Bearing New Fruit with the December Floricane Newsletter

The most exciting thing about the latest issue of the Floricane newsletter is the flurry of new business activity that popped up immediately after it hit the Internet. Not business driven by the newsletter, but irons that had been in the fire for a few weeks finally reaching the right temperature.

You can read all about what's new by subscribing to the enewsletter -- the next issue will be out late in January, and it's already thick with exciting news and stories. Or just follow along on the Floricane weblog.

In the meantime, the PDF of December newsletter is ready for your perusal.

SPOTLIGHT ON: Virginia Society of CPAs

Spotlight On is a new feature of the Floricane e-newsletter that specifically highlights recently completed client work. In this section, we will provide a brief overview and link to a simple case study that describes the work in greater detail.
 
CLIENT: Virginia Society of CPAs
 
CHALLENGE: Redefine the organization's process for setting goals; empower staff to work together more effectively; unify the organization's culture.
 
RESOLUTION: Guide the organization through the process of establishing "smart goals" that are attainable, aligned with growth, appropriately challenging, relevant to the organization, and measurable. Align these goals properly across the organization and at all levels -- from individual to individual...to organization...to manager...to team. Facilitate self-awareness study and exercises to identify individual learning styles and personal motivators.
 
BEARING NEW FRUIT? Yes. >> download the Virginia Society of CPAs Case Study

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories we tell, or have told, about ourselves show up everywhere we go. I recently interviewed with the senior leadership team of an organization who had short-listed Floricane to handle their strategic planning process in 2010. Everything about the meeting felt positive, engaging, focused. Iknew that there were other consultants in the process, and that my most effective interviewing strategy was to simply be myself. An hour into the discussion, and all indications were that things were going well. They asked good questions -- about my philosophy and process, my background, the differences between strategic planning for corporations and non-profits, my expectations of my clients. As the conversation began to wind down, they asked if we could take a five minute break and regroup. I assumed they were going to huddle and generate a final handful of questions. While they were gone, I perused the framed news articles about the organization that lined the walls. After about 10 minutes, two of the team returned. "Can you grab your notebook and folder and come with us?" one of them asked. "Did you have a coat?" That's when my inner voice -- presumably the one who was called far too often to the principal's office in middle and high school -- kicked in. "Uh oh," the voice muttered silently. "They're escorting me out of the building." I frantically replayed the conversation of the past hour, wondering when I had been too candid, or too flip, or mildly inappropriate. We turned a corner, and they ushered me into an office where the executive director and the project manager waited. "Come on in and close the door," the executive director said. The principal's office in every sense of the word. I continued threading through the conversation, trying to figure out when I blew it. "We were planning to regroup on Friday to make a decision, but we'd like to go ahead and offer you the contract," the project manager said. We all carry stories and narratives around with us, unpacking them when we need to justify ourselves or deploy our defenses in the face of perceived attack. Apparently, one of my stories involves a default assumption that when someone of authority calls me, I'm in trouble. A former coworker and I used to joke about the feeling. She called it "getting caught shoplifting." I called it "going to the principal's office." Whatever the name, it's been with me a long time. I learned long ago that our stories and narratives once served a purpose, but that we tend to hold onto them far past their useful shelf life. It's not often that any of us slows down enough to honestly examine our inner dialogue, much less engage in the hard work of editing, revising or discarding those stories that no longer serve us. For me, rewriting the script is always a work in progress, and I've been revising and editing this particular story for some time now. When it pops back up, I quickly recognize it and invite it to move along. But I've also started developing new stories focused more on who I want to become and less on who I've been. Situations like this week's interview remind me just how important those new stories can be.

A Tale of Two Strategies

There is the process of creating, and then there is the process of doing. Work continues, both with the implementation of The James House's new strategic plan, and with the creation of a strategic plan for the Valentine Richmond History Center. Both projects require a very different sort of skillsand attention, which makes life challenging and fun. Hopefully for everyone involved. Over the next 45 days, I'll be holed up with markers, flip charts, pretzels -- and Lesley Bruno, the Richmond History Center's project manager for the strategic planning process. Lesley listens a lot, and she tak es notes. And then she asks a question that freezes my brain, or suggests a turn in our work that opens up a whole new direction. Our shared goal is to develop a plan that delivers some pragmatic, short-term guidance and some ambitious initiatives, both of which position the Richmond History Center to take advantage of future demographic, technological and cultural trends. During that same period, I'll be blocking out time with key members of The James House board and staff to quickly move on the implementation of the Hopewell-based non-profit's strategic plan we developed earlier this year. In addition to building significant board capacity, we'll be implementing a set of very ambitious goals related to development and fund-raising. Both projects are engaging me in extremely different ways: At the Richmond History Center, we're trying to thread two distinct needles. The first is short-term, focused and rooted in not overburdening an organization or staff that is at, or near, capacity. That means identifying manageable tactics that move the center forward without relying on additional resources. The second is more of a stretch -- helping the organization look several decades into the future to anticipate ways it will need to reinvent itself in order to continue to tell the story of our amazing city. At The James House, I will cycle through three different roles -- strategist, project manager and coach -- in order to achieve our goals. The first is empowering the board to strategically lead the organization forward. The second, to help the organization meet the growing challenges of women and children in the Tri-Cities who are affected by sexual and domestic violence. Turning our strategic ideas into a reality that serves these clients may well be some of the most important work I do in 2010. One thing I've discovered over the past year is that cookie cutters are useless tools in strategic planning and consulting. Having a loose process is a good thing, but assuming that every project can be forced through similar molds is inherently unfair to the client -- and to the consultant. Especially if the consultant is curious, open to learning and willing to work.

Discussing Diversity and Inclusion in the Richmond Region

Take 67 community leaders and a large map of Richmond. Post 200 colored sticky notes on the map. Discuss. One of the more interesting projects I’ve had this fall was the co-facilitation of the December mid-year session for the Leadership Metro Richmond (LMR) Class of 2010—a collection of 67 professionals representing a broad swath of the region. The focus of the session? A two-day conversation on racial identity, diversity and inclusion in Richmond. It was the sort of project that got interesting before it even started. LMR had put out an RFP for the session, and met with me to discuss Floricane’s proposal. Several days later, I was asked by LMR if I would be interested in partnering with one of the other organizations who had submitted a proposal. Instinct #1: This isn’t how these things work. Instinct #2: Or is it? Naturally, I went with the second instinct, which is how I found myself negotiating the framework for a two-day workshop on diversity and inclusion with Jonathan Zur and Ali Thompson of the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities; I was joined by my sometime facilitation partner, Matthew Freeman, who also does facilitation work focused on racial identity, diversity and inclusion. All three of them are experts on the history, psychology and institutional challenges that sit deep within diversity and inclusion work. That meant my best work would be focused around my own strengths in program design and the facilitation of group conversations. In the end, I think we created the framework for a strong experience for a group of community leaders who—collectively, at least—had no clear sense of what it might mean to have “courageous conversations” or to “go beneath the waterline” or truly understand how all the components of their individual identity might serve to build them up in the community, or to hold them back. We began with one of my favorite community conversation starters — a gigantic map of the Richmond region, a simple 10 foot by 15 foot geographical overview of where we live. Participants were asked to answer three questions on different colored Post-In notes. The first question was, “Where do you live?” The second asked participants to identify one location or place in Richmond to which they felt an emotional connection. The third question asked them to name a location or place that everyone visiting the region should see or experience. We had them place their orange, green and yellow Post-It notes on the map, and then we raised it up to the ceiling and started to talk. Geography is a common denominator in Richmond. It is what we all have in common. It also serves to keep us apart, to reinforce stereotypes and to paralyze many regional conversations. It wasn't long before the conversation about geography turned into a discussion about racial identity, and that was where the discussion stayed for most of the first day. The conversation and learning focused on the cycle of prejudice, which plays out across issues of race, gender, sexual orientation. Using an interactive polling technology that allows audience members to use electronic keypads to instantly and anonymously respond to questions, Matthew created a real-time discussion about how identity and diversity played out within the LMR class. (Learn more about how audience response keypads can augment small group dialogue here.) Over the span of two days, participants also explored their own personal timelines related to their identity; participated in a range of small and large group conversations; and began to identify new ways to frame their community work. Helping groups of people move through hard conversations isn't new work for me, but having the expertise, emotional energy and skills that Matthew, Jonathan and Ali brought into the room made a huge difference. The end result was a rich, significant and deeply exhausting experience for everyone in the room. I learned as much as the participants from my fellow facilitators, and heard powerful and personal stories from residents of the Richmond region about ways in which their identity -- racial, cultural, socio-economic, gender -- surfaced every single day in ways positive and negative. Moving community conversations into uncomfortable terrain is important work, and Richmond should be proud that organizations like LMR and individuals like Matthew, Ali and Jonathan are helping to lead the charge.

Thankful for Something of My Own

During the season finale of "Mad Men," Don Draper blurted out, "I want to build something of my own. How do you not understand that?" By the end of the show, Don and a small crew from the ad firm had jumped ship and started a new firm. That's not exactly how things went down last November, but a year ago this month wheels were set into motion that churned slowly and certainly into something called Floricane. Oddly enough, the last thing that crossed my mind when I walked out of Luck Stone Corporation last November was starting my own business. And, yet, here I am. A year ago, I'm not sure I would have understood Don. Today, I do. I've spent the better part of a year doing something I love -- building something of my own. But I didn't do it alone. No, the pretty stellar thing about this past year has been -- quite simply -- how much of a case study in collaboration it has become. I think that's the real beauty of venturing into new territory -- the very real possibility that you might discover something much more amazing than you originally anticipated. I knew I would have fun building a business. I didn't realize how much fun it would be. I knew I would learn a lot along the way. I didn't quite get how much there was to learn (and remains to be learned). I suspected that there would be challenges. I didn't anticipate how difficult some of them would be to overcome. I anticipated that I would meet new people. How could I ever have foreseen the number of new friends I would make? Entering a busy Thanksgiving weekend -- one with more than a few hours set aside for business -- I am most thankful to have had this opportunity to build "something of my own" and for the help of so many phenomenal people along the way. Because without them, what I've managed to cobble together would be far less.

Voiceless, and Paying A Different Sort of Attention

Those of you who know me will have some appreciation (or apprehension) of this little tidbit: I have been silent for more than 24 hours. My throat ache began on Friday, and our family spent much of the weekend feeling varying degrees of feverish, miserable and fine. Thea mostly felt fine, which isexactly how you want your high-energy toddler to feel when the rest of the family is under the weather. Tuesday morning, I had a series of highly talkative meetings. I knew going into my first meeting that I was going to lose my voice. I could feel it. By the time I got to my last meeting of the day, I was flagging. My voice was breaking, kicking in and out. This morning, I went to the doctor. Her orders: No talking, no whispering. Indefinitely. Apparently, I'll be able to tell when it's time to talk again -- which is interesting, because it took me 40 years to learn when to shut up. But the lesson is this: Silence, even medically imposed silence, changes communication. I don't think I'm listening differently, but I have been paying a lot more attention -- to people around me, to different ways I can connect and communicate without my voice. Nikole left me alone with Thea for an hour this evening while she ran errands. I admittedly couldn't avoid speaking, even in strained whispers, but for most of that hour we played together quietly. There was more, or more of a different, connection. What if we all practiced periods of disconnection from our sense, forcing ourselves intentionally into spaces where we have to pay different attention? Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws sure will be interesting.

The James House Plan Approved; Lessons Learned

Last night, the board of The James House (TJH) officially approved the strategic plan we developed over the course of the past seven months. But it's not the end of my journey with the Hopewell-based nonprofit focused on providing services to those affected by sexual or domestic violence; in fact,the hard work is yet to come.Last night, the board of The James House (TJH) officially approved the strategic plan we developed over the course of the past seven months. But it's not the end of my journey with the Hopewell-based nonprofit focused on providing services to those affected by sexual or domestic violence; in fact, the hard work is yet to come. Thanks to the forward-thinking (and generous) approach of The Cameron Foundation, which has funded my work with TJH since April, I'll spend the next year helping the board and staff of TJH implement the plan. I could pretend that I designe d and delivered the perfect strategic process for The James House, but the reality is that this was the first strategic process I have managed from start to finish. And while the board and I feel that the final strategic plan is a solid and ambitious road map for the organization, I stumbled a few t imes along the way, and I missed some important opportunities. The good news is two-fold: The James House has a good plan to guide their growth over the next 2-5 years, and I learned a raft of lessons that are already helping me to implement better strategic processes for other Floricane clients. The Plan One of the most exciting aspects of the planning process for me was the willingness of The James House to take some time to step back and look at the big picture. The organization does important work in the human services arena and serves residents of eight cities and counties in south-central Virginia -- a region facing significant growth with the expansion of Fort Lee, and other demographic trends. Three of the most important aspects of the plan involve the board of TJH, the organization's future development/fundraising needs, and the role of the staff in the plan's development and implementation. The James House has been around for several decades, but it has just been in the last seven years or so that it has reached a level of service, stewardship and competency to be seen as a professional and reliable resource for individuals affected by the trauma of sexual or domestic violence. The board that helped move TJH forward in recent years has been committed to the mission, but in need of a strategic vision, clearer roles and expectations for its members, and new members. During the first six months of 2010, one of our primary strategic tasks will involve the creation of a larger board that is ready to take the lead on strategy, governance and fundraising. But the board recognizes it can't do it alone. Which is why we're also focusing in the near-term on funding, finding and hiring a new development director who can play an active role in supporting the board's fundraising work; strengthening relationships with key donors, businesses and community leaders across the eight service areas; and doubling up on the organization's already aggressive grant-writing efforts. And it's why the staff has been involved in the process from the get-go. And why the staff will be partnering with the board as we work to implement key strategic outcomes. A final, personal and and important note on the process: I didn't do it alone. It wasn't just the staff and board of The James House who helped get this plan to the finish line. One of the most important players in the process has been Kristen Kaplan, a Richmond-based consultant (and one of the founders of Hands On Greater Richmond). Kristen not only provided me with some much-needed guidance and confidence early on, but she provided great perspective throughout the planning process. Oh, she also pretty much single handedly research and wrote the development portion of the plan. I really would have struggled without her support and expertise. The Lessons Without going into great detail, the lessons I learned in this process have been significant. I'll bullet a few key learnings below: * I don't do my best work alone. Former coworkers, pick yourselves off the floor. I get it for real now. Being a consultant is inherently lonely work. The smartest decision I made early on was to recruit smart people to partner with me where possible. I couldn't have found a better partner for this project than Kristen. In addition to everything described above, Kristen kept me accountable. And she served as an important reminder of what it feels like to work with someone I like, trust and respect. * Pacing and scheduling are important. The smartest thing I did with The James House work was create a block of time I called the "discovery phase" of the project. It involved research, an assessment of board and staff perspectives, and one-on-one discussions with each board and staff member. But because we didn't schedule key blocks of work in advance, we lost a lot of ground when that process moved to its conclusion and we couldn't schedule the second phase. This stop/go process continued throughout the summer, and it was largely a result of my poor planning on the scheduling front. * Research, research, research. Yes, Kristen did a ton of research. I should have done more, and I should have done it in the first month. Reading through existing documents, delving into demographic and other regional research, meeting with other external stakeholders -- all critical work that I didn't focus on soon enough. It didn't sandbag the process, but I think the plan would have been significantly better if I had spent more time on the front-end really learning the nuts-and-bolts of the organization and the communities it served. That all said, the plan is done and implementation has started. I'll be meeting with a team from the board in a few weeks to matrix out a work plan for the strategic recommendations, and we'll get rolling. The James House was my first long-term client under the Floricane banner, and I'm excited to continue building on a great working relationship.