Simplify

It doesn't have to be complicated! Really...really!

Often the resolutions to our challenges are right in front of us. It would appear--especially for those of us affiliated with the work of non-profit organizations--that it is our belief the resolutions, in order to be effective, have to be more complex, detailed, tested, expensive, debated, focus-group approved, consensus made, stakeholder engaged, consultant-driven. We have convinced ourselves that reaching out to the problem solving industry is better than accessing our own common sense and intuition. Think about it!

Now, it is true, some challenges we face require additional support. Big support. And, sometimes the resolution to what feels like a major institutional problem is just plain and simple:

• Offering a contract to the new hire may help them to stay longer and alleviate your fear of an abrupt departure.
• Hiring an electrician to relocate the electric outlet which will enable the computer to be moved so that the greeters' backs are not facing guests as they enter the building.
• Adjusting or amending your strategic plan (or Bylaws, for that matter) when it fails to inspire or organize people toward goal achievement.
• Requesting that a disengaged board member step down prior to the completion of a term.
• Replacing meeting mechanics (i.e. Robert's Rules of Order) with a dose of healthy facilitation skills, hearty discussion, and a clock to keep time.
• Treating anyone in your midst as a potential donor and using every gathering of people as a cultivation opportunity.
• Keeping it real...simple...real simple.

It is pretty typical that the biggest challenges are resolved with the simplest solution, the solution that is intuitive and readily accessible. It is our belief that the resolution has to be bigger (smarter? expert? expensive?) that keeps us from actually resolving what ails us. We fall into a cycle of avoidance, overwhelm, fear, perfectionism, procrastination when we know--in our hearts--that the solution we seek is right in front of us. This does not have to be complicated.

Think about your challenges for a moment. Give them some order, biggest to not biggest (rarely are our challenges viewed as small). Now consider the biggest challenge and what you know is the resolution. Go deep. You probably know the ways to address the challenge. Now think about what you are actually doing to address the big challenge. What is the gap between what you know/intuit and what you are actually doing? What would alignment between the two look like to you? What are the barriers in the way of your intuition coming forth and resolving the matter? When you say "yes" to an overly-processed solution, what are you saying "no" to? What would simplicity look like?

Take the biggest challenge on your list and resolve to resolve it...today!

Word for the Day

What are you grateful for? What does gratitude feel like for you? For me, gratitude is more than offering "thank you"...yet that is a start. What does an expression of gratitude look like to you? What gets in the way of offering gratitude? Or acknowledging gratitude? Or receiving gratitude?

Think of a gratitude that you wish to offer. Got it?

Now go do it!

Discovery

I am my family's historian. It is a self-appointed position that I love. I am the keeper of the family tree database, a process that began over 35 years ago on scraps of paper and index cards and is now tracked on an elaborate database. I scan old photos that are then appended to individual records. I get mysterious documents and photos translated from their original languages (usually handwritten Yiddish or Old Russian). I search for vital documents on web sites and in libraries and court houses. This past summer I spent two weeks in Poland on a genealogical trip of a grand scale visiting the villages of my ancestors. I track down distant cousins on the Internet and make visits and telephone calls to collect information and solve mysteries. I am really serious about this project. My hobby is my passion.

And what I am deeply aware of when indulging this passion (almost daily!) is the depth of my passion for this hobby. I am totally committed. I am in it! When I am in pursuit of a genealogical fact, I can get lost in my effort for hours...the world is blocked out...I am in pursuit of something important...a resolution...mystery solved. I notice my focus is clear and directed. I also notice, depending upon the fact-chase I am on that my heart begins to race and I my body speeds up (I type faster on the computer keyboard). It feels very "hunter"-like, as if being in pursuit of big game. Adrenaline. Hunger. Goal.

This project has been a powerful metaphor for many aspects of (my) life. And today I am aware of how my individual efforts (daily research, collaborations, dedicated pursuits) have created a body of work. Years of research tasks have begun to show a full picture of a family. There is something very individual, singular about the work with something very collective in the result. In the same way, there is something very individual about life in a family while also being a very collective, group experience. Big picture. Goal. Eye on the prize.

So, the learning for me today is to remember the small pursuits--tasks, efforts, achievements, ideas--can add up to something bigger, richer, more complete. Research becomes a body of work. Raising many small donations becomes a new facility at a wildlife sanctuary. Making multiple employment inquiries leads to a new job. Falling repeatedly on the snow leads to mastery of jumps, grinding rails, and a half-pipe on a snowboard. Attending years of school leads to high school (and college) graduation. With each birthday, there is wisdom (hopefully) and some gray hair. The challenge is to execute the individual efforts with a conscious nod to the collective goal.

What are you passionate about, so passionate that you get lost in it? What do you notice about your body when you are indulging this passion (heart racing? focus?)? Think about your individual or daily efforts and how they contribute to a larger collective goal. What is easy, familiar to you? What is difficult? What motivates you when the goal seems so far away or incredibly difficult to achieve? It isn't only the successes that leads to the goal; what does it take to be okay with the collective failures that lead to growth and learning? What are your doing today, or this year, or for years in service to tomorrow?

Enjoy the day!

The Pursuit of Joy

I have a new acquaintance (quickly becoming a friend) who is a talented, educated, experienced, skilled professional in her non-profit field. She is fantastic. And she has been stuck in a rut professionally. I know she is a success--meets her goals, contributes positively to the cause and culture, leads--but she would describe her existence as joy-less. Something is missing.

It took some time. Then the shift happened.

Perhaps you can relate: There are those moments in our lives when we have had enough of our circumstances being the way they are and we make a change...a deliberate, conscious, intentional shift in the dynamic in order to create a new dynamic. We stop waiting for something to change and we go out (or inward) and make the change! My friend did this. She stopped waiting and she started making. It did not take long before the new job, the new home in a new state, the new challenge was created. She stopped living from the place of managing circumstances she did not like and began vigorously shaping her desired life and circumstance. Re-frame!

It wasn't easy, I'm quite sure. Big results require big effort.

And in this case, she chose to shift away from "what can I do to make this situation more tolerable?" to taking a big risk in today's unstable economic climate and pursue a job where she can make a real impact and feel real passion and joy. Big, scary, "what the hell am I doing" kind of effort! To be fair, I am all for the need to sit still and examine our current states of being in order to mindfully shift energy, resources, time into more fruitful areas. But quiet exploration must yield to real work, to sincere effort, to doing something!

Name your rut, your stuck place right now. What is holding you back (for you in the non-profit world, the answer is not "money")? What do you really know about this place? Now imagine the shift to something else, a different place, a different perspective. What will it take to get there? Name some action you can take to get closer to this new place. What are you willing to "spend" in order to get there? What will it "cost" you to stay where you are? what are you willing to do in order to be who you want to be?

My friend wanted to find joy. Pretty simple conceptually, yet achieving the goal (finding joy) is loaded with practical and emotional weight. Finding joy requires various levels of risk, perseverance, and a sense of humor. What else?

What do you want?

Tough Times

A major study produced by Guidestar about the financial health of America's non-profits in the first half of 2010 was released today (7014 respondents) and it contains great validation and little surprise. In short:

• Charitable contributions decreased greatly.
• Fewer individuals gave.
• Gifts from individuals were smaller.
• Demand for services increased modestly.
• Foundation grant awards decreased.
• Foundations made no major changes in their grant making processes.
• Number of funding requests remained the same.
• 2010 annual budgets increased slightly over 2009.
• Budget reductions are due to reductions in activities and services.
• Volunteerism has stayed the same.

The full study--The Effect of the Economy on the Nonprofit Sector--complete with charts and graphs, can be found here.

It is a tough time out there for nonprofit organizations! But you already knew this... Yet, I am convinced, if you meet the challenge of the times with new perspectives--for leadership, staffing, measurement, donor stewardship, fundraising, service delivery, strategic planning, board management, volunteer recruitment, message management...everything-- you will come through in a better place.

What are you learning from these times? You have a solid sense for now...what's next? Try removing money (funding, fundraising, etc.) from the equation for a moment...what's going on in your organization? Here's the creative, new perspective part...what solutions can you come up with that do not require money (funding, fundraising)? Money is just one of the many tools you have available to deliver the services you are committed to; what are the other tools you have available and how well are you using them?

The inward journey during a time of external chaos is worth exploring. Give it a try!

And give me a call if I can be of service to you.

Make It Up

I just returned from a month of travel and have now completed many of the tasks that lingered in my absence. A terrifically satisfying accomplishment: Cleaning and organizing my office! In the stacks of paper waiting to be filed, I found a paperclip holding three random notes. I do not recall the origins of either scrap or even why the content was important at the time.

Maybe there is some wisdom to share.

I.

Make up your own philosophy.
Invent your own story.
Free up your own imagination.
Create your own self.
Perfect your own flaws.
Follow your own evolution.
Believe in your own team.
See your own ability to change the world.

II.

Utility. Trust. Pleasure. Virtue.

III.

Don't be a conveyor of information. Use the information. Impact.

My dear coach friend will often ask "So what do you make up about it...?" I love the freedom in the question, the freedom to be creative, not to have to know it all, and to find value in the discovery.

So what do you make up today?

Connectivity

I have a theory. More and faster and instant communication portals and devices do not make us better communicators. We just have more and faster communication portals and devices.

The origins of my theory this morning: I have a contractor completing a year-long project at my home who is getting quite lazy and we are literally 6 hours from completing the job. The last few months have been horrible trying to get his attention on finishing the job. I make a phone call to the business number. Voice mail. I make a phone call to the contractor's cell phone. Voice mail. I send a text to the cell phone. No answer. I send an e-mail to the business. No reply. FAX. Nothing. E-mail marked urgent. Nothing. Contractor drops by unannounced. Promises to come back Friday. No show Friday. No call. No text. No e-mail. It is an endless loop of communication devices. Until recently, these modes of communication worked just fine.

No doubt, I am frustrated by this situation with my contractor (a bit cranky, really). And the M.I.A. contractor is one example of millions in a day. I also notice people texting others while sitting around a table together. I notice the commuter train filled with loud conversation on cell phones; no one is talking to one another. I notice pedestrians walking down the streets having animated conversations into cell phones. I notice an inordinate amount of time spent in front of a computer screen. I notice 90% of all connection with any charity is via an electronic communication. There is a lot of connectivity without much meaningful connecting.

None of the technical access points available to anyone make a difference if the users of the devices aren't committed to the people generating the words being communicated. We're so busy being connected that we become more disconnected. Our lives have devolved into 100 letter status updates and not to fulfilling promises, obligations, contracts, agreements. What would it be like to spend less time managing the number of messages and devices and more time managing the relationship with the person on the other end of the device? In other words, it's not the managing of the message or the device that matters as much as managing the relationship with the messenger and recipient!

I am not device-phobic. Really. They come in really handy at times. Many times. What I notice though is that when we lose the human connection with one another we are not nearly as engaged, committed, present, or successful. We hide in the transmission (or exchanges) and the more devices that exist between people, the more places to hide. There is a huge paradox here: The more connected we are the less connected we are. The relationship becomes about how often and in how many ways we miss one another and not actually those times we connect.

Our lives, our relationships, our businesses, our organizations, our boards of directors, our communities, our friends, our kids...we fail when we forget that the device is merely the conduit for people to connect. It's the relationship that matters! Isn't it funny that the now vintage telephone service advertising said to "reach out and touch someone" and there was no reaching or touching involved?

How important is technology to you? What are your core "technology" values? What do you do to manage and balance the real and the virtual worlds in which you live/work? If you rely upon technology to communicate, what do you do that makes the communication effective? Authentic? Connected? What would be possible if we unplugged just a bit?

NOTE: Contractor has never returned to the job and has been replaced.

Enjoy the day!