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STAY CURRENT IN 2012!
We appreciate all of our clients, partners and friends - and see our monthly newsletter as a way to keep you informed about our work throughout the Richmond region. We work hard not to overwhelm you with too many emails. It seems appropriate to start the New Year with a clean sweep of our online email contacts. Please take a moment to update your email address and preferences.
If you would prefer not to receive our emails, you may unsubscribe at any time using the links at the top and bottom of the newsletter. You can also invite your friends and colleagues to learn more about our work by forwarding the newsletter at the link just below.
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WATKINS' SUCCESSFUL START
We recently worked with the new team charged with opening of Bon Secours' St. Francis Watkins Centre facility. We asked each of the 100 team members to jot down a few thoughts on how they would personally ensure the success of the new facility, and their fellow teammates, during the first month of operation. At the end of the month, Tina Pearlman delivered breakfast and their original letters - so each person could see how they'd lived up to their personal commitment! Congratulations on a solid start, Watkins Centre team!
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Greetings!
Our team is excited and astounded by the emerging landscape that stretches ahead of us in 2012.
There's a lot of change in the air, and we're eager to be in the thick of it. It's the 21st Century version of loading everything you own into a wagon and joining your neighbors on a westward migration.
Collaboration will be the appropriately overused term of the year at Floricane. There is almost nothing visible on our business horizon that doesn't involve partnerships with other organizations.
We wrapped up 2011 with a successful collaboration with the Social Media Club of Richmond and the newly branded Connect Virginia at a social media mini-conference at the Library of Virginia. The new year promises even more partnership opportunities.
Just a few days into the New Year, and we find ourselves knee-deep in planning mode on a host of projects with organizations like the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Richmond Symphony and the Greater Richmond Chamber.
Add to that mix the new Leadership Lab, the Greater Richmond Chamber's new collaborative venture with Luck Companies and Floricane. A group of 20 pioneering young professionals, including our own Sarah Milston, are set to begin work on their personal leadership this month. It's exciting to see Luck's decade-old investment in transformational leadership go public.
We're getting the old band back together, and adding a horn section. One among many projects we're tackling in 2012 related to the I.e.* innovation effort: a forward-leaning series exploring the history of innovation and change in Richmond. Floricane will be joined by the Valentine Richmond History Center, the Library of Virginia and other leading history organizations to shape and deliver this cool program this spring.
Speaking of innovation, the second i.e.* creativity and innovation event is set for June, and is starting to take shape.
Those are just a few of a growing number of collaborative spaces we're entering in the coming year. We're increasingly embracing the old-fashioned idea that many hands make light work, and responding in new ways to a continuously changing business landscape. It's what we've been preaching to our clients for three years running.
We're certainly not standing still. New clients, new projects and new teammates form the foundation for the new year, and all of those demand new approaches to our work.
If you are working with Floricane in 2012, I hope you will actively experience what we've been working toward for more than a year -- a genuine team approach to helping your organization bear new fruit.
My challenge in this new space is to let a core group of exceptional performers move into position and apply their unique talents in our work. Scary, gratifying stuff -- and more of what we've been preaching for a while now!
So, welcome to 2012, where collaboration is the new black, and Floricane continues its own work of reinvention. Each year, we find opportunities for our strategy to meet reality. And while we know where the journey into 2012 begins, we're pretty confident there will be plenty of surprises along the trail.
Westward ho!
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A NATIONAL DAY OF SERVICE
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MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAYMONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2012 I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent, we are interdependent.- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Thank You
If we didn't catch you last month when we deluged our friends, clients and partners with appreciation for three years of creating change in our community, please let us thank you now for being part of our journey over the past three years - and for all of your work to make Richmond a stronger community.
Take a moment or four to view our new Floricane video, produced by Richmond-based multimedia reporter Alix Bryan. It features interviews with four of Floricane's favorite clients, as well as our lead consultants John Sarvay and Sarah Milston.
It has been an amazing three years, and we all appreciate your support and friendship. Thanks for being part of the adventure!
>>> JOHN, SARAH, TINA, CARA, DEBRA,
JULIET, SABRINA & JOSH
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Meet Sabrina Barekzai
We're very excited to welcome Sabrina Barekzai to the Floricane team as our new marketing and  editorial coordinator. A senior mass communications major at Virginia Commonwealth University, Sabrina is a northern Virginia transplant who fell in love with Richmond between classes. In addition to a raft of internships and writing experiences under her belt - stints at Richmond Home magazine, the Commonwealth Times and DecideSmart - Sabrina brings a love of words and music to our rhythmic team. (The photo is from a recent show at The National; Sabrina's blog tracks her listening experiences and love of music.)
Regular Floricane followers know our commitment to communication. In addition to coordinating our regular blend of newsletters, blog posts and social media updates, Sabrina will be revisiting Floricane's website in 2012 and supporting our business efforts with her own writing. Many of you will have a chance to meet Sabrina in the coming months as she joins us in our regular client interactions to better understand the work we do.
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SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NONPROFITS
We went from idea to social media conference in just over 30 days - thanks in no small part to our partners-in-crime at the Social Media Club of Richmond, ConnectVA and Richmond HYPE (and our sponsors-in-crime at The Hodges Partnership and the Library of Virginia/Library of Virginia Foundation). Floricane's Sarah Milston worked closely with SMCRVA's Cameron McPherson and ConnectVA's Mark Hickman and Rebecca Eisenman to turn a simple idea into a signature event. The idea was signature Floricane - create a learning environment that brought together groups that didn't typically interact in a formal way; in this case, social media professionals and nonprofits. November's "Between Iraq and A Hard Place: Social Media Lessons for Nonprofits" was one-part social media workshop, one part networking and one part learning about VCU's two-year social media in journalism experiment with 50 Iraqi college kids. We had a packed house of 100+ participants for the workshops, and close to 70 people stayed to listen to VCU Mass Comm professors Marcus Messner and Jeff South discuss their Iraqi summer program. It was a great event, and I suspect you can keep your eyes peeled for a re-do in 2012. Read WorkIt Richmond's coverage of the event here. |
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MORE LESSONS IN SOCIAL MEDIA
When she's not transforming organizations strategically, Sarah Milston spends her time exploring the world of social media. She'll be leading several workshops this winter (and early spring) focused on social media and nonprofits.
January 24 Social Media - Beginning the Process Southside Community Partners March 22 Fundraising and Social Media Association of Fundraising Professionals March 28 and April 4 Social Media for Nonprofits Nonprofit Learning Point |
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IN WITH THE NEW (THANKS TO THE OLD)
The Floricane team has rolled into the new year with some new faces, and a few familiar ones.
On the strategic planning front, we're continuing our work with Rx Partnership, Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, Virginia Dental Foundation and the Library of Virginia. We're equally excited to be engaged in a series of extended facilitation projects with Bon Secours Virginia, Virginia Oral Health Coalition and the Chamber's new Leadership Lab program.
We had a flurry of new inquiries during the last weeks of 2011, and are excited at the opportunity to introduce ourselves to other organizations doing great work in Richmond, and beyond.
We'd like to thank some of our latest work partners - we recently completed facilitation projects with the Greater Richmond Chamber, the Virginia Oral Health Coalition, the Virginia Poverty Law Center and The James House. We also tied a bow around our organizational engagement work with the Library of Virginia in November.
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CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS
John recently spoke to a business group in Hanover about creativity in business. The Richmond Times-Dispatch's new Work It, Richmond e-publication covered the talk. Here's a snippet from Jacob Geiger's piece from Work It, Richmond:
Sarvay said companies and organizations can't have innovation without vision, without an idea of where they want to be in 10, 20 or even 50 years. They may not need to build a detailed plan to carry you from 2012 to 2062, but without that long-term vision it's much harder to make the right strategic decisions in the next year or two. And innovation is going to be driven an organization's environment, which Sarvay defined as its "space plus culture." And all this high-level thinking is great and exciting, but Sarvay reminds his clients not to forget the bottom line. "You need innovation to drive an output," he said. "Your ideas should lead to something tangible, and that's key for businesses." |
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Driving home with Thea from the grocery store recently, we engaged in our typical playful banter.
"Who is going to help me carry these groceries inside?" I plead.
"Dad, I will carry my guys" she says, referring to her armful of stuffed animals. "You can get the rest."
"But they are so heavy," I complain.
"Then we will do teamwork," she says, not missing a beat. "I'll get one handle and you get the other, and you will be okay, alright?"
Teamwork is a lesson I hope she learns faster than her dad.
My resistance to teams comes naturally - a collision of DNA, terrible youth sports experiences and my Generation X psyche.
I'm genuinely terrible at collaboratively working with others, and spend a lot of energy trying to rein in my instincts to go it alone - or solve the problem before I invite others to weigh in.
As she nears her fourth birthday, I think I'm pretty lucky that she even slows down long enough to perceive that other people might benefit from her help. Those rare moments when she's not focused exclusively on her own immediate needs (or testing the law of "cause and effect") have started to increase in recent months.
Psychology aside, it is fascinating to watch Thea begin to reshape her own sense of the world, and understand that she can help shape it. Impulse remains a big driver, but she increasingly slips into these lovely moments of unintentional altruism - whispering sweet nothings into Nikole's ear at unexpected moments, surprise hugs on the playground, offering up teamwork when the groceries are too heavy.
In times of transition and uncertainty - say, moving toward a fourth birthday, or entering a fourth year of economic uncertainty - we all have opportunities to resist our impulses, and to explore the "we" in our work. A wise person in my life once told me that there can be no "we" without a "me" - that effective relationships require all parties to have a clear identity and strong self-awareness. That's true at work, and at home.
But the other thing an effective relationship requires is trust and acceptance of the identity and perspectives embraced by others in the relationship. In other words, meeting people where they are, not where you want them to be. Thea's not there yet. Too often, neither am I.
That, perhaps, is the gap between teamwork and collaboration. It's one thing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone holding back the tide, or carrying groceries. It's quite another to give your trust and respect into the care of another person with the belief that they will treat it gently, and return the favor.
Watching my daughter grow toward Grace is a reminder that my own journey is an important one, that the collaboration, trust, respect - and love - Nikole and I demonstrate on a daily basis shape everything. For now. At some point our lessons will carry much less weight, which makes it all the more important for me to be in the moment now - and to let my child help me carry the groceries.
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