PAUSE to Elevate

We will elevate others, including our so called “competitors”.

Competitive tendering, silos, factions, and alliances that are more about empire building and individual ambition or agenda, are getting in the way of outcomes and real social change.

Great leaders “elevate” others.

At the organisational level, we figure that means promoting other professionals and agencies.

So, as we build we are dedicating a page of our website- that we hope will grow overtime- to others who are doing awesome work.

It can’t be bought or bargained for, there is no quid pro quo.

There is no catch. No strings. No ulterior motive (other than a social transformation of course!). It requires nothing of those who we include- they just keep being themselves- they might not even know we exist. But we know something of them, and we admire it.

We will simply use publicly available info, eg web address/mission/bio/etc, let them know, and share it. And of course, if they don’t want to be included, we remove their info immediately. Hopefully, however, it will build a list of people/orgs whose mission, practices or values share some deep, meaningful, visible, alignment.

It will list others who offer complementary but different strengths and services to each other, or who meet any one of the many gaps we can’t fill…

That’s nice- and we do not underestimate nice (!)- but it’s not really new, bold, or disruptive.

More impactful, we hope, is that we are also promoting awesome folk, who are doing similar, or the exact same range of offers to us.

We want to elevate those, who in the current dominant culture, would be pitted as "competitors".

We think that listing your so called direct competitors, is when elevating others starts to look like an antidote to the damage currently being inflicted by competitive tendering, silos, factions, and alliances that are more about empire building and individual ambition or agenda, than outcomes and real social change.

Bad business sense? Maybe. But hear us out, we don’t think so…

It seems to us that competitive tendering, silos, empire building, and individual agendas and ambition, are part of the problem.

These practices are undermining the strength of the system- jeopardising genuine transparency, generosity, collaboration, collective knowledge. It is a deficit model, that is getting in the way of good outcomes, and damaging people along the way. The current climate of divide and conquer means sectors are in crisis.

So, we’re flipping it- from competition, to cohesion & community.

The inspiration comes from Quality Leadership practices. It also comes from Community Action, Diversity & Inclusion, Social Justice, Social Change, even various sociological, religious or spiritual adages… All boats rise in a tide, it takes a village, we are stronger together, safety in numbers, do unto others, critical mass….

We hope that celebrating and promoting others is a seemingly small, and very practical, tactic we can use to be part of the change we want to see.

Consider doing it on your own website, or in whatever way you have to reach others, to build community.

Who do you think is awesome? Who are the leaders, the organisations you think are part of the bigger solutions because of HOW THEY OPERATE? Which leaders and organisations do you know who’s values and practices are congruent?

Here's to cohesion & community!

Go to the “work with us” page for the list.