Category Archives: Governance
Realize Solutions Named a 2025 Top Impact Company by Real Leaders®
Realize Solutions has been recognized as one of the 2025 Top Impact Companies by Real Leaders® magazine, underscoring our approach to transforming organizational performance through strategic leadership and governance! Hosted by Real Leaders® (a UN Global Compact member and Certified B Corp), this global award recognizes businesses that are driving meaningful change across industries while balancing purpose and profit. Along…
Top 5 CEO Succession Planning Strategies Guide
If you’re sitting on a board today, here’s a sobering reality check: over half of corporate boards lack a formal CEO succession plan. When there’s a CEO currently in place, it’s easy for boards to ignore CEO succession planning in favour of other more pressing matters. Until it becomes today’s crisis. The truth is, effective CEO succession planning isn’t just…
Executive Guide: Managing Leadership Conflict & Conversations Ebook
Discover how top executives transform difficult conversations into strategic advantages. Learn the 5 hidden costs of conflict avoidance and a framework for success.
Mastering Organizational Change: An Executive’s Guide to Effective Transformation Ebook
What is effective change management? Explore the top 5 challenges that can make your organizational change fail, and practical change management strategies all leaders should use to successfully implement organizational change.
Designing Your Board for Maximum Value and Impact
Whether you’re a board chair, a board director, or a CEO, each role can uniquely address problems related to the top two common pain points that can hinder a board from maximizing their value to the organization: alignment, and expertise and resources.
Realize 2023 Impact Report
Organizations have a responsibility to help build a better world, and we are no exception. We are proud to be certified by B Corp, Living Wage, and Buy Social Canada. From empowering leaders and organizations, to volunteering, social purchasing, knowledge sharing, and global stewardship, we are committed to strengthening our communities. Some of our 2023 highlights include: Learn more about…
4 Questions All Board Chairs and CEOs Should Ask Each Other
The best board chair (chair) and chief executive relationships are founded on mutual trust and respect. But at Realize, we know that for some chief executives, this relationship can be a deadweight and feel like just another item on their pile of things to ‘manage’ instead of a real lift both professionally and personally. For boards, we know that this…
Our Social Impact: Realize 2021-22 Impact Report
“We bring value to our members, clients, and partners by reinvesting in, engaging, and collaborating with the communities we serve.” 2021/22 has been a year of growth and new ventures. As the world around us has shifted and adapted to the new needs and norms of the workplace, we have been listening closely to the needs and aspirations of our…
Realize is a 2022 Best for the World™ B Corp!
We are thrilled to announce that Realize has been named a 2022 Best for the World™ B Corp in recognition of our exceptional positive impact in two categories: Governance and Workers! Best for the World is a distinction granted by B Lab to Certified B Corporations (B Corps) whose verified B Impact Scores in the five impact areas evaluated in…
Making a Difference: Realize 2020-21 Impact Report
“We believe people are the heartbeat and that culture is foundation of all world-changing organizations.” This is the core principle of the work we do here at Realize – putting people and culture at the centre of everything we do. 2020/21 has been a year of unprecedented change. As we have all had to continuously adapt to shifting circumstances and…
Dear Non-profit Board Member: Are You Harnessing or Hindering Innovation?
Dear Non-profit Board Member, Let me start this letter by thanking you sincerely for agreeing to serve on a non-profit. It’s incredibly important work. You’ve chosen to sacrifice time with friends and family. You may even have given up an opportunity to make money — possibly a lot of money. Instead, you’ve chosen to volunteer your time, energy, and experience…
The Business Case for Pressing Pause: Our August Break Week
We’re closing down this August. Not permanently – but for the first time in our 22 years of practice, Realize is closing our practice down in the middle of August for a week. But why? We can hear many of you asking. What’s the point of closing in the middle of August? Is it for some weeklong professional development bootcamp?…
DEI: From Acronym to Action
What’s stopping your workplace from taking practical action to become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive? This was the topic we dove into at our DEI workshop with more than 45 passionate leaders and change makers from multiple sectors and across Canada and the U.S. Led by the inspiring Donte Curtis, Lead Consultant and Founder of Catch Your Dream Consulting, we…
Here’s Our Talent Culture and Performance Strategy. What’s Yours?
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Peter Drucker At Realize, we spend a lot of time thinking about people and culture. We firmly believe that people are the foundation and heart of all organizations regardless of size or sector – they’re the ones running, building, innovating, giving loyalty, and bringing in money for your company. People and culture are integral aspects…
7 Options for Socially Conscious Procurement in Greater Vancouver
Here at Realize, we’re incredibly passionate about using our procurement practices to support local, socially conscious organizations. Before we work with a new supplier, we go through a vetting process to make sure their values and practices align with ours. To share the love, we thought we’d share our list of qualified social suppliers: Mills Basics Office Productivity Mills began…
Realize Strategies Recognized As A “Best For The World: Overall” B Corp For The Fifth Year In A Row!
Every year with the “Best For The World” honoree list, B Lab recognizes the top 10% of B Corps from around the world who are generating the greatest environmental, community, governance, customer, worker, or overall impact through their businesses. We are absolutely thrilled to share that we are on the B Corp “Best For The World” honoree list for the fifth year in a row –…
We’re A Certified Living Wage Employer!
We’re proud and excited to announce that Realize Strategies is now a certified Living Wage Employer! Here at Realize, we take pride in doing everything we can to ensure our team members have fair and competitive salaries and benefits. That’s why we are proud to share that we have a longstanding internal policy that the ratio of compensation between our most senior and…
Social Purchasing Lessons from The Buy Social Canada Summit
Realize CEO John Kay shares his takeaway from the 2017 Buy Social Canada Summit. Every day Canadians make thousands of purchases. Coffee. Paper. Clothing. But how often do we stop to think about the impact of our purchases? Who made those clothes? Who benefits from the purchase of a morning latte? The December holidays seem a fitting time to think…
ANNOUNCEMENT: We’ve just gained certification as a B Corporation!
For those who don’t know what a B Corporation is, they are organizations certified by the non-profit organization B Lab, to meet rigorous standards of accountability, transparency, and social and environmental performance. It’s a corporate standard – think Fairtrade coffee or LEED construction. At the root of B Corp philosophy, is the triple bottom line – meaning a corporation is…
7 Signs of A Healthy Organization
In our many years of working with purpose-driven organizations of all sizes and across multiple sectors, we’ve learned that some organizations tend to be stronger than others. These organizations all have 7 traits in common and their programs, employees, clients, and bank accounts are healthier because of it. In general, there are 7 elements that strong organizations share: 1. Cohesive…