Quick Tip #3: Take a Little Walk

The other day, a friend of mine who works in a large Milwaukee nonprofit joked that her boss only said hello to staff when she was showing a board member around the agency.  Otherwise, the boss is unseen or walks by without acknowledging anyone. 

Wow. What a tiny, no-cost, missed opportunity to build morale!

That boss should learn about the Wes Scott rule of starting your day when you’re the CEO of a large nonprofit.  Mr. Scott, a long time director of the Milwaukee Urban League, also served on the Social Development Commission as a board member and served a stint as Interim Director for a few years after a particularly tumultuous time in the agency.  Mr. Scott was charming, urbane, wise, and funny.  He could chat up anyone.

So Mr. Scott would start his mornings at SDC by pouring a big mug of coffee and walking through the agency to personally greet everyone.  A “Good Morning” here, a “How’s it going?” there.  Every morning.  Then he’d go back to his office and get to work.  When I asked him about that years later, he explained that it got his day off to the right start.  Note – his day.  But from what SDC employees told me after he left, it was something that meant a lot to them.  The executive director thought they were important enough to greet every day.

A little thing, right?  Maybe not.

The Right Answer is Yes

The agency director said, “We try to teach our people here that the right answer is yes.”  I was so grateful to hear this my eyes teared up.  No joke. I want to put THE RIGHT ANSWER IS YES on T-shirts and coffee mugs.  Maybe make a magnetic sign for my car.  Rent the psychedelic billboard on I-94 West and have the morning exodus wondering “What does that mean?”  “Say yes to what?”

Can you help me?  Will you help me?  Can I be helped?  Am I worth helping?

This is my rookie year in actually trying to help a human being maneuver the human service system.  Yeah, yeah, I have a lot of years of experience talking about systems – analyzing, critiquing, drawing new boxes and arrows on flowcharts.  Until April of this year, I had zero experience trying to get anyone services except the people in my own family, an endeavor made ridiculously simple with health insurance and a credit card.

This is what I’ve learned so far this year:

• A person’s problems can disqualify him/her from getting help even if the problems are the reason he/she needs help.
• Cynicism is a cancer that keeps helpers from helping and the needy from trusting help.
• People who have a life that is a jumble of failures and mishaps won’t suddenly be cured when they walk in the door of a human services agency.
• Agency staff often seem to think  they should parent the adults seeking help.
• People who feel judged and diminished will flee from help.

So when my colleague, Joe Volk, head of Community Advocates, made this statement to me yesterday, it made me really happy.  First of all, it meant I wasn’t just a naive little do-gooder who couldn’t read the scorecard right.  All the barriers and rules and ways to exclude people with messed up lives from getting help really is bullshit.  And, secondly, and more importantly, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Years ago, I was at a conference and some motivational guy uttered these parting words:  “People are hurting.  It doesn’t have to be that way. We need to do something.”  And, of course, I thought, rolling my eyes, “Oh brother.”  But it’s stuck with me all this time.  Because I believe it to be true.  A lot of what I’ve seen these past few months — in my volunteer work and my professional life – has made my eyes cross and my heart ache.

I don’t believe it has to be that way.  A few weeks ago, I talked to some service providers about how they selected people for their programs.  Several providers told me about intake criteria, especially noting those things that would disqualify someone from getting help.  It was clear they’d spent a lot of time carefully constructing these barriers to make sure they got the right kind of customer in their program.  The last guy said, “No, we just take the next person in line, we don’t screen out.  The next person’s in until it looks like it won’t work for him.”  That guy gets a T-shirt and a coffee mug.