Ori,
Your email was spot on. And it is so refreshing to hear someone speak the truth about who we are as staff.
In my time running Org Dev, I saw incredible talent here at the Foundation, across departments, including members of the C-team. And as the situation has become progressively more chaotic, I've seen *everybody* level up. I've seen individual contributors and managers take on new challenges, new departments, grow their skills, learn how to trust one another and have each other's back, and find ways to grapple with our most important problems. In the absence of an org strategy and to side step the chaos and omnipresent conflicting information and confusion on the ground, departments have been getting together and charting their own way. I am inspired by the work I've seen my colleagues do *in spite of the dysfunction at the top*.
And as far as our "toxic culture"... don't believe the hype. I've actually seen our collective dialogue *improve* in the last two years and in the last year I've seen my colleagues show tremendous restraint in incredibly chaotic times of intense stress. Don't get my wrong, we have work to do, but we're heading in the right direction.
I don't at all believe it when I hear that there is not enough leadership at the Foundation. *I see leaders across this organization.* *I see untapped talent everywhere I look* that is finding ways to contribute despite land mines, roadblocks, and seriously hard-core motivational zappers everywhere.
My colleagues inspire me. And thank you so much for sharing that wise perspective, Ori. It made my week.
Rock on,
/a
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 2:48 AM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
Thank you so much for chiming in, Gayle. This means a lot. בתאריך 19 בפבר׳ 2016 10:17, "Gayle Karen Young" gaylekaren@gmail.com כתב:
People will leave despite how much they love a place, its mission, and
its
volunteers at the point it becomes too painful for them to stay. And no
one
can make that decision for them. While the support of one's colleagues
goes
a very long way, it is necessary but not sufficient. I have been
watching,
even in pain and at a distance, the enormous toll it takes for people to
go
in day after day and keep doing their work when they have felt
unsupported
and unheard by the leadership, the board, and the movement, and uncertain of the strategy of the organization - and even worse, characterized as being the wrong people on the bus, so to speak - that this turnover is "normal" and part of leadership transition. This is not normal.
Dysfunction at the top does matter. It sets the tone for what is permissible in the organization. It is part of the leadership obligation
to
create an organizational and systemic environment in which people thrive, and feel aligned to the mission and the values of the organization. When that is absent, the resulting toxicity is downright unfair to ask people
to
continually endure.
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Dan Andreescu <
dandreescu@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
This is happening in spite of -- not thanks to -- dysfunction at the
top.
If you don't believe me, all you have to do is wait: an exodus of
people
from Engineering won't be long now.
I hope you're wrong, Ori. I hope people have the presence of mind,
like
you say - despite the dysfunction at the top, to stay and talk things
out
among each other. And to realize that the dysfunction at the top does
not
*really* matter. People screw up, but this is a movement. And this movement, as you point out, has not screwed up.
I hope we talk, fix the problems, and grow stronger in our connection
and
commitment to the amazing community we serve.
If anyone is feeling despair, please talk to me first, we have all the reason in the world to channel our effort in a positive direction.
Just
to
be clear, I admire Ori for his intelligence and for writing this
email, I
just hope he's wrong that people will leave this place that I love so
much.
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