Mission and vision:

To what degree is the development of your mission and vision a collective exercise, rather than the work of a single person? What are the trade-offs to the two models of visioning, and where is the point between the two models that is most appropriate for your particular project? How do you find it?

How do you express your mission and vision internally, within your company? And is it possible that your internal practice of mission and vision could get in the way of your external practice of mission and vision? How do you determine which of the two should bend to the other, and how do you arrive at that decision?

To what degree is your theory of change “systemic” in scope? (And do we all agree on what that word means?)

Decision-making at progressive organizations:

How much of your decision-making can be decentralized?

Is your organization, which culturally values decentralized or democratic decision-making, actually set up to successfully handle decentralized or democratic decision-making? Or is it contributing to nebulous accountability?

Knowing why you're growing, before you figure out how:

Growth is not inherently good. Can you articulate why growth is necessary for the execution of your mission? It might not be. All growth is directional. It may take you towards, or away from, your vision of the future.

What would it look like to treat your project like a campaign? You do the thing you say you're going to do; then you either pivot or dissolve.

What would it look like to put yourself in situations in which your theory of growth can be authentically challenged?

Growing for the right reasons can be a rallying cry for an organization's community.

On-the-job training:

In Boston, Black folx and US-born Latinxs coincide on a ~28% college graduation rate, according to a recent study by the National Fund. To the extent that you want to hire Bostonians of color to perform work that has historically (and needlessly) required a Bachelor’s degree, you will have to do some on-the-job training. Let’s talk about how to build a training program, in a way that is effective and equitable.

And let’s talk about incumbent workers too. Let’s make clear, transparent, and quantifiable the skills that employees need to demonstrate in order to advance in their careers. And then let’s give them the direction, the resources, the time, and the mentorship we all need in order to nurture those skills.