Lastly September Forbes published “America’s Most Innovative Leaders” list, profiling one hundred of “the most creative and successful business minds of today.” Ninety-nine of the top one hundred list were men (and barely a sprinkle men of color). You had to scroll down to # 75, Ross Stores’ CEO Barbara Rentler, to see the one woman mentioned, and she didn’t get so much as a headshot — just a masculine silhouette in gray (which has since been updated to resemble a female). YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP.

As noted by this Washington Post reaction, the Forbes list was supported by an algorithm that ranked CEOs market value (greater than $10 billion) and their companies’ “innovation premium,” or the “difference between their market capitalization (value) and the net present value of cash flows from existing businesses.”

“What’s astounding is that there is no discussion of how much the 99% male list might be a result of choices about what quantitative indicators to use.” Others laced their comments with sarcasm: “It’s so weird,” mocked one Twitter user. “Our algorithm, which is based on years of outdated statistics that favor privilege and patriarchal systems … just seems to keep rewarding white guys.”

In case you missed that: the Forbes list, like many, was supported by an algorithm. An algorithm (like all the rest) designed by, with, for people. Do not blame the inanimate databases or the robots; we’re wiring systems to preserve and promote exclusivity.

Women barely represent 5% of CEOs in the S&P 500 Index. So from the get-go, women didn’t stand a chance at making the Forbes list. Further, in response to public backlash, Forbes acknowledged that the vast majority of its lists are “data-driven exercises, where we determine a methodology, crunch the numbers and let the chips fall where they may.”

Let the chips fall where they may?!

This practice of surrendering to systems designed to filter and screen in the few is also common [understandably, to a point] in recruiting — yet all too often loaded with bias.

I’ve devoted a large portion of my career to creating diverse and inclusive workspaces. I regularly hear companies fret about the lack of skilled talent “supply” in the local pipeline, and concerns regarding workforce readiness and training consistent with open jobs are valid.

Of equal — arguably greater — concern is the “demand” side of the equation: companies that want to grow diversity yet create and/or outsource applicant screening processes that favor exclusivity. Many hiring systems are designed to screen-in pedigree where, on the job, a degree is significantly less a determinant of success compared to the know-how of skill. Ask any professional what or who they credit most for their success in the workplace and they are much more likely to cite learning gained from real world experience, not degree.

Further, if only a third of the US labor market has a college degree, what’s to happen to the other two thirds, particularly those for whom a college degree was neither affordable nor accessible? By choosing pedigree over skills mastery, a large portion of talented human capital is excluded from mere consideration for the job interview, let alone participation in our talent-hungry, innovation-starving labor market.

To quote a common phrase from my good friend and colleague, Byron Auguste, co-founder of Opportunity@Work: “Talent is universal. Opportunity is not.”

Though the struggle was real for my parents to send this first generation kid to college, I have been blessed beyond measure with opportunities to go to school, to travel and gain perspective, to seed and strengthen my social networks, to know a person that knew a person that scored me a job interview, helped pave my career path, and so forth. I was born on third base where others don’t get up to bat. I have a responsibility to stand up and speak out, to pry open closed doors, to create opportunity.

But standing up and speaking out isn’t sufficient. Until more women are seen and leading in spaces traditionally dominated by men, these not-so-accidental slip-ups like Forbes’ will continue and we’re all the emperor’s new clothes.

Forbes: if you want to make a list of innovative thinkers and publish it, please do the world a favor and come out of your man cave to see what real inclusive leadership looks like. Here’s a fantastic start by Sarah Robb O’Hagan on LinkedIn, (my newest hero, who deserves a spot on this list just for writing it).

Please join me in the call for discernment toward inclusion, and not just from institutional structures and systems but from and for ourselves. We are the systems we’re designing. It’s high time we take a long look in the mirror at how we design and choose systems that make our daughters see they’re worthy of a world in desperate need of their and their sisters’ strong-willed, driven, intelligent, compassionate, creative innovations.

We are better than Forbes’ list. Our systems can be too — if we design them to be.

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“Namaste,” I returned.

“Namaste,” I said, holding up my prayer-shaped hands, my heart overflowing with gratitude. I continued to make my entrance through the greeting committee, two lines of brightly adorned red, blue, and pink Nepali dressed women. Several gifted additional flowers to me, repeating the same warm Namaste welcome. Some proudly carried their infant children on their hip or in their arms. Never before had I felt like such royalty; this was a most warm, most proud welcome of my friends and I to their village.

Carmina met me at the end of the entrance lines; she hadn’t taken me out of her sight. She told me she was 15, and her face appeared curious, friendly, and anxious to meet us.

When she returned less than an hour later she was dressed in a shiny black and red floral dress. Her hair appeared newly rinsed and she was eager to get my attention. “I show my house,” she said gesturing for me to accompany her through the village, pass the straw-covered barns of water buffalo and goats, to her home. I left my group and eagerly followed her lead.

She introduced me in Nepalese to her grandmother, who crouched on a two-inch high stool, stirring sun-dried corn kernels over a ground-level fire. The woman turned to me and smiled enthusiastically. “Grandmother,” Carmina explained, and then proceeded to introduce other surrounding family members using the few English nouns she had memorized at the nearby English boarding school attended by privileged youth.

Yes, privileged. The ground we stood on was dirt covered but flat, their house short but made of bricks and covered not by a thatched roof but one instead made of tin. The small manger nearby where the food was prepared housed a mother water buffalo and her calf, as well as a family of goats, to include several new kids. The sounds of baby chicks chirping filled the air, as well as the laughter of curious children eager to see the foreigner and her fancy camera.

Such ordinary experiences that remind us we are extraordinarily strong women. The generations of women from WORTH may appear quite unlike my daughters and I on the surface–different attire and material surroundings — and yet within we share a great deal. As it goes when we say, “Namaste” — I honor the light in you that is also in me. Though that visit to Chitwan lasted a matter of hours, and the capacity for English-Nepali translation nil, there are few with whom I have experienced wholeness with such immediacy and at that scale.

Is there a sight more beautiful, more divine than that of a capable, confident, strong woman? Such a gift to have met those women of WORTH, to witness their pride first-hand, and to be reminded of my own immense strength and the promise of two capable, confident, strong young girls who make my heart swell with love and hope.

Photographs provided by Jan Somers, Ralph Kelly, and Jen Hetzel Silbert

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A newly hired school superintendent felt this and, despite pushback from a handful of leaders who had grown complacent with status quo, decided to do something about it. She knew that the values that shaped how education happens had never been made explicit, let alone consistent, generating inconsistent results. Staff morale was at an all-time low, and attrition had reached 40% – a costly trend for her network of nonprofit community schools. Her aim as the new sheriff in town: to make radical improvements to school culture, and to engage all teachers and staff in designing the school culture they believed would be:

• Financially sustainable – within budget
• Compliant – consistent with state/federal regulatory requirements, combined with the school community’s homegrown recipe for self accountability, “metrics that matter”
• Enriching – create a school community and place of work where staff, teachers, students and families all thrived.

Even in the best of circumstances, schools require intentional design – design of physical spaces, roles, and processes, as well as the design of a thriving culture. If they can name and measure it, they can manage it.

Enter the Barrett Values Centre (BVC) and Appreciative Inquiry (AI).

Step 1: get the data – baseline metrics

Data would provide a means to align school culture with strategic priorities, like higher student performance, increased family and community engagement, and accountability around metrics that matter.

Newsflash: values equal data.

Moreover, by naming and even measuring values, a school can turn implicit cultural norms into explicit actions, structures, processes and roles for thriving.

And so a BVC Cultural Values Assessment, or CVA, was introduced to the diverse school community. This 3-question survey elicited staff and administration perceptions of:

(A)  Personal values – words to describe individual values

(B)  Current culture values – words to describe the current culture

(C)  Desired culture values – words to describe the school’s desired culture, the ideal

…and collated the 450+ responses to measure areas of:

• Cultural alignment (or lack thereof), e.g. degree of staff connection to the organization, level of confidence in the school’s direction
• Entropy, or wasted energy/productivity, as measured by the potentially limited values chosen, and
• Revealing the most desired values as antidotes (self-prescribed solutions).

Step 2: help school staff to interpret and own the data findings

Using a homegrown mix of AI workshops and debriefing sessions, staff worked together to make sense of the CVA insights and own the CVA findings. More than articulating core values, staff defined them and identified sample behaviors to render the implicit cultural values explicit, day-to-day.

The outcome: new staff-designed structures, roles, and work processes to further increase cultural alignment, reduce entropy, and turn the most desired cultural values (antidotes) into action.

Step 3: implement through experiment

Among these new structures was the creation of a values-based recruitment and interview process for hiring a new principal to oversee an already low-performing elementary and middle school. Morale was on the decline, and entropy (or wasted productivity) measured 30% and 26% at the elementary and middle school, respectively (no surprise, given the dangerously high staff turnover).

A staff-prescribed solution: hosting new “meet and greet” recruiting events to gauge prospective candidate fit, as well as experimentation with new behavioral interviews that included story-seeking questions to reveal the true character of carefully vetted candidates.

One candidate rose to the top of the list following the new values-based interview process. He was unconventional in a manner that was met with resistance by several selection panelists, and yet he aced the behavioral interviews, his values entirely consistent with the core values now being sought by staff. The job was his, and his charge a mighty one: to turn around the schools in ways that were manageable and measurable.

Step 4: measure impact – re-assess annually

Fast forward 12 months into 2014, where the CVA survey and debriefing process was repeated for all 450+ staff and administrators. Below is just one example of the drastic reductions in cultural entropy, as measured by the CVA 2013-14, for the elementary and middle school under the new principal’s leadership. The elementary school measured a 23% reduction (from 30% to 7%) and the middle school a 10% reduction (from 26% to 16%).

The new principal was doing his job, and well.

Testimonial evidence gathered in focus groups and staff surveys revealed the how’s behind the schools’ recipe for change and dramatic improvements to morale, from community partnerships (in and out of school), to more culturally “fitting” means for family engagement, to intentional teamwork, to include collaborative curriculum design by grade levels across schools, making wiser use of teacher time and work-life balance, as well as innovations in teacher-administrator-family communications—leveraging free and existing (yet underutilized) technologies and mobile apps.

Visible or invisible, tangible or intangible, values are data.  Culture is measurable and manageable. And, for better or worse, we design culture in the everyday processes, roles, and behaviors we all too often take for granted.

Want to improve how things “get done around here”?  Bring a little intention to work and design the culture you most desire–inclusively.  And be prepared to measure it, meaningfully, holding yourself and each other accountable for being the change you want to see. People commit to what they help to create.

Authored by Jen Hetzel Silbert and Cheri Torres

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In my organization development and strategy work I remind people that, “we see more of what we look for.”  This principle is fundamental to Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which asks questions about moments of success and triumph, then builds on the strengths of stories to explore bold—yet possible—stretch goals for the future. 

One of the questions I am often asked is…what about the negative? How can we move forward when there is deep-seated pain and resentment that makes conversations about the positive and what’s possible impossible to initiate or comprehend?

Storms brew in many forms, and the pain they bring is real.  Be the ill feelings from a company acquisition, an unwelcomed re-org, leadership change, or lost job, or from a fall-out with a friend, a lost loved one, broken home, community, or nation – hurt is hurt is hurt.  So where does Appreciative Inquiry (AI) – strength-based, positive change – fit when it comes to moving beyond hurt and despair?

Justice Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court of South Africa

In 2009 I had the honor of hearing Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa speak at the World Appreciative Inquiry Conference in Nepal¹.  He captivated his audience recounting his experience of being severely injured in 1988, losing an arm and sight in one eye when South African security agents placed a bomb in his car.

Sachs also told stories about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which addressed the competing, yet often interdependent forces of accountability and amnesty.  He recounted how certain persons who engaged in the most horrific criminal acts during the Apartheid regime gained amnesty when they were held accountable to telling the truth. 

The TRC was not a closed-room confession – it went public and involved the whole nation.  Gross human rights violators testified before television cameras, radio, and the press in ways that licensed the country to relive the unforgettable horror and publicly acknowledge its moral defeat.  With tears streaming down his face, one sergeant told of placing a plastic bag tightly around a teenage girl’s neck as she sang the national anthem on her last breath.  Another told of an outdoor barbecue where, within yards of grilled beefsteaks the bodies of the tortured were also burned.  The horror was unfathomable, the tears real.  In an auditorium of 350+ conference attendees one could hear a pin drop.

As Sachs pointed out, the TRC allowed a sharing of knowledge with public acknowledgement; and from acknowledgement came reconciliation and a readiness to heal.  South Africa [and the world for that matter] knew what happened during the Apartheid regime; but it needed to connect to that information in order to lay the foundation of national reconciliation.  More than satisfying the objective of information gathering by the courts, the nation needed a process for healing – to connect to the information and acknowledge it together.

“It was not about victory for either side, but about victory for a set of values,” noted the Honorable Sachs.  “It meant that for the first time, we as South Africans were living in the same moral country.”  Amnesty in this sense, with the price of public acknowledgement, replaced impunity.  And in Sachs’ view, it was the turning point, only after which a new democracy could be born.

On a personal level, Sachs recounted his reunion with the man who planted the bomb in his car, the acknowledgement that came with that experience, and the healing thereafter.  Following the TRC trials, and on the very grounds of the prison that once incarcerated Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,  a new court was built to symbolize healing, openness, and peace.  The facility was decorated with artwork from around the country, and choirs are said to be regularly singing on the grounds. 

There were three points that I drew from hearing the honorable Justice Sachs speak, all of which underline the importance of acknowledgement in leading lasting positive change:

     1. Healing is more than the mere absence of pain.

     2.  The process is as important as the outcome.

     3.  Lasting change is at the scale of the whole.

1. Healing is more than the mere absence of pain.  Likewise, peace is more than the absence of violence; it’s about flourishing societies.

To heal from difficult experiences (regardless of context, culture, or scale), we need to do more than get rid of the unwanted or the negative.  As Justice Sachs argues, we need to acknowledge, and from this we can create space for positive growth.  In South Africa’s case, healing was far more than the abolition of Apartheid, far more than the cessation of violence.  The TRC enabled public acknowledgement in ways that paved the way for reconciliation and democracy – something far beyond the mere punishment or elimination of gross human rights violators. 

Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, wrote that optimism in the face of tragedy can turn suffering into a human achievement.  He called this “tragic optimism” and related it to his own experiences as a Holocaust survivor.  As a prisoner every freedom is taken away but “the last of human freedoms”—the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”²  No matter the circumstances, no matter how tragic or horrific the experience, we all have a choice in attitude that makes possible positive growth.  And far more than the absence of pain, the path of healing is one we must choose for positive growth to begin. 

2. The process is as important as the outcome.  The “truth” is not something you “get” to but something you “talk” to. Justice Sachs originally recommended that the TRC hold trials in more intimate settings where, in his opinion, the criminals would be more likely to fully disclose their heinous crimes.  Fortunately the TRC disagreed with him and instead went public.  Many painful “truths” from the past were openly aired and acknowledged and a nation’s process of healing could begin – a process that was (and is) inclusive, dynamic, continuous, and ongoing. 

Where most court systems rely exclusively on observational and logical truth, Justice Sachs speaks of  “dialogical truth,” something you experience through dialogue and the exchange of stories.  He has said that “judges are the storytellers of the 21st century” ³, recognizing the unique responsibility and opportunity a judge has in integrating a judicial opinion with judicial passion in ways that generate  meaning for society. 

Storytelling itself is a process, and it is society’s oldest, most universal means of creating and sharing knowledge.  Its power comes not only from the “data” it reveals but also from its generative process of engaging, moving, and inspiring connection – connection to new perspectives and learning, as well as connection among people. 

Appreciative Inquiry can be a highly effective means of sparking the exchange of stories – stories that do more than “look for the positive,” but also force us to examine the assumptions we’re holding and examine reality a little differently.  In his article “AI Is Not (Just) About The Positive,” Gervase Bushe encourages people to “be thoughtful in how we make a space for inquiry into hurt, anger, injustice, despair – doing that in a way that contributes to the group’s ability to understand, and bring into being, its collective aspirations.”⁴

3. Lasting change is at the scale of the whole.  We’ve all heard that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and yet we’re often challenged to expand our thinking around who/what really can and should make up the whole.  South Africa didn’t need another human rights violations report published by legal experts. It needed a nation to come together, publicly witness and acknowledge moral defeat, reconcile, and heal.  This process didn’t require the wisdom of a handful of individuals; it took the wholeness of a nation [with the world watching].

Sachs’ presentation moved me to tears.  As a mother – as a human being – the stories were hard to bear. At the close, I retreated to a nearby ladies room for tissues where a stranger, a petite elderly woman from Korea, approached me.  She put her small hands on my shoulder, and we wept together, complete strangers in a strange place far from home. 

And we were.  It was what David Cooperrider later called a “prophetic experience⁵,” a shared moment where we experience the past, present, and future simultaneously in connecting to the “whole”.  Justice Sach’s story let us relive his past in ways that fueled our compassion for the present, and stirred within us a compelling vision of hope for the future. 

Following a physical injury, such as a cut or scrape, we bleed at first, then new tissue forms – not a fixing of the damaged old tissue (resolution), but creation anew (renewal).  Renewal of this sort is at the heart of any lasting positive change effort, and Appreciative Inquiry helps makes this possible, elevating and increasing that which we not only value, but need in order to live.  We value and need acknowledgement.  Furthermore, we value and need courage and compassion, and acknowledgement requires much of both.  With acknowledgement there is great risk, such as the release of deep pain and hurt; and when received with courage and compassion, there is also space for renewal and growth.

Endnotes:

¹ Justice Albie Sachs, World AI Conference, Kathmandu, Nepal. 19 November 2009.

² Sider, N.G. (2003.) “Discovering Resources for Post-traumatic Healing and Growth” in Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding. PACT Publications: Washington DC.

³ Gorman, N. (February 2010.) “Uncommon Interview with Justice Albie Sachs.” Chicago Maroon.

⁴ Bushe, G. (August 2007.) “Appreciative Inquiry is Not (Just) About The Positive.” Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University.

⁵ David Cooperrider, World AI Conference, Kathmandu, Nepal. 19 November 2009.

The post Acknowledging the Negative in Leading Lasting Positive Change appeared first on Spartina Consulting.

Among our growing list of A1 partners in social innovation (by disruption) is Neighborhood Centers Inc., a non-profit human services agency serving the 

This post examines Neighborhood Centers’ journey and the role of ‘figure it out’ leadership in taking a snowball’s chance to define communities as sources of infinite potential – not problems to be solved. Experience their story live when CEO/President Angela Blanchard takes the stage at #BIF10, Sept 17-18, 2014.

From Settlement House to Social Innovator

Jane Addams

Neighborhood Centers Inc.’s earliest work began with the settlement house movement in 1907, laying the groundwork for marginalized populations to participate more meaningfully in society in ways that nurture self-sufficiency over dependency. The agency held true to a key tenet of the settlement house philosophy: neighborhood involvement. In one of her early writings, Ms. Jane Addams, a founder of the settlement house movement, stated that she and her fellow workers learned “not to hold preconceived ideas of what the neighborhood ought to have, but to keep ourselves in readiness to modify and adapt our undertakings as we discovered those things which the neighborhood was ready to accept.” Openness and adaptability was key.

In the 1960s and 70s, the agency was considered a ‘poverty agency,’ not just because of the population it served, but because of how it operated: in ragtag buildings, poorly equipped, poorly trained, under-funded, and in many cases taken for granted. ⁱ An ‘either/or’ mindset was the norm: EITHER the agency funded its internal infrastructures OR fed its clients.

Under the leadership of Angela Blanchard, first as board member in the early 1980s, then CFO and now president/CEO, the search for ‘both/and’ solutions took over: “Far from depriving our clients, we were strengthening our capacity to help them by meeting the basic needs of our organization.” ⁱⁱ  Helping clients hold a possibility-focused abundance mindset meant Neighborhood Centers Inc. had to hold one for itself.

Angela Blanchard, CEO/President

Despite initial resistance Blanchard persisted, strengthening internal infrastructure until the results began to speak for themselves. In 1995, Neighborhood Centers Inc. was eleven times larger than it had been in 1986 with the lowest overhead among agencies of equal size. ⁱⁱⁱ

Leveraging internal talent and a strengthened operating capacity, management began securing large government grants and contracts. This enabled the expansion of financial assistance programs aimed at child care, adult employment services, job training and case management for disaster relief activities. Neighborhood Centers Inc. built on its long-standing expertise in childhood development, expanding services to include early childhood education and opened a charter school. By 2007 its reputation as a poverty agency was a distant memory as it catapulted itself into a new position as one of the largest service employers in the greater Houston area. ^iv   

From White Board to Neighborhood

Neighborhood Centers Inc. was already a success story, but it aspired to still greater heights, namely improvements to service delivery consistent with their strength-focused operational philosophy.

“Kinfolks” by Sacha Lazarre: spirited painter, advocate for immigrants

In 2005, Blanchard’s staff began experimenting with Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as applied to Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), recognizing that individuals and organizations housed assets on which economic, political and social strengthcould be built.  AI framed service delivery around two deceptively simple premises:

1. What we look for, we find, and what we pay attention to, grows.  Positive image begets positive action.
2. People commit to what they help to create.  The more inclusive the change process, the more committed community members will be to its success and follow-through.

Neighborhood Centers’ responsibility and opportunity was to link neighbor to neighbor, asset to asset. Consistent with its settlement house roots, it did not set out to ‘help’ Houston residents, but to ask, to listen, and to empower, giving voice to people such that they might participate in the enrichment and vitality of their neighborhoods, building on strengths while transforming the lives of those who live there.

Over 120 appreciative interviews were facilitated at town hall meetings and community events, at schools and places of worship, even on front porches.  Staff published these stories of strength, resilience, and exemplary leadership in its first Voices report shortly after. Unlike traditional media sources, Voices portrayed the amazing promise of Gulfton and Sharpstown, printed in both English and Spanish, and was distributed widely across the community.

The impact was astounding; conversations began to shift from the downward spiral thinking residents were used to (poverty, struggle), to that of adversity and opportunity. Community members began to change the stories they told about themselves.

Gatherings small and large, these community inquiries helped the agency turn a critical corner. By inviting residents to come together to tap into their well of strengths and assets, and envision still greater possibilities for themselves and their neighborhoods, improvements occurred more swiftly, efficiently and purposefully. The change was grounded in principles of self-empowerment and cooperation.

Among the countless social innovations that have since spawned:

• A community newsletter titled “Gulfton Neighbors” to communicate and highlight the many rich assets already at play in the neighborhood, while also shedding light on opportunities for further strengthening social connections critical to economic and community development.
• 

  The Magic Bus

  The Magic Bus, which circulates between the neighborhood’s many apartment complexes, grocery stores, and social service providers – key locations that the city’s public transportation alone does not serve.

• New partnerships, particularly among service providers who were inspired to work together more collaboratively around complementary strengths and shared areas of interest.
• 
  

  “Voices to Vision” Appreciative Inquiry Summit

  The Voices to Vision summit, a three-day gathering in August 2008 of over 400 staff, residents, educators, business owners, donors, volunteers, students, and elected officials for a collaborative learning and strategic planning journey. More then empowering staff to ask great questions, Neighborhood Centers wanted to empower and inspire its richly diverse community to also be the change they wanted to see in Houston.

• 

  Baker-Ripley Neighborhood Center

  Cutting through the partisan rhetoric, Blanchard wooed Democrats and Republicans, raising $25 million to build the Baker-Ripley Neighborhood Center which opened in 2010, a five building, four acre complex designed by community members for community members, with services ranging from tax preparation to low-cost banking, a clinic, and charter school.  Since the center opened, crime has decreased 11% in Gulfton. In Houston overall, crime is down 4%.

• In 2010 Neighborhood Centers gained national attention from the US Department of Education, which granted the agency a $500,000 Promise Neighborhood planning grant, wherein Neighborhood Centers was 1 of 21 organizations selected (out of 300 communities that applied nationwide).

The agency’s model for building vibrant communities stepped up to the national stage in 2011 at TEDxHouston, then later at the Business Innovation Factory (BIF7) summit. Fast Company magazine listed Angela among its November 2012 Generation Flux, honoring disruptors who embrace adaptability and flexibility with success.  The following year Angela was featured again in Fast Company, this time on its 2013 Top 1000 Most Creative People in Business.  Also in 2013, Neighborhood Centers was invited to the White House (for the 3rd time), where Blanchard met with 9 other community development leaders, senior white house officials, and President Barack Obama to advise the administration on the President’s Promise Zone Initiative and Ladders of Opportunity, working to ensure that all families, no matter where they live, have ladders of opportunity to the middle class.  

Figure It Out. That is the job.

Perhaps most noteworthy of the many innovations spawned and honors received was the agency’s own transformation from the outside-in, from a facilitator [of strength-based service delivery for others] to an OWNER of strength-based, possibility-seeking human capital development [for ITSELF].

In a recent interview, Blanchard talked about the most important jobs, those that she calls “FIO jobs”: “Figure it out. That is the job.”  The task may seem daunting, and the masses might call the mission impossible; real leadership figures it out, no matter.

A big fan of Simon Sinek’s ‘Golden Circle,‘ Blanchard knows how to start with the “WHY”.  It’s one thing to tell the world WHAT you do and HOW you do it so well, but it’s quite another to tell them WHY they should care. And FIO leaders “need a big WHY to get an even bigger WE.”

Blanchard lives by Teddy Roosevelt’s mantra, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”  Her favorite day each month: every third Thursday, when she hosts her #InGoodCompany forums for aspiring leaders, which she opens up to the general public.  It’s a mixed bag of storytelling, listening, and connecting – topped off with a call to action for community members, youth, and staff to be ‘figure it out leaders’, come hell or high water.

For more on Neighborhood Centers social innovation savvy, come to #BIF10 in Providence, Rhode Island, Sept 17-18, 2014, where Angela Blanchard takes the BIF stage for the second time.

Endnotes

iBlanchard, A. (1995) Hierarchy of Needs – For Organizations: A Story of Organizational Transformation

ivChung, R. (January, 2008). ‘Financial Comparison 1997-2007: Neighborhood Centers Inc.’

vTimme, L. (January 2008). ‘Pasadena & South Houston: Unlocking the Strengths of our Communities.’ Voices: A Report onthe Strengths and Assets of a Community.

viChung, R. (January 2008). ‘Financial Comparison 1997-2007: Neighborhood Centers Inc.’

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There’s a reason why many of the same faces keep showing up at the final table in the World Poker Tour, and it has nothing to do with luck.

A lot of people assume that poker is a game of chance and luck. And while luck does help, it is far more a game of skill. Each hand can be improved upon by using the community cards, your poker knowledge/skills, and the ability to adapt your play. The same capacities that make one successful at poker can also help unleash a “strategy culture,” elevating organization’s ability to decide, learn, think, and innovate – strategically.

Four Strategic Capacities

1. Strategic Action and Decision-making
2. Strategic Learning and Reflection
3. Strategic Thinking
4. Strategic Innovation and Improvement

1. Strategic Action and Decision-making

In poker you have a limited time to make your move. At each point along the way (pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river) you must make decisions and take action – whether to fold, check, bet, raise, call, or go all in!

The same is true when it comes to implementing your strategy; analysis paralysis will not get you very far. The stronger people’s capacity to make strategic decisions day-to-day, the more successful they will be. See HBR’s Stop Making Plans, Start Making Decisions

2. Strategic Learning and Reflection

Just as it’s important to evaluate your play in poker (after a hand, a session, or a tournament), it is equally important to evaluate the success (organizationally) of action taken or a decision made. Questions like:

• How has “X move” positively influenced you, your team, division, strategy or company?
• What desired outcomes were achieved?
• How do you make sense of the impact of your actions AND what would you change moving forward?
• What innovations or improvements would take your play to the next level?

3. Strategic Thinking

In poker, strategic thinking means know the rules of poker and poker strategy (mathematical odds, pot odds, implied odds, reading others, etc.). Organizationally this means understanding strategically how each person (role) impact’s the organization’s success. By understanding the rules of the business/industry you are in, you can choose to A) maximize them for your organization’s advantage, B) play better than your competitors, or C) create new rules.

In “What Poker Taught Me About Business,” Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos, shared the following:

“In a poker room, I could only choose which table I wanted to sit at. But in business, I realized that I didn’t have to sit at an existing table. I could define my own, or make the one that I was already at even bigger. (Or, just like in a poker room, I could always choose to change tables.)I realized that, whatever the vision was for any business, there was always a bigger vision that could make the table bigger.”

Strategic thinkers don’t just know their industry/market superbly well, they understand how to make new markets and discover Blue Oceans – thereby making the competition irrelevant!

4. Strategic Innovation and Improvement

One of the most important things you can do in poker is “switch gears” – changing your game and style of play to adapt to the emerging circumstances. The same is true when it comes to implementing your strategy. It is not a straight line from point A to point B; it is more of a cyclical pattern of experiments (and learning from those experiments) that catapults you from point A to point Z!

Poker, Strategy, and Experiential Learning Model

In overlaying the above four strategic capacities with the Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model, it was apparent that the lessons I learned from poker could be applied more systematically within a company.

Like poker, strategy isn’t just serendipitous luck. Unleashing a strategy culture requires intent in fine-tuning the very capacities that enable a strategic mindset, from an organization’s ability to take strategic action (regularly), to its willingness to pause and reflect, to learn from what’s working and what could be done differently the next time around. Apply strategic thinking and you’ve also learned to influence the rules of the game (or create new rules), and, most importantly, to use all of this knowledge to continually innovate your company’s way to success.

@TonySilbert

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Do you work in a high-reliability industry? Is your work – your success – based on facts, figures, and data? If so, you’re probably a big fan of evidence-based practice. I work with a great deal of healthcare professionals, engineers, scientists, financial folks, and technologists. Evidence-based practice, research, and evaluation are at the heart of their work, and for good reason. Rigor and reliability are needed to both guide and to evaluate the effectiveness of their technical, medical, and scientific methods and solutions.

Might you be drawn toward novelty, creativity, and invention? Do you or your organization thrive in the unknown? If so, you might call yourself an innovation junkie for whom the notion of evidence-based practice can feel constraining.

Regardless of the type of organization or industry you live and work in, a common strategic priority is to answer the following: “How can our team, business unit, company become more innovative, come up with more innovative products/solutions, or create a culture where creativity and innovation thrive?” This is no small task for any organization, much less a highly technical one.

Enter the paradox

Not long ago I was approached by a company eager to create an internal “innovation hub,” and admittedly weary to enter into the unknown. Below is an excerpt of his email:

I find it somewhat frustrating that these pieces are not backed up with externally validated evidence – careful evaluations by disinterested third parties, comparative studies with careful case-control conditions, use of plausible counterfactuals against which to assess the impact of particular actions, etc. This frustration may of course simply reflect that these evidence issues are among my key preoccupations in the substantive work in relation to my programmes.”

There is no doubt that evidence, research, and evaluations are highly valued commodities in many work environments – where experimentation and exploration happen only if you can prove it’s worked before.

When reliability becomes a real liability

Relying too heavily upon evidence-based practices (looking backward) can inhibit innovation (looking forward), stifling opportunity. Consider, for example, programs like Six Sigma, which may increase operational efficiency and reduce waste, yet might dismiss any chance of breakthrough discovery or invention – essentially choosing tweaks over transformation.

When talking with clients about innovation, I often get requests for case studies, research, articles, or evidence where “this sort of innovation has worked before”. These requests always make me smile! By its very nature, innovation means implies something novel or new, which makes it unlikely that evidence or hard research exists to support it. Anecdotal stories and testimonies highlighted in client case studies and business magazines might make one feel more calculated, confident, even daring, yet rarely carry a risk-free promise or guarantee.

If you want disruptive innovation, Whitney Johnson (@JohnsonWhitney), says, “Throw out the performance metrics you’ve always relied on”. She contends that new metrics are needed to measure value and success. AND, your odds of success will improve when you pursue a disruptive course.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m actually a fan of proven practices, evidence, scientific research, and evaluation. If I’m at the hospital and about to go under the knife, there’s something to be said for evidence-based practice in choosing the right doctor. And thank goodness for that doctor and/or that lab scientist who was willing to seek a new, unproven method, a better way!

Innovation implies risk and no guaranteed return on investment. If your organization wants innovation, evidence and proof can become a real liability, restricting learning and trail blazing altogether. As my good friend, Saul Kaplan (@Skap5) of the Business Innovation Factory says, “Tweaks won’t do it. We need to get things off of the whiteboard and into the real world!”

@tonysilbert

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Strategic planning is all about getting on the same page.   It is about creating shared meaning for coordinated action. However, it’s difficult for organizations to find shared anything when communicating complex ideas, goals, strategies, initiatives, and financials. This complexity often comes in the form of a thick document (called the strategic plan) and it makes a loud thud when placed on a desk or table.

This “credenza-ware” requires that you read, interpret and make sense of the plan. Most people try to figure out: what does this plan mean to me and to my job? And, how in my role, can I help the organization achieve it goals (or at least what I think they meant in the strategic plan)?  When you haven’t been part of creating the strategy, it is easy to misinterpret or not share the same enthusiasm and commitment of the few who did create the plan. You might consider yourself a can-do supporter, but you are most likely not on the same page.

Strategic Intent:

Strategy, in many ways has grown out of military planning – which has reinforced the notion of competition and winners/losers in business.  And while I’m not a big fan of win-lose metaphors, the notion of commander’s intent resonates.

When companies craft their vision, it can quickly denigrate into wordsmithing hell. A great vision captures the essence of the future direction in a short statement that conveys the organization’s strategic intent. Further, it invites others to join – while not dictating “HOW” to achieve this intent.

Strategy on a Page:

One of our most valued tools is the “strategy-on-a-page,” a one-page summary that visually displays the organization’s strategy – including the vision, strategy/goal areas, key initiatives (by goal), and top priorities.  The most important aspects of the business are conveyed simply and succinctly, on a page.

Wireless Company Strategy on a Page

Pharma Company Strategy on a Page

Museum Strategy on a Page

So if you want a “living” strategy – less is more. Focus on strategic intent and getting everyone on the same page – literally!

Here are some other strategy readings you might enjoy:

Strategic Planning:  It’s about creating a movement, not just a plan.

Reframing the Role of the Board in Strategic Planning.

SOARing from SWOT, 4 tips for strategic planning done right!

Check out our upcoming Strategy workshop in London: June 16 – 20

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But they all had one thing in common: they seemed to never meet expectations (if not fail altogether).   There was something missing between that great strategic planning process and the “actioning” processes that were intended to follow (but didn’t).

So what was missing?

First, the people ultimately capable of implementing the best ideas didn’t have a seat at the table.  Strategy then was the domain of the C-Suite and Big 5 Consulting firms.  And yet the best ideas and innovation rarely came from the top; in fact, they most often came from the farthest parts of an organization.

Second, we compromised values when they did not meet our quarterly objectives to be leaner and our drive to “do more with less.”  When Jack Welch first said that the only responsibility of a corporation was to “enhance shareholder value” I guess most people thought that meant, “make a lot of money fast and get rich.”  And they did.  Sometimes.  But we lost our hearts and souls in the process.

We forgot that sometimes it’s good business to do something that is worthwhile, despite the absence of double-digit growth objectives and ever increasing pressures for squeezing out margin.  A lot of people were not happy and we lost entire segments of our economy due to “globalization” and cheap labor offshore.

But then things started to change.  People started looking at the waste involved with shipping raw materials offshore only to ship the finished products back, not to mention the energy and passion lost when we focused on Return on Investment instead of the people that made things work.

Six years ago I attended my first Business Innovation Factory (BIF) summit in this far-away land called “Providence.”  I saw a town not unlike the Seattle of the 1980’s- where the creative arts and innovative thought spoke through the lingering industrial recession of …something…new on the horizon.

Now I am hopeful.

I heard people like Tony Hseih speak of “Return On Community” and investing in people …and the profits that follow.  I Listened to Alex Osterwalder, Dan Roam, and Dave Grey as they tossed out all the traditional approaches and started designing business models that were crazy, purposeful, and passion-driven.  I listened to Dan Pink remind us that people are really not motivated by money as much as they are excited about being relevant and making a difference.

I see corporations and communities starting to make strides in energy, poverty, and environment where government stalls.  I see education changing to excite and empower students to want to learn, instead of just teaching them to pass high-stakes standardized tests.  I see communities embracing paths of self-reliance, transforming public services into career path partnerships and entrepreneurship, and graduates who aren’t just looking for jobs, but creating them – and with the support of growing ecosystems, like the SEEED summit for growing this global social enterprise movement.

This is not your father’s business model… and thank goodness, because if we want a different “what” we need a different “how”:

As for the strategic planning I mentioned earlier – talk about a whole new ball game.  The SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) I was taught in business school are being replaced with more solution-focused approaches, like SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results).  More significantly, the innovative C-suites are putting more seats at the table in planning discussions – many even opting for more tables in the room, inviting staff and stakeholder input to the strategy.

And it’s working.  More than staying relevant and on top of their game, internal teams are gelling like never before, not just engaged but empowered to design more innovatively as they create and deliver value – for themselves and for the populations and communities they strive to serve.

This is not your father’s business model.  Things are changing.  And I am hopeful.

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