Tourism in the Richmond Region: After the Deluge

The Richmond region has braced itself for a spike in tourism – driven both by economic recovery and by the 150th anniversary recognition of the American Civil War and the emancipation of millions of enslaved Americans. The organization responsible for representing and promoting the region outside of Richmond, the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (RMCVB) has started planning for life after the CW150.

The entire Floricane team is on deck – along with our project partners Peter Fraser and Lauren Stewart – to create a regional tourism vision plan with RMCVB over the next several months.

We’ll be casting a wide net to help the RMCVB identify the region’s best opportunities to market to, attract and meet the needs of the next generation of tourists, who will visit Richmond and the region over the next decade. In addition to one-on-one conversations with 20 regional government officials and

cultural leaders, we’ll facilitate a series of brainstorming conversations with several hundred representatives from the local retail, hospitality, transportation,

sports and creative communities. RMCVB will also be surveying targeted groups outside of Richmond to deepen our understanding of what “tourism products”

make Richmond most attractive.

The vision plan will be a energetic, high-level document designed to help the region’s tourism stakeholders anticipate the next wave of visitors to Richmond,

and to continue creating the right tourism infrastructure to make their experience exceptional. Our hope is to deliver the final plan to RMCVB and their community of friends and stakeholders as part of National Tourism Week in May.

Floricane to Facilitate HYPE Workshop

This month, Floricane joins the Greater Richmond Chamber’s HYPE program to help our area’s young professionals grow both personally and professionally.

On February 16, Floricane’s John Sarvay will guide participants through an abbreviated version of Floricane’s full-day Insights Discovery for Workplace Effectiveness workshop – which aims to increase self-awareness and strengthen work teams.

HYPE, short for Helping Young Professionals Engage, holds regular workshops as part of its Educational Series. Corey Humphrey, project manager with the Greater Richmond Chamber, said the choice to have John facilitate the workshop was an easy one.

“John is someone who is well recognized and respected in our community for his work,” said Humphrey. “Given his knowledge and reputation, it was a great opportunity.”

The Insights Training Workshop with John Sarvay will be held from 6:00pm – 8:00pm on Wednesday, February 16 at the Holiday Inn Express-Downtown. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

For more information, please visit HYPE ED online.

Finishing Up in Greater Fulton

In our first formal partnership with designer and planner Peter Fraser, we spent the better part of four months co-creating a community vision plan with the residents of the Greater Fultoncommunity in Richmond’s East End.

The draft plan – which was completed at the end of December – was largely built around the community’s strong neighborhood fabric, unique topography, rich history and solid recreational infrastructure. The plan was built by several hundred Fulton residents, who contributed their best ideas and perspectives along the way.

Over the next several months, work teams of neighborhood residents will be partnering with government and nonprofit stakeholders to prioritize initiatives, and to develop funding and implementation strategies. At that point, our team will briefly come back into the picture to transform the initial draft document into a

final vision plan for the community.

The community vision initiative was funded by Virginia LISC and organized by the amazing team at Fulton’s Neighborhood Resource Center. The grassroots

nature of the project allowed us to give voice to a wide variety of residents, and to create some unique partnerships between the Fulton community and a number of Richmond-based organizations.

Certainly, the best part of the Fulton project has been the people. In addition to working with a new team of contributors, I have had the chance to engage with

communities of people I never would have met – from the amazing leaders at the global Christian organization Youth With A Mission to the life-long residents of Fulton who continue to hammer away for the return to a vibrant neighborhood.

We may be finished with Fulton’s plan, but Peter and I both know that we’re going to stick around to see the residents cross the finish line.

Climbing Creative Mountains

I spent a recent Saturday at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond remembering why I enjoy working with groups.

“Climbing the Right Mountains: Creating Your Best Creative Life” is a full-day workshop at VisArts that attempts to walk creative individuals through some of the bigger creative drivers in their lives – their personality styles, their core values and their beliefs (about themselves, about their creativity, about the world). The

idea is that by helping people hit the proverbial pause button, and to reflect more intentionally on their lives, they’ll find different approaches to their creative life.

There were six participants in the most recent offering of the workshop – an ideal number for plenty of relaxed, small group exploration. This group came primed

for it – almost everyone was wrestling with specific transitions; one person was moving to Virginia Beach the next week, several were in or nearing retirement.

While we didn’t get to the genuinely visual part of the session – capturing their ideal creative life on paper with pastels and pencils – it turned into a reinvigorating day for me thanks to the energy of the group. They all seemed to leave recharged, as well.

I walked into the room that Saturday morning wondering why I had signed up to teach yet another workshop. I left six hours later wondering why I wasn’t teaching more of them.

That’s the definition of a successful day.

An Introvert’s Lesson: Go Large To Recharge

When I facilitate large groups – especially around personality preferences – I usually mention the curious path that led me to a career designed for energetic extraverts. That curious path was, essentially, a very direct path.

I was happily plugging along in my communications job at Luck Stone – hammering out the employee magazine and videos and HR manuals – when my boss at the time, Tammy Cummings, popped into my office.

“We’ve been asked to roll out an intensive customer service training program to every employee this summer,” she said. Luck Stone at the time had about 800

employees.

“That’s nice,” I replied, as I typed away.

“Since we only have one person on staff that does training, you’re going to spend some time delivering the program in the field,” she continued.

“No, I’m not,” I opined, barely looking up. “I don’t do well with groups.”

“Do you want to have a job at the end of the summer?” she asked.

“I’d love to awkwardly stand in front of groups of truck drivers and mechanics and deliver this training program,” I said after a pause, “especially if it involves leading them through an activity called ‘Build Your Customer Service Superhero’ using construction paper and glue.”

That summer, I co-facilitated over 60 days of stand-up training, including one very bumpy session in western Virginia where those truck drivers and mechanics

went into open revolt as I passed out the construction paper. “I haven’t played with colored paper since kindergarten,” one employee said in a tone of voice that

suggested he didn’t have plans to break that particular streak.”

I learned a lesson in adaptability that day.

And over that summer more than a decade past, I began to discover how to facilitate large groups of people through a wide variety of activities and discussions. I learned how to listen, how to ask better questions, when small groups work better than large groups, and how to move difficult conversations forward.

Those first few months and years, I would come home exhausted after a full day of facilitating. An extreme introvert, I would expend all of my energy being in

the moment and engaged with a group – and then go home and almost literally watch the paint peel from the wall. My wife knew not to ask me how my day went, or tell me how hers went, or ask what I wanted for dinner, until I’d had several hours of severe, introverted quiet.

Over time, I learned to strengthen my ability to adapt my style, and to better understand how to facilitate in ways that actually recharged my battery. Working

with groups became a pleasure and a passion, not a task, and it has since become a career.

In early February, I facilitated six straight days of employee discussions, training and workshops at the Library of Virginia, the Virginia Credit Union and the Visual Arts Center of Richmond – 35 hours of group interaction with well over 100 people in total. When I came home from the last session, Nikole asked me how my day went, told me how hers was and asked me what I wanted for dinner. And I even had enough energy to play with Thea.

Thanks for the push, Tammy.

Making Maestros Out of Managers

What can your organization learn from a symphony orchestra?

Find out this March, when the Richmond Symphony and Floricane present The Music Paradigm – a unique experiential seminar that uses an orchestra to demonstrate key concepts for a highly effective business team.

In this interactive program, the Richmond Symphony will serve as a metaphor for a dynamic organization. Participants are seated among the orchestra players as they explore concepts like teamwork, leadership and communication.

Kathryn Bishop Pullam, Assistant Director of Business Development with the Richmond Symphony, said her own experience with The Music Paradigm was memorable.

“I was amazed by the different elements of business that were used – what The Music Paradigm is able to illustrate with an orchestra is really cool, and quite inspiring,” she said.

According to Pullam, the Music Paradigm is an important tool which Richmond area businesses should take advantage of.

“Right now, many businesses are reevaluating themselves and trying new things. This seminar allows businesses to think creatively … it is the perfect bridge between the arts and the business world,” she said.

The Music Paradigm, created by Roger Nierenberg, has gained worldwide notoriety since its start in 1995. Nierenberg’s clients have included Capital One, Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Pfizer.

The Music Paradigm will be held on March 22 at the Carpenter Theatre in Richmond, Virginia.

Reserve your seat today!

Self-Awareness and Workplace Effectiveness: A HYPE Primer

Next Wednesday, February 16, I'll be facilitating an abbreviated self-awareness workshop for the Greater Richmond Chamber's yougn professionals organization. HYPE – Helping Young Professionals Engage – has regular education programs for its active, and growing, membership, and our introduction to the Insights Discovery assessment tool is on deck next week.

The workshop couldn't have been scheduled at a better time – we just finished facilitating more than 60 hours of Insights training to large groups at the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Credit Union, and have scheduled our next full-day public workshop for April 26.

During next week's HYPE-ED workshop, I'll introduce Insights Discovery, talk about the role our perceptions play in almost all of our workplace engagements, and take the group through some extremely interactive experiences to help each person gain a better sense of their personal style and how it impacts their effectiveness, their approach to teams and the way they communicate on the job.

The HYPE-ED workshop will be held at the Holiday Inn Express Downtown (on East Cary Street at 2nd Street) from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 16. Advance registration is $15 and includes non-alcoholic drinks and snacks – and a great lesson in self-awareness. You can register here, and find out more about HYPE and its programs here.

Returning to the Scene of the Valentine

Nothing beats returning to the scene of the crime.

The management team at the Valentine Richmond History Center invited me back for a bit of a check-up in January. A year earlier, we had tied a bow on their

latest strategic plan and parted ways.

A lot has changed in a year.

The Valentine RHC has some new key staff, is making some major enhancements to their Sculpture Garden and has started to chip away at their ambitious plan; the management team meets several times a year with a strategic planning committee of their board to check on progress and talk about the future.

On the Floricane front – well, we actually know what we’re doing now. And we've learned a huge amount along the way, including during our six months with the Valentine RHC team. We’re fortunate to be able to fold those lessons into the work we’re doing right now.

Spending a few casual hours with the Valentine team discussing lessons learned, progress made and opportunities that still remain was a great use of my time. It’s the sort of conversation I hope to continue having with clients.