Words Create Worlds

David Cooperrider often says, “Words Create Worlds,” and I believe they do. From studying appreciative inquiry and practicing it in my own life, I know that the words I choose matter.

That’s why I am so surprised that so many people say things like, “Well, you know, it’s because the millennials… <insert negative comment here>. I have heard everything from they are lazy, entitled, rude, selfish, have a poor work ethic, etc. Regardless of the date ranges you prefer, you are talking about more than 80 million people. I’m not sure how it became acceptable to talk despairingly about 80 million people, but somehow, I seem to hear and read about people doing this all the time. For anyone that is either participating in this behavior or accepting it in others, I have one question – What do you hope to achieve?

Can you think of anytime throughout your career or life that you talked badly about someone and their behavior improved as a result of it? What would we say if we heard our teachers were talking to children in classrooms this way? Would we believe the teachers were encouraging the children to become better? What do we want for this generation in the work place? Do we want them to take our companies on to bigger and better places? Do we want them to continue innovating and finding cures to diseases? Do we want them to eradicate poverty and help with global warming? If so, why aren’t we encouraging them to be their best?

Can you imagine if we changed our language highlighting their strengths? What if the story became that they are better equipped to create technology for affordable solar energy and digesters? What if we talked about their caring attitudes and their desire to have meaning and purpose? What if we welcomed what they had to offer and how it complimented the other generations? Do you think they’d live up to the new story?

If ‘Words Create Worlds’, I challenge you to find the words that create the world you want to live in.

POSITIVE IMPACT FRIDAYS: The Portico Café

Positive Impact Force was founded to be a Force for GOOD in our community. Our mission is to unleash the potential of people, organizations and the community by helping organizations build triple bottom line cultures (People, Planet, and Profit), and we would like to recognize other businesses, organizations and community members who are also making our community better.

The Portico Café

On 10-25-18, Social Venture Partners Tampa Bay hosted the 2018 Fast Pitch Tampa Bay event, where ten social enterprises pitched to win $25,000. There are some great social enterprises out there and we were happy to see one that we frequent and support – The Portico Café. The Portico Café is located at 1001 North Florida Avenue, Tampa, FL, 33602 and is a great place to host a meeting, event, or just have lunch. The café offers a delicious menu, fun atmosphere, free wifi, reasonable prices AND also helps community members who are transitioning out of homelessness. A portion of the staff are transitioning out of not-for-profits, paid a livable wage and offered healthcare. They also place homeless men into beds, provide them jobs, and help them get on a ladder to permanent employment.

During their pitch presentation, Rev. Justin LaRosa, LCSW – Director, The Portico Campus of Hyde Park United Methodist Church, stated they have plans in place for his staff to continue their development and move to even higher paying jobs, allowing new employees the opportunity of this starting point. They also had a very moving story from an employee of The Portico Café about how the opportunity to work in the café not only changed her life, but allowed her to have custody of her daughter again, gave her a purpose so she could rehabilitate herself, and allowed her to be a contributing member of our community.

Supporting this great mission is just a lunch away. We encourage you to check them out and consider hosting a holiday meeting or event there. Their staff is fantastic, food is great and you’re helping your community become even better!

Appreciative Inquiry is Not Reasonable

In Chapter 3 of The Power of Momentsby Chip and Dan Heath, they refer to Forrester’s research on customer satisfaction. Forrester has built models on the financial value of customers and has shown that very satisfied customers spend more money with you than less satisfied customers. On a scale of 1-10, the very satisfied customers were identified as a 7. They go on to say that if you focus on the customers with a satisfaction of 4-6 and work to improve their experience, it is better for your business than fixing the issues of customers with a satisfaction score of 1-3. In other words, you should not focus all of your energy and budget on your most unhappy customers, but rather on your neutral customers. 

This research validates how important it is for organizations to focus on using the Appreciative Inquiry framework in their planning and business processes. Appreciative Inquiry is inclusive and will generate energy and help create the mechanisms necessary in your business to move neutral customers to very satisfied customers. This will happen through customer ideas, employee ideas and the shared energy in your organization to reach a common goal that everyone works on together. If you have not experienced the Appreciative Inquiry process, it can be difficult to understand how valuable it is.

Chip and Dan Heath refer a little to that in The Power of Moments when they talk about reasonableness. They state that often times we don’t create memorable moments because it isn’t reasonable. That’s also what organizations say when we talk to them about having an Appreciative Inquiry summit and including their staff. They say it isn’t reasonable to shut down their company for an entire day, or to pull half of their organization out of production to create an inclusive plan. They say it isn’t reasonable to invite their customers into their planning processes, or to even let competitors know what they are planning. It may not sound reasonable, but it is remarkable, and it produces results.

The final fact I’ll leave you with on this topic was also cited in The Power of Momentsby Chip and Dan Heath. “There is nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones.” Appreciative Inquiry will allow you to elevate positive customers, create a strategy to elevate neutral ones, accomplish whole system change, and have a remarkable experience in the process. It might not be reasonable, but it is profitable.

You Were FIRST – Why Aren’t They Celebrating?

Have you ever been to or seen the clips of that race where the runner was in first place, saw a teammate fall, ran back to help them and they hobbled over the finish line together with the entire crowd cheering them on? There is so much energy in the moment. The crowd is watching and almost willing the duo to finish strong, while the stronger runner is smiling and focusing on one goal – getting their teammate over the finish line. Someone actually won that race – they crossed the finish line first – but in our story, we focus on the runner who went back for their teammate. They become the real winner.

That is what an Appreciate Inquiry session feels like.

When the executives sit around a conference table and plan the goals for their organization in a strategic planning session, they go for the win. The employees sit in the bleachers to watch the race, hear the results, and then receive the plan for their training practices and workouts, but they don’t get to participate. How enthusiastic would you be to workout and prepare for a race that you weren’t going to participate in? You can have the t-shirt from the race, but no entry and no number.

The Appreciative Inquiry framework is inclusive and asks your employees to train for a race that they are very much a part of and want to win. They are included in the training plan, the workout plans, and assigned coaches to help them reach their potential. In this process they have the opportunity to go back and help a fellow runner get across the finish line and they feel the glory when they get across themselves. Instead of being in the bleachers, they ask their family, customers, vendors, competitors, and community to watch as they give it their all and show what they are capable of, and when everyone is there cheering the on, the executives hold back and offer support to help everyone win. In this process, everyone can win together.

What does your planning process look like? Are you including your employees, vendors, competitors, and community? Do your employees have a voice, or do they just nod their heads and say things like, “They said we have to…, or “Apparently the new process is…,” which lets everyone know that they’ve been told to do something they do not believe is in the best interest of the customer or the organization.

I invite you to consider the power of an inclusive process and whether you want your employees to run the race or watch it.

The Website

I’m not sure if you’ve ever gone through the process of creating a website or not, but it is a great opportunity to define what it is that you are, as well as what you are not. It has given me the opportunity to really look at how to present Positive Impact Force to the outside world. I think I would have had an easier time going through Monet’s paintings and finding one that captured the essence of this company. Finding words to explain something that is bigger than you have proved quite difficult.

I did create some art to help me in the process, but still, at the end of three long weeks, I summarized the company with a set of inquiries instead of statements. I realized that we’re not really a company that is offering specific services, we are a company that is offering inquiry. Our force is group of experts on related cultural topics, and our goal is to implement the best of what each of our individual clients can be. We are the reflection of our clients. Our inquiry process allows our clients to determine what their vision is and our force of talented individuals come together to help create that vision as a reality. Since I do not know the vision of the client, it is hard to define our services as a specific solution. We are more like walking on the path with you to create a positive impact with your vision.

Since my background is in learning and development, and I know we can offer many solutions for specific learning needs, it has been an interesting journey to transform from problem solver to inquirer. We study works like Conscious Capitalism and Everybody Matters and build those principles into the fabric of our work with clients who know that their businesses do and should have a positive impact on the communities that they serve.

I had a colleague ask – “How are you going to make them do it?” I thought long and hard about that question and I realized we’re not going to make them do it. Nobody is going to make them do it. Positive Impact Force wants to work with clients who want to do this work. His follow-up question was, “What type of client is the right client for you?” That response was easy, “We are looking for clients with great vision that believe that their people are important and want to invest in a strategy for sustainable growth over time.” He mumbled something like, “Good Luck”, and smiled with his big grin. I don’t think it will take luck, just a few compassionate CEOs with great vision.