Inventing New Tomorrows

I'm currently involved in strategic planning with a volunteer group I’m associated with. Most of us are of retirement age. All of us are invested in the success of the organization and have spent years supporting it with personal ideas, efforts and intellectual gifts.

Having spent 30 years or more in professional strategic planning consulting, it is interesting to sit on the other side of the dais. I’m a participant planner, not the head coach or facilitator. That job belongs to others. I observe the process and act within it as well.

The fit is OK but uncomfortable at times. I feel manipulated at times by the process. Did I do that with my clients?  Did they feel the same way? I can only hope they didn’t, but that is not likely accurate!

Luckily our group has others within it that have much group facilitation experience and planning expertise. We are rescued from dangerous abysses and circular logic. We are brought back to the path and wind up at the finish line whole. Whew! I wondered if we would ever get there!

But we did. Now; without ego involvements that almost destroyed the process several times. That’s the nature of working with retired executive types. They have decades of successful business and organizational achievement under their belts. And they are not the least bit bashful to share it. Some are curt and cutting. The air is poisoned occasionally by such offerings. But we move on anyway.

Outside the planning chamber we continue our operations as normal using the old protocols that will be soon challenged with new ones. Interesting to experience the juxtaposition of the old and new with colleagues unaware of the sort of thing we will be working with shortly. So we are drawing near a playing field on which the new and old will tussle some as transitions are worked out.

Some of us have been experimenting with the new for a while without letting others know. We are getting good results from the new ways. Not scientifically registered or analyzed but early indications are the new is promising. Outcomes in coaching and mentoring are slow to materialize; all we can go on is amicable relations with clients and their comfort with working through their entrepreneurial struggles. If they are good with it and a new business or a strengthened existing business results, we can mark that up as an outcome of the new process.

Doing something one way for years does not make it the best. It is only the most comfortable, until the new takes its place in the comfort fitting department. Then it will become ‘the way we always did it.’

I can only hope we get there sooner rather than later. There remains much to do and stretching our resources as far as we can with the growing client base we are attracting. That alone is a measure of our success I think. It is not a certainty but it is a hopeful sign.

Breaking free from the old to give the new a chance is always risky but refreshing as well. Perhaps even exciting? Yes. And that is an allure to try new things.

The future calls.

August 5, 2016