What will be your partnership's epitaph?

Here is a very engaging 20 minute TED talk by social activist and fund raiser Dan Pallotta (brought to my attention by Jonathan Andrews of Remarkable Partnerships):

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong

It challenges the way we perceive and relate to charities and non-profit organisations.   

During his talk Pallotta speaks about what a non-profit/social initiative would like to have written on its tombstone once its natural life-cycle has come to an end.

This struck me as a very simple yet powerful idea. Asking the partners in a social initiative to discuss the epitaph they would like to see written on the metaphorical tombstone marking the end of their work together would, because of the visceral finality of the image, concentrate partners' minds upon what is really important and what their initiative's lasting legacy ought to be.

Such a discussion would strip away the pressures of the present moment and expose the faulty thinking and assumptions that can easily masquerade as good and proper practice. (For example, Pallotta describes how giving seemingly proper but actually undue attention to minimising overheads can cause social initiatives to become starved of resources and unable to achieve their goals and aspirations.)

So, what words do you want to see on the tombstone that marks the end of your initiative's life story? And what faulty thinking and assumptions do you need to clear out of the way in order to deserve them?  

                        

Banking on values

The Global Alliance for Banking on Values is an independent network of banks that uses finance to deliver sustainable development for unserved people, communities and the environment.

It does this by adhering to 6 key principles of sustainable finance and banking.

A collaborative culture and approach is central to the effective application of these principles. For me, three aspects stand out in particular:

1. The need for this new type of values based banking to create active relationships with the extended stakeholder community (not just shareholders).
2. The need for the initiative to survive long-term (not only by surviving the current CEO and Senior Team but also by becoming increasingly influential within the financial sector, eventually embedding itself into the mainstream of financial institutions' practice).
3. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the need for a new type of collaborative financial worker who demonstrates some (or indeed all) of the following characteristics:

Populate your partnership with a new breed of collaborative worker