Last week, Melinda and I had the honor of working with this year’s cohort of aspiring urban school principals participating in the New Leaders for New Schools program. It was awe inspiring and heart warming to meet these accomplished educators who are now putting their classroom successes to the test by striving to take on instructional leadership of a challenging urban public school and raise student academic achievement across the board.
Our work was to help the New Leaders develop and strengthen skills that would serve them in putting together and managing their leadership teams. While focusing on meeting design, we talked about how important it is to avoid simply inheriting old practices and meeting culture that may be dysfunctional or deadening. To honor people’s time and energy, it behooves leaders to be thoughtful and strategic with respect to when and how they convene them and to what end. As we discussed the myriad options for creating a group experience, one participant stood up and said, “We really have to get ourselves out of the box to do this work!” Indeed.
As you read this post I find myself in Guatemala, honored to be working with Reading Village, a truly inspired reading promotion organization. I’ve been impressed by the principled stance of its founders, the serious attention they are paying to respecting local culture and being of authentic service. Having run a successful pilot, they have asked me to come a facilitate a set of conversations towards the development of a field guide – a text that will serve replication of the success of Reading Village while remaining flexible enough for local adaptation. Wish us luck! We are doing something good here!
I’ve been making the argument that happiness matters. I think it specially matters among those of us who are working towards social transformation. I believe there is a way to be happy and still face down the horrors that abate our world. I am convinced that when movement builders find and cultivate this sort of clear eyed happiness we will actually become a powerful attractor for those who yearn to build a better world but have not yet found a way to do it. Read the rest of this entry »
This past week marked the release of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ newest action learning guide – Do Nothing About Me Without Me: An Action Guide for Engaging Stakeholders. IISC is pr0ud to be a co-publisher of and contributor to the publication, which builds on our work with GEO staff facilitating Engage for Results. Essentially this seminar walks foundation staff through a series of strategic questions and tools for engaging grantees, community members, and other stakeholders in their grantmaking. Worth highlighting here is what GEO and IISC identify as being core to the case for funders doing more to involve others in their work: Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, Steve Waddell wrote an excellent post on the Networking Action blog about initiating a network. In it, he talks about four lessons he’s learned in starting a network:
Be passion-driven and work-focused
Think “community-development” not “governance structure”
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