Vocation

“All human activity emerges from our inwardness…our outward work in the world is a projection of our inner condition.” These are the words of Patricia Thompson. In her paper Being the Change We Want: A Conversation about Vocational Renewal for Nonprofit Leaders she writes passionately about the connection between vocational vitality and social change. Through the [...]

Fierce intentions, humble means

Cameron’s recent post made me think of my friend Jonathan Glencross. That’s his picture on the left. Jonathan is a student at McGill who is disarmingly gifted at sparking visible, large-scale change. Last year he was the catalyst for the creation of a  $2.5 million sustainability project fund, financed and governed by students and administrators [...]

Why ‘what’ follows ‘why’: Organizational archeology

“Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t give an ‘I have a plan’ speech. He talked about his dream.” It’s perhaps the most effective way that Simon Sinek, in his TED talk on powerful leadership, makes his point about the power of belief to inspire action. Most of his examples centre around business innovation and business success, [...]

A conversation with Turi

The following is an edited transcript of a conversation that Tana and I had with my sister Turi Nilsson. She is the Director of Instruction and co-founder of Southwest Baltimore Charter School, a place of great inspiration and learning for us. We’ve written about it in previous posts. RENNIE: What would you say are the [...]

Expressive change at the grassroots

My friend Alex Megelas has been organizing a monthly Geek Out event that I’ve had the joy of going to a few times over the past year. The idea is pretty simple: gather a bunch of interesting people and a bunch of games and crafts in the same room on a wintery Saturday afternoon and [...]

Inscaping

Brandon, a teacher’s aide at Southwest Baltimore Charter School once said to me, “The weak link isn’t necessarily the person who doesn’t do the job well. It’s the person who doesn’t do the job from within or truthfully.”

This is why, I think, that the most deeply engaging organizations I’ve encountered seem to be rooted in small, daily acts of personal revelation. [...]

“Something like that happened to me recently…”

We are talking to our friend Andrew Woodall, someone we can always count on for a spirited conversation. He has spent the last five years running the Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

After a pleasant, wintry morning tramp up Avenue du Parc in Montreal, we are hanging out in Em Cafe, discussing Organization Unbound over tea and toast. [...]

Growth at St. George’s

The other day Tana  and I went to talk to Megan Webster who teaches at St. George’s, a school in Montreal that seems quite steeped in this idea of expressive change. Megan describes it as a place where teachers, staff, and students are all deeply engaged in their own learning and where people pay profound [...]

The giving field

It seems simple now.

But I had to hear many voices say it in many different ways before it became simple to me. Two of those voices, Patrick and Louis, are from a small organization in Montreal called L’Abri en Ville:

Patrick: “Before I came here, I slept all the time. After I ate, I went to bed. [...]