Letter from John: April 2012

Two months of actively considering the power of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony at the elbow of Steven Smith, music director for the Richmond Symphony, can really stretch your mind.

And then there's the experience of standing on stage with Steven -- along with 60 professional musicians and 80 hospital leaders from HCA's CJW Medical Center. 140 people experiencing music as a metaphor for change and leadership is a whole new level of stretching your mind.

During our exploration of Beethoven and his Fifth Symphony, Steven talked often about the power of bringing new, and different, voices to a vision. Steven is talking about instruments and musicians, and a musical vision, of course. But that hardly matters once you understand, and experience, the depth and complexity of Beethoven's Fifth.

This month's newsletter is an interesting departure for me -- and for Floricane. It reflects a multitude of voices that aren't mine. Our editorial coordinator, Sabrina Barekzai, reflects on her vantage point at the recent Symphony/HCA mash up, while our new project manager, Josh Epperson, deconstructs our new collaborative creativity series. On the business front, two of our lead consultants -- Sarah Milston and Debra Saneda -- chime in on their recent projects.

Increasingly, the individuals who have joined our team are tuning their own voices and contributing to the symphony of change we're committed to performing in Richmond. (In fact, Sarah, Debra and Cara will be performing as a trio with the staff of The Daily Planet later this month!) It's part of our evolution as a business, and it ebbs and flows as we move from idea to event, from client to initiative.

Striking a balance between strategic and organic is hard for any business, and particularly hard for individuals in leadership roles within organizations. I'm fortunate to have an exceptionally self-aware group to keep me in check and hold me increasingly accountable. (Sharing my Insights profile with my team = wise + challenging!)

I hope you enjoy the symphony of voices captured in this month's newsletter. Let us know how you're making music, and giving others a chance to experience the power of a shared performance.

Playground Perspectives: April 2012

As she prepares to celebrate her fourth birthday, Thea is faced with the challenge of determining which of her best friends will be invited to attend the party.

Let's not even talk about whether boys are allowed, or what color icing the cupcakes should have on them!

I exaggerate, but only slightly. It's been amazing to watch from the sidelines as our young child begins to create and navigate relationships, and circles of relationships.

Co ming home from the playground the other day, she and one of her best friends clutched hands as they ran across the field. Inseparable. Beautiful. And subject to change at a moment's notice.

How like our world of work. Except we don't slow down to see the beauty as often as we should...

One of our clients is Bon Secours Virginia, an organization that has invested itself tremendously in the development of its people and its culture. Their partnership with the Gallup Organization is well-known in leadership circles; albeit less-known here in Richmond.

Gallup has found a powerful voice for itself in the development of strong cultures and organizational leadership. Its engagement instruments help organizations measure a set of factors that are key for a highly engaged group of employees (or children, really).

A while back, we spent six months exploring the connection between leadership and engagement with Bon Secours Virginia's top leaders. One of the engagement questions Gallup consistently asks in organizations continued to surface -- Do you have a best friend at work?

As you might imagine, people consistently wrestle with what that question means, and its implications.

Most of us work in environments that hammer home messages about the separation of our work life and our home life - messages about work/life balance, work friends and real friends, leaving our personal issues at home.

Deep down, most of us also know that work is one of the most personal things we will do in our lives.

I had lunch today with two of my best friends at work -- colleagues, mentors and friends, both of them, from my time at Luck Companies. It was through Donald and Bob, in particular, that I discovered the real and important power of emotional relationships in my work. Our ability to engage and make an impact was amplified by our relationships.

Which takes us back to the schoolyard. Thea's school holds an annual Pizza Fun Night (or Pizza! Fun! Night! as Thea and I like to call it). Last year, our three-year-old clung to our knees as Jonathan the Juggler performed to a motley crowd of preschoolers and their parents.

This year, her ability to engage and make an impact was amplified by her relationships. Our girl and her gaggle of best friends were inseparable, and beautiful.

How lucky am I to deliberately blur the lines -- through Floricane -- between my work, my civic engagement and my personal life, between all of my varied relationships? And to have a four-year-old daughter who helps me slow down and see the beauty in each of those friendships?

When The Symphony Serenaded The Hospital

The sounds of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5th Symphony rang out over at Center Stage last week in the middle of the afternoon. The Richmond Symphony, clad in black was notshy about their passion for this piece. The concentration on their faces under the conduction of Steven Smith was unlike anything I’ve seen before.

I had the opportunity to sit in on a special Floricane collaboration with the Richmond Symphony and the CJW Medical Center. The creative facilitation was led by Floricane's John Sarvay and was part of a leadership team "treat" (not retreat!) to energize and reconnect an 80-person team of leaders from CJW. Steven and John co-facilitated the 140-person group of hospital executives and symphony musicians through a three-hour exploration of vision, leadership, creativity, collaboration and communication.

CJW staffers sat on stage, right beside the Richmond Symphony. What they saw was the passion, drive and dedication put forth into working together as a group. Experiencing that synchronicity with a leader’s vision set off light bulbs for the hospital team: Hey, this is exactly what we do with out patients.

Though unclear at first, the similarities between the two groups were drawn out in front of everyone. The connection felt by both groups through the performances was clear upon the last note played of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. The  compassion that the CJW medical workers experienced for their patients is the same compassion experienced by the Richmond Symphony’s musicians.

The CJW workers were entranced, under a spell of beautiful music and wonder. How did the players know and understand the wild movements of their conductor? How did the players’ understand and communicate with their conductor? Body language, experience, confidence and understanding intentions.

What does a good conductor do? What can a good leader do to become a great leader? They raise expectations, change directions and create mystery.

Richmond Gets Re-Mapped During RIC/RVA Session Two

Last night, nestled in the basement of The Valentine Richmond History Center, we presented the second part of the RIC/RVA event series. Fighting the urge to frolic in thebeauty of an 80-degree evening, 40 Richmonders once again put their heads together to think differently about the town in which they live. And if I do say so myself, we created our own bit of beauty – ours shining through new ideas, and a city reimagined.

True to form John began with a challenge. To engage properly in the depths of Richmond’s past, he told us, we needed to understand Richmond through the city’s built spaces.  Here, we were reminded, were the tangible manifestations of all the conflict, innovation, and pride Richmond has wanted to show the world. Leaving our interests piqued, John handed the floor over to Gregg Kimball, of the Library of Virginia, and Bill Martin our gracious host at the Valentine. With an obvious excitement the pair walked us through the ways in which the landscape of Richmond has been carved and re-carved. Not surprisingly, the crowd was rapt by the presentation. Each building torn down, each community split in two, was a part of our fractured past, and the comments from the audience were vigorous. Notably Christy Coleman of The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, gave some significant context for many of the buildings and events that surrounded them. Piece by piece the rich history of what has been built, torn down, or denied its proper place, began to come together. And with that, we moved from the informative to the creative.

As the empty wine bottles began to pile up, attendees were led by John and Peter Fraser, of Fraser Design Associates, into a mapping exercise that further explored our city’s landscape. The results were inspiring to say the least! Instructed to re-imagine how the city is connected, where we envision its focus, and how we will all relate accordingly, groups of 6 literally remapped Richmond. Taking decidedly green approaches, each group made clear that connectivity and inclusion were paramount. It was so heartening to know that if we could have our way, there would be far fewer fissures and separations between the members of our community.

With Floricane at the helm, and some help from i.e.*, this series is proving to be a spectacular way imagine our cities future!

Pigs Fly and Big Idea Challenge Mayhem

What if we followed the same old formula to kick off an event?

What if we didn't?

On March 15th, the Big Idea Challenge leapt out of the realm of the conceptual with panache and smacked straight into the expanse of the visceral.   Happy-hour-hunt-beckoned, our beloved early adopters, our first and favorite evangelists, arrived en masse at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and were:

...welcomed,

...informed,

...challenged,

and rewarded.

Oh, VMFA, how we wish we could come and play like that more often.

What's that? You missed all of the fun? It's not too late! Follow this link to the Big Idea Challenge, grab your friends and help support one of RVA's great treasures:  The Community Idea Stations.

An Inside Look at a Recent Insights Workshop

Earlier this week, Tina and I hosted our first 2012 Insights Discovery Workshop.  This workshop is one of my favorites to facilitate because we always have fun, participants always learn a lot during the day and selfishly, it always leaves me feeling good to have shared the best self development tool I know of with another group of people. 

The workshop is framed around the Insights model for self development which is pretty simple to grasp.  I t goes like this.  Step one is about exploring and discovering more about yourself.  Step two is about learning to recognize and appreciate others’ differences.  Step three is learning how to adapt behavior to be more effective with others.  And finally, step four is about taking the learning and putting it into action.

For a workshop participant, the morning is very interactive and engaging, the session is filled with learning based activities that ramp up the energy and relationship building in the room.  The activities are guided toward self discovery that answers the question:  Am I more blue, red, green or yellow?  Each participant starts the day trying to figure out which one of four colors they are and then which one of 8 types they are to where do I fit in a 72 type wheel?!   It’s quite a journey filled with questions, challenges and looking in those dreaded mirrors that help us see parts of ourselves that perhaps we don’t like, but that typically hold us back from being all that we can be.   That’s where self awareness starts, its starts with the discovery of those things we don’t want to see in the mirror.  Once we know what those things are, we can start doing something about them.  The last activity of the day is goal setting the Insights way.  By tapping into all four energies:  blue, red, yellow and green, goals are designed that include not just our most preferred preferences, but our least preferred ones, too.   The participants leave with a tangible plan and a sharpened focus about how to bring all their energies to the world.   

There are several ways most individuals and/or organizations use Insights Discovery.  They include personal growth & development, team assessment and development, leadership development, but another application struck me recently.  I heard about a recent Right Management survey of 1,000 employees in North American that said, 84% intended to actively seek a new position in 2012.  If a friend or family member of mine, were one of those 1,000 in the survey, I would highly recommend they complete an Insights Discovery profile.   The profile results go well beyond personality preferences.   The advantage of knowing not just about my preferences, but what makes me tick, my preferred work environment or how I add value to my work team provides a real advantage to select not just the right next job, but the right next employer.      

We are excited to be offering this workshop 5 more times during 2012 and I look forward to the light bulbs being lit and the ah-ha moments happening again and again.

Creativity Shines in 24 Hour CreateAthon Blitz

How much work can you get done in 24 hours?  You would be surprised.  I had the privilege of serving as a mentor at the recently concluded Createathon VCU. In its 5th year Createathon is a VCU Mass Communications semester long project for students to learn the ins and outs of working with nonprofits.  In the end 12 teams of students from VCU and VSU guided by Project Leaders reimagined, rebranded, and generally updated the look and feel and story of 12 nonprofits.  While I did not manage to stay for the whole 24 hours  I helped a few groups get started, guided a team for Virginia Advanced Study Strategies through some murky vision and mission work and sat through 6 critiques at 3pm.  I retired home to sleep and revisited the groups in the morning for their final presentations.

There were stories of meltdowns and creatives breakthroughs and amazing things happening all night despite a messy 24 hour creativity blitz - the finished products were break taking.  Clients cried, team leaders cried, and I got goose bumps.  With nonprofits the mission and deployment of programs come first and often times the visuals are finished as an after thought.  It is an amazing gift to hand a nonprofit a new image that conveys a story visually - it helps with general awareness, financial support and improves the overall feeling of legitimacy.

I was honored to work with the teams this year and will do my best to hang for the full 24 hours next year but in the meantime I can't wait for the final reception in May to see all of the work displayed and hear how it is helping nonprofits already.

Giving Voice to ART 180's Teen Leaders

I’ve lived on the periphery of ART 180 for most of the organization’s 14 year history. My wife served on the board – along with some of my favorite Richmonders (folks like Tristana Nesvig Trani and Sue Ann Messmer) – and our daughter is often found in the South of the James corn box next to ART 180 founder Marlene Paul’s daughter.

It’s a small town sometimes, Richmond is.

And then you walk into a room with 12 teenagers and realize it’s actually a little bigger than you might imagine.

These particular teens come from all over the city. They’re black and white, male and female, outgoing and introverted. They are an eclectic and talented group of ART 180 alum.

These teenagers have gone through the organization’s arts programming for several years, and are now meeting weekly to make art, build relationships and create a vision.

Part of the vision is for a new ART 180 building, the organization’s first permanent home. Fingers are crossed for that home to be on Marshall Street in Jackson Ward.

And so I found myself in the basement of UR Downtown’s expanded campus on West Broad Street with 12 teens and two program directors. If there’s anything more awkward than a group of teenagers in a classroom setting, it might be a 40-year-old facilitator trying to engage them in brainstorming.

We broke some ice, made introductions, talked about what it means to be part of a group – to be part of this particular group. And then we broke out the balloons.

The balloon tower activity is amazing with 100 people and 1,000 balloons. It’s still pretty cool with 14 people and 150 balloons. As they group worked in varying configurations to build a balloon tower, we paused and debriefed around the dynamics of the team.

We spent the last part of the evening capturing the a sense of the energy they hoped to create – awesome, loco, bumpin’ and full of expression, but also welcoming, cozy and chill. Almost 100 words reflecting a wide range of personality and youthful expression, and an opportunity for the ART 180 team to think creatively about a space that can balance the powerful tensions of #RVA’s teens.