Last weekend, I attended one of my favorite little girl’s third birthday party. Along with enjoying the princess castle bouncy house and the face painting, my favorite moment was watching the organized chaos of the gift opening.
Two blankets were laid out on the lawn. One was meant to be for the birthday girl, the other for the little guests. Best intentions aside, the full party decided to all smush themselves onto one blanket with the birthday girl and her mom. With each child holding their brightly wrapped gifts, they stood, moved around, and continued to encroach closer and closer to the birthday girl.
The excitement to have their gift opened and acknowledged* created ten minutes of extreme excitement and activity. By the end, gifts were strewn about and mom and birthday girl were on the grass.
I laughed aloud watching this scene because the activity was not unlike the way we approach new ideas and projects in the social sector. With many good intentions, we toss around words like collective, collaborative, and community. In all of the theories, these sound amazing, yet in many of the practical examples of projects and efforts, they are left behind. Instead, what we see are individuals each with their passions and ideas clamoring to have their gifts opened and acknowledged first, most loudly, with the most enthusiasm.
In the business sector, when competition occurs there’s a rationalization of the “bottom line” that employees, owners, and shareholders can get behind to understand a decision – a project, a merger, a sale. It’s business and the bottom line counts. Case closed. (You can argue that this is changing, adding to my point.)
In the social sector, we don’t have one bottom line. Instead, we’ve built our whole sector to say that we have multiple bottom lines (double, triple, quadruple) or even a mish-mashy blended value, with no lines at all…just a puree. When, in our best attempts to collaborate collectively for community, we are each bringing our own preference on which value should be seen as best, highest and most worthy.
The sustainability guy sees the need for an LEED building without considering budget and revenue. The innovation gal sees the need to use the new, shiny way of doing things without considering that older ways may yield similar results. The business mogul sees the need for social impact, but only to the extent it serves their business. We, “social do-gooders”, stand together on the same blanket clamoring for the birthday girl (i.e. funder, though leader, politician) to open and acknowledge our gift.
So what are we left with then, when ultimately there is no one bottom line? We can continue to toss around the theories of collaboration and community. We should. They help us to make sense of the world around us. But when we clamor for ourselves, we don’t leave space for others. We make everyone else a little less shiny, a little less gifted, and a little less right than we are.
There’s a reason why the gift giving is often last at birthday parties. The energy and excitement is too much for the little ones to handle and soon after, they melt down. The quibbling, the he said/she said, the ‘do you like mine best’, and the tears. We’re not three year olds, yet too often, we act like it. We don’t have a bottom line to bail us out. In many cases of projects, organizations, and community building we forget there is an opportunity of acting socially good in the delivery of social good.
The reality is that, in the end, our new gift will be an old gift next year. Ideas and theories will change and projects will morph. There will always be something new to promote and new people on the blanket. There’s no need to change our behavior, after all, if we’ve been acting like this since three, why change now? But if we don’t change, how can we expect any of our work to change others? Why should they listen to us when we’re acting like children?
*Birthday girl played with the baby doll first.
