Why the signs matter

April 20, 2018April 19, 2018 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Check out the signs in your office, the photos, how clean the kitchen is, whether the clocks are set to the right time.

Or, pay attention to what happens when you have a visitor. Who greets them when they come in? No one? Just the receptionist? Or anyone who walks by?

When you boil it down, there are two kinds of organizations in the world: ones in which everyone acts like owners, and ones in which people just do their jobs.

In ownership cultures, people lean in on tasks big and small — because it’s ours, not someone else’s, and every last detail matters.

There’s no in between. Choose.

The spirit of service

April 8, 2011April 7, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 12 Comments

Most people get into nonprofit work because they want – in some way, big or small – to change the world. This spirit of service defines our missions, which are not vague platitudes about “delighting customers” or delivering “superior results to our stakeholders,” but are real, tangible, and laudable: end malarial deaths in Africa by 2015, feed the hungry in New York City, make the foster care system work for kids, enable every kid in Harlem to go to college.

And yet.

And yet we get busy with “the job,” and it can become more real and more palpable than the mission. We sit at desks day after day looking at spreadsheets or writing yet another report, and though we hear the echo of why we’re there, this original purpose can morph – not immediately, but eventually – into background noise.

We’re wired, fundamentally, only to experience fully the reality in front of us. And because our daily interactions, the stresses of life, the honest considerations about our own goals and aspirations, dominate our experience, there’s the risk that this day-to-day reality gets decoupled from the spirit of service we expect to pervade our work. And so, like at any job, there are high points and low points, successes and disappointments, days when our contributions are recognized and days when someone (peer, boss, donor, board member) is careless in how they speak to us. We, too, have highs and lows.

Unless.

Unless we take every opportunity to stoke the fire that burns within – for ourselves and for our peers.

Unless we look for chances to keep that flame lit, by giving our employees, our volunteers, our donors a chance to feel, breathe, see and touch the service that is at the core of what we do.

Unless we create space to swap stories, whether close by or far away, of people whose lives have been transformed by our work.

Unless we find moments, hours, days, to pull back from the frenzy that pervades our days (how could it not? The problems are so big, our urgency so great) to reconnect to the original sense of what we’re here to do.

We are blessed to have the privilege to serve others. And it is a privilege. There is no higher calling.

From that kernel of truth, I’ve no choice but to wonder: is it naïve to think that we might conceptualize our professional lives differently? Is it possible that the question “what’s best for me, for my career, for my life?” should pale in comparison to the question “am I doing the most good I can possibly do?”

Because I do believe that one has a different orientation when one says, “I’m here to make a change in the world” (goal-oriented, and with it ego) and when one says, “I’m here to serve.” To be sure, if we, our employees, our volunteers, our donors do not feel nourished, respected, honored, and challenged, then there is no way we can serve others effectively. But are careers dedicated to service fundamentally different? What is the right balance here?

Two reminders

July 2, 2009July 1, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

There are two monstrous excuses out there that keep us from doing what we always wanted to do:

I’ll have plenty of time to do it in the future.
What if I fail?

This week I’ve been reading Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture.” Randy, a Professor at Carnegie Mellon, was in his early 40s, happily married with three young children aged 5, 2, and 1, and had a very successful academic career. Then Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which has a 20% one-year survival rate and a 4% five year survival rate. He died less than two years later.

Randy gave an actual “Last Lecture” in which he shared his life’s dreams from his childhood. The book builds on these stories, and it is part reflection on his own life, part sharing what it’s like to be a terminally ill patient, and part stand-in for all the lessons he hoped to teach his children in their lives, before he found out he was going to die. It’s impossible to read the book without reflecting on how much time we all really have, and that this time, someday, will come to an end.

We’ve no choice but to live life as if we’re going to live forever, but every so often it helps to be reminded that we won’t. The other day I was talking to someone who admitted that he’s so focused on the things that are urgent that he’s pretty sure he’s not giving time to the things that are important. Put another way: it’s easy to spend a long time being busy and then one day discover that you missed the chance to do what you really wanted to do (because you don’t have the skills or the flexibility or the guts or the time).

Not so long ago, when my wife was thinking about shifting careers, I gave her a little metal block for her desk that said, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” Sometimes we all need to be reminded that we are capable of great things.

We all will fail along the way, and none of us will live forever. But we have a chance, if we choose, to live as if the time is NOW and that, if we put in the work, we can do that thing – we can live that life – we’ve always dreamed of.

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Canned beans or bananas?

April 30, 2009April 29, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Every year, between the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, many Jewish congregants take home a brown paper bag to be filled with non-perishable food for people in need. It helps fill food banks, and is emblematic of the principle of tzedakah, or charity, which plays an important role in most major religions (tithing, zakat, etc.)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the surge of interest in volunteering / working in the nonprofit sector, especially the social enterprise sector (where I spend my days). There’s a tsunami of people, young and old alike, interested in using their skills for good in the world. Organizations like Acumen Fund, where I work, seem to be attracting particular interest, and I think it’s because of the impression that nonprofits that work with social enterprises are more likely to be able to take advantage of people’s business skills and put them to good use in solving social problems.

(I say “impression” because I still haven’t been convinced that “business skills” – which I take to mean effective leadership, management, strategy, organizational design, use of capital, etc. – have any more or less application in social enterprise organizations vs. the nonprofit sector more broadly. And I bet the leadership of CARE or Mercy Corps or UNICEF or Save the Children would agree here.)

Part of the challenge of matching this talent to needs is about canned beans vs. bananas. Historically, “volunteering” has often been about applying less specialized skills (serving in a soup kitchen, helping to build a home) to directly serve a population in need. This is canned beans: highly nutritious, long shelf life, can plug in almost anywhere.

Bananas are tougher. They don’t travel particularly well, they spoil quickly, they’re best if you pick them and buy them locally. Yes, you can transport a banana across the world (and we often do), but you would never think that a banana and a tin of canned beans are interchangeable.

I think it’s time we start calling bananas bananas, which may mean distinguishing between “volunteering” and “service.” This is a tough one, because even those words feel like they imply that one is more valuable than the other…which isn’t true.

But if we could develop a common vocabulary about long-term, on-the-ground, specialized engagements requiring screening and specialized skills, we’d be a long way towards clearing up a lot of confusion.

Because, in truth, we really do need a lot more bananas.

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