Finding Doors in Richmond

When the Floricane team was strategizing early in July at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, we were greeted by a door. A painted door standing curb, waiting for passers-by to pause and reflect – and perhaps read a detailed sign that explained its purpose.

The door, it turns out, is one of 40 painted doors scattered around Richmond. Each features the work of local artists, and each helps tell a story of homelessness – and solutions to the plight of the homeless in our region.

A few days later, Richmond Magazine spotlighted the doors in an article, and described the idea behind the Virginia Supportive Housing/Art On Wheels collaboration:

A sign is placed at every painted door, telling stories about formerly homeless people who benefitted from VSH. The signs also provide information about the artist who painted them. 

“A sign is placed at every painted door, telling stories about formerly homeless people who benefitted from VSH. The signs also provide information about the artist who painted them.

Each door will have a sign that will tell a little bit about the person behind the door...,” [VSH’s Andrea] Butler explains, “and about their journey to get out of homelessness.”

She hopes the installation will correct common misconceptions about homelessness. “When you read the stories, you realize [these homeless individuals] were teachers, and homemakers and professionals,” she says.

The artists were not asked to paint with any theme in mind, nor are the doors explicitly tied to the stories that accompany each door, but the message remains the same throughout this family-friendly activity: “We want people to know there is a solution to homelessness,” Butler says. “Supportive housing works, Ninety-five percent of those we serve do not become homeless again.””

The Find Art Doors self-guided tour is accessible through an online mobile site and interactive map at findartdoorsrva.org.

Letter from John: July 2015

Some of you may remember a bleak confessional in these virtual pages way back in late 2012. Four years into the business, and every turn of the wheel invited a new ditch. Realizing that there are some chapters in life that call for competent co-pilots, I scheduled lunch with Jim Parker, the retired CFO of Luck Companies. He spent the next year on the periphery of the business, providing me with good counsel and challenging my approach to the financial side of Floricane's practice.

We had lunch last month. As I got Jim current with the state of the business, and regaled him with heroic stories of hard decisions, near misses and a slow, but steady, crawl toward a sustainable structure, he struck.

"So," my too-wise mentor and friend said to me, leaning forward, "it sounds to me like you're exhibiting the same behaviors -- you're just working with bigger numbers now. If we get back together a year from now, what's going to be different?"

“This, my friends, is why you don’t let people smarter than you play with your stuff.”

One of the most challenging aspects of personal development is the sobering recognition that you are who you are. Self-awareness, coaching and mentoring, training and development -- in most cases, they help us see the gaps. Sometimes, they even help protect us from the gaps. In rare, and usually finite, moments, they help us change behavior and close the gaps.

“But our gaps, almost always, remain our gaps. Wherever you go, they say, there you are.”

Jim's point wasn't to tell me, "Great job treading water, John!" (Or maybe it was and I've missed the point. Again.) No, Jim was reminding me that I have gotten better at paying attention to what Benjamin Zander calls "the long, long line from B to E" -- from the present reality to the future, aspirational vision. And he was warning me that in my persistent rush to the more majestic notes in the symphony of Floricane, I can gloss over the workmanlike moments that hold the entire composition together.

How's that for stretching a metaphor?

Jim and I talked after lunch about a set of targeted financial goals we've established for the business, and what it will really take to reach them in the balance of 2015. We chewed on some emerging solutions to managing the workmanlike corners of the business differently. And we acknowledged that I've already taken steps in that direction -- for instance, hiring Terri Andrus, the bookkeeper who has pried my fingers from the tactical corners of Floricane's financials, and expanded my view of the business rhythms from weekly cycles to quarterly cycles.

But what Jim really did was reassure me. Blunt, but caring, confrontation has a way of doing that.

By every measure, Floricane is a successful company seven years into what should be a 25-year journey. By most measures, I have learned volumes -- about myself, others, our community. By some measures, I have grown and strengthened my personal capacity for ambiguity, change and challenge.

But in the end, given the choice between the future and the present, between the big idea and the workmanlike task, between acting and investing, I'll almost always pull the cart the same direction. Which is why some carts have drivers, and others have teams. And maybe why Google is now inventing driverless vehicles.

#WotWW Day 4: Readiness, or Red Reeds?

We kicked off our last day of Work on the Work Week by having breakfast with several members of the team at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. As the food and conversation wound down, John dashed off to take care of business related stuff and left the rest of the team to talk about 3 of our key internal business processes. We joked before he left about the ways in which the conversation would be different without him.

Theran provided excellent facilitation. He had a clear agenda. He balanced the right amount of direction and support. He gave us a starting place with each topic and then opened up the conversation, debate and dialogue. All the while, capturing next steps and salient points visually for all of us to see.

As I reflected upon the morning and why it felt like we “got so much done” the easy answer is, “the boss wasn’t there!” But there was another dynamic at play, we were ready to have the conversation. The topics included tasks, activities and communications that effect what we do everyday.  We were all invested in the topics.

In all honesty, we also knew that our day would end in the afternoon at Amuse! I thought to myself that perhaps it was the thought of seeing the red reeds and some much needed, relaxed time with the team that really propelled us to be so effective in the morning! Who’s to say? Readiness or Red Reeds? Perhaps it was both, but I can’t help but reflect that readiness and effectiveness have a significant connection. 

WotWW Day #3: More Laughter, Please

Sometimes space makes all the difference.

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes you can think too much.

Sometimes you need to be really tired before you start making sense.

These are a few lessons I’ve drawn from the first three days of Floricane’s Work on the Work week, or as Lesley calls it #WotWW.

This is the fourth #WotWW at Floricane since we stumbled upon the idea of spending a week without clients to focus on our business a few times a year. We’re not even finished with the week, and I’m ready to chalk it up as the hardest.

When the team wrapped up day two yesterday, we were spent. And we had a much deeper appreciation for our client teams – circular conversations, spinning wheels, the words being spoken not equaling the words being heard. (Note to future self: Sometimes you just need a good, neutral facilitator.)

Today felt better.

The space was better today. We started in the VCU Depot building, an amazingly restored urban trolley station blessed with Alchemy Coffee as a tenant. The space felt good, the coffee was excellent, and we laughed more.

To regain traction, we began with a look at our 60 Day Sprint – the 21 key projects and initiatives that we need to land exceptionally well by Labor Day. Many of these emerged as action items from our first two days of #WotWW. Forest, trees, actionable progress.

Did I mention we laughed more? We laughed about quail hunting. Also book clubs. And then we spent time deconstructing the Floricane brand. We identified some aspirations, some areas we want to be have a more palatable presence in the Floricane brand – Fun, Challenging, Authentic, Relational. There was thinking going on, but it was more relaxed. Maybe less guarded. More authentic, even.

We end #WotWW tomorrow – fortunately for our emotional energy, I’m running a statewide Sister Cities International annual meeting on Friday.

We’re ending with a few high notes – a celebratory team lunch at The Daily, followed by drinks and dessert at Amuse. Hopefully, we’ll laugh more.

WotWW Day #2: A Little Less Conversation

When I was a kid, I used to have mandated room cleanings. As most kids' room do, mine would accumulate so much clutter that only I knew the path to the bed. At my parents gentle nudging (threatening), I would plant myself in the middle of the floor and start going through things. This went well for about 10 minutes, if that. Inevitably, I would pick up a book and start reading, or find an old CD that I had to dedicate my full attention to, or spot a photo album that needed to be looked through. 

That's kind of how today's Work on the Work session felt.

Now, I must clarify that Floricane in no way is a messy as my room circa 1998, nor did we get distracted by things as irrelevant as a children's book. But when you get a room full of people who talk about strategy, business development and leadership for a living and ask them to turn the lens on themselves, you can get a whole lot of conversation around things you didn't plan on tackling. It can be exhausting. 

What I'm trying to say here is, we get it. We know that what we ask our clients to do can be hard. Taking an honest look at your organization, finding the cracks, and coming up with a plan to smooth them out is not something that can be done in a day. It's not easy. It's not comfortable. Even so, the work needs to be done.

We want to always practice what we preach here at Floricane. So we will push on, armed with post-its and sharpies and flip charts. We will make clear decisions, even if we have to pull our red energy kicking and screaming out of its hiding place. At the end of the day, we will come away with a clearer vision of we need. The 10+ action steps I have in my notes from today is proof.

WotWW Day #1: A Bunch of Greens and Blues Discuss the Numbers

Today, the Floricane team began its twice-annual Work on the Work Week (WotWW), a four-day process during which we bounce around town, from one neat space to the next, and spend time examining our company and planning for the year ahead. We lay it all out for discussion – financials, business development, strategy, brand, culture, processes, client experience, etc. – and do for ourselves what we typically do for our clients. We’re consulting with/for/by ourselves, but in other people’s offices. Brain bender!  

Our various and gracious hosts throughout the week – today we invaded Gather and the Robins Foundation, tomorrow The Valentine – provide space and Wifi for us. In exchange, we provide a meal for their staff members, who then are forced, er, invited to eat with us. 

Who’s with me on this? Self-analysis is not that fun. It’s nerve wracking and frustrating, and we tend to skip over the painful stuff and spend time on the things we mostly have figured out. But John kept us on track today, arriving armed with P&L statements and asking tough questions as the rest of us shook off the cobwebs of a week’s vacation. 

And it turns out that this was the best way to get started. Rip off the band-aid. Crunch the numbers. Do the work that we ask clients to do, and tackle everything head-on. By lunch, I was awake and excited for the afternoon. 

But not before a fantastic lunch and YouTube–ing with Kelly’s delightful team at Robins. We then sidled into a biz dev discussion that, for a bunch of post-lunch greens and blues who consider sales to be the worst form of torture, ultimately went fairly well. 

Tomorrow, Debra leads a day focused on Floricane's company culture and team effectiveness, with exercises and concepts that she typically uses with clients.  My personal goal for the day is to trick Theran into showing Feelings and Emotions, but don’t tell him that. 

Stay tuned for dispatches from tomorrow, Day #2 of Floricane’s WotWW.

Lessons in Leadership, Culture and Change from the Mosh Pit

In the summer of 1984, I discovered punk rock music. It changed my life, and it shaped my identity – and it utterly informed work as an organizational change consultant. 

I never grew a Mohawk or pierced my nose. I didn’t snarl at old women crossing the street. I was never a big fan of anarchy. No, the popular trappings of punk rock weren’t really my thing. For me, punk was a political, intellectual, and emotional force for change.

To understand the politics of punk, and its impact on a generation of American kids, it helps to understand the 1980s. The economy was creeping along. The Cold War felt hot. American culture felt stale and homogeneous. (Go watch “The Americans” on FX. Seriously.)

The early 1980s was not “morning in America.’ It was pretty bleak. 

In the words of actor John Cusack, “There's also some element of coming of age during the Reagan administration, which everybody has painted as some glorious time in America, but I remember as being a very, very dark time. There was apocalypse in the air; the punk rock movement made sense.”

In the time before the Internet, punk was a refuge of the lonely and misunderstood. It was where I learned to emotionally connect with others, bootstrap my own future and collaborate to create something significant.

“Time was slow back then. Things were barely moving, and this music came along and it was like an electrical charge,” recalls filmmaker Dave Markey in the film American Hardcore.

When I was 16 years old, punk rock in America was evolving from its urban and arty nihilistic roots into the suburbs. Time may have been slow. The music was fast and furious. The attitude was unapologetically political.

Punk music introduced me to the power of having a point of view. I was much more into The Clash’s smart, but angry, political stance than I was into the musically and personally abrasive Sex Pistols. Closer to home, the almost intellectual nature of the D.C. hardcore punk scene – Minor Threat, Scream, Gray Matter, Dag Nasty – and the angry, yet affirming, Boy Scout energy of bands like 7 Seconds appealed to me more than the in-your-face New York sounds of Agnostic Front.

But it was Richmond’s punk/hardcore scene in the 1980s and 1990s that most shaped my thinking about myself, and about others. The local scene was an amazing community of incredibly diverse nonconformists.

In Richmond’s punk rock community, I found a tribe of people who were curious, friendly and radical. I discovered feminism, globalism, environmentalism and politics. I developed self-awareness, and discovered the power of shared energy, connection and positive emotions. I learned that I didn’t need to wait to be invited to someone’s table – I could build my own tables.

Over the course of my adolescence and through college, hardcore punk was a social, emotional and intellectual cornerstone of my life. I booked bands, hung out with bands, and toured with bands. I published zines built around local music that I distributed around the world (by mail). I hosted radio shows, and interviewed dozens of traveling bands. I spent hours sitting on sidewalks along Grace and Broad streets connecting with others. And I did most of this before I was 18.

Listening to Graven Image; hanging out with Unseen Force and Four Walls Falling while they practiced; or interviewing Honor Role in a Hardee’s on Broad Street – through it all, I absorbed subtle lessons about the power of music and change. Distributing my own, self-published zine – a photocopied montage of typed record and show reviews, band interviews and bad poetry – connected me with people around the world. (At a time when the world was not so connected. 

What I didn’t fully appreciate then was how much all of this was teaching me – about myself, about community and about building the future. When I reflect back on my journey through Richmond’s punk and hardcore scenes, it’s easy to see how key lessons from Grace Street evolved into my key consulting philosophies:

• Build your own table. If you’re tired of waiting to be invited to the metaphorical table by others, stop waiting and start building. If you don’t like the tables that anchor your community, stop complaining and start building. Oh, and make sure the table you build isn’t as exclusive and annoying as the ones it replaces. When alcohol regulations all but shut kids under 18 out of rock clubs in Richmond, some friends and I convinced Charlie Brown at New Horizon’s Café to let us book all age shows on Sunday afternoons. (I was 15 years old.)

• You can do it yourself – but it’s more fun, and usually better, when you include others. There’s power in bootstrapping ideas with other people. There’s real energy found in enlisting a small group of passionate, like-minded people to come along for the ride. Connecting smart people with other smart people is transformational. Successful (a relative term, believe me) punk bands were built by local radio stations, fanzine editors, risk-taking club owners, and by someone who worked at an office with a photocopier (to print flyers, of course). Being a small link in a chain of people who helped bands thrive was significant. 

• When someone falls, pick them up. In the mosh pit of old (think more organized slam dancing), if someone stumbled you helped them up. When a kid dove off the stage into the crowd – we did that a lot – you’d reach up to catch them. (Um, sorry about that one miss at that Black Flag/Rollins show, Kit.) When a band needed a space to practice, you opened your door. If someone didn’t have enough money to pay at the door, you found a way to sneak her into the show. Supporting the success of others is all about reciprocity.

• Diversity rules. There was a magic moment in Richmond where you’d go to a show and old school punk rockers, everyday college kids, straightedge hardcore kids, skinheads, skaters and Goths stood shoulder-to-shoulder at a show. The scene was predominantly white and male, but girls formed the best bands, put out powerful fanzines, and launched their own record labels. Blame my sheltered suburban life, but my first real black, Asian and gay friends emerged from my involvement in Richmond’s hardcore scene. That diversity had impact. The music was better, the community was stronger and the energy was more positive when different voices were on stage.

• Change starts with you. Bands like 7 Seconds and Verbal Assault taught me about looking in the mirror and the importance of self-awareness years before I knew who Carl Jung was!

• It’s okay to let other people on the stage. The best bands welcomed their fans on stage for the inevitable moment when fans grabbed the microphone to sing along with their favorite singer, or to “mosh” on stage for a pregnant moment before stage diving into the crowd. There was room for everyone on stage. 

I'll wrap up with five songs that that are the pillars of my American punk hardcore consultant education.

Clampdown by The Clash is just one of so many calls to anger from this British group. Forget musical genres – The Clash is hands down one of the top bands of the last century. “Let fury have the hour / Anger can be power / Do you know that you can use it?” 

Heal by Verbal Assault is one of my favorites by this Rhode Island band. I was in awe, hanging out with these guys, 7 Seconds and Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat one night at the 9:30 Club in D.C. “Empty with no respect at all, we expect what’s been built to crumble and fall / Shocked at the indifference to our unheeded call / May I ask you what do we offer instead? / We can’t change around until we change within / To scream and yell and sloganize only shields us from our own lies” 

#1 Rule by 7 Seconds is not my favorite song by these champions of punk rock as “a positive force.” But its clear, non-comformist message has always resonated. “Number one rule is no rules / Number two they’re not for you / Number three they’re not for me / Number four, don’t be ignored / Number five to live our lives we must break down stagnant rules.”

Sink with California by Youth Brigade with its overtly anti-nationalist, anti-fascist theme remains one of my favorites – “I’ve been all around the country, and I’ve met a lot of kids / Some kids are smart, and others are dumb, but I don’t pass judgment they’re just having fun… / The kids are our future. You can see it in their eyes / We must overcome mediocrity if the world is to survive.” 

Salad Days by Minor Threat is a great reminder from our neighbors to the north (Washington, D.C.) that we’re all getting older, and that moving into the future is important. Minor Threat’s real impact came from giving birth to the straight edge movement, a subgenre of hardcore punk that rejects alcohol and other addictive habits as unnecessary crutches. Singer Ian MacKaye was another early entrepreneur – his label, Dischord Records, is still running strong today.

Work on the Work Week: July 6 through July 10

A few years ago, it happened that Theran, Caroline and I found ourselves in the office with no client projects for the entire week after Christmas. We got a tremendous amount of work done, and thus was born Floricane’s Work on the Work week.

It happens twice a year – 10 days where we avoid client work, and focus our time and creative energy on the business. And it’s really 20 days of focused time – our whole team is on vacation both weeks prior to the Work on the Work weeks.

This year – with two new team members and some major new projects coming on line – we’ve decided to step it up a notch.

Floricane’s 2015 Work on the Work week is a moveable feast of sorts.

We’ll start on Monday, July 6, with breakfast at Gather with the coworking space’s awesome manager, James, and the team from Dodson Properties. We’ll work for three hours, and then head to the Robins Foundation for lunch with the foundation’s dynamic team – and three more hours of work. The Valentine, VCU’s Depot, One South Realty, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts are also on the list. (Day five will be spent at the statewide Virginia Sister Cities Conference – hosted by Floricane, and featuring a keynote by Anne Goddard of ChildFund, International.)

During the week, we’ll spend relaxed time breaking bread with about 100 folks from key client and partner organizations – and wrestle with eight blocks of key business content to help Floricane strengthen and improve.

Look for daily updates on our Work on the Work week starting Monday, July 6!