ChildFund Retreat

In February, we were lucky enough to spend a week with the global sponsorship team at ChildFund International, a diverse group of kid-centered professionals representing more than 20 countries on five continents.

During our week-long engagement, we helped the group build alignment around a shared vision for their work for children around the globe. It was first time this global team had ever been in the room together, and it was a powerful week.

We recently returned to ChildFund. Our work in February was focused on their overseas sponsorship team, but the organization also maintains a significant sponsorship team here in Richmond. A small group of managers – with new leadership, new initiatives and significant visibility in ChildFund’s long-term strategic plan – came together with us at the Roslyn Conference and Retreat Center to do a little planning.

As always, I leave my engagements with the ChildFund team inspired by their commitment to two primary groups – the children they serve, and the sponsors who provide the support.

It’s always inspiring to hang out with people who want to change the world.

Creating Breakthroughs for Collaboration

John and I recently facilitated a staff retreat for the Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC) team. While the relationship between Floricane and VPLC has been on-going for several years, it was my first opportunity to interact with the whole team. I had met everyone in smaller groups as participants in our Insights Discovery public workshops – so the next logical step was to take them through Insights for Team Effectiveness.

As w e arrived at the Roslyn Conference Center, a light mist fell outside. We started the morning, a bit in the space of, “Well, we don’t really work as a team…..our roles and specialty areas don’t really cross over…..we are a highly, self-reliant group of folks….that’s what makes it work so well…..I like the people I work with, but I don’t really need them to do good work.” I wasn’t quite sure where it was going to go from there, but as the day went on, the mist gave way to sunshine. Clarity about how team members could better connect and collaborate with each other broke through, too.

There were many breakthrough moments that happened during the day. I think the first breakthrough came during the Colorful Queues activity. In the coaching world, we often use the mind, body and spirit model to fully engage clients’ gifts to reach their goals. During Colorful Queues, the body is engaged by having participants organize themselves in their perceived order of intensity of each of the Insights Discovery color energies, one at a time. The reaction of the team as they observed themselves both during the activity and at the end was pretty cool to watch. For a team that thought they knew each other pretty well, their take-aways were all about seeing each other in new ways through the lens of each of the color energies.

Later in the day, another key moment happened during the goal setting segment. There is a fact we like to repeat that the chance for success of accomplishing a goal goes from 13% to something like 77% when you think of a goal, write it down AND share it with those who can support your achieving it.

Most of us, at one time or another have been in a workshop or a training session that, at the time, seemed life changing. Then, we leave and go back to our worlds only to find the momentum gets lost. By having a goal that is shared with others, we now have a more powerful form of accountability to use toward accomplishing that goal.

What I saw over the course of the day was a team that started the day thinking they didn’t have many ways to really engage and support each other. They ended the day by created goals that engaged and supported each other. Some examples included: using each other as resources on projects or setting goals that meant spending time and learning about each other’s worlds or considering new ways to engage with each other. The transformation of how they see themselves as a team was pretty inspiring.

As Floricane continues to grow and mature as a business, with newish team members, new roles, and new challenges before us, I can’t help but wonder what we can apply from the learning that took place with the VPLC team that day. What can we apply to ourselves as a team of people who may describe our team in a similar way? I don’t have the answer(s) yet, but I bet my teammates could help me figure it out.

Small Team. Big Work.

We get excited when we have an opportunity to work with young organizations. Nothing beats sitting down with smart, energized teams and savvy, hard-working leaders in those early months when the initial vision remains clear, commitment runs high and a passion for revolutionary change is palatable.

Enter Virginia Commonwealth University’s Office for Health Innovation, and its small team of 15 professionals focused on health care and community engagement. The Office’s team is charged with charting the VCU Health System’s course through the Affordable Care Act, and developing new approaches to care management, even as it coordinates the delivery of care to thousands of underserved individuals in our community.

It’s a small team. It’s not small work.

So it’s no wonder that during our first conversations with the team our attention shifted to the Vision and Mission of the organization. Finding clear, simple and inspirational language that frames the complicated work of health policy, health innovation and education, care delivery and health management is challenging!

Leave it to a smart, energized team to hammer it out in less than an hour.

After taking the team through some idea generating activities to help put words and shape to the strategic challenges that the Office for Health Innovation must address, Sarah Milston and I were impressed with the alignment within the group. This was a group that knew what it needed to do – and was eager to strengthen its own alignment and start building a game-changing strategy.

We ended our first session with a draft Vision and Mission, and an emerging set of strategic outcomes that will serve as cornerstones for the team’s new strategic plan. We’ll come back together later in June to begin to build that plan.

Designing the Roadmap

There are times when written strategic plans and PowerPoint presentations just don’t cut it.

One outcome of our week with ChildFund International’s global sponsorship team in February has been a continued need for the team – scattered across five continents – to communicate more frequently and stay focused on a set of key global strategies.

A small team at ChildFund has been working with me and designer Ben Dacus to create a poster that vividly captures the sponsorship team’s vision and goals. The teams wants a strong visual that clearly communicates a set of key messages to the team.

I’ve worked with Ben for more than 20 years – we were coworkers at VCU, and he did exceptional design work for me during my years at Circuit City and Luck Stone. He’s responsible for most of the brand identity work for Floricane.

We leveraged the metaphor of a river – a visual the global team first embraced in February. The illustration features strong colors, clear messaging and images that reinforce the importance of children, sponsors and strong connections in the work of ChildFund.

Over the course of several meetings, Ben has framed out a design that resonates. Over the coming weeks, we’ll fine-tune the look, feel and messaging. Later this summer, the posters will be hanging in ChildFund offices around the world.

New Fruit: Strategic Retreats Galore

Ah, summertime in Richmond. The humidity climbs, and the lightning bugs begin to swarm. Professional associations and nonprofit boards take a deep breath and lock themselves away for a day to think about the future. And Floricane's calendar begins to get very busy!

Over the next several weeks, we're fortunate enough to be in the room facilitating strategic sessions with several organizations that are focused on making a difference in Richmond, and across Virginia.

• Just today, Sarah and Debra spent time with the small board of the Free Clinic of Powhatan. The three-year old nonprofit is one of 62 free clinics serving underserved populations around the state, and we were pleased to help them reframe their strategic opportunities.

• Last week, Sarah and John spent a full day with the staff of the Virginia Poverty Law Center – the third staff retreat Floricane has facilitated for the team of 10. In the past, our conversations were strategic. This year, the staff wanted something a little different – and so we took them through a full-day workshop on Team Effectiveness using the Insights Discovery instrument.

• In June, we'll be working with the board of VAFRE, the Virginia Association of Fundraising Executives.

• In July, we have a day lined up with the board of the Richmond chapter of the Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM). It's one of the largest chapters in the country, and we'll be helping them bring more focus and boldness to their game plan for the year ahead.

Those are just a few of the one-day strategic and team-focused sessions we have on the calendar for the summer. We're very excited about working with all four of these organizations.

New Fruit: Punch Gets Strategy, We Get Punch

We're really excited about one of our newest clients – we're swapping our strategy services with the creative team at PUNCH for a bit of their visual and brand talent. This summer, we'll be working with PUNCH to help them identify their best opportunities for growth across their key business areas. And while we have most of their employees tucked away in a room mapping strategic outcomes, tactics and deliverables, they'll be spending some time and energy reinvigorating our website and helping us design an amazing piece of collateral that tells the Floricane story in a visually powerful way.

In other words, we're going to get some PUNCH.

New Fruit: Designing A Roadmap for ChildFund

On the heels of an amazing week in February with the global Sponsorship Division of ChildFund International, we're back in the mix – and this time we've brought the design talent of our friend and partner Ben Dacus of Zeigler|Dacus Marketing to bear.

Over the next several weeks, we'll be supporting the sponsorship team with two initiatives. This Friday, Floricane will facilitate a strategic retreat for the division's management team as they work to build alignment and energy around their three-year plan to strengthen the relationship between ChildFund, its sponsors and the children they all serve. And over the coming weeks, I'll be working with Ben to design a Sponsorship Roadmap poster that graphically delivers a set of key messages to the global team's members.

The Leadership Journey: Decisions

Throughout our life we have millions of decisions to make. In fact each day we have 8,746 decisions. * So, which ones are we being intentional about?  Thiswas the beginning of day three of my RVALeadership Lab experience - a joint venture of Floricane, The Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce and Luckstone.  We have been gathering for several months to work through our leadership skills and abilities and develop adaptation tools. 

This session featured feedback examination and some coaching exercises, but ended with John Fernandez, a local business leader as the guest speaker.  Read more about him here (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-fernandez/5/9a1/9b8)  John lead us through several stories to drive home the point that we are in charge of our own success.  The part that resonated with me most strongly was all about decisions. 

"Time, talent, treasure. These are the assets that everyone has. Leadership comes in how you make decisions and choices that define who you are and define whether you are going to be happy or unhappy in your life." said Fernandez. 

That sounded like a pretty lofty ideal.  But of course, he had a tool to share.  Fernandez suggested we complete a time inventory.  Here are the steps:

1. Inventory your time for one week.

2. Write down everything you do and how long it takes to do it. 

3. Once it is done, review the list and label everything as I, C, E, or U.

    Incompetence - hate doing, suck at it

    competence - kinda okay at doing it

    Excellent - things I am great at

    Unique ability - You are excellent at this and you would do this tirelessly, you would even do it if you weren't getting paid.

His suggestion - spend 70-80 % of your time in your unique ability. Ignore and or delegate your incompetence and competence space.

I haven't done this inventory yet, but I've been thinking about it constantly over the past few days and looking at what I was doing and asking myself - is this my unique ability?  I have already started making decisions.