True inclusivity demands more than open doors; it requires the courage to delve into the complexity and intensity that diversity and divergence ignite.
This Thanksgiving, I thank all my teachers. Thank you for being my guiding lights, wise sages, and enthusiastic cheerleaders. Your impact is immeasurable, and your presence in my life is a gift I deeply cherish.
As philanthropic and nonprofit leaders, we are committed to a living our purpose, and driving societal impact. It's time we align our strategies and lofty ambitions with the realities we face. We can shine under the mounting pressures. Remember, diamonds are just specks of carbon that handle stress well.
By regularly assessing collaboration, organizations can pinpoint areas of improvement to support their evolution towards a more aligned, inclusive, innovative, and impactful culture.
To engage your stakeholders, you must first ignite their imaginations, which will increase their participation, which will foster their commitment to your shared work and the desired results. These three pillars of engagement are broad, so to help ground these concepts in practice, I am excited to share with you the following list of ways to ignite your stakeholders’ imaginations and get you moving down the road to meaningful engagement.
We are at a time when we face many challenges and stakeholders are increasingly polarized in their thoughts on how to solve the issues at hand. This makes engaging certain stakeholders even more difficult. This is why we need become more creative in how we engage each other - our colleagues and our peers across “the aisle.”
American culture supports & rewards the analytical left-brain thinking; yet it is in the right brain where the magic happens. We can logically think through problems with our left-brain, but how often do we become blocked or stuck on an issue? Or, how often do our solutions actually solve the problem as we intended without creating new problems?
It’s been said that creativity is the survival skill of the 21st century, -- creativity is the multiplier of intelligence and it sharpens our competitive edge. In this day and age, everyone must learn how to be a better problem solver. And this is vitally important because, after all, aren’t we all paid to solve problems?
