Sticking with the Basics at ChildFund

I have an interesting new role with the executive team at ChildFund, International. I’m trying to fill the shoes of their former director of strategy. She just left to do a little strategic work at a foundation run by a guy named Bill Gates.

Because she left at a critical planning window for the global child development organization, they began looking for someone who could facilitate and guide their planning process even as they recruited a new director of strategy. That’s how I find myself spending big slices of the next six months helping the senior team at ChildFund map out, prioritize and align big buckets of strategic and operational work.

In many ways, the work takes me back to my organizational development work at Luck Companies, supporting key leaders as they sought to implement big changes. It’s real journeyman work, requiring solid process and facilitation skills – along with the ability to remember that I’m not the boss. (That’s sometimes a challenge for me.) My work at ChildFund isn’t to develop strategy, or invent a process. No, it’s simpler (read: harder) than that – they simply want me to take their existing process for their strategic business planning and facilitate it effectively.

Make it better, not different.

Understand. Organize. Facilitate. Clarify. Those words are at the heart of the role I’ll be playing as I partner with ChildFund in the coming months.