Power to the people, part I

“Most organizations are designed so that a few people make decisions and the role of the rest of the people in the organization is to complain about the decisions,” I said at a dinner last fall.

As I said it I felt my stomach drop and the drop had nothing to do with the dinner or my dinner companions--Stephanie Grimes, Evergreen Leaders president, her husband Rodney, and a couple of other people from their church and my wife Sarah.

My stomach dropped because I suddenly remembered all the complaints I had been fielding from members of Plow Creek Fellowship over the previous year. I’ve been an elder of PCF, a communal group, since 1981. The group owns 190 acres, runs businesses, serves as a spiritual community, and sends members on mission. Plow Creek was founded as a seven-day a week way of being Christian rather than the dominant model of church on Sunday’s and maybe a time or two in between.

It was also founded to be a group where everyone could have an equal voice in decision-making and where each person had an important role in the life of the community.

But when my stomach dropped I asked myself: Could it be that the complaints are coming because PCF is designed for a few people to be in the role of decision makers and the rest are given the role of complaining about the decisions?

On the face of it PCF is designed to do just the opposite. All major decisions are made in members meeting by consensus. But organizations are complex and leaders need to dig deep to understand the systems at work in their organizations.

For the past three years, since several other people and I founded Evergreen Leaders, I have been thinking deeply about what makes organizations thrive. After doing workshops for two years on the topic, much reading and after much thinking (and prayer), last spring I identified 7 paths that organizations use to thrive.

The smart and friendly systems path is one of the seven paths thriving organizations use. The path is based on the principle that organizations thrive or shrivel on the systems they set up for getting things done.

Organizations that shrivel focus on the paradigm: we’ve always done it this way. Organizations that thrive focus on the paradigm: we‘re always looking for ways to make our systems smart and friendly.

There’s a very good reason organizations tend to keep old systems. Once upon a time those systems were great, served the organization well, and, in fact, helped the organization to thrive.

But then slowly reality shifted and the ways of doing things that helped the organization thrive no longer do. Leaders can throw all kinds of energy into making the old systems work but that doesn’t seem to help the organization get back to the thriving days.

A long time ago farmers went through the same experience. They planted corn on a new piece of ground and got an amazing crop. Great, they thought, I’ll do the same thing next year. They did and got another great crop of corn. Slowly but surely the corn crops began to dwindle.

The farmer thought deeply and decided to try beans on the piece of ground. He got a fantastic crop, Great, he thought, this ground is best for beans. Year after year he planted beans and slowly but surely the bean crops began to dwindle.

He thought deeply again and planted corn on the piece of ground. He got a great crop of corn. Then the next year he planted beans and got a great bean crop. The next year he planted corn and got a great corn crop. Thus was born crop rotation.

Organizations that are always looking for ways to make their systems smart and friendly are like the farmers who discovered crop rotation. This is not change for change sake but change to help the organization thrive.

As I thought deeply about the Plow Creek decision-making system I realized the growing frustration within the organization pointed to a need for crop rotation. We needed to make changes in how we made decisions as part of taking the smart and friendly systems path.

I thought more about the need for change in the fellowship I realized that in all likelihood our frustrations were rising not only from a need for smart and friendly systems but also from major changes in the context that PCF operates in.

Tomorrow is my day off. On Saturday I’ll post part II focusing on how Evergreen Leaders’ ecosystem path helped as I struggled with the changes needed in PCF decision-making model.

Rich's blog 2.0

Most of my readers have probably gotten discouraged since I haven't posted since June 11. Sorry about that.

I've been doing some deep thinking about how to carry out the mission of Evergreen Leaders--helping nonprofits thrive. Early in the summer I condensed thirty years of leading secular and religious organizations into The 7 paths of thriving organizations. I think the 7 paths will be the treasure that Evergreen Leaders has to offer the world.

The 7 paths emerged out of two years of doing Evergreen Leaders workshops for nonprofits on the topics of listening, envisioning, and encouraging. The two years of workshops showed me that I needed to sharpen the message. Saying an organizations can thrive through listening, envisioning and encouraging is sort of like saying you can get to Chicago's Millenium Park from Wisconsin, Indiana, or Iowa.

True, but if you are in Nebraska and you stop and ask for directions to to Chicago's Millenium Park you need a little more specifics than "drive though Iowa and Illinois until you get to Chicago and then drive downtown and it's by the lake."

I'm very excited about the 7 paths because I think they will be as helpful in providing a map for organizations as Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People have been for individuals.

I think we have a treasure in the 7 paths. Part of my deep pondering has been: how can we create smart and friendly systems for people to discover, explore, and learn the paths?

I've decide to re-create this blog into a smart and friendly system for you to use to discover the 7 paths. To the left of the most recent entry you'll find a new section (thanks to Taher Baderkhan) called Categories. From now on each of the entries will be archived in one or more of the catgories. Over time there will be a treasure trove of information about each of the 7 paths.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (5)

Plans are I won't see and hold Aaliyah until August when Hannah and Donny travel to Illinois. So I look at e-mailed photos. These two are my favorites taken on day two of Aaliyah's life. The next morning I spoke by phone with Hannah Donny before they went went home from the hospital. "“I love it! I love having a baby,” Donny said to me. I look at this photo of dad and daughter and the excitement in Donny's voice comes back. For years before Hannah met Donny I prayed for a good husband for her I about cry with gratitude as I look at this photo--a good man who loves Hannah and Aaliyah.

“She is so precious. We just love looking at her,” Hannah said. And the photo says it as well. Children love to be looked at. One of these year's I'll hear a little girl's voice, "Grandpa, watch me."

Happy birth, dear grandchild (4)

The photos I have been waiting for arrived during the night. Here's is mother and child checking each other out in wide-eyed wonder.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (3)

Aaliyah Jean Yvonne Hackworth, welcome to the world.

Late this afternoon I went to the Met where I swim 3-4 times a week and I told lots of folks that I had become a grandpa today and they all celebrated with me.

At noon Donny called me and told me that he cut the umbilical cord. Yeah, Donny! He also held her lots this morning. Hannah nursed her twice before 11:00 this morning. She is wrapped her pearents love.

Heidi arrived around 2:00 p.m. in time to take care of Aaliyah so that Hannah and Donny could rest. Yeah, Heidi!

Heidi is going to e-mail us photos. I can hardly wait to see photos of my precious little granddaughter. I'll post a photo on my blog.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (2)

A child is born. At 8:32 a.m. Donny called me for 30 seconds to let me know that he and Hannah have a daughter. Her first name is Aaliyah. I can't remember her two middle names. She was 7 lbs., 8 oz.

Poor Sarah. I called her immediately to let her know she was grandma but her cell phone was off. She had started orientation for a new job at 8:30 a.m. and they must have told everyone to turn their cells phones off. She has to be suffering.

A few minutes later our daughter Heidi called from the Houston Airport. She had a layover on her journey from St. Louis to Jacksonville, FL to be with Hannah, Donny and Aaliya. Heidi had talked with Donny who said that Aaliyah has lots of dark hair. I'll post a photo as soon as I have one.

I had a meeting from 9:00 to 10:00 with no further calls from Donny. I hope all is well.

Thank you, Lord, for new life.

Happy birth, dear grandchild (1)

Our first grandchild is about to be born. Hannah is in the hospital, Donny's taking great care of her and he's so excited to be a Dad. Any moment Sarah's and my first grandchild will be born. You can fellow a long in my joy today on this blog.

Sex, Money, and Power: What I'd like to say to the class of 2006

No one has invited me to speak at a graduation ceremony this year but if they did here’s what I’d say.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2006, I skipped my two college graduation ceremonies because I had already spent enough time in class being bored. I assume you too have spent enough time listening to boring speakers so I’m going to address three attention-getting topics--sex, money, and power.

Only, I’m going to reverse the order and talk about sex last because I want to keep you and the administration on the edges of your seat.

Oh, yes, and as a bonus I’m going to talk about God too. I’m not sure what’s going to make the administration more nervous, me talking about sex or me talking about God.

But first money. Money is like water. You can only drink so much water in a day and you only need to spend so much money in a day. Drink 729 glasses of water in a day and you die. My basic attitude towards money is that the less you spend the less you have to earn which gives you more time for the important things in life like smiling at people.

Of course, if you stop drinking water you die too. So make a little, spend a little. That’s all you need to know about money.

All you need to know about power you can learn by becoming a parent. Give a newborn what she needs--warmth, food, touch, drink, and a clean diaper--and she grows. Now that’s power. But it’s usually not that simple. Often your new baby screams and you have no clue why. Here is your first lesson in power: people in power often do not know what to do. You turn to your husband or wife as your baby screams and you say, “What do we do now?” Here is your second lesson in power: people in power figure it out as they go.

Parents, be sure to thank your graduates. Not for making it through school but for the 729 lessons in good uses of power that they have given you.

Moving on to God. One day in 1956 when my Grandma was 53 she was reading the newspaper when she saw a story about a young mother in Grygla, the nearest town, who had died, leaving a husband, Elton Anderson, and two young girls, ages five and seven.

Grandma turned to Grandpa and said, “Oh, Emil, wouldn’t I just love to take care of those girls.”

A week later Grandpa, who was 20 years older than Grandma, had a stroke and died. A couple of weeks later Elton Anderson called Grandma and asked her to move to Grygla and take care of his two girls, Mayvonne and Donna. Many years later when Grandma told me this story she said, “God put those girls on my heart because he knew I was going to need something to do after Emil died.”

Graduates, a higher power has need of you.

Now, as promised, here’s what I have to say about sex. In the movie, Vanilla Sky, the Cameron Diaz character says to the Tom Cruise character, “Don't you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not?”

Graduates, get married and keep your promises.

Thank you very much, class of 2006, it’s been a pleasure.

Fixing people

Stop trying to fix them.

That was a subhead in Yona Lunken's e-letter that I received this morning. He went on to say, "As a culture we keep thinking that if we just point out someone’s weakness and then give them training for that weakness, they will be fixed. This just doesn’t happen."

As an undergraduate I studied social work and then earned a Master's degree in counseling. You could say I was interesated in fixing people. I didn't think training would fix people but I was focused on people's weaknesses and I thought counseling would fix people.

I'm not against counseling. People close to me have benefitted greatly from therapy.

Yet on my own journey I have begun to appreciate how each of us is a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses. I don't spend a lot of time trying to fix my body so that I can walk long distances. Instead I hop in my wheelchair (well, not exactly hop--smile) and get busy doing the things I'm good at.

As Yona says, "Rather than trying to fix someone, find a way to diminish or ameliorate the effects of their weakness so that their talents can shine."

That's the wonder of families and workplaces. In groups our strengths and weaknesses fit together to create a beautiful mosaic.

I'm not talking about adultery or theft--those are mloral failures, not weaknesses. When I talk about weaknesses and strengths I'm talking about things like I am a pretty good writer and pretty lousy at keeping my office in order.

Our weaknesses naturally create space for other people's strengths.

You can subscribe to Yona's free ''Thinking Skills Seminars Newsletter'' by e-mailing him at thinking@a5.com.

(By the way, can anyone tell me how to create a link for an e-mail address in blogger so that the reader can click on the e-mail address and go directly to their e-mail program with the address inserted in the "To:" box?)

Living in a marketing world

Lately I've been meditating on Jesus of Nazareth's manifesto, aka the sermon on the mount. This morning a phrase caught my attention: "Where your treasure is, there your heart is also."

Where is my treasure?

Like most folks in the USA I live in a marketing world, a world that treasures things, experiences, security. etc. Looking around the room where I write this I can see well over 100 things that were made and marketed (lots of books).

At the moment I don't see what I treasure most--God and his people.

Yesterday after Plow Creek worship and our common lunch three little girls, Kora Behrens, Margret Moore, and Isa Newhouse climbed on me and my wheelchair and took a ride. I treasure the children of Plow Creek.

Lately I have been meeting with Bethany Davis, a young mother of three who moved to Plow Creek from Hawaii last August after her husband died. A stay-at-home Mom with a high school education, she is exploring where she fits in the world of work. I encouraged her to attend Evergreen Leaders recent workshop--The Listening Path--that helps people identify their talents.

During the Listening Path I ask particpants identify seven things there brain loves to do--recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior.

After the workshop I asked Bethany about her list of seven things her brain loves to do. Two themes emerged. Her brain loves facts and ideas and her brain loves to meet new people and to have new experiences. After we had talked a few minutes I asked her, "Have you ever considered doing marketing?" She was appalled at the idea. She saw marketing as equivalent to high pressure sales.

To give her a broader picture I gave her a couple of other examples of marketing. Kevin Behrens, a shy guy and the opposite of a high pressure, fast-talking salse person, does a great job of marketing Plow Creek Farm produce.

Kevin does everything from writing and producing the farm newsletter, taking photos, managing the farm website and during the growing season, he does the daily phone message updates. In the last couple years he has created a great relationship with Natural Direct, a new home delivery produce distributor in the western Chicago suburbs, making it possible for folks in the western suburbs to enjoy locally grown Plow Creek produce. He also creates the signs and the layout for our local self-service produce market.

Then I described to Bethany all the marketing I do for Evergreen Leaders, a nonprofit company I head that does leadership workshops and consulting to help nonprofits thrive in towns under 10,000.

As Bethany and I talked about the marketing I do for EGL Bethany kept coming up with ways to improve EGL's marketing.

"Bethany, you have a marketing brain," I said.

Last week Bethany committed to starting as a vounteer marketer for EGL. I've committed to spend time with her each week supplementing her raw talent for marketing with knowledge about how to market EGL. Also, she is going to take marketing classes at the local community college.

I treasure giving Bethany the opportunity to develop her marketing talent. One of the places I love to put my treasure is in helping people develop the talents God knit into them starting in the womb.

The world's only diamond willow headboard maker

When Dad, who lives in northern Minnesota, was 79, a stranger stopped and asked him if there were any diamond willows growing in the area.

Dad didn't know. He had never heard of diamond willows. The man showed Dad some beautiful walking sticks he had made out of diamond willows.

Dad researched diamond willows on the Internet and then went looking for them. He discovered lots of diamond willows near our farm. "I've probably been walking by them since I was five years old and never knew they were there," he says.

Now Dad is 82, a man with his own diamond willow business and website, Foss Diamond Willows, and someone who is having more fun working than ever before. In fact, recently he told me, "Life begins at 80."

While I've been launching Evergreen Leaders, discovering how to create a nonprofit that can help other nonprofits thrive, Dad has been discovering how to create a thriving business.

When the board and I launched Evergreen Leaders we focused on developing leadership workshops for nonprofit staff. Recently we have added strategic planning and fund raising consulting services in addition to the workshops.

Dad began making diamond willow walking sticks and lamps and marketing them at craft shows. But he kept looking for bigger ticket items that he could make from diamond willows.

After he made a diamond willow bed a couple of people suggested that he make diamond willow headboards. When a customer happily paid $500 for a diamond willow headboard, that got Dad's attention.

Now he has created diamond willow headboards for every size of bed. As he's shown them to customers he's dicovered that his customers see the diamond willow headboards as a perfect addition to their lake homes.

I'm proud of my Dad--the world's first maker of diamond willow headboards.

A thousand mouths

This week I wrote a poem for the Easter sun rise service Erin Kindy and I lead this morning.

Here's a bit of background on the poem. This week the Plow Creek farmers planted strawberries. They order the plants from a distributor in Indiana who purchases them from a grower in California. The plants are refrigerated until it's time to plant them.

We sell a lot of strawberries each June. Last year Kevin Behrens, who does our marketing, said that by the end of the season he felt like he was pushing tons strawberries into people.

Of course, the poem has several Biblical allusions as well. Erin and I used Jesus' metaphor about his death and resurrection in the call to worship:

I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

In the last part of the poem I use the metaphor of tasting drawn the phrase in the psalm, "taste and see that the Lord is good."

A Thousand Mouths
By Rich Foss

Tender Plow Creek hands
lifted little green shoots
from a refrigerator this holy week,
hands like those of a rich man from Aramathia
tenderly wrapping a body
and hefting it into a rocky tomb.

Ah, the grief of a single grain of wheat
clinging to life.

Hand and machine ripped open the field--
now strawberry shoots dwell
in Plow Creek soil,
roots caressed by earth.

A body housed in hewn rock,
lifeless, breathless,
three days of stillness
before the startle.

June is coming when earth and plant
fling tons of strawberries into the air,
succulent to a thousand mouths.

He is risen,
tasting with a thousand generations
the raw goodness of resurrection.

Shall we dance?

This afternoon I suggested Sarah pick up a video and she came home with Shall We Dance? a remake of a Japanese film that stars Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. Sarah loves dance but I had my doubts. After all, I don't move well due to my disability...all I could think of was watching a movie that reminded me of my shortcomings as Sarah's man.

At first the movie confirmed my fears as Richard Gere secretly pursues ballroom dancing lessons, unable to reveal that side of himself to his wife. Does Sarah secretly wish she could dance with someone who could move freely?

But then to my astonishment the movie flows into powerfully affirmation Richard Gere's marriage. At one point Peter Gabriel's "The Book of Love" was playing in the background and tears were welling up in my eyes:

The book of love is long and boring...

The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb

But I
I love it when you sing to me
And you
You can sing me anything

Sarah, my heart is a ballroom for you. Shall we dance?

Sometimes life is as brutal...

Sometimes when I need a break I wander the web. This afternoon I wandered to Kevin Rains' blog and discovered that Mark Palmer died.

I don't know Mark Palmer. I only know he's a friend of Kevin's and he had cancer. I clicked on Kevin's link to Mark Palmer's blog. Mark's last post was 3/25/06. He talked about celebrating his four year-old son Micah's birthday.

His wife has written three entries since his death, starting on 3/27/06 with: My lover is gone...

Sometimes life is as brutal as an eagle swooping over a rabbit.

Mark's last words in his blog were to his son, Micah, who is named after the prophet:

Happy birthday little prophet, may you be filled with the blessings of peace, hope, and love.

Sometimes life is as tearing and tender as the blessing of a dying man.

Laughing and weeping

Yesterday morning, as I have done for months, I prayed for the Christian Peacemaker Team members being held in Baghdad. At first I prayed for four, then three after Tom Fox's body was found a couple weeks ago.

When I was done with my quiet time I turned on my computer and my Inside Yahoo! screen popped up declaring the CPTers had been freed. What great joyful news.

Later Erin Kindy, one of our church members who is active in CPT came over and we rejoiced together that the three CPTers were released without a bullet being fired. Talk about an answer to many prayers.

As the news has unfolded in the day since they have been released the three who were from Canada and Britain indicated that they had not been mistreated while in captivity.

That likely means that Tom Fox was tortured and killed for being an American. People get upset when their country is invaded.

That reminds me of fifteen months ago when I was in the Miami area between Christmas and New Years. One day my wife and daughters decided to visit a huge mall. I stayed in the van to snooze but soon found myself in a conversation with a New York building contractor who divided his time between New York and Florida.

"I wish I could sit down with President Bush," he said. "I'd tell him he has blood on his hands."

When you listen to people, even strangers, you hear interesting things.

On the news last night a newscaster said that CPT does not use security so they were easy targets for kidnapping.

Tom Fox was a sacrificial lamb for the blood on American hands. Of course, some Iraqis have his blood on their hands too.

Bullets fly in circles, bloodying the hands of those who pull the trigger. A wise friend of mine once said, "They that live by the sword, die by the sword."

I take quiet pleasure in knowing the Christian Peacemaker Teams will not bloody any of the Swords of Righteousness Brigade who took Tom Fox and the other CPTers.

Grieving Tom Fox

I am mourning the death of Tom Fox, a Christian Peacemaker Team member whose body was found last Thursday in Baghdad, bound with gunshots to the head.

Plow Creek has sent three of our members to Colombia and Hebron to serve with CPT, and the father of one of our members, Erin Kindy, has spent much time in Iraq with the CPT team there.

So this news story is more than a news story.

It also hits close to home because my wife's father went to Ethiopia in 1950 as a missionary and was shot and killed.

People who go to dangerous places out of obedience to the Lord sometimes are killed and family and friends are left behind to grieve.

Remarkably, the day before he was taken captive, Tom Fox wrote a reflection on why he and CPT are in Iraq.

Three CPTers are still being held captive. Lord have mercy on they and their captors.

What's wrong with employer-based healthcare?

Six years ago Malcolm Gladwell author of Blink and Turning Point debated a proponent of the Canadian system of healthcare.

Galdwell has changed his mind. He now says that employer-based healthcare makes about as much sense as employer-based transportation. You know, if you lived in New York and lost your job "you would either have to walk or pay a prohibitively expensive subway surcharge."

Check out his blog.

Evergreen Leaders Drill Down 6

My brain is still working on simple, powerful words and concepts to create a clear focus for EGL.

For the last couple of years I've often said to people that EGL provides leadership training to people who would not otherwise have access to it. When I've said that I was thinking about people in small nonprofits, small business, etc. A couple days ago it occured to me that people in leadership and management in small towns--whether they are small businesses, nonprofits, public sector, or churches--do not have access to leadership seminars in their towns at an affordable cost. So here's EGL mission version 6:

EGL helps
• nonprofits, small businesses, govermental units, and churches in towns under 10,000
• to be great workplaces
• and to transform the lives of service recipients.

Evergreen Leaders Drill Down 5

I'm still trying to drill deep enough to find simple words to describe what EGL is trying to achieve. Every business and nonprofit exists to make life better for somebody. Whose lives is EGL trying to make better? What will happen when lives are been touched by EGL?

I'm looking for a way to describe EGL's mission so that excitement flows like an artesian well for all connected with EGL.

Here's another version:

EGL helps
• companies (nonprofit and for profit) that employ service people for $12 an hour or less
• to be great workplaces and to transform the lives of service recipients
• at a cost comparable to national firms providing management seminars to small businesses and nonprofits.

Now I think I am really close to pay dirt.

Talents and laughter

Among Rick Reha's talents is eclectic reading--science fiction, theology, art history, music instrument making publications, and much more.

Talent, according to the Gallup Organization research, is "a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied."

Here's how Rick recently applied his talent for reading. He recently read Holy Humor by Cal Samra. He passed the book along to Jim Fitz.

Jim, when he's not traveling as part of his peace-making ministry stays three night's a week with Jim and Donna Harnish, Plow Creek's most senior members. He brought ''Holy Humor'' with him to Harnishes'. He leaves the book there and each evening he stays with the Harnishes he reads to Jim.

Fitz has a talent for connecting with people. "It's more fun reading a humor book with someone. When I read the book to Jim he often has funny stories to tell," he says.

Getting old gracefully is not for the faint of heart. Donna had a stroke seven or eight years ago and has not been able to speak or walk since. Jim and others at Plow Creek have faithfully cared for her since her stroke. Now Jim H.'s health has deteriorated to the point where he can no longer drive and he mostly uses a wheelchair to get around their apartment.

Still he's a great conversationalist. He enjoys discussing the politics of hope for the poor, telling stories, and laughing at the occasional absurdity of life.

When I'm old and can't get out and about I'm looking forward to people sharing talents, moments of absurdity, and laughter with me.