New Business: Virginia Poverty Law Center

I'm not sure we can call our work with the Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC) new, although this is a brand new engagement between Floricane and the VPLC team.

We have spent time this year with both the staff and the board of the organization, and are excited to be starting a strategic planning process to help the VPLC explore the ways in which it build awareness of and provides support around the legal needs of low-income Virginians.

One of the most important tactical pieces of work the VPLC staff does is to provide support for the Legal Aid community across Virginia. VPLC's staff are primarily lawyers, and they represent areas of law that disproportionately impact lower-income indviduals – health, housing, domestic violence, among others.

But VPLC also plays an important role in keeping the legal issues affecting lower-income Virginians visible to the rest of the public. Their "Through Different Eyes: The Faces of Poverty in Virginia" exhibit is a strong and emotional example of the power of images to tell the stories of our communities. For five years, "Through Different Eyes" has traveled the state, telling the stories of people struggling through poverty, and building awareness of the issue.

We're excited to begin exploring powerful new ways for the VPLC team to continue its training, research and legal support of Legal Aid organizations, even as it explores evocative new ways to tell the stories of Virginians in crisis.

2nd Birthday Superlatives: I Get A Kick Out of RMCVB

It’s dangerous when you’re in my business to call a client or project “the best” but I have to say that spending a February day with the marketing team from the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (RMCVB to their friends) was a kick.

The team wanted to build a stronger sense of identity and vision for itself, and so we gathered at the Visual Arts Center for a series of activities and discussions designed to get them thinking a little more intently about who they aspired to be.

Since RMCVB’s essential task is to market and sell the Richmond region to tourists and convention goers around the world, I thought it might be interesting to see which cities the RMCVB marketing team identified with.

After playing with a hundred balloons – a small lesson in collaboration – the small group filled dozens of colorful sticky notes inked with phrases and characteristics the group felt described them at their best. They were then asked to use those characteristics to determine what city they – as a team – were most like.

We ended the day in two teams with markers and pastels and very large sheets of paper laid out in a workroom at the Visual Arts Center. VisArt’s Aimee Joyaux guided both teams through a mildly competitive mural making activity – capturing their team as a city visually.

What made the RMCVB marketing engagement so much fun – even beyond the creative and colorful elements embodied in balloons, post-it notes and pastel crayons – was the high energy and sense of fun the team itself brought to the day. There was little apprehension, and plenty of willingness to play hard and take a critical look at the gaps between their self-perception as a team and how they might be perceived by others.

I’m not really sure which city they finally embraced, but working with the RMCVB team was a good reminder of why I love working in Richmond.

2nd Birthday Superlatives: Fastest Learning Curve

There are lots of runners up for the project that taught me the most about my business. Seriously.

That said, my five months with the staff and board of the Valentine Richmond History Center involved schooling on so many levels.

Here’s a recipe for learning.

It starts with a new consultant – one who’s a little wet behind the ears but works hard not to let everyone know. (That'd be me.)

Put the new guy in the room with some incredibly smart people – the staff and board of the Valentine, for instance. Invite more smart people – technologist Chris Busse, educational/learning expert Richard Sebastian, and so on – to be part of the conversation. Accelerate.

Believe me. I learned tons – about Richmond history, about trends in technology and learning, about strategic planning.

Mostly, though, I learned how to be a better consultant. (I can safely say this is an outcome of almost every client engagement.)

In the best of times, my most important job is to ask good questions, listen deeply, connect dots, help people see patterns, push people to see more deeply. It’s not to be the expert on the organization, or to write their strategic plan.

(I’m still learning, by the way.)

I mark my time with the Valentine Richmond History Center team as my fastest learning curve because it taught me so many lessons about the work Floricane seeks to do. It also happened as I was trying to clarify my business model.

The lessons I took away from the Valentine's strategic planning process remain a yardstick with which I continue to measure our success with other clients.

Don’t get me wrong – I think we did good work with the Valentine’s strategic plan, and the leadership there uses the plan as a platform for effective leadership and decision making. We’re even having a reunion of sorts in January, when they bring me back to check in on their progress.

But sometimes the best good work is work-in-progress. If the Floricane team can continue to learn from our work with clients, we'll be doing our best good work.

Thanks for the lessons, Richmond History Center.

2nd Birthday Superlatives: The Hardest Step

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the first step that was the hardest to take. It was the one midway into the journey.

I decided to start my own consulting business in November of 2008 after being laid off from my 12-year career at Luck Stone Corporation – the result of a construction materials supplier meeting a recession. The first months were engaging and fun – designing an identity and website; networking with literally hundreds of amazing and interes ting people; dabbling in the beginnings of actual work, both paid and pro bono.

It wasn’t until mid-summer that reality really came a’calling.

By early July, both my generous severance from Luck Stone and some early client work had dwindled to a meager trickle. I was doing more free work than paid work.

One Thursday afternoon, Nikole called to tell me that our personal bank account was nearing empty. At least it matches the business account, I thought, even as a pit began to form in my stomach.

So, this is what “cash flow” looks like on a bad day.

For more than eight months, I had stayed busy doing the soft side of entrepreneurship – building relationships, testing the waters, casually looking for interesting opportunities.

I’d forgotten that running your own business was – at its heart – an exercise in selling, doing, delivering. Forgotten, perhaps. It is more likely that I just didn’t realize this at all until this moment.

We talked through the weekend, Nikole and I. First, we sorted through the short-term issue – paying our mortgage for the month, and buying groceries. Then came the hard part.

Were we cut out to be entrepreneurs? Did we want to ride the ebb-and-flow of a start-up consulting business in the midst of the worst recession in our lifetimes? Did we have confidence in my vision, my abilities and the fledgling Floricane brand I had worked to build?

The conversation was not easy – for either of us. In the end, we asked a good friend (and my old mentor) over to help us walk through our decision. He pushed me especially hard to acknowledge how much of my ego was invested in this new venture, and that if I was serious about running my own business I needed to start acting serious.

Ratcheting up my commitment was harder than talking about it. And sticking to that commitment remains a daily exercise.

I walked into the office the next Monday with my sleeves rolled up, and two weeks later started working with my second strategic planning client – the Valentine Richmond History Center.

My sleeves have stayed rolled ever since.

2nd Anniversary Superlatives: Building A Shared Vision

We had a team meeting last month at Floricane World Headquarters – it involved Post-It® Notes. Of course.

I’ve had lots of questions since Floricane began its shift from an individual consultancy to a small consulting firm. One of the bigger ones has been centered around the creation of a plural voice – as in, a Floricane voice that is bigger than my own individual voice.

Well, 36 Post-It Notes later and the writing is on the wall. Literally.

When the six of us sat down in October, I asked everyone to grab a blank sheet of paper and put six Post-Its on it. On the first Post-It, each of us wrote down one word or phrase that captured our best sense of a Floricane we wanted to create. Then we passed the sheet to our left, and wrote down a second word or phrase on the sheet that was handed to us. And a third, and so on.

When all six Post-Its on all six pages we completed, each of us had a sheet of paper with six words or phrases – only one of which was our own idea. We prioritized them, and 12 words emerged as a foundation for the team’s first stab at creating a shared sense of the Floricane culture and voice.

I think they clearly identify the sort of company I want to co-create – and I’m excited to be part of a team that would land such strong concepts.

Here they are. Let us know how we’re doing.

• Purposeful
• Creative with a purpose
• A place where we make each other better
• Space for radical changes/moments
• Valued as individuals
• Open communication
• Intriguing energy
• Edgy
• Cutting edge
• Authentic
• Straight talk
• Hard-working and light-hearted

Greater Fulton: Letting The Children Speak

What’s the best part of bringing residents of a community together to talk about the future?

They get right to the point. They’re plain-spoken and blunt. They care – deeply.

As part of our three-month, community visioning effort in the Greater Fulton area of Richmond’s East End, we’ve spent hours brainstorming, asking questions and listening deeply to residents – well over 100 at two community sessions in October, plu s dozens of on-the-street interviews and sessions with teenagers and young children.

Sidewalks. Playgrounds. Better bus service. A place to buy fresh vegetables. An elementary school – heck, any neighborhood school.

These are just some of the things residents say they’d like to have in their neighborhood. Nothing fancy – just the sorts of things many of us take for granted in our own communities.

Okay, some things fancy. For starts, Caliyah wants “a mansion and a million dollars.” She also wants places to play with her best friend.

The work of community visioning is as frustrating as it is affirming. It helps when we have the opportunity to sit on the floor with young people and soak up their perspective on what makes a neighborhood. Almost every single time, it's as simple as feeling safe, and having something fun to do.

As Peter Fraser and I have immersed ourselves in the world of Fulton’s 5,000 residents, we’ve been amazed at the ways in which accidents of design and, worse, decades of neglect, have conspired to leave this slice of Richmond to fend for itself.

Fulton has no library or school or police station or medical facility or grocery store within walking distance. (Well, there’s a Food Lion a few miles down Williamsburg Road across the county line in Henrico – residents walk there frequently because it’s the only place they can buy groceries.)

As we work with residents to complete a community vision for Greater Fulton – and to help design a year-long strategy to make the vision a reality – we’re more excited by the small opportunities than we are by the grand ideas.

With one month left before we pass the plan off to the capable folks at Fulton’s Neighborhood Resource Center and Virginia LISC, we’re genuinely stoked by the emerging vision and possibilities for Greater Fulton.

We wouldn’t be this close to the finish without the residents.

Lights! Action! Leadership!

We’ve got exciting things planned for our clients, partners and friends throughout Central Virginia as we move toward 2011.

Want an example? Look no further than The Music Paradigm, an amazing presentation of The Richmond Symphony that Floricane is sponsoring. On March 22, several hundred musicians, businesspeople and community leaders will gather at CenterStage to learn lessons in organizational culture and leadership from conductor Roger Nierenberg.

What makes The Music Paradigm special is that participants are seated within the orchestra for the entire experience – as Nierenberg conducts, he periodically pauses for an in-the-moment, experiential teaching lesson.

The symphony’s assistant director for business development, Kathryn Pullam, and I both experienced The Music Paradigm this summer. Kathryn traveled to Capital One’s Falls Church office, while I lived the experience with the incoming executive class at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. We both left amazed.

Kathryn and I talk about our experiences, and The Music Paradigm, in this video produced by the talented Jerry Williams.

A Global Future for One of Richmond’s Best Homegrown Treasures

Children, Incorporated was one of our first, big clients coming into 2010. We just put the final touches on their long-term strategic plan.

Our work with Children, Incorporated held important lessons. The importance of the journey, for starters – and of dreaming big.

Our journey was almost 10 months, and the organization experienced tremendous change while we explored new ways for Children, Incorporated to manage its programs, serve 14,000 children around the globe and maintain an emphasis on sponsorship.

As always, success lies in the hands of the employees and board members who felt the most invested in the process. A handful of key contributors helped to craft, reshape and influence the final planning document – pushing the 47-year-old nonprofit to create an ambitious, aspirational strategy.

But we couldn’t have gotten to that point without the engagement of every employee in the organization – even those who were skeptical of the process (or of me, the consultant). Multiple times during the process, the entire staff (and sometimes the board) came together to wrestle with big questions about the organization’s future direction, and how to strengthen their internal operations.

The ideas and insights – and even the skepticism and pragmatic push-back – that emerged in these sessions helped put shape to an ambitious, new vision statement: Children, Incorporated envisions a world where every child has the resources and opportunity to build a better life.

Building better lives for children. For every child. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.

Thanks to Marian, Kelsi, Ryan, Liz, Whitney, Luis, Renee, Dick, Dana, Elethia and others, Children, Incorporated is ready to turn ambition into action. The new strategic plan maps out fundamental steps toward an exciting, global future for one of Richmond’s best homegrown treasures.