Business Dating

The Floricane team recently sat down with a local public relations firm on a quasi blind date.

The goal was to learn if we liked each other and if our services were complimentary enough that we might recommend each other from time to time. It was all about introductions and how we gothere for the first part – then both teams got excited.

As I described our core services and the work we do for groups around town a funny thing happened.

I fell in love.

I have always known that my life’s work was nonprofits. But in those moments of describing our passionate belief that our services were making a big difference in the lives of people in our community I realized that this business where I have been hanging around for a year now – had stolen a piece of my heart.
 
There is a moment when you fall in love where you don’t exactly know it yet – you are describing this incredible person who has turned your life upside down to a friend and you see them realize it a moment or two before you. Because, love is a scary thing, right?
 
How about loving a business? Loving a business is about believing fully in the mission and vision and ideals, having great fun, and for me the extra necessary part – the belief that the work I was doing was changing the world.
 
After our business date, John Sarvay and I headed out to lunch with Chris, a friend of his. Chris had just found out that he was being appointed board president of a thriving and important local nonprofit. For an hour he spoke passionately about the nonprofit and we made suggestions and asked questions.  As he talked I realized, he too was in love. It was infectious – by the end of the lunch he had me convinced in supporting this organization.
 
It was a day packed full of energy. Both dates went well, and I expect more dates in the future. So my big lesson -- I believe in the work that I am doing with Floricane; I know that it is creating change in the community for the better. Consulting with people and organizations who are willing and daring enough to demand change is my life’s work. Change can happen in a public relations firm, a nonprofit, a credit union, or a major corporation – in fact, Floricane can help make that change possible.

It's my life's work, but I am not doing it alone.

The Power of Thank You

When I started Floricane more than two years ago, I made a commitment to myself to regularly write thank you notes – to prospective clients, lunch and coffee dates, people who’ve lent a hand along the way.

I just ordered my third 500 count box of envelopes, and am racing to catch up with a large handful of recently completed clients and coffee meetings.

For all the electronic communication Floricane does – emails, PDF proposals, e-newsletters, a variety of social media – all of us are steadfast fans of a hand-written notes.

A thank you in any form is a powerful thing.

Last month, in Floricane’s regular newsletter, I congratulated Cara McDaniel on her first year with the team; she received a half-dozen congratulatory emails from clients, strangers, my own mother. Cara was surprised, pleased and a bit flattered.

During a recent series of wrap-up sessions with the staff of the Library of Virginia, one of the employee work teams referenced a desire for the Library to create a “thank you” culture. On a whim, as we wrapped up the first session, I asked everyone in the room to take out a piece of paper and a pen.

“Think about our last six months of strategic work,” I said. “Think of one person who has made a difference, connected with you in a meaningful way. Write down their name.”

When those gathered had written down a name, I asked them to write a note of thanks to the person whose name they’d written. Create a culture of thank you today, I said.

More than several people at the Library have commented since on their surprise at receiving a note from a coworker.

I was unable to free my schedule recently to do work with one of my favorite organizations in town – the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Richmond. Instead, I met with the Center’s Amy Howard and Sylvia Gale to design a two-day staff retreat that both reflected on the Center’s 10-year history and its future.

One small slice of the retreat involved thank you notes.

I ran into Amy at the South of the James Market recently, and asked her about the retreat. She said several people decided to write personal notes to every person on the team, lingering long after the session ended to pen their appreciation. The letters were sealed, and Amy dropped them in the mail last week.

On the home front, Nikole had the ridiculous idea to ask that we appreciate each other nightly for at least one thing that we did for the other during the day. Six years later, I can count on two hands the number of evenings we’ve missed – and cannot imagine our marriage without this evening ritual.

In our rush for the next thing, to accomplish the next task, how often do we miss the opportunity to appreciate the moment we just left?

Who do you need to thank? What’s getting in your way?

Making Disney Magic on a Tuesday Morning

Hand stretched out, sporting a flag-centric Mickey Mouse lapel pin and twinkling eyes, and exuding Hollywood charm, Lee Cockerell introduced himself to me, and the three others in my row; our reward for laying early claim to a seat in the lecture hall.

And just like that, the drama ofthe morning’s journey into the city, through torrential rain and hideous traffic, evaporated.

A former Disney executive and the keynote speaker of the May 17^th VCU Center for Corporate Education ‘Leadership Strategies:  Creating Magic in Your Business’ event, Mr. Cockerell offered a peek behind the Disney curtain.  The hour-long conversation was peppered with stories, both funny and poignant, underlying the ten practical, common sense leadership principles that guided his own journey, and helped to create the Disney workplace environment, shaping it into one in which great leadership is evidenced at every level.

Turns out, creating magic in business is not so different from raising children to become magnificent citizens of the world: 

• Appreciate. The power of a thank you is infinite.
• Recognize. Acknowledge that each voice matters, and no one is invisible.
• Encourage. We are each the owner of unique abilities and special talents -- find them, nurture them.

And that charm?  Clearly and delightfully authentic.

Building a Regional Tourism Vision

The Floricane team -- partnering with Peter Fraser and Lauren Stewart -- has been working since January to help shape and develop a regional tourism vision plan for the Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau (RMCVB). The Times-Dispatch's Peter Bacque wrote a fairly comprehensive piece on some of the elements emerging in the plan; even though we still have several more meetings before a final draft will be presented to the RMCVB board, Bacque hits the right notes.

The point of emphasis for the plan is that Richmond doesn't lack in tourism assets -- attractions, restaurants, hotels, events -- but that as a region we do a relatively poor job ensuring that the 6 million visitors who pass through the area each year have a consistently excellent experience. RMCVB's primary focus has been on successfuly marketing the Richmond region to potential visitors, and filling the Convention Center. The vision plan suggests that RMCVB will need to add a third leg to its stool -- helping shape and manage the visitor experience -- for the Richmond region to become the American destination for the next century.

And that piece -- the Richmond region as the American destination -- is the real vision. Our city and surrounding counties have the raw material -- historical, architectural and cultural -- to be seen as one of the singular American cities, and a must-see destination for anyone interested in experiencing the fullness of the American experience, past and present.

Bacque captures the nuts-and-bolts of it in his article; we'll share more about the vision itself once the RMCVB board signs off on it.

Building the Business, and a Family

RVANews' editor Ross Catrow asked me months ago to pen an article for the news sites' Founding Fathers series, which spotlights life with kids from the perspective of dad. Ross wanted me to focus on the challenges of starting a new business while raising a child.

Of course, I put it off for weeks -- I was busy running a business, and chasing after a three-year-old.

After repeated emails from Ross this week, I broke down and finished the story. It turned out pretty good. You can check it out right here on RVA News.

Culture Change at the Library of Virginia

We started our work with the Library of Virginia last fall by listening deeply. We believe that when you let a community talk – about their passions, their dreams, their frustrations, their concerns – good facilitators can help the group identify what matters most.

We got an earful of passion from the 140 or so employees of one of the Commonwealth's oldest agencies. They care about their work as librarians and archivists, about our shared history, about technology and change, and about each other. They cared enough to be very candid with our team about how they wanted the Library to change and transform – and then rolled their sleeves up for the second half of our engagement.

That’s when Floricane’s Debra Saneda worked with four project teams to reshape the Library’s Vision and Mission, and to identify key strategies to strengthen access, maximize the Library’s Broad Street location, and to develop a new generation of expert employees. More than 40 employees participated in the teams, and delivered several dozen recommendations to the Library’s leadership in March.

We recently closed this chapter of work with the Library team with a series of employee sessions that looked back at our work together, and looked ahead to the changes to come.

What started as an effort to bolster engagement and map out a few new strategies for the agency has turned into a full-fledged culture change initiative. There is nothing about the Library’s new Vision that feels musty and old.

“The Library of Virginia will inspire learning, ignite imagination, create possibilities, encourage understanding, and engage Virginia’s past to empower its future.”

If anything, the new Vision is a call for transformation – and many of the staff seem ready to run toward a different future.

We promised to come back in six months and see how much progress the Library employees make on their culture change. The rule of thumb is that it takes five to seven years to transform an organizational culture; the Library hopes to take a big leap forward this summer.

I can’t wait to see their progress in November.

New Work, New Business

Every time our team looks ahead and wonders what is going to fill some future block of time on the calendar, the phone rings. We’re wrapping up 10 strategic planning and facilitation projects during the month of May, and appear to be more than filling the pipeline with new initiatives during the early months of the summer.

We’re in the process of landing strategic planning and visioning work with the Library of Virginia, Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission, Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, Southside Community Partners and the Virginia Poverty Law Center. We’re also finishing facilitation engagements with Bon Secours Virginia, the Consumer Alliance of Virginia, the James House, the Medical College of Virginia, and the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

We’re moving ahead with new activities supporting Bon Secours Virginia, the Community Idea Stations, the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Credit Union – with more new client discussions in the works.

It’s pretty amazing for our team to look back and review at the work we’ve done with more than 70 nonprofit organizations and mid-sized companies in Central Virginia since 2009. We’d love to talk to you about ways in which the Floricane team can help your team bear new fruit – strategically, culturally and organizationally. Drop us a note.

Governent Works: Planning on the Piankatank

The Middle Peninsula, a rural stretch of river land easing from Tappahannock to Deltavillle, has always been a part of my life. My childhood summers were spent on the Rappahannock and Piankatank rivers, and my own daughter now spends long weekends with her great-grandfather at his home facing the Chesapeake Bay just outside of Deltaville.

Naturally, I leapt at the opportunity to work with the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission (MPPDC), an agency representing nine towns and counties in the area, in the development of a strategic plan.

The core of our interactions happened on a sunny day in March at the Piankatank Golf Club. Sarah, Cara and I spent the day with MPPDC staff and commissioners exploring new strategic approaches to the peninsula’s key issues.

Because the MPPDC was in the midst of major transition – its long-time executive director had left in February, and the organization’s finances had been hit by federal and state budget reductions – the goal was to identify high-impact, low-resource initiatives.

In the end, what made the entire process so rewarding for our team was seeing several dozen public officials engage in serious discussion about the future. We not only took the group through some blue sky thinking, but we also waded through some mind-numbing financial discussions; they stayed in the game throughout.

At a time when so many people appear to be cynical about the nature and role of government, it’s refreshing to see examples of political collaboration and long-range regional planning. It’s even more refreshing to be part of the conversation.

photo: Homes & Land (http://www.homesandland.com)