Three good things for happier and more innovative nonprofits
In keeping with a tradition of all resourceful (lazy) bloggers, this is a reposting of content I wrote on another blog. This post is from the social services innovation blog I started at 211info: InciteSocialServices.org. The post is aimed at nonprofits but has a wider application as you will soon learn. Enjoy! And hopefully I’ll be posting more original content here too. Originally posted here: http://incitesocialservices.org/three-good-things-for-happier-and-more-innovative-nonprofits/ The first step is admitting you have a problem. Months ago I realized I had a negativity problem. That negativity was affecting my happiness enough to research how to “fix” it. Among the suggested antidotes was writing down three good things about the day, every...
Read MoreBonus: What I left out of my social media presentation
I got the pleasure to speak to more than 200 members of the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems (AIRS) via webinar along with my colleague Kelly Bergeron. For those interested in the slides you can view them here. And AIRS tells me the audio will be available at some point. I want to follow up on one topic I never dig deep enough in to. More importantly, it is a topic that gets glossed over by almost everyone. Why consistently creating is so hard. In the presentation, I talk about creating remarkable content consistently. Create remarkable blog posts, a remarkable Twitter relationship, or Facebook page or video. But the million dollar question is: how? The advice most people give is — just create more. Try hard. Blah, blah, blah. But the equation...
Read MoreFor the love of the game
I was on a call with a colleague in San Diego and he mentioned my website and how I haven’t written anything in a while. I was kind of taken aback. Wow, he was actually interested in what I was writing. So this revitalization is for you Bill York. I revamped the look of the site to be lighter and I’m back at the keyboard. My favorite sports writer/podcaster Bill Simmons was interviewing Dirk Nowitzki, last year’s NBA finals MVP. Dirk spoke of a concept I hadn’t thought of in many years: having fun. It made me think, it’s time we inject a sports cliche into the nonprofit world. Dirk talked about playing in Europe weeks after a 102 game NBA season. He hated every minute of it and couldn’t wait to escape the gym. After a few months off, he came back...
Read MoreAct A Fool
Why do we need all the answers? We need it all planned out. We have to know every step of the way for the next 6 months or year or 3 years. Employees and boards expect us to plan. They feel like organizations can’t function, services can’t serve or ideas won’t spread with out the plan. We take every precaution. We read every book. We gather all means of consensus. And we puff out our chest and unroll our plan. But we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Likely it is something we didn’t expect. So we freeze when it goes “wrong.” “This isn’t going as planned! It turns out I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, Ahhhhhh.” So we retreat to planning mode and resolve to make a more fool-proof plan. But shouldn’t we just be OK with being...
Read MoreHow to embrace transparency and avoid being an ass
Transparency isn’t just about sharing your strategic planning process on a wiki. It’s about knowing yourself, understanding other people know you and cutting out all the games. That’s my philosophy. But philiosophy doesn’t always drive practice. So when I walked into an operations meeting, having just talked about how to improve the efficiency of meetings with our COO, you could say I had an agenda. I’m not efficiency-obsessed, but when it comes to meetings I am. (As a point of reference, I love the way this guy thinks.) The COO gave me the floor and what did I do? Played down my agenda. Pretended like I didn’t have a stake in the ground. And half-heartedly asked others for advice. I probably looked like an arrogant,...
Read MoreHow to spark a new idea everyday
As creators and thinkers it’s easy to assume we have to generate all the ideas. Our culture makes heroes of the lone wolf. But there’s a more effective way to produce great ideas that lead to action. Let’s take yesterday morning for example. I had a plan to write every day. I would reflect in the early morning on the previous day’s activities and write something based on those experiences. I sat down to my laptop, but nothing came. I sat and thought and reflected but I was empty. So, I became frustrated. I got down on myself and I stalled without creating a thing. Maybe this makes me an amateur. I don’t care about the label, all I know is it didn’t work. Later in the evening, I attended the monthly PDX Tech for Good meeting in downtown Portland. I...
Read MoreSplit personality
On Facebook I’m this guy my old friends know. I can’t be the guy who has a day job. On Twitter I’m all about #NPTech. But God forbid I talk about sports or beer. On my agency blog I’m a spokesman. On my personal blog…who knows. I always have to think about what person I’m going to be. What’s my brand? I’m through with it. I realize this is kind of the anti-Google + mentality. Circles were invented because supposedly in “real life” I am expected to be a different person at work than I am at home. I’m expected to act differently at church than at a social function. And thus the Internet should mimic real life. (Though of course it doesn’t.) In recent months, I decided I was splitting myself too many ways. Sure I could pull it off, but I...
Read MoreAbout the site
Understanding how to think on a journey of lovingkindness, compassion and wisdom. 
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