Fostering a Culture of Inquiry

How can MFH foster a culture of inquiry? What are the best mechanisms for sharing our learnings, both internally and externally? Perhaps more importantly, how do we move beyond sharing learning to incorporating our collective knowledge and experience into our grantmaking so that we can improve our impact on the communities we serve?

These questions, and many others, were raised by staff in small discussion groups at the June 10th learning agenda session, “Greasing the Wheels of Learning”. The purpose of this learning agenda session was to engage staff in discussions to surface ideas and insights for the learning agenda. Some of the highlights from discussion groups included:

• The importance of acknowledging and building upon current mechanisms for learning 
• Interest in establishing venues for reflective conversations where staff can learn from one another and/or from an external source 
• The need for learning to be multi-modal to adapt to different learning styles among staff 
• Learning should be both retrospective and forward thinking 
• Interest in working more collaboratively across portfolios 

Staff understand that we, as a Foundation, cannot increase our impact on the communities we serve if we remain static. Organizations and communities that we fund rely upon our ability to be flexible,

DiSC Group Culture

The DiSC Group Culture report representing current MFH staff has been distributed and was reviewed at the June 25 All Hands meeting.

Information about the group culture report and links to other resources are below:

Coping with Organizational Change

Change is something we all experience throughout life in various forms.  How we CHOOSE to deal with change is the key!  

During the PRIDE discussions on Organizational Change, we were asked to read Pritchett & Pounds book.  This book discussed “mistakes” that are commonly made when dealing with organizational change and gave solutions to stir our thinking on how to reduce stress when going through organizational change.  

There are three key drivers of organizational change:  external, industry and internal.  External drivers of change are those things that we typically view as more environmental or social.  Industry drivers are task oriented and internal drivers are those that are personal or individual.  The latter is where I’d like to focus.

Thinking about Organizational Change

When Deidre stopped by my office to drop off “The Stress of Organizational Change” a book, I thought, “oh boy!” She assured me it was an easy read, and it was. I finished it in less than 30 minutes and saw it as a call to action.

First, it reads like a tough love, 12-step affirmation handbook. It is a self-inventory of one’s position in the workplace and how old behaviors play out in an organization that has refocused itself. Yes, there were several items in which I had to say to myself, “oh boy I need to change that.” However this tiny book does not leave you hanging; it informs you with some stern advice on how to remove “stinking thinking” and move towards a practical, positive way to rid the stress that accompanies organizational change. So in other words, as the organization changes, so does staff behavior. One cannot stay stagnant in order to achieve success.

Integrity in the Workplace

Core values are defined as those things which we believe are the most important aspects of who we are and how we treat others.

Integrity is the foundation of one’s character.  Integrity comes down to 3 things: being authentic with yourself, being authentic with others, and doing things you said you would do.  It means treating people with honesty, fairness, and compassion. 

One Team, Different Styles

Over a rainy weekend in October of 2009 I traveled with a team to the Nelson Ledges race track in Garrettsville, OH, to race a $500 car for 24 hours.

An auto racing series was developed a few years ago called the 24 Hours of LeMons that fields over 100 beat-down cars in 20-odd (very odd) endurance races throughout the country. The series takes its name from the famous 24 Hours of LeMans, if that race was filled with crap-can lemons found at the junkyard. Typically the races are 12-14 hours, divided over a Saturday and Sunday, but our team decided to go big or stay home. Nelson Ledges was going to be a true, non-stop, 24-hour race—and we had just the car.

A friend told me about a car he saw for sale, cheap. “The owner was asking $200 for it, but I’m not interested,” he explained. “You should buy it.” There’s a bad feeling that comes from being urged to buy something that a friend wouldn’t touch, but I ignored those feelings entirely and brought the rusty, non-running car home. Recognizing that I know little about working on cars and absolutely nothing about racing them, I needed to round up some other nuts interested parties. I posted a message online at the St. Louis BMW Club forum saying I had a 1983 BMW 635 that needed a racing team, and almost instantly had nearly a dozen people jump on board.

The team included six driver/mechanics, a couple regulars who helped wrench from time to time, and dozens of specialists, supporters, financiers and other invaluable individuals who got us to the finish line. I learned to recognize where my talents could be brought to bear, and noticed where others found their comfort zones.

Some team members focused on the big picture. Their enthusiasm helped promote the team, raise funds and keep the car clean (occasionally they polished parts of the rust-bucket while others were simultaneously grinding ever-expanding holes in the floor.) Others were interested in improving performance by tuning the engine and suspension, and buying special racing tires. Stability and dependability was important for those who worked on matters unique to an endurance race, like protecting the headlights from damage during night racing, and even basics like changing the oil. Attention to detail was crucial for building the car to the rules (including cheating), managing our registration, entry fees, and selecting the right bottle of Irish Whiskey for bribing the judges (it’s encouraged in the rules).

The rules state that teams can’t spend more than $500 on the purchase and modification of the car, but this excludes safety equipment for obvious reasons. When the car came back from having a roll cage installed with a $2,000 price tag on it, several members of the team began suggesting walking away or postponing our entry until the following year. “I wrote the check to the cage builder, but now my mortgage check is going to bounce,” one teammate e-mailed.

Call it my D-style tendencies, but sometimes I prefer a brute force solution. Throwing more money at the problem seemed like an easy fix, so I instantly replenished our funding by transferring a wad of cash through PayPal. “Here, pay your mortgage,” I replied. I’ve never replaced a fuel filter, but it needed doing, so I crawled under the fuel tank and tried to minimize the amount of gasoline running down my forearm as I worked. And nearing the end of the build, when no one else was around to get the car from the paint shop back to the garage, I went to a club member’s place after work to borrow his diesel pickup and trailer. Then I drove to Sauget, IL, picked up the car and trailered it back to the garage in Webster Groves, returned the borrowed hauler to the south side and made it home before midnight (I think--things got hazy towards the end).

Some weekends the car was swarmed with people working on it, while some nights involved one person replacing shock absorbers or rebuilding brakes. I could take almost anything off the car, but more skilled team members were required to put things back on properly. Getting the car ready for a trip to Ohio included everything from holding a flashlight and passing tools, to coaxing experts to weld the exhaust, adjust the vales and rewire the ignition so the car would, you know, start.

I didn’t share the same objectives or methods as my teammates for making a race car, but we all brought valuable talents to the project. Everyone’s smallest efforts were necessary to be successful, like having a team member with a smart phone who could find a motel in Indiana at 2 am. And even after 13 hours of racing, when the water pump gave up, a few of the team waited for the parts stores to open Sunday morning, found a water pump for a 26-year-old German car in the middle of Amish Ohio, and installed it in time to finish the last three laps before the checkered flag.

In the end it wasn’t speed or performance that caught us out, but a simple maintenance item that ended our reliability. Yet, we would never have even reached that point without all the cash, time, blood, sweat, grease, fuel, tools, firewood, loaner cars, camping gear, granola bars, water jugs, blue racing suits, tractor headlights, custom racing-stripes and hot pink paint.