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My favorite poem on planning
Organizations strategize and plan, rinse and repeat. Keen analysis and strategy is key to planning, but so is space to co-create, which is the only option when there are questions with no answers. I think this poem describes that space...
FIRE by Judy Brown
What makes a fire burn | is space between the logs, | a breathing space. | Too much of a good thing, | too many logs | packed in too tight | can douse the flames | almost as surely | as a pail of water would.
So building fires | requires attention | to the spaces in between, | as much as to the wood. | When we are able to build | open spaces
in the same way | we have learned | to pile on the logs, | then we can come to see how | it is fuel, and absence of the fuel | together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log | lightly from time to time. | A fire | grows | simply because the space is there, | with openings | in which the flame | that knows just how it wants to burn | can find its way.
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This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
Who Said It So Well: Leonard Bernstein
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How Very Cross-Sector is Your Board?
One resource every nonprofit organization has is its board of directors. Volumes are written on the subject, and here’s an observation to add to the mix: The one and only place that influential people representing many sectors at many levels regularly meet to work together as equals, over a span of years, is the nonprofit board of directors.
Check it out. There are 1.5 million nonprofits in the U.S. There are also 1.5 million NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in India. In these two countries alone, at an average of 12 board members each, that makes 36 million accomplished people working cross-sector monthly, quarterly, at retreats, in committees, etc.
Consider the profile of two nonprofit boards I recently worked with as a consultant and facilitator:
Board #1:
Corporate Attorney
Philanthropist (2)
Public Benefit Agency Director
Architect
Marketing and Communications Professional
Venture Capitalist
Leadership Consultant
Event Producer
Commercial Real Estate Developer
Gallery Owner
Writer
State Policy Department Chief
Fellowship Recipient
Filmmaker
Graduate Student
Former Elected Official
Board #2:
Bank Vice President
Human Service Consultant to State Government
Social Capitol Advisor
Management Consultant
Corporate Board Member
Foundation President
Private Banker
Nonprofit Consultant
Philanthropist (3)
Media Publisher
Corporate Consultant
Utilities Company Public Relations Director
Corporate Business Manager
University Professor
Local Community Leader
Public Attorney
Clergy
Executive Coach
The social sector is hot on a new paradigm of cross-sector work -- where agencies, organizations, investors, business, entrepreneurs, creators, tech makers, grassroots voices, philanthropists and government seek to come together to make an impact on wicked problems. The field literature is ripe with ideas for the cross-sector future.
Cross-sector work is the DNA experience of board members serving nonprofit organizations and NGOs. It's reached critical mass in the sheer numbers of diverse, eclectic and connected people involved across the world, the years of trial and error already put in (key to design and innovation), the vast array of experiments in how people team together to scale an effort, and more.
Having served on and chaired boards, as well as consulted to and coached dozens, I am not naïve about “what is”. There is much to do to lift up the inherent value of cross-sector boards via improved practice.
But with the new visibility of cross-sector work, I'm moved to call out the “what could be” when nonprofits and NGOs can optimize the resource that meets in their shops month after month, year after year, replacing and replenishing itself – and then can deliver this huge bank of knowledge to our changing social sector. To borrow from one of the best tag lines ever: "An asset like this is a terrible thing to waste."
#nonprofit#social sector#social change#leadership#diversity#boards#organizational culture#social innovation
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Seven Ways to Understand One Billion
One billion is one thousand millions.
One billion seconds ago it was 1959.
If one billion goldfish live in a bowl, it’s a stadium.
It takes 95 years to count from one to one billion.
There are 893 million girls in the world, or 89% of one billion.
One billion women standing on each other’s shoulders stretch to the moon.
On February 14, 2013 one billion women walked out, danced and rose up for the sake of freedom from insufferable violence.
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I have decided to stick to love... Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Who Said It So Well: Martin Luther King Jr.
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It's the Winter Solstice.
Times are uncertain. The ground for the leaders and teams I work with in the social sector is shifting. Profound questions for the future of humanity abound. It's the season to turn within, and allow ourselves to move with change and be moved in the changing. Not so easy. But it's also the time where our great capacity to give is replenished.
At a coaching master class last week, we considered what Heidegger meant when he wrote about "the sober readiness to be astounded before the coming of the dawn." Yes, I thought, this speaks to renewed capacity to roll with change. As the leaders and teams I work with determine how best to close a year filled with challenges, they are also astounded by small and large gifts of treasure, kindness and beauty received.
I love this gallery of images from the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Our changing earth, impacted by many forces, including our own destructive acts, yet continually astounding in its changing. Upper left: Lena Delta, Russia. Upper right: Terkezi Oasis, Chad. Lower left: Akpatok Island, Canada. Lower left: Richat Structure, Mauritania. Blessings to all for the Winter Solstice.
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"Making the Case" to the American People
Cue up dramatic music, cut to fly-in logo with cameos, cue announcer: "To-NIGHT the candidates MAKE their CASE to the American people in the presidential debate!"
The U.S. race for the White House storms on. "Making the case" is everywhere, and in the presidential debates, it's promoted like nowhere else.
For all strategizing to "make the case" for year-end fundraising, this is for you.
Four Tips from Watching the Debate:
#1. Be a whole person. Respond with guts, show heart, be in your body, exhibit critical thinking, have a grasp on data. That's how I stay curious to know more.
#2. Be a whole entity. You're an "administration." You are roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, infrastructure, operations, finances, strategies, programs, information and oversight. For me to get a picture of how you want to move forward and why I should move with you, give a sense of what it really takes.
#3. Be a part of the whole mix. There are hosts of people that care about the same things you do and are working way hard to see it done. No doubt some are your colleagues or communities. Take credit for your part but in context with others. That's when I decide to get more involved with what you're doing.
#4. Be a visionary with your feet on the ground. Touch my heart and soul with what could be instead of how it is now, then let me see how you're moving the needle from here to there. Show me you're doing it as a seeker of justice and passion in spite of your own limits and those of the world. Believe me, I'm interested to invest in that combo.
"Making the case" is more than a set of messages or talking points. Like Sidney Poitier's autobiography The Measure of a Man, the case is the measure of a whole effort.
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We need, each of us, to begin the awesome, difficult work of love: loving ourselves so that we become able to love others without fear so that we can become able enough to enlarge the circle of our trust and our common striving for a safe, sunny afternoon near to flowering trees and under a very blue sky.
Who said it so well: June Jordan
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And then the Dalai Lama said...
Story told to our Insight Meditation class at Spirit Rock (paraphrased with my apologies, but here's the gist):
"The Dali Lama spent a few days at Spirit Rock. The whole staff and all the teachers had a time with him where we could ask questions. One of the staff members posed, 'I've had a sitting practice for many years. In the first years, I thought I made much progress. But in the last few, try as I might, I don't think I am. What your thoughts on this?'
"The room fell completely still. We all wanted the answer to that one! His Holiness sat in thought. Three to four minutes passed. You could hear a pin drop.
"Finally...his answer: 'You know, that's happened to me before too!' "
Growing up as a concert pianist, I practiced the instrument hours every day. "Practice makes perfect" the teachers and the culture told me. Well...in music, in meditation, in developing the way we work in our organizations or teams, it turns out practice does not make perfect.
Today I think what practice does is create a path to explore, curiosity to see where it takes us, courage to try it out, greater flex for uncertainty, and kindness for ourselves and others as we take one step forward and...
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Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
Who Said It So Well: Dr. Seuss
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What Makes A Liveable Culture?
As a coach to leaders and teams, clients are often concerned with their organization's culture. Attitudes and morale are well known to impact daily progress. For boards, culture can make the difference between members contributing what they joined the board to do in the first place, or not. So what makes a liveable organizational culture?
Volumes are offered on this topic, but I want to reflect on my time this summer spent in the Luberon Valley of Southern France. I don't speak the language, which is certainly a huge part of a culture (hurray for the app Google Translate). But as my partner and I made our way through the hilltop towns in the Luberon, two observations brought my clients' efforts to create livable organizational cultures to mind.
#1. Knowing your history matters. Nearly every place we went was hundreds of years old, steeped in stories of multiple generations and stark transitions. Ancient walled towns with tiny curling streets, weathered doors that now open to invite shopping or reveal living spaces with Wifii and the rest of it. And full of French tourists soaking it in, exploring their historic stories.
Stories create common ground, a baseline for a collective context. How many staffs and boards know their organization's founding story, or something of the major transitions that have taken place, whether the history is forty years old or two? I say interview your founders and get their story. Same with leaders going out and coming in. Archive and get creative. If your cultural history is not documented and shared in interesting ways, especially during these times of rapid organizational change, it won't exist in the future.
Creating the expectation that there's a regular period in the workday where people can change state in the company of others, say to sit down and enjoy a bite and some conversation, is a culture tried and true. I know one organization that provides a free daily lunch. Another has a day every quarter where staff works on creative projects or inventions of their choosing. And how about "hackathons" where developers get together and dive into a collective challenge? The trick here is to hold the expectation of a time to change state lightly; making it unacceptable NOT to participate can be just as limiting as the other way around.
In closing, I do recommend a his-storied, change of state visit to another place. When planning our visit to the Luberon, I had imagined my partner and I having deep conversations and me making great progress writing my book. None of that happened. Instead, hours went by watching street scenes unfold from the table of a cafe. Or remarking on someone's passing hat, learning how a family's generations of olive growers developed the tapenades they still sell in the Friday market, taking a surprising walk down a country road, and more.
The result? I'm refreshed and ready for the next steps in my work. Experiencing a piece of Provencal French life helped me remember that liveable cultures are part expectation, part shared practice -- and part freedom to create by experiencing. Carry on!
What makes a liveable organizational culture for you? Let's exchange.
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Take 1 Poem and 1 Song and Call Me in the Morning
When doing strategic design with my clients, critical thinking skills are very highly valued – a 21st century capability indeed.
But consider this astonishing plank proposed for the 2012 platform of the Republican Party of Texas: “We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (value clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
Take one poem and one song and call me in the morning.
I was once invited to be guest conductor for a mass chorus workshop, where several choirs, related through their service to a church, came together to sing en masse. From the opening song they passionately performed, clearly they loved harmony.
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and the daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but they are not from you, and though they are with you, they belong not to you.
You can give them your love but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts.
You can house their bodies but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in a place of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You can strive to be like them, but you cannot make them just like you.”
Sweet Honey’s song is infectious, but soon hands slapping thighs to keep time ground to a halt. Silence. Is it something I said? Finally, a young man around age 25 spoke up: “My parents do not want me to sing this song.” What? Why? “Well, because they would be really upset if I said I’m not like them.”
But… This is poetry, interpretation, metaphor, song, culture, history, writing, rhythm, legacy!
I’ll never know if I was convincing or not for that young guy. And it became clear that the choir's politics were 180 from my own. But I went ahead and taught the song to the end (it’s short). And witness the power of poetry and musical tradition and song – groups of choir members kept hitting those harmonies again and again after rehearsal, through dinner, after dinner and into the night. They just could not stop singing Of Children.
So to the Republican Party of Texas: Opposing Higher Order Thinking Skills, critical thinking, et. al. is a fruitless endeavor. You can’t stop the human mind from reaching for meaning and connection. An alternative and more useful plank for your platform? Support strong moves for music, arts, poetry, writing and culture.
And for strategic planners: Try inserting a poem and a song to help people change state and open 'out of the box' critical thinking.
P.S. Did you know that Khalil Gibran is the third best selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu?
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If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."
Who said it so well: Vincent Van Gogh
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After grappling with make a Word Press web site myself, just had to make this, with love, to all my super resourceful clients and colleagues in the social sector.
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Times being what they were, I took the job.
Who said it so well: The Wizard of Oz
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Re-Thinking Strategic Planning
Repurpose. Recycle. Rebuild. Reframe. Recreate.
"Re" verbs describe the new actions of our era.
Re-novating our kitchen is currently on the wish list. So is re-covering from stress. Re-lating with donors and supporters is top of mind for several of my clients. Re-living the "good times" with friends is popular on Facebook. "Re" is all around us.
These days, I love to work with leaders and teams on re-conceiving strategic planning practices in our nonprofit and social sector organizations. Re-envisioning for 3 to 5 years into the future is complicated work and can consume re-sources at a rapid rate.
I find that the larger elements like mission, vision and core work do not change that much over time. The question is more about re-levance to changing markets and communities.
My clients need to mount an increasingly interactive and distinct re-sponse. I work with them to be more re-iterative in planning and feel the re-wards of making specific strategic moves across one year timeframes. Then re-flecting to inform the next stage.
Strategic planning is very important, but let's re-imagine processes to fit today's re-alities. What do you think? Let's connect.
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