JANUARY 2024
CELEBRATING 145 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
THEGROWER.ORG
LEADERSHIP
Great expectations motivate Gen Z
The Grape Growers of Ontario is nurturing a young growers’ group that has its own communications and government relations committees. It’s a shadow cabinet, if you will, for a sector that has an annual farmgate value of $112 million. The Next Generation Committee is chaired by Jessica Solanki (L) at Niagara-on-the-Lake. She is joined by fellow growers Connor Watson and Mark Lepp. Photo by Marcella DiLonardo.
Leaders rarely lobby to replace themselves. A democratic process is required to limit terms, to ensure new perspectives, to train up the executive suite. The Harvard Business Review, in a January 2022 article “Reinventing your leadership team,” states what’s expected of leaders today. “We used to expect, for instance, that leaders could be either great visionaries or great operators. No longer. Companies now need their top people to perform both roles—to be strategic executors, in other words. They’re also expected to be tech-savvy humanists, high-integrity politicians, humble heroes, globally minded localists, and traditioned innovators.” Associations are not corporations primed for profit. Nonetheless, they’re complex legal entities that must
navigate their way through dynamic personalities and politics at municipal, provincial and federal levels while driving toward strategic goals. The Grape Growers of Ontario (GGO) is no stranger to this terrain. Born in 1947, the Association represents 500 growers and a $112 million industry that’s intertwined with agri-tourism areas across the province: Niagara, Lake Erie North Shore, Prince Edward County and Georgian Bay. Despite its many achievements to date, the Association still faces the need to reinvent itself in a competitive world. Again, from the Harvard Business Review, “traditioned innovators use the past to help direct success while creating a forward-focussed culture that allows for innovating, failure, learning and growth.” For the GGO, it was important to reimagine the future after COVID. Part of that strategic plan was launching the Next-Generation Committee in spring 2023. Under the leadership of Debbie Zimmerman, GGO CEO, the
Ergonomics in the greenhouse
PG 6
El Salvador pilot project
Volume 74 Number 01
$3.00 CDN
@growernews
KAREN DAVIDSON
P.M. 40012319
PG 8
association secured provincial funding for skills development including a transition planning workshop, leadership training, a public speaking and social media workshop, and media training. As opportunities present, members of the Next-Generation committee are invited to conferences and events, and when possible, help to staff the GGO booth. “Several Next Gen committee members have participated in government meetings to represent the future of the industry in the context of the modernization of alcohol retailing in Ontario,” says Zimmerman, a political veteran herself, having served two terms as the regional chair of the Region of Niagara. “Their perspectives were well received.”
Continued on page 3
Grapes, vineyards and berries
PG 14