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( Happy Monday! Today’s post is from Tuti Scott, an inspiring thought leader on women’s philanthropy, leadership, and social change. Tuti will be sharing her Imagine Philanthropy insights with us periodically. You can read her bio here. Thanks Tuti!)

How people are treated and how customers and clients ‘feel’ about the changes a leader or team implements has a ripple effect on the brand and the organization’s mission. Without a guiding set of values to anchor the ‘heart’ of an organization, one tends to drift aimlessly from project to event to meeting without a sense of conviction.

Values and principles are essential starting points for organizations seeking to create change. Most donor activists want to be part of an organization that has a sense of sincerity and passion.

A friend was walking on a college campus in Virginia and texted me the statement she read that was engraved in stone across the entrance to the student union; “hearts on fire” – compassionate, confident, change makers. What that statement implies about the schools’ values excites me. Hillary Clinton’s campaign t-shirt that reiterated her June 7, 2008 speech line “For everyone who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you!” spoke volumes about her values as a public servant in one sentence.

Before I digress with too many examples, I want to make sure that we understand the intersection between productivity and values. People often think that what they ‘do’ and what services they ‘offer’ are their values. A mission or vision statement is not an organization’s values.

The principles and values of an organization are how you expect the organization to act toward its consumers, how you expect people to work with each other and the feeling’ that you want to leave with your clients and community about how every staff member related to them. Ideally everyone affiliated with the organization should be able to recite the values from their heart.

Whenever I am asked to be part of a strategic planning or visioning exercise with a group, I first ask to see what values have been established. Often they may not be there or they have not been dusted off for ten years, so we go through a series of steps to help shape these. Feel free to notice the connection between imagination and creating values (a not so subtle link to the reason behind the name of Imagine Philanthropy.)

1. First, imagine how you would like a constituent to view your organization.  Are you approachable and transparent? Are you innovative? Do you engender respect or courage?
2. Second, imagine a cocktail party where one of your clients, community members or donors is describing your organization to someone. What words are they using? Maybe they are saying energetic, smart, collaborative, warm, and effective.
3. Third, determine the rhythm you would like to have in your office or headquarters. If a visitor comes into the building, what do they take away? Similarly, today, we need to think as well about a web site as the place where people feel the rhythm of your organization. Contemplative space, cluttered desks, open doors, fluid movement, laughter, playful spaces, color, imagery – all of these say a lot about the culture and values of working for your organization.
4. Fourth, think about the mindset and behaviors of the people who work and serve the organization. Are they inclusive and do they embrace diversity? Are they risk takers? Do they express themselves freely and with humor? Do they exude energy?
5. Fifth, and this is where the vision and values really intersect, imagine where your organization is five years from now. What do people see in the world that would not be there without you? What difference did you make and how did you make it? What made you think you could do this? What values enabled you to get here?

The more people involved in this conversation – staff to Board leadership- the better. Set a stage to allow full expression and conversation. Once crafted, see what changes in your synergy, productivity and interaction with your constituents. And, most of all – enjoy flexing your imagination muscles!

Substitute, “Status quo” with “Hearts on fire.”

“There has never been a better time to explore ideas and methods to bring forth places of great strength in your work and philanthropy.”

- Tuti Scott

Happy Monday!

Short post today as I was busy this weekend getting ready for the next Frisbie St. Art Show. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area come check it out next weekend. The theme is Still (in) Motion featuring photography by women.

What are you working on this week? Is there something that you are preparing for?

Notice as you prepare how your ideas and the situation change and evolve. Preparation is creation. And sometimes this process requires abandoning what we thought we would need or what we had planned for.

The more flexible we can be with ourselves, others and external conditions as they shift and change – the more synergy and alignment is possible with what is naturally evolving. Often we fight what is happening because it is not what we prepared for.

Just because we think something is going to work, doesn’t mean it will.

Be prepared and be willing to abandon your preparations. Nothing is ever wasted. Just evolving in the process of creation from one moment to the next.

Substitute, “I didn’t plan for this!” with “How do I want to respond to what is happening?”

The Rain Stick by Seamus Heaney

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand time before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

(from The Spirit Level, poems by Seamus Heaney)

(Art by Gary Turchin)

Happy Monday!

What is your relationship with the unknown? Do you try to answer every question and figure out what is going to happen?

I know I do. I grew up in a family where “What’s the plan?” was a daily question. We didn’t step out the door without knowing where we were going.

That’s why my life is such a surprise to me lately. Every day is full of wonder as I realize that I have no idea what is coming next. I can plan all I want, but creation happens in the space of the unknown.

Like writing this blog. I make plans for topics I want to cover. Then I start writing and the writing shapes itself into something else. Our lives are like this. Our jobs. Our relationships. Our conversations. Even our fundraising efforts. We don’t really know how things are going to turn out.

We predict. We plan. Then the unexpected occurs and our “need to know” instinct kicks in. We come up with explanations and reasons for why or we say, “That was meant to be.” Really? How do we know?

Notice how we rush to fill the space of not knowing with certainty.

I was sitting on the train this week in front of two older guys who hadn’t seen each other in awhile. They were both musicians and talking about the music business.

First they lamented the lack of freshness in today’s music, nostalgic not for the music of the past but for the energy of the era when rock music was born. “Why are kids still listening to the old music instead of creating something new for themselves?”

Then they started trading info about various musicians, comparing notes on albums and songs they liked. One of them said, “The best music right now is full of complex rhythms. I never like it on the first listen but after a few times…”

“Yeah,” the other guy said, “It’s about surrender. You have to surrender to the music and let it reveal itself to you.”

Surrender to the unknown this week. See what happens.

Substitute, “Known” with “Unknown.”

“Nobody has all the answers. Knowing that you do not know everything is far wiser than thinking that you know a lot when you really don’t. Phony expertise is neurotic. Fortunately, once the symptoms are recognized, the cure is easy: stop it.”

#71 from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching adapted by John Heider

Happy Tuesday!

I’ve heard a lot of speeches in my lifetime and most of them I’ve forgotten. But there is one that stands out. Years later I still have the scribbled notes I took during the speech.

What was so inspiring to me about this particular speech was that it was about politics and love – two words we don’t often put together.

I didn’t know the person who was talking, a man named Van Jones.

He looked at us and said, “In this room we are tearing down social walls.” He began listing all of the ways we categorize each other – race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, etc. – and talked about the divisions we create among ourselves because of our differences.

He pointed out that just by sharing a meal and physically sitting side-by-side we were changing the rules of the game. Historically, “people like us” did not mix and yet there we all were, in a room together.

He stressed the importance of not underestimating the power of simply sitting together, with our differences, as a community. In fact, this was an example of how we could and would build a new kind of politics.

And then he started talking about love. He acknowledged that our hopes for change might seem impossible but, “If you love someone, you don’t have small dreams for them.”

He challenged us to love and to dream big.

Where is the love in our politics today? It’s easy to become lost in the maelstrom of incrimination, accusations and arguments over “facts.” We all have our positions and opinions and rush to defend them. But with everyone in battle stance – what can get accomplished except a fight?

As I notice my thoughts circling in the familiar “us” and “them” mindset I remember Van Jones pointing out the obvious: we are one diverse community sharing life on one planet.

I try to rise to his challenge – can I sit side by side with people who are different from me and love them?

Substitute, “Politics as usual” with “Politics and Love.”

“People aren’t either wicked or noble,” the hook-handed man said. “They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

- from The Grim Grotto, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket