I haven’t written a word here in months. Part of that was not my fault. It has been a horrendous year for our family and only now are we getting back in to a routine. It wasn’t even because I had nothing to say about Community Benefit organizations, because I always do.
The truth is, I also got stuck. I intended to finish the series of articles for small organizations on the benefits of using a consultant. Every time I got ready to work on it, I realized I needed to research. Back burner again. Today I got up and decided I’m moving on. I may come back and work on the series at some point in the future. Or not….
I’ve seen this same thing happen in Community Benefit organizations I’ve worked with. Great ideas are started with enthusiasm and the best of intentions. First steps are taken and then everything comes to a crashing halt. It winds up on the ever growing task list where it will languish on the back burner and eventually fade away.
The difference between my blog debacle and what happens in Community Benefit organizations, is I chose to let something go that was not being productive. When the decision is made by default due to limited staffing, limited dollars or competing priorities, important ideas are sometimes lost.
I’m a big fan of the “take a step back” school of prioritizing. When I was an ED, at least once or twice a year our team would look at our current focus and the projects and ideas we would like to work on. Starting with our vision for the future, we reviewed all of the choices for investing our time. One of the most important questions in these kinds of sessions was, “What do we need to stop doing”.
Just continuing down the road because that’s where we were headed 2 years ago, didn’t mean that was where time still needed to be invested. Some of those creative, time-consuming new ideas languishing on the back burner, were now just what we needed.
For today, I have decided it is time to begin anew with this blog and see where the writing takes me. Hope some of you decide to come along for the journey.
