Social Service, Community Mental Health and Homeless Service Provider Collaboration for Effective Case Management

This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Lauren Frederick. She asked for a blog about “Promoting efficient collaboration between social service agencies, community mental health, & homeless service providers for effective housing case management”

The last time I blogged about collaboration was the summer of 2013. I stay convinced that the five steps for effective collaboration that I outlined in that blog remain true:

1. Agree on how you will communicate with each other

2. Ensure creative conflict

3. Be deliberate and thoughtful in figuring out with whom you are collaborating

4. Have a defined process

5. Make certain there is accountability

And I also remain convinced that any talk of collaboration only makes sense if we are all on the same page about what is meant by collaboration. To that end, you can read this old blog gem from March 2012. One of the quotes in that blog that rings true to me whenever I go about discussing collaboration is from Thomas Stallkamp, who has had a rather successful career in business and now leads a group calledCollaborative Management, who remarked, “The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other.”

That said, many people who work in this industry talk a good game about collaboration because we think it is the answer. It isn’t always. Collaboration only works when there is a genuine commitment to labor together (which, by the way, is the origins of the word). Collaboration is not partnership. It is not mutual aid. It is working together.

How do you get groups to work together?

First of all, they have to consent to do so and commit to do so. In a number of communities the way to ensure this will actually occur is a signed charter or memoranda with signatures from the parties that agree to collaborate.

Groups really only work well together when they have mutual interest. To that end, if a group wants collaboration so that, say, a behavioral health service will assist a participant in your program, that isn’t mutual interest. That is an interest in you having someone do the job that they are mandated to do. Mutual interest would be if the behavioral health service provider had something they wanted you to labor on with them.

Sometimes that we think having shared clients on caseloads creates an environment where collaboration will definitely occur. Nope. It only works if the sum of the various parties working together exceeds the impact of any one party working alone.

Let’s us assume that a group (comprised of three agencies: social services, a homeless service provider, and community mental health) agrees to collaborate. It will not all go smoothly, and it shouldn’t. We want there to be different perspectives and opinions on what should occur, in which way, and why. And let us not forget that the participant should have an active voice as well. Sometimes the best way to promote collaboration is to let prospective parties participating in the collaboration to know that you don’t expect everyone to agree.

Identifying the objectives of having the parties collaborate with each other is necessary for it to be effective and efficient. If you want people to come together and labor together without identifying the objectives, expect it to all fall apart, quickly and with considerable frustration. Why? Because chances are different parties had different objectives to achieve through the collaboration.

You would be hard-pressed to find any of these groups (social services, homeless service providers, or community mental health providers) with more staff, money or time than they know what to do with. Because everyone is overtaxed, suggesting one more meeting or get together is probably the last thing on anyone’s mind. “Many hands making light work” only succeeds if people feel that there is equal effort in participation. You also need to let people know how you plan on communicating about the work if they do agree to collaborate – Case conferences? Phone contact? All visiting participants at the same time? Emails? Skype chats?

Before you actually begin the collaboration, I would also make sure that people know how the group will have mutual accountability. That way if someone is not carrying their load or laboring in the way that was agreed to, there is recourse. If you don’t have this, people can start skipping out and avoiding participation.

How I might go about doing collaboration for the purposes of ending homelessness

1. Signed Memorandum of Understanding between senior managers in all three sectors of service.

2. One pager writing out the objectives of the collaboration signed by the frontline staff involved in all three parties.

3. Outline the steps that will be taken if there is operational conflict.

4. Identify the first five participants to collaborate on through discussion of all three parties.

5. Weekly email communication on tactical and operational division of labor across all three parties with specific clients.

6. Meet the second Friday of the month to discuss broader shared work strategically and actively create debate on approach, technique, and strategies for specific participants.

7. Summarize results of collaboration to Senior Managers of all three parties on a quarterly basis.

8. Expand to additional participants (incrementally) after at least two consecutive quarters of effective collaboration, with improved client outcomes.

Reflections on the 20K Homes Campaign from a Canadian Close to the Ground on the 100K Homes Campaign

This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Tim Richter of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. He asked for reflections on the Canadian 20K Homes Campaign in light of my exposure to the 100K Homes Campaign in the United States.

My fellow Canadians, congrats on going the route of the 20K Homes Campaign!

If you were at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Conference last year in Vancouver, you probably heard Becky Kanis say nice things about me and the VI-SPDAT. That was pretty awesome. In the process, you learned that I was a Canadian close to the 100K Homes Campaign – if you didn’t already know that. I was the only Canadian invited to the White House along with Community Solutions staff and selected higher-performing Campaign Communities in the US. I am fairly certain that no Canadian was closer to the campaign than I was, and I am grateful for that experience and the opportunity to offer some perspective and observations about the campaign that may be helpful as you move forward with the 20K Homes Campaign in Canada.

First of all, you should know that I started as not being a strong vocal supporter of the 100K Homes Campaign. Then, I had my socks blown off by what was being achieved and how Community Solutions went about working with communities to make it happen. What I misunderstood at the start is that the campaign has more to do with reframing how we think about and end homelessness. It isn’t a program; it is a campaign. When I wrapped my head around that, there was much that I was humbled by and learned from in witnessing the progress and achievements of the campaign.

I share these thoughts with you at the invitation of Tim Richter in the hopes that we don’t miss any important lessons from the 100K Homes Campaign that can be considered, refined and improved upon (perhaps) in the Canadian adventure. In no particular order here are 20 reflections:

1. Work with the providers in your community that are on board. You will NOT get everyone on board. And that is okay.

You can have meeting after meeting after meeting trying to get people on board, or you can just start prioritizing and housing amongst the service providers that are on board. Do the latter. Homelessness has never been ended in a Committee, as the 100K Homes Campaign proved.

2. You don’t have to operate a Recovery-Oriented Scattered Site Housing Focused Assertive Community Treatment program for this to work.

When some communities hear discussion of a housing-focused approach to service delivery aligned to Housing First two things can happen: either hands get thrown up in defeat because there is not and will not be a Housing First ACT in their community; or, a group of critics will tell them that they cannot be successful because they do not have a Housing First ACT. Focus on the philosophy of Housing First, more than a particular Housing First intervention to get you started. It is especially true that you can learn how to align to Intensive Case Management aligned to the principles and service orientation with some training of existing organizations – and be successful. You can learn while you are housing people if necessary.

3. This should kick-start your communities approach to coordinated access and common assessment (or build momentum on whatever system you have). That is one of the great legacies of the campaign.

Sure, it is called a “campaign” but I like to think of it as the seeds planted to grow greater things. In dozens – if not hundreds – of communities across the US that we at OrgCode have worked with that were 100K Campaign Communities, we have taken what they have learned to put it into a highly functioning, fair system with effective triaging. This includes all parts of the service delivery sector – street outreach, health services, shelters, transitional housing, drop-in centres, etc. Communities learn how to go about matching the right person/family to the right program in the right order. Communities get out of a first come, first served mindset. They learn what prioritization really means in this line of work and how to operationalize it.

4. We can do a better job in Canada of tracking how many people stay housed and how many people pass away after moving into housing.

It is hard to say with precision how many people stayed housed in the 100K Homes Campaign. To be fair, this was never a stated objective of the 100K Homes Campaign. Also to be fair, there is a subset of data from communities that demonstrates a greater than 80% housing retention rate. Knowing how many people returned to homelessness more precisely, and how many people die after moving into housing is helpful, especially given the nature of vulnerability the program participants expected. I also would suggest having this information will help us improve public policy and programs. We can do this without a massive amount of extra work if we think it through from the beginning.

5. Get at least some supportive housing and social housing providers on board – and early.

This type of housing cannot and will not be the only solution, but they are an important part of the solutions. Higher achieving 100K Homes communities tended to get some preferred access or set asides to supportive housing and other government assisted housing. In your community, this may require thinking through modified chronological access within the legislative framework that your government assisted housing works through sooner rather than later.

6. Work to the targets you set.

The data will guide you on what you need to do in order to achieve your goal. If you work towards the data as a collective, you will reach the outputs necessary to achieve your goal. If you consider the target only an abstract or “nice to do” you will fail. You will find the targets to be audacious to some. But trust me, they are achievable if you do the right things in the right way. While I shudder at the phrase “take down target” that was used in the US campaign, the concept is an important one. You need to know how many people to house per month to reach your goal. 20,000 Canadians housed through the initiative in and of itself is pretty audacious when you consider the size of Canada. On a per capita basis it is higher than the US target.

7. There is no such thing as a perfect prioritization or assessment tool.

You have likely heard a lot about the use of Vulnerability Index (VI) or the Vulnerability Index-Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (VI-SPDAT) used in the 100K Homes Campaign. No prioritization tool is perfect. Pick the one that works best. Do NOT, as some 100K Homes communities attempted early on, to create your own new tool. There isn’t enough time. And besides some other tools have already been proven to work, even with their imperfections. There are loads of Canadian communities using the VI-SPDAT and/or SPDAT products with great success – some for several years. Also, don’t confuse a prioritization tool with the campaign or think that just because you have a prioritization tool you automatically have coordinated access. The tool is just part of it.

8. You don’t need to study this to death, nor do you need the permission of academics to validate what you are doing and why.

We already know that ending homelessness saves money. Do we need another study? That would just be a waste of time. And as Becky and others have so elegantly stated, so many in the academic community are behind where the cutting edge of innovation and practice is at on a day to day basis in communities that are pioneering new ways of thinking and doing. If there are community-minded academics that are on board or want to join you along the way, great. But don’t wait.

9. Go easy on the competition aspects of it.

This was probably one of my least favourite parts of the 100K Homes Campaign. Competition was used as a device to stimulate achieving goals, and was primarily used to get entire communities to buy into achieving success. Competition may work for frontrunners or even middle of the pack communities to get further ahead. For those towards the bottom of the pack, it had little impact, in my experience. Ending homelessness matters. From the perspective of the end user of services, what matters is not who achieved it first.

10. You have the chance to fix some of the problems of your service delivery that have plagued you for a long time.

You’ll need to have some rapid decision-making for your community to reach its target. This often means needing a quick resolution to some barriers. Embrace the action. Do NOT form another committee to study it. For those Canadian communities that run most decisions through a municipal city council, you will need to figure out how to manage this in such a way that does not require taking all major decision points back to Council.

11. You’ll have to use some existing resources differently.

The Campaign doesn’t come with a plethora of new resources. That is part of the magic of it. It forces you to use some existing resources differently. And if you get your head around that, you will probably wonder why you used the resources in any other way in the past. One of the biggest things I saw across US communities and continue to see as the legacy of the Campaign is reinvesting resources that managed homelessness or the symptoms of homelessness into real and immediate solutions to homelessness.

12. Keep the focus simple: getting people housed. You will not solve all of the problems with your community’s approach to ending homelessness through the Campaign.

Your job is to house people. You job is not to fix the mental health system or the addiction recovery system or discharge planning issues. Those are important, but you don’t want to delay or hold up this process to achieve that. You can use the success of your Campaign to demonstrate to those other systems that success is possible despite the faults in the systems that impact homelessness.

13. There will be naysayers. And mean people suck.

You would be hard-pressed to not find someone in the 100K Homes campaign communities that did not absolutely hate it. Sometimes this was an existing service provider that always had done things differently. Sometimes this was a local policymaker that had been trying to coalesce the community around a different priority. Sometimes this was an advocate for homeless persons. Just accept that not everyone will welcome the campaign and what it represents, and some people will be very mean about that on a personal and professional level. You don’t need everyone to agree the Campaign is a good idea. You need to weather the storm of meanness.

14. Get your political leaders on board – if you can. Do not wait for them if you can’t.

Mayors are especially impactful to get on board, even in our weak mayor system in Canada. If nothing else this represents an issue that would benefit from all orders of government working together but essentially lands on the lap of local government to solve. To make this all work, give your local politicians a briefing and the talking points to work off of as it relates to what the Campaign does and does not do.

15. Remember this is about ending homelessness.

Simple, but true, the whole reason for doing this Campaign is to end homelessness one person/family at a time. This transcends subpopulations quite well. The campaign identifies people by name, knows their vulnerability and housing instability risks, and then houses and supports them in order. It does not attempt to solve the root causes of why particular groups of people find themselves homeless in the first place. That would be a different campaign altogether.

16. Other work can springboard from this experience.

Do this well and prove to people it can be done and other major change work can follow suit. But don’t make the mistake of trying to do this and 8 other things at the same time. One of the things the Campaign can teach you and your colleagues in your community (which I wish I had learned earlier in my career) is how narrowly focused attention on doing this Campaign well can provide proof and motivation that change is possible.

17. Get traction in 100 days.

The most important time, I would argue (and many involved in the US Campaign would agree) is the first 100 days. This sets the stage for instant results. Will you make mistakes? Yup. And what you learn in that mistake will lay the groundwork for future success. You may want to learn more about how the amazing folks at the Rapid Results Institute helped accelerate change and achieving results.

18. Have a local spokesperson that knows all of the ins and outs operationally as well as what the broader objectives of the Campaign are about.

You will need a local spokesperson about the Campaign for service providers, homeless persons, media inquiries, elected officials, policy staff, the general public, etc. When I reflect on communities that kicked butt at the Campaign in the US there is one person that comes to mind in each of those cities that I could easily identify as the local spokesperson. There was never ambiguity of who was in charge, who knew all the operational details, etc. This wasn’t always the most typical, highest ranking person historically in the local homeless service delivery system.

19. Prove success and watch more investment come your way.

While not a guarantee, one of the things that has happened in a number of communities is the ability to prove that housing people with really acute needs is possible and that homelessness can be reduced – and quickly! Proving this to government and other funders can actually result in increased investment to the community, as well as a reprofiling of existing resources into those services that are proven to work. It can also spotlight the need for increased investment for particular populations. For example, the Americans showed us that being successful can result in new, larger investment in addressing homelessness amongst veterans. Imagine if in Canada we could get more resources for youth homelessness or homelessness amongst aboriginal persons – and not at the cost of other populations already being served!

20. Community Solutions are the real deal.

These cats know exactly what they are doing. You may feel “But they are American” in the same way that many of our US clients say to us at OrgCode “But you are Canadian”. Great ideas don’t know passports. I know of no organization around the world that makes social change happen at such a pace when it comes to homelessness. They are smart. They are passionate. They know what they are talking about. What they are sharing is a damn good idea – not an American way of thinking about homelessness that won’t work in the Canadian context.

Housing People in Communities with Low Vacancy Rates

This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Matt Ashdown.

I get it – you want to house people out of homelessness. But – and this is making your life difficult and their life hell – you cannot find any place to rent because the vacancy rate is low. Let me give you three things to ponder for your community.

First of all, the vacancy rate is misleading. Depending on what country you are in, it is captured in different ways. For example, in Canada many may be familiar with CMHC’s Rental Market Survey that comes out in October. Check the fine print. It only reflects buildings with 6 or more units, with three or more storeys. Does it capture the secondary market? No. So while it may tell you what is going on in larger property management firms, it doesn’t tell you much about the entire universe of rental housing stock. Another way the vacancy rate can be misleading is that it doesn’t do a great job at looking at seasonal fluctuations in the rental universe. It is a point in time, which can be a good barometer, but I think we can all agree that communities that are influenced by their college population or seasonal jobs like tourism are bound to experience changes at different times of year. If all people do is look at the vacancy rate and feel defeated and think there is no reason to even bother looking for housing, that is a problem.

Second, once a community gets to a certain size (say 100,000 give or take) it makes more sense to have a housing locator team for the entire community rather than having each organization hunting for and fighting over the same housing stock. If you have done coordinated access and common assessment properly, this is the next step in the evolution of coordination. You want a housing locator that is an expert in the rental market. You don’t want a social worker trying to be a housing locator.

Third – and this one has been a huge boost to several communities I have done work with over the last couple years – go to some of the neighbourhoods known to have the lowest incomes in your city. What will you find? A whole bunch of people that never experience homelessness despite living on meager and insufficient welfare, or having no formal source of income at all (though may participate in the informal economy). Start asking them how they are able to find and maintain housing and then replicate it. Sometimes our problem is that we apply a middle class lens to the issue and are oblivious to how a whole contingent of the community stay housed in tight and unaffordable rental markets.

Re-Housing is Not Failure

Welcome to 2015! Like many others, I suspect you have made a resolution or two for the year ahead. Let me go out on a limb and suggest you – or someone you know – has resolved to lose weight this year.

Obesity is an epidemic. The percentage of the population over-weight is staggering. No doubt, people that are not a healthy body weight deciding to become a health body weight is a good idea.

The science of weight loss is simple: a reduction of 3,500 calories is equal to a reduction of one pound. If you reduce your caloric intake and increase your aerobic exercise, weight will come off.

Some people with their resolution for 2015 are trying a miracle diet of some sort. Even though the science is clear that these are less likely to be sustained changes, people will do anything to find a shortcut to get the weight off.

Many people planning on losing weight have a shiny new gym membership right now. The fitness industry counts on you showing up about now. The first few weeks of this month the gym will be crowded. Then the herd will thin.

See, you know that making a decision to change is relatively easy. Maintaining the change is relatively hard.

By February, the miracle diet will be a thing of the past. People get fed up feeling hungry all the time, or the bland food, or the taste of cabbage or whatever. By February, hitting the gym three or four times a week will become once or twice. By March you may get there once every two weeks. By April you may be regretting buying the 12 month membership.

BUT…

If you are serious about losing weight, you can get right back to it. You can learn from what worked and what did not in the changes to your eating habits. You may come to realize that evidence is your friend, and that appropriate portion control and caloric intake coupled with physical activity is the way to go. You probably recalibrate your expectations and timelines for losing weight. You may enlist the assistance of someone to support you – whether that be a professional or a friend.

What am I getting at?

Sustained change is really difficult. Whether it is losing weight or quitting smoking or reducing drinking or budgeting better or having a more positive peer network or packing a lunch more than going out – any of these sorts of things are hard to maintain.

Then consider, if you will, the experience of a person or family that has been homeless for some time and has a range of things happening in their life that they are coping with on a daily basis. Once they move into housing it may not stick the first time. Being housed represents a dramatic change in their life. There are experiences and skills and challenges that they may be under-prepared to handle.

We shouldn’t punish any household if their housing doesn’t stick the first time. The worst thing we can do is put them to the bottom of some list or not see them as a priority. If they were prioritized by their depth of need to get housed the first time, why would they be a lower priority the next time?

Much like the attempt at weight loss that comes up short the first time (or two or three or ten), so too might the first attempt at being housed out of homelessness. We can learn from the first experience to increase the likelihood of success the second go around (or third or fourth or tenth). The metric that matters isn’t how many people stay at the first address they move into. The metric that matters is how many people stay housed regardless of how many address changes it takes to get to that state of being. Re-housing is not failure. For a large number of people you support you might even say it is expected.

Re-Housing is Not Failure

Welcome to 2015! Like many others, I suspect you have made a resolution or two for the year ahead. Let me go out on a limb and suggest you – or someone you know – has resolved to lose weight this year.

Obesity is an epidemic. The percentage of the population over-weight is staggering. No doubt, people that are not a healthy body weight deciding to become a health body weight is a good idea.

The science of weight loss is simple: a reduction of 3,500 calories is equal to a reduction of one pound. If you reduce your caloric intake and increase your aerobic exercise, weight will come off.

Some people with their resolution for 2015 are trying a miracle diet of some sort. Even though the science is clear that these are less likely to be sustained changes, people will do anything to find a shortcut to get the weight off.

Many people planning on losing weight have a shiny new gym membership right now. The fitness industry counts on you showing up about now. The first few weeks of this month the gym will be crowded. Then the herd will thin.

See, you know that making a decision to change is relatively easy. Maintaining the change is relatively hard.

By February, the miracle diet will be a thing of the past. People get fed up feeling hungry all the time, or the bland food, or the taste of cabbage or whatever. By February, hitting the gym three or four times a week will become once or twice. By March you may get there once every two weeks. By April you may be regretting buying the 12 month membership.

BUT…

If you are serious about losing weight, you can get right back to it. You can learn from what worked and what did not in the changes to your eating habits. You may come to realize that evidence is your friend, and that appropriate portion control and caloric intake coupled with physical activity is the way to go. You probably recalibrate your expectations and timelines for losing weight. You may enlist the assistance of someone to support you – whether that be a professional or a friend.

What am I getting at?

Sustained change is really difficult. Whether it is losing weight or quitting smoking or reducing drinking or budgeting better or having a more positive peer network or packing a lunch more than going out – any of these sorts of things are hard to maintain.

Then consider, if you will, the experience of a person or family that has been homeless for some time and has a range of things happening in their life that they are coping with on a daily basis. Once they move into housing it may not stick the first time. Being housed represents a dramatic change in their life. There are experiences and skills and challenges that they may be under-prepared to handle.

We shouldn’t punish any household if their housing doesn’t stick the first time. The worst thing we can do is put them to the bottom of some list or not see them as a priority. If they were prioritized by their depth of need to get housed the first time, why would they be a lower priority the next time?

Much like the attempt at weight loss that comes up short the first time (or two or three or ten), so too might the first attempt at being housed out of homelessness. We can learn from the first experience to increase the likelihood of success the second go around (or third or fourth or tenth). The metric that matters isn’t how many people stay at the first address they move into. The metric that matters is how many people stay housed regardless of how many address changes it takes to get to that state of being. Re-housing is not failure. For a large number of people you support you might even say it is expected.

Special Supplement – What I Want for 2015

As a special supplement to yesterday’s blog about what we should all want for 2015, I wanted to share with you what some of my personal goals are for 2015 in working on ending homelessness and increasing affordable housing:

1. To not feel alone when I sometimes feel afraid.

I am afraid sometimes that no one else is pushing the rock uphill. I am afraid sometimes that those precious resources that are available are being spent all wrong. I am afraid sometimes that more people will die before we commit ourselves to change at a scale that is necessary. There is an “I” in “Illness” and a “We” in “Wellness”. When I am sick and tired and lonely and worn out I am afraid that I am all alone. This year I want to know how I am connected to others on the same mission with the same goal. I want to know there are more shoulders carrying the load, acting as one. I want to know that on nights when I am all alone and on the road and miles from home that someone thinks all of the effort is worth it.

2. Fewer haters.

This work is hard enough. I could use a few less haters of me or the message this year. And I know other long blades of grass in a sea of lawnmowers that feel the same more often than they should. On the interpretation of facts, I welcome people to disagree. On the merits of my presentation methods I appreciate not everyone understands or applauds how I present the messages I choose to speak of in any given day. But your hatred is wearing me down. Haters started to win in 2014 and that caught me off guard.

3. An End to Askholes – Accepting the answers to the questions asked.

The classic askhole wants the answer but doesn’t want to act upon it when given. I am a professional answer giver. I get paid to give my best possible answers. Here’s to a year of people accepting the answer they are given and acting upon it rather than: a) thinking the answer given cannot possibly be the solution; and/or, b) asking more questions from other people until they hear what they want to hear.

4. A positive spin on being an arms dealer.

Generally speaking I do not like being touched by people I do not know really well. I want to get over that a bit in 2015. I want more hugs from people that just want to communicate in a way that only an embrace can – I am with you.

5. Improved health.

Here is to a year with fewer red-eye flights, accepting more homemade dinner invites rather than restaurant food night after night, more runs on roads I’ve never visited before, and lower blood pressure. Here is to a greater focus on mental wellness. Here is to a few more nights of at least 6 hours of sleep.

6. More time with family.

My family pays the biggest sacrifice for what I do every single week. I need a few more weekends with an extra day at home. I need a few more work assignments when daddy can have one of his special assistants come along for the plane ride and extra time in the swimming pool.

7. Renewed faith.

More than once in 2014 I lost a little faith in humanity. It felt a little like vomit does when it reaches the top of your throat and goes back down. I want to rediscover faith that sometimes all of this hard work pays off. I want people to share what is working not to be boastful, but to give the rest of us collective hope that it is all worth it.

8. Less agreeing to disagree.

If someone is completely wrong, I need to speak truth to the power of their lie. When there is fact, I am compelled to allow that to contradict opinion. If they are held tight in a cocoon of cognitive dissonance, I need to keep saying it in different and polite ways – you are wrong. Why? Because I care too much about ending homelessness and improving housing and social policy to allow for the continuation of fairy tales when we have proof.

9. Figuring out the business side of consulting.

We give away a lot of stuff for free (as you will note if you ever try to “buy” things off our website…your check out cart asks for $0 money) and we lose money on the SPDAT and I bought out the other partner of OrgCode in 2014 which came at a huge personal cost. Balancing what people can afford to pay with what we need in order to cover our costs (I am not the only staff at OrgCode) is always hard. There is no Foundation or Sponsor of our work. We aim to be more or less a break-even, for-profit company. But I need to get my head around how to do that better and not alienate potential communities to assist in the process.

10. Being awesome.

I want to inspire awe. This probably means I need to dedicate some time to the things I love like music and stand-up, and maybe even take a retreat and a real vacation to charge my batteries more than once this year. I want to be the man my young kids think I am, while being worthy of the highest esteem of my wife. I want them to know and feel that all I do is worth it.