METHOD MAN

What’s harder, perfecting a craft or creating the craft in the first place? One of the things I have decided to spend significant time doing each week is creating. Creating what? Creating methods, opportunities and relationships. I know it’s not the same as inventing an Ipad but it’ll have to do for now.

I recently accepted a contract to work for an organization with loads of talent. They have motivated personnel who know what they’re doing. Their facilities are something you blog about and their genuine care for their constituency is blatant. So why do they need me? I’m the method man, no affiliation to Wu Tang Clan. My job is to spot the source of disconnects in the environment and guide the organization and its members through a process of honest self-reflection. And that process is still evolving, still being invented. Figure it this way, I am the unbiased outsider who has been trusted. And that in and of itself is interesting. How can you be an outsider and trusted? Simple, I have history with these folks and lots of folks just like you do. I have prior knowledge of their impediments but I know their mission well because it is my own. I can own what this organization is about so it’s not hard to create ways to reacquaint them with the reason they all signed contracts.

My method is comprised of nothing more than finding a common honest thread in people who are part of a team. In other words, “What’s the thing they all believe in?” Once we discover that, the challenge is to admit the role you play in getting the team to move in the direction of the thing in which everyone believes. Roles may vary but everyone has to prepare, everyone has to be gracious and everyone has to fight prejudice. But creating a method for respective teams is harder than it sounds because organizations are as different as people themselves. It’s a fun job though and it’s lovely when a method you’ve made up helps people help people.