I recently followed up with a team of employees who had gone through several workshops focused on the Insights Discovery self-awareness instrument we use with teams. They wanted a engaging, fun and quick way to explore their team dynamics during a quarterly meeting. I think we delivered.
Overtime with U-TURN
We went into overtime with U-TURN Sports Performance Academy this year in an effort to land the best strategic plan possible; it's part of our commitment is to do whatever it takes to deliver the service our clients seek.
The real story here is U-TURN, an organization that combines sports training with community outreach and Christian ministry; the nonprofit was formally established by tennis player Paul Manning in 1996 – four years after he started his informal inner-city youth ministry.
Today, under the leadership of Robert Dortch, U-TURN is going full-bore with exciting plans to extend its community outreach work into a variety of neighborhoods in our community. I met Robert years ago – he was working for the Richmond Region 2007 initiative, and I was at Luck Stone – and he always has ranked high on my list of Richmonders worth knowing.
Robert and his team – including a newly engaged board – have big plans for its 150,000-square-foot facility, which existed in a previous life as Circuit City’s Thalbro store and offices. Part of our work in developing a long-range strategic plan was to align the best aspirations of U-TURN’s staff, board and community of parents and student athletes.
The plan heads to the Board of Directors for approval in April, but the U-TURN team has already started putting many of its key elements into motion. One of the more exciting ideas? U-TURN On-the-Go, which leverages existing relationships to bring sports programming into communities in need. (Two recent initiatives: football in the Calhoun/Gilpin neighborhoods, and volleyball in Louisa County.)
Better Acquainted with Southside
We’re having a blast getting even more acquainted with the Tri-Cities and Southside Virginia, as we get started with the development of a strategic plan with Southside Community Partners.
Southside Community Partners (SCP) formed more than a year ago with the merger of three organizations who had been working to meet the needs of the nonprofit community in Petersburg and the surrounding areas. A service of the Appomattox Regional Library System, SCP provides a resource center, the online Connect Southside information source, training classes and other support.
If you know anything about the communities that SCP serves, you might know that their challenges are more pronounced than most – and their opportunities to strengthen their services are only limited by their resources. Which makes SCP an essential service to the community.
Sarah, Tina and I have spent the past several weeks getting to know the SCP team, and meeting one-on-one with some of their key stakeholders, as we start the process of identifying their best opportunities to grow and serve. In April, we’ll work with the SCP team to identify strategic outcomes and then spend a day with the staff and Advisory Council to build the strategic plan framework.
We anticipate delivering a final strategic plan to the organization in May. Our relationship with the Petersburg/Southside area? We think it's just heating up.
Jumping into the Pool
Growing up, I spent my summers in Halifax, Virginia, with my grandparents. They belonged to the neighborhood pool; I practically lived there from sun-up to sun-down.
Every evening, one of them would walk to the pool to meet me before dinner – and to drag me home.
I can still remember my grandmother trying to teach me how to perfect my dive, standing at the deep end of the pool on the diving board in shorts. She leaned into the water with her hands in a perfect point demonstrating how to almost bend into the water. Then she tipped a bit too far and into the water she fell.
As an adult, I think back and remember a slight smile on her face – like she might have been able to stop herself but she figured that falling would help me the most. That gentle, deliberate nudge.
In my work as a strategic planner with Floricane I often assume the role of the nudger – pushing clients to lean a little further and go for it. John Sarvay calls it landing the plan. It is my favorite part of the process.
Regardless of its name, there is exquisite beauty in watching a group of passionate people wrestle with the possibilities of what can be and then dreaming it bigger and scarier as a group. There is always a moment with clients, that moment when you see them tip just so – and into the pool!
The best parts of the week are when I am able to help a client tip, and to land a few impossible dreams with a gentle, deliberate nudge.
Making A Play for Change
Consultant Andy Stefanovich not only talks a mile a minute, but he’s a non-stop ball of action when it’s his turn on stage. He recently took a turn on stage – and turned on his strategic charm – as part of Richmond C3 (Creative Change Center) Breakfast Break, a monthly conversation with local change agents and creatives.
Stefanovich, who co-founded the rule-breaking and highly successful consultancy PLAY two decades ago, spoke to a group of more than 100 on the top floor of his firm’s old Richmond headquarters in Shockoe Bottom. Coincidentally, the space was home to C3 during that organization’s early years.
PLAY has since been acquired by San Francisco-based Prophet, and Stefanovich now finds himself roaming the world doing client work, and thinking about big ideas. He’s set to publish a book on some of those ideas this spring, and talked about a few of them at the C3 event.
“There’s a really interesting thing going on in the world today called a Wicked Business Challenge,” he started off.
“What’s a Wicked Business Challenge? A couple of criteria make up a WBC,” he continued. “It’s a leadership moment for someone. Someone will seize the moment. It will not go undone. And you will find yourself talking about it with friends and family over dinner. These challenges will show up in your dreams.”
“We are in the middle of a human energy crisis,” Stefanovich continued. “We are not as filled up and energized as we’d like to be right now. The world wants to be personally and professionally inspired.”
“Gen Yers are asking for meaning. They’re asking our generation, ‘Please give us meaning, help us find meaning.’”
He went on to talk about the 5 M’s – two of which are Mood and Mindset.
Mood, Stefanovich says, is one of those things that helps us create. Mood is purposeful disruption. Mood, he says, is cultural.
Mindset, on the other, is very personal. “Do your people have the mindset to do great things?” he asks. “Which of our barriers are real, and which are articifial?”
In his call for “passion in action”, Stefanovich took the group from corner to corner of the three-floor building – leaping on tables, giving countless verbal nods to his hometown crowd. As he always does, he catalyzed people’s thinking and created space for relationship and discomfort.
All in a day’s work for one of Richmond’s creative talents.
Passion, Purpose, Giraffes…
From the start, it was clear that the Brown Bag lunch at the Pediatric Connections’ Manchester offices would not be a normal business sit-down. The colored markers and sketch pads were one indication. The plethora of colorful giraffes and artwork littering the bright, modern office space were another sign that business was unusual.
The company’s co-founder, Beth Bailey, brought it all home with her high-energy, effusive delivery. She kicked off the Greater Richmond Chamber lunch with a rapid-fire introduction to the business she founded in 1998 with Bruce Green.
“In 1998, the Pediatric Connection was born,” she said. “We had a small office in Crozier, Virginia, and it was so much fun because you just did everything – because that’s what you do when you are a start-up. And then we started adding people, and we were all in one room, and everyone knew everyone’s business.”
“When we started, we said there were no rules,” she continued. “When a patient called, we got them what they needed, no questions. We got our name out. It worked.”
Too well. Years of fast-paced, start-up growth were accompanied by several physical moves and all the ups-and-downs of running a new business, Bailey continued. But what held it together was simple – a committed staff, a helpful consultant and a willingness to try something different.
“Our staff is extremely important to us,” Bailey told the packed room. “Every day since 1998, we have worked to make life better for our staff.”
That included welcoming new perspectives.
“We worked with some consultants who said, ‘Hello, you need processes.’ So, we sat in a room and wrote processes for days,” Bailey continued. “The change that we rolled out in 2004 is what made us successful as a company – not just the process and role clarity, but the accountability. After that change, we were not only getting a lot of business, but we were able to handle the business we got.”
Bailey's comments were echoed in short order by the company's marketing manager, human resources manager, one of the two consultants who is now along for the ride as an employee, and by her co-founder, Green.
If anything, their comments mirrored her energy – and echoed her theme. The Pediatric Connection is about children first, staff second and passion all the time.
Today, the Pediatric Connection provides home health care services to children and their families throughout Virginia. More than 170 employees work at several organizations in Richmond and beyond, and the organization is passionate about creating the best working environment for each of them.
The commitment to people is built on a belief that climate and culture are the most important people drivers – a positive emphasis on the events, activities and relationships that shape employees’ perspectives, coupled with a set of shared beliefs and values that drive everyone’s actions.
At the end of the day, however, it really is about the children.
“We’re able to care for all of these families and keep these kids out of the hospital,” Bailey concluded.
The organization has been recognized by the Greater Richmond Chamber’s IMPACT Awards, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Muse Awards and many other organizations for its creativity and business success.
Spring Forward with Work
The Floricane team is excited to see a new roster of partners on our calendars as we move into spring. As we move into the first week of spring, we’ve got a full plate of work, including the following projects:
- Long-range strategic planning efforts with Southside Community Partners and the Virginia Poverty Law Center
- Strategic planning support for Community Idea Stations
- Team-building with the Virginia Credit Union’s IT department
- Regional tourism vision planning with the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Center
- Continued engagement work with Bon Secours Virginia Health Systems, the Library of Virginia and the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission
Shaping A Regional Vision
Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before...
With apologies to Morrisey, we're growing increasingly excited about the regional tourism vision plan that we've been asked to develop with the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (RMCVB). We're about halfway through the process – hundreds of interviews and surveys, tons of research and a series of theming conversations – and we feel like we're landing something that is both familiar and transformational.
That balance is important, and challenging. Richmond is a city in transition, and finding a narrative that feels both familiar and fresh is tough. We described it in a meeting with design firm JHI last week as trying to write and design a college catalogue that convinces young people that your school totally rocks and reassures their parents that the school takes learning seriously.
We'll be spending the next three weeks submerged in half-shaped themes and ideas with a project team before delivering the final draft plan to the designers, and the RMCVB Board of Directors. The final vision plan is expected to be unveiled during National Tourism Week in May.