GV in May: Becoming Mickey Goldmill

I’m reading: A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson. It’s a wild history of the distribution (or hoarding) of power in Major League Baseball. “Told with passion and occasional outrage, A People’s History of Baseball challenges the perspective of the well-known, deeply entrenched, hyper-patriotic stories of baseball and offers an incisive alternative history of America’s much-loved national pastime.”

I’m listening to: Everything Hurray for the Riff Raff has ever put out. Spring is for bluegrass, Americana, and love songs.

UPDATES:

PIVOTING TO CAPACITY BUILDING OVER CONSULTING

“How can I make this work more sustainable for me and for clients?” is a question that’s been incredibly hard to answer, until now! While I will continue to take on a few consulting projects here and there (I’m defining “consulting” as project-based work in which I am responsible for facilitation, deliverables, etc.), I’m shifting the bulk of my work to a capacity building approach.

I will continue to focus on facilitation, organizational effectiveness, and data design - but instead of doing, I will be teaching.

I think social change organizations need a “bench” of these skills - especially facilitation! By the time organizations realize they need a consultant, things have usually gotten pretty wacky - before the RFP is posted, an organization has to bump into a lot of walls.

I have a hunch that bulding these skills and practices internally will allow organizations to:

• Navigate change more effectively, with less collateral damage - by the time an organization actually posts an RFP for a consulting engagement, things have usually gotten pretty wacky. Trust among staff and leadership can get bruised while an organization bumps into corners and walls before figuring out they need external support!

• Deploy skills when they need them - when I ask organizations what their timelines are for projects, they almost always say “yesterday!”

• Build more power and autonomy within the organization

• Build and nurture the “connective tissue” crucial to cross-functional collaboration and coordination

• Keep internal dirty laundry and politics internal

…given our current political context, with civil society and nonprofits under direct attack, all of these can help build build organizational resiliency and responsiveness.

My capacity building packages have two tiers:

1. Goal-based, time-bound support: 1 - 2 months of teaching and coaching, working towards a specific goal or event

2. Skill-building: 4+ months of teaching, coaching, and collaboration, with a focus on building skills that will support facilitation, data design, or more borad organizational effectiveness work

I’m offering these packages to:

• one staff and one leader, or

• a team of 2 - 4 staff and one leader, or

• a team of 4 - 6 staff and two leaders

We can work together to tailor these packages to your organization or team’s needs and goals - please reach out if this sounds interesting to you. You read more about this approach, including pricing, here.

LEARNING:

GV ADVISORY’S OUTDOOR RETREAT AND TEAM-BUILDING OCCURENCE

I’ve been BURNT OUT. GV’s Executive Leadership decided to take action and got together for a retreat. (GV’s Executive Leadership is me and the dog, Dudley.)

A few weeks ago, while we were talking about burnout and how unsustainable our work can feel, a friend and fellow consultant suggested that shifting my focus to facilitation coaching might be something for me to think about. I took this idea and ran with it, and asked myself the following questions:

1. What do I want work to feel like?

2. What don’t I want work to feel like?

3. What do I love about facilitation and consulting?

4. Why shift to teaching instead of doing?

5. What does having an internal facilitation or consulting “team” or “bench” make possible for social change organizations?

6. What will I stop doing?

…I won’t bore you with my answers to these questions (though I’m happy to share if you’re interested!), but I will share my biggest takeaway. In retrospect, I’m realizing that used to aspire to be like Rocky Balboa - the one on stage, the one doing the work. The one whose name is on the poster. The one running with bricks in my hands, exercising with a log on my back, chasing chickens, and running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Now? Now I want to be Mickey Goldmill - Rocky’s trainer. I want to be backstage. I love concepts and theory, and talking about why we work the way we do or how we might ask the most powerful questions. I also love teaching - I love sharing what I’ve learned and seeing how other folks arrange that information with their own experiences and expertise. I’ve been training some Foundation staff to become internal facilitators, and it’s been a blast.

I also think this approach is better for the work. More folks with facilitation, data design, and organizational effectiveness skills is a good thing for the sector - especially right now.

QUESTION:

This month’s question is a self-serving one! Do you know of any organizations who might be interested in Capacity Building services? Drop me a line!

ABOUT GV:

Genevieve (they/them) runs GV Advisory - Guided by collaboration, humanity, and joy, they help social impact organizations embrace data and cultivate a learning culture. This work enables organizations to evolve into entities that operate based on evidence and relationship to community. Reach out to Genevieve at [email protected].