Nothing is required of me more than being and creating. Simultaneously being present with who I am, who we are as a species..and creating who we must become and within that, who I must become.
-adrienne maree brown
Nothing is required of me more than being and creating. Simultaneously being present with who I am, who we are as a species..and creating who we must become and within that, who I must become.
-adrienne maree brown
On Ecosystems 8/11/22
Today I was invited to join a research roundtable on the when/why/how of "business ecosystems." No formal definition was given. A few emerged. I was a bit of an odd duck coming from the social sector. But it was an interesting conversation that made me wonder about how to apply the thinking in my work where there is often complete "market failure." In the social sector, we think about ecosystems as all the stakeholders in a given field needed to make progress/improvements. Why are these ecosystems so hard to build? Six reasons came to mind: 1) Scarcity mindset creates competition and little incentive to collaborate among non profits 2) No common theory of change or shared definitions of equity 3) Community context varies and creates highly diverse stakeholders with nuanced needs 4) Coordination across such a highly diverse set of stakeholders is complex and requires slowing down to bring everyone along 5) Silos abound (education vs health vs housing) 6) Power over rather than interdependence with and the most "powerful" (policy makers, funders) being too far from the problem. But what if funders (with power over) focused more on developing what I called "micro" ecosystems--networks of individual stakeholders with shared values and similar problems. Would these highly diverse collective micro-ecosystems (essentially networks) be more nimble and creative at solving problems together and building a diverse ecosystem versus continuing to fund individual organizations in the system to "partner" and intermediaries to pull those partners together? How could a network, movement building strategy create the conditions for solving complex organizational problems? I tried to do pieces of this in the past. But I'm wondering now: What might an entire philanthropic strategy focused on innovation/impact in this way lead to..
On Gift Giving 7/26/22
About a month ago my friend Chris suggested I read a book called Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks, former head of AEI, the conservative think tank in DC. Chris just turned 50 and it's about how your life changes and how you might want to refocus later in life. The book argues there are two types of intelligence: fluid and crystalized. Fluid intelligence is what we use when we're young. He calls it the "raw smarts." It's what we use to establish our careers--you think flexibly, quickly to solve problems. Versus crystalized intelligence which is about using your stock of knowledge and learnings from the past, synthesizing information. It increases with age and is about applying concepts and seeing patterns you've learned and sharing them with others. I love the idea of everyone sharing what they have learned later in life and letting go of worldly views of success and reward. What if we could all afford a "gift decade?" When would your gift decade start and what would you share?
On A Soft Focus and a More Beautiful Question 7/6/22
Just before the 4th I had a lovely lunch with a new friend Pireeni. She happens to be a poet and brain scientists who studies tech and human interactions. Serendipity brought us together and it was a lovely way to practice my Sichuan cooking skills! At one point, our conversation moved to creativity and I asked her where she gets her creative rest. She talked about her wellspring being found in nature forms and then in a way that only a brain scientist can, she explained three parts of the brain and how it processes information. It's when you are walking under trees or noticing the light through leaves that you might be using the "soft focus" part of your brain. It's the associative part that let's things bubble up. But technology (and I argued schools) often focus too much on the "rapid" or "logical" processing parts of the brain. It's why she says you have some of your best ideas in the shower or on a walk. And then she left me with a question that is still in my soft focus: if you were to teach a class on ANYTHING what would it be? "Always the beautiful answer. Who asks a more beautiful questions." ee cummings
On Serendipity 6/26/22
My friend Sam and I have an argument: can you teach people how to embrace serendipity? I think you can and he thinks you can't. Serendipity is sometimes thought about as happy accidents, luck. But it's more than that. Louis Pasteur said: "Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors the prepared mind." In other words serendipity is more like a mindset or an openness, an orientation. It's how I met my husband; it's how I got my first job; it's how I ended up working at one of the world's largest philanthropies. I like to use an expanded definition of serendipity from a friend. Serendipity occurs when you:
Create an environment rich with loose ties;
Use peripheral thinking
Engage with the world around you.
Surely we can help the next generation of leaders generate larger loose tie networks to expand their thinking; learn to use more lateral, peripheral and adjacent thinking when developing strategies; and teach people to be more curious, build new relationships with others?
On Designing for Belonging 6/16/22
Yesterday I went to the Director's Dinner at the Oakland Museum of CA. The focus was on how they "design for belonging." I had a sidebar with Roberto Bedoya who is the cultural affairs manager for the City of Oakland after the dinner--he reminded me he was a poet not a city administrator by training! He coined a phrase that is used in the city to describe their mission: Equity is the driving force. Culture is the frame. Belonging is the goal. Pause. He proceeded to tell me wonderful dreams: What if the police department designed it's community efforts for belonging? How might policies look differently? I actually began to wonder what if a poet was running the US Programs at the Gates Foundation--how might giving look differently?
Sometimes we get so caught up in numbers and narrow definitions of success that we forget about the "intangibles" which are represented through our values. Donella Meadows says: No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth or love. No one can define or measure any value: but if no one speaks up for them, if the systems aren't designed to produce them, if we don't speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist."
Belonging is a value that we doesn't show up in most cities let alone learning environments. Fortunately, the museum had a way of at least partially measuring it. The head of measurement said she asks visitors to rate:
I feel welcome.
I see my stories reflected.
I connect with other people.
I express my ideas and am open to those of others.
Wouldn't that be a nice alternate measure for all schools to consider.
On Making Decisions 6/15/22
My eldest daughter is applying for colleges next year so over spring break we visited more than a dozen universities on the East Coast (read this as "I want to get as far away from my mother as possible!"). As you do these tours they all start to blur together and one night after the tenth one my daughter felt overwhelmed. So like any trained strategist, I drew a 2x2 on a paper bag for her and created two axes: one for academics/pedagogy and one for place/culture. As we plotted all of the schools, a pattern started to emerge among the ones she liked.
I found myself doing a similar exercise with my son when we created a Harvey ball chart and five columns to describe the qualities of the different soccer teams he was choosing from (quality of coaching, level of play, friends/teammates, etc.) If only all of life's decisions could be done by analysis.
When I was struggling with a decision of my own someone asked me: What does your heart tell you to do? I replied: My mind is telling me to take the job but my heart is telling me not to. I've always just gone with my gut! So when I read this quote by Neri Oxman, it really spoke to me:
“I have learned over the years that when the mind, the heart and the gut disagree one is simply lagging behind the other. So I wait for the lag to resolve itself. It is from this place of harmony and deep and peaceful sense of knowing that you can face the hardest of challenges.”
It's not an either/or choice when it comes to big decisions of the heart and mind. It's the lag that matters. But you have to wait for it. Be patient. Have faith. As they say, the story isn't over until it ends the way you want it to.
On Walking Out 6/10/22
One of the last projects that I worked on at the Gates Foundation was focused on K12 assessment and accountability policy (reading bad testing and unfair punishment), a thankless project at best! Having been at the table as the director of assessment and accountability during the early days of No Child Left Behind, I knew a little something about the topic. I was also at the table during the early days of the standards movement when we called it Goals 2000 and it was supported by Republican and Democratic governors a like. There were a number of unintended consequences to our current assessment and accountability policies that I decided needed to be acknowledged to set us on a path for equity and policy invention.
As I look back on that project, I am struck by how difficult it was to create alternate frames in people's minds about what is possible. George Lakoff's words ring true:
“It is essential to have an alternate frame if the old one is to be debunked. Simply rebutting the dominant frame will ironically only serve to reinforce it. And without an alternative to offer there is little chance of entering let along winning the battle of ideas.”
The closest we got to an alternate frame was to create a "from>to" chart as we tried to center the new strategy in equity and a new set of values. We proposed a new theory of action that was grounded in community engagement and small local actions that lead to more informed policy innovation versus a top down strategy as was the standards movement.
I recently read Walk Out, Walk On my Deborah Frieze and Margret Wheatly. Their book is filled with alternate frames for scale and sustainability through their vignettes in other countries. It should be a must read for any foundation executive. But the most powerful alternate frame targets our theories of change themselves. Their alternative goes something like this: Start with small local actions>develop solutions>let them travel freely through networks of relationships>who pick up the deeper patterns and principles>beautifully adapt them>leading to large scale movements.
Imagine if the world's largest foundations supported that kind of theory of change?
On Creative Rest 6/7/22
Sometimes I think of Corita Kent as my art teacher but I have never met her. I attended the high school that sat below Immaculate Heart College where she launched the art program. All of her philosophies got carried down to my high school and even today if you meet any Immaculate Heart graduate, we would have the same creative training and probably similar handwriting!
Recently I was asked what kind of "rest" I would like to have more of and I chose "creative rest." So I picked up my copy of Learning by Heart by Corita Kent to inspire me. It's a fabulous contrast to more traditional books about creativity like Creative Confidence by the David Kelly from IDEO. As you do some of her exercises--the first one I tried was to notice how the shadows moved across leaves for an hour--you realize that creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercised. It requires patience, practice and different ways of seeing. Another exercise she gave me was to look at a tree and imagine what other house hold objects take that form. I realized when I could only come up with a handful of items while my son came up with dozens how easy--it is to loose your creativity as an adult.
But what impresses me most about Corita is how she used her craft to create hope and action. She said: "Doing and making are acts of hope and as that hope grows we stop feeling overwhelmed by the troubles of the world. We remember that we as individuals and groups can do something about these troubles.” So here is to more creating and hope in 2023!
On Visioning 6/2/22
Today I met one of the leaders of THNK, the organization where I am doing a creative leadership fellowship. Many of the practices that Bas Verhard uses, have been part of my toolkit for years. But he taught me one that he uses that I have stated to use and it has really been interesting to see how my boxes changes.
He draws an "essence box" every evening. He keeps a notebook of them. He boils down his focus into four things which he writes on the sides of the box and then makes connections to the big ideas. When I do my box, on the top of the box are I do with others. On the bottom of the box are activities that I am doing alone. On the right and left sides of the box are two things that are really important in my life, like family and health.
I didn't do this daily but did it weekly for a month and saw what I wrote on my box get clearer and clearer. It works!
Then of course, I made my children do it. Interesting exercise to see what a teenager and an 11 year old think the essence of their life is! Try it.