Lessons Still Being Learned
Reflections on Leading Through Change and Uncertainty
These essays begin with my work, but they aren't really about it.
They grow out of the questions I've found myself returning to over and over again: How do we build trust? How do we navigate disagreement? How do we change without losing ourselves? What does it mean to care for something that will outlast us?
I don't publish these on a schedule, and I certainly don't write because I've arrived at the answers. I write because I'm still working through them—and because the generosity of others has shaped my thinking in ways that shouldn't benefit only me.
If these reflections help you make sense of your own work, your community, or simply the questions you're carrying, then they've done what they were meant to do.
Essay 5: A Failure of Nerve
We didn't build nonprofits because we were poor. We built them because we believed certain things shouldn't be organized around profit. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that, and called the forgetting realism. That's a failure of nerve.
Essay 4: The Necessary City
Cities protect what seems essential and defer what seems optional. Culture is not a luxury, and until cities settle that distinction, they'll keep deferring the very thing that makes them worth staying in.
Essay 3: The Character of Strong Communities
Every July, Calgary reminds us what kind of community we aspire to be. I've been thinking a lot about what our response to someone else's success says about us. Not as individuals, but as a community.
Essay 2: The Space Between Us
We often assume that the goal of difficult conversations is agreement. I'm beginning to wonder if it's something much harder: learning how to stay in relationship even when agreement isn't possible.
Essay 1: Borrowed Authority
A reflection on why the things we care for most are rarely ours to own, and how responsibility changes when we begin to see it as stewardship rather than power.