You Already Know What to Do

“When the first baby laughed for the first time,

his laugh broke into a million pieces, 

and they all went skipping about. 

That was the beginning of fairies." 

– JM Barrie, The Little White Bird

I must be growing up. I’m starting to believe in fairies.

I volunteer on the Board of Directors at my daughter’s school, a non-profit preschool operating in the Waldorf traditions. We are children, parents, teachers, and caregivers; singers, storytellers, bakers, and gardeners; puddle stompers, flower-sniffers, bubble-blowers, and bug-counters. We dance around Maypoles and walk through wintry labyrinths by candlelight. We opt for a media-free lifestyle or (in the case of most families) mindful media use. We practice our manners and much as our painting. We believe in magic, rhythm, adaptability, the power of nature, exploration, love, and service. We are a Waldorf community.

And we are on the cusp of considerable change.

We do zero marketing, and we have a waiting list a yearlong. To fulfill our mission promoting the values and principles of Waldorf Early Childhood Curriculum, we need and want to grow. But, how do we do it in a way that represents, protects, and even strengthens our values? Which of the multiple opportunities for growth are actually -- or best -- aligned with our values? 

That’s where the fairies come in. In the Waldorf traditions, fairies are both magical and mischievous. Some people think of them as your intuition. Others think of them as the proverbial angels and devils who sit on your shoulders, challenging you to pay close-closer-closest attention to the opportunities or paths in front of you. Then, the fairies compel you to choose a course of action.

But which course should you choose? Whose voice do you listen to? You listen to your own. You’ve already created your answer: it’s waiting for you in your organizational values.

Values to any organization—be it a non-profit, a business, even a family—are your strategic, cultural, and operational litmus tests. Before you shift into something new, you need to evaluate any opportunity—consciously, deliberately—through the lens of your values.

At my child’s school, after evaluating our current potential opportunity for growth via a real estate developer and a new larger, flexible space we can grow into in a new urbanism neighborhood, our values told us, No. According to our values, this is not the right opportunity for us. When we realized this, we could see what values were missing, and we empowered ourselves to negotiate with the developer and make our needs/terms more clear. The idea was to either claim more common ground with him, or move forward in a different direction. Armed with our values, and examples of our values in action that illustrated contrast between his offering and our own, we had a very productive conversation that's leading us to a new location and facility in his development -- something much more aligned with our values and our brand identity.

I tell this story because I think it’s relevant to our friends, colleagues, and clients in the EPI community. We partner together to help accelerate growth and empower performance amidst that growth.  Whether you’re trying to onboard new hires, upcycle your training and development tools or programs, or leverage your strengths in a new initiative, it’s important to analyze that desire up front. 

 Evaluate the opportunity through the lens of your values. Mindfully. Deeply. Honestly.

When you find your answer, you can smile and thank the fairies, and maybe even leave them a little offering.

Source: http://happysnapmichelle.blogspot.com