11A Collaborative

Our first issue of our newsletter ??Consulting on Purpose?? (please subscribe) is about Downsizing by Design -- a crucial alternative to the (often damaging) restructuring that most nonprofits are doing now in the wake of lost funding. Downsizing by Design is a process we have been developing across multiple clients who are intentionally shrinking in the wake of cuts, both governmental and philanthropic. Downsizing by Design offers a trauma-informed approach to collective change. It engages the organization in intentionally designing a new path forward by aligning the challenge of reduced funding to the organization's strategy and intentionally developing a structure to meet this. It offers clear parameters for staff realignment that sets the organization up for renewed success through an inclusive process. Follow 11A Collaborative for more content as we continue to write about our experiences consulting across the social impact space.

Yesterday, the Executive Director of a foundation thanked us for holding her hand. ?? This is first and foremost what we do in Organization Design and Development work. Our founder Julian Chender MSOD, ACC learned to lead with love and care from a late, great mentor, Suzanne Zaldivar. Suzanne was his shadow consultant when he worked as an internal consultant the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the Ebola and Zika crises -- rough times for the Institute. She taught him to lead all consulting engagements with "apapacho," a Spanish (mostly Mexican) word with indigenous roots that means "to embrace with the whole soul." As she explained it, a lot of our work is to show tender, loving care; to be there for our clients when they are in need; and to embrace the whole organization with love. Here's to handholding.... CC: Enrique J. Zaldivar

?? Calling all Nonprofiteers planning for or executing downsizing! As we move through a stage of waiting and scenario planning, downsizing is a real possibility. Downsizing by Design helps you strategically retrench in order to regrow. It's like trimming a bonsai tree just right, so that it regrows even more beautifully. Follow 11A Collaborative, where we focus on organization design, which means aligning strategy to structure and helping to scale organizations, both up and back. Learn more at www.11Acollaborative.com.

?? Calling all Org Design friends and those interested in learning more! The March Coffee to Cocktails club is Tuesday 3/18 at 11am EST, hosted by the Organization Design Forum. This month's topic is "Designing Functions and Business Units." Come discuss, learn, and expand your views on this important topic. ?? Here is the blurb: It’s wonderful when we as organization designers are asked to consider a whole organization.?This is a transformative process that aligns strategy to impact across an entire body.?And there are many times when we are asked to focus on just part of an organization: a Function or a Business Unit.?This work requires a unique skill — toggling between levels of system.?We design the part within the context of the whole. Join us this month to discuss the unique approaches we each bring to designing parts of organizations, and how we manage the tensions inherent in this work.

11A Collaborative is out in the world, creating healthy society through healthy organizations. Today we met with an arts organization looking to do some big transformative work!

Two weeks ago I posted a question about self-management as a leader and entrepreneur (https://lnkd.in/eJKHu5Jg). And I think I found the answers from Maria Popova, author and curator of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings). After 9 years of writing a plethora of deep dives into psychology, philosophy, art, nature, and other lovely subjects, Maria had 9 learnings. Here are my 4 favorites and a link to the article: https://lnkd.in/eysTtEBD ?? Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. She quotes Paul Graham, "Prestige is like a powerful magnet that... causes you to work not on what you like but what you'd like to like." ?? Build pockets of stillness into your life and... Sleep! "Besides being?the greatest creative aphrodisiac, sleep also?affects our every waking moment,?dictates our social rhythm, and even?mediates our negative moods," she writes. "Be as religious and disciplined about your sleep as you are about your work." ??♂? When people tell you who you are, don't believe them. "You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you." ? Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time. This is a quote from Debbie Millman, to which Popova adds, "The myth of the overnight success is just that — a myth — as well as a reminder that our present definition of success?needs serious retuning... The flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny." Here's to blossoming... ?? And to 11A Collaborative taking time, with plenty of sleep along the way.

We are pleased to announce our new Advisory Board, which will provide strategic direction as we build our impact -- creating healthy society through healthy organizations. We have a diverse group of incredible practitioners and thought leaders: Heather Berthoud, a storied consultant with a focus in the social justice space at BERTHOUD CONSULTING LLC; Jonathan Bennett, C.Dir., FNI.Dir., a former B Corp founder of a nonprofit consulting business and now a professional board director and coach at ClearlyThen Inc.; Kate Dixon, an expert on small consultancies with a B Corp practice in compensation design at Dixon Consulting; Beth Gunderson, a long time organization design practitioner, founder of Minikahda Partners, and Senior Affiliate Practitioner at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC Marshall

Earlier this week I led an organization design workshop for a corporate foundation and developed a deeper understanding of what my friend Rick Buccheri II, MSOD would often tell me, quoting Lennox Joseph: "Endings have a way of bringing up unfinished business." As we finished the draft designs of a new organization, we effectively began the ending of the old organization. And as we debriefed and checked out, multiple people said they were excited about the new organization and aware of "unfinished business" -- direct quote. That is the work that was lying under the surface, the work that we will now approach in anticipation of the activation of the new organization. Because unfinished business needs to be addressed!

Today is Day 1 of the Inaugural 11A Collaborative Annual Retreat and I already find myself face to face with the stormy seas of self-concept development (pun intended - Bermuda is wonderfully awash in weather). In reflecting on the past year, I realize that who I am has fundamentally changed. I have gone from employee to founder. I have built a solid business. I have led teams. I have wrestled with not knowing and figuring something out. I have built boundaries and preferences. I am not who I was a year ago. And my guess is, neither are you... At times like this I go back to an article on self-concept development I had the privilege of co-writing with Corrie Voss, MOD, Ed.D. a few years ago, ably supported by Frances Baldwin. Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/eXvkv2-G. In it we propose a three-step process to assimilating new realizations about oneself: Awareness, Humility, and Will. It's very helpful to revisit the article on this stormy morning as I experience what we call "dislodgement," the jarring unseating of one's current self-concept. As I approach the retreat process ahead, I will aim to find a new self-concept by bringing Awareness, Humility, and Will into all that follows.

The spirit of 11A Collaborative is alive and well with a collaboration between Julian and Heather Berthoud on a strategy and organization design project for a leading Civil Rights organization.