When the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright got a call from the resident of one of the homes he had built to complain that the roof was leaking over her bed, he had an unsympathetic reply. “Madame, move your bed.” His penchant for flat roofs was good for design, bad for drainage. We did not need to be told to move our “beds” this last year, we just shoved them over and kept serving our customers and clients even though the environment was stormy. No whining. Better yet, action.
I would like to suggest that our inner wisdom knew we were not doing things as right as they could be done. We have been forced to change, invent, learn, upgrade. How we serve our clients today is more streamlined than a year ago. It’s hard to let go of some of our patterns and practices in managing nonprofits. I and my team have the same heart but with healthier processes.
Boards and their directors no longer just drive to lunch meetings donating their guidance for 90 minutes a month. They are working hard, some many hours a week, to make sure the paying membership and the sponsors of their group are getting exactly what was promised. Committees that had been dormant prior to March 2020 were revved up. And it has not been easy for them. We are paid to manage the business, but board members are volunteers with businesses and lives of their own to negotiate the leaking roof that was the Pandemic.
I know everyone is exhausted on many levels. We have lived through an extreme version of ‘who moved my cheese.’ But as we “return to normal” do not mourn the loss of an old habit, event, or process. Embrace new ways. Some are better.
