7 paths

We've moved

2007-09-17T08:38:00.000-05:00

The 7 Paths blog has a new home.

Evergreen Leaders now has a completely revamped website and the 7 Paths blog has migrated to the new site. You can now follow this blog at http://www.evergreenleaders.org/thriving-groups/7-paths-blog.html

See you there and while you're there, feel free to explore the new site. You can learn more about Evergreen Leaders, find tools for annual and capital fund raising campaigns, and watch us grow the site as a resource for folks who want to help their groups thrive by using the 7 Paths.

What frustrated donors want

2007-09-12T15:20:00.000-05:00

Small business owners are tired of being hit up continually for donations. The topic came up in a conversation I had today with Illinois State Senator Gary Dahl. "There's a golf tournament almost every day during the summer," he said.

What's the alternative?

Annual campaigns.
Four years ago I helped a nonprofit stop doing special events (yes, they did a golf tournaments, dinners, and a dozen other events) and launched an annual campaign. Dahl served as the first chairperson of the campaign.

The organization kept their popular Christmas appeal and then organized volunteers from the business and professional community to meet in person and ask the person for a pledge for the year.

In four years, the nonprofit doubled it's income from the face to face solicitation phase. And the business and professional people were delighted because they knew that at least one major nonprofit in the community was going to ask them only once a year.

The principle of the the thing

2007-09-06T15:52:00.000-05:00

"There is no policy in the handbook forbidding a supervisor from living with someone he or she is supervising," the young supervisor said.

She was right. She was also inadvertently pointing to the flaw of using policies as a management tool.

The supervisor at a community nonprofit faced a housing crisis and she faced who solved her housing problem by moving in with a male staff person whom she supervised.

When the program director discovered her living arrangement, she transferred her to other department so that she would no longer supervise the staff member she was living with. The supervisor objected to the transfer and pointed out she was violating no policy.

That's the inherent weaknesses of running an organization by policies. You can never create enough policies to cover all the crazy things people will do. It would be better to have a few principles, one of them might be, avoid conflicts of interest with anyone that you supervise.

Here’s a quote that expresses what I think about principles and policies:

A principle is just a commonly held guide for thinking, behaving and making decisions. You can manage a process or a machine with regulations, rules, and procedures, but if you want the best chance to capture people’ latent potential, then you start with principles that people “own” and help create.*

Principles can be smart and friendly.

* From “My Unfashionable Legacy” by Ralph Sink, Strategy+Business Autumn 2007. Click on Magazine tab, find the Autumn 2007 issue, and then scroll down and click on the article. You may have to fill out a free registration at the site but the article is worth it.

Grandeur from rude nature

2007-09-03T10:02:00.000-05:00

For the past week Sarah and I have had a young woman living with us, testing the outdoor life by working on the Plow Creek farm. Mandy, a young woman who grew up in a Chicago suburb, gets up at dawn to join several other folks who grow, harvest, and market berries and vegetables.

This morning Mandy asked me where Labor Day came from. “I think it was started by unions to honor workers,” I said.

A little research revealed this gem: “Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those ‘who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.’” The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City.

I grew up among farmers and who carved grandeur from rude nature. Even though I became disabled in my late teens and moved from the working man world to the white collar world, I am still shaped by growing up among people who worked for a living.

As I’ve been working with a web designer to build a new Evergreen Leaders website, I’ve often thought of my father building a new barn in the early 1960s. Almost all of our neighboring farmers decided they couldn’t make a go of it and moved away from their farms to work in factories.

In today’s post on Labor Day, Seth Godin contrasts the hard physical work of manual labor with the hard work of today–taking risks. My father knew how to do both, work eighteen hour days physically and take the risk of building what at the time was the most advanced dairy barn in Minnesota. Godin describes perfectly the risk he took:

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo.

Dad took the risk of building that barn, a risk that made it possible for him to raise ten kids on that farm and still be living on the farm 21 years after he retired. Apparent risk is also a way to create grandeur from rude nature.

Fundraising as a mangement function

2007-08-29T12:57:00.000-05:00

While taking a break from revamping the Evergreen Leaders website, I check out other nonprofit bloggers. I recently discovered Rosetta Thurman's blog, Perspectives from the Pipeline.

Two of the principles mentioned in a post from fundraising school caught my attention:

Fundraising is essentially a management process.
Whoever spends money in your organization should be involved in raising money for it.

The revamped, interactive EGL website will be both a resource for nonprofit leaders and fundraisers. At first I saw them as two different foci but as I've worked on the site I see how much they fit together as Thurman pointed out.

I chuckled when I read "Whoever spends money..." It takes leaders and a system to apply that principle.

Frie green tomatoes and nonprofit leadership

2007-08-11T15:31:00.000-05:00

A little after noon today I stopped at the park where the local farmers market does business. I talked to vendors and customers, taking notes for next week's column for our small town's weekly newspaper.

At the Coneflower Farm booth, there were red, yellow, and green tomatoes. I'm familiar with red and yellow varieties but who would want to buy green tomatoes in August? If it were late in the fall and the tomatoes were picked to prevent freezing., I could understand a customer might buy them in hopes that they would ripen. But August? I asked Dennis Zehr from Coneflower Farm about the green tomatoes.

"We sometimes get requests for green tomatoes from customers who want to make fried green tomatoes," he sad. "Usually it's later in the season but I had accidentally knocked these two loose from a vine. I brought them along in case someone wanted green tomatoes."

The best vendors at farmers markets get to know what customers want. It's a business with low margins and the best farmers grow the produce that the most of their customers want and also keep an eye out for what the least of their customers want too.

As someone with a disability who has been on the receiving end of nonprofit services and also spent a career in nonprofit leadership, I know that clients of nonprofits want both the most and the least treasures from a nonprofit.

Patients want the doctor to do a great job on their hip replacement surgery and a day later, when they turn on the call light, they want a personable nurse's aid to help them turn over in bed.

Who's more important? The doctor or the nurses' aid?

Almost everyone would say the doctor is the source of the greatest treasure (that new hip) and yet it's the nurse's aid who spends more time with the patient and is likely to know the patient loves fried green tomatoes.

A leader who wants his or her nonprofit to thrive must cultivate an organization that produces big treasures and little treasures.

A road-tested vision

2007-08-01T10:05:00.001-05:00

In the next few weeks this blog will migrate to a completely revamped Evergreen Leaders web site. Yesterday I began to work with a web designer on the new site.

Our original site was developed by an intern, Kevin Behrens. He did a great job given the fact that Evergreen Leaders was a vision that had not been road tested.

The vision has been road-tested. Now we're ready for a new site that can translate the road-tested version of EGL online.

As I reflect on the road-testing of my vision for EGL the last three years, I wonder what prompted me to launch a new nonprofit in my 50's. I've answered that a number of different ways. First, it's been a call from God. Second, it fit's my passions and talents. Third, I think nonprofits that serve low and moderate income people need our services to help their nonprofits thrive.

As I've founded EGL I realize I have a lot in common with entrepeneurs. Recently I read a column in Inc. Magazine that quotes The Theory of Economic Development published in 1911 by economist Joseph A. Schumpeter who says that entrepreneurs have:

"...the will to conquer: the impulse to fight, to prove oneself superior to others, to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself…There is the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one's energy and ingenuity."

I don't recognize within myself the impulse to fight or prove myself superior but I do recognize within myself "...the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one's energy and ingenuity."

I'm back

2007-07-23T10:27:00.001-05:00

I'm back from a three week vacation and excited to be growing Evergreen Leaders again.

Three weeks away has given me time to reflect on the broad picture and make course corrections. I've decided to create a new category of posts, CEO notes, to include more about my work with Evergreen Leaders. I'm not abandoning posting about each of the 7 paths; I'm simply making a commitment to write more based on who I am and the day-to-day challenges of launching a nonprofit start-up.

Before I went on vacation I made a presentation to the board of a potential client that wants to do a capital campaign to launch a theater conservatory. I'm excited about the possibility of serving as the campaign consultant and at the same time keeping my hopes in check.

When I launched EGL, I did not know I would spend as much time marketing and fund raising as I am. I also did not know I would spend as much time as I have on the wilderness path trying to discover what treasure nonprofits need that we can offer.

The board and I started out conceiving of EGL as a leadership training organization. As we worked with nonprofits we've discovered they are much more eager to pay for fund raising consulting with its immediate promise of increased income. Leadership coaching and training have a long payoff. I haven't given up the leadership training but we're taking a longer route to get there. More later on the longer route.

Work free space

2007-06-28T09:26:00.001-05:00

I am off for three, work free, weeks in Minnesota and New York City.

I love working. At the same time, heading up a nonprofit start-up like Evergreen Leaders takes a lot of creative energy. Over the years, I have discovered that if I take a good vacation in the summer, when I get back to work I suddenly have a creative burst that helps me move through intransigent issues that have been a drag on whatever organization I am leading at the time.

Earlier this morning I did a post on Rhythm Path basics. I'm off to create space in my life for that creative burst that will shape my work with Evergreen Leaders when I get back.

The rhythm path basics

2007-06-28T07:23:00.001-05:00

If you sustain high positive energy on an extremely demanding job, you almost certainly have predictable ways of insuring that you get intermittent recovery. Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarz

Principle: Organizations and individuals thrive on daily and seasonal rhythms.

Paradigm:

Shriveling: “To be productive, we override the natural rhythms of life.”

Thriving: “To be productive, we ride the natural rhythms of life.”

Behavior

¨ Organizational structures support rhythm of challenging work and renewal rituals.

¨ Staff workers are honored for developing positive energy rituals that balance stress and recovery.

Results

¨ Staff workers are highly productive.

¨ Staff workers do not burn out.

¨ Organization is known as a great place to work.

Treasure path basics

2007-06-26T09:12:00.000-05:00

When potential clients and potential staff knock on your nonprofit’s door, they are looking for a treasure. You need to know the answer to two questions. What are they looking for? What will they find?

Rich Foss

Principle: Organizations thrive on the treasure of meeting deep human needs and being a great place to work.

Paradigm

Shriveling: We value the bottom line above all else.

Thriving: We value transforming lives through meeting deep human needs and we value the people who produce the golden egg.

Behavior

¨ Our board clearly defines our treasure--who we offer our golden egg to and what their transformed lives look like.

¨ The right clients knock on our door in desperation and hope looking for the treasure we offer.

¨ Staff members are free to develop best practices to produce the golden egg.

¨ Board and staff operate from basic human values such as trust, openness, respect, and responsibility.

¨ All who work together to produce the treasure--board, staff, clients, donors, funders, suppliers, and partners--are honored.

¨ Each person is treasured based on their unique qualities and needs.

Results

¨ Clients’ lives are transformed.

¨ The board measures the effectiveness of the organization based on clients lives being transformed.

¨ Everyone knows their job is important because it helps produce the treasure.

¨ Everyone is recognized for good work.

¨ A culture of honesty, respect, responsibility, and quality work.

¨ Every person feels cared for by their supervisor or someone in the organization.

Check out this quick summary of the 7 Paths.

Humble hierarchy path basics

2007-06-21T16:59:00.000-05:00

Decisions are like gold. Share the gold.
Rich Foss

Principle: Humble hierarchy leaders have little personal ambition, an unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves, and a passion to create space for all to thrive.

Paradigm:

¨ Shriveling: Leaders use power to benefit themselves.

¨ Thriving: "We constantly focus on transforming the lives of those the organization serves and creating decision-making space for the voices and talents of all to produce the treasure."

Organizational behavior

¨ Majorities and minorities lead together.

¨ Leaders create open systems to share information and decision-making.

¨ Everyone has access to the information they need to make good decisions.

¨ Everyone, including service recipients, is involved in making crucial decisions.

¨ Supervisors and co-workers involved in hiring decisions.

¨ The organization humbly learns from critics inside and outside the organization.

Results

¨ Good decisions are made based on shared information.

¨ Barriers of race, gender, disabilities, etc. are overcome for the benefit of the entire group.

¨ Everyone’s talents are used to produce the organization’s treasure.

¨ Everyone, including service recipients, enjoys making decisions to help the organization produce the treasure.

¨ The organization constantly uses feedback to thrive.

¨ Radical trust takes root within the organization.

Check out this quick summary of the 7 Paths.

Coaching trail blazers

2007-06-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

Coaching trail blazers

April 5, 2007 issue of 7 Paths e-letter

“Dad, I didn’t get the Community Foundation grant,” my daughter, Hannah Hackworth, said in a phone call last week. “That’s the eighth grant I’ve applied for and didn’t get.”

I love to coach trail blazers, those folks like Hannah who head off into the wilderness, determined to find collaborators who will co-create a new nonprofit or a new program.

Years ago Terri Barton, executive director of Urban Jacksonville, a Florida nonprofit that has served elders and their families for over thirty years, recognized that older Americans often have unmet mental health needs.

For instance, the suicide rate among older adults in the United States is 50 percent higher than all other age groups.

Three years ago Hannah was hired to coordinate a mental health assessment and referral program for Urban Jacksonville. Through her work she discovered an unmet need for a community process to address to the well being of older adults who have severe mental health disorders, medical problems, and complex life domain needs. Such folks are at risk for suicide, homelessness, incarceration, exploitation, neglect, hospitalization or long-term care placement.

“At the heart of the problem,” Hannah says, “our current health systems are highly fragmented and a source of utter confusion” for elders who often find themselves interacting with numerous doctors, hospitals, home health agencies, senior programs, etc.

Hannah’s solution is not to create a new nonprofit but to create a new way for existing nonprofits and governmental organizations to meet the mental health needs of older adults.

Concord, New Hampshire has developed a model community process that Hannah wants to adapt for Jacksonville, a much larger city. Through the model nonprofits “wrap services around” the individual, through innovative, community-based and comprehensive coordinated services.

This week she hosted a meeting of 31 government and nonprofit leaders to identify the gaps in mental health services to elders and to begin to lay the groundwork for the wraparound program in Jacksonville. On the way out of the meeting a Jacksonville official said, “I’ve been working for the city for thirty-one years and this is one of the best meeting I’ve ever been to.“

As a nonprofit trailblazer, Hannah faces the same challenges as business entrepreneurs who search for partners and pitch investors for the funds they need to launch their business.

At my suggestion, she contacted someone in the Community Foundation who worked with her on another project. Rather than ask why she didn’t get the grant, she asked for help in improving her application. Next Tuesday she has a meeting with a foundation official who will help her improve her application.

Hannah, like other nonprofit trail blazers, has wandered into the wilderness with a clear vision of the treasure--how to meet a crucial unmet need in the human community.

She’ll keep searching for companions to co-create the treasure of wraparound community process for elders with mental health issues. And when she finds them together they will do what none of them could do alone.

Wisdom for the week: Nonprofit treasures are created one conversation at a time.

Fare thee well, Rich

My neighbor's labor of love

2007-06-09T21:35:00.000-05:00

My neighbor's labor of love

March 22, issue of 7 Paths e-letter

Last summer Sarah and I stopped in at a neighbor’s farm on a Sunday afternoon. Dan was cutting granite pieces for the fireplace in the lodge he’s building. The lodge is located in a wooded area next to a pond with a fountain.

Recently I asked Dan how the lodge is coming along. He said that he has decided to sell it. “I like to build things and I realized that I don’t want the hassle of running a retreat center,” he said.

“It’s been a labor of love,” he added.

For a couple weeks that phrase--it’s been a labor of love--has surfaced periodically in my thinking like a fish leaping in a pond.

I grew up in a family where men used their hands in their labors of love. My father was a farmer and a lumberjack; my seven brothers are machinists, electricians, loggers, builders and an electronic communications specialist.

I was the odd man out in my family, the one who was never good with his hands. Then I became disabled and making a living with my hands was out of the question.

Fortunately I discovered a labor of love that fit me perfectly--working with words. I began hauling words out of the woods to carve them into stories. I began stacking words in the shape of poems.

Five months before I called a group together to found Evergreen Leaders, I launched this e-letter. Writing to each of you is a labor of love.

My neighbor knows what he loves to do. He loves to build things. He had been dreaming of building this lodge for years, he said. He could have made a mistake and thought because he built his dream lodge, he had better run it.

Someone is going to purchase and cherish my neighbor’s labor of love--someone who loves running a retreat and meeting place. People will come a great distance to enjoy the craftsmanship of my neighbor and the hospitality of the new owner.

Wisdom for the week: Make your work a labor of love; organizations thrive on craftsmanship.

Fare thee well, Rich

Fervently calling a soldier a hero

2007-06-04T09:51:00.001-05:00

One day several year ag0, shortly after America began a policy of torture as part of its response to 9-11, I suddenly had a sick feeling in my stomach. What will this do to the men who do the torturing? What will it be like when they return to the USA?

Now this Washington Post story describe the tortured lives of torturers after they return to the USA. Torture, it turns out, is not a smart a friendly system that brings about the treasure of democracy.

It seems to me that one way we as a country deal with our guilt over sending young men and women to distant lands to kill and maim and be killed and maimed is to fervently call our soldiers heroes. The story aptly described that when you are suffering for what you've done in war, being called a hero doesn't help.

A humble man does not cut a soldier off by calling him a hero. He istens.

Doing more for a cool planet

2007-05-21T07:44:00.000-05:00

To produce a treasure you need a smart and friendly system. Seth Godin rightly points out that humans have a powerful impulse to do more. So what's a smart and friendly system to get us humans to produce less carbon emissions to reduce global warming? Here's Seth's take:

let's figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less. Example one: require all new cars to have, right next to the speedometer, a mileage meter. And put the same number on an LCD display on the rear bumper. Once there's an arms race to see who can have the highest number, we're on the right track.

Seth is on the right track. We need to put in place smart and friendly systems to achieve the treasure of a cool planet.

Riding the waves: Using the rhythms of life to be highly productive.

2007-05-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

"How are you doing?" I asked my daughter, Hannah, in a phone call last Friday at 4:00 p.m. I knew she was is in the middle of preparing a big grant due next Wednesday. She'd been working on it all day and planned on working through the evening.

"I'm bogged down," she said in a weary voice.

"Hannah, I have a good idea. Do you want to hear it?"

"What?" she said in a flat tone that let me know that the last thing she wanted to hear was one more good idea."

"Take a 15 minute walk and when you get back you'll think much more creatively,"applying the rhythm path to her situation."

"I'll take a break in a few minutes," she said, still sounding weary.

About 8:00 in the evening I called and she sounded re-energized and was making good progress.

Later, after she was home, I asked her if she had gone on a walk. She had not only gone for a power walk but on the walk she had used her Blue Tooth to talk with her 11-month old daughter and her mother who was taking care of her baby. The exercise and connecting with two people she loves was just eneough recovery time to give her the energy to work another five productive hours.

Starting over

2007-05-07T21:48:00.000-05:00

Since co-founding a nonprofit three years ago (Evergreen Leaders) I've been a beginner at one thing after another. Even things that I've done for other organizations have me feeling like a beginner when I do them for the first time for EGL.

I've helped other organizations raise millions but today when I e-mail the board to tell them we need to raise $15,000 to create a website that can host a complete set of plans for annual and capital campaigns for other nonprofits, and serve as part of a platform for a book on nonprofit leadership, I feel like a beginner.

Reading Michele Martin's How to be a beginner was exactly what I needed as I wrap up my day this evening. Here are two good quotes:

Part of learning and growing, I think, is getting comfortable with being a beginner.

Be willing to fail publicly. This is the hardest one for me. I prefer to fail quietly, behind the scenes, not in front of an audience. But you don't get feedback when you always fail alone, so sometimes you have to be willing to take a risk where people can see you.

You can't get to the treasure unless you go through the wilderness.

Check out Michele's "The Bamboo Project Blog."

The kindness economy

2007-05-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

The kindness economy

As I twisted the gas cap on my Dodge Caravan a well-dressed stranger, a seventy-something lady, came around the gas pump and said, “Could you show me how to do this? My husband died and I don’t know how to fill on gas.”

“Yes,” I said, and I followed her to her car.

“I have to learn to do this,” she said, as I coached her to twist the black gas cap and then pull it free. Next I showed her how to lift the nozzle from the pump and to select a grade.

“Won’t the gas come out if I push the button?” she said pointing to the button to select a grade.

“No,” I assured her, “the gas won’t come out until you squeeze the handle on of the nozzle.” Then I showed her how to insert the nozzle and lock the handle into the on position.

“My husband died and he always filled on gas,” she said as we waited for her tank to fill. Then I showed her how to hang up the nozzle and taught her how to turn and press the gas cap to lock it back into place.

Then I drove to Chicago to pick up Sarah from the airport. An hour early, I stopped at an Aldi near Midway Airport to shop for a few groceries. At Aldi you insert a quarter in Aldi shopping carts to unlock them and to use them. When you finish with the cart, you return it, relock it in place, and get your quarter back.

I’ve always thought that was a smart and friendly system to encourage folks to return their shopping carts to the stall. Only this time when I relocked the cart, it did not release the quarter. I tugged at it but with my arthritic fingers I could not get it out. Finally I abandoned my efforts. As I turned, a thirty-something dark-haired woman approached the carts.

“Someone’s going to get a free cart,” I said. “My quarter is stuck in this one.”

“Let me look at it,” she said. As I watched she struggled with the quarter. She tried several different ways to release it. Finally she freed it and handed it to me.

“Nothing is free these days,” she said. “Not even a penny.”

Then she took a cart into the store and I returned to my van to contemplate her words, “Nothing is free.” But, as I think about teaching the new widow how to put gas in her car and the young Hispanic woman rescuing my quarter, I realize that each was given freely and received. There is an economy to kindness apart from money.

Our financial economy allows nonprofits and activist organizations to pay salaries, to purchase goods and services, and requires the tracking of funds. Yet there is a deeper economy that nonprofits depend on--the flow of strangers helping other strangers.

Wisdom for the week: At their best, nonprofits run on an economy of kindness among strangers.

Fare thee well, Rich

7 Path of Thriving Organizations, #103, March 1, 2007

Eliminate what?

2007-04-29T21:13:00.000-05:00

4. Eliminate management, organization charts, job descriptions, and hourly wages.

I enjoy people who approach life from less than standard approaches. I’ve regularly made suggestions in the organizations I’ve been apart of that have led people to look at me askance.

A good friend of mine recently sent his son to talk to me about his career because, as he told his son, “Rich thinks out of the box and some of his ideas are downright hare-brained.”

So far in Bakke’s Joy at Work Top Ten I’ve been enthusiastic. But I must admit even I, when I read “eliminate management”, was taken aback.

Bakke’s #4 touches on one of the 7 paths that I’ve written about before--the smart and friendly systems path. Every organization develops systems. The trick is to dazzle people with your organization's smart and friendly systems.

Most nonprofits have management, organization charts, job descriptions, and categorize staff as hourly or salary. Each of these is so much a part of companies and nonprofits in the USA that we never stop to ask whether they are smart and friendly.

But none of the standard organizational practices were handed down by God as part of the Ten Commandments and thus we are free to ask if they are smart and friendly systems. Do they really help your nonprofit transform the lives of the people you serve and do they really make your nonprofit to be a great work place?

While trying to create a fun work place at the energy giant, AES, Bakke noted that dividing workers into salary and hourly divided people which does not make for a fun work place. Bakke went on a campaign to put everyone in his company on salary. Of course, that’s against the law. The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in the 1930s to protect hourly workers and to ensure they were paid overtime for work over 40 hours a week.

Bakke made working on a salary such a great system for workers, that almost everyone, including union workers, voluntarily joined the salary system. As a built-in safe guard, and to keep the company out of legal trouble, workers eligible under law to be hourly, could switch back to hourly any time they wanted.

Former hourly workers often discovered that they could work less hours and still get paid the same.

Do your systems, including managers, really make your nonprofit a smart a friendly workplace? If not, eliminate them and come up with smart and friendly systems.

What makes a fun workplace?

2007-04-26T16:46:00.000-05:00

3. Attempt to create the most fun workplace in the history of the world.

Bakke in Joy at Work says that in AES, the energy giant he co-founded, he discovered the key to a fun work place was decision-making. Getting to make decisions is great fun and under Bakke’s tutelage workers had great fun. Machine operators in AES power plants made the daily phone calls to invest the company’s short term investments.

His goal as CEO was to make one decision a year so that the employees of the organization could have all the fun.

Nonprofits and other organizations thrive on trust. When I worked for Horizon House of Illinois Valley Jim Monterastelli showed incredible trust in me. PR was part of my role and Jim trusted me. One day I managed to shoot a photo and do a story that landed on the front page of the local daily news paper. I was so used to Jim’s trust that I forgot to tell him that I had submitted to the paper. The next day he gently suggested that I let him know when I was submitting a story to the paper because he had been at a business event fielding congratulations on a story that he didn’t know anything about.

There’s one other key to a fun work place that Bakke doesn’t mention in his book--getting to use your talents. Gallup Organization defines talents as “recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.” Getting to do those things we do over and over again because their fun and getting to do them on the job definitely makes for fun workplace.

You can find Bakke’s Joy at Work Top Ten here.

Who benefits from your nonprofit?

2007-04-23T21:04:00.000-05:00

2. The purpose of business is not to maximize profits for shareholders but to steward our resources to serve the world in an economically sustainable way.

Every organization operates based on certain assumptions. Once I interviewed a bank vice-president for a feasibility study for a capital campaign. He said corporations should not make donations since they exist to maximize profits for shareholders. Individual shareholders can decide whether to donate to charities from their personal funds but companies should not make the decision to donate shareholders money, he thought. Fortunately for the nonprofit I consulted for, the bank made a generous donation despite the V-P’s opinion.

Organizational assumptions taken to the extreme can have devastating consequences. The practice of maximizing profit for shareholders has led to global warming.

In the second of "Bakke’s Joy at Work Top Ten," he balances profit for the shareholder with the needs the world and the need of the company to be sustained economically.

How does this translate from the business world to the nonprofit world?

As part of my work for Evergreen Leaders I recently I’ve begun writing the introduction to 7 Paths of Thriving Organizations, a book on the issues that nonprofits need to pay attention to in order to thrive. As I was writing I began to ponder the assumptions that Evergreen Leaders is built on. I came up with three that balance the interests of everyone affected by the organization:

Evergreen Leaders shares power justly between board, staff, clients, suppliers, genders, ethnics, neighbors and strangers.

Evergreen Leaders shows mercy when people screw up.

Evergreen Leaders faithfully carries out its word.

What are the assumptions about who benefits from your work place?

Radical organizations 1

2007-04-15T20:42:00.000-05:00

1. When given the opportunity to use our ability to reason, make decisions, and take responsibility for our actions, we experience joy at work. From here.

I grew up in a working class/farmer family whose attitude toward leaders was that they were the folks who didn't know how to do the actual work and made life miserable for those who did.

Now I'm quite sure the leaders of the factories that my people worked in didn't get up in the morning and say, "Now how can I make life miserable for the workers today."

No, the factory managers woke up knowing that it was their job to think and to make decisions and be responsible for the whole shebang while it was the role of my people to carry out the decisions. And then my people would come home and tell stories about the stupid decisions the bosses were making.

Radical organizations begin with the assumption that everyone has the ability to reason, everyone has the abilitiy to make decisions and people love to take responsibility for their actions.

The role of leaders and managers of thriving organizations is to create as many opportunities for people to
think, make decsions, and to be responsible for the results of their actions.

Before Bakke co-founded AES he worked for the US Energy Department, an experience that led him to hate staff positions. Staff people were supposed to do the thinking for the line people. In AES they tried to get by on as few staff people as possible and instead created task forces of workers who did the work ordinarily done by staff people.

One day Bakke's wife was at an AES recognition dinner when they asked everyone who had worked on the budgeting task force to stand up and be acknowledged. A man sitting near her stood up with the others who had been working on the task force.

When he sat down she asked him what his position was with the company. "Security guard," he said.

Now I can guarantee you that the working class people I grew up with would have loved to work for such a company.

My father has an 8th grade education. He would never have been given major thinking and decision-making responsibility in most organizations and yet he designed and oversaw the construction of one of the most advanced dairy barns in Minnesota in the early 1960s.

Are you giving everyone in your nonprofit the ability to think, make decisions, and experience the joy of being responsible?

People love working for radical organizations that give them the opportunity to be at their best.

Radical organizations--an intro

2007-04-12T22:37:00.000-05:00

Dennis Bakke, an American businessman, and Ricardo Semler, a Brazilian businessman, have been the two biggest influences on my thinking about what it takes for a nonprofit to thrive. Both have pursued radically different approaches to organizations than the corporate norm.

I first read Semler's Maverick: The World's Most Unusual Work Place in the early 1990's and his The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works last year.

Semler's Maverick was a liberating book for me, to say the least. In the early 1990 the Christian intentional community I am a leader of, Plow Creek Fellowship, went through a crisis. Maverick was the right book at the right time as I and my fellow communitarians renewed our organization.

Last year I also read Bakke's Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job. Like Semler, Bakke and the company he co-founded, energy giant AES, took an approach of radical trust in employees and giving employees incredible responsibility.

Bakke's website features Joy at Work Dennis Bakke's Top 10.

Read all ten, get Semler and Bakke's books, and follow along as I post my reflections on each of Bakke's top ten.

As I reviewed this post I realized that I was not totally accurate. Jesus of Nazareth is a bigger influence than either than Semler or Bakke. It's taken quite awhile to realize how radical an organizational leader he was because I was acculturated in the church, a generally conservative institution.

Perhaps I will weave a little of Jesus' edginess into my reflections on Bakke's Top 10.

Teach your children well

2007-04-07T09:53:00.000-05:00

Teach your children well
7 Paths #102, February 15, 2007

Occasionally I wonder how 7 Paths e-letter readers apply what they learn in their work. I caught a glimpse recently in a conversation with Heather Munn.

Last summer Heather taught about 40 AIDS orphans in a summer program in a one-room schoolhouse in Jos, Nigeria.

When she finished teaching in the summer school she began to teach literacy classes which opened her eyes to an issue she had been reading about in Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development.

Education is valued very highly in Nigeria and yet there is a shortage of teachers. She realized that there is a treasure in Nigeria that is not being used--literate mothers who have less than a high-school education but could teach their children to read.

Because these mothers are poor they assume they cannot teach their children to read. As Heather described in one her e-mails last fall, “They know they are not "Educated People". And only Educated People can teach. They believe they are incompetent and helpless in the area of education. They believe that only teachers teach, and teachers are trained in a teacher-training school; they, unqualified, untrained, cannot hope to teach.”

Heather created a program, Teach Your Child, to address this issue. She set up a class to teach four mothers how to teach their children to read.

Recently Heather, back from Nigeria, stayed with Sarah and I over a long weekend. She had been reading the 7 Paths e-letters and realized that she needed to use the smart and friendly systems path to create Teach Your Child. She created “track sheets” that described each step in teaching your child to read and allowed mothers to track their child's progress. For instance, track sheet three instructs the mother how to use the Simple Words Page. At the end of the instructions the mother is asked: . “Can he read all the words easily and correctly?” and the mother circles: “No, Still learning, or Yes.”

Shortly before returning to the states Heather did a seminar for fifteen people, teaching them how to run Teach Your Child classes.

Heather isn't done with creating smart and friendly systems for Teach Your Child. She plans on using the open source model, posting Teach Your Child on the web so that anyone with access to the web can download the materials and Teach Your Child materials and even add to the materials.

If you'd like to know more about Teach Your Child, you can e-mail Heather at heathermunn@yahoo.com

Wisdom for the week: Use smart and friendly systems to produce your treasure.

Fare thee well, Rich

No need for another book on leadership

2007-04-07T09:43:00.000-05:00

No need for another book on leadership, 7 Paths #101, February 1, 2007

“This world does not need another leadership book,” I thought in the fall of 2005 after an hour of browsing through the management and leadership sections of a major bookstore chain.

Two years earlier I had helped found a nonprofit, Evergreen Leaders, whose mission is to help nonprofits thrive. I was on a continual search for resources we could use in our consulting, coaching, workshops, e-letter, and blog. During those two years I browsed the leadership and management sections of bookstores every chance I got. I had found plenty of good books.

But after two years of reading, teaching and writing about leadership I was getting tired of the model of leader as hero.

Organizations thrive on a lot more than leaders. As Marshall Goldsmith, corporate America's preeminent executive coach, said in a Fast Company column, “Long-term success is created by the 40,000 people doing the work -- not just the one person who has the privilege of being at the top.”

“If you read the literature,” Marshall also observed in the same column, ‘you'll see that much of it exaggerates -- if not glamorizes -- the leader's contribution.”

“What this world needs,” I thought that day in the bookstore, “is a book on the 7 habits of highly effective organizations.” Not a very original title, but a seed was planted.

In June 2006 Stephanie Grimes, the president of Evergreen Leaders, and I went to a two day workshop of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey studied success literature and through his research he identified 7 habits of effective people and also the principles, paradigms, behaviors and results linked with each habit.

As I was writing in my journal on other issues the morning after the first Covey workshop I kept interrupting my journaling to jot down I ideas for the paths of thriving organizations. In the months since I’ve used my 25 years of experience in nonprofit and church leadership as well as years reading leadership and management books to revise and polish the 7 paths. I also added notes on the principles, paradigms, behaviors and results linked with each path.

The world may not need another leadership but I do think it could use a book on the 7 Paths of Thriving Organizations. I’ve begun work on the introduction and the first two chapters. When they’re completed I’ll outline the remaining chapters and then second hire an agent to market the book. I’ll keep you, the readers of this e-letter, informed.

While for-profit businesses and families benefit from using 7 Paths, my passion is helping nonprofits thrive. Every day people in deep need turn to nonprofits for hope. My deepest hope is that countless nonprofits will use the 7 Paths of Thriving Organizations to meet deep human needs and to be great workplaces.

Wisdom for the week: When organizational life is tangled, complex and frustrating, you need a path or seven.

Fare thee well, Rich

The delicate balance of power and tall grass prairie

2007-04-07T09:38:00.000-05:00

The delicate balance of power and tall grass prairie, 7 Paths #100, January 18, 2007

Leading a nonprofit organization is a delicate balance of personalities and performance, values and vulnerability, commitment and creativity, power and humility.

One day in late December 2006 when I was thinking about how being a humble leader can help an organization thrive, I rolled into a gallery at the Chicago Cultural Center located in a beautiful old building in downtown Chicago.

One piece in the gallery in particular, a video playing on a small screen, drew my attention. In the video a young artist, Victoria McOmie, dressed in a stocking cap and coat, walked across brown, wintry-looking grass and approached an abandoned chicken coop on the Ragdale Foundation grounds.

The Ragdale Foundation, a nonprofit organization, provides inexpensive residencies for artists and writers in an old mansion north of Chicago. At any one time there are 12 artists and writers living and working there. The exhibit, to celebrate Ragdale’s 30th anniversary, featured pieces done by artists while in residence at Ragdale.

McOmie had collected pieces of wood and plants and created an installation by arranging them in the coop in a pattern based on balance. The camera follows her inside and pans the collection of material balanced in the coop. Then the camera focuses on her as she crouches next to a long, stem of prairie tall grass balanced on an unseen object. Gently she blows on the head of the tall grass--you can see her breath--and the tall grass gently moves away from her, then back again; she blows again and the tall grass moves away, then back. I sat mesmerized; never once did she blow too hard and disrupt the delicate balance of the long stem.

McOmie’s installation seemed to me to be a perfect metaphor for leading a nonprofit. McComia created a work of art out of an abandoned chicken coop, dried weeds, fallen branches, and broken bits of wood. Nonprofits often work with people who have been abandoned, neglected, and are on the margins of society.

Yet nonprofit leaders, like McOmie, have the ability to see potential in otherwise overlooked people. And they create organizations that thrive on a delicate balance between clientele, staff, board, donors, funders, and regulators, and the community

And when it’s done well it’s a thing of beauty.

Wisdom for the week: Humble hierarchy leaders create space and balance in which the unlikeliest of folks thrive.

Fare thee well, Rich

2007 in your memoir

2007-04-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

2007 in your memoir, 7 Paths #99, January 4, 2007

As we begin 2007 I think about Doris Haddock, otherwise known as Granny D, who on January 1, 1999, at the age of 89, starting in Pasadena, California, began a walk across America in support of campaign finance reform.

On February 29, 2001 and 3200 miles later she walked into Washington, DC. Actually she skied the last 100 miles along the towpath of the C & O Canal in Maryland. In Washington, DC she was joined by 2200 reformers including several congressmen as she walked to the Capitol to press her case for campaign finance reform.

A year later the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 also known as the McCain-Feingold Bill, was passed into law.

A couple years ago my daughter Hannah gave me a copy of the memoir that Doris wrote after her walk, Granny D: Walking across America in my 90th Year. I read it and was deeply moved.

The seed for a Doris’ journey was planted one evening in her hometown of Dublin, NH, when she was complaining to Bonnie, the leader of a study group that Doris belongs to, about how the rich were taking over and “you can’t get elected unless you have a million dollars.”

“Well, Doris, what are you going to do about?” Bonnie asked.

“Me? For heavens sake, what can I do?”

“Well, what can you do?”

She organized her friends over the next two years they collected tens of thousands of signatures on petitions for campaign finance reform and they sent them to the New Hampshire senators. One responded with a form letter calling unlimited campaign contributions a form of free speech and the other senator never even bothered to respond.

She felt like a woman scorned.

Rather than giving up she decided to walk across America in support of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. She walked and talked to all the reporters curious about a 90-year old woman walking across America.

At one point in her corporate career she was the second highest paid woman in New Hampshire. Yet, when she wrote her memoir after her walk, she never mentioned her career until near the end and then it was to say that she guessed that her career was not important compared to her public service on behalf of campaign finance reform.

In 2007, do something to make this a better world, something you will be proud to include in your memoir when you are in your 90s.

Wisdom for the week: Humble hierarchy leaders believe that powerlessness can be overcome by persistence.

Fare thee well, Rich

Note: In my last issue of the 7 Paths I invited folks to offer their own suggestions on how to spot dangerous leaders. Two responded. You can check out their thoughtful comments here.

Nonprofits should give without trying to get

2007-03-20T13:04:00.000-05:00

Nonprofits can learn from marketing guru Seth Godin's father who has been a successful manager and entrepreneur and he's always given without expecting in return.

In a recent blog post Godin notes that most companies and marketers give in order to get. The same can be said for nonprofits.

But I think nonprofits should give without expecting to get. In fact when I started Evergreen Leaders in 2003 I wanted the organization to adopt a policy of giving 10% of it's income away.

The attorney helping us to apply for our 501c3 was dubious that the IRS would approve such a plan. Our by-laws state clearly that we practice giving away 10% as a way of showing gratitude to God our Creator who we believe provides all we need. We also have a clause that says we'll give the money only to other 501c3s.

The IRS approved our 501c3 application.

Last fall I delivered a check to a charity for their capital campaign that the EGL board decided to give to. No organization that we have given to had ever used our services but it turns out that the organization had lost their campaign consultant in the middle of the campaign. They contracted with EGL to serve as their consultant for the remainder of the campaign.

Did we give to them to get?

No, we gave because we are grateful for a generous God.

As Seth concludes in his post, "Now, more than ever, it's easier to give even when it seems like you're not going to get. The happy irony is that this turns out to be a very effective marketing approach, even though that's not the point."

Hire athletes

2007-03-15T16:53:00.000-05:00

This issue of Sales Caffeine caught my attention because my two daughters and a son were college athletes--track and cross country, volleyball abd basketball.

Sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer walked around his office and asked each person if they ever played sports on a team or competitively. He was surprised to discover "that the people who had played sports were among my best employees."

"If you’re an employer," suggests Gitomer, "you may want to look past job experience, and read deeper into athletic experience. It will give you greater insight as to the life skills of a person, not just their job skills." Check out why athletes make better employees.

The joy of teaching

2007-03-15T16:43:00.000-05:00

Last Monday night I taught a one hour course on blogs at our local library. What fun. Three people came to the event. My wife came, not because she has much of an interest in blogs, but she was being nice to me. I like nice.

The other students were a retired couple who knew nothing about blogs other than the term. They were eager students and by the end of the hour they headed home with plans to create a blog this weekend.

Have a passion? Volunteer to teach it at your local library.

There's something deeply satisfying about teaching eager students.

How a patient changed a hospital policy

2007-03-03T16:15:00.000-06:00

In December I did a post about an experience with a nonprofit hospital that had my wife and me furious.

When the hospital, whose slogan is "We care for you", tried to enforce a policy that required Sarah to go home rather than to stay the night with me, I called the administrator at home at 10:20 p.m. and said that if the hospital enforced the policy it would be the last time I used the hospital. The administrator worked the magic that top administrators can do. Sarah stayed the night.

A week later I was back in the hospital with pneumonia. One night I asked if my daughter, a nurse also, could stay the night with me. The CNA that I made the request to said, "I don't know. They're really screwy about such things." When she came back to let me know she could stay she let me know that I "sure was lucky."

I was glad that she made that comment, implying that I was lucky to have the power to pull strings because it helped me ask the question: "Do I want this hospital to be a good for me and my family or good for all patients and families?

After the two hospital stays I began lobbying the administrator by e-mail to change the policy. I knew that both my family physician and surgeon had lobbied him. My family doc encouraged me (and my family) to take it to the hospital board, but I wanted to work first with the administrator.

We exchanged a series of e-mails and he promised to work on it. Then I received this e-mail recently:

Just wanted to let you know that the policy re: visitors staying overnight has been formally modified. In short, a visitor/family member/significant other may stay overnight with a patient upon request as long as it does not impede with routine nursing care or contradict physicians order. Due to space limitations, we need to limit the overnight policy to one person at a time in the room but it is rare that more than one person requests the accommodation.

Again, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

I am proud to use the Illinois Valley Community Hospital in Peru, IL as my hospital and am grateful for the leadership of Steve Hayes. With a little help from their patients, they really do care for you.

Evaluation as empowering

2007-02-26T21:33:00.000-06:00

One of our Evergreen Leaders board members, Lynn Reha, loves helping organizations do self-assessments. My eyes sort of blur and my brain becomes fuzzy when I think of nonprofits doing program evaluation. It all seems cumbersome to me.

And yet I keep coming back to simple questions. Given that Evergreen Leaders' mission is to help nonprofits thrive by meeting deep human needs and being a great workplace, how do we know if we are helping nonprofits meet deep human needs? How do we know we are helping a nonprofit to be a great work place?

I've found a website that makes assessment clearer and easier to think through, Innovation Network.

Through their website they "offers free tools and resources for assessment, accountability, communication, and program improvement." Can't beat that. All you need to do is complete a free registration and you can use their tools.

Also, I like their philosophy: "We believe evaluation can be a form of empowerment. Participatory evaluation empowers an organization to define its own success, to pose its own evaluation questions, and to involve stakeholders and constituents in the process."

My problem with accountability

2007-02-21T17:54:00.000-06:00

For some time I’ve had trouble with calls for accountability. I’ve been part of a Christian communal group for almost 30 years and from time to time some folks in the group issue calls for accountability.

I strongly believe in people being responsible and moral but the longer I’ve been in leadership both in our communal group and in secular organizations the more dubious I’ve been of actions taken under the guise of accountability. When I first joined the communal group we had lots of rules and decision-making procedures to help people be accountable. Then one of the founders of the group disclosed a history of sexual misconduct including abuse of children.

He was leading a group that deeply believed in accountability. How could that be? I began to lose faith in lots of rules as a way of accountability.

The other way I’ve seen leaders try to bring about accountability is to call people on the carpet. That sometimes seems to produce good short term results but it doesn’t seem to help people be responsible in the long term.

Then last Sunday night I read Bill Harris’s post on Accountability, systems, and loop gain. He developed a computer model to uncover the reason a particular organization had a problem with its ability to manage its expenses. Using the model he was able to test what types of reports would best help managers to manage expenses. Once they determined the best report to give managers the problem was reduced by 95%.

You can read the post and his associated article for the details but I resonate with his observation:

The model shows a most interesting lesson. In a poorly designed system, high management pressure (high externally-imposed accountability) made things worse, while low accountability actually made things better. In a well designed system, management pressure really didn't matter so much…

I also strongly resonated with his conclusion: “Management's primary job is to create systems that work well, not to push people to do well.”

Now I’m wondering how to improve our communal systems so we need less leadership pressure.

Global risks and your nonprofit

2007-02-18T20:33:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Deon Binneman's blog , I just checked out the World Economic Forum's Global Risks 2007 report.

One of the 7 Paths nonprofits use to thrive is the ecosystem path. The path is based on the principle that organizations thrive on healthy, improvisational relationships with their environment.

A shriveling organization defends its border against the world but a thriving organization sees its external borders as creative points for discovering the healthiest ways to improvise with reality around the organization.

The Global Risks 2007 reports indicates how the ecosystem your nonprofit operates in may shift, requiring you to improvise. Here are the 23 "Core” Global Risks they've indentified in the world economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological ecosystem:

Economic

• Oil price shock/energy supply interruptions
• US current account deficit/fall in US$
• Chinese economic hard landing
• Fiscal crises caused by demographic shift
• Blow up in asset prices/excessive indebtedness

Environmental

• Climate change
• Loss of freshwater services
• Natural catastrophe: Tropical storms
• Natural catastrophe: Earthquakes
• Natural catastrophe: Inland flooding

Geopolitical

• International terrorism
• Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
• Interstate and civil wars
• Failed and failing states
• Transnational crime and corruption
• Retrenchment from globalization
• Middle East instability

Societal

• Pandemics
• Infectious diseases in the developing world
• Chronic disease in the developed world
• Liability regimes

Technological
• Breakdown of critical information infrastructure (CII)
• Emergence of risks associated with nanotechnology

These litany of risks are scary, especial when the introduction of the report says, "Expert opinion suggests that levels of risk are rising in almost all of the 23 risks on which the Global Risk Network has been focused over the last year – but mechanisms in place to manage and mitigate risk at the level of businesses, governments and global governance are inadequate."

The basic premise of Evergreen Leaders is that nonprofits exist to meet deep human needs and to be great workplaces. Nonprofits that have healthy, improvisational relationships with their environment will have plenty of deep human needs to meet.

Naps are good

2007-02-13T14:32:00.000-06:00

We human beings are built for a rhythm of good hard work and good recovery time. After about 90 minutes of concentration we do well to have a bit of recovery time.

Now a study shows naps are good:

In the largest study to date on the health effects of napping, researchers tracked 23,681 healthy Greek adults for an average of about six years. Those who napped at least three times weekly for about half an hour had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart attacks or other heart problems than those who did not nap.

I'm off to take a nap.

"I made a mistake"

2007-02-12T12:19:00.000-06:00

In a recent post on the Organizational Development Network list serve leadership coach Ann Kruse noted that she is “fascinated by Hillary Clinton's decision to avoid the word 'mistake'
with regard to her vote for the Iraq war.”

Ann offered a variety of explanations for Hillary’s action including gender and power issues. I’d like to offer another. As someone who became disabled as a teen and then has held a variety of leadership positions all of my adult life I am aware of the tremendous pressure on leaders to be capable and self-assured and, at the same time, I am aware that leaders are as vulnerable as the next person.

I learned to survive and build on the experience of being physically disabled by being open about the emotional trauma linked with the experience. When I began my career as a leader, I felt internal and external pressure to be the strong, capable, self-assured male. At the same time being capable and self-assured is only part of my story since I need to ask for physical help regularly and I am physically and emotionally vulnerable to an unpredictable disease.

To be an integrated leader I try to be both capable and acknowledge my vulnerabilities. Even the most powerful leaders and organizations are vulnerable. Take the USA. The USA is clearly the most powerful country in the world and yet we are vulnerable and make mistakes. Both Vietnam and Iraq show that when we invade another county we are militarily vulnerable to
insurgencies. Our political leaders spend a lot of energy denying our vulnerabilities and mistakes.

While I try to be capable and self-assured as a leader, I assume that I will make mistakes and I make it a point to readily admit my mistakes. It takes a lot of energy to deny mistakes. I also make it a practice to meet three times a year with two mentors who are separate from the organizations I lead. I share my emotional vulnerabilities as a leader, husband, and father
with them. It takes a lot of energy to ignore ones vulnerabilities.

I feel sympathy for Hillary Clinton who, to put it mildly, is under extreme pressure to show herself to be a capable, self-assured person in order to be elected. At the same time, running for political office at that level makes one extremely vulnerable.

From an organizational development perspective we as a nation demand strong, capable, leaders and, as a consequence, we get leaders who deny our nation’s vulnerabilities and their own mistakes.

A humble hierarchy organization learns from critics inside and outside the organization. It’s tough to lead a world power from a humble hierarchy stance making it difficult for a world power and its leaders to admit and learn from their mistakes.

Love Machine

2007-02-09T10:50:00.000-06:00

Does your nonprofit have smart and friendly systems in place to increase positive interactions between staff?

Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, and his company, Linden Labs, have an interesting system in place. They call it the Love Machine. Here's how Rosedale describes it in an Inc. article:

We have this thing we built called the Love Machine. The Love Machine allows anyone who works here as a Linden employee to send anyone else a brief note that says "Thank you for doing this for me." There is a little webpage where you can go to send an e-mail, and then you get a little e-mail that says "Love From Philip" in the subject and it's got text in it. Now, you think, what's the big deal about that? Well, all of that stuff goes into a database. Your review carries that. Everybody is sending love to each other. It creates a positive collaborative environment.

Most businesspeople communicate in a mostly negative way. If people are encouraged to be entrepreneurs and take risks, they can also become combative and competitive. You have to balance that. So we built the Love Machine for balance.

Rosedale jokes that Linden Labs will someday be more famous for the Love Machine than Second Life.

For those of you who wonder whether a positive work atmosphere is all that important you can check out the work of psychologist Barbara L. Fredrickson, University of Michigan, and mathemetician Marcial F. Losada, Universidade Cato´lica de Brası´lia, whose research shows a ratio of 2.9 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction is associated with flourishing work groups.

As Frederickson and Losado noted in their review of literature “bad is stronger than good” and you need 2.9 positive interactions for every negative interaction in a work group for the group thrive.

Getting back on the treasure path

2007-02-05T10:44:00.000-06:00

Every nonprofit starts based on a mission--who the npo is going to serve and what the transformed lives of those served look like--deep values, and the founding stories of the organization. I call these the markers for the organizations treasure path.

Usually the mission, the values, and the founding story is clear at the beginning. But over time as the organization sets up systems, struggles with changes in the environment and its clientele, and as the npo ages new and often conflicting stories emerge.

Appreciative inquiry can be helpful in getting the organization back on track. Mark Lau Branson has a very helpful summary of AI, "Ten Assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry" in the most recent issue of Alban Weekly. While the article is aimed at an audience of church leaders it's equally applicable to other nonprofits.

Appreciative Inquiry is a good way to help your organization get back on its treasure path.

Is a little mess part of a smart and friendly system?

2007-02-01T17:05:00.000-06:00

My workspace always includes stacks of books and papers. I am blessed to be married to a woman is wonderful, goodhearted, and organized. Usually about once a year before vacation she helps me spend half a day filing etc. And then I slowly but surely make it a mess again.

She survives my home office by declaring that it is not part of the house. Otherwise she'd have the urge to get on my case to straighten it up.

For year's I've felt guilty about the clutter that accumulates in my workspace but, thanks to Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman I no longer have to feel guilty.

Check out this great Inc. story on why chaos, clutter, disorganization, and on-the-fly decision-making actually are good for your company--and for you.

Being nonprofit and entrepreneurial

2007-01-29T09:58:00.000-06:00

It's not online yet but the February issue of Inc. has an interesting interview with Second Life founder Phillip Rosedale. Second Life is the virtual reality world that became a phenomenon in 2006.

I'm still a little queasy about venturing onto Second Life but other businesses and nonprofits are so one of these days...

I was more interested in some of Rosedale's approaches to running Linden Lab, the company that created and runs Second Life. At first they simply told their engineers to e-mail everyone in the company what you are going to do that work, then work on it, and then e-mail everyone how you did it.

That system has evolved into a huge database of "stuff to do. You choose your own work from it."

"I am pretty critical of traditional business styles," Rosedale says. Me too.

Companies encourage their people to be entrepreneurial. "But the way you are really entrepreneurial," Rosedale says, "is that you have to set your own strategic direction. That's what entrerpeneurs do. You have to take risks and you have to be held accountable."

Even though Evergreen Leaders is a nonprofit I get to be very entrepreneurial. Each week I e-mail the board what I call Monday Morning Coffee and in it I describe what I am going to do that week and how my work went the previous week.

When you get to choose your own things to work on your naturally choose to do things that fit your talents.

Beyond mission statements

2007-01-22T13:05:00.000-06:00

If a mission statement is the headline, what's the story?

For several years I have taught individuals and leaders how how to write brief powerful personal and organizational mission statements. I've even created a two-page "A guide to developing your organization’s mission statement" that my daughter, her director, and colleagues used to create a mission statement for Urban Jacksonville (Jacksonville, FL) whose mission is to: Honor elders, promote independence, and encourage families through service and support.

A well written mission statement is like a headline. It packs alots of information and punch into a few words. But a newspaper or magazine would sell few copies if it consisted of only headlines.

To describe the treasure that your organization has to offer clients, staff, board, donors, and funders, you need more that a mission statement--you need stories.

Secular and religious nonprofit leaders can learn from Diana Butler Bass who for three years studied 50 vital mainline Protestant churches to see what made them vital. Her research led her to write two books and one of her many observations in a recent Alban Weekly caught my attention:

Throughout my research on vital mainline churches, both clergy and congregational leaders were storytellers. They knew their own faith stories, they knew the stories of their congregations, they knew their tradition's stories, and they knew the larger Christian and biblical stories. They exhibited ease and comfort in sharing these stories and invited others into a variety of stories in natural and authentic ways. In the process, they opened paths for other people to learn and tell stories of faith. And they ably moved between personal, congregational, and biblical stories to create worlds of spiritual and theological meaning. They intuited the power of story to rearrange people's lives...

To move beyond your organization's mission statement you need to tell the stories of your nonprofit--stories of how your organization was founded, stories of lives transformed by your organization and stories of what your staff have done to transform lives.

If your mission statement is the headline for your nonprofit, then the stories you and your colleagues tell are the treasure.

To get your free copy of "A guide to developing your organization’s mission statement" e-mail me at richfoss@evergreenleaders.org.

Not serving but serving better

2007-01-20T09:48:00.000-06:00

When I set my 2007 goals for work as CEO/Teacher's Assistant I had a nagging feeling that something was amiss. I like setting goals because they give me a sense of accomplishment but something in me was resisting goal-setting even as I did so.

Then I read a Fast Company article about a typical Toyota plant in Kentucky, where "What is so striking about Toyota's Georgetown factory is, in fact, that it only looks like a car factory. It's really a big brain--a kind of laboratory focused on a single mission: not how to make cars, but how to make cars better."

Later in the article another quote caught my eye: "What happens every day at Georgetown, and throughout Toyota, is teachable and learnable. But it's not a set of goals, because goals mean there's a finish line, and there is no finish line. It's not something you can implement, because it's not a checklist of improvements. It's a way of looking at the world."

Something clicked. At Evergreen Leaders we teach the smart and friendly systems path is one of the 7 paths organizations use to thrive. But there is no such thing as a perfectly smart and friendly system.

Currently I am producing Evergreen Leaders' first annual report, a system that corporations have used for years to report to stakeholders on the previous year and plans for the next year. Looking at it through the Toyota lens, next year I'll have the opportunity to produce a better annual report.

In fact, after I produce the first annual report I can use 2007 to improve the way that I gather the information to use in the 2007 annaul report.

The annual report and the smart and friedly systems used to create it can be improved ever year.

So your nonprofit is not in the business of serving elders or people with disabilities or the homeless but your organization exists to serve them better.

I suspect that simple change--not serving but serving better--could have a profound impact on your organization from this day forward.

A new way to elect our president

2007-01-18T12:34:00.000-06:00

Last night I read The Atlantic Monthly article on Unity08. These folks may have come up with a smart and friendly system to elect our next president.

The 59 Smartest Orgs Online

2007-01-18T12:29:00.000-06:00

Nonprofits are scrambling to find smart and friendly ways to connect with their supporters using the web. Learn from the best.

The hard part is to stay with it

2007-01-09T21:43:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you come across a passage in a book that is worth returning to again and again. A couple years ago my daughter gave me Granny D: Walking Across America in My 90th Year.

People who are drawn leading nonprofits intend to do good. In her 90th year Granny D, Doris Haddock, walked across America to bring attention to the need for campaign finance reform. The she wrote her memoir. Recently it's been published in paperback. Here's the passage:

...when you take on some leadership responsibilities in the world, you must accept the fact that you will change lives. Your intention is to do good for everyone. But you will change lives in ways that you cannot fully control, and sometimes things will go terribly wrong. The hard part is to stay with it and not give up trying to do good in the world. But my, it is hard when tragedy and defeat come visiting, as they do. If love is your motivation, and if your respect the people you serve as your moral equals, you will do more good than harm over a lifetime--by far. But you will do some harm, and it may haunt you when you take a walk in your old age.

That's the humble heirarchy path.

Spotting dangerous leaders II

2007-01-04T10:23:00.000-06:00

7 Paths for Thriving Organizations, # 98, December 14, 2006

“I was dangerous,” Len Corti, a retired Fortune 500 executive, said to me as we ate lunch in a small café in Utica, Illinois, “because I believed in what I was doing.”

Len and I met in the mid 1990’s when I was directing a capital campaign and he was a volunteer leader of the Special Gifts division of the campaign.

As he and I drove from town to town meeting with potential donors, we became friends--despite the fact that my driving scared him. He still calls me the “Tiskilwa terror” after my hometown and my driving.

We completed the campaign in 1997 but we still get together with lunch. I love hearing his stories from his career.

At our last lunch he began talking about a point in his career when he was raising money from investors for business start-ups. That’s when he said, “I was dangerous.”

“Tell me more,” I said, puzzled by the comment.

“I really believed in the start-ups and, because I really believed, I raised money but that doesn’t mean the start-ups were necessarily good investments.”

Since our lunch I’ve pondered Len’s comment. It’s not only business leaders who believe and are dangerous but also nonprofit and church leaders. Not all leaders are dangerous but certainly enough that we all ought to be wary of leaders who really believe in what they are doing.

I really believe in what I am doing. Almost four years ago I called a group of people together and we founded Evergreen Leaders, a nonprofit whose mission is to help other nonprofits and churches thrive through consulting and training.

In addition, I am one of the leaders of Plow Creek Fellowship, a Christian communal group. Last Saturday night I had dinner with a young couple, inviting them to consider joining our commune. After I painted a picture of my vision for the renewal of our 35-year old commune, I said with a laugh, “Either I’m a man of faith or I’m delusional.”

All leaders are persuasive. How do you know whether a person is a good faith leader or some who is dangerous in their beliefs? There are no guaranteed answers but here a few things to look for:

Are they humble when someone challenges their vision? In my experience leaders who are defensive and attack critics eventually prove to be dangerous.

How are their relationships with those closest to them? People are themselves with those they are closest too. Grand visions and putdowns of one’s spouse, children, or parents make me nervous.

Are they eager to learn from those around them? Even the most visionary leader is not as smart as the group they lead.

I’d love to hear from you. How do you know whether a person is a good faith leader or someone who is dangerous in their beliefs?

Wisdom for the week: Humble hierarchy leaders have little personal ambition, an unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves, and a passion to create space for all to thrive.

Fare thee well, Rich

Changes in your npo's ecosystem

2007-01-01T21:14:00.000-06:00

Business 2.0 highlights the 15 most significant innovations, events and launches that are planned for the 2007. The event most likely to create more misery and more work for nonprofits--gambling on your mobile phone. The best event for developing countries-10 million laptops in the hands of the planet's poorest children by the end of 2007.

Last night I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Nonprofits need to join the business community in dealing with global warming. Thin-film solar panels may be in the future of your nonprofit.

Viral marketing as a smart and friendly system

2006-12-22T22:49:00.000-06:00

Viral marketing is a smart a friendly system. You create something--a story, a video on You-Tube, or in this case, a remarkable digital Christmas card--and people will e-mail each other about it and the word spreads quickly. It's a very inexpensive way of marketing and can easily be adapted by nonprofits. Check out the Ashland College Christmas card.

Overseeing a culture of responsibility

2006-12-21T10:32:00.000-06:00

It's the responsibility to top leadership to see both the intended and unintended consequences of the systems the organization sets up. Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban had a great post earlier this week on the fines the NBA commissioner handed out to the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks players involved in last week's brawl.

Cuban said, "I like that the commissioner fined the teams 500k, but I don't think it goes far enough. Not in terms of dollar amount, but in terms of assigning responsibility. I think the coaches, the President, GM and Owners should have been fined directly instead." He added, "The responsibility of the culture of a team and organization, of any business, starts with the owner and is implemented by the team's President, GM and Coach or whoever is in the position to manage the workforce."

Organizations our wholes. In the nonprofit world, when a direct care staff worker abuses a person receiving services, the staff person is rightly fired. But the board and CEO need to review the systems they have established that made the abuse possible.

The culture of an organization is supported by its systems. It's difficult leadership work to look honestly at the unintended consequences of the systems you have put in place to do good. But that's the responsibility of humble heirarchy leaders.

Distrbuted leadership

2006-12-20T22:08:00.000-06:00

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, based in New York City, a Grammy Award-winning ensemble, has no cunductor and yet it performs Mozart and Stravinsky to rave reviews around the world.

In a fascinating Business 2.0 column, Jeffrey Pfiffer talks about the advanatges of what he calls distributed leadership--employees leading themselves.

The orchestra has a managing director but the musicians not only play in the orchestra but do fund-raising, staffing, and educational outreach. Traditional leadership too often creates bottlenecks and fails to bring out the best in everyone.

Check out the column. Nonprofits ought to take the lead in letting employees lead. I do believe it would be away to energize your staff. After all leading is fun. Why shoudn't everybody have fun for the benefit of the organization?

Your stories reveal the treasure

2006-12-19T17:13:00.000-06:00

I have a friend, Jim Fitz, who works with Christian Peacemaker Teams. When he first began peace work he had a hard time writing reports to donors and supporters. But then he began to tell stories.

Here's a story from a November e-mail:

I was traveling with Juan, a rural Pentecostal pastor, on the way to an evening worship service near Cucuta, Colombia. He told me this story:

"One night the Paras (Paramilitaries) took a 23 year old mother in our church and shot her in front of her children, because the Paras thought she had killed her Para friend. The community was afraid to go to recover the body, for fear of what the Paras might do to anyone who showed sympathy to the mother. So they called me. I went that very night and recovered the body and gave her a proper funeral in our church, as a way of saying that the church was not going to be intimated by the Paras threats. As often happens here in this war, it was soon found out that the killing was a mistake for she had had nothing to do with the killing of her Para friend. Then, led by the Spirit, the church carried the coffin to where Paras lived and buried the body there.”

“This made the Paras face their awful mistake every time they passed the grave. As a result many of the Paras quit. They even had fights among themselves. And this event became the beginning of the end of the Paras control in the region. Three years ago we could not drive this road we are on tonight for fear of the Guerrillas or Paras. They are still around, but their control of the people is greatly diminished."

A mission statement helps people know who your nonprofit serves and how you are transforming lives but it is the stories that reveal the treasure.

Consensus and accountability

2006-12-18T22:19:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I did a post that ended with me pondering how the Evergreen Leaders board can define its expectations for me as the CEO/Teachers Asst. and the organization in carrying out its mission. How can I report at each board meeting the effectiveness of Evergreen Leaders?

I am intrigued by an article in the Facilitation Quarterly called “The Link between Consensus and Profitability” The article summarizes a study done by Charles-Huber Heyvaert, a researcher at the University of Leuven in Belgium, that shows a positive link between consensus on overall objectives and profitability.

I was particularly intrigued that the study focused not on consensus on a particular decision but consensus on the overall objectives of the companies.

Nonprofits do not measure profitability but it has to be good when a nonprofit’s board has consensus on what key issues it wants to measure to determine our effectiveness as an organization in carrying out our mission.

Accountabilty

2006-12-17T19:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I met with the Evergreen Leaders board in a regular session. The board spent part of the time discussing its role. Someone mentioned that their role is to hold me, as CEO/Teacher's Assistant, accountable.

I responded that holding me accountable for EGL finances is easy because I can have our bookkeeper produce a financial statement for each board meeting.

But I would like the board define it's expecations of me and the organization in carrying out our mission. How can I report at each board meeting the effectiveness of Evergreen Leaders?

Our mission is to help nonprofits transform the lives of the people they serve and to be great work places. We do consulting, coaching, and leadership development workshops to help nonprofits to help thrive.

But how does the board measure our effectiveness in helping nonprofits carry out their mission and to be great work palces?

I think it's time to study John Carver again. And trust the board as the wrestle with what they expect from me and the organization.

People have time for people

2006-12-16T21:21:00.000-06:00

My daughter is in Ethiopia for a month long visit. Her husband is Ethiopian and this is their first visit since they were married three years ago. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail from a couple days ago:

One of his uncles, Tedla, took us around the city today and brought us to his home. He is married and has twins—boy and girl- 2yrs old. They are sooooo cute and make you smile. They live in a room about 6 feet by 10 feet. They share an outhouse with others in their compound. He is happy and so thankful for his children and for his wife. Each evening friends and family members come over to visit. That is one thing different than the states is that people have time for people.

I've been pndering that pharse: "...people have time for people."

In 1999 Gallup published First, Break All the Rules that featured 12 characteristics of great work places and one of the 12 was "I have a best friend and at work."

When it was published reviewers and commenatators scoffed at the notion that friendship is an important part of work. That's because people in our country assume that productivity comes from ignoring people and focusing on the work at hand. Perhaps people having time for people is the path to productivity.

The kindness of strangers

2006-12-14T21:22:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning I pulled into a Chicago area Loyola parking lot on my way to see my rheumatologist. All the handicapped parking spaces were full. I drifted to the far side of the lots and found two vacant space, slipped my van into one, and swung my door wide to ease out my unbending knees.

After I was in my wheelchair I looked at the slender, empty space on the driver's side and thought, if a vehicle pulls into the slot, I'll never be able to get into the van. Lord, I'll need help.

Sure enough. When I returned from my appointment a car was parked on the drivers side. I looked around. A Middle Eastern man neared me. "Sir," I said, sitting in my wheelchair, "I can't get into my van with the car parked next to it. Could you please back it out for me?" I held out the keys.

"Yes, I will be glad to help you," he said in accented English.

He could drive off, I thought, as he backed up and manuevered the van into the lane. Once he had it in the lane he got out. I thanked him. He continued on his way and I loaded up my wheelchair.

A leader depends on the kindness of strangers.

What to do when you are called in for questioning

2006-12-13T21:18:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been on the road quite a bit and I'm listening to John Grisham's The Innocent Man. A small town Oklahoma police department and prosecutor "solved" two murders back through coerced confessions. A painful, gripping book. As I'm listening I think, if you are ever called in for questioning, ask for an attorney immediately even if you are innocent and think all you have to do is tell the truth.

Attracting great staff

2006-12-12T15:46:00.000-06:00

While waiting for an open computer at a library I scanned old issues of BusinessWeek. The September 18, 2006 issue ranks the 50 best places to launch a career. The list includes two nonprofits, Peace Corps at #38nand Teach for America at #43.

For nonprofits to thrive they must attract talent and make it possible for that talent to thrive.

The best way to measure whether your workplace is a place where people with talent can thrive is to regulalry test your organization or department on the 12: The Elements of Great Managing . The book is a sequel to the 1999 runaway bestseller First, Break All the Rules.

I haven't read 12 yet but I have returned to First, Break All the Rules over and over again. I'll never forget doing a workshop and seeing Ed Sims, a direct service worker in a small group home, look at the 12 questions Gallup identified that distinguish a great work place. He picked them up and waved them and said, "They are exactly right. It's not about money. It's about these."

Spotting dangerous leaders

2006-12-11T09:47:00.000-06:00

Recently I had lunch with Len Corti, a retired Fortune 500 executive. I love hearing his stories. He began telling me about a point in his career when he was raising money from investors for business start-ups. “I was dangerous," he said.

“Tell me more,” I said, puzzled by the comment.

“I was dangerous because I believed in what I was doing" he said. "I really believed in the start-ups and because I believed I raised money but that doesn’t mean the start-ups were all good investments.”

Since our lunch I’ve been pondering, "How do you know whether a person is a good faith leader or someone who is dangerous in their beliefs?"

I'm writing the next issue of the 7 Paths e-letter on that topic. If you'd like to read the issue when it comes out on December 14, and you're not a subscriber, you can subscribe to the free e-letter at the top right-hand side of this blog.

Are e-letters a good nonprofit investment?

2006-12-10T20:05:00.000-06:00

Last week I stopped in at Gateway Services, a nonprofit I've done consulting and training for. When I do a workshop, I ask particpants if I may have their e-mail address and add it to our 7 Paths e-letter list. As I was rolling down a hallway at the npo, a staff member stopped me and said how much she appresciated learning from the e-letter.

In this day in age of overflowing inboxes of spam I've wondered if the e-letter is a good use of my time.

Then tonight the Studio 501c blog pointed me to an executive summary of a study on e-letters by Nielsen Norman Group. The key finding of the study:

Users tend to glance at websites when they need to accomplish something or to find the answer to a specific question. In contrast, newsletters feel personal because they arrive in users’ inboxes, and users have an ongoing relationship with them. Newsletters also have a social aspect, as users often forward them to colleagues and friends

The positive aspect of this emotional relationship is that newsletters can create much more of a bond between users and a company than a website can.

Today's main events

2006-12-09T21:36:00.000-06:00

Today my goal was to have two conversations, breakfast with a potential Evergreen Leaders client and dinner with a young couple from our church. Of course, I could think of many other things to do today like this blog entry but I kept focused on the two conversations as my contribution to the world today.

I used to keep a to do list. I found it depressing because I could never get through the list in a day.

I became a much happier camper when I began planning on the two or three main events of the day and then filling it a few details each day around the main events.

Steven Covey calls it "first things first." Others call it planning the big rocks. I call it the main events.

It's almost 10:00 p.m. and I'm still riding high because my two main events were beyond what I could hope or dream. Speaking of dreams, goondnight, friends.

Whose cares more--nursing or housekeeping?

2006-12-07T21:51:00.000-06:00

Within three hours of becoming a patient at a nonprofit, community hospital (a nasty bit spider-bite induced infection in my foot), a nursing supervisor had me furious. And my wife, Sarah, too.

No one may stay over night with a patient unless the patient is in serious condition, said a stone-faced nursing supervisor. A new policy, she said, because of boyfriends staying over night, homeless cousins, and people who had been drinking.

When I checked in I asked for a private room, glad to pay the extra $31 a night to make it possible for Sarah to stay in the room with me, something we had done last November when I spent five days in the same hospital with pneumonia.

Didn't matter to Nurse Stone-Faced. I'm disabled, I said. My wife can help me and it'll make easier for your staff. Use your call light, said Nurse Stone-Faced.

I want to appeal, I said. Talk to the administartor tomorrow. Implication to Sarah, get out of here tonight.

Organizations thrive on smart and friendly systems. The "no one stays overnight in the hospital except parents of young children and family of seriously ill patients" is smart and friendly for the night shift nurses who don't have to deal with unpredictable family members present.

But not for patients. According to my daughter who's an RN and studying to be a Nurse Practioner, the research clearly shows that patients recover better when family is present.

After the surgeon had cut a hole in my foot, drained the infection, packed it with gauze, wrapped it, and left, Sarah looked at me and said, "You look distressed."

"I thought I was done fighting hospitals," I said.

Almost 32 years ago in our first year of marriage I had to spend fives weeks in the hospital, most of it in a rehab hospital that allowed visitors from 5:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Didn’t matter that we were newly weds. Visiting hours were visiting hours. Desperate to be a good husband, I talked my doctor into extending visiting hours to 10:00 and then we had hell to pay from the hospital staff who were angry that I got special privileges.

Getting a feisty look on her face Sarah said, “I’m going to find the administrator's home number,” thumbing through the phone book.

“You find the number, I’ll call him.”

“Mr. H, are you the hospital administrator?”

“Yes.”

I launched into a succinct description of the situation and concluded by saying, “If this policy is applied to my wife tonight this will be the last time I will use your hospital.”

He handled it very well, asking clarifying questions, and then telling me that he would call the nursing supervisor and someone would get back to me. We knew Sarah could stay the night when a CNA brought in a reclining chair for Sarah to sleep in.

The next morning, Barb the housekeeper, a cheerful soul if there ever was one, blew into my room. She saw Sarah waking up on a recliner next to my bed and said, “You don’t look very comfortable.”

Sarah acknowledged she did not have a goodnight’s sleep on the chair. “Would you like a roll away bed tonight?” she asked Sarah. “The hospital has three of them,” said Barb. “I’ll look for one for you.” “Yes.”

In the afternoon Barb stopped in again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “All the cots are being used by parents who are staying with their kids.”

The next day when Barb breezed in and began mopping the floor, she said, “I told my husband last night that I felt terrible because I couldn’t find a bed for that poor woman who had to sleep on that uncomfortable recliner.”

Later in the day Barb popped in and said, “One of the children was just discharged and there’s a bed available. Would you like me to put it in your restroom and you can use it tonight?” “Yes.”

Sarah worked the evening shift at another hospital but when she arrived at IVCH at 1:00 a.m. she had a much more comfortable sleep thanks to Barb, the housekeeper. I about cry just writing this. Barb was deeply caring. She went out of her way to be kind to Sarah as Sarah stood by her man in the hospital.

The hospital has a slogan--"We care for you."

I have a hard time convincing myself that whoever dreamed up the no family overnight policy was caring for Sarah and me but I have no doubt about Barb, the smart and friendly housekeeper.

Headline turns my stomach

2006-12-06T21:46:00.000-06:00

Actually it was not the headline but the subhead, reprinted in full below:

The nation's 2 million inmates and their keepers are the ultimate captive market: a $37 billion economy bulging with business opportunity

Business 2.0 December 2006, p. 62

The USA is the world leader in the number of prisoners with 715 per 100,000. Instead of acknowledging the shame of leading the world in holding people captive, Biz 2.0 cavalierly describes the inmates and their keepers as "the ulitmate captive market", one "bulging with business opportunity.

Uffda.

My ancestors came from Norway. The USA has 7 times as many prisoners per 100,000 as Norway.

For some reason or other I hear an echo from tha economic engine from our nation's past--slavery.

In fairness to the author of the Business 2.0 story, the story features a former prisoner who has started a business offering reduced collect call rates for prisoners. Collect calls that average four times the cost of regular collect calls is just one typical way that someone is making money off the "ultimate captive market."

I'm a big fan of nonprofits learning from the most humane practices of progressive businesses but some business practices should be avoided like e coli.

Trust is a beautiful thing

2006-12-05T16:26:00.000-06:00

Imagine working at a place where they trust you to use your time wisely even when they can't see you? Check out the BusinessWeek Cover story, Smashing the Clock. Thanks for the heads up from Bill Harris' blog.

Giving and taking criticism

2006-12-04T12:07:00.000-06:00

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.

-- Frank A. Clark

Clark's observation makes sense when you are criticizing from a position of power. Then your criticism needs to be as nourishing as a gentle rain.

But if you are in a position of power, you need to accept and welcome criticism as fierce as a driving rain. Why? Put yourself in the shoes of your critic. Criticizing a person in power is scary business. The only way the critic can criticize the person in power is to crank up his courage and spit it out. In that case it is not likely to come out gentle but it is likely to provide the leader, the person in power, with valuable information.

When George W. Bush ran for re-election as USA president in 2004 he made sure that his security people screened out every possible critic. They were very effective. Not once during the campaign was Bush heckled. After Bush's re-elction, his one purported critic within his first administration, Colin Powell, was out.

Subsequently, Bush missed important information from critics of his Iraq war policy until it was too late and he lost Republican control of the House and Senate.

The humble heirarchy leader knows that he needs the information provided by his fiercest critic.

What will succeed mission statements?

2006-12-02T07:56:00.000-06:00

Yesterday my daughter, Hannah Hackworth, called to say that she has been urging her workplace, Urban Jacksonville, to develop a mission statement. Urban Jax is an organization that provides a variety of services for seniors in Jacksonville, FL.

In mid-December thay have a staff meeting that will focus on developing their organizations mission statement. Hannah asked if I have materials on developing mission statements. I do. I've taught individuals and organizations how to develop their mission statements. I particularly like Laurie Beth Jones' approach to developing mission statements.

But I'm losing my enthusiasm for mission statements.

Recently I read a story where a consultant meeting with a group of 20 or so business CEOs asked them to write out their corporate mission statements. Then he had them place them on a table, mixed them up, and challenged the CEOs to find their mission statements. The mission statements were so much alike that the CEOs had a hard time picking out theirs.

Lately I've begun to consider treasure statements as an alternative to mission statements.

When a client knocks on the door of a nonprofit he does so with a mixture of desperation and hope. The knock on the door is the beginning of a journey with staff and client together searching for a treasure.

Whats that treasure? A transformation in the life of the client.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll do an occassional post as I ponder how to create a simple process that an organization like Urban Jacksonville can use to describe the treasure they have to offer to folks who knock on their door.

Treasure path basics

2006-11-30T16:41:00.000-06:00

Nonprofit organizations thrive on the treasure of meeting deep human needs and being a great work place.

Every nonprofit begins when someone recognizes a basic, unmet human need and decides to create an organization to meet that need. In 1990 John Green launched Emmaus Ministries in Chicago. It began when John recognized that no one in Chicago was reaching out to male prostitutes and helping them to turn their lives around.

United Way has its roots in an organization that was launched in 1887 when a Denver priest, two ministers and a rabbi recognized the need for cooperative action to address their city’s welfare problems. That year they raised $21,700 for 22 agencies and in so doing launched a movement that serves communities across the USA.

Thriving nonprofits continually focus on transforming lives through meeting deep human needs and valuing the people who produce the golden egg. In contrast, a nonprofit that values the bottom line above all else is a nonprofit in decline.

Here are some of the key behaviors you’ll find in a thriving nonprofit:

Our board clearly defines our treasure--who we offer our golden egg to and what their transformed lives look like.

The right clients knock on our door in desperation and hope.

Staff members are free to develop best practices to produce the golden egg.

Board and staff operate from basic human values.

All who work together to produce the treasure-- clients, board, staff, donors, funders, suppliers, and partners--are honored.

Each person is treasured based on their unique qualities and needs.

The above treasure path behaviors produce results. Here are the types of results you will see in a thriving nonprofit on the treasure path:

Clients’ lives are transformed.

The board measures the effectiveness of the organization based on clients lives being transformed.

Everyone knows their job is important because it helps produce the treasure.

Everyone--that means clients, board, staff, donors, funders, suppliers, and partners--are recognized for good work.

The organization has a culture of honesty, respect, responsibility, and quality work.

Every staff person feels cared for by their supervisor or someone in the organization.

For further resources check out the Treasure Path books at this 7 Paths web resource.

A homeless man and an industrialist

2006-11-12T22:43:00.000-06:00

A homeless man and an industrialist

Today I have two new heroes, Gregory Lockett, a homeless man from Florida and Ray Anderson, chairman of a Georgia flooring manufacturing company that’s approaching $1 billon in sales.

Both Gregory, 48, and Ray, 72, are willing to take what I call the wilderness path to help their organizations thrive.

I met Gregory 12 days ago at the Pentecostal conference in Philadelphia. A man who has spent many years on the street, Gregory knows that homeless people are often arrested and then released without being charged.

When homeless people want to turn their lives around and get a job, their arrest records are a huge stumbling blocks even if they were never charged with a crime. Gregory knows because he’s been arrested 17 times but only charged and convicted three times.

Gregory, who has become a Christian, is launching FAVOC, an organization that works with homeless people who are “falsely accused victims of crime” to help clear up their arrest records to make it possible for them to get jobs.

All nonprofits start out on the wilderness path. They begin when the founders have an idea of how to meet an existing social need that is not currently being met. Nonprofits begin with a trip into the wilderness to discover the treasure that emerges when you create an organization that meets a powerful human need.

As Gregory takes the wilderness path, dealing with all the unknowns of creating a viable nonprofit organization, Evergreen Leaders has offered to provide the consulting services.

I’ve never met Ray Anderson but he became one of my heroes when I read about him in an Inc. magazine story. When Ray started Interface, a flooring manufacturing business 33 years ago he made sure it complied with environmental laws but he never thought about its impact on the environment. Then in 1994 he read The Ecology of Commerce by businessman Paul Hawken who is deeply concerned about what industry does to the environment.

After reading Hawken’s book Ray “asked his engineers to determine what had been extracted from the earth to produce the company’s income.” The engineers determined that it took 1.2 billion pounds of raw materials to produce the companies $800 million in income that year.

“I was staggered,” Anderson said later, “I wanted to throw up. My company’s technologies and those of every other company I know of anywhere, in their present forms, are plundering the earth. This cannot go on and on and on.”

Anderson decided to take the wilderness path, a completely unknown path for an industrial giant. He was going make Interface a sustainable company.

He defines sustainability as “taking from the earth that is not rapidly and naturally renewable, and doing no harm to the biosphere.”

Their first steps focused on waste reduction and the company saved $60 million in the first three years. That was just the beginning on their long and arduous journey to sustainability.

Interface has been on this wild path since 1994 and they project that by 2020 they will be completely sustainable.

Gregory is taking the wilderness path to create FAVOC, an organization that will help homeless people clean up old arrest records as part of helping them find work.

And Ray is taking Interface on the wilderness path as a way to help the company move from plundering the environment to sustaining a healthy environment.

You can learn more about the wilderness path on the 7 Paths blog.

Wisdom for the week: It takes a long journey into the wilderness to discover the treasure your organization has to offer the world.

Fair thee well, Rich

Lessons from a Noble Peace Prize winner

2006-11-12T22:42:00.000-06:00

Lessons from a Noble Peace Prize winner

Last week Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize because of how he responded to a famine in Bangladesh in 1974.

An economist educated at Vanderbilt University and then teaching at Chittagong University, he went to Jobra, a nearby village suffering from the famine. He described to an Associated Press reporter what happened next:

Sufia Begum was a 21-year-old mother of three when he met her in 1974 and asked how much she earned. She replied that she borrowed about five taka, the equivalent of nine cents, from a middleman for the bamboo for each stool.

All but two cents of that went back to the lender.

"I thought to myself, my God, for five takas she has become a slave," Yunus said in the interview.

The following day, he and his students did a survey in the woman's village, Jobra, and discovered that 43 villagers owed a total of $27

"I couldn't take it anymore. I put the $27 out there and told them they could liberate themselves," he said, and pay him back whenever they could. The idea was to buy their own materials and cut out the middleman.

Over the following year, they all paid him back — day by day.

“In order to get a loan from a bank you have to prove you don’t need it,” a friend once told me. In essence, banks do not loan money to poor people.

Yunus changed that. Out of his experience with the nearby villagers Yunus created a smart and friendly system of loans to the poor to help them launch businesses. When he approached banks in Bangladesh about loaning to the poor they refused unless he co-signed every loan.

Yunus went on to form Grameen, a bank that make business loans with an average size of $130 Instead of requiring collateral, Grameen “lent to groups of five people,” according to a New York Times story, “who helped ensure that each member repaid his or her share. It lent not only to farmers, but also to laborers and women who had a knack for crafts and shopkeeping. And it required borrowers to repay their loans in manageable, bite-sized weekly installments.”

Grameen’s smart and friendly system of loaning to the poor was soon adopted by others. “Last year,” said the New York Times story, “more than 100 million people received small loans from more than 3,100 institutions in 130 countries, according to Microcredit Summit, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group.”

Wisdom for the week: Nonprofits can multiply the amount of good they do by developing smart and friendly systems.

Fare thee well, Rich

Lessons from a scandal

2006-11-12T22:40:00.000-06:00

Lessons from a scandal

As House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Congressional leaders struggle with former Congressman Foley’s sexual e-mails and instant messages with Congressional pages, I remember the painful lessons I learned when a former colleague at a religious nonprofit was involved in sexual misconduct.

Here are five lessons I learned:

Leaders who do great good can lead double lives. My former colleague was a founder of the organization, dedicated to its well-being, and a fun person to work with. At the same time he led a secret life that included sexual abuse of minors.

Sexual misconduct by leaders is a misuse of power. Congressman Foley, by position and age, had much more power than the teenage Congressional pages. He was using his power to benefit himself at the expense of the pages.

There are powerful forces within organizations to cover-up misconduct. Misconduct is power wrapped in fear and shame. As the Foley scandal unfolds, it’s apparent that as long as three years ago a Congressional staffer tried to warn Hastert of Foley’s danger to pages. At the same time, leaders who see themselves as doing good, find it extremely difficult to expose themselves by revealing the shameful behavior of a colleague. Fear and shame fuel cover-ups.

Misconduct by leaders never remains hidden. My nonprofit colleague managed to keep his secret life hidden for 15 years. He used his power and prestige to silence his primary victim. But, as many an institution has discovered, sooner or later misconduct always reveals itself.

Scandal calls for humility. Damage control is the height of arrogance. Organizations cannot quietly manage significant ethical violations by a leader. When such violations occur, the organization needs humble leaders who will reveal the misconduct, take responsibility for seeing that the person is removed from a position of further misusing power, and seeing that those who were injured are cared for.

According to Evergreen Leaders humble hierarchy path, the best leaders have little personal ambition, an unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves, and a will to create space for all to thrive.

Wisdom for the week: To humbly admit and quickly deal with ethical violations is the surest path your organization can take back to helping transform the lives of those it serves.

Fair thee well, Rich

Breakfast with Dave

2006-11-12T22:38:00.000-06:00

Breakfast with Dave

While the omelet is cooking he asks, “What case are you most proud of?” Then he listens.

Evergreen Leaders humble hierarchy path is based on the principle that “humble hierarchy leaders have little personal ambition, have an unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves, and create space for all to thrive.”

When Dave was first promoted to executive director of YSB he negotiated a salary lower than the normal executive director salary because he said if he was making that much money he’d be embarrassed to come to work.

The first Breakfast with Dave was announced by memo and e-mail but when the day came he discovered no one had signed up. He promptly called staff in that branch office and invited them to breakfast individually. Dave may have been humble about his salary but he has an “unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves”. He knows he needs to hear the stories of lives transformed as part of creating an annual giving program to support their work in helping children and families succeed.

YSB staff often work with children and families in crisis. It’s easy for staff to feel like they go from crisis to crisis. Yet when Dave asks, “What case are you most proud of?” he is giving them an opportunity to recall when they and the organization are at their best in transforming for children and families.

Dave concludes Breakfast with Dave with a couple more questions: “Are you having any problems at YSB that I can help with? Do you have any suggestions for me? I need all the help I can get.”

Wisdom for the week: Serve omelets, keep the focus on transforming lives, and create space for all to improve the organization--that’s a great way to take the humble hierarchy path.

Fair thee well, Rich

In search of smart and friendly

2006-11-12T22:37:00.000-06:00

In search of smart and friendly

Last year I spent a few days in two different hospitals. After each “visit” I was mailed a long questionnaire. I dutifully whipped through the surveys as quickly asossible.

I hate long surveys. I know they help hospitals and other businesses do a better job but I find them tedious.

Here’s the questionnaire I’d like to get the next time a hospital or other business wants to know how they can serve me better:

How likely are you to recommend our hospital (or business) to a friend of colleague? Circle one with 1 being very unlikely ranging up to 10 being extremely likely: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.

If you are you unlikely to recommend us, please tell us why?

Thriving organizations follow the 7 paths including the smart and friendly system path. This path is based on the principle that organizations thrive or die based the systems they use for getting things done.

Creating a system for getting patient or customer feedback is smart but a long questionnaire is not friendly.

The above questionnaire did not come from my imagination but from the work of Fred Reichheld who has spent over 25 years studying customer loyalty and who recently published The Ultimate Question.

Jack Brennan, CEO of Vanguard calls Reichheld’s approach "radically simple but incredibly valuable”. That’s the hallmark of smart and friendly systems--they are incredibly valuable.

Recently I used Open Space Technology to lead two meetings to get input from the board and staff of a nonprofit that I’m consulting with as they develop a fund raising plan.

Afterwards their CEO e-mailed me saying, “That approach is so simple it is deceptive. We really were involved.”

That’s another hallmark of smart and friendly systems--they are simple and get people involved.

Wisdom for the week: Thriving organizations continually use the smart and friendly systems path to keep their systems finally tuned.

Fair thee well, Rich

The treasures your employees look for

2006-11-12T22:34:00.000-06:00

The treasures your employees look for

“Dad, I got a job!”

Music to a father’s ears. Yesterday my son Jon called to say that he has a job as a waiter starting today. Last May Jon graduated from Colgate University, moved to Brooklyn, NY with a fellow grad, and landed a summer job with Boys Club.

Last Friday he wrapped up the Boys Club position. He’s searching for a professional position in New York but in the meantime he needs to feed his 6’8” inch frame and pay the rent. His plan? Get an evening job as a waiter, leaving daytime hours open for his professional job search.

For three days he walked the streets of Brooklyn, NY looking for a job as a waiter. Restaurant after restaurant had no openings. Yesterday he walked into an Italian restaurant and they had an opening. After a brief conversation the manager asked, “Can you start tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Then the manager asked to see Jon’s resume. After glancing through it he said in surprise, “You don’t have experience as a waiter.”

“I’m a very quick learner, sir, and I’m a hard worker” Jon said quickly. He finally had his foot in the door and he wanted to keep it there.

The manager thought a moment, smiled, and said, “You can start training at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon.”

The manager hired a treasure. Jon is extremely personable and helpful and people like him. He’ll make a great waiter.

Right now Jon is looking for a job to pay for food and rent but soon he will be looking for other kinds of treasure through his job. He’ll want to know that his supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about him as a person.

In First, Break All the Rules, the author’s tell about the restaurant manager who let his staff know that when they needed a short term loan they should help themselves to money from the till and simply leave an IOU in the till until they paid for it.

The same manager made it a point of getting to know his staff, giving better hours to those who were supporting a family.

For twenty years the Gallup organization studied organizations to see what made a great work place and identified 12 treasures that separate great workplaces from so-so workplaces. According to the Gallup study Jon will be looking for workplace treasures like:

At work, I have the opportunity to do what you do best every day.

In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

My supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person.

There someone at work who encourages my development.

For a complete look at the fascinating treasures that employees look for according to Gallup’s study check out First, Break All the Rules or at Feedback for Real on Gallup’s website.

Wisdom for the week: Employees look for more than pay; they look for treasures from their worksite.

Fair thee well, Rich

Ps. Check out the 7 Paths, their principles and paradigms at the Evergreen Leaders website.

Uncovering your organizations treasure

2006-11-12T22:32:00.000-06:00

Uncovering your organization's treasure

What does a restaurant chain specializing in breakfast and lunch have in common with a nonprofit that provides supports to adults with developmental disabilities?

Both focus on offering a treasure that folks seek over and over again.

It’s not easy for a business to discover the treasure that will keep its customers coming back nor is it easy for nonprofits to discover the treasure that transforms the lives of those who use their services.

For years the nonprofit, Horizon House, Peru, IL defined itself as an organization that makes it possible for adults with developmental disabilities to choose where they want to work, where and with whom they want to live, and what kind of recreation they want to enjoy.

Recently Jim Monterastelli, HH CEO, gathered his board and management staff to review their mission. The conversation revealed a drawback to focusing on offering choices to their clientele. The limited intellectual abilities of people with developmental disabilities means they have a limited understanding of the options they might choose from.

As the conversation progressed someone suggested that HH help the people they serve discover options to increase the array of choices they make.

Jim immediately recognized the treasure in the word discover. Horizon House could offer a variety of experiences to help their clientele discover the types of living arrangements, types and places of work, and types of recreation available in their community. As the people Horizon House works with discover their options their choices will be deeper and more genuine.

The treasure that an organization offers needs to connect with the deepest, most compelling needs of those the organization serves.

A couple Sundays ago I read in the menu the treasure offered by First Watch in St. Louis, a restaurant that specializes in breakfast and lunch. The treasure was not the food. It was a great, reasonably priced breakfast but we could have found similar food in lots of restaurants.

No, the treasure was in the First Watch promise:

The staff of First Watch promise to do everything possible to make your visit a moment of relaxation in a busy day. Meeting special needs or requests that you might have gives First Watch a chance to be a special restaurant. Let us know how we can be of service to you and we promise that we will go that extra mile to make you smile. (c)

I read that and immediately was touched. I was on vacation and looking for relaxation. Usually I feel like I’m imposing if I make a request. Here was a restaurant that invited me to make special requests.

I spend a lot of my time going the extra mile to make people smile. Like writing this e-letter at 8:30 at night because you, my readers, deserve the treasure of this e-letter today.

And this restaurant wanted to go the extra mile to make me smile.

How do you discover your organizations treasure? Here are four questions for you and your organization to ponder?

Who are the people that want the treasure your organization offers?

What do they urgently want to avoid? (Bad food in a restaurant; other people always deciding for you if you have a developmental disability)

How can your organization make sure people avoid what they want to avoid?

What are the compelling desires of the people who are seeking treasure from you? (Wait staff at a restaurant eager to go the second mile for you; nonprofit staff eager to help you discover new options for working, living, and playing, and then helping your choices come true--that’s magic if you are an adult with a developmental disability).

I’d love to hear about the treasure your customers or service recipients find in your organization.

Next issue we’ll explore another part of the treasure path--treasuring your employees/staff.

Wisdom for the week: Thriving organizations keep polishing their treasure.

Fair thee well, Rich

7 Paths #89

2006-11-12T22:22:00.000-06:00

During the November 2005 Evergreen Leaders board meeting Tutuk Horning held up a flower. “This flower has a form and a function. My English is not very good,” she said, "I do not know how to describe the form and function of Evergreen Leaders."

Other board members chimed in. "It's not your English, Tutuk. We don't know how to describe it either."

I recruited Tutuk, an Indonesian immigrant, to be on the board because I have this crazy idea that EGL will grow and teach organizations to thrive all over the world.

Now, two and half years into the venture, Tutuk and the board were telling me that they didn’t understand what Evergreen Leaders was about.

As I listened I felt an odd combination of gratitude and chagrin. Gratitude because Tutuk, our quietest board member, had simply and eloquently described the key issue. Like a flower, EGL needs a simple and beautiful way of describing its form and function.

Chagrin because after two and half years, I, who love putting concepts into words, still couldn't describe EGL with the simple beauty of a flower.

EGL started out with a mission to give ordinary people the skills to help their groups thrive. Soon we had three seven-hour workshops focusing on listening, envisioning and encouraging. But it was all too vague. It didn’t have the simple elegance of a flower.

The memory of Tutuk holding up that flower at the board meeting sent me on a quest, a search for treasure that EGL could offer to folks who long to help the organizations they are part of to thrive.

Twenty years ago Stephen R. Covey wrote is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That book has sold 20 million copies and continues to help individuals to be more effective. On my quest to identify the treasure that EGL has to offer, a question gradually began to take shape in my mind: What are the habits of highly effective organizations?

Eventually I synthesized thirty years of leading organizations and reading about thriving organizations into seven characteristics I call the 7 Paths of Thriving Organizations.

The treasure path is the first of the seven paths.

Every nonprofit organization thrives on discovering a treasure that a group of people is longing for, a treasure so powerful that service recipients seek it out and funders and donors willingly support it.

The 7 Paths is the golden egg, the treasure that EGL has to offer to organizations.

Nonprofits who use the 7 Paths can become great workplaces and transform the lives of the people who use their services.

What's your organization's treasure and who's seraching for it?

In the next issue of 7 Paths we'll focus on how to put into words your organization's or work group's treasure.

Wisdom for the week: You and your organization have a treasure someone's seeking.

Fair theee well, Rich

E-letter archive

2006-11-12T22:00:00.000-06:00

The 7 Paths e-letter began as Growing Leaders Update and then began the Evergreen Leaders Update. You can check to earlier archives here.

The wilderness path

2006-11-02T12:27:00.000-06:00

When I was in college in the early 70’s I discovered and devoured Tolkien’s trilogy about Frodo Baggins long journey to save his world by finding a golden ring and tossing it into a fiery pit.

When we had children, Sarah and I shared the delight of Tolkien with each of them, enjoying many an evening of bedtime reading.

Evergreen Leaders’ wilderness path is based on the principle that thriving organizations regularly take long journeys into the unknown as a way to discover new ways to produce their treasure.

Recently I was teaching Evergreen Leader’s wilderness path to a group in their early 20’s. One of the young women said, “Isn’t the wilderness path just normal life?” The wilderness path is normal when you are in your 20’s and searching for a career, a spouse, and your place in the universe.

Most organizations prefer to spend as little time as possible in the state of the unknown.

Yet all nonprofits start out on the wilderness path. They begin when the founders have an idea of how to meet an existing social need that is not currently being met. Nonprofits begin with a trip into the wilderness to discover the treasure that emerges when you create an organization that meets a powerful human need.

From the beginning of the 20^th century most people in the USA with developmental disabilities were gathered into huge institutions. But in the 1960’s parents and community leaders began to question the practice of warehousing people in huge institutions.

Out of that questioning grew a movement of nonprofits that make it possible for people with developmental disabilities to live, work, and play to the best of their abilities in their home communities.

Often these nonprofits were started by a group of parents who wanted their adult sons and daughters still living at home to have a place to work or do crafts during the day time. They took the wilderness path, creating the organizations with a limited vision of what they were doing.

They simply sensed that they wanted something better for their adult, developmentally disabled sons and daughters, something better than sitting at home by themselves, something better than going to a state institution.

By the 1970’s state governments began to realize these small nonprofits were a treasure, a viable, humane alternative to the state institutions, and they began to fund them.

Organizations try to get out off the wilderness as soon as possible. They establish policies and procedures as a way to reduce the unknown and consistently produce the treasure, consistently meet the needs of their clientele.

But organizations can never quite get away from the unknown. Hence, planning was invented. Thriving organizations are constantly aware that they can do a better job of producing the treasure. To make those improvements, organizations usually adopt yearly goals.

But sometimes organizations need to make major changes in order to produce the treasure in a better way. I worked for a nonprofit that had purchased a nursing home in 1977 and converted it to a living place for 88 people with developmental disabilities from the institutions in Illinois that each housed thousands of people.

Soon after the purchase the staff of the agency realized that they had made a mistake. While the nursing home was a lot better that the state institutions living with 80+ other people in a crowded nursing home was not a treasure.

Finally in 1992 the board of the organization voted unanimously to close the home by 1995 and open small group homes to make it possible for each person to live with a handful of others.

It truly was a wilderness path with many obstacles along the way. The organization had to convince the state bureaucrats to change their rules to stop paying for the nursing home and to start paying for the small group homes. The organization, even though it had never done a capital campaign, raised $1.2 million to make the change possible. Some homes had to be built to accommodate those who used wheelchairs while others homes were purchased and renovated for people who did not need wheelchair accessible homes.

The last person moved out of the nursing home and into a small group home in May of 2000.

To produce our treasure thriving organizations combine short plans with periodic, long journeys into the unknown to discover new ways to produce the golden egg, that treasure that brings people to the door of a nonprofit in desperation and hope.

In order to consistently produce the treasure that their clients are looking for, thriving nonprofits do the following:

Develop a regular pattern of planning to improve ways of producing the golden egg.

Include clients in the planning.

Make it possible for everyone in the organization to plan how their job and their part of the organization will help produce the treasure.

Include mile markers in the plans

A core group of leaders in the organization periodically commits to the long journey of a big, hairy audacious goal to transform the way the organization produces the treasure.

Here are the results organizations can expect when they take the wilderness path:

Everyone is involved in making organizational course corrections.

Everyone understands how plans and changes will help do a better job of producing the treasure.

Everyone celebrates key mile markers.

The organization recreates itself and the way it produces the treasure.

Dazzling with smart and friendly systems

2006-10-18T08:49:00.000-05:00

You can dazzle the people you serve with smart and friendly systems.

Every organization has systems, the way they do things. Some of these patterns are smart, some are dumb, some cause frustration and some are friendly.

Recently my wife, an RN started a new job on a mental health unit of a local hospital. The general hospital orientation was smart and friendly. She came home singing the praises of the hospital. Those doing the orientation were positive about the hospital and she was excited about working there.

But once she started on the unit her orientation was brief and inadequate. The hospital uses an antiquated computer system and she was given almost no training on the computer system. One of her first shifts after the unit orientation she struggled by trial and error to discover how to do an admission on the computer.

Her shift supervisor, overwhelmed by an influx of patients, barked at her for taking too long on the computer. Orientation to the computer system was neither smart nor friendly.

Nonprofit organizations thrive or die on the systems they set up for getting things done in the process of caring for the people who arrive in desperation and hope at their door. Smart and friendly systems are one of the 7 paths thriving organizations use.

Shriveling organizations are stuck in the attitude that “this is the way we’ve always done it.”

Thriving organizations are “always looking for ways to make our systems smart and friendly.”

Here are four behaviors that are common to an organization that use the smart and friendly systems path as part of their strategy for thriving:

They treat complaints from service recipients as opportunities to develop smarter, friendlier systems.
They constantly looking for ways to make policies and ways of doing things smarter and friendlier.
Everyone in the organization knows the process to use to make systems smarter and friendlier.
Like farmers who practice crop rotation, their leaders recognize that as internal organizational reality shifts, systems need to shift.

Here are three results organizations can expect when they use the smart and friendly systems path:

Service recipients see organization as smart and friendly as they use services.
Staff workers are empowered to make changes in the systems in order to transform the lives of service recipients.
Staff workers see organization as smart and friendly place to work.

In the fall of 2005 when I was hospitalized in the Illinois Valley Community Hospital for pneumonia I was dazzled by the smart and friendly food service system the hospital used.

I have a disability and have spent my share of the time in hospitals. I know “the food” is the most common complaint about hospitals.

Basically IVCH adapted hotel room service model. I was given a menu that contained breakfast, lunch and dinner items. When I called in my order I was told what the specials were for that meal.

Since I love fruits and vegetables, I ordered meals that included five fruits and vegetables.

Not only could I order each meal I could tell them within ten minutes when I wanted the meal delivered and that’s when it arrived.

Wow.

You can dazzle the people you serve with smart and friendly systems.

Forgiveness as part of organizational life

2006-10-10T10:26:00.000-05:00

In the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly describes a moment early in Hillary Clinton's first Senate term when she began attending a Bible study with other senators. When she first began participating, Republican Senator Sam Brownback confessed to her that he had hated her and said derogatory things to her. She forgave him.

Like Hillary Clinton, who led efforts in the first Clinton presidential term to pass universal healthcare, nonprofit leaders often take hits.

In the middle 1990’s the CEO of an organization I worked for asked me to direct a campaign to raise $1.2 million to help close their nursing home for adults with developmental disabilities and open about a dozen small group homes for them to live in.

I deeply believed in the cause. I knew many of the people who lived in the nursing home and I knew that their lives would be greatly improved by moving into smaller homes. As the head of the nursing home resident council would say, “You know me. I like peace and quiet,” something that was impossible in the noisy, crowded nursing home.

Neither the organization nor I had ever done a capital before and the board decided we would do it without a campaign consultant. Many people thought we would not succeed in raising the money needed. I can understand their doubts because it’s very difficult for an organization to raise that much money without the help of a consultant to keep the campaign on track.

Fortunately for me, a retired YMCA executive from the Chicago area took mercy on me and offered to come out every few weeks during the campaign to advise us.

Despite this, one of my colleagues who was in a position to track what I was spending to prepare for the campaign, was convinced we would fail. She began to spread rumors through the organization that I was wasting money. She actively opposed the campaign in staff meetings and made life miserable for my assistant campaign director.

One day my colleague and I were both working late. I went to her office, listened to her anger about my spending, and tried to respond. Nothing I said seemed to help. It was deeply painful to have her questioning my integrity. I got tears in my eyes for the first and only time in my 20 years of employment at that organization.

Almost every morning since 1977 I’ve written in a spiritual journal, often writing about whatever current challenges I’m facing. During those days I wrote about the tension I felt as I launched the campaign. Gradually I realized that I was carrying a lot of resentments toward my colleague.

One morning as I was writing in my journal I had a sense that I needed to forgive my colleague. I listed out five different things she had done to undercut me and the campaign.

That winter day on the way to work I drove a country road and stopped the car next to a creek. I picked up five stones and one by one I dropped them in the water, forgiving my colleague for each of the five things she had done to undercut me.

As I dropped the stones in the moving water in the creek I noticed how the stones immediately dropped to the bottom but the water flowed on. I sensed God telling me that I had forgiven my colleague and my life could flow on like the water in the creek.

Life did flow on and eventually it appeared that the campaign was going to be a success. My colleague then solicited a club she belonged to, to donate to the campaign.

When the campaign was completed I resigned and went on to working as a consultant to help other organizations do similar campaigns. After I resigned my colleague said to me, “In a few years we are going to have to have you back to do another campaign.”

Because I had forgiven her I could gratefully accept her compliment on my work.

In Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great, Jim Collins describes Level 5 leaders as people who have little personal ambition but incredible will "to make sure the right decsions happen--no matter how difficult or painful--for the longterm greatness of the instituiton and the achievement of its mission..."

Forgiving harsh critics can help nonprofit leaders keep on making sure the right decsions happen even after taking lots of hits.

Lessons from a scandal

2006-10-09T11:07:00.000-05:00

1) Leaders who do great good can lead double lives. My former colleague was a founder of the organization, dedicated to its well-being, and a fun person to work with. At the same time he led a secret life that included sexual abuse of minors.

2) Sexual misconduct by leaders is a misuse of power. Congressman Foley, by position and age, had much more power than the teenage Congressional pages. He was using his power to benefit himself at the expense of the pages.

3) There are powerful forces within organizations to cover-up misconduct. Misconduct is power wrapped in fear and shame. As the Foley scandal unfolds, it’s apparent that as long as three years ago a Congressional staffer tried to warn Hastert of Foley’s danger to pages. At the same time, leaders who see themselves as doing good, find it extremely difficult to expose themselves by revealing the shameful behavior of a colleague. Fear and shame fuel cover-ups.

4) Misconduct by leaders never remains hidden. My nonprofit colleague managed to keep his secret life hidden for 15 years. He used his power and prestige to silence his primary victim. But, as many an institution has discovered, sooner or later misconduct always reveals itself.

5) Scandal calls for humility. Damage control is the height of arrogance. Organizations cannot quietly manage significant ethical violations by a leader. When such violations occur, the organization needs humble leaders who will reveal the misconduct, take responsibility for seeing that the person is removed from a position of further misusing power, and seeing that those who were injured are cared for.

Wisdom for the week: To humbly admit and quickly deal with ethical violations is the surest path your organization can take to get back to helping transform the lives of those it serves.

55 and glad to be alive

2006-09-30T07:12:00.000-05:00

7:15 a.m.

I awoke this morning, 55, and glad to be alive. In keeping with a tradition started the day I turned 53, I am going to blog my birthday.

I woke at 4:00 a.m. and had my quiet time. I'm working my way through Judges 9, an account of Abimilech's short bloody career. Abimilech, son of Gideon and a concubine, persuades his mother's kinfolk to anoint him king and give him 70 pieces of silver. He uses the silver to hire hoodlums and together they kill his 70 brothers, except for the youngest, Jotham, who hides.

After the massacre Jotham stands up on a hill and tells a remarkable parable to the the folks who made Abimilech king. After questioning whether they were acting in good faith he ran away and hid from his brother again. Abimilech was not leading in good faith. He was gathering raw power for himself. I love stories of the youngest who often have to alternate between hiding and speaking the obvious. The king has no clothes.

As for me, my goal is to live in good faith today. Now that means making waffles for a few of the Reba interns. Later this morning and afternoon I'll be teaching them the 7 Paths and applying them to life in an intentional Christian community.

6:19 p.m.

I finished the 7 Paths workshop at 2:45. First time through this version of the workshop and I had to do it quickly which meant I used more of a lecture style than I like. I hope it will be benificial to the interns. I think each path is right on. Now I need to teach them better.

After I put all the workshop materals away I took a nap and woke groggy. To cheer myself up, I looked at Anne Sigler's Blue Mountain card. Now I'm going to make myself a Mexican dinner and have friends over for the marvelous chocolate cake Sarah made. She's working tonight at the Community Hospital of Ottawa mental health unit. She called on her break and wished me happy birthday. I love her calls on her break.

9:29 p.m.

I invited Erin Kindy, Bill and Kate Newhouse and their two daughters, Isa and Elaina, and Lori Behrens and her two daughters, Kora and Mary, over for chocolate cake and ice cream. (Kevin Behrens missed the party because he's on the way to Michigan to go with his brother to the last regular season game of the the Detroit Tigers tomorrow.) What fun to talk, laugh, and enjoy ice cream and chocolate cake. I loved having the children at the party. The party ended with everyone giving me a hug.

My daughter Heidi and her husband Woju called from St. Louis. I also talked to Hannah and her husband Donny from Jacksonville, FL. I love giving and receiving love through phone calls.

My son Jon has forgotten my birthday. He'll feel bad when he remembers and I'll love him no matter how many times he forgets my birthday. I'll try calling him one more time before I go to sleep.

While talking to Heidi on the phone after the party I went to get the mail. Ah, the beauty of a cool, moonlit, starlit night.

Fifty-five years ago I was born for this world of stars, chocolate cake and hugs.

In search of treasure 2

2006-09-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

In my post two days ago I was searching for the words to describe the Evergreen Leaders' treasure. My heart sang when I came up with: Call us when you want your nonprofit to thrive while transforming lives.

But then slowly my enthusiasm waned. Something was missing. Then I remembered my friend Bob Betzelberger's question to me a couple of years ago: What's the pain that EGL will relieve? When Bob asked that question I didn't know what to say. An eternal optimist, I find it difficult to focus on pain yet I know that when someone knocks on a nonprofit's door it's usually with a combination of desperation and hope.

So went back, read the jottings in my journal that led to Call us when you want your nonprofit to thrive while transforming lives. I had forgotten I had written: "I want nonprofits to care as much for their organization as their cause."

How do you portray the pain that nonprofits get into when they have miserable organizational problems while trying to do good? I kept trying out version after version of an EGL treasure statements. Here's the latest:

When you’re tired of your nonprofit hobbling, call us. We help nonprofits thrive while transforming lives.

Let's see if that takes root and grows.

In search of treasure 1

2006-09-26T09:18:00.000-05:00

You wouldn't think a guy who started out marketing consulting services to health clubs would be a source of wisdom for a nonprofit CEO.

But I've been learning from Michael Port and his Book Yourself Solid.

When clients knocks on your nonprofit door they are looking for a treasure. Your task as a nonprofit leader is to understand your clients so well that you can put into a few simple words a treasure statement so powerful that it resonates with the soul of your organization and the souls of the people who in desperation and hope knock on your door.

Evergreen Leaders is a three-year-old nonprofit start-up and we provide consulting and leadership training to other nonprofits. For three years now the board and I keep revisiting the question of what's Evergreen Leaders about.

I don't regret the journey because every worthwhile treasure is discovered after a long journey.

The last few days I've been doing Port's writing excercises on what we do, who we do it for, and why we do it. I've been fascinated by the question: Why do we provide consulting and leadership training to other nonprofits?

After writing numerous answers I landed on the following:

Call us when you want your nonprofit to thrive while transforming lives.

I need to live with that statement to test it out but right now it's singing to my soul:

Call us when you want your nonprofit to thrive while transforming lives.

Breakfast with Dave

2006-09-23T17:38:00.000-05:00

Dave directs YSB, a nonprofit organization that helps children and families succeed. With a staff of nearly 80 working in several counties, it’s a challenge for Dave to be in touch with the stories of lives being transformed by the staff of the organization.

Recently I’ve been consulting with YSB as they develop an annual fundraising program. Part of my work has been to help them discover the treasure--the stories of lives being transformed--the organization has to offer donors. Dave realized he needed to meet with the staff and uncover the stories.

His solution was sheer humble hierarchy genius. He decided to do Breakfast with Dave. He is scheduling times to go to each office, meeting with staff in 25-minute intervals. He brings with him all the ingredients to make omelets and his omelet maker. He asks each staff person what they like in their omelets and that’s what they get.

While the omelet is cooking he asks, “What case are you most proud of?” Then he listens.

Evergreen Leaders humble hierarchy path is based on the principle that “humble hierarchy leaders have little personal ambition, have an unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves, and create space for all to thrive.”

When Dave was first promoted to executive director of YSB he negotiated a salary lower than the normal executive director salary because he said if he was making that much money he’d be embarrassed to come to work.

The first Breakfast with Dave was announced by memo and e-mail but when the day came he discovered no one had signed up. He promptly called staff in that branch office and invited them to breakfast individually. Dave may have been humble about his salary but he has an “unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves”. He knows he needs to hear the stories of lives transformed as part of creating an annual giving program to support their work in helping children and families succeed.

YSB staff often work with children and families in crisis. It’s easy for staff to feel like they go from crisis to crisis. Yet when Dave asks, “What case are you most proud of?” he is giving them an opportunity to recall when they and the organization are at their best in transforming for children and families.

One of the first staff member that he had breakfast with told him about a fourteen-year-old girl they had helped find a foster home. When she was older she entered a beauty pageant and as part of the pageant she described her wonderful experience in the YSB foster home.

Dave had his first story of transformation.

Smart and friendly spinach

2006-09-23T11:59:00.000-05:00

If you've been listening to the USA news lately you know that there's been an E. coli outbreak that's been traced back to spinach from a three-county area in California.

USA farmers are alway trying to develop smart systems for growing and marketing their crops. California spinach growers developed a smart system, banding together to cooperatively process and market their spinach. It was a smart system because it reduced costs and increased demand for spinach.

But organizations thrive not only have smart systems but smart and friendly systems. The spinach marketing system did not prove to be friendly because it spread E. coli, sickening 166 people in 25 states. The E. coli bacteria have been traced back to nine possible farms but because the spinach from all the farms are combined, it has improved impossible this far to pinpoint the exact source.

"There is going to be a need to examine the system -- what's working, what's not working. At this point I wouldn't want to rule anything in or anything out," said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer for the FDA's Food Safety and Applied Nutrition branch.

The dominant system in the USA involves trucking fruits and vegetables all over the country. That's how tainted spinach from three counties in California made people sick in 25 states.

But trucking food from vast warehouses is not the only system.

I live on a farm that, for the most part, uses a smarter, friendlier system. Grow it and then market it locally through farmers markets.

Farmers markets are a smart and friendly system for getting your spinach. Most farmers markets require sellers to grow the produce what they sell. That means that while you may pay a little more at a farmers market, that friendly man or woman you're buying from is the farmer who grew the spinach. And it wasn't combined with produce from dozens of other farms and trucked half way across the country.

I'm not a farmer but I've enjoyed eating Plow Creek produce for many years. Today for lunch I had seedless watermelon. I know Neil and Jim who grew the melon.

Now that's a smart and friendly system.

You don't need a title to be a leader

2006-09-16T14:39:00.000-05:00

The humble hierarchy path in Evergreen Leaders' 7 Paths is based on the principle that "humble hierarchy leaders have little personal ambition, have unwavering will to help the organization transform the lives of those it serves, and creates space for all to thrive."

Mark Sanborn's new book, You don't need a title to be a leader, has a great story about humble hierarchy at work. You can check the story out Mark's Leadership Lessons.

Would you recommend us?

2006-09-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

The September 2006 Inc. issues has an article (currently available in the magazine and online after the October issue comes out) that declares you can "perfect your service by asking the only question that matters."

And that question? "Would you recommend us?" Actually they recommend a follow-up question as well. Ask those who say they would not recommend your service: If you would not recommend us, whey not?"

The article is based on the work of Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question.

Now that sounds like a smart and friendly system for improving customer satisfaction.

Power to the people, part II

2006-09-02T16:22:00.000-05:00

When Plow Creek Fellowship was founded in 1971 as a communal church the USA was riding the waves of the countercultural revolution of the 60’s. Plow Creek rode one of the waves of the counterculture--the Jesus movement.

Sarah and I arrived at Plow Creek in 1977 and three years later Sarah was one of five pregnant women at Plow Creek. In fact, almost 20% of the adults in the community were pregnant that year.

Every organization is part of an ecosystem and the ecosystem profoundly affects the organization. For instance, every organization is part of the physical environment. While an extreme example, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast of Mississippi and Lousians in 2005, it showed how every organization in in its path had a complex relationship with the physical environment.

Social, political, legal, economic, and religious systems are all part of the ecosystems that organizations operate in.

The principle that Evergreen Leader’s ecosystem path is founded on states that organizations that build healthy, shifting relationships with their physical, social, political, legal, economic, and religious systems thrive.

In its early years Plow Creek Fellowship had dynamic relationship with its environment. The founders were all a generation older than the youth who arrived in the 1970’s. When I lip-synced to Larry Norman’s “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” at a Plow Creek talent show complete with strobe lights set up be my friend Kent Rathgen, it was a signal that Plow Creek’s environment had shifted.

The teenage children of founders were shocked and delighted. This was definitely not the music of their parents. But their parents were willing to build healthy, shifting relationships with the 20-somethings who arrived at Plow Creek having been deeply influenced by the counterculture.

What, you may well be wondering, has this to do with tension in the community in 2006 that signaled a need for change in the decision-making structure?

A 1995 decision by Plow Creek Fellowship led to a significant change in the social ecosystem that PCF operates in today.

From 1971 to 1995 the only way to be a member at Plow Creek was to be communal, to be part of the common treasury and communal decision-making. In 1995 the group decided to make it possible for people to join Plow Creek Mennonite Church without joining the communal group, Plow Creek Fellowship.

Starting in 1997 younger families began to join the church without joining the fellowship. By 2005 half were members of the church without being members of the fellowship and half were members of both. Most of the new church members lived on the farm, renting from the fellowship.

As you can see the ecosystem the fellowship operates in has shifted significantly.

The demographics of the fellowship have also shifted. By 2005 the youngest member was in her late 40’s and the oldest in her early 80’s.

In the early 2000s the fellowship began talking about attracting the next generation. In 2005 the fellowship affirmed a plan to launch a three-month to one-year internship in communal living. In a break from past tradition the group affirmed interns participating in members meeting through out the internship. Previously people interested in joining PCF attended members meeting only in the final stage of becoming members--we called these folks sharing neighbors--and they they simply observed the decision-making. Only member actually affirmed decisions as part of the members meeting.

In the summer of 2006 interns began attending meetings for the first time. At the same time several of the younger families who were part of the church expresses an interest in becoming sharing neighbors.

The ecosystem had shifted. Now we had folks who had lived on the farm for one to five years wanting to explore becoming part of the community.

When the ecosystem of an organization shifts sufficiently it creates anxiety within the organization, making it difficult for the organization to build healthy, shifting relationships with a changing environment.

Difficult but not impossible.

An organization with a strong sense of its own treasure can shift within its ecosystem without feeling that the treasure of the organization is going to given away in the change.

Next time I’ll explore how Evergreen Leaders treasure path made it possible for me to propose a change in our decision-making pattern that addressed both the shift in the fellowship’s ecosystem and the need for a change to create a smart and friendly decision-making system.

Power to the people, part I

2006-08-31T14:57:00.000-05:00

“Most organizations are designed so that a few people make decisions and the role of the rest of the people in the organization is to complain about the decisions,” I said at a dinner last fall.

As I said it I felt my stomach drop and the drop had nothing to do with the dinner or my dinner companions--Stephanie Grimes, Evergreen Leaders president, her husband Rodney, and a couple of other people from their church and my wife Sarah.

My stomach dropped because I suddenly remembered all the complaints I had been fielding from members of Plow Creek Fellowship over the previous year. I’ve been an elder of PCF, a communal group, since 1981. The group owns 190 acres, runs businesses, serves as a spiritual community, and sends members on mission. Plow Creek was founded as a seven-day a week way of being Christian rather than the dominant model of church on Sunday’s and maybe a time or two in between.

It was also founded to be a group where everyone could have an equal voice in decision-making and where each person had an important role in the life of the community.

But when my stomach dropped I asked myself: Could it be that the complaints are coming because PCF is designed for a few people to be in the role of decision makers and the rest are given the role of complaining about the decisions?

On the face of it PCF is designed to do just the opposite. All major decisions are made in members meeting by consensus. But organizations are complex and leaders need to dig deep to understand the systems at work in their organizations.

For the past three years, since several other people and I founded Evergreen Leaders, I have been thinking deeply about what makes organizations thrive. After doing workshops for two years on the topic, much reading and after much thinking (and prayer), last spring I identified 7 paths that organizations use to thrive.

The smart and friendly systems path is one of the seven paths thriving organizations use. The path is based on the principle that organizations thrive or shrivel on the systems they set up for getting things done.

Organizations that shrivel focus on the paradigm: we’ve always done it this way. Organizations that thrive focus on the paradigm: we‘re always looking for ways to make our systems smart and friendly.

There’s a very good reason organizations tend to keep old systems. Once upon a time those systems were great, served the organization well, and, in fact, helped the organization to thrive.

But then slowly reality shifted and the ways of doing things that helped the organization thrive no longer do. Leaders can throw all kinds of energy into making the old systems work but that doesn’t seem to help the organization get back to the thriving days.

A long time ago farmers went through the same experience. They planted corn on a new piece of ground and got an amazing crop. Great, they thought, I’ll do the same thing next year. They did and got another great crop of corn. Slowly but surely the corn crops began to dwindle.

The farmer thought deeply and decided to try beans on the piece of ground. He got a fantastic crop, Great, he thought, this ground is best for beans. Year after year he planted beans and slowly but surely the bean crops began to dwindle.

He thought deeply again and planted corn on the piece of ground. He got a great crop of corn. Then the next year he planted beans and got a great bean crop. The next year he planted corn and got a great corn crop. Thus was born crop rotation.

Organizations that are always looking for ways to make their systems smart and friendly are like the farmers who discovered crop rotation. This is not change for change sake but change to help the organization thrive.

As I thought deeply about the Plow Creek decision-making system I realized the growing frustration within the organization pointed to a need for crop rotation. We needed to make changes in how we made decisions as part of taking the smart and friendly systems path.

I thought more about the need for change in the fellowship I realized that in all likelihood our frustrations were rising not only from a need for smart and friendly systems but also from major changes in the context that PCF operates in.

Tomorrow is my day off. On Saturday I’ll post part II focusing on how Evergreen Leaders’ ecosystem path helped as I struggled with the changes needed in PCF decision-making model.

Rich's blog 2.0

2006-08-30T16:53:00.000-05:00

Most of my readers have probably gotten discouraged since I haven't posted since June 11. Sorry about that.

I've been doing some deep thinking about how to carry out the mission of Evergreen Leaders--helping nonprofits thrive. Early in the summer I condensed thirty years of leading secular and religious organizations into The 7 paths of thriving organizations. I think the 7 paths will be the treasure that Evergreen Leaders has to offer the world.

The 7 paths emerged out of two years of doing Evergreen Leaders workshops for nonprofits on the topics of listening, envisioning, and encouraging. The two years of workshops showed me that I needed to sharpen the message. Saying an organizations can thrive through listening, envisioning and encouraging is sort of like saying you can get to Chicago's Millenium Park from Wisconsin, Indiana, or Iowa.

True, but if you are in Nebraska and you stop and ask for directions to to Chicago's Millenium Park you need a little more specifics than "drive though Iowa and Illinois until you get to Chicago and then drive downtown and it's by the lake."

I'm very excited about the 7 paths because I think they will be as helpful in providing a map for organizations as Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People have been for individuals.

I think we have a treasure in the 7 paths. Part of my deep pondering has been: how can we create smart and friendly systems for people to discover, explore, and learn the paths?

I've decide to re-create this blog into a smart and friendly system for you to use to discover the 7 paths. To the left of the most recent entry you'll find a new section (thanks to Taher Baderkhan) called Categories. From now on each of the entries will be archived in one or more of the catgories. Over time there will be a treasure trove of information about each of the 7 paths.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (5)

2006-06-11T18:05:00.001-05:00

Plans are I won't see and hold Aaliyah until August when Hannah and Donny travel to Illinois. So I look at e-mailed photos. These two are my favorites taken on day two of Aaliyah's life. The next morning I spoke by phone with Hannah Donny before they went went home from the hospital. "“I love it! I love having a baby,” Donny said to me. I look at this photo of dad and daughter and the excitement in Donny's voice comes back. For years before Hannah met Donny I prayed for a good husband for her I about cry with gratitude as I look at this photo--a good man who loves Hannah and Aaliyah.

“She is so precious. We just love looking at her,” Hannah said. And the photo says it as well. Children love to be looked at. One of these year's I'll hear a little girl's voice, "Grandpa, watch me."

Happy birth, dear grandchild (4)

2006-06-08T05:56:00.000-05:00

The photos I have been waiting for arrived during the night. Here's is mother and child checking each other out in wide-eyed wonder.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (3)

2006-06-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

Aaliyah Jean Yvonne Hackworth, welcome to the world.

Late this afternoon I went to the Met where I swim 3-4 times a week and I told lots of folks that I had become a grandpa today and they all celebrated with me.

At noon Donny called me and told me that he cut the umbilical cord. Yeah, Donny! He also held her lots this morning. Hannah nursed her twice before 11:00 this morning. She is wrapped her pearents love.

Heidi arrived around 2:00 p.m. in time to take care of Aaliyah so that Hannah and Donny could rest. Yeah, Heidi!

Heidi is going to e-mail us photos. I can hardly wait to see photos of my precious little granddaughter. I'll post a photo on my blog.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (2)

2006-06-07T10:37:00.000-05:00

A child is born. At 8:32 a.m. Donny called me for 30 seconds to let me know that he and Hannah have a daughter. Her first name is Aaliyah. I can't remember her two middle names. She was 7 lbs., 8 oz.

Poor Sarah. I called her immediately to let her know she was grandma but her cell phone was off. She had started orientation for a new job at 8:30 a.m. and they must have told everyone to turn their cells phones off. She has to be suffering.

A few minutes later our daughter Heidi called from the Houston Airport. She had a layover on her journey from St. Louis to Jacksonville, FL to be with Hannah, Donny and Aaliya. Heidi had talked with Donny who said that Aaliyah has lots of dark hair. I'll post a photo as soon as I have one.

I had a meeting from 9:00 to 10:00 with no further calls from Donny. I hope all is well.

Thank you, Lord, for new life.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (1)

2006-06-07T07:33:00.000-05:00

Our first grandchild is about to be born. Hannah is in the hospital, Donny's taking great care of her and he's so excited to be a Dad. Any moment Sarah's and my first grandchild will be born. You can fellow a long in my joy today on this blog.

Sex, Money, and Power: What I'd like to say to the class of 2006

2006-05-08T10:09:00.000-05:00

No one has invited me to speak at a graduation ceremony this year but if they did here’s what I’d say.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2006, I skipped my two college graduation ceremonies because I had already spent enough time in class being bored. I assume you too have spent enough time listening to boring speakers so I’m going to address three attention-getting topics--sex, money, and power.

Only, I’m going to reverse the order and talk about sex last because I want to keep you and the administration on the edges of your seat.

Oh, yes, and as a bonus I’m going to talk about God too. I’m not sure what’s going to make the administration more nervous, me talking about sex or me talking about God.

But first money. Money is like water. You can only drink so much water in a day and you only need to spend so much money in a day. Drink 729 glasses of water in a day and you die. My basic attitude towards money is that the less you spend the less you have to earn which gives you more time for the important things in life like smiling at people.

Of course, if you stop drinking water you die too. So make a little, spend a little. That’s all you need to know about money.

All you need to know about power you can learn by becoming a parent. Give a newborn what she needs--warmth, food, touch, drink, and a clean diaper--and she grows. Now that’s power. But it’s usually not that simple. Often your new baby screams and you have no clue why. Here is your first lesson in power: people in power often do not know what to do. You turn to your husband or wife as your baby screams and you say, “What do we do now?” Here is your second lesson in power: people in power figure it out as they go.

Parents, be sure to thank your graduates. Not for making it through school but for the 729 lessons in good uses of power that they have given you.

Moving on to God. One day in 1956 when my Grandma was 53 she was reading the newspaper when she saw a story about a young mother in Grygla, the nearest town, who had died, leaving a husband, Elton Anderson, and two young girls, ages five and seven.

Grandma turned to Grandpa and said, “Oh, Emil, wouldn’t I just love to take care of those girls.”

A week later Grandpa, who was 20 years older than Grandma, had a stroke and died. A couple of weeks later Elton Anderson called Grandma and asked her to move to Grygla and take care of his two girls, Mayvonne and Donna. Many years later when Grandma told me this story she said, “God put those girls on my heart because he knew I was going to need something to do after Emil died.”

Graduates, a higher power has need of you.

Now, as promised, here’s what I have to say about sex. In the movie, Vanilla Sky, the Cameron Diaz character says to the Tom Cruise character, “Don't you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not?”

Graduates, get married and keep your promises.

Thank you very much, class of 2006, it’s been a pleasure.

Fixing people

2006-05-03T15:52:00.000-05:00

Stop trying to fix them.

That was a subhead in Yona Lunken's e-letter that I received this morning. He went on to say, "As a culture we keep thinking that if we just point out someone’s weakness and then give them training for that weakness, they will be fixed. This just doesn’t happen."

As an undergraduate I studied social work and then earned a Master's degree in counseling. You could say I was interesated in fixing people. I didn't think training would fix people but I was focused on people's weaknesses and I thought counseling would fix people.

I'm not against counseling. People close to me have benefitted greatly from therapy.

Yet on my own journey I have begun to appreciate how each of us is a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses. I don't spend a lot of time trying to fix my body so that I can walk long distances. Instead I hop in my wheelchair (well, not exactly hop--smile) and get busy doing the things I'm good at.

As Yona says, "Rather than trying to fix someone, find a way to diminish or ameliorate the effects of their weakness so that their talents can shine."

That's the wonder of families and workplaces. In groups our strengths and weaknesses fit together to create a beautiful mosaic.

I'm not talking about adultery or theft--those are mloral failures, not weaknesses. When I talk about weaknesses and strengths I'm talking about things like I am a pretty good writer and pretty lousy at keeping my office in order.

Our weaknesses naturally create space for other people's strengths.

You can subscribe to Yona's free ''Thinking Skills Seminars Newsletter'' by e-mailing him at thinking@a5.com.

(By the way, can anyone tell me how to create a link for an e-mail address in blogger so that the reader can click on the e-mail address and go directly to their e-mail program with the address inserted in the "To:" box?)

Living in a marketing world

2006-05-01T08:09:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been meditating on Jesus of Nazareth's manifesto, aka the sermon on the mount. This morning a phrase caught my attention: "Where your treasure is, there your heart is also."

Where is my treasure?

Like most folks in the USA I live in a marketing world, a world that treasures things, experiences, security. etc. Looking around the room where I write this I can see well over 100 things that were made and marketed (lots of books).

At the moment I don't see what I treasure most--God and his people.

Yesterday after Plow Creek worship and our common lunch three little girls, Kora Behrens, Margret Moore, and Isa Newhouse climbed on me and my wheelchair and took a ride. I treasure the children of Plow Creek.

Lately I have been meeting with Bethany Davis, a young mother of three who moved to Plow Creek from Hawaii last August after her husband died. A stay-at-home Mom with a high school education, she is exploring where she fits in the world of work. I encouraged her to attend Evergreen Leaders recent workshop--The Listening Path--that helps people identify their talents.

During the Listening Path I ask particpants identify seven things there brain loves to do--recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior.

After the workshop I asked Bethany about her list of seven things her brain loves to do. Two themes emerged. Her brain loves facts and ideas and her brain loves to meet new people and to have new experiences. After we had talked a few minutes I asked her, "Have you ever considered doing marketing?" She was appalled at the idea. She saw marketing as equivalent to high pressure sales.

To give her a broader picture I gave her a couple of other examples of marketing. Kevin Behrens, a shy guy and the opposite of a high pressure, fast-talking salse person, does a great job of marketing Plow Creek Farm produce.

Kevin does everything from writing and producing the farm newsletter, taking photos, managing the farm website and during the growing season, he does the daily phone message updates. In the last couple years he has created a great relationship with Natural Direct, a new home delivery produce distributor in the western Chicago suburbs, making it possible for folks in the western suburbs to enjoy locally grown Plow Creek produce. He also creates the signs and the layout for our local self-service produce market.

Then I described to Bethany all the marketing I do for Evergreen Leaders, a nonprofit company I head that does leadership workshops and consulting to help nonprofits thrive in towns under 10,000.

As Bethany and I talked about the marketing I do for EGL Bethany kept coming up with ways to improve EGL's marketing.

"Bethany, you have a marketing brain," I said.

Last week Bethany committed to starting as a vounteer marketer for EGL. I've committed to spend time with her each week supplementing her raw talent for marketing with knowledge about how to market EGL. Also, she is going to take marketing classes at the local community college.

I treasure giving Bethany the opportunity to develop her marketing talent. One of the places I love to put my treasure is in helping people develop the talents God knit into them starting in the womb.

The world's only diamond willow headboard maker

2006-04-22T16:24:00.000-05:00

When Dad, who lives in northern Minnesota, was 79, a stranger stopped and asked him if there were any diamond willows growing in the area.

Dad didn't know. He had never heard of diamond willows. The man showed Dad some beautiful walking sticks he had made out of diamond willows.

Dad researched diamond willows on the Internet and then went looking for them. He discovered lots of diamond willows near our farm. "I've probably been walking by them since I was five years old and never knew they were there," he says.

Now Dad is 82, a man with his own diamond willow business and website, Foss Diamond Willows, and someone who is having more fun working than ever before. In fact, recently he told me, "Life begins at 80."

While I've been launching Evergreen Leaders, discovering how to create a nonprofit that can help other nonprofits thrive, Dad has been discovering how to create a thriving business.

When the board and I launched Evergreen Leaders we focused on developing leadership workshops for nonprofit staff. Recently we have added strategic planning and fund raising consulting services in addition to the workshops.

Dad began making diamond willow walking sticks and lamps and marketing them at craft shows. But he kept looking for bigger ticket items that he could make from diamond willows.

After he made a diamond willow bed a couple of people suggested that he make diamond willow headboards. When a customer happily paid $500 for a diamond willow headboard, that got Dad's attention.

Now he has created diamond willow headboards for every size of bed. As he's shown them to customers he's dicovered that his customers see the diamond willow headboards as a perfect addition to their lake homes.

I'm proud of my Dad--the world's first maker of diamond willow headboards.

A thousand mouths

2006-04-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

This week I wrote a poem for the Easter sun rise service Erin Kindy and I lead this morning.

Here's a bit of background on the poem. This week the Plow Creek farmers planted strawberries. They order the plants from a distributor in Indiana who purchases them from a grower in California. The plants are refrigerated until it's time to plant them.

We sell a lot of strawberries each June. Last year Kevin Behrens, who does our marketing, said that by the end of the season he felt like he was pushing tons strawberries into people.

Of course, the poem has several Biblical allusions as well. Erin and I used Jesus' metaphor about his death and resurrection in the call to worship:

I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

In the last part of the poem I use the metaphor of tasting drawn the phrase in the psalm, "taste and see that the Lord is good."

A Thousand Mouths
By Rich Foss

Tender Plow Creek hands
lifted little green shoots
from a refrigerator this holy week,
hands like those of a rich man from Aramathia
tenderly wrapping a body
and hefting it into a rocky tomb.

Ah, the grief of a single grain of wheat
clinging to life.

Hand and machine ripped open the field--
now strawberry shoots dwell
in Plow Creek soil,
roots caressed by earth.

A body housed in hewn rock,
lifeless, breathless,
three days of stillness
before the startle.

June is coming when earth and plant
fling tons of strawberries into the air,
succulent to a thousand mouths.

He is risen,
tasting with a thousand generations
the raw goodness of resurrection.