Maytree » 2007/08

Using Your Voice to Deliver Your Message

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:03:35 +0000

Remember the last time you “listened” to a public speaker with your head bent over your BlackBerry? You managed to get some work done, but imagine how the speaker felt! Don’t let that happen to you! Learn to use your voice to captivate your audience and deliver your message effectively. Bonnie Gross will lead this interactive session, offering tips and tools to ensure that your next presentation won’t be delivered to a sea of bowed heads. Bonnie is a speech language pathologist and a professional trainer focusing on fearless public speaking, voice, language training and communication skills.

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Five Good Resources:

Jones, Chuck. Make Your Voice Heard: An Actor’s Guide to Increased Dramatic Range Through Vocal Training. Watson-Guptill Publications, 1996.
Gottstein, Deb and Buzz Mauro. Taking Centre Stage: Masterful Public Speaking Using Acting Skills You Never Knew You Had. Berkley Books, 2001.
Ashley, Joy. Overcoming Stage Fright in Everyday Life. Three Rivers Press, 1996.
Maisel, Eric. Fearless Presenting: A Self-Help Workbook for Anyone Who Speaks, Sells, or Performs in Public. Watson-Guptill Publications, 1997.
Lowndes, Leil. How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships. McGraw Hill, 2003.

Turning Around Your Organization

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:05:08 +0000

How can you work with your board, donors, staff and other stakeholders to introduce significant change without alienating long-term supporters? How can you shift from seemingly endless consultative processes towards action and results? How do you ensure that new visions for your organization honour the past, but are not constrained by it? For example, in the corporate world, turnarounds are often achieved by hiring a new leader, firing staff, and changing the board. Here are the five good ideas that can help social purpose organizations take practical action to achieve meaningful organizational change. Paul Davidson has held leadership positions in the public, private and voluntary sectors. He shares his experience and lessons learned from leading turnarounds in each sphere.

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Five Good Resources:

Between the Breaks… Live!, a recording by Stan Rogers, 1979 Fogarty’s Cove Music, especially The Mary Ellen Carter for its sheer grit and determination.
My Final Hour, an essay by Margaret Laurence, found in Canadian Literature, Issue No. 100 ed. W. H New, Spring 1984. For its passion, urgency and integrity.
New Year’s Day Address on Assuming the Presidency speech by Vaclav Havel found in Lend Me Your Ears, ed. William Safire, WW Norton & Company, 1992 New York.
The Cult of Efficiency, Janice Gross Stein, House of Anansi Press, 2001, Toronto.
Getting to Maybe; How the World Is Changed, by Frances Westley , Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Patton , Random House of Canada, 2006 Toronto.

Hiring the Right Person

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:13:12 +0000

Finding the right person for your team is incredibly important. The success of a non-profit organization, or any organization for that matter, depends upon the strengths and talents of its employees. They are the thinkers, the creators, and the innovators that drive an organization. They deliver the services, build relationships with stakeholders and become the organization’s link to the community. Hiring the right person requires a careful investment of time and effort – a tall order when you are pressured by a lack of time and resources. A successful hire opens up the potential to promote and enrich your organizational culture and enables innovation and growth. On the other hand, a mistake in hiring is costly and exhausting for an organization in the long run. In an environment where our budgets are stretched and our HR resources are scare, a creative and intentional look at how we are hiring our people could be just the ticket!

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Five Good Resources:

HR Council for the Voluntary Non-Profit Sector, HR Management Toolkit.
Finding and Keeping Great Employees, Jim Harris and Joan Brannick, AMACOM/American Management Association, 2007.
Secrets of Hiring Top Talent, Daniel Abramson, 2005.
First Things First, Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, Free Press, 1996.
The War for Talent, Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Agency, 2001.

Building Networks

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:18:23 +0000

In today’s world, collaboration, partnership and ‘adding value’ are important to any recipe for success of a non-profit organization. But you can’t do it alone. In order to achieve results and impact, organizations and their leadership must expand beyond their traditional partners and stakeholder groups in order to create synergistic and innovative relationships that energize, excite and lead to change. By developing broad based networks, leaders of organizations can increase their influence, relationships and ability to deliver on their organization’s mission. Building a network can be daunting for many. This presentation will help you to develop a framework for building your own network, and in doing so you will see that building a network is not the same thing as networking, that it really is better to give than to receive , and how two “no’s” do, in fact, make a “yes”.

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Five Good Resources

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
The Republic, by Plato
In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed, by Carl Honore
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Getting Even, by Woody Allen – some light relief after Crime and Punishment!

Building a Movement

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:18:44 +0000

Building a movement for social change takes passion, energy and resources. Social movements have a life cycle: they are created, they grow, they achieve successes or failures and eventually dissolve and cease to exist. In this session Mary Rowe will highlight this lifecycle by examining a variety of tools to encourage innovative, holistic approaches to building a movement. Mary’s long and productive career has focused on facilitating solutions to complex problems in the public realm. In particular she played an instrumental role in advocating for a new deal for cities in Canada as Director of Ideas that Matter and currently works with a US philanthropic initiative fostering self-organization in urban communities.

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(More Than) Five Good Resources

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience . Harper Collins, 1990.
Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-organization and Complexity . Oxford University Press, 1995.
Johnson, Steven . Emergence: The Connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software . Scribner, 2001.
Easterly, William. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done Much Ill and So Little Good , Penguin, 2006.
Goldsworthy, Andy (sculptor)
Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business , Economies, Societies, and Nations. Doubleday, 2004.
Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business , Science and Everyday Life. Plume 2003.
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals . Penguin, 2006.

Reaching Out in a Web 2.0 World

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:10:12 +0000

Do you know what is meant by ‘Web 2.0′? And, more importantly, are you ready to live it? Many people mistakenly believe that the web is simply about reaching more people, publishing more information and targeting a wider audience. In truth, this is only a tiny part of how the web is helping change society for the better. Traditional institutions are becoming weaker; consumers are more informed; people have higher expectations of services, charities and governments. Jason Mogus understands that the internet now reflects this change and represents a culture shift impacting upon us all. He reveals how and why Web 2.0 can help organizations working in social change interact more with their audience, listen and learn, share stories and develop greater transparency.

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Five Good Resources

Text Definitions: Wikipedia has the classic definition , but this one , while a bit more technical, is rich with meaning
Video Definition: The most well known overview of Web 2.0 is an easy to watch 4 minute video, The Machine is Using Us
Books: Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed, by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton (great summary here )
Books: Leadership and the New Science, by Margaret Wheatley
Conference: Web of Change at Hollyhock

Institutional Change: Turning a Ship… it takes time!

Markus Stadelmann-Elder — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:10:30 +0000

Everyone’s heard the refrain: ‘Institutional change takes time. Be patient.’ This notion is perhaps one of the greatest sources of conflict and mistrust between organizations and seekers of change. While it is true that real, lasting change is time-consuming, there is no formula or model to quantify or predict the time required for an institutional change process. At the same, the issue of time and patience poses a challenge for volunteer boards that typically have a limited period of office and are anxious not to be dismissed as ineffectual or irrelevant.

Alok Mukherjee identifies and explores concrete ways in which a volunteer board committed to genuine institutional change can achieve significant results within its finite term of office.

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