This quote from Samantha Power, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, struck us as the raison d’etre of Catalytic Thinking. “We must resist the temptation to spend our time admiring the problem. Rather, we must urgently work for the world we seek.”
Our fourth planning meeting for our community engagement efforts was a time for more personal reflection on what it means to be in community with others. For background, you’ll find the summary of our first planning meeting here. Our second meeting is summarized here, and our third meeting is summarized here. This particular meeting was … Read more
About a year ago, our board determined its most important role would be to ensure the actions of the organization are walking the talk of our values… an Integrity Board. To that end, we first encoded that role into our bylaws, creating plain English bylaws that describe how decisions are made, by whom, and according … Read more
For the past several months, Creating the Future community members have been working to craft a communications strategy, to help our mission ripple out farther and wider. (You can see those rich conversations all linked at this post.) As we are now ready to put that strategy into action, the first step is to hone … Read more
This week, Creating the Future will begin developing a communications strategy, to move our work to the next level. (You can watch or participate in that session here.) Because we will use Catalytic Thinking to develop that strategy, you may notice that some of the questions we ask feel different from questions posed in traditional … Read more
The following is Part 2 of a two-part post, the draft Statement of Our Values in Action. For background to provide context for this statement, please click to Part 1 here. On June 12th, from 1pm-3pm ET (US), Creating the Future community members will discuss an updated Statement of Our Values in Action. Based on … Read more
Statement of Our Values in Action (DRAFT) On June 12th, from 1pm-3pm ET (US), Creating the Future community members will discuss an updated Statement of Our Values in Action. Based on those discussions, our board will then vote to adopt the statement. This post and the post that follows at this link are the draft of … Read more
The worst time for having to be with lots of other people is when we’re feeling stressed or even depressed. The holidays often bring both those things at the same time — stress AND being with people. Talk about set up to fail! My Catalytic Thinking practice has changed all that for me. When I let that … Read more
You can’t fight the system. The system is stacked against us. Systems change is hard. Because a big part of Creating the Future’s work is about changing systems, we thought it would be helpful to define what we mean by “systems” and why we focus there. The following combines … Read more
What do bylaws make possible for accomplishing an organization’s mission? Aside from meeting various external regulatory standards, what good do bylaws really do for an organization and the mission they have set out to accomplish? These were just some of the questions our board and community members explored at our July 2016 board meeting, as … Read more