Kickstarting Your Program

How to Roll Out A Great Idea into a Broad-Based Community-Supported Program

Come Alive

Don’t ask what the world needs.

Ask what makes you come

alive, and go do it.

Because what the world needs

is people who have come alive.

—Howard Thurman

What inspires you? Tell the story.

Activate Indra’s Net

“I can’t do this alone. I need help.”

One small step each day.

Engage in enquiry: �  Does our community need this?

�  What part can you do to help?

�  Who else do you know who would like to help?

�  Move on to others when someone is hesitant.

Engage with Chaos

Look for the Trim Tab Factor. Allow for self-organization to harness the power of chaos. Seek the Tipping Point. Identify the Keystone Species.

The Trim Tab Project

The small effort that catalyzes big change. • Tends to create new systems that allow the current system

to surpass itself • Is not leader-dependent • Tends to revise the nature and purpose of a system • Can be scaled up or down to meet need.

Trim tabs involve the skillful orchestration of three other factors: • Chaos • Tipping Points • Keystone Species

Utilize Chaos Power

What is chaos?

�  It is not messy happenstance.

�  “It is an underlying interconnectedness that exists in apparently random events. Chaos science focuses on hidden patterns, nuance, the ‘sensitivity’ of things, and the ‘rules’ for how the unpredictable leads to the new.”

�  Nature uses chaos to create.

Lessons of Chaos Theory

Lesson One: Create

Engage with chaos to find imaginative new solutions and live more dynamically.

FUND RAISING

Lesson Two: Use Butterfly Power

Let chaos grow local efforts into global results.

STRATEGIC PARTNERS

Lesson Three: Go with the Flow

Use chaos to work collectively with others.

SELF ORGANIZATION

Lesson Four: Explore What’s Between

Discover life’s rich subtleties and avoid the traps of stereotypes.

PEOPLE’S HIDDEN GIFTS

Lesson Five: See the Art of the World

Appreciate the beauty of life’s chaos.

EXPRESS GRATITUDE FIVE TIMES A DAY

Lesson Six: Live Within Time

Utilize time’s hidden depths.

STRETCH IT / CONTRACT IT

Lesson Seven: Rejoin the Whole

Realize our fractal connectedness to each other and the world.

INDRA’S NET

Seven Life Lessons of Chaos, John Briggs and F David Peat

Tipping Points

People may work hard for years without making much of a difference, and then suddenly one action at just the right moment seems to set off a large ripple effect that even affects other systems: a tipping point has been reached.

Keystone Species

A species whose very presence contributes to a diversity of life forms and whose extinction would consequently lead to the extinction of many other forms of life.

Keystone species play a special role in their ecosystems. For example, prairie dogs create a network of tunnels and thereby support more than 200 other species of animals and keep the plant life of the prairie healthy as well. Just like architectural keystones, the prairie dogs are ecological keystones necessary to support the prairie as a whole.

Features of Trim Tabs

1. View your Project from a Higher Level

2. Bring a Reflective Consciousness into the Project

3. Re-vision the Nature and Purpose of Your Work

4. Seek to Create Self-Sustaining Systems

5. Become Sensitive to Timing

6. Embody Keystone Properties

7. Become Scalable and Transportable

-Adapted from The Seven Brothers: A Workbook for Social Artistry Leadership

Incorporate Community Development Principles

�  Delimit geography

�  Include all issues/people

�  Attend to depth human issues, the spirit issues

�  Symbol is key

— Institute of Cultural Affairs

Tend to Depth Human Issues

UNITI

VE/INTEGRALMYTHIC/SYMBOLIC

PSYCHOLOGICAL/HISTORICAL

SENSORY/PHYSICAL

The Four Levels of the Psyche

Symbol is Key

�  Make a logo that informs and inspires you and everyone else for years to come

�  Create professional-looking fliers and a website

�  Do a ceremonial launch

�  Start with a pilot program – get more stories.

Ceremonial Launch

Start with a Pilot Program

Tell the Stories

Circle Up

�  Begin with centering that honors the deeper agenda.

�  Check in / Agenda of work

�  Share leadership of the meeting: facilitation, time-keeping, vibes watching.

�  Work in circle: confidentiality, build on strengths, give and get feedback and practical help, gain support for creative intention, talk straight, nurture possibility.

�  Summarize next steps/when and where to meet.

�  Clear the air: voice unresolved questions, needs, feelings

�  End with voicing gratitude, recognition and joy.

www.CirclesWork.net

Focus on the Essentials

�  Avoid giving people job titles as long as possible.

�  Look for who emerges offering the skills needed for various jobs.

�  Keep things fluid and moving, engaging others, with the essential outcome providing the organizing of things.

�  Pick the one thing you do best, then let others do the rest, putting yourself out of a job as much as possible.

Leadership from Within This is the foundation, the starting point for every other form of leadership. Strongly related to self-knowledge, self-expression, and integrity.   Characteristics: Connected to inner self and integrity. I show up full, fully aligned, making the choice at every moment to be my best self.   Shadow form: The ego-based self, seeking aggrandizement or avoiding what is see as rish or danger, at the expense of integrity and self-expression.   Leadership from Front Characteristics: This is “leadership from the front of the room,” leading others—the dominant model in our western culture. Has a vision of where we’re going, mapping the trail. “I have a plan—follow me.”

  Shadow form: Domination of others, not listening, not collaborating, disempowering others, not knowing when to sit down.   Leadership from Behind Characteristics: Responsibly empowering the “Leader from the Front to succeed, supporting, offering help, engaged in looking for ways to help. Shadow form: Abdication of their own power & self-expression, not expressing self, allowing the leader to founder or fail, passive-aggressive behavior, “not my responsibility,” co-dependency.

Share Leadership

Leadership from Beside Characteristics: Co-piloting, truly collaborative leadership, offering clear communication and accepting co-responsibility, partnership, sharing leadership. Not: adopting this “shared leadership” model is often seen as the panacea for groups and communities, trying to avoid what is seen as hierarchy or without having a clearly-dominated leader from the front—but it isn’t a panacea.   Shadow form: Co-dependency, co-leading in a way that is only negative or drains energy or “stops” action, identifying only problems in a disempowering way.  

Leadership from Field Characteristics: Accessing information from the field and bringing it back to the organization, providing the larger context, the big picture. “It’s worth noticing that. . . .” putting things in a broader perspective.   Shadow form: Always bringing an overwhelming bigger context or unresolvable questions. “It’s all too overwhelming” or irresponsible use of the information, bringing in too many “considerations” or different viewpoints.

  NOTE: Everyone is always playing one or more of these leadership roles, in either its positive or shadow form.   How to work with these models/roles constructively: •  Notice and become conscious of the

leadership role we and others are playing at any one time.

•  Notice when a certain type of leadership is missing, and naming or addressing it.

•  Notice the role(s) we are most comfortable with.

•  Learn to be more comfortable with playing each of these roles well without falling into the shadow of any of them.

•  Learn to choose the right role to play at any moment in time, and

•  Learn to support the role of other leaders in our team from our leadership positions knowing that every position in our team is a leadership position.

Brainstorm What It Takes

30” Flip CHART and markers

Qualified and trained horse

Qualified TR Instructor

3 trained volunteers for side walking and leading plus backups for absences

Arena in quiet setting

Equipment

Liability insurance

PATH Intl program membership

Staff fees

Funding plan for meeting budgeted cost: in-kind, cash gifts

Pilot program costs

Grants and crowd funding

Fiscal agent for tax deductible gifts

Non profit structure for future?

Separate bank account

Outreach plan for community support: newspapers, TV, radio, local web networks, support groups, physicians

Schedule volunteer training and prepare materials.

Put Yourself Out of a Job

�  HANDS ON:

Side Walkers

Horse Leaders

Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteer Trainer

Horse Caretaker and Trainer

Therapeutic Riding Instructor

 

�  BEHIND THE SCENES:

 Client Finder/Strategic Partners in the Medical World

Public Awareness 

Funding Management

Grant Finders

Grant Writers

Crowd Funding Campaign managers

Cultivation of donors

Everyone Spread the Word

�  TV, newspapers, Facebook, radio talk shows, service clubs, etc.

�  Always ask for support of any kind you can think of: volunteers, money, materials. Come up with creative, fun ways to include people.

�  90% of funding comes from individuals writing checks, not grants or fundraisers. Set up a system to regularly contact new people and to stay in touch with everyone: blogs, email, phone calls, Facebook, newsletters, handwritten notes, and more.

�  Express gratitude five times a day.

Everyone Benefits

�  Find ways for volunteers and other supporters to experience the benefits right along with the clients and participants.

�  Blur the distinctions between roles so that essentially we are all taking a journey together, lending our own particular expertise to enhance the outcome for everyone.

�  Make your endeavor a Teal Organization. (Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness. Frederic Laloux)

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

by William Stafford

Resources

�  Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. David G Korten

�  Reinventing Organizations, A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness. Frederic Laloux

�  Social Artistry www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org

�  Seven Life Lessons of Chaos, John Briggs and F David Peat

�  Institute of Cultural Affairs www.ica-usa.org

�  CirclesWork www.circleswork.net

�  Peggy Rubin www.peggyrubin.com / www.sacredtheatre.com

�  Jean Houston www.jeanhouston.com

�  Terry Axelrod www.benevon.com

trishbroersma.com RidingBeyond.org

TRAINING COURSE FOR PROFESSIONALS: trishbroersma.com/free

trishbroersma@gmail.com 541.482.6210

PO Box 1281, Ashland, Oregon USA