Village Voices...
Why Thrive Village?
Thrive Village is a dream that has been a seed laying just beneath the surface for years, but I didn’t know it. I am a consummate learner, designer and adapter – I take a problem worthy of being solved, find the best thinkers and authors on the subject and craft a solution that weaves the best parts together. For the past two decades I have been focused on challenges organizations face that prevent them from growing and innovating.
My career has been blessed with good employers who invested in me, talented partners who challenged me to grow and great clients who trusted me with their organizations to serve as a lab for mutual learning. I have a loving family who has been patient as I struggled to find work-life balance for them and for me. To each of them, I am grateful.
Along the way, I have grown deep friendships with people who excel at what they do and have an entrepreneurial spirit and drive to serve like me. I love my energizing time with these sages, and we have conversations that easily stretch hours without feeling that more than minutes have passed. Slowly, ever so slowly, the thought began to emerge to package up the central tenets of my learnings and share them with others – not just my direct clients, but out to the people who can use them to reach a larger audience of organizations while I continue to learn to develop even better tools and approaches.
A colleague and I went to a class in the Netherlands a few months ago and met an amazing group of people with skills in organizational development, culture and change management. They encouraged me to dream big – to help professionals and organizations world-wide. It was intriguing, but scary. It was indeed a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal.) For years I’ve helped leaders of organizations craft them and have celebrated from the sidelines as they overcame the odds to knock them out of the park.
I’ve made risky moves before and at my heart I am an entrepreneur, so slowly this little seed began to burst forth. Upon deeper reflection, I realized that if I didn’t reach for this, I would regret it. So, I reveal to you my dream:
To bring talent together to help organizations across the world learn the best and most effective ways to THRIVE: to flourish, grow and prosper.
Why does this matter? Thriving businesses and non-profits are critical to thriving communities. They bring out the best in the people who work for them. Thriving people raise thriving children and the circle continues. I do this in the hope that my five wonderful children and my seven beautiful grandchildren will have worthy places to work live and play, that we all will.
I also commit to serving my local community first. For all the reasons stated above, we need every organization in our region to thrive. I have begun to curate an exceptional group of local organizational development talent who are creative, entrepreneurial while also being collaborative and purpose driven. They are unique among independent contractors and by bringing their skills together synergistically, will be able to address the needs of our region’s organizations more effectively and efficiently.
Here’s to big dreams. Here’s to venturing into the unknown and here’s to making the world a little bit better with the gifts we have been given. I welcome you to join me in my quest or cheer me on from the side, we all need a little help from our friends!