Creating the Future!

To read about our journey from the beginning, start here.

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Week 2:
We have finished the first week of intensive workshops for California’s local Fire Safe Councils. It is Sunday morning the 21st. Dimitri gets online, and learns there are 2 fires burning in the area. One look out the window tells us why: The treetops are all blowing sideways in the gale-force Santa Ana winds.

We spend the morning transcribing the notes generated from the week’s facilitated classes (to be able to share those with the attendees). Then we begin packing up yet another hotel suite with our boxes and luggage and computers and such, to once again hit the road.

But the wind is so strong, it keeps blowing the cart filled with our luggage across the parking lot. The wind is so strong, it blows the car doors shut each time we try to move those boxes and bags from the cart to the car. The wind is so strong it takes an hour and a half just to pack up the car. They always talk about the Santa Ana’s as “hurricane force winds, but in dry conditions.” Suddenly, we get it.

By the time we leave the hotel parking lot and stop at the gas station on the way out of town, we learn there are now 5 fires burning.

Heading west, the sky starts to get hazy. Then the haze becomes thicker. It is smoke. The farther we drive along the Ventura Freeway, the thicker it becomes, blotting out the afternoon sun.

By the time we head north and arrive in San Luis Obispo, where we will spend the night on our way to Oakland and our next workshop, the only news is the fires.

As we continue our journey the next day, heading north and away from the fires, we have become born again to the cause of teaching local Fire Safe Councils how to Govern for Community Impact. And we renew our commitment to helping them address the question they all seem to want answered most - how to engage their communities in becoming fire safe.

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In the car, our ears are glued to the radio; when we are not in the car, our eyes are glued to the news online. Google Maps has a fire map, which we check regularly throughout the day.

The Headquarters of the Cleveland National Forest, where we provided our Rancho Bernardo / San Diego workshop, is now the seat of the worst of the fires. The very people who were in the room that day are now being evacuated. Just days ago they were asking how to engage their communities and how to govern to create community impact; today they are the very people whose homes and lives are at stake.

As we arrive for workshops in Oakland and Sacramento, the terrain is fire free. But the issues raised by these northern California communities are the same as those raised by attendees of the ironically-timed workshops just days before the Southern California fires.

How can we engage our communities in creating their own safe place to live? How do we create a shared sense of responsibility? How do we make fire safety a natural part of life, rather than something extra to be done?

And how do we do all that when fire is not grabbing headlines, when people have, once again, just gotten on with the business of living their lives?

By the time it all settles down, there will have been 23 fires overall, destroying 500,000 acres. Approximately 2,000 homes will have been lost. Depending on which news source we listen to, anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million people will have been instructed to evacuate the Los Angeles and San Diego areas.

And 9 people will have died.

Even in these early stages, though, one thing is becoming clear: In those communities where Fire Safe Practices were put into place, loss of life and property was less than elsewhere in those fire-struck regions.

We have spent the last two weeks teaching the boards of small, local Fire Safe Councils how to govern for maximum community impact. It is that very impact the groups we are teaching want to engage their communities in creating.

We are now seeing firsthand how dramatic that impact can be.

The story continues with Part 4…

(Photo credits: #1 - AP / #2 - Me, as Dimitri drives along the freeway)

The work Dimitri and I do is always exciting. Working with hospitals and healthcare organizations to build communities that are healthy and thriving in all ways. Working with educators to change the face of public education in America.

Suddenly, that all pales compared to the past month’s work - traveling around California, teaching the boards of the state’s Fire Safe Councils how to govern for maximum community impact. Fire Safe. In California. In October of 2007.

We have packed the car with a month’s worth of clothes and books and files and computers and work-still-to-be-done. It is October 12th when we hit the road. We have no idea that once again we will find ourselves in the middle of the nation’s top news story.

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Week 1:
The mission of the California Fire Safe Council is to “mobilize Californians to protect their homes, communities and environments from wildfire.” This statewide organization is a catalyst for helping communities decrease the effects of wildfire in California’s fire-prone areas. The actual hands-on work of providing both community education and direct action - clearing and chipping to ensure that “brush” doesn’t become “fuel,” for example - is done by small, independent, community-based Fire Safe Councils, organized in both urban and rural settings, wherever there is a threat of wildfire destruction.

The Allstate Foundation has generously funded our work with the Fire Safe Council, as they understand that keeping communities fire safe is in everyone’s best interests. When it comes to catastrophic wildfire, there are lots of “good guys.” And Allstate is right up there in our book!

The work we are here to do is nothing less than prescient - teaching small regional Fire Safe Councils how to “Govern for What Matters,” transforming the passion board members feel for the mission into effective governance.

We spend a full day meeting with the board of the statewide organization. Then our first regional workshop, gathering board members from local Fire Safe Councils, is October 17th in Rancho Bernardo, a suburb of San Diego.

The Workshops
At the front of the room, I have hung a sheet that I often use in governance workshops. Here it seems both appropriate and haunting. It says:

Governing for What Matters:
Should Boards Always Be Putting Out Fires?

While everyone in attendance is a board member of a Fire Safe Council, most do not know each other. So we start the day with introductions, asking folks to also share (for my benefit) what they hope to get out of the session.

This is a governance workshop. But as the participants talk about what they hope to learn, the word raised most often is “engagement.” They want to engage their communities in their mission. They want to engage their volunteers. They want to engage their boards.

The day is spent in facilitated dialogue, giving folks a chance to not only learn but engage each other.

Governing for What Matters
To begin, we share the 2 steps in Governing for What Matters. First, we define what matters. Only then can we put “what matters” into action.

So the group defines what matters most, starting with their vision for success, moving towards the mission that will accomplish that vision, and then moving again to the values that will guide that work.

The group becomes engaged almost immediately. The vision they share is for a community with a shared sense of responsibility for the safety of its residents. A community that is engaged in its own well-being. A community that doesn’t have to pay special attention to fire safety, but instead assumes it to simply be the way life is, just like one accepts that mowing the lawn is part of living in the suburbs.

We talk together about the fact that Vision, Mission and Values are not just words to put on paper; that they are, in fact, all that matters. If we are fiscally prudent, but pay no attention to creating real change in our communities, what good is the money? The group is energized as they realize the possibilities in just these simple steps.

The rest of the day is spent teaching how to put “what matters” into action. We facilitate the group through an accelerated version of the single planning process that covers everything a board needs to be actively and consciously accountable.

We walk them through the steps that aim their work at creating significant, long-term community improvement. We go through the steps that provide for the comprehensive health of the organization’s efforts. We show how these steps provide for both Legal Oversight and Operational Oversight. We review issues related to Board Mechanics. And we share how the board can monitor monthly to remain as fully accountable as any governance expert could desire.

“If this planning is done annually,” we tell them, “the board will be doing its best. If NOT done annually, boards are almost guaranteed to be putting out fires.”

The story continues in Part 2…

(Photo credit - NASA)