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• Dear Barack and Friends

  Aug 26, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      8 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  

  "The Democrats still don't know how to go negative. Until they do, they will lose." That's how a CNN commentator ended Monday night's coverage of the Democratic Convention. Is he right? What does it mean for someone to offer hope -- and strongly defend it -- when public life and politics is marked by acrimony and negativity, and shaped by pundits who unrelentingly dispatch such nonsense? Here's how.

  Any individual seeking to promote authentic hope and change in today's society must be clear about two things: keep focused on what truly matters and be certain of your desire to win. Your pursuit to make a difference in the world cannot simply be about "fighting the good fight." Those of us who toil in the vineyards of hope and change should want to harvest the fruits of our labor, simply put to improve people's lives; strengthen conditions in society for change; and make good on our urge to do good.

  But we all know that the purveyors of negativity will not relent. They will bait you, call you names, and push half-truths. They will decry any form of nuance as weakness. We know their ways, and you must not fall victim to them. Do not take the bait. Do not get lost in their maze of mischief.

  Stay true to your aspirations, and train your eye on victory. This is something I wrote about some months ago. My advice is similar today, only stripped down, more urgent, and perhaps more relevant given the chatterboxes, consultants, and critics in their empty suits who stand vulture-like awaiting the demise of hope.

  Moving forward, here are key points to keep in mind:

  1. Be clear on the difference between authentic hope and false hope -- I say this because this distinction must guide and propel everything you say and do. The moment you slip into a rendition of false hope is the moment you lose credibility. This requires enormous discipline on your part; you will have to play by stricter rules than those who assail you. It will be easy to take cheap shots, produce half-baked ads, and blur the lines between false and authentic hope. Don't do it.
   
  2. Demonstrate hope, don't simply talk about it -- I've said this numerous times before: people gain hope from the sense of possibility which emerges from the potential of a new path. This path must be rooted in a vision of what can be versus what is; and it is made real by offering succinct proposals that make it concrete. Talking about "hope" alone will not motivate people.
  
  3. Be tough as nails -- anyone who has brought about authentic hope has had to be tough-minded, thick-skinned, and a fighter. Ex: the prophets, Martin Luther King, Jr., neighborhood folks who made a difference. None of these people brooked any lip from others. They hit back, hit hard, and hit consistently. This is your task. Just be clear that in doing so you must stay true to points #1 and 2 above.
  
  4. Negativity is a deathtrap -- yes, I know it has worked in the past for many individuals seeking to win, whether they were candidates seeking election or community leaders making a point. In fact, it very well might work again today. But if you genuinely believe in the call to pursue authentic hope, then you must not bite the apple. It is rotten to its core. Tactics and strategies rooted in negativity will only lead to your demise. People support you because of where you have planted your feet; stay there.
  
  5. Stay away from Kum-ba-yah -- let's be honest, there's a danger in all this hope and change stuff. It's easy to slip into touchy-feely language that makes it sound like we're all headed for summer camp, or some God-awful office retreat. If you want to pursue hope, then you must be careful about gratuitous Hallmark card moments. Keep it real.
  
  I've written a little piece called Make Hope Real that might come in handy; if you've already read it, pass it along to others who want to pursue hope and change. What's clear is that we can't do any of this work alone; it's also true that if you and I don't stand up, then who will? There's too much at stake. Let's win.
  
  
  

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  Click here to order a free copy of Make Hope Real
  
  

• Have you answered Jon Stewart yet?

  Aug 19, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      3 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  Last night my wife handed me a Sunday New York Times article on Jon Stewart -- Is this the Most Trusted Man in America? -- telling me that I had to read it. She was right. You should, too. During a time of record-breaking Olympics, a decidedly mixed presidential race, and general social anxiety, Jon Stewart's success on "The Daily Show" holds some key insights for those of us who want to make good on our urge to do good.
   
  For me, there are at least three components to Stewart's success:
  

  
  1. He and his staff display an uncanny ability to puncture false realities, a great gift at a time when so many people feel that their realities are being actively distorted in public life and politics.
  
  2. He consistently shines a bright line on a range of issues the mainstream news media often handle with kid gloves or ignore, such as the war in Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the politicization of the Department of Justice, and more.
  
  3. Stewart is able to make his points through a combination of satire, humor, profane language, and a host of other techniques, all strategically deployed to engage viewers.
  

  
  Now, think about Stewart in relationship to the current presidential race, which increasingly seems to be teetering on the brink of another battle over false realities and empty hope. Recent campaign ads are riddled with half-truths, negativity, and silly efforts to misdirect conversation away from people's genuine concerns. I suppose the upcoming party conventions will be relatively better -- could they be any worse -- but how long that improvement will last before the campaigns again descend into a debate over false realities is anyone's guess. All this from two candidates many of us expected would produce a genuine debate and sense of possibility about our future.
  
  Juxtapose these candidates to another group of high-profile individuals, the current U.S. Olympic men's basketball team: Just four years ago, this team was essentially booed off the international stage, as individuals who had ignored or rejected any notion of what it means to act as a team, play defense, and wear the red, white, and blue. They lived in the false realities of self-centeredness, seeming to celebrate the ugliness of professional basketball here at home. But this year, U.S. co-captain Lebron James, who played on that 2004 team, came together with new teammates and punctured the 2004 reality. If nothing else, they have proven that it is possible take a different path -- if the desire is there. Listen to these guys being interviewed, watch them play, and it's so clear that this is a stand-up group, proud to wear the USA uniform, humble in their pronouncements.
  
  So what does all this mean for you and me? After all, there's only one Jon Stewart and Lebron James. None of us have their platforms, megaphone, or talent. What can we do? Here are some takeaways for you to consider:
  
  

  • You can puncture false or negative realities when you decide to step forward and genuinely attempt to portray life as it really is. Indeed, it is possible to break through the noise. For you, this breakthrough may come in a particular meeting, or in how you write a brochure, or produce a new Web site; it may come in how you structure a new initiative or program, or in the ways in which you talk about the challenges you seek to take on. But be clear, it is these breakthroughs in how we depict reality that people are yearning for today.
    
    
  • In your attempts to puncture false reality and shine a light on real issues, you must not disingenuously straddle the fence. Simply going through the motions will not do; nor will rooting your work in reality only when it is easy or convenient. To do is to become irrelevant. People eventually will turn away. Only look at people's reaction to mainstream news, the current dynamics of the presidential race, or local organizations that give lip service to reality and its real-life implications. People's "BS-meter" is very sensitive; they know when they're being manipulated and toyed with.
    
    
  • You must creatively make use of different ways to engage people in discussions about reality and its implications. Simply being "serious" all the time, or projecting "doom and gloom" won't cut it. You will need to engage people based on a clear understanding of your own talents to engage others and the level of credibility you hold with people. So, the U.S. basketball team has gone the route of using honor, humility, and hard work; their efforts are a reflection of keen earnestness and an understated posture. Jon Stewart mixes in humor, satire, and other techniques. In today's world of disbelief, irony, and dissonance, how will you productively engage people and help to meet their deep yearning for authentic hope?

  So, the bottom line is this: we face a choice today, which Jon Stewart, the presidential candidates, and the U.S. basketball team only serve to underscore. It is a choice that existed long before they came along, and it will persist in our lives no matter what they do. Will we step forward to do what is necessary to puncture false realities and engage people in real ways; or, will we toy around at the edges, boasting of a new direction, only to stay within the boundaries of the same old game? The second option is safe; but only the first one allows us to make good on our urge to do good.

• Re-awakening

  Aug 15, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      4 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  This week we're sharing some "Voices from the Summit." Throughout the week participants in the 2008 Summit will be blogging about their experience, their work and their thoughts. This reflection comes from Jean Feraca, Host of "Here on Earth."
  
  

  Ever since I came back from the Summit I've been living in state of grace. It's a little like being born-again.
  
  Imagine having forgotten who you are, what your real name is, why you were sent to earth in the first place, and then being re-awakened. That's what it was like for me. Before I left for the Summit, I had no idea how far I had strayed from my original purpose in creating Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders. Simply stated, it was to show who we are at our best, we humans, and how much we have in common. It was to bring the world a little closer together and to show, over and over again, in as many different ways as possible, that there is only one race on earth, the one we call Human. The best way to do that, of course, is by telling stories, and what better place to tell them than on the radio where "stories make brothers and sisters of us all," as my friend Harold Scheub, who teaches The African Storyteller, has so often stated.
  
  But somewhere along the way, I forgot all that. I began to think that telling stories wasn't important enough. I began to try to be more like other talk show hosts. It was Rich who brought me back to my authentic self.  "When I tell other people about you," he said, "I don't tell them you're a journalist. I tell them you're a poet."  Ah, yes. And then he reminded us that one story connects to another story, and that's how, in the aggregate, altogether we create The Moving Mosaic.   

  Jean Feraca, Host of Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders

• Space for the quiet

  Aug 15, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      3 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  This week we're sharing some "Voices from the Summit." Throughout the week participants in the 2008 Summit will be blogging about their experience, their work and their thoughts. This reflection comes from Wendy Willis of the Policy Consensus Initiative.
  
  

  I've often asked friends and colleagues toiling in the civic engagement trenches if there is such a thing as "social capital poisoning."  While many of our fellow citizens are struggling to find meaningful ways to participate in public life, those of us who have turned our passion for engagement  into a vocation can find ourselves meeting and talking and collaborating ourselves straight into exhaustion.  Sometimes, we just want to be left alone. 

  It was in that state that I showed up at Skamania Lodge two Fridays ago -- depleted and unenthusiastic about more meetings -- even optimistic ones.  Everything in me wanted to hide out.  But, there I was -- nametag in hand -- so I put on my best introvert armor and headed down to the first set of discussions, determined to protect my zone of privacy.  What happened in that first discussion -- and throughout the weekend  -- was not what I anticipated nor was it what I was prepared to resist.  Yes, the discussions were optimistic and spirited and engaging, and I had to be grateful for being in the company of such creativity and hope.  But, the conversations and the facilitators that led them also asked us to do something more than just bubble over with ideas  -- they asked us to reflect deeply and quietly and to connect our inner lives with the outer realities of the work.  They asked us to think about  -- and then speak from  -- our core values and fondest dreams, and even to admit our darkest fears.

  That marriage of reflection and conversation had obvious and immediate consequences -- deeper insights, more honest connections, grittier truths.  But it was also -- for me -- both regenerative and humbling.  It was restorative in that there was space for quiet, even in the face of such palpable creativity and enthusiasm.  But, it also put me right straight in my place.   I had been prepared to let myself off the hook -- to willfully withdraw even in the face of such generosity and warmth.   I was brought face-to-face with my own stinginess and tendency to withhold.  But, the better angels -- and the munificence of the gathering -- won out, and I was left filled with gratitude and not with regret.

  Wendy Willis,Director of Business Development and Engagement, Policy Consensus Initiative

• No More Hopeless

  Aug 15, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      2 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  This week we're sharing some "Voices from the Summit." Throughout the week participants in the 2008 Summit will be blogging about their experience, their work and their thoughts.

  This post was written by Steven A. Smith for his blog "News is a Conversation.  The editor of the Spokesman-Review (Spokane), Steven has worked with the Harwood Institute for more than a decade.  What follows is his post reflecting on the experience of attending his first Harwood Public Innovators Summit:
  

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  I just returned home from the three-day innovators summit in Stevenson, WA.

  I need some time to synthesize what I learned. Suffice it to say for now the innovations most helpful to newspapers probably won't come from our own industry. This conference was a chance to spend time with innovators in a variety of business and non-profit roles. The ideas I will steal from them will help push our own transformational change, I hope.

  But today's end-of-conference discussion did have an epiphinous moment worth sharing.

  We were discussing the writings of noted social activist Dorothy Day.

  This line jumped off the page for me.

  "No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do."

  Words a weary editor, all weary editors and newspaper people, need to take to heart.

  
  Steven A. Smith, Editor, Spokesman-Review

• Busy

  Aug 13, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      2 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  This week we're sharing some "Voices from the Summit." Throughout the week participants in the 2008 Summit will be blogging about their experience, their work and their thoughts.
  

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  These days, when I ask a friend or colleague how they're doing, I almost always get the same one-word response: "Busy."
  
  I don't just interpret this as a reflection of the pace by which we live our lives; in fact, most of the people I know are busy doing things that either matter deeply to them or to people who depend on them. So it's not necessarily the pace that's the problem; it's the way the word choice reveals what we choose to illuminate and, by extension, value in ourselves and the world around us.
  
  It's almost as if the word "busy" has become a short-hand way to describe what it feels like to live in modern society. Is this an accurate description? Is there a difference between feeling busy and feeling highly engaged? If so, what does the predominance of the one word over the other say about our states of mind?
  
  These questions, for me, illuminate why the Harwood Summit is so valuable. Instead of crafting a busy agenda, Rich and his staff provide a precious opportunity for people to feel engaged. Together, we pause, exhale, reflect on who we are, what we do, and why it matters, and make connections with other committed professionals from a range of professional sectors.
  
  ~Sam Chaltain, Executive Director, Five Freedoms Project

• What's our business

  Aug 8, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      3 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  This week we're sharing some "Voices from the Summit." Throughout the week participants in the 2008 Summit will be blogging about their experience, their work and their thoughts. This post comes from Farhana Huq, Founder and CEO of C.E.O Women.

  I started volunteering with citizen sector organizations when I was 14.  My sense of the sector was myopic in that I was on the front lines most of the time, focused primarily on direct service. 

  When I founded C.E.O. Women -- an organization dedicated to helping low-income immigrant and refugee women to become entrepreneurs -- I did so with the goal of helping women.  However, what has evolved for me, over time, is a commitment to addressing the systemic barriers faced by these women. I've come to believe that this requires a very different mindset and tool set. It also requires dialogue.  My thinking is now less about the direct service and more geared towards creating solutions and shifts that will inevitably solve the problems these women face over time. 

  Many of the key players in our sector run their organizations from a purely competitive lens.  What was valuable to me about attending the Public Innovators Summit was the focus of discussions around this phenomenon of organization building.  Many of us expressed our skepticism around measuring success based on the old tropes of "We're the biggest.  We're the best organization.  We're the oldest in the field." 
  
  The dialogue with other civic leaders at the Summit confirmed, for me, that the change we all want to see requires a deep sense of humility and a collaborative spirit.  Sometimes I think people forget what they are in the business of doing.  Are they in the business of doing business, or are they in the business of social change?  Regrouping and refocusing ones efforts around their work is critical to keeping you focused and understanding how to achieve change. 

  Farhana Huq: Founder and CEO, C.E.O Women

• The View from the Summit

  Aug 8, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      3 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  This week we're sharing some "Voices from the Summit." Throughout the week participants in the 2008 Summit will be blogging about their experience, their work and their thoughts.
  
  

  Summit has always been one of my favorite words. When I reached the summit of Mount Rainier some years ago, we broke through a thick layer of clouds and the sky above was absolutely clear. From the summit, we could see the horizon but not the land or cities below. The "real world" was obscured. It was a reflective moment of beauty and clarity, a time for looking upward and outward.

  The Harwood Public Innovators Summit affected me in somewhat the same way. Being there made me look in many different directions and reflect on new possibilities, while leaving the day-to-day world behind for a while.

  Everyone there seemed to be in that space and share that spirit.  All seemed willing to be transparent, open and accountable for their work and themselves.

  Whatever our sector, whatever our challenges, we asked ourselves: How can my organization best help? On what scale? With what participants? With what resources? What metrics? To what end? And what is my personal role? My motivation? Values? Energy? Legacy?

  Those are the kinds of things the Summit made me think about. And finding that many others are asking themselves the same questions was good to know. Sharing our successes and failures, hopes and fears, laughs and tears, dreams and realities, at the Summit was -- at least for me -- truly a peak experience. That's what summits are all about.
  
  John Hamer,  Executive Director,  Washington News Council

• The Starbucks Trap

  Aug 5, 2008      Posted by Rich Harwood      7 comments      Add your comment      [Link directly to this post]
  The Starbucks juggernaut has flipped its lid in recent months, experiencing a downturn most never expected. Over the years, Starbucks had emerged as a new social icon, a reflection of a brilliant business strategy rooted in a keen knowledge of people's yearnings for connection. But somehow Starbucks got burned when it tried to occupy too much space. Any of us can fall into this trap.

  The story is a familiar one: a great idea, terrific execution, rising demand, and then expansion, expansion, expansion! Starbucks coffee can now be seen virtually everywhere. Not only did stores pop up on nearly every corner, they embedded their beans and brand in grocery stores, hotels, even in the air.

  Originally, Starbucks was about intimate coffee houses where people could meet, chat, read ... in essence, be in public. Company leaders often talked about carving out "third spaces" in communities -- neither yours nor mine, but "ours." But things started to unravel, and on Valentine's Day 2007, Chairman Howard Shultz sent out a memo entitled, "The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience." Starbucks had morphed from being an experience to selling a cup of coffee.

  To get back to basics, the company plans to shutter 5% of their stores nationwide, with as many as 12,000 much-heralded workers losing their jobs. Ouch!

  What happened to "The Starbucks Experience?" This raises a key question I often ask people in their work: What space do you want to occupy? Earlier Starbucks enjoyed clarity on this question, but eventually their success and scale led them to believe they could be ubiquitous. That is, they could occupy virtually any and all spaces available.

  My concern is not with their business strategy -- spreadsheets, numbers, coffee beans, and other related matters. That's really not my business.  

  Rather, my focus is on how an organization (whether a for-profit or non-profit) positions itself in public life, how it thinks about the very space it chooses to occupy. The Starbucks phenomenon has many of the same markings I see with non-profit groups that get caught up in their own success, when they wish to occupy any and all spaces.  For instance:

  • A successful local organization that confuses the fact that people value its role in their lives, with the belief that the organization should take a higher profile in the community. When does the promise of a broader profile take your eye off the real target?
  
  
  • A national organization that decides to scale up in dozens upon dozens of communities, but loses sight of what it means to create the very conditions in communities that brought about its initial success. When does the lure of expansion undermine our true objectives?
  
  
  • A civic engagement effort that started with a clear focus, now believes it should go into every nook and cranny of a community to listen to people, even tackle a whole host of issues. Will the numbers add up to anything meaningful?  

  I said earlier, the problem I see here is not first and foremost about a group's business or strategic plan. Starbucks, like many organizations, lost its soul, becoming more about coffee than the "experience." For nonprofits, the lure of occupying more and more space can cloud the realities of who you are and what you are truly trying to achieve. It can diminish the opportunity for producing real change, even if in smaller steps. It can blur one's thinking about what sits at the essence of the work you actually do. At issue is, "Are you clear on the space you want to occupy?"

  My own hope is that good programs and initiatives will expand and even go to scale. But I also know that those that do must be clear on the space they should occupy. Otherwise, it is too easy to get burned.

  It's good to wake up and smell the coffee.