Last winter, Floricane took Christmas week off. The following week, we kept the calendar free of clients and spent the week working on the business. We dove into 2014 much better prepared, as a result -- and on the same page as a team.

 

We're in the midst of a repeat right now. Our offices were closed for the Fourth of July week, and this week we've been client-free and focused on the next 18 months. I think our "Work On Floricane Week" will become a permanent fixture.

 

We started the week exploring our shared vision for the future and strategizing. (Physician, heal thyself. I know, right?) Another large chunk of time was spent on business development, and we mapped out strategies for our growing social media presence and for our Insights Discovery� work. And we're pretty excited about our 18 month calendar of events, which we'll unveil later this summer.

 

We've had fun, too. Team breakfasts, downtown walking meetings -- and a few secret meetings with clients. (We're rule-breakers!)

 

On a slightly tangential note, we recently were stoked to bring some of our favorite clients and community friends together for a summer party. Our Summer Shindig was made possible in large part by Rick Jarvis and our friends at One South Realty -- and by the deft planning skills of our own Caroline Moyer. It was a great party, and a fantastic, low-key way to reconnect with many of the people who have helped Floricane thrive.

 

Taking a vacation week away made for a nice breathing space for all of us on the personal front. Taking time to connect with old friends and work partners was fun and joyful. Investing a week to plan together as a team, well, that may be the best medicine we could have taken this summer.

 

Vacation, Work On Floricane Week and our Summer Shindig all hit at a perfect time for me personally. A handful of curveballs hit on the home front in June, and having some planned opportunities to recalibrate may have saved me from a complete early summer meltdown! No, seriously.

 

Taking time to create a shared vision, to connect with our community, to rest and to plan our best work -- these are cornerstones of our continued success. It's good for me personally, for the Floricane team and for our clients and partners.

 

Sometimes it pays to take our own medicine. How are you recharging as we move into the second half of 2014? I'd love to hear your secrets to staying focused, energized and motivated about your own work...  

John Sarvay
JULY 2014
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ORGANIZATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
American Civil War Museum
ART 180
Bon Secours Virginia
Draper Aden Associates
Price Studios
PUNCH
Richmond Times-Dispatch
VCU Office of Development and Alumni Relations
VCU Department of Health Policy
 
COACHING
Diamond Healthcare
Draper Aden Associates
 
COMMUNITY & STRATEGIC PLANNING
Virginia Audubon Council
Medical Legal Partnership Richmond
Richmond Public Library
Richmond Symphony
Virginia Beer Wholesalers Association
Virginia Dental Association
Young Nonprofit Professionals Network
 
LEADERSHIP FACILITATION & TRAINING
Bonner Center for Civic Engagement
Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce
Dodson Property Management
Greater Richmond Chamber
Richard Bland College
Super Radiator Coils
Valentine Richmond History Center
Virginia Society of Association Executives
Virginia Society of CPAs
 
WORKSHOPS & CONFERENCES
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Main Street Virginia
Project Management Institute (Center Virginia Chapter)
Richmond SHRM Strategic Leadership Conference
Virginia Society of Association Executives CEO Retreat




 
CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM OUR SUMMER SHINDIG SLIDESHOW...
 


THE LEADERSHIP CIRCLE
Building leadership effectiveness with peer-based dialogue and support

By Debra Saneda and Anne Chamberlain

 

Launching in September, Floricane's new Leadership Circle provides space for a facilitated monthly dialogue with small groups of organizational leaders (no more than 10) over a nine month period. We're excited to be co-facilitating this new program. The Leadership Circle is designed to be a confidential space to explore issues, opportunities and ideas that are central to effectively leading an organization.

 

Floricane's Leadership Circle is not a leadership development course for emerging leaders, or a tactical problem solving session in which to grapple with the nitty gritty, daily decisions. Created for experienced leaders with a high level of influence in their organization, the Leadership Circle is built to allow groups of peers identify, discuss and share personal experiences about the real challenges of leading people and organizations during times of change.

 

Sessions will be held monthly on Fridays between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. at Floricane starting in September (and ending in May). For more information about the application process, check out our Leadership Circle webpage -- or drop us a note!



VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
Hitting our stride with VCU's development and alumni relations team

By Theran Fisher

 

Part of the reason I love working for Floricane is because we have awesome clients who let us engage in really interesting work. And our current work with the Development and Alumni Relations staff at VCU is a prime example.

 

For the past six months we have been engaging with DAR staff across both campuses using Insights� Discovery, which is one of my favorite tools. What has been both exciting and rewarding is to see the folks at VCU really embrace what they are learning and put it into action with their teams. My conversations with the 21 different DAR teams have left me inspired and full of great ideas.

 

Currently, we are getting excited about our Summer Check-In with all of the DAR staff coming up in a few weeks. The agenda is a bit of a secret for the time being, but we have put together a really fun day with the incredible help of several VCU staff. It's going to be a great opportunity to get feedback on the work we have done and to kick-off our upcoming work, which includes small group leadership coaching and a focus on team effectiveness.

 

As we begin to discuss the next phase of our work, I am thrilled with the possibilities to create and deliver work that energizes me as much as it enhances our clients.

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COACHING
Staying in your lane gives your leadership a chance to breathe

By Debra Saneda

 

I've had an opportunity to coach a wide range clients lately -- health care, design and marketing, museum and real estate professionals, among others. Role clarity is something that continues to pop up. Whether it's a result of external demands, a co-worker's departure, new strategic direction for the company, increased responsibility -- the list goes on and on it seems the need for clarity doesn't stop. I suppose its something that is here to stay given the nature of work coming out of the latest recession.

 

Yet, we as humans need to feel some structure and some security -- Millennials, Gen X'ers and Boomers all share this desire. It may show up differently for each generation, but the underlying, human fundamental is the same.

 

A recent quote by Brene Brown sums it up nicely: "I swim for many reasons but none more important than the constant reminder to stay in my own lane." 

 

As I work with clients, I help them reach clarity about their lanes -- what lives within their lane and what doesn't. And, more importantly, we work on how they can be the best swimmer within their lane. How to recognize when they go out of bounds and the price they pay for it -- personally and professionally.  

 

Having lane clarity, gives clients the chance to breathe and lean into their role. It helps create a rhythm for their day and their life that makes the stresses seem less overwhelming and a bit more manageable.

      

YOU SCREAM
Join us for some free ice cream

It's summer time, and the living is easy. Even better, the ice cream is free -- or it will be on Tuesday, July 29, when Floricane pairs up with the other tenants in the 1E Collaborative Workspace and Gelati Celesti for our second annual Ice Cream Social party.

We'll be dishing out six amazing flavors of Richmond's best ice cream, and mingling with a host of community change makers and RVA do-gooders. This free event is open to all of our friends and connections, but you must RSVP to attend! It's the perfect mid-summer escape from work.

Register now to join us on Tuesday, July 29, between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. in the back garden of our offices in the Richmond Times-Dispatch building. (That's on the 300 block of East Grace between 3rd and 4th streets, people.) Get your Golden Ticket here.

MEET MADISON
Our new intern is all energy

We're spending the summer with our second Randolph-Macon College intern, and we couldn't be happier. During her 10 weeks with our team, Madison will be shadowing each of our four consultants as we go about our client work. She's also helping us pull together the beginnings of a super-secret project we hope to launch this fall in collaboration with another RVA organization.

In the language of Insights, Madison is all Sunshine Yellow and she brings a fantastically positive vibe to the space when she's working. We didn't find out until after she started that she's the niece of our longtime client Sheryl Garland, who heads VCU's Office of Health Innovation -- and apparently 30 other departments at VCU! If you happen to see Madison, be sure to say hello.



SHOP CLASS
RVA's favorite series returns

More than 500 people have wandered through the creative mash-up that is SHOP CLASS since it launched in 2011. Make plans now to join us for the fourth annual SHOP CLASS series, a three-session mashup of innovative thinkers, innovative doers and curious bystanders.
 
SHOP CLASS is designed to showcase Richmond's creative best and push new thinking by blurring the lines between creator and creative minded.

 

Organized and hosted by Lauren Boynton, Peter Fraser, Ansel Olson, John Sarvay and Lauren Stewart, each SHOP CLASS session is a two-hour, hands-on discovery zone centered in the historic Marvin Lang Building on West Broad Street.

The classes are free to attend, and a schedule with registration details can be found at the SHOP CLASS RVA website later this week.

 



FLORICANE
Check out our team poster

When we were organizing our Summer Shindig for our clients last month, our team realized that guests might benefit from a visual aid to introduce them to our new team. Working with designer Ben Dacus, Caroline pulled together a fun poster we displayed that gave guests a quick glimpse into the work and lives of our growing team. (You can check a PDF of the poster here.)

It's been a fun challenge this spring to work as a team of seven (including our intern, Madison) to clarify our collaborative work at Floricane, and to map out shared opportunities to grow our vision -- and our business. As we hit the mid-year point, we're spending a week getting to know each other a little better.


THE BANK
Facilitating at the Fed

John spent some time with a team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond last month, exploring the relationship between high-performing teams and the Bank's values and leadership competencies. Working with a small team of Bank managers, he designed an interactive session that helped the larger team see the inter-relationship between all 34 of the supporting behaviors for the organization's values and leadership competencies.

Although the discussion with the larger group Bank managers was just over an hour, participants left with a better understanding of how leveraging each behavior well could impact overall team effectiveness -- and with a tool to assess how well their own teams were performing. The small planning team helped take John's initial ideas and make them much more applicable to their colleagues, and co-facilitated the session.

INSIGHTS
An onslaught of self-awareness


What do American Civil War Museum, Richard Bland College, Super Radiator Coils, the Valentine Richmond History Center, the Virginia Society of CPAs and the University of Richmond's Bonner Center for Civic Engagement all have in common? They're all going on a self-awareness exploration using Insights Discovery� with us this summer.

Each of these teams is looking to tackle different issues -- new members, new strategies, opportunities for new leadership or approaches to collaboration. And each team recognizes that self-awareness is the cornerstone to helping teams bolster their engagement and improve their effectiveness. Insights Discovery� starts with highly individualized profiles for each employee, and builds from there.




Let's begin again...

 

At some point in the next eight weeks, Thea will become a big sister, and Playground Perspective will take on an entirely new tilt on life. I may just have her start writing the column.

 

In one of the multitude of illustrated models we use at Floricane is a developmental model that shows how people and teams learn and adapt to new skills, expectations and changes. It's in the form of a ladder, and at the top of the ladder is "integration" -- that moment when everything falls into place, and the change or skill becomes fluid and innate.

 

The irony of that moment when "we get it" is that it is a moment. It's often followed by the moment when "it" changes. I'll often joke, in quite a serious fashion, about the "rice paper floor of integration."

 

One of life's developmental ironies is that as we successfully adapt to one change, the world continues to move. A new leader hitting her stride at matching her leadership style to her team gets promoted -- and has to adapt her style all over again to a new group with different styles and needs. A new team collaborating effectively and hitting on all cylinders develops a new process -- and back to the beginning they go. We develop social media strategies, and Facebook changes the algorithms.

 

I finally get something of a handle on parenting our school-aged daughter, and an infant son prepares to land in my arms. Thea develops her sea legs as an only child, and a new source of love, noise and distraction changes the focus of every conversation.

 

When the rules change, when conditions change, we adapt. My picture of parenting is about to shift.

 

One of my favorite punk bands from the 80s, Rites of Spring, said it well: "They say life's a game all full of chutes and ladders. Then it's not if I win, but how I play that matters, right?" (See them scream about it in this 1989 video. Yes, I still love this music.)

 

Right now, Thea is excited about being a big sister. I expect over time her experiences of having a brother will fall in the realm of net positive.

 

Similarly, right now, I am anxious about being a dad for a second time. Some things are easier. We're buying a lot less stuff, for instance. (The first time around, you don't know what you don't know. So you buy two of everything.) I'll be less panicked, I hope, when the baby cries. The dog is old, and will sleep through everything. Nikole has been a great mother to Thea, and will be an even better mother to this new tyke.

 

But I don't think for one second that this chapter will be anything like the last. And all of the lessons I've learned -- about myself, about adapting, about love -- are going to go through a great big reset. And this new child will be his own person, ready to teach me.

 

My biggest challenges? Being fully present as the nature of my family shifts, and all of our needs (including the poor dog's!) wrinkle and change. Focusing on my way of being with Thea, with Nikole, with the baby.

 

Or, in the words of my old favorite band, just "open my eyes for the first time... and start feeling all I see."