walkthroughs
Last week I spent a few hours a day attending AORTA’s Facilitation Skill-Up Intensive! course. I’m a huge fan of everything AORTA (Anti-Oppression Resource + Training Alliance) does. I love their approach to facilitation and the insightful trainings they offer. Even their cooperative organization structure is something to admire!
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Think about some of the ways we want to change the world. Some of my dreams are audacious reimaginings of the unjust systems that surround me. Many people in the social justice arena want to make the world a better place even while it’s a terrible one. We need
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Everything in the universe is in a constant state of change. The change can be imperceptible like the flowing water of a river. Or it may be more like the sudden eruption of a volcano changing the world around it. Change is inevitable. Yet when change comes, most organizations act
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The Golden Rule is a central Christian tenet for most practitioners. For the unfamiliar the saying means (roughly), “treat others how you yourself want them to treat you.” Professor Leonard Swidler writes that similar sayings sprung up in at least four places in 6th century B.C. He also describes
walkthroughs
I’ve written about the advice process many times since I started this blog. It’s one of the most thrilling discoveries I made after I entered senior leadership. The advice process upended everything I hated about hierarchy and top-down decision making. In most companies major decisions fall to the
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In community health, circumstances are everything. We can’t improve health at a population level until we understand those circumstances. One way community health practitioners do this is with a windshield survey. A windshield survey is a quick way to survey an area, usually a neighborhood or part of a
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I’ve been running Future Emergent for a year now! When I announced my new business last March, I wrote: “I am here to encourage you to dream bigger. I am here to tell you that we can do this. I am here to tell you that this can’t
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I’m allergic to cats. Maybe I never told you. When I went to the animal shelter the day we met, I actually met with two separate cats before you and your sister. The first cat, an older longhaired gentleman, set me off sneezing immediately. I lasted a few minutes
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A lot of nonprofits collect more data than they know what to do with. We might have a cool idea for a survey question. Or a foundation that’s giving us money asks us to collect it. Sometimes an off-hand request from the ED sends the staff down a data
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Last week, I said that our success in a system often means it’s tilted towards us. What I mean to say is that the systems that we live, work, and play in are arbitrary. There’s no reason they have to stay the way they are. For centuries, these
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Some articles get my goat and don’t let go. Last year I read an interview with a roundtable of CEOs at major food banks around the country. The headline quote was, “we have power, let’s use it wisely.” I want to unpack that! The panelists, well-meaning or well-intentioned,
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“Hooray! Our non-profit organization is ready to use its power for change. The status quo won’t stand a chance against us. Let’s see, we’ve got ourselves a fifteen-point plan to end racism. We’ve got our diagrams, our power analyses, and our group agreements. We’ve got
