Pigs Fly and Big Idea Challenge Mayhem

What if we followed the same old formula to kick off an event?

What if we didn't?

On March 15th, the Big Idea Challenge leapt out of the realm of the conceptual with panache and smacked straight into the expanse of the visceral.   Happy-hour-hunt-beckoned, our beloved early adopters, our first and favorite evangelists, arrived en masse at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and were:

...welcomed,

...informed,

...challenged,

and rewarded.

Oh, VMFA, how we wish we could come and play like that more often.

What's that? You missed all of the fun? It's not too late! Follow this link to the Big Idea Challenge, grab your friends and help support one of RVA's great treasures:  The Community Idea Stations.

An Inside Look at a Recent Insights Workshop

Earlier this week, Tina and I hosted our first 2012 Insights Discovery Workshop.  This workshop is one of my favorites to facilitate because we always have fun, participants always learn a lot during the day and selfishly, it always leaves me feeling good to have shared the best self development tool I know of with another group of people. 

The workshop is framed around the Insights model for self development which is pretty simple to grasp.  I t goes like this.  Step one is about exploring and discovering more about yourself.  Step two is about learning to recognize and appreciate others’ differences.  Step three is learning how to adapt behavior to be more effective with others.  And finally, step four is about taking the learning and putting it into action.

For a workshop participant, the morning is very interactive and engaging, the session is filled with learning based activities that ramp up the energy and relationship building in the room.  The activities are guided toward self discovery that answers the question:  Am I more blue, red, green or yellow?  Each participant starts the day trying to figure out which one of four colors they are and then which one of 8 types they are to where do I fit in a 72 type wheel?!   It’s quite a journey filled with questions, challenges and looking in those dreaded mirrors that help us see parts of ourselves that perhaps we don’t like, but that typically hold us back from being all that we can be.   That’s where self awareness starts, its starts with the discovery of those things we don’t want to see in the mirror.  Once we know what those things are, we can start doing something about them.  The last activity of the day is goal setting the Insights way.  By tapping into all four energies:  blue, red, yellow and green, goals are designed that include not just our most preferred preferences, but our least preferred ones, too.   The participants leave with a tangible plan and a sharpened focus about how to bring all their energies to the world.   

There are several ways most individuals and/or organizations use Insights Discovery.  They include personal growth & development, team assessment and development, leadership development, but another application struck me recently.  I heard about a recent Right Management survey of 1,000 employees in North American that said, 84% intended to actively seek a new position in 2012.  If a friend or family member of mine, were one of those 1,000 in the survey, I would highly recommend they complete an Insights Discovery profile.   The profile results go well beyond personality preferences.   The advantage of knowing not just about my preferences, but what makes me tick, my preferred work environment or how I add value to my work team provides a real advantage to select not just the right next job, but the right next employer.      

We are excited to be offering this workshop 5 more times during 2012 and I look forward to the light bulbs being lit and the ah-ha moments happening again and again.

Creativity Shines in 24 Hour CreateAthon Blitz

How much work can you get done in 24 hours?  You would be surprised.  I had the privilege of serving as a mentor at the recently concluded Createathon VCU. In its 5th year Createathon is a VCU Mass Communications semester long project for students to learn the ins and outs of working with nonprofits.  In the end 12 teams of students from VCU and VSU guided by Project Leaders reimagined, rebranded, and generally updated the look and feel and story of 12 nonprofits.  While I did not manage to stay for the whole 24 hours  I helped a few groups get started, guided a team for Virginia Advanced Study Strategies through some murky vision and mission work and sat through 6 critiques at 3pm.  I retired home to sleep and revisited the groups in the morning for their final presentations.

There were stories of meltdowns and creatives breakthroughs and amazing things happening all night despite a messy 24 hour creativity blitz - the finished products were break taking.  Clients cried, team leaders cried, and I got goose bumps.  With nonprofits the mission and deployment of programs come first and often times the visuals are finished as an after thought.  It is an amazing gift to hand a nonprofit a new image that conveys a story visually - it helps with general awareness, financial support and improves the overall feeling of legitimacy.

I was honored to work with the teams this year and will do my best to hang for the full 24 hours next year but in the meantime I can't wait for the final reception in May to see all of the work displayed and hear how it is helping nonprofits already.

Giving Voice to ART 180's Teen Leaders

I’ve lived on the periphery of ART 180 for most of the organization’s 14 year history. My wife served on the board – along with some of my favorite Richmonders (folks like Tristana Nesvig Trani and Sue Ann Messmer) – and our daughter is often found in the South of the James corn box next to ART 180 founder Marlene Paul’s daughter.

It’s a small town sometimes, Richmond is.

And then you walk into a room with 12 teenagers and realize it’s actually a little bigger than you might imagine.

These particular teens come from all over the city. They’re black and white, male and female, outgoing and introverted. They are an eclectic and talented group of ART 180 alum.

These teenagers have gone through the organization’s arts programming for several years, and are now meeting weekly to make art, build relationships and create a vision.

Part of the vision is for a new ART 180 building, the organization’s first permanent home. Fingers are crossed for that home to be on Marshall Street in Jackson Ward.

And so I found myself in the basement of UR Downtown’s expanded campus on West Broad Street with 12 teens and two program directors. If there’s anything more awkward than a group of teenagers in a classroom setting, it might be a 40-year-old facilitator trying to engage them in brainstorming.

We broke some ice, made introductions, talked about what it means to be part of a group – to be part of this particular group. And then we broke out the balloons.

The balloon tower activity is amazing with 100 people and 1,000 balloons. It’s still pretty cool with 14 people and 150 balloons. As they group worked in varying configurations to build a balloon tower, we paused and debriefed around the dynamics of the team.

We spent the last part of the evening capturing the a sense of the energy they hoped to create – awesome, loco, bumpin’ and full of expression, but also welcoming, cozy and chill. Almost 100 words reflecting a wide range of personality and youthful expression, and an opportunity for the ART 180 team to think creatively about a space that can balance the powerful tensions of #RVA’s teens.

RIC/RVA Session One Goes Off Without a Hitch and Lots of Fun

If the first event was any indication, the RIC/RVA series is going to be quite an experience!

Welcomed by the warm embrace of The Library of Virginia, last night's inaugural event was a healthy collision of historical education, creative engagement, fermented fruit, and inspired ideas. John got the party started with an invitation to begin thinking differently about Richmond's history.  Asking participants to relinquish the common story that our biggest achievements took place in the 1860s, we were encouraged to widen our view to see a picture of Richmond that honors our rich diversity. Gregg Kimbel of The Library, and Christy Coleman from The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, continued the conversation with an engaging exercise. Each of the six tables of participants were armed with a stack of 50 cards describing important events in Richmond's past. The attendees then picked nine events they thought most important, and one that was not included in the stack. In sharing their choices, each group displayed their unique opinions on what mattered most in our history. From the overly political to the inspired and creative, each group shared a different story of their version of Richmond; stories that converged to tell our collective tale.

As Bill Martin of the Valentine Richmond History Center refueled us with wine, the night shifted towards a creative exploration. Aided by six of the city's best designers, attendees brainstormed provocative posters to begin mapping out how their version of Richmond's history could be captured. The variety of the results spoke to an excitement in the room that was truly inspired. You could see on the faces of everyone in attendance that something different was being considered, and a new story beginning to be told.

With the additional support of Fraser Design Associates, and some help from the i.e.* initiative, this first event was a great kick start to getting a new conversation started. As the night wound down, there was a palpable buzz among the crowd, the kind of buzz that results from 60 people getting activated both creatively and intellectually; the kind of buzz that marks those higher moments in our day to day lives.

As this series moves on I believe we can expect that feeling to recur time and time again.

Richmond Magazine Previews Floricane’s RIC/RVA Series

Richmond Magazine's historically savvy editor, Harry Kollatz Jr., spends some virtual ink putting a comprehensive spin on the new "RIC/RVA: 400 Years of Revolution, Innovation and Change" series that Floricane is launching tomorrow with the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, i.e.*, the Library of Virginia, Peter Fraser and the Valentine Richmond History Center. The first free event in the four-part series is SOLD OUT but the whole run promises to be a real blast for participants. Here's how Harry sets the piece up:

The name of the four-week program helmed by John Sarvay and his Floricane consulting group possesses an epic sweep — RIC/RVA: 400 Years of Revolution, Innovation & Change — like a book with an accompanying documentary on DVD. And that's probably fitting, as this aims to be a public re-understanding of What Richmond Is and Why.

“The purpose is to say, ‘Let’s do something that tilts our narrative a little so that it isn’t wholly fixated on four years in the 1860s,' " Sarvay says. "Other fascinating parts of the fabric have lain fallow because of our preoccupation with that period. And we’ll have fun doing it, and take that content and create something along the way.”

Go devour the entire story at Richmond Magazine.

Top 7 Strategic Planning Lessons from the Library of Virginia

Everything I needed to know about strategic planning I learned from the Library of Virginia.

Okay, not really.

Each plan we complete for a client is such an amazing gift – and I mean that. Learning as much as possible about a client in a short period of time is always achallenge. Some of the learning might be a bit dry – audits, bylaws, code mandates – but each engagement offers unprecedented opportunities to dig into something really awesome about our region, or an industry, or a group of people. I've learned more about Central Virginia from strat egic planning than any number of sessions, readings or research.

Here are seven important lessons I’ve learned from my work with the Library this year.

1. The Library of Virginia is the amazing place you have never visited. You might have seen the building on East Broad Stree t, but have you ever been in? Have you ever seen the exhibits - the most recent was the Hatch Show. Have you ever been upstairs to look at what they have to offer? Over the years I had visited the Library several times but never the actual library portion. Go explore.

2. Writing for people who work in a library is like writing for your college English professor. I have spent more time googling grammar questions and looking up the definitions of words. Librarians and those who make a living helping people research information are very intentional about their words. This is a good reminder to reduce language down to its most essential. Adjectives and adverbs can be helpful but make sure they are not distracting.

3. Order is important. My three year old daughter is in the thick of understanding that she must turn four before she can turn five despite what she wants. But the order in which things are portrayed, even in draft form is important. If you have four outcomes that are even, then spending the time to make a graphical representation is worth your time. The lesson: Write with the most intention.

4. Self-awareness makes work easier. Floricane has worked with the Library of Virginia over the past 18 months on leadership development and organizational change. Part of that work has been around InSights, a self-discovery tool that helps individuals understand their leadership personality. Working with a group that has high self-awareness and others awareness is great! There are times when my concentration on getting things done could get in the way, but knowing that and deffering to others who are happy to let a group wrestle with an issue until they are ready to move on is the true leadership skill. Group process is outrageously hard but amazingly rewarding if it is well managed and has the right tools.

5. First-hand exposure pays dividends. Part of my work in discovery was to take a six-hour tour of the Library spending time in each of its parts including areas not typically open to the general public. There is by far no better way to understand an institution and its nuances than to take a staff guided tour. This lesson also applies to boards and staff – engaging your key stakeholders in the tangible ways you fulfill your mission will be time well spent. I heard this idea at a work session a few weeks ago and it directly applies, cancel your next board meeting and take them for a bus ride, or a tour of your building. Let those who you wish to engage internally and externally touch and feel your services. You are sure to create ambassadors faster this way than by giving them statistics and data.

6. Find your passion. At the Library of Virginia collecting, managing, and providing access to information is the very most important thing they do – and they love it. Keeping this at the forefront of the discussion helps ground the key parts of their plan. Aspirational dreams and true organizational stretches live beneath your hedgehog - or the thing that you do best. Focus your time and energy on what you are great doing.

7. A great plan gives equal footing to clarity, focus, and boldness.  Within the next week as we move from a framework to a meaty plan the Project Team will tire from me saying those three words, but they are absolutely true and essential to keep in mind.

Letter from John: March 2012

My new favorite slice of wisdom was tweeted recently by the brilliant and talented Gretchen Pisano from a conference; the words weren’t hers, but I’m awfully glad she shared them.

“What if we don’t train them, and they stay?” it read.

My first corporate job was for a Fortune 500 company that treated its people as expendable; it no longer exists. I stayed there 11 months. I stuck out my second, and last corporate, gig for 12 years – primarily because my employer supported growth opportunities for every employee.

For five years, I’ve watched businesses and nonprofits around the Richmond region tighten the reins – trimming staff, cutting budgets, eliminating training and development budgets. Those moves made sense early in the recession, but smart organizations have realized that investing in their remaining people is an investment that’s been deferred far too long.

I work hard to think of ways to help the Floricane team grow and develop. Their personal and professional growth is important for Floricane, for our clients and for each person on my small team.

Some of it is free or inexpensive – we cross-train and collaborate together on projects; we attend workshops offered by HYPE and Leadership Metro Richmond; we organize “dates” with businesses we admire and meet for breakfast to talk shop.

Other developmental opportunities are major investments of time or money. This year, Sarah is participating in the Greater Richmond Chamber’s seven-month Leadership Lab program. I’m registered for a twelve-week Technology Entrepreneurship online class through Stanford University later this spring.

Our new Insights Discovery offering – self-awareness and team development – is geared specifically for individuals and organizations who truly believe that professional training and personal growth are differentiators.

I’m tired of talking to leaders who wonder aloud, “What if we train our people, and they leave us?” If you’re still asking that question, you deserve to be left.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in asking us out for a date, we appreciate good coffee.