Letter from John: Fables of the Reconstruction

I’ve come to respect the difficult work of Floricane’s clients – most of them are actively engaged in changing their organization’s trajectory, or some act of strategic reinvention designed to bear new fruit. I’ve been fortunate to play a small role in these efforts, and I’ve been smart enough to pay attention.

I often find myself telling our clients how important it is to have someone outside of your organization – a board member, a close friend, even a consultant – ride shotgun, whispering truths in your ear. I experienced my own advice recently (though it came in the form of a shout, not a whisper).

Actually, it came in the form of a lunchtime conversation at Dot’s Back Inn – followed by a six-page list of complicated financial questions from Jim Parker, the retired chief financial officer of Luck Stone Corporation. Jim had agreed to spend some of his summer helping me restart Floricane and position it for long-term growth and success.

Before asking Jim for his help, I mentally combed through a list of people who I thought could help me focus on the business side of Floricane. The criteria were simple – I was looking for someone with strong business finance competencies, someone I trusted, and someone who knew me well enough to call me on my ability to talk circles around myself. Enter Jim Parker.

I’ve known Jim for 15 years, which is about when he sat me down in a vain attempt to teach me about profit-and-loss statements, and how to teach groups of quarry workers how they impacted cash return on capital employed and revenue. My initial financial training efforts were a clear case of the blind (me) leading the blind (hourly quarry workers). Over the years, Jim diligently helped me understand business financials and contributed a great deal to Luck Stone’s organizational transformation.

My work with Jim on financials is just one important cornerstone of Floricane’s reconstruction. Over the next several months, our team will be hard at work in key areas, such as:

• Continued focus on major client engagements, including ongoing work with the Library of Virginia, Bon Secours Virginia, ChildFund International, VCU’s Center for Health Innovation, the Richmond Symphony and a slate of new clients.

• Swapping services with PUNCH marketing – our strategic planning support in exchange for their creative talent. A revamped website, branded business templates and a snappy piece of creative collateral are all in the mix.

• Refining two major leadership initiatives – the Greater Richmond Chamber’s #RVA Leadership Lab and the Richmond Symphony’s live action offering focused on creativity and organizational change.

• Deploying our new business development initiative focused on marketing our broad suite of services for individuals, teams and organizations looking for support with strategic transformation and organizational change.

• Moving to an amazing new space.

We don’t expect this reinvention to be easy. Tinkering with the engine of a fast-moving car is dicey stuff! But it’s time.

Floricane’s first year was all about survival – getting through the worst year of the recession in one piece. Year two was spent learning that I couldn’t do it alone, and experiencing relative success. Year three was living into that initial success, building a solid team and realizing I had no idea how to run a business.

Which makes year four all about getting it right. Together.

Alignment in Powhatan

Within the rooms of Belmead Mansion on their historic grounds in Powhatan recently, the Board of the Free Clinic of Powhatan gathered for a quarterly meeting focused on their future strategic direction. 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.

The goals for the day included discussion on the current strategic plan’s wins & opportunities, structural alignment of the Board and setting future direction for the Clinic. With an organization that’s only been around for a few years, it was fitting that the historic mansion served as our home for the day. I can only imagine the stories the walls of the mansion could tell, but they may not rival the stories we heard from board members about the importance of the work of the clinic and the impact to their patients who have nowhere else to turn for care.

We then reviewed the current strategic plan highlighting the successes achieved and the challenges that remained. It became evident, there were many areas that belonged in the success column and given the limited resources the challenges were well understood. One of the highlights that stood out to me was the strong sentiment from the Board about the volunteer base at the clinic. In so many organizations, it seems that volunteers are either hard to come by or that the work of many seems to fall on the shoulders of the few, at the Clinic it is just not that way. The core group is dedicated and flexible to meet the demands of working in health care these days.

Shifting into the afternoon, the Board agreed the two most important pieces of work were financial support and long range planning. While these two topics are intertwined, the group was undeterred to create specific, detailed plans to address them head on. And, most importantly, to address them in alignment.

Throughout the day, the group used the home to its fullest – the ceiling height was just high enough to allow the group to reach for new heights; the expansive, bay windows allowed a look beyond the current horizon to what the future may hold; everywhere we turned memories of Powhatan’s past were present.

There were many soft reminders that this group holds the keys to a future that doesn’t forget about the past but uses it as a springboard to continue their good work in the community.

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.