Articles

Leadership - Body of Work


Leading a bonsai organization can be a complex task. In addition to establishing and supporting the vision of the organization, executive committee members, they juggle many responsibilities including creating a fundraising plan that will ensure sustainability, managing organizational finances and recruiting and developing future leaders.

As leaders, we must create a space for people to march to the beat of their own drums. We must create space for people who do things differently, people who think differently, people who are willing to look within and find the talents and skills that dwell inside. That’s our job. That’s the real work of leadership. In this series of articles I will offer advice on how we can do it.

As Daniel Pink wrote in Drive, “The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.”

Your organization’s body of work is everything you create, contribute, affect, and impact. For individuals, it is the personal legacy you leave at the end of your life, including all the tangible and intangible things you have created. Your words do not communicate your value, your work does.

So for our first article let’s investigate developing mastery around creating a program or event. You must ask yourself these 5 questions of every project:

What do you want to create?

Name it. Describe it. (A workshop, a show, a book, a video, an event)

Who is it for?

Describe your audience. (Include specific details about who you are targeting. New members with little or no bonsai experience. Advanced members who may need additional inspiration?)

Why does it need to be accomplished?

Describe the roots of the project. (How does this fit into your organization’s mission? Who will be affected by it? What positive outcomes will occur as the result of you completing it?)

How are you going to structure the project?

Define a model. (Who has done something similar in the past? How was it structured? How can you customize this model and improve it. How do you make it your own?)

When does it need to be finished?

Make a timeline. Set a deadline. (Nothing happens without a deadline. Set a date and work backward.)

Soon enough, asking these questions will become second nature. You will think about each one for each new piece of your organization. Creating rapidly will quickly become an unconscious skill.

For a list of skills we as members can offer our leaders Read More