The Corner of Design and Strategy

I spent the morning with a group of 20 interior design students at Virginia Commonwealth University, whose semester is focused to a large degree on consulting around built spaces. We spent most of ourtime discussing the challenges of navigating a client space – especially when you come to the table with your own ideas, passions and designs.

I wasn't quite sure walking into the room how to start the conversation, or what from my world of strategy and facilitation might be most relev ant to their design-centered aspirations.

I quickly discovered – thanks to their excellent questions – that what our work had in common was a passion for the work and a focus on the client.

We began in earnest with a focus on the importance of listening, but I also suggested – strongly – that the best consultants (business, strategy, design or otherwise) are those who can understand deeply what the client truly wants, and then give them that plus something unexpected. Something that takes them even closer to their dreams – for their home, their workplace, their organization.

It's an outcome I work hard to achieve for my clients, and I still have so much to learn when it comes to tapping into unspoken aspirations and delivering something powerfully better than either of us – client or consultant – could have individually imagined.

Continuing to learn how to do that better is part of the work. Seeing it as an investment, not an expense, is another part.

A member of my team remarked recently that she was surprised and impressed with what she described as my patience. "You just let the group continue to talk and work toward the right answer," she said, while pointing out that she'd run out of patience with what felt like wheel-spinning much earlier in the meeting.

"The answer is already in the room," one of my mentors told me long ago when I asked how they facilitated so effectively. "If you start with the belief that you alone have the answers, you're not doing the right work. If you deeply believe that the client already has the answers, and that your job is primarily to help them discover and deepen their commitment to their best answers, it's powerfully different work."

I wasn't surprised that the VCU students wanted to have a long discussion about this, because I believe it is at the heart of effective consulting. And it is at once so obvious and so difficult that it demands our constant attention.

Team Huddle

Floricane had its first official team meeting last month.

The primary goal was to take some time to build relationships, but it is increasingly important for our clients that our team of strategic planning, project management and marketing gurus work off of the same sheet of music.

Even as we work ourselves out of work with great clients like Children, Incorporated, we are welcoming new clients to the mix. In recent weeks, we’ve started work with U-TURN Sports Perf ormance Academy, One South Realty and the 4,500 person organization known as the Greater Fulton community in Richmond’s East End. We’ve also launched a new workshop series designed to help organizations increase their employee engagement and effectiveness, and began a new partnership with the Richmond Symphony.

Each new opportunity is exciting news for a consulting firm launched in the early month’s of the deepest recession in our lifetime.

I can’t help but think that there is a correlation between Floricane’s emerging team and our business success:

    * Sarah Milston runs her own consulting firm – and chases after her daughter Lily James – when she’s not partnering with us on strategic planning work.

    * Juliet Brown works hard to keep our messaging strong, and to maximize our use of a host of marketing tools – from print to social media.

    * Cara McDaniel and Beth Coakley work as project coordinators for both one-time events and long-term strategic engagements.

    * HR consultant and coach Debra Saneda and planner/designer Peter Fraser also have their own businesses. Debra and I are developing a body of work together around organizational effectiveness, while Peter is the visionary (and artist) in the room with our visioning work in the Greater Fulton community.

Floricane began in November of 2008 when I left Luck Stone Corporation. As I look ahead to the second anniversary of the launch of the business, it’s gratifying to know that I am surrounded by a great team of friends, partners and clients.

Building A New Playbook

U-TURN is a nonprofit at the intersection of faith, sports and kids. We’re helping build their long-term strategy.

If you drive around the Willow Lawn area regularly, you might know U-TURN Sports Performance Academy as the owner/occupant of the old Circuit City store on Tahlbro Street. Within the 150,000-squar e-foot building is a hidden secret – and another of Richmond’s hidden nonprofit gems.

I’ve known about U-TURN for several years. The organization was created 18 years ago around its founder’s passion for tennis and God.

In a nutshell, U-TURN is committed to helping kids from all walks of life build character through athletic training and spiritual growth. It has a strong outreach component, and a deep commitment to serving Richmond-area students who might not have access to year-round sports programming or state-of-the-art equipment.

When founder Paul Manning left U-TURN last year, I was pleased to hear that the nonprofit had landed Robert L. Dortch Jr. as its new president.

I met Robert several years ago through a Greater Richmond Chamber community initiative, and connected with his passion, his thinking and his ability to preach powerfully from any pulpit – religious or secular.

Robert and I reconnected earlier this year, and after a series of conversations he invited Floricane to support U-TURN in the development of its new strategic plan. Sarah Milston, Cara McDaniel and I will be working closely with the staff and board of U-TURN into the winter to craft a plan that can help U-TURN continue to grow and thrive.

We started work recently, and have already seen huge opportunity for U-TURN to live more powerfully into its mission and to strategically maximize its use of its 150,000-square-foot training facility. More than 3,000 kids pass through U-TURN’s athletic programs every year – kids from private and public schools, from the city and from the counties, kids with a passion for tennis, volleyball, football and more.

It’s likely I’ll exhaust my limited supply of sports metaphors quickly in the strategic planning process, but I’m confident that the staff and board will be quick to fill any gaps.

Fulton Rising

One of Richmond’s oldest neighborhoods wants to create a community-centered vision for its future. The Greater Fulton community asked Floricane to help.

History suggests that in 1607 Captain John Smith met with Powhatan’s son at the foot of Fulton Hill. More than 400 years later, Richmond’s Greater Fulton community – Fulton, Fulton Hill and Montrose Heights – is ready to move past its history and define a new future.

With funding from LISC Virginia, Fulton’s Neighborhood Resource Center (NRC) invited area planners to help the community build a grassroots vision and strategic plan. Floricane stepped to the table, combining our facilitation and planning expertise with strong visioning and design support from our new partner, Peter Fraser.

Last week, Peter and I had our first formal meeting with the newest Floricane client – the 4,500 residents of Fulton. Well, three of their representatives.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring the Fulton community on foot and by bike. We’ll also sit on a few front porches. Along with co-director of the NRC, Annette Cousins, and her team, our goal will be to connect with the community, more deeply understand Fulton’s geography and architecture, and begin building awareness of the visioning process among local residents.

In October, plans are to hold a series of visioning sessions with residents and other community stakeholders. Peter and I will then go to work on both written and visual planning documents that seek to capture the community’s passion, its story and its dreams for the future.

November will bring a two-day open design studio – residents can review our work and provide in-the-moment feedback – as well as a presentation at LISC Virginia’s 20th anniversary celebration and a final community-wide session.

Peter and I are lucky to have Beth Coakley, a masters student in VCU’s Public Administration program, working with us as project coordinator.

We believe that our three-month engagement with the Greater Fulton community is going to be an amazing experience for everyone involved. We can’t wait to see what dreams emerge from the community in the weeks ahead.

Six Big Trends Affecting Nonprofits (and everyone else)

At last week's Nonprofit Learning Point annual conference, close to two hundred Richmond nonprofit employees and consultants gathered to hear keynote speaker Peter Brinckerhoff address the current round of generational change impacting American society. I wasn't startled by Brinckerhoff's presentation, as I'd been paying pretty close attention for several years to the ways in which the generational shifts have been – and will continue to – impact organizations. But Brinckerhoff's good humor, engaging style and succint approach to six major trends he sees stretching across the Boomer/GenX/Millennial divide made the morning both enjoyable and educational.

He began by giving the audience some deeper clarity on what divided the three primary generations populating our organizations today (he did also speak to the generations that came before Boomers, and who still play a big role in our culture) – essentially:

• Boomers = Television shaped their worldview. They think they saved the world in the 1960s. They're ready to save it again.
• Generation X = Personal computers changed their worldview. They're half the size as Boomers and Millennials, population-wise. They value work/life balance.
• Millennials = (Brinckerhoff calls them Generation@) Technology is invisible to them; it's like air. They like doing things in groups. They're smart, and eager to contribute.

It was Brinckerhoff's overview of six cultural trends connected to the generational shift that I found most interesting – it echoes some of the work I've done with local nonprofits as it relates to changes in demographics, diversity and technology. The six big areas Brinckerhoff explored were:

• Financial Stress
• Technological Acceleration
• Population Diversity
• Redefinition of Family
• Me Branding
• Work/Life Balance

You can download a copy of his presentation from the NLP conference, or visit his website for more details.

All the News That’s Fit To Print

If you missed it last month while you were at the beach, the Richmond Times-Dispatch inked a lengthy (and lovely) profile of Floricane – and some of its great nonprofit clients – in its Monday business section. The inclusion of clients like the Valentine Richmond History Center and Children, Incorporated are important reminders that our success as a small business is built on relationships with more than 30 fantastic clients and community partners over our first two years of strategic planning and facilitation work.

Below is a brief excerpt. You can visit the Times-Dispatch online to read the whole story.

Bill Martin turned to John Sarvay of Floricane last year when the Valentine Richmond History Center began to formulate its long-term strategic plan.

In the past, the museum routinely had created a five-year plan to define its mission and activities, as well as its needs and vision for the future.

This time, "we didn't want to use the traditional process," said Martin, the director of the museum. "We wanted to develop a process that engaged the staff and the board of trustees and encouraged people to look much farther into the future."

Sarvay's work with the Valentine Richmond History Center cascaded into projects with other nonprofit organizations, such as the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, where Sarvay taught team-building workshops.

Brother, Can You Spare Some Time?

One of my first engagements as a new entrepreneur in 2009 was designing and delivering a program for a huge swath of recently unemployed workers in the Richmond area – first at the Greater Richmond Chamber with Stephanie Kirksey, and then at St. Michael's Catholic Church with Eleanor Rouse.

St. Mike's has been running its Jobs Assistance Ministry since the fall of 2008, and has cycled as many a 1,000 people through an intensive series of networking lunches, workshops and coaching sessions – all designed to help displaced workers land a job, set a new course or adjust to the abrupt changes in their circumstances.

I'm excited to be returning to St. Mike's on Wednesday, Septembe r 29, for their weekly JAM lunch session. The focus of my conversation will be all about the importance of networking – or really, the importance of human relationships in networking.

During my own journey from unemployment to self-employment, I had three things working in my favor – luck, discipline and time.

Luck: The day after I was unexpectedly laid off from Luck Stone in November of 2008, I happened to have coffee scheduled with James Ukrop of the supermarket and banking fame. While I'd worked for Ukrop's through high school and college, I had never met Jim. We scheduled coffee months earlier after a mutual friend suggested me meet to talk about community efforts in the Richmond region. And while we did have that discussion, we also talked about life after Luck. He was encouraging, and he helped connect me with a small handful of people in town who have been equally supportive of my work with Floricane.

Discipline: During the first eight weeks after leaving Luck Stone, I met with almost 250 people – former colleagues, old friends, friends of former colleagues, colleagues of old friends and an assortment of connections established through social media tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. Taking weekends and holidays out of the mix, I averaged five meetings a day through the middle of January. None of them resulted in work. None of them were designed to land work. Almost every conversation was focused on building relationships, building confidence in my ability to start a business, and learning from the successes and mistakes of others. I had to force myself to keep pushing, keep scheduling, keep showing up in a positive, curious light. Most of those 250 people remain part of my business and personal network almost two years later.

Time: While my intent in all of my early networking was to connect, not to sell, I certainly knew even in those early months that selling was going to be an important success factor. The only one, initially! In effect, I spent all of 2009 networking and connecting and doing far more pro bono work than I had anticipated. I netted 20% of my take home salary from Luck Stone during that first year; my family lived off of my 401(k). But a funny thing happened as the calendar flipped into 2010 – the phone started to ring, and I began to do paying work for clients. More than half of them were connections established through the networking I did a year ago, or longer. In fact, almost every single piece of business that Floricane has generated since the beginning of this year – five times the business, paid or pro bono, done last year – has been the result of a personal relationship.

Luck. Discipline. Time. Relationships.

Those will be at the heart of my discussion with the St. Mike's JAM attendees on September 29. You can find out more about St. Mike's Job Assistance Ministry on LinkedIn.

Hold That Note: Experiencing The Music Paradigm

Early in 2011, The Richmond Symphony and Floricane will be bringing The Music Paradigm to Richmond. A convergence of music, self-awareness and leadership development, The Music Paradigm essentially seats a group of leaders and learners smack in the middle of a full orchestra for a powerful series of lessons on discipline, accountability, communication, awareness and leadership.

I spent an afternoon with The Music Paradigm and more than 50 students in UVa's Darden School of Business executive program to see – and experience – the program for myself. I'll let conductor (and instructor) Roger Nierenberg tell the rest with a few of the insightful observations he shared with the group at Darden:

Meaning [in an orchestra] is conveyed by sound, and people communicating without any words at all.

What are the behaviors? What are the skills that give these musicians this competitive advantage? While the rest of you were enjoying your childhood, we were locked away with our instruments, learning to be accountable – because you can't blame anyone else for the sounds that come from your own instrument.

These musicians are technical skill personified, but there is another set of skills they manifest – people skills.

I won't share much of what Nierenberg said or did – part of the energy of his session is the surprise and spontaneity. In the October issue of the Floricane newsletter, the symphony's Kathryn Pullam and I will sit down on video to talk about our unique experiences with The Music Paradigm.

The Music Paradigm will be in Richmond in March of 2011, courtesy of the Richmond Symphony and Floricane. Keep your eyes open for details this fall!