Dear Colleague,
These are times that call us to pay attention to what matters. That first requires, of course, that we determine what does indeed matter. Adrienne Maree Brown, the visionary author of "Emergent Strategy," has a principle that suggests why this exercise is so important: “What we pay attention to grows.” (We highly recommend you pick up the book and read it cover-to-cover if you haven’t already.)
For some of us, recognizing that we have a choice in the matter is itself revolutionary. At AchieveMission, we consider that choice – of not only what to pay attention to, but how to mobilize the attention of others on it – an act of leadership.
“Attention is the currency of leadership,” a dictum originally penned by Ron Heifetz, is oft-quoted across our AchieveMission team. The writer and philosopher Simone Weil also weighed in on this one: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Our ability to step back and see what matters, to even notice what we are paying attention to can be eclipsed by the volume of the tasks and the weight of our feelings about them – meetings, deliverables, challenging conversations we studiously avoid, administrivia still incomplete, blogs and newsletters and emails filed to read later.
Who has the capacity to think about paying attention?
Sometimes, the great disruptor no longer allows us to look away. #MeToo has swept our nation and thankfully swept long-festering issues from under rugs and locked file cabinets and board room tables right with it. This attention mobilized is transforming relationships and practice in many organizations. Of course it hasn't "solved" the problem at its source - yet. But it has elevated new questions and many many new voices. Attention. Focused. Leadership in action.
This is also about each of us individually, whoever we are and wherever we sit. For the long-game, we need to stay in condition to feel generous enough to share our attention. This requires that we find what supports us and go toward it no matter the circumstances; do what enlivens us and stick with it even if it feels like we have no time; find true partners, and go toward them even if we are a scared or uncomfortable.
We can change the conditions by seeing and filtering the polluted waters in which we all swim. And as we pay attention to what matters, healthy new life will grow.
"The Long Middle": Building Leadership at Harlem Children's Zone
On August 23rd, Conrad Pinnock, Senior Managing Director at Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), and Mike Markovits, Partner at AchieveMission (AM), sat down in conversation with Patrick Garrity to reflect on four years of dedicated partnership between the two organizations. (Read the full interview transcript here.)
As Conrad and Mike recount, their relationship began as a thought partnership, but soon evolved into an ambitious effort to build a culture of leadership development within HCZ that could integrate deep community knowledge and expertise with new awareness and practice.
Through the partnership with AM, Conrad was interested in exploring ways to deepen HCZ's existing Leadership Development activities. As he puts it, the question was, "how do you expand that into an organizational strategy to transform an organization?"
Over the next few years, Mike and several AchieveMission colleagues worked with Conrad and HCZ to do just that. As Mike recounts: "What we’ve tried to think about at HCZ is how not to do events, but how to do culture change...creating a leadership culture, a much more interwoven set of interventions to transform HCZ around how it thinks about leadership, what is expected of leaders and the behaviors associated with that."
The work has not been easy. As Conrad has come to realize, creating true impact seldom is. He notes that it takes more than just having formal authority and creating new policies. Instead, real impact comes from "influence, it’s persuading, it’s developing; it’s doing those things differently when managing," day in and day out.
"For this reason," Conrad notes, "it takes great wisdom, it takes great skill, it takes great insight… [and] it comes down to the leadership of an institution. We have been fortunate at HCZ to have had extraordinary leaders in our founder, Geoffrey Canada, and our current CEO, Anne Williams-Isom."
The leadership development work at HCZ has surfaced adaptive challenges that mirror larger social dynamics around race, class and culture. Along the way, Conrad and Mike have learned and re-learned some critical lessons that continue to inform their collaboration as they strive to create lasting impact within an organization and the vibrant community it serves.
Two salient lessons are the necessity of daily practice and the importance of persistence and partnership over time. As Conrad offers, "The challenge is doing, practicing, taking a thing one has learned and applying it in the daily exercise of managing and being. It is hard for things to take root if they are not practiced."
Long-term partnership has also been essential: "One thing that has contributed to a successful partnership with AchieveMission," Conrad concludes, "is that you stay in the work. You stay in the relationship.... I would say to those who are looking to do this work: think carefully and deeply about the beginning and the long middle."
Welcome, Diane and Tamika!
The AchieveMission team could not be more pleased to announce the addition of Diane Robinson and Tamika Mason as Affiliate Senior Consultants.
Diane, based out of New York City, has spent nearly 20 years at the forefront of education change, and is a seasoned development coach with years of experience as an adaptive leadership practitioner. Full bio here.
Tamika, based out of Washington, D.C., has spent the majority of her career focused on talent and organizational development in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors, and she has led significant change and innovation in the areas of diverse and equitable talent management practices. Full bio here.
Our team is stronger with Diane and Tamika onboard, and we look forward to even better serving our partners with the considerable expertise that they bring.
AchieveMission at the 2018 Equity in the Center Summit, October 9-10, 2018
AchieveMission is honored to have been selected to design and facilitate a session at the first-ever Equity in the Center Summit this October in Baltimore (register here). AchieveMission Executive Director Mikaela Seligman, Affiliate Tamika Mason and Partner Mike Markovits will offer "Getting to Work: Managing Succession with Race and Gender at the Center."
We know that advancing from Awake to Woke to Work requires that we ask challenging questions of ourselves, interrogate our assumptions and how they play out in our professional practice, and work in new ways across our organizations to create environments in which all staff can advance. As we know from our work with HCZ and many other clients and communities, this is not a one-shot deal. It requires us to assess and reshape our own ways of seeing and doing, and some of our key management and operational practices.
This workshop targets one key leadership development practice, Succession Management. Through a case-based approach, participants will learn how to assess and support talent equitably and over time in their own organizations.
AchieveMission at Upswell LA
Come join session moderator Mikaela Seligman on November 16 to explore how you can go beyond being an ally to people of color in your organization. Are you actively using what you know about race and power dynamics to build an organization that makes a difference, while remaining open to what you may not yet understand? Register here to join the conversation.
Confronting the Nonprofit Sector as "White Space"
We must step outside of "white space," Cyndi Suarez argues in her recent NonProfit Quarterly piece, if we hope to achieve a systems-change solution to racism in the nonprofit sector. This means challenging normative frames like "diversity, equity and inclusion" (versus racial justice) and "implicit bias" (versus racism), which reflect a white dominant approach to dismantling white domination.
Planning for Succession: Eight Stories from LEAP Ambassadors
This article offers the perspective of eight CEOs on their "succession journeys" as well as tips for addressing yours. Clear and relevant. We also encourage you to consider how succession can be an equity accelerator, surfacing issues of race and gender, and ensuring that this next generation of leaders reflects who we are and who we are becoming in the communities we work in and with.
Building Authentic Partnerships Across Cultural Divides
People often ask us, and we keep asking ourselves, how to partner well across differences in culture, resources and power. In this recent blog post, Vu Le offers some very useful words of advice.
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