Kitchen Sink: When It Rains, It Snows. A Lot.

When it rains, it pours. Or snows, if you've been living in Richmond this winter.

The year started with a handful of strategic planning projects on the books, and the opportunities to help organizations improve their effectiveness, focus and cultures are keeping the Floricane team hopping.What follows is a quick overview of some of the amazing work we're doing for organizations throughout Central Virginia:

• The Valentine Richmond History Center: After delivering the final draft of the museum's new strategic plan to its Board of Trustees toward the end of January, we're working with the project team to make a few revisions to the document. Since October, we've worked with the Richmond History Center to explore how it can position itself to engage proactively around the tsunami of change on the horizon in the areas of technology, regional demographics, culture and economics.
• The James House: We worked hard last year to help the Hopewell-based nonprofit develop a strategic plan that positioned it to better support residents of Tri-Cities community impacted by sexual assault and domestic violence. We're now three months into implementation of that plan, working closely with the CEO and Board of Directors to increase its capacity, strengthen its leadership and streamline some of its processes.
• The John Randolph Foundation: I spent an afternoon with the staff of the foundation created by Hopewell's John Randolph Medical Center discussing how team dynamics and personality styles can impact the team performance.
• Virginia Society of CPAs: It was nice to return to the offices of my first client almost a year-to-the-day after our first engagement! Having facilitated the VSCPA team through a series of workshops on the Insights personality instrument, I returned in January to explain the tool to a new employee and answer her questions about it.
• The Visual Arts Center of Richmond: I spent several hours in January facilitating board and staff members as they brainstormed future exhibitions for the organization's gallery spaces.
• Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau: I'll be working with the marketing team of RMCVB later in February as part of their annual retreat. We'll spend the morning exploring a shared vision for the team, and developing action steps to help support a team climate that excites and engages the whole group. The afternoon -- a creative team activity currently being designed -- promises to make the day even more fun!
• Morton's the Steakhouse: In a unique partnership with The Hodges Partnership and Richmond.com, we'll be facilitating a series of six community conversations at Morton's this year. The first one is slated for February 28 with a focus on how young professionals see and experience the Richmond region. Keep your eyes tuned to Richmond.com for more details!
• Blue Sky Fund: Situated in the heart of Church Hill, this organization has a powerfully simple mission -- "To provide transformational experiences for urban youth through outdoor education." I'll be helping to facilitate a portion of their Board of Director's annual retreat this month.

I recently wrote about the work we're starting with Bon Secours Health Systems of Richmond, and we're engaged in another half-dozen conversations with area organizations interested in working with the Floricane team for strategic planning, facilitation and organizational development support. If this is what winter feels like, we can't wait for spring to get here!

Facilitation: Breaking out the Conversational Scrubs

It's always nice when you find a piece of work that connects your competencies and passions to an organization that actively practices its core values in its day-to-day business.

That's the intersection at which I find myself with one of the newer opportunities to cross my path this year -- helping a team at Bon Secours Richmond Health System design and facilitate a series of conversations with physicians about their relationship with, understanding of and questions about a local hospital.

I had lunch today with a friend from Bon Secours who works closely with their change management initiative, which is focused on creating a values-based, service-focused culture throughout the Bon Secours community in Richmond and Hampton Roads. We talked at length about some of the different filters through which a non-profit, community-oriented, faith-based medical organization sees the world -- in contrast, obviously, to profit-based companies. But we also talked about how the leadership at Bon Secours Richmond has catalyzed changes that just don't happen without direction, focus and measurement.

I told her that I was struck -- though I'm literally only ankle-deep into this project -- by the competency, energy and outcome-focus of the project team whose work I will support through my facilitation. Next week, I spend an afternoon touring and exploring the local hospital. Then we'll map out the outcomes for the physician discussions, design the questions that need to be asked, check in with hospital administration and get rolling.

I expect to learn volumes about the medical profession in general, but more specifically I am intrigued personally about the opportunity to better understand the relationship between a single hospital and the community of physicians and patients it serves. And I'm excited to experience a values-based organizational culture as it goes about the business of listening, asking questions and making strategic decisions that will enhance its relationships with its clients.

Strategic Planning: A New Vision for Children, Incorporated

Often described as one of Richmond's hidden gems, Children Incorporated has been in the business of connecting individuals to children in need for almost five decades. Their sponsorship model -- inviting people to contribute on a monthly basis to make a difference in the life of a single child --has been at the heart of the Richmond-based nonprofit's work from the get-go.

Floricane has been asked to work with Children Incorporated (CI) on the first phases of their year-long strategic planning process. During the next several months, we will engage the organization in a number of important conversations and begin to lay the foundation for a strategic plan with clear outcomes and measures -- and a plan that clearly repositions the organization in its work in the areas of child sponsorship and global fund development.

In addition to a comprehensive online assessment of the organization that seeks feedback from staff and board, donors and contributors, volunteers and community partners, we'll be meeting individually to interview key stakeholders in the organization about its strengths and opportunities. Simultaneously, a small team will research and benchmark best practices around the world in a handful of areas important to CI's future growth and success. All of this perspective and context will help frame a series of working sessions with CI stakeholders to revisit the organization's vision, mission and guiding principles.

In its 46 years of serving children, CI has remained committed and focused in its work. As it nears a milestone anniversary, it has an important opportunity to better align its work to a rapidly changing global environment.

Here's how CI describes its evolution on its website:

Children, Incorporated was founded in 1964 by Jeanne Clarke Wood. Compassion for needy children was bred in her, as her parents, Dr. and Mrs. J. Calvitt Clarke, were noted philanthropists during their lifetime. The beginning of Children, Incorporated was a modest one, and the first youngsters Mrs. Wood helped were from Guatemala. On a visit to Guatemala in 1964, she had photographed 95 poverty - stricken children and had written accounts of the miserable circumstances in which each child existed. Immediately upon her return to Richmond, Virginia, her hometown, Mrs. Wood began to seek help for the 95 little Guatemalans. She opened an office in her own home and by writing letters and through magazine advertisements she told of the children's plight.

In the spring of 1971, Mrs. Wood made a second trip to Guatemala. During the lapse of time between her two visits there - from 1964 to 1971, barely seven years - her program of help to children, begun on such a small scale, had flourished. So, from fewer than 100 children in three small projects, Children, Incorporated now has over 16,000 children in 300 projects in 24 countries around the world.

Today, more than two dozen employees manage thousands of contributions made annually by individual donors -- as well as larger bequests -- and works to keep sponsors connected to the children whose lives they touch.

I've been impressed over the past several weeks by the commitment of the senior staff I've met. There is a clarity of purpose that spans the organization's leadership, and a desire to make meaningful changes that can help CI continue to be successful in its work.

As we complete this first phase of work in May, I'll be interested in seeing how CI begins to evolve in its strategic direction. I'm pretty sure the organization's commitment to children will remain front-and-center.

Winding Down Projects

One of the more enjoyable longer-term contracts I've had is beginning to wind down, which has gotten me thinking about the whole notion of "letting go" of clients.

When I look back at the clients I've worked with over the last year that I've been in business, what I see is a long list of people I grown to like and appreciate -- and organizations about which I care. And while I may be closing the door on a piece of work, I'm not sure I'll ever be in the business of ending my relationship with clients.

For more than a decade, my clients were internal. We all worked for the same company. Essentially, none of us ever went anywhere and, over time, our relationships ebbed and flowed.

Today, I wonder at the lack of closure that created. Projects rarely ended, they tended to fade away -- or transition into different projects.

I've also started mulling over some ideas for my own business -- like, for starters, ways to create closure with clients as I wrap up a strategic plan or finish a facilitation project. I think it's important for my clients to know how much of an impact they've made on me, and for all of us to acknowledge the end of an important chapter of good work.

Climbing Your Creative Mountains

At the end of February, I'll be teaching a workshop at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond focused on the alignment of your personal values, beliefs and creative endeavors. The six-hour session will help participants recenter their lives -- especially their creative lives -- around those things that matter most to them.

What excites me most about this workshop is that the space -- the Visual Arts Center -- demands a very different sort of instruction than most of the environments I find myself engaged as a teacher, trainer or facilitator. My goal will be to make the day as interactive, tactile and fun as possible, even as I push participants to dig deep to identify and define their core values and beliefs.

If you participated in one of last year's Next Steps sessions, this workshop puts a small nugget of that program under the microscope. Or a kaleidoscope.

For details and registration information, visit the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.

Getting the Advice that Matters in a New Business

As I've been preparing for next week's presentation to the local chapter of the American Marketing Association -- I'll be talking about the benefits of establishing an advisory board for your business -- I've been thinking moreand more about the role my own advisory board has played with Floricane.

The seven (my new marketing consultant just joined the original group of six) members of Floricane's advisory board have alternately helped me think out loud about my business, challenged me to focus, called me out on my commitment and encouraged my best thinking. Their support and questions and challenges and perspectives have been invaluable.

Next Tuesday morning, members of my advisory board will join me as I discuss how to establish and utilize an advisory board with a new business. In the room will be members of the American Marketing Association. Here's the skinny:

John will share his experiences of launching a new business during the recession and the value of establishing an advisory board of professionals who knew more about starting and operating a business than he did. After a few fits and starts, the Floricane Advisory Board did exactly what it was designed to do -- it kicked John's entrepreneurial butt up-and-down the street a few times and challenged him to get serious about his business.

The event is for AMA chapter members only; if you qualify, register here.

Floricane Has an App for That

If you have an iPhone, you should have the new Floricane app.

Designed on a bit of a whim, the new Floricane app consolidates the Floricane weblog feed, Twitter stream and newsletter archive into a handy app that -- for the time being -- is nothing more than a glorified newsreader. That said, it was fun to cobble together and it's nice to think that I'm likely the only strategic planning consultant in Richmond with my own iTunes business app.

Go check it out here.

An Evening at Morton’s - Six Times the Fun

When I agreed to live blog last year's first An Evening at Morton's community conversation, I didn't have many expectations. The topic was sports in Richmond, which has historically been low on my "pay attention to" list, and my primary job would be sit at the children's table with my laptop, quietly typing away as the adults had a free-spirited discussion about Richmond as a sports town. The arrangement worked well, primarily because Josh Dare of The Hodges Partnership is both an avid sports fan and an exemplary facilitator.

But Josh was unavailable for the second event which turned out to be a lively conversation about arts and culture in the Richmond region, and I found myself in the thick of the conversation while THP's Tony Scida rode shotgun with the live blogging. The group took the reins -- who needs a facilitator when you have Harry Kollatz, David Fisk and Ana Ines Kin g bonding over a bottle of red wine?

The essential idea of An Evening at Morton's has always been the same -- bring a group of people together over dinner at Morton's the Steakhouse to have a topical discussion about the Richmond region. Live blog, tweet and audio record the evening so that others can dig in, weight in or simply listen in.

One thing led to another, and by late summer I found myself facilitating a discussion with leaders from Virginia's higher education system (a seperate project organized by The Hodges Partnership) and back at the table again for the third An Evening at Morton's event, which was focused on Richmond's nonprofit community.

It turns out that 2010 will see An Evening at Morton's moving a bit toward prime time -- with six events starting in February, and with the sponsorship support of Richmond.com, one of the region's top news and information hubs. I've been asked to facilitate all six, which are described briefly below.

One of the biggest changes this year is the addition of Richmond.com to the fold. They'll not only host the live blog of each event on their site, but will provide ongoing context about each topic for their readers and work to generate broader conversations in the community. Since their new Chief Connector is Rick Thornton, who helped lead the Times-Dispatch's popular Public Square events, I have no doubt they will be up to the task.

The remaining usual suspects on the planning side of the table are Morton's AnnMarie Grohs, THPs Julia Webster and Josh Dare, and me. Tony Scida will continue live blogging, and the editor of the acclaimed Downtown Short Pump news site will be live tweeting.

We're in full-on planning mode right now for the February session, which is focused on the business climate in the Richmond region for young professionals. While the tidal wave of layoffs that hit the region over the winter of 2008-2009 hit an older demographic hard, the area's younger professional demographic is feeling the full force of a tight job market. We'll be pulling together a unique group of folks whose job has been to pay attention to and deal with young professionals in the region for the February 23 event.

The other five sessions will follow every other month. In April, the focus will be on Richmond neighborhoods, and we hope to really raise the heat in June with a media-centric panel discussion the state of media (news and other) in the region. August's focus will be on the James River, and October promises a tasty discussion about food and dining in Richmond. We'll close out the year in December with a conversation about transportation.

Keep an eye out in this space or at Richmond.com for details on each event as the dates draw closer.