What’s your best experience being part of a team that discovered something new? Did exciting ideas or insights emerge from deep listening and asking questions to fully understand all the diverse opinions in the…
 

Successful meetings aren’t all business, focused on content.  Nor are they all pleasure, focused on relationships.  The most productive (and enjoyable) meetings combine both:  focus on what we are doing…

Most working professionals spend more than half their time in meetings. Feel the pain? Me, too!

Whether by phone, live, or internet, I am in meetings most all day.  Then after work, guess what, more meetings!  So much of life happens in meetings of one kind or another…

You may feel intimidated to create your own website, because it seems like so much work. Remember this: how you look at the challenge before you is everything…

The 2016 United States presidential elections revealed that many Americans are afraid of government, afraid of particular leaders, afraid of unknown “others,” afraid of change and afraid of not changing.

A mood of unexamined fear seems to hang over…

Years ago I was blessed by a three-year fellowship to explore approaches to social transformation in different parts of the world. For example, in South Africa I was exposed to people who had been on different sides of Apartheid, at a time when young…

You excel at caring for others. How well are you caring for yourself? Perhaps this gardening blog speaks to you:

“If established plants are left without water for a period of time it inhibits the plants’ growth and makes them more to susceptible to…

Have you and your colleagues shared stories about your
summer adventures? 

Do you feel a strong sense of connection with your team?

Or do you work in an environment where the focus is all business? 

Do you dance?  If so, you know the difference a good partner makes. You’ve experienced that sense of delicious expansion from tuning into the other, feeling their rhythm, responding in trust, and finding your way to move…

To what extent is your organization maximizing human resources in these three critical dimensions of fund development:

1. Donors (individuals who care),

2. Funders (foundation, corporate, business and
   government sources), and 

3. Earned Revenue Strategies  (products…

SEED’s highest-performing client-partners are crystal clear about what they do best. 

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What are the vital ingredients in your organization’s recipe for success?

Typically, your secret sauce is a rich expression of your shared values, authenticity and…

How does your organization measure social impact?

Many nonprofits don’t, for reasons described as:

• limited time and resources,

• hard to keep track, and

• really hard to quantify the value.  

You might be surprised that many nonprofit investors…

There really aren’t many tools out there to help you bring strategic plans to life, much less to streamline operations and communicate progress across and beyond organizations.

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At SEED, we have seen that our clients are looking for a few simple…

Some say open networks are the “biggest predictor of career success.” 

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Open networks are especially productive when there is an intentional practice to achieve creative dialogue. Dialogue is akin to planting seeds in fertile soil, as opposed to scattering…

How well are you hanging in with those new year’s resolutions? Have you established your practice, practice, practice? 

Think about it. When and how have you carried out a new year’s resolution?  It’s easy enough to identify a wish and declare it…

What have you been dreaming lately?

Most of what gets created in our world exists in large part because of vision. 

There are unlimited ways to tap the well.  It doesn’t matter…

In working with organizations of all sizes, missions and cultures, we often discover an opportunity to build trust.  SEED may be invited to design an evaluation plan, create a new data base, or lead…

Event season is a fine time to integrate the practice of shared reflection.  When there is a lot of activity and active engagement of many contributors, this is a prime opportunity to expand and strengthen your team.

Each time you plan a meeting, we invite you visit to the “Meeting Check-Ins” section of the SEED Library.  It is chock-full of ideas for opening a productive meeting.  You will find “purposeful questions,” “appreciative questions,” “stretch questions,” “questions…

Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has said: “Two are better than one if two act as one.” Teams work better when they share a vision of what success…

What makes a viewer visit a website, stay for a spell, and repeatedly
come back again? What causes that attraction?

These days we have thousands if not millions of sites promoting similar products and sending out similar messages.…

There is a Zen story of a professor who goes to see a monk. The monk welcomes him, and the professor explains that he has come seeking wisdom from the monk. With that, the professor begins to talk endlessly about his knowledge…

As the Robert Burns poem forewarns,

"The best laid plans… often go astray… and leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy.”

How do we manage unexpected change?  What happens when great…

Visioning and planning can be heady activities if we are not careful. At SEED we urge our client partners not to think too much!  It is easy enough to produce an exquisitely articulated vision statement and a brilliantly crafted strategic plan…

Let’s develop a work plan. How much time have you got? 

The ancient Greeks introduced two words for time: xρόνος + καιρός= time

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1. Chronos is clock time; it can be traced through history into the future. It is quantifiable…

You’ve done a great job engaging a diverse team to articulate what success looks like in the future.  Is the team excited?  Can everyone talk about what you intend to create and who benefits?  Have you elicited inputs from all who may have interest to expand the vision…

There comes a time when all our big dreams need to be brought down to earth, mingled with reality, and framed as an achievable vision. Right? 

Yes to that. And quickly as possible. Who doesn’t yearn to see…

What have you been dreaming lately? How are you thinking? Are you allowing the possibility of your highest potential to emerge? How do you go about eliciting big dreams in diverse groups? Once you discover…

It is so enticingly easy to critique what we are against. We can readily notice others’ doing this, in every walk of life: politics, the arts, education, and even among community organizers whose expressed mission…

“Enrolling allies” is a craft you can practice and develop into something of an art.  It’s kind of like dancing with your heart. How do you dance in conversation with a potential ally, such that shared agreement and enjoyment emerge? You want to be fully…

STRETCH: Developmental staging is one of the most widely used frameworks in social science and assessment. Growth is described through a sequence of steps. Achieving successively higher stages indicates positive, qualitative shifts…