This document summarizes a webinar about communicating vision and value in nonprofit organizations. The webinar discusses moving beyond linear strategic thinking to embrace more complex and adaptive systems approaches. It explores envisioning as an ongoing process of open dialogue and discovery rather than fixed plans and messages. The webinar also provides tools and strategies for communicating vision through social media in a way that pulls people in through exploration and authenticity rather than just pushing messages.

1. Communicating Vision and Value
Todd Hoskins
January 31, 2012
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

2. Protecting and Preserving the www.cjwconsulting.com
Institutional Memories of
Nonprofits Since 1993 (866) 598-0430
info@cjwconsulting.com
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

3. Affordable collaborative data
management in the cloud.
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

4. Today’s Speaker
Todd Hoskins
Founder
Canopy Gap
Assisting with chat questions: Hosting:
April Hunt, Nonprofit Webinars Cheri J Weissman, CJW Consulting & Services, Inc.
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

5. Communicating Vision & Value
Todd Hoskins
Community 31, 2012
January Workshop

6. What we are exploring today . . .
• The limitations of strategic thinking
• Explore the relationships between vision, mission, strategy, and tactics
• Being a more dynamic organization
• Tools for adaptive communications internally and externally

7. About Todd
• Corporate technology for 8
years
• Grad school psychology
• Startup technology for 3 years
• Thrivability Strategist for 3
years
• “Engagement Architect”
• Knowledge of networks
• Adaptive systems
• Human behavior
• Provide structure and
process
• Consult and Coach
• Social change agents
• Education
• Non-profits
• Technology

8. The communications triangle: sharp and linear

9. The downside of linear business thinking
Mission
• Limitations of language (Cannot capture intangible value)
• Restricted “vision” (Exclusionary blinders)
Strategy
• The world is increasingly complex, and changing fast
• Rigidity – sticking to the plan – can be deadly
• Who gets to build the strategy?
Tactics
• Constituents can sense behavior-influencing attempts
• “Campaigns” or being “targeted” feel disingenuous

10. Organizations as Living Systems
A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a
whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior among the possible properties)
not obvious from the properties of the individual parts.
Even the US military is undergoing massive change from a command and
control organization to a lightweight, leaderful, and adaptive system.

11. The complex system inside us
vs.

12. Getting to Vision
For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning.
- Annie Dillard from “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”
Hit the target Weave
Consistency Allow discrepancy
On message Discover themes

13. Tools for Envisioning
• Nature / getting out of cubicles
• Designing environments for serendipity
• Open dialogue
• Free association
• Active listening to all constituents
• Images & sounds
• Word / phrase clouds

14. Both/and: Strategy and Agility
X 100
• Plan more frequently
• Prototype
• Let all constituents
• Iterate
participate
• Structure the chaos
• Stories > Messages

15. How can we create value continuously?
Value is something we perceive, and although we try to
fix value in linear terms and control it through logic and
strategy, it‟s increasingly apparent that „value‟ has
dimensions beyond the fixed world of form and logic. To
understand value and the intelligence encoded in it, we
need to develop our innate capacity for going beyond
logic and form, a limitless capacity to learn and know
and create using „intangible intelligence‟.
- Marti Spiegelman
• Value cannot be fully measured – it’s
multidimensional
• Value is co-created : “Ideas are networks”
• Authentic organizations are comprised of authentic
people freely moving towards and around a shared
vision
• People are drawn to people living fully, and
organizations that are helping people live fully

16. What does this mean for marketing?

17. What does this mean for your web presence?

18. What does this mean for social media?
Moving from rules to guideposts and guardrails
Push Pull
• Announcements • Explorations
• Special offers • Invitations for help
• Feel good / look good • Authentic
• Brand-building • Community-building
• Targeted • Diverse
• Safe • Experimental
• Robotic • Human

19. Some sample questions
• What is inspiring us?
• What are we learning?
• What big questions are we asking?
• Who do we admire?
• Where are we falling short?
• What possibilities are emerging?
• What stories need to be amplified?
• What is valuable to us?
• What are we grateful for?
• What help is needed in our community?

20. Polarity Management
Action Understanding
Yang Yin
Logic Intuition
Planning Adapting
Tradition Original
Analytics Sensing
Doing Being
Privacy Transparency

21. Resources
Working in Systems
• Paul Krafel’s Upward Spiral video
– http://solseed.org/The_Upward_Spiral
• Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
– http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557
Envisioning
• David Bohm, Dialogue Exercises
– http://www.visualexplorer.org/downloads/Mediated_dialogue_Palus&Drath.pdf
• Wordle for phrase visualization
• Pinterest for imagery
• Marti Spiegelman, Visionary Skills
– http://www.entheosacademy.com/courses/Visionary-Skills
Feel free to contact me:
Todd Hoskins - @toddhoskins - todd@canopygap.com

22. Find listings for our current season
of webinars and register at:
NonprofitWebinars.com
A Service
Of: Sponsored by: