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Two recent blog posts from INC have focused on how to convince your coworkers to use online tools to collaborate (read them at Getting Colleagues on Board with Collaboration Technology and How to Convince Colleagues to Collaborate Online ). Basically, the arguments these guys are making include:
Really??!?
Take a few minutes this week to look around at the people you work with and serve beside. For whom and for what are you thankful? Be sure you let somebody know.
What are you thankful for this holiday season? We are thankful for you! During this past year, we have learned a lot, grown a ton, and are looking forward to what is emerging in the new year. Here are some highlights for 2010:
A few people who have attended a "Treasure in Clay Jars" workshop this fall thought they heard us say leaders are unnecessary. They couldn't have been more wrong! So, why did these people hear that? Because we are strong advocates of more decentralized, collaborative work environments. In fact, we believe this way of working together isn't just preferred; in the emerging future, we believe it is inevitable. And some people assume there's no role for a leader in a decentralized organization. Ha!
A whole lot of people can tell other people what to do (the old model of leadership). But it takes real skill to recognize, tap into, and unleash the creativity, intelligence, and passion of the people you're working with (the new model of leadership). And that is the kind of leadership our businesses, nonprofits, governments, and religious organizations need today.
We heard from a lot of readers off-line over the past few days, in response to a previous post, thanking us for a) acknowledging that making the shift to a new, renewable approach to life and work can be lonely and b) giving them some ideas to get started. But we also got an email from someone encouraging us.
Remember when you were in grade school and you loved to draw what you could not see? Some days it was a picture of outer space; on others maybe it was what you imagined your family would look like when you were an adult, with your own home and kids. Then there were the pictures assigned by a grade school teacher, of what you wanted to be when you grew up. Pictures, lots of them!, often filling up the front of the kitchen fridge.
When is the last time you drew a picture of something you could not yet see?
Can you say in 8 words or less why your organization exists? Can your leaders do it? Can most of your members/staff/volunteers? If not, then odds are you don't really know the answer. Not having a tagline is a pretty good indicator that people in your organization do not have a strong, common sense of purpose.
But the inverse is not also true.
Just because you have a tagline doesn't mean you have a clear sense of common purpose. Take, for example, one of the finalists in the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards*: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
We are going to save you a lot of future headaches. Are you ready? OK, here goes. This is a list of things NOT TO DO if and when you ever lead the organization you care about through a process that leads to revisioning, rebranding, or in any way re-articulating your core purpose and values:
“In the past two and a half months, we have done over a dozen meetings with people who are angry and upset about the vote to change our denomination's policy,” one church judicatory staff person told us recently. “And we’re exhausted.” He looked it, too.
This leader is dealing with a hard situation but not a unique one:
So far he and others on his team have been chasing around their territory trying to prevent people from making good on their threat. That not only doesn't seem to be making much difference to the people who are angry–in some ways it's just adding fuel to the fire–it's also killing him and his team.
What's a leader to do?
