T'shaka goes All-Star

My work with www.thegatheringforjustice.org is about as inspiring as work can get. I am working with a bold and committed Design Team that has been carefully crafting the next leadership convening of the organization – the purpose: decentralize to build movement. During our last Design Team meeting my thoughts were particularly provoked by one of T’shaka’s (http://www.burnsinstitute.org/) sports analogies.

People have fun with sports, they look forward to the game, their aim is to excel, and they are celebrated for their work. By comparison, this work for social change too often feels like a drag to those who devote their life to it, meetings are more of a pain, we tend to hate on our teammates and mediocrity is often the norm.

Now, T’shaka is not into the “touchy feely” stuff, his structural analysis is as sharp as it gets, and he is consistently concerned with what it is the work looks like when the “rubber hits the road.” But even from this perspective T’shaka was able to name the importance of an attitudinal shift and how important it is for us to check how it is we approach the work. Underfunded and overworked, raging at injustice and at structures that keep us stuck (from policy to the 501(c)3), it is understandably challenging to keep our spirits up, even when our commitment is strong.

“How do we go all-star?” he asks. How do we make sure that a meeting is good by virtue of our being there? How do we honor ourselves for the work that we do? And how do we work to excel?

I am passionate about my work, it certainly is my life’s purpose, and I want to be the best at it. Most of my work is about re-inventing our work, about reimagining how we are do this social transformation thing, about creating spaces that are life-giving and not depleting, about unlocking the sense of purpose that got us on this track in the first place.

This is probably the reason why I am noticing more and more that my networks in both the physical and virtual worlds are self-organized in such a way that people are more able to transcend our organizational constraints. More and more of us are coming together to serve our purpose, support one another and excel at the work of reinventing the work. We have all-stars coming up, and my friend T’shaka is one of them – we mean to play a whole new game.