If all we want to do is advance incrementally, to make small improvements, then society’s habit of looking at what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed may well be equal to the task.
I’m asking you to set your sights higher – on your highest aspirations for yourself and society.
To best support those high aspirations, we focus on our strengths — the resources we can tap into — rather than our needs and problems. And we learn how to:
- Locate, mobilize and sustain human will and energy.
- Realize human and organizational potential.
- Bring forth the best from people, their best contributions.
The approach you’ll discover in these pages was first designed for philanthropy (for both the philanthropically-inclined and those whose work is in facilitating philanthropy). But it applies to the whole of the organization, and to socially conscious businesses and public enterprises as well.
After all, the root meaning of philanthropy — love of humanity — is at the heart of every organization of social good, every social cause, indeed every human system.
Finding the Vital Center
This approach taps into an organizational power that is often overlooked: the latent resources waiting to be drawn upon. Untapped strengths await if you can see them, bring them to the surface, and capitalize on them.
The way we discover and surface these resources is to inquire into the high points of the past and present — and uncover the conditions that made possible those peak moments.
We focus on what we have, rather than what we lack; on what’s working, rather than what’s not.
We use “the best of the past and present” to “ignite the collective imagination of what might be” (in the words of my colleague, Dr. David L. Cooperrider of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University).
This relentless focus on strengths can generate significant new resources for our organizations, causes, and communities — and for ourselves.
Consulting? Maybe speaking, writing, coaching, facilitating, teaching, advising? Get the special report I’m just now finishing on 3 strategies ... “How to create the consulting practice you really want.” Click here for your complimentary copy.
