"Pursuing Big Ideas"

published in Articulate Magazine, Fall 2018

Throughout my career of writing, performing, directing, and producing, I’ve

always been thrilled by improvisation. No more so than when a Big Idea

materializes in my imagination, seemingly arriving from nowhere. As artists

will try to describe, it’s a time-stands-still moment. Palpable: it feels like one

can actually see, hear, and taste the finished product. What happens next is

like a dog troubling a bone, gnawing on it, twisting and flipping it this way

and that, crunching away trying to get to the heart, the essence of the idea. If

the initial euphoria sustains, then comes the look-in-the-mirror challenge:

“Are you—yes I’m talking to you, Bozo—are you ready to huff and puff to

make this happen?” That’s always the big question. Momentary euphoria? Or

dedicated effort?

Creative process is based on invention and improvisation in the face of

thousands of big and small design questions and the reactions to decisions

one makes in answer to those challenges. For those with the aptitude and the

right temperament, this delicious travail is both the fun and exasperation of it!

Make too many ill-advised choices, and one finds themselves in an

imagination maze, face-to-face with dead ends, frustratingly backtracking,

still hoping to retrace the through-line from that first flash of inspiration.

Making a story, a painting, a song, a theatre piece…they all start with a big

idea and are fuelled by the experience and talent of the artist(s) to arrive at,

hopefully, a successful destination.

It follows, then, that making a successful nonprofit organization also stems

from a Big Idea i.e. to fill a perceived gap, to deliver a service, to provide

something useful to those who will experience and value the benefit. Over the

last ten years, I’ve been asked to make keynote presentations at conferences

across the country to tell the story of how our small, rural arts council grew

from $50,000 in revenues with 35 Members to over $500,000 and 700

Members. As the change agent and leader of that journey, my process was, as

could be expected from a practicing artist, instinctive. I grew very adept at

describing the skeleton of the story: “We did this, then this happened, and

then we did this.”

However, there’s a lot of mystery involved with creative process. Some of it

can be explained, much of it can be taught, but the doing is still an intuitive

and mysterious process. Ask the artist, “Why did you do this?” and they’re

likely to answer, “I don’t really know…it felt right.”

Looking back over 14 years of Kicking Horse Culture’s journey, I

have come to realize there is a difference between an artist pursuing a Big

Idea and a nonprofit organization pursuing a Big Idea. Paying respect to the

40 year long practice of Susan Kenny Steven’s “Lifecycle Stages for

Nonprofits”, I have come to appreciate that the process of a nonprofit

organizations’ journey pursuing the Big Idea can be characterized and

explained.

When I first dove in to Susan Kenny Steven’s lifecycle stages model back in

2013, I felt its intrinsic truth. This research foretold the change process of our

nonprofit from a “declining” reality in 2003, through the “turnaround” stage,

into the “growth” stage, and after ten years of hard, exciting work, into the

early throes of “maturity.” I had lived this journey and here were tools that

accurately depicted what we had just lived through! Somewhat unnerving,

but also somehow very comforting. The process was demystified. We were

not alone.

At it’s essence, Lifecycle Stages model confirms that the nonprofit’s Mission

is achieved by the delivery of it’s Programs. How effective the society is at

delivering those Programs is grounded on the foundational capacity of the

nonprofit’s ability—or capacity—in Governance, Management, Financial

Resources, and Administrative Systems. The model takes one through the

typical stages of the life of an organization from a Big Idea, to Start Up, 

through Growth, to Maturity, and possibly to Decline and then to either 

Turnaround or Terminal.

Along the way, the model details the usual characteristics found in the

programs, governance, management, financial, and admin resources of a

typical nonprofit in each of those life stages.

In the planning and coaching work I do now with nonprofits, I ask all of the

people around the visioning table (board, staff, stakeholders, champions) to

first review and select the characteristics in programs, governance,

management, financial, and admin systems that they—from their personal

interaction with the organization—think best determine the nonprofit’s

current reality. Given their varying roles in the organization, people around

the table will usually differ in their perspective. Through the ensuing

discussion, however, the group comes to consensus and confirms an accurate

diagnosis of the current realities.

Google Maps asks you to insert a starting point before you can get directions

to your destination. But, all too often boards feel they must do strategic

planning so they can give direction to staff on what to do to achieve the

mission in the next 5 or 10 years. But, one must learn to crawl, before

toddling, before walking, before running. Visioning by those gathered around

the planning table must be informed by current organizational realities.

Implementing Lifecycle stages practice gives those at the planning table the

diagnostic starting point and the detailed direction on how to build

foundational capacity in governance, management, financial resources, and

admin systems, and, therefore, the strength to deliver the programs which

will achieve the mission.

When asked for feedback on Kicking Horse Culture's organizational reality, the Town of Golden’s Chief Administrative Officer told us, “Continue to be stable,

continue to be dependable, continue to be indispensable.” Susan Kenny

Steven’s Lifecycle stages for nonprofit research is one of the many resources I utilize in my coaching practice with nonprofit boards and staff to build that capacity for dependability.