Reframing Purpose
Six months into 2023… and it’s been quite a year! And in just the past two months…
Besides experiencing Beyonce at Club Renaissance (yes, it was awe-inspiring)…
and Taylor Swift at The Eras Tour (yes, it was magical)…
… I have:
Delivered a workshop on Building Personas To Lead Change to 60+ cross-industry leaders in NYC. I spoke at a conference alongside leaders from Sesame Street, Visa, Walmart, Microsoft, NASA + more!
Spoke on Centering Care in Design Thinking at Good Tech Fest
Facilitated a very successful Board and Staff retreat for a local organization that received an influx of $MM in funding. It was an emergent dialogue on org purpose, surfacing hard decisions, and translating all of it into action
Collaborated with Houston-star and dear friend, Judy Le, from TakeRoot. We facilitated series of three workshops to rebuild trust within a team of 20ish scientists
Collaborated with Judy to build a workshop on The Art of Conflict
Kicked-off TWO really cool human-centered design research sprints (details on these another time)
Woof.
Doesn’t that seem all the over the place?
Honestly, I’ve been noodling A LOT on how I to position my work.
The business best practice of “specialization” keeps nagging at me…
… I should pick a lane.
… I should narrow down my services.
… I should continuously deliver one type of work, excel at it, and then grow, grow, grow.
I should. I should. I should.
At the end of a recent project framing conversation, Barbie Brashear, a local Houston leader, said to me: “This is your gift. This is why I want to work with you!”
She was referring to…
… How I hold space and listen
… How I surface tensions and the unspoken
… How I help her and her team better understand themselves and each other.
And it clicked.
I help people understand people.
This is my lane.
I help folks…
… understand themselves (*more on this later this year*)
… understand each other, and
… understand the people they hope to serve
And I make this work
… More more visionary, less short-sighted
… More actionable, less exhausting
And I use human-centered design, emergent facilitation, etc. as needed.
And I bring in experts and collaborators from my network as needed.
Yep.
Instead of picking a pre-determined lane of services…
… I want to pave my own!
… I want to continue to explore and hone the product-market fit situation. How do I do this sustainably and in a way that creates movement and sticky transformation for ALL of us?
… I want to continue to experiment, test, and shift my offerings and business model…
So I can help people understand people.
Because that’s my role in transformation…
… in moving the needle on big, stubborn, systemic, gnarly problems.
It feels so good to arrive at that… for now.