Meet the dynamic father-son duo behind Sajecki Planning!
Meet the dynamic father-son duo behind Sajecki Planning!
An Interview with Ed and David Sajecki
It was a delight to interview Ed and David Sajecki, co-founders of Sajecki Planning in Toronto, over lunch. David and I had crossed paths over the years, and I’d heard Ed’s name long before we met. As a father-son duo, they launched Sajecki Planning in 2017. Aren’t you curious how they make it work? Here, they reflect here on the importance of good communication – with each other, with clients, and especially when the stakes are high.
Ed is Partner and Co-Founder at Sajecki Planning and a Senior Advisor at StrategyCorp. He has expertise in strategic and tactical planning, policy and land use planning, development planning, and building construction. As a former Assistant Deputy Minister and Planning Commissioner with several Toronto region municipalities, he is a bit of legend, I must say. Learn more about Ed here.
David is Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Sajecki Planning. He has directed and managed projects for a variety of public and private-sector clients. His diverse and extensive project experience includes urban design guidelines, growth management strategies, municipal-wide zoning bylaw reviews, secondary plans, master plans, transportation infrastructure planning and design, development feasibility studies, development approvals, mediation, and OLT/TLAB expert witness testimony. Yup – he’s done it all! Learn more about David here.
Lisa: I am so curious about how the two of you work together, as father and son, and as business partners. Your firm is one of the fastest growing in the city. How are you making it happen? And particularly, how do you communicate as you grow the business?
David: We talk every day. I think we probably have different boundaries than some other partners might, because often we can't talk during the day. We try to limit work talk at night, but often there'll be a call at eight or nine, which I would never do with someone who was not family. It's all been organic, in terms of how we make decisions, I think.
Ed probably lets me make most of the decisions about the future of the firm; he provides guidance, although that will probably all change now that we have brought in another partner [Blair Scorgie]. We’re pretty well-aligned on what it is we want to do, although I'm probably more interested in policy work than Ed is.
Ed: I'm going to add to that. I'm always conscious of growing the firm, and in some instances, in taking on a particular client. David might say, “This is a lot that they want us to deliver. Is this realistic? And is this a best practice from a planning perspective?”
David: Ed takes more of a position that we can guide potential clients, where I may be inclined to say no.
Ed: You never know quite where it's going to lead. I can tell you we started off with some fairly small clients, but one of these days, one of those clients that's kind of small may come to us with a much bigger project. And the next thing you know, they're the new Reichmans. Everybody starts somewhere. So I've been a little reluctant to say no, as long as we can fit it in. Now increasingly, as we've gotten busier, and we've gotten into more complex projects, we are seeing bigger clients.
We have our disagreements like everyone else, but I'd say we're pretty aligned. David is really strong. And he wants to make sure our credibility is maintained, always, because there are some planning firms out there that are more like processors. I’m a bit more inclined to think about the path to get a negotiated settlement.
David: I have no problem with taking on a Committee of Adjustment project, I don't want to give that impression. I think there are projects where I'm thinking in terms of delivery, how we are best positioned to deliver it, and Ed is more interested in figuring it out. That’s probably the main area where we’re different; on everything else we’re pretty aligned.
But to go to go back to your question, our communications about the firm has evolved. First, about starting a company: it dominated our conversation all the time, which I don't think is sustainable. Where we're at now, we have more of a structure in place. We rely more on that structure, rather than just constant communication, and are starting to trust the structures we have in place. For instance, I know, at least for me, I need to step back a bit more at night than I did in the first year or two years of starting up the firm.
Ed: It was a challenge, a little bit, in the first or second year when we had clients who know me, and trust David, but these other folks, they don't really know us, so they wanted me at every meeting, or David, or the both of us at every meeting, and you just simply can't offer that. Now we're hiring more senior people and so forth. And the clients also develop a comfort level with our staff, which is really important, especially with the clients that have been with us longer.
David: I’m very glad that I had a career not working with my father before we started the firm, because if I came in junior, it would have been a different dynamic, a different relationship. And I think this allowed us to bring our own opinions and be able to bounce them off each other, and have that mutual respect.
Ed: He'd have been in my shadow. He used to hear, “Oh, you’re Ed’s son!” and now I get, “Oh, you’re David’s father!” He’s the superstar now!
David: When I first started right after my master’s degree, I worked in B.C. for a few years, because he has a big shadow here. I’d go to a meeting and nobody knew him.
Ed: I can tell you it's really evolved. I was in a lot of meetings with our clients at the beginning, but they have so much confidence in him that they don't even know my name anymore!
Lisa: Given your different perspectives and experiences, what have you observed about how well planners write? And have you seen any real changes for better or worse?
Ed: There's a big variety out there. There are some planners who, for whatever reason, are really exceptional writers. And there are others who are sort of in between, and there are others who are awful. So it’s all over the place. But is there a need for improvement? Absolutely. Planners don’t have the discipline of journalists, unfortunately; they just feel that more words are expected. And they don't focus on getting right to the point.
It’s less about writing and more about thinking, “What am I trying to say here? And what audience am I trying to address?” Quite a bit more upfront thinking would be really, really helpful before they actually start putting pen to paper.
David: I agree with that so much. I can say that from experience. I used to just start writing rather than laying it out by first focusing on the argument that I wanted to make, and the points I wanted to make. I would just have so much stuff that would land on a page. And I'd be thinking, “What is this even about, what am I even trying to prove here?” I find new planners, especially, do that, too.
Upfront thinking is so critical, even more than writing. And I mean this genuinely, that the most important thing when we're bringing on new planners is their ability to think critically and to write well. Everything else can be taught.
Lisa: Do you think that's partly because of planners’ training? Something is missing?
Ed: Some of the best planners I've worked with have an earlier degree in either English or journalism.
David: And confidence comes into play, too. I think one of the reasons planners use gobbledygook, planning jargon, is because they don't have the confidence to make the argument and explain things clearly. They're hiding behind language people won't be able to understand and will just accept.
Critical thinking is a muscle you have to exercise over and over. I think if you're taught that in university, it's helpful. Analyzing situations, which planners have to do a lot of every day – well, you can get even better.
Ed: It’s very inefficient for a manager to spend their time rewriting reports. I would just say to the planner that there are some things that are incorrect, and send it back – so they learned. If I just changed it, they wouldn’t learn or understand.
Lisa: Ed, how did you guide staff on developing their critical thinking, and for their communications in particular, in your different roles as an Assistant Deputy Minister, Planning Commissioner, and other leadership roles.
Ed: Sometimes you can push for the gold standard too often. I would let things go that I wouldn't have said a certain way, just because I knew council would still understand what it was all about. I’d check that the recommendation was right, and if I didn't think we were going to be challenged at the Ontario Land Tribunal [formerly the Ontario Municipal Board], I’d let it go. Then there were other proposals that I knew were really controversial, where I was going to have lawyers showing up to the meeting and reading every word. So it really depends.
I would always look at these things, “Who's the audience? What is needed to get the job done?” because we're so busy, we’ve got other things to do. So I’m not looking for that perfectly written report. I'd like it to be perfected, but no, not everyone's William Shakespeare.
Lisa: Tell me how your own written documents have been received, or what you have done to make sure they are well received.
Ed: We have to prepare witness statements, and so much of it is about anticipating the weak spots in the argument and what we have to do to really make sure that we cover everything off.
Everything we've talked about is really about telling a story. I used to say it a lot to staff, actually. Like in their presentations – if you can tell the story in 5 minutes to council, don’t make it 20.
David: I have a methodology that we follow that starts with laying out the study area and trying to think critically, from a policy perspective, about how that framework is going to relate to the argument later on. There's a few different ways you can do it, but I always have my issues list. Within your issues list, you're trying to prove your argument based on your informed planning opinion. I take those issues and I tie them back to policy. As I'm laying out the policy, I'm always thinking about how it is going to really highlight the arguments that I'm making, and then I use that to follow it through, step by step, in a logical order. And that's proven to be helpful with a member [of the OLT] that's hearing it, in terms of getting the right answers.
Then in terms of the cross examination [on the stand], I find it really comes down to oral communication, how comfortable you are, because every lawyer that I've come across starts with really simple questions, but they're trying to trip you up. So you have to be straightforward and simple in your answers, not provide more than you think you will need to provide, because they're looking for holes the whole time. Just like with our written communication, we're trying to keep it as tight as possible. And they're [the lawyers] going to put you into a rhythm, where they will actually start asking their questions faster and faster to throw you off. I like to respond in my own time. I’ll use a lot of “yes, buts.” Or I'll take a sip of water. Or I might take a really long time to get started on my answer. A lot of it does come back to communication skills.
I was working on a daycare case and the lawyer was attacking me on licensing requirements and design guidelines. I knew nothing about that, and I could have looked really bad if I went into that space. You can just say, “No, I'm here to speak to the area that I'm considered to be an expert witness for, and that is the policy and how it relates back to the OP.” I built huge credibility with the member. I was sticking to my lane. It's tough. It's intimidating.
Ed: David's done that quite a bit recently [act as expert witness]. And he's been very successful.
In some cases, it's not a disagreement where there's a fight. You’re just talking it through and then the lawyer convinces me, or David confirms, this is the right approach, or maybe we'll convince the lawyer to take a different tack. But it's a very consultative and cooperative. Where you get the confrontational stuff is with the lawyers on the other side coming at you in a very tough way under cross examination. It can be very intimidating.
Politicians also read certain reports and they'll give you a perspective as to what they see as being important and less important in the planning report. Politicians are usually good communicators. David Crombie, the “tiny perfect mayor,” is such a good communicator. I'll give you an illustration. We attended a session with five former mayors to talk about the new “strong mayor” legislation [Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, 2022)]. What I later noticed on the CBC coverage was that he managed to say very succinctly what the issues are. He said, “I want to raise three points. Number one, council is supreme and should be supreme; the mayor doesn't run the whole show. Point two, transparency and discussing things in public is fundamental to all of this. And thirdly, the civil service should be independent,” because through the strong mayor system, the mayor will have the right to appoint, hire, and fire. Senior officials like the planning director are key, and they [the provincial government] want to politicize all that. He [Crombie] caught our attention.
Lisa: Between the two of you, you’ve worked in planning for so many years in both government and industry. What’s changed about how planners communicate with decision makers, partners, and others?
Ed: What's really changed is that you better make sure that you keep the decision makers involved, every step of the way, so they know what you're doing. Ask them, “Are we on the right track?” You have to constantly be in touch with them. I think that's incredibly important.
David: We have templates for some reports, including planning rationale reports, but the biggest fear is if somebody is using that template, they're just copying previous language from another report, when they need to rewrite. Reading and reviewing is really important.
Ed: I struggle with what I call digital distraction. I, for one, can't read long paragraphs. I don't think any of us have an attention span anymore.
Lisa: Thank you both!
Notes for the new year:
If you’re a paid subscriber, look out for a few more posts before the end of the year. Some tips, some essential reads, and other light stuff for the holi-daze.
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Lastly, thank you all for joining me. It’s been a highlight of my year to launch this newsletter. Keep your comments coming! After all, this space is for you to learn and connect with other practitioners, and I want to give you what you need to excel at on-the-job communication. See you again after Jan 1!