The Tools Work: Focus on What You Are Trying to Achieve!
- Posted by: Joe Williams
Bill Holladay on “Bill’s Rock” (named in his honor) at the site of our Meditatio Divinas when we were at the Lazy K. On this rock one morning a hummingbird stopped and treaded air mere inches from Bill’s shoulder. Somehow that little winged creature knew that Bill was a birder and in the silence of that minute I think the two of them had a dialogue all their own.
How One Dialoguer Is Using the Tools
I am the client relations manager for a 20-person marketing department in a 200-employee, not-for-profit fundraising organization for a major university. A number of years ago, my boss attended Dialogue in the Desert. Soon after, she used the Strategic Mapping process at a departmental retreat to help us focus our efforts. It was a revelation. It led to a shift in our thinking about ourselves and our role in the organization. Our office went from feeling like an overworked, under-appreciated, reactive collection of rather cynical writers and designers, to an energetic, client-oriented, in-house creative agency. (Still feeling overworked and under-appreciated…and maybe a bit cynical still…but we’re working on that.) We now feel ourselves to be true partners in our organization’s mission.
Since then, I too have attended Dialogue. Twice. Together my boss and I worked the Strategic Mapping approach into the everyday office routine. We don’t require the staff to use the actual map, but we’ve got them asking the questions, especially at the start of a new project. We have demonstrated its effectiveness in those initial meetings with clients: how it helps focus everyone’s ideas and goals, client and creative team alike.
Increasingly, the staff is thinking in “Swoosh & Star” terms. It comes out in their meetings and in their own approach to projects. Our colleagues in the organization have noticed the change in attitude. They appreciate the new purposefulness and the improved communication. Several have expressed how the mapping process helped them see past the surface, to understand what they were really trying to achieve with their programs. On occasion, it has even shown that what they thought they needed was not what they needed at all. On one occasion, that revelation saved the organization—and our staff—the effort and expense of putting out a new quarterly newsletter to people who were already receiving two other mailings. When that happens, everybody wins.
It seems such a simple thing: Focus on what you are trying to achieve. Yet it is amazing how often that principle gets lost in the daily grind. The tools we learned at Dialogue have helped us and our clients stay on track, and that translates into more effective communication with donors and prospective donors. Ultimately, that means more donations for our cause. And that’s why we’re all here.
Bill Holladay
Client Relations Manager, Marketing Group
Indiana University Foundation
Email: bhollada@indiana.edu
Greetings From Bloomington, MN
I am writing this in the evening from a Residence Inn hotel room in Bloomington, MN. Tomorrow I am leading a Face2Face communication training session for managers of General Dynamics. For the last several years, General Dynamics has made our program required training for all managers, which means that I’m on planes from Arlington, VA to Thousand Oaks, CA and from Andover, MD to Santa Clara, CA. It’s good work, they are a good company and the managers in every location really take to the tools and find the program extremely valuable. In fact, I’m told it is the highest rated of all training programs in the company.
Residence Inn has an evening “Manager’s Reception,” complete with free drinks and a light dinner–tonight hamburgers, bratwurst, chips and chocolate pudding. Nothing like ranch food, mind you, but it beats going out to try to find a place to eat by myself.
I like to watch people. Sitting there tonight I noticed that all the tables were arranged so they faced the TV–and everyone was watching Let’s Make A Deal. They looked like zombies. One or two people to a table. No one was talking to anyone else. So I have an idea for you, Residence Inn: Put several tables together and place a card on it that says “Community Table: Dialogue Encouraged!”
People who travel for a living, travel in isloation. Sometimes it is nice to be by yourself, and unto yourself, especially after a long day of talking with others. But how nice it would be to have the choice to sit down in the evening at a table in a family of strangers atmosphere, where people can brag on their families and share a laugh or two.
Kinda like it’s done on a ranch in Arizona.
