Can your board answer “What Is Your Organization Identity?”
What makes you different from another institution? Why are there 5 different gardens? Why 8 different homeless shelters? Why 6 different animal welfare organizations? What are YOU? Can you answer that question without resorting to “we are not them?” A lot of things...
Why Use a Facilitator?
Board retreats, all-staff meetings, strategic planning, community convening - any time people get together to accomplish a goal, it’s important that the work gets done. But getting the work of the meeting done doesn’t mean that the results of the meeting will get...
How to Create a Culture of Board Education
It’s easy to dive into pressing board business immediately after bringing the meeting to order. Urgent matters float to the top of every agenda. But there’s a difference between urgent and important. And the important stuff isn’t addressed until it becomes urgent....
From Diversity to Inclusion through Real Conversations
What does it take to build inclusion instead of diversity? I started this weekend with a tentative blog post, but when I watched this video I was blown away. I have to share it. This conversation among inclusion and leadership consultants Desiree Lynn Adaway and...
Build a More Engaged Board
Do your board members feel responsible to one another? Responsible to the organization should be a given. But do the board members feel responsible to each other? On two recent occasions, I asked board members of very different organizations “What does it look like...
Asking for help…or opening possibilities?
Change the question; change perspective. With a pile of work in front of you, or any job that needs doing, do you automatically ask, “How am I going to get all that done?” In years of working with very different nonprofit leaders, I’ve noticed that’s a common...
Confession of a Control-Freak Consultant
Things fall through the cracks. They just do. Not often. But they do. Sometimes it’s because we have too much on our plates. Sometimes, an emergency or a rush job came up, and our mind is focused on that. But sometimes, everything is going along smoothly, and things...
Are Old Tapes Hindering Group Progress?
It’s common parlance to refer to ‘the same old tape we play over in our heads.’ The phrase comes from the time (remember it?) when we used cassettes and 8-tracks to replay the same songs over and over again. It is a fitting metaphor for the implication, since the...
Only One Resolution
Is this a familiar scenario? You follow up on every obligation to your boss, or your board chair, or your spouse. But when you vow to do something for yourself, it keeps moving to the bottom of the list. Promises to others are easy to keep. You want to help. They’re...
Star Trek, Nonprofits and Ideals
I grew up on Star Trek – not just the show, but the idealistic vision of a future in which a United Federation of Planets could boldly go where no one has gone before, seeking out new life forms and new civilizations. Conquest was wrong. Help was right. People got...
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