Orgforward Opines

My mother recently gave an intimate talk on creativity. She has been creating for over seven decades as a painter, gardener, chef, house renovator - really in everything she does. So she has bona fides in the subject area.  In all those years, this was the first time she says she has ever publicly talked about her paintings and she revealed that she was a bit anxious talking about the idea of 'creativity.' - How do you describe something that just is. Spoiler alert - she was amazing at it.  Two things in particular snuck up on me, and then, with the force of a compass needle finding its place pointing north, revealed the influence my mother's creativity has on my work. First, she spoke of how creativity is about coming into something without 'any rules about a certain product expected [of the work].' Second, she explained how she always started with just observing - seeing what you see without judgement or expectation.  (In fact, I can still hear her instructing my

I sit on the board of an organization called Creating the Future . The tagline is ‘Change the questions, Change the world.’ The underlying principle is that we can create more equitable and healthy strategies to create and sustain a thriving world by basing our decisions and actions on a different set of questions than we often are conditioned to asking. In my own practice as a coach, consultant, and educator, I spend most of my time trying to figure out the question, not the answer. (I think that is actually what I earn a living doing…)  So here is the one question we absolutely need to change. Stop asking about whom you serve Start asking about whom will you affect In my experience working with organizations around strategy, design, and programming, people with decision-making power spend a lot of time thinking about whom the organization serves - whom the client or customer is and what their needs are. This is not an inherently bad question. Who doesn’t want to help impro

I will be honest. I am a bit of a Strategic Planning skeptic – so best to get that bias out first. My overall experience is that the cliché of the report that sits on the shelf (or a cloud server, to be more 21 st century) or a planning process that falls short of expectations is far too common.  I won’t start the diatribe here about why that may be happening – that’s for another post – but let’s just leave it at strategic plans are often a square approach (peg) to a round set of desired outcomes (hole). Instead, I want to offer up the questions that successfully guide any planning or design process in a way that ensures that the process actually gets you where you want to be. Not surprisingly, it starts from what you hope to accomplish as opposed to presumption of what we ‘should’ do . Those familiar with Catalytic Decision Making ™ will recognize this pattern of questioning. So…before jumping to the decision to move forward with a strategic planning process and sending out

Several years ago I had the opportunity to work with a small nonprofit in the local area on a comprehensive organizational identity and strategy alignment process. As they explored what they valued and how best to advance their work in alignment with those values, focus turned to the board and any implications the newly articulated vision and values might have on the board itself. At one point, one of the board members asked if they should start thinking about the board as an opportunity to develop the leadership of young women (a clear extension of their mission and values). This was one of the most brilliant questions I had heard in many years of doing board development work. Not just because it indulged my own passion for developing leadership among young people, but because it also demonstrated a deep desire to have the board be aligned with AND integrated into the vision and values of the organization as opposed to the proverbial steward/caretaker of those values.   In previou

Many of you may have had an experience with a common strength demonstration activity that I first experienced when my freshman English teacher, an Aikido master, asked me to help him make a point - I honestly don’t remember what the point was…so much for that lesson - but I did walk away with an understanding of strength (hmm, maybe that was the point…) Anyway, he asked me to stand in front of him, extend my arms out straight, rest my wrists on his shoulders, and resist his attempts to bend my elbows. Of course, my first reaction was to clench my fists, flex my muscles, and probably make an awkward anxious facial expression. He bent my arms easily once I ran out of juice and my muscles fatigued from flexing – plus it hurt. Then he said to do it again, but this time, open and relax my hands, don’t flex my arms, and just concentrate on breathing. Again, he eventually bent my arms, but I lasted a whole lot longer and nothing ever hurt. Simple moral to long paragraph – there was gr