EMBRACE TENSION M y process with CREATE has been a deep dive. A deep dive into the organization, myself, my new teammates and mentors, and how we would work together – oh, and how we would work together, again, amidst COVID-19. It also required a significant amount of reflection: What makes communities better? What leaves people feeling more inspired? What role do each of us play in our collective purpose striving to maximize impact on community? At times, we’ve seen things differently. Experienced tension. We’ve become frustrated with one another. We’ve experienced conflict – even disagreed about whether or not we experienced conflict. On the other side of tension lies a depth of understanding, trust and camaraderie required of successful and agile teams. Agile teams continuously strive to lead with creativity and innovation during environments laden with dynamic change and unpredictability. The magic, I have learned, lies on the other side of conflict, and is best described as CAMARADERIE and COHESION. To cultivate this, I learned to lead with a mindset that consistently seeks understanding and prioritizes communicating effectively – this means being curious, not critical. I learned to be more patient – doing more listening than speaking. Entering conversations with the standard of 70% listening, 30% speaking was a wonderful technique discussed in Prof. Elizabeth Martin’s Wisconsin Leadership Seminar. Listening is an art that takes practice. I learned to practice asking excellent questions that are open-ended and seek a greater level of understanding – and even help the speaker reach greater clarity. One of my teammates would share he learned throughout this engagement the importance of togetherness as it relates to taking a next step or moving forward. “Steamrolling” was a descriptor we used for ‘moving forward without the readiness or buy-in of stakeholders’ – and it can leave potentially valuable
A NONLINEAR JOURNEY
From these solutions, we synthesized and prototyped our service as a marketing brochure. We shared our concept brochures with the CREATE Board of Directors and gathered feedback from business and community leaders in and outside of Stevens Point.
We repeated this process over and over.
We leveraged the outstanding work CREATE has done in network building to gather feedback from prospective clients, communities and business leaders – both regionally, from Stevens Point to Antigo, and nationally, including small communities in New York, Iowa, and even Alaska. These conversations informed our work significantly. After hearing directly from the individuals we would serve, it was easier to begin aligning their needs with the talent, thought-leadership and expertise within the walls of CREATE. Each time we spoke with a potential client community, we put together a viable proposal that responded to their specific need, emphasizing the importance of a thorough intake process that helped CREATE understand their unique situation, capacity and stakeholders. Though I started with CREATE with the intent of a clear, phased process (think, research, plan, design, launch, evaluate) that ended with a clean launch of a well- defined product, it was most definitely not a linear, 1-2-3 process. As an agile, effective strategy should, our process has turned into an evolving, working product that is responsive to community and client need, but proactive in anticipating and proposing value. The best part: each iteration is informed by the last and becomes stronger moving forward as we continue delivering this value-rich, high-impact work across communities.
Chris Klesmith, Leah Knights
M y purpose in joining CREATE as a fellow was to develop revenue-generating strategies that will sustain and grow the organization’s impact into the future. I’d like to share the interaction- intensive and nonlinear nature of my journey in hopes of offering helpful takeaways as you embark on your own development strategies. We started our development process with a lot of group think – more as a trust-building opportunity than anything. Given “group think” is not as effective in strategy brainstorming as it is individually, we shifted to individual brainstorms – posing a key question and bringing back a proposed solution or pathway.
partners and teammates behind, disengaged, or out of the loop completely – something detrimental to a cohesive team. During a time when nothing is certain, be certain about the strength of your teams. People doing good work is a tremendous place to invest your talent, time and treasure. During a time when nothing is certain, be certain about the strength of your teams.
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