Six Big Trends Affecting Nonprofits (and everyone else)

At last week's Nonprofit Learning Point annual conference, close to two hundred Richmond nonprofit employees and consultants gathered to hear keynote speaker Peter Brinckerhoff address the current round of generational change impacting American society. I wasn't startled by Brinckerhoff's presentation, as I'd been paying pretty close attention for several years to the ways in which the generational shifts have been – and will continue to – impact organizations. But Brinckerhoff's good humor, engaging style and succint approach to six major trends he sees stretching across the Boomer/GenX/Millennial divide made the morning both enjoyable and educational.

He began by giving the audience some deeper clarity on what divided the three primary generations populating our organizations today (he did also speak to the generations that came before Boomers, and who still play a big role in our culture) – essentially:

• Boomers = Television shaped their worldview. They think they saved the world in the 1960s. They're ready to save it again.
• Generation X = Personal computers changed their worldview. They're half the size as Boomers and Millennials, population-wise. They value work/life balance.
• Millennials = (Brinckerhoff calls them Generation@) Technology is invisible to them; it's like air. They like doing things in groups. They're smart, and eager to contribute.

It was Brinckerhoff's overview of six cultural trends connected to the generational shift that I found most interesting – it echoes some of the work I've done with local nonprofits as it relates to changes in demographics, diversity and technology. The six big areas Brinckerhoff explored were:

• Financial Stress
• Technological Acceleration
• Population Diversity
• Redefinition of Family
• Me Branding
• Work/Life Balance

You can download a copy of his presentation from the NLP conference, or visit his website for more details.

All the News That’s Fit To Print

If you missed it last month while you were at the beach, the Richmond Times-Dispatch inked a lengthy (and lovely) profile of Floricane – and some of its great nonprofit clients – in its Monday business section. The inclusion of clients like the Valentine Richmond History Center and Children, Incorporated are important reminders that our success as a small business is built on relationships with more than 30 fantastic clients and community partners over our first two years of strategic planning and facilitation work.

Below is a brief excerpt. You can visit the Times-Dispatch online to read the whole story.

Bill Martin turned to John Sarvay of Floricane last year when the Valentine Richmond History Center began to formulate its long-term strategic plan.

In the past, the museum routinely had created a five-year plan to define its mission and activities, as well as its needs and vision for the future.

This time, "we didn't want to use the traditional process," said Martin, the director of the museum. "We wanted to develop a process that engaged the staff and the board of trustees and encouraged people to look much farther into the future."

Sarvay's work with the Valentine Richmond History Center cascaded into projects with other nonprofit organizations, such as the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, where Sarvay taught team-building workshops.

Brother, Can You Spare Some Time?

One of my first engagements as a new entrepreneur in 2009 was designing and delivering a program for a huge swath of recently unemployed workers in the Richmond area – first at the Greater Richmond Chamber with Stephanie Kirksey, and then at St. Michael's Catholic Church with Eleanor Rouse.

St. Mike's has been running its Jobs Assistance Ministry since the fall of 2008, and has cycled as many a 1,000 people through an intensive series of networking lunches, workshops and coaching sessions – all designed to help displaced workers land a job, set a new course or adjust to the abrupt changes in their circumstances.

I'm excited to be returning to St. Mike's on Wednesday, Septembe r 29, for their weekly JAM lunch session. The focus of my conversation will be all about the importance of networking – or really, the importance of human relationships in networking.

During my own journey from unemployment to self-employment, I had three things working in my favor – luck, discipline and time.

Luck: The day after I was unexpectedly laid off from Luck Stone in November of 2008, I happened to have coffee scheduled with James Ukrop of the supermarket and banking fame. While I'd worked for Ukrop's through high school and college, I had never met Jim. We scheduled coffee months earlier after a mutual friend suggested me meet to talk about community efforts in the Richmond region. And while we did have that discussion, we also talked about life after Luck. He was encouraging, and he helped connect me with a small handful of people in town who have been equally supportive of my work with Floricane.

Discipline: During the first eight weeks after leaving Luck Stone, I met with almost 250 people – former colleagues, old friends, friends of former colleagues, colleagues of old friends and an assortment of connections established through social media tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. Taking weekends and holidays out of the mix, I averaged five meetings a day through the middle of January. None of them resulted in work. None of them were designed to land work. Almost every conversation was focused on building relationships, building confidence in my ability to start a business, and learning from the successes and mistakes of others. I had to force myself to keep pushing, keep scheduling, keep showing up in a positive, curious light. Most of those 250 people remain part of my business and personal network almost two years later.

Time: While my intent in all of my early networking was to connect, not to sell, I certainly knew even in those early months that selling was going to be an important success factor. The only one, initially! In effect, I spent all of 2009 networking and connecting and doing far more pro bono work than I had anticipated. I netted 20% of my take home salary from Luck Stone during that first year; my family lived off of my 401(k). But a funny thing happened as the calendar flipped into 2010 – the phone started to ring, and I began to do paying work for clients. More than half of them were connections established through the networking I did a year ago, or longer. In fact, almost every single piece of business that Floricane has generated since the beginning of this year – five times the business, paid or pro bono, done last year – has been the result of a personal relationship.

Luck. Discipline. Time. Relationships.

Those will be at the heart of my discussion with the St. Mike's JAM attendees on September 29. You can find out more about St. Mike's Job Assistance Ministry on LinkedIn.

Hold That Note: Experiencing The Music Paradigm

Early in 2011, The Richmond Symphony and Floricane will be bringing The Music Paradigm to Richmond. A convergence of music, self-awareness and leadership development, The Music Paradigm essentially seats a group of leaders and learners smack in the middle of a full orchestra for a powerful series of lessons on discipline, accountability, communication, awareness and leadership.

I spent an afternoon with The Music Paradigm and more than 50 students in UVa's Darden School of Business executive program to see – and experience – the program for myself. I'll let conductor (and instructor) Roger Nierenberg tell the rest with a few of the insightful observations he shared with the group at Darden:

Meaning [in an orchestra] is conveyed by sound, and people communicating without any words at all.

What are the behaviors? What are the skills that give these musicians this competitive advantage? While the rest of you were enjoying your childhood, we were locked away with our instruments, learning to be accountable – because you can't blame anyone else for the sounds that come from your own instrument.

These musicians are technical skill personified, but there is another set of skills they manifest – people skills.

I won't share much of what Nierenberg said or did – part of the energy of his session is the surprise and spontaneity. In the October issue of the Floricane newsletter, the symphony's Kathryn Pullam and I will sit down on video to talk about our unique experiences with The Music Paradigm.

The Music Paradigm will be in Richmond in March of 2011, courtesy of the Richmond Symphony and Floricane. Keep your eyes open for details this fall!

Take Me To The River

One of Floricane's longest running engagements has been the Evening at Morton's community conversations launched by The Hodges Partnership and the awesome manager local Morton's the Steakhouse; we've facilitated close to a dozen dinner conversations with leading community leaders around topics like arts in Richmond, the state of nonprofits and Richmond's best neighborhoods. In one of those strange moments where a random choice meets the weekly headlines, last winter we selected the James River as the topic for the August conversation – which happens online next Tuesday evening.

Who knew that the City of Richmond would be wading through proposals to take a hard look at what one consultant calls "Richmond's great, wet Central Park"? Or that everyone's favorite columnist, Michael Paul Williams, would champion the James River in his Tuesday column this week? Or that we'd find such a fantastic cross-section of passionate river rats willing to show up and talk about the future of the James River on an August evening?

Richmond.com has all the details on next Tuesday's Evening at Morton's conversation – including ways you can submit questions, or follow it live on the web or on Twitter. There are also profiles of our guests with their thoughts on what makes the James River such an amazing asset to the Richmond community.

Playground Perspective: Try To See It My Way

There's an old adage often bandied about in facilitation and consulting - "Meet your clients where they are," it goes, "not where you want them to be."

A recent parenting moment was a powerful reminder of the applicability of that adage on the home front.

Thea went to the hospital last month for outpatient surgery. She's had a herniated bellybutton since birth - a fairly normal problem - and it needed to be resolved.

Thea, perspectiveA friend told me, "She'll never remember it, and you'll never forget it!"

How right he was!

I sometimes struggle to appreciate that Thea experiences the world differently from me. In so many ways, her experiences are much more pure, less filtered. They're certainly less rooted in experience - or information overload!

My perspective: Our daughter was in a scary environment with a bunch of people she didn't know. We were putting her into the care of strangers for the first time ever. People die under anesthesia. Surgery is bad. We're not in control.

Her perspective: "I'm going to the hospital with Blue Dog to see the doctor to fix my bellybutton," she brightly informed me when I went to wake her the morning of the surgery. When it was time for surgery, Thea gave us both hugs and then skipped off with "Nurse Cupcake" to hunt for duck food. The surgeon said she walked right into the surgery, climbed onto the table and proceeded to chat herself to sleep as the anesthesia took effect.

The surgery went without a hitch. And though she started well, she woke confused and disoriented. We quickly scooped up our sobbing toddler in the recovery room.

By lunchtime, she was curled on the sofa with her favorite stuffed animals, a cup of juice and 32 episodes of "Curious George" teed up.

And over the next 24 hours -- when I was ready for her to recover and move on -- Thea was just starting to process her experience.

"I went to look for duck food and they didn't have any, and I woke up and you weren't there," she said (repeatedly over the next few days). "Then you were there, and Mama was there, and Mema was there, and you had Blue Dog and my duckie."

The day was a whirlwind, and every time I tried to anticipate Thea's needs, it turned out she needed something very different. When I thought she needed a hug, she needed to skip off on her own. When I thought the worst was over, it had just happened in her world. When I was ready to move on, she needed more time to process.

The lesson? Pay attention to the people in your life. Appreciate that their experiences are different from yours. Take the time to ask them what they really need from you, and be prepared to offer it.

Letter From John: It’s A Balancing Act

Over the past 18 months, Floricane has had the opportunity to work with more than 50 organizations doing phenomenal work in Central Virginia with a wide range of focus - health care, human services, housing and urban development, arts and culture and history - and they are all making a majorimpact on our community.

We've spent a lot of time paying attention to how these organizations operate, and what distinguishes those that are struggling from those who continue to thrive.

The best of these organizations share a commond denominator -- balance. They work to discover and maintain their own unique equilibrium in three areas:

Tactical & Strategic: Part of running a successful organization is knowing what you need to do to be successful tomorrow - and in ten years. Keeping one foot in the tactical day-to-day business and another in the future is not easy work. In an initial meeting about strategic planning with one local organization, the CEO talked about looking 30 years ahead while his board president focused on a more actionable, two-year plan. What could have been a real disaster instead turned into a visionary document, crafted by staff and board members, that framed short-term tactics against major changes in demographics and technology.

Head & Heart: An old mentor of mine used to joke that the longest distance in the world was the 13-inches between your head and your heart. Strong organizations understand the value of creating a high-speed rail line that clearly links the organization's bottom line with its core values and culture. And the strongest spend time developing individual leaders who demonstrate strong emotional intelligence competencies - who can manage with their heads, and lead with their hearts.

Leadership & Teamwork: Nothing within organizations happens without collaboration, and I'm always surprised by those who believe otherwise. Being intentional about teamwork - rewarding collaboration - puts great organizations ahead of the rest. Leading collaborative teams requires that leaders listen deeply, act with integrity and help groups collectively move toward a shared vision of what they can accomplish - together.

It's a rare organization that creates its own sense of balance in each of these three areas. It's been awfully inspiring to support - and learn from - those that are really working at it.

Say Sesquicentennial Seven Times Fast

There’s no better time than the eve of a sesquicentennial for the small team at the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar to focus on their future.

Although the old Tredegar iron works site has hosted museums before, the American Civil War Center opened its doors to the public in 2006. It was the first museum in the nation to focus on the three key perspectives on the major American conflict – Union, Confederate, and African American.

That unique approach – and a mission to “tell the whole story of the conflict that still shapes our nation” – made a recent, two-day staff retreat a compelling challenge.

Because the 13 person team was almost evenly divided between four-year veterans, recent hires and in-betweeners, we started our work together with some discussion on how each group saw the institution and its purpose. The different perspectives were both real and important, and they gave shape to subsequent discussions on the center’s emerging role as a central starting point on the road to understanding the American Civil War for Richmond residents, tourists, history buffs and academics.

Over the course of our two days together, the staff reworked its strategic focus and increased its sense of alignment. In the coming weeks, the staff will work with the center’s national board of directors to fine tune their strategic work and position the center as a critical hub in the 150th year commemoration of the first shots fired in the American Civil War.