Hello Reader, My daughter pitches in rec league softball, and I am absolutely the mom white-knuckling her phone in the stands. I’ve even had a “lucky spot” to stand for a season. IYKYK. A few weeks ago, she walked several batters in a row. It was a hard game, and she had to keep going with everyone watching. Later, a mom from the another team texted me to say how much my daughter’s pitching had improved this year. She didn’t have to say anything. I’m glad she did.Every Executive Director I...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, When I was ready to leave my last ED position, I looked for a roadmap. Not the organization's succession plan. That existed. It named how we would find the next leader, explained how the search would run, told the board what to do. Useful, as far as it went. What I was looking for was a roadmap on how to transfer my work. The documentation nobody had asked me to write. The years of institutional context that would walk out the door the day I did if I didn't build a structure for...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, We have a fireplace in our bedroom, and a few weeks ago something moved into the chimney. For four nights it scratched and nested, and I lay there in the dark building a whole creature out of the noise. A squirrel, at least. Maybe an opossum. Something big and furry and clearly plotting against me. By the third night I was running on no sleep and sure we had a real problem. So that Sunday we called a wildlife guy. He listened to our video of the racket, said he was ninety percent...
3 months ago • 2 min read