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Surf Life Clients & Alumni Making Waves!

4/7/2016

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Congratulations to entrepreneur Helen Russell and Equator Coffees & Teas for winning the 2016 California Small Business of the Year Award!

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Helen Russell, Co-Founder, Equator Coffees & Teas Photo: MattySF.com
Click here to read the award announcement.

Congratulations to artist Farah Yasmeen Shaikh, for worldwide press coverage on her dance drama about India’s most powerful woman!

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Farah Shaikh, flourishing artist and creator of The Twentieth Wife Photo: Brooke Duthie
Farah came to Surf Life when she was at a crossroads as a dancer wondering how to make the leap from a trained student to making a career and living as an artist. We did a great deal of work on purpose and alignment together. Today, as a result of her hard work and courage, she is a now an accomplished artist with her own school who has also turned a novel about one of India's most powerful women into a full length work of art using dance, drama and storytelling - a great feat in finding her authentic voice in her art form and in life.

She says this about Surf Life: "Farhana helped me to break through the things that are holding me back and find the path to not just discovering, but living a life that is authentically me."  Click here here for artistic highlights of her show.

Click here for her press accolade.

Congratulations to architect John Lum and his firm, John Lum Architecture, on being featured in California Home + Design!

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John Lum, Founder, Owner and Principal Architect of John Lum Architecture
Click here to read feature.
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Founder Transitions: 6 Things You Need to Know From a Founder

12/10/2014

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I recently coached a non-profit executive about two years away from an impending transition out of her non-profit organization.  After understanding structurally where the organization was at and how she envisioned her exit, there was a part of me that wanted to yell, “Are you f*&%ing crazy?  You can’t do that!”  However, being the refined coach that I am, ;) I was able to maneuver with grace and ease through the conversation and drop some knowledge on the matter.  I was surprised, actually, at how much knowledge I had acquired around transitions.  I decided to take off my coaching hat (which allows me to view the client as the expert of his or her own life) and drop some hardcore advice.  Really, I just wanted to see my client avoid the pitfalls and be as successful as she could be during the transition out of her organization.

Thinking more about our conversation inspired me to write this post.  Below are 6 things I think you REALLY need to know about Founder transitions.  I always tell my clients that transitions can either be well thought out and smooth with sufficient planning.  The opposite outcome is that the shit can hit the fan and force the transition.  And then there’s the happy medium of in between.  No matter what path you face on your transition, I hope these points can serve to help make it smoother and more productive for all involved. 

1.  Get Clear on Where YOU Stand First   

Remember that 80’s song by The Clash called ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’?

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An' if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know…

This indecision's buggin' me (Indecisión me molesta)
If you don't want me, set me free (Si no me quieres, librame)
Exactly whom I'm supposed to be (Dime! ¿Qué tengo ser?)
Don't you know which clothes even fit me? (¿Sabes que ropa me quedar?)
Come on and let me know (Pero tienes que decir)
Should I cool it or should I blow? (¿Me debo ir o quedarme?)


If you find that those lyrics really resonate with you, you know what it feels like to be a Founder in transition.  Continue reading below, por favor.

When longtime Founders leave, there is no doubt that their absence affects the energy of the entire organization.  A big question to consider is what will happen to your business or organization when you leave.  Your options are to sell, merge, be acquired by a larger business or organization, hire a new leader or to close.  These are the options for all businesses.  Yet one of the most important things to do is to get clear first on what YOU want for yourself.

Once you are clear, you will be that much more effective in creating a plan and path forward.  If you aren’t clear, it will likely throw everyone else around you off, and for some personality types, the ambiguity can be extremely uncomfortable.  So, do your research and know what direction you want to take first – WHEN do you want to transition?  WHAT do you want your relationship to the organization or business to be, if anything?  HOW will this happen?  You’ll be surprised by how much having clarity for yourself will help move the process forward for everyone involved.

2.  Create a New Generation

Remember that old Pepsi brand motto:  “Pepsi, the Choice of a New Generation”? Well, replace “Pepsi” with your business or organization name and that’s what we’re going for here!

The biggest thing you can set up for your business or organization preceding your exit is a generation of leadership and followers of your organization’s brand for which YOU don’t matter.  What you’re going for is Casper the friendly ghost; you want to get to the point where you are just a shadow of a presence in all things related to the running of the ship.  It’s as if you can step away and you’re irrelevant to the cause because nobody really knew you in the first place.  In other words, relationships and getting business (or grants or whatever) are not solely dependent on you, Casper. 

After 10 years running my organization, I took a sabbatical for a few months.  When I got home, I looked around and there were new volunteers, some new donors that knew very little about me and there were new clients that had relationships with the rest of the staff irrespective of me.  Sometimes, Founders take sabbaticals precisely to force organizations to build capacity to operate more independently without them.  For me, going away was the best thing I did for the organization; it forced it to start operating dependent only on mission - a more social justice aligned way of operating - and less on individual, charismatic leadership, - a more capitalist, business-centric philosophy of leadership. However, it may be different for you, depending on whether you are in for-profit, are an entrepreneur, have investors, etc

A colleague of mine founded and left her non-profit organization to a successor.  About 2 years after her exit, her husband went to one of the organization’s events and introduced himself as the Founder’s husband.  Everyone mistook him for one of the current leader’s husband, because nobody knew who the Founder was.  It was the best feeling for him and my colleague to be totally anonymous, after years of putting everything into the organization.  See?  The Casper principal applies to spouses, too!

In short, what you want to do is find ways to start stepping back while still keeping your vigilance, and allow people to enter the enterprise or organization without having to touch you, or know about you.  Start to spread your relationships out among staff, and if appropriate, the board.  Think about leaving a lasting philosophy rather than a permanent presence.  Create a new generation of supporters, customers and followers loyal to the BRAND and not to you. 

3.  Don’t Always be the PR Face 

As part of building a new generation, you will need to build others as the spokespeople for your business or organization.  For larger organizations with division heads, this may be easy to do.  However, if you have just one ship, chances are, things are funneling to you.

 As a Founder, you are always going to be a human interest story.  Don’t ask me why – the media loves Founder stories, especially if it’s the “was an underdog and found success” flavored narrative.  Enough!  Now, try to make your clients’ success the front of your PR.  This will help with the impending transition.

Identify other key staff people or board members whom you can point PR towards when being interviewed for the news or other publications.  If I could give you one piece of radical Founder advice it is this: if you are serious about leaving, don’t do ANY PR during your last year with the enterprise.  See how it feels, and see what other leadership and capacity emerges within the organization if you don’t do it. 

Note: the above advice doesn’t hold if you plan on transitioning into more of a branding role for the organization where you are positioned as a high level, critical thinker still affiliated with the organization.  This is also a model I have seen some Founders follow, as the business world thinks that sometimes the enterprise does better to have the Founder still affiliated with it.  If this is the case, you can be used very strategically to continue to forward the mission or business of the organization and remain the steward of some key relationships. 

4.  Make a Case for the Individual vs. Collective Good

This point especially applies to non-profit or social justice organizations.  One of the challenges these organizations face when they have a very corporate board is the lens with which the board views leadership.  Expect folks more attuned to a corporate model to view the CEO as the most important figurehead.  This is largely the model in start-up businesses where the board and investors sees themselves as essentially investing in the entrepreneur or Founder and, in some cases, the founding team.  While this is one model of leadership largely originating from market-based business models, it can be at odds with a non-profit that seeks a more collective culture and membership.  You can guide people through this friction, but it will take thoughtful narratives to carry people forward. 

You see, the problem arises when leadership fails to walk the board or team through understanding the nuances of different models of leadership, offering them a narrative of why leadership should start to become more collective vs. individualized for social impact organizations.  This may be hard for some folks to wrap their head around, as studies show that the brain is more prejudiced against things it cannot process or understand.  If the concept is a bit alien to your board members or team members, don’t expect them to have well-defined neural patterns to understand it.  They will always be prejudiced to their way.  So expect pushback.

I’ve seen non-profit executives especially pull their hair out struggling with a corporate board.  Sometimes, it is an issue of the executive not knowing how to craft a narrative that can bring the members along and reconcile conflicting value systems, or offer a logical framework as to why the organization is better off with such a value system.  Often, transitioning the board is about transitioning them to seeing your value system when it might be at odds with what they are used to.  If you want to be a skilled executive leader, you will need a narrative for this to guide the team forward without alienating the board. 

5.  Be Prepared for Founder’s Syndrome

It sounds like a disease, I know.  The good news is that it’s not, really.  If you have Founder’s Syndrome, you simply cannot see the organization or business functioning without you.  It may keep you from leaving or making healthy changes in services to your mission.  Another characteristic of Founder’s Syndrome is that you might want everything your way.  In other words, you cannot healthily detach. 

Don’t worry – not every founder suffers from this syndrome.  But be warned:  In some cases, be prepared for OTHERS to have Founder’s Syndrome – to think that things cannot possibly go on without you at the helm, even when you are confident they can, or to not want to listen to anyone else unless they are the Founder.  In such cases, you can do things to bring these people along, but also expect that they may drop off in the process or after you leave.  Inevitably, they are tied to your brand because of their emotional connection to YOU vs. the emotional connection to the brand, and it creates a slippery slope again for building a sustainable business or organization.    

When I announced my executive transition from the organization I ran for 11 years, there certainly was a degree of mental “drop off” from some members of the Board.  The thinking is, “if this leader is out, so am I”.  It’s not out of malicious intent, but rather a tricky phenomenon of organizational psychology – the imminent losing of faith that happens in an organization when a Founder decides to depart and there is no clear successor.

It was at that point I learned the hard truth about Founder transitions:  sometimes people are there to support YOU and not necessarily the organization.  There is a saying in Organizational Psychology: People leave people.  They don’t leave organizations.  It can feel like a stab in the heart when you’ve invested so much in an idea or a business, and you just want to see the work outlive you.

It is important to recognize what kind of board you have.  Who would still be committed without you there?  Who would leave?  Who would be neutral?  These are all important things to consider with a transition.

Understand that people will go through several phases of denial, then acceptance, (and maybe never accepting) and may very well decide to move on.  Change is never linear and can involve a process of accepting and rejecting, accepting and rejecting. Others can have Founder’s Syndrome no matter what state the organization may be in. 

A colleague of mine who founded a national non-profit had a successor already identified and sufficient capital in the bank to run the organization.  She still had board members say, “we might as well close” upon hearing her plans to exit, as they believed that the work could not go on.  Unfortunately, what is often missing in transitions is envisioning how an org can be BETTER after the Founder.  Everyone defaults to envisioning the worst, the crumbling and instability.  Almost 5 years later, this particular organization is stronger and thriving with its new leader, perhaps the real hero in terms of making impact.  Founder’s Syndrome is more a function of emotional connection and ties others have to you, the leader.

6.  DON’T Follow the Textbooks


Just like people, each organization and business has it’s own personality, rhythm and lifecycle.  Each one is unique.  There is a history and ecosystem as to how and why they do their work and how they historically achieved results.  Applying textbook ways of thinking about HOW a transition should ideally happen can be detrimental to your transition, especially when you might be facing time and resource constraints.

And here’s where a bit of brain science comes in.  Process thinkers (this thinking occurs in the left hemisphere of the brain) may often be fixated on a way of doing something to the point where they are so rigid, their behavior actually produces divisions in their following.  On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t necessarily want to fly by the seat of your pants and just feel your way forward, either.  Ideally, you want to be able to have some structure, but take into consideration the uniqueness of the organization or business, and honor the opinions and ideas team members have about how this transition could effectively happen.

If your vision for how a transition happens doesn’t fit the textbook version, it’s OK.  Perhaps there aren’t enough resources to invest in an outside consultant, or perhaps the resources should be better spent on coaching for you and your team to figure out the best transition plan for the organization.  Founding boards often aren’t independent enough to steward a transition without you, so it’s important to gauge where the organization is at, and to make the transition appropriate to where people are in the process.  Textbook thinking can overshadow the brilliance, knowledge, know-how and intuitive pulse you may have on what it is going to take to lead the organization or business to its next level, and the type of vigilance it needs in a new leader.

Your intuition is a result of using the most integrated right and left hemispheres of your brain.  Feel your intuition early, and feel it fast.  Be open to the intuition of others as well.  You may have experienced board members who have watched transitions occur in their own careers and have a gut sense of what needs to happen.  Just because you don’t have a drawn out process for it, doesn’t mean you lack the knowledge of what the best move forward is for your enterprise or organization. 

To sum it up, get clear on what YOU want to do first, and then start acting from the perspective of sustainability by instilling a collective philosophy vs. thinking of yourself as the leader.  Build the capacity of others, understand that change can mean two steps forward and one step back, and always trust your intuition - it can mean the difference between a healthy and smooth and timely transition vs. one wrought with challenges and difficulty.     

Thank you to Jane Leu, Award-Winning Serial Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Upwardly Global and Smarter Good, for her input for this post. 

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7 Effective Strategies to Prevent Leadership Burnout

3/10/2014

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Burnout is something that can creep in very slowly, without you even realizing it.  It doesn’t matter what sector you work in – be it nonprofit, corporate, or as an entrepreneur; if you are in a demanding and high-stress position for a long enough period of time, you are at risk of burning out.

As someone who has experienced burnout firsthand (involving experiences working at nonprofit organizations, where I’ve never worked harder in my life), and now coaching some of my clients through severe burnout, I wanted to share some of the strategies and steps you can take in your work and life to recognize and prevent burnout from occurring in your leadership. 

1.  Make your actions purposeful

Reflect in order to learn.  If an action is purposeful and if there is learning in between, there is less of a chance that that action will lead to burn out.  So in your company or organization, for example, if you wonder why you are doing the same thing over and over again, this may be a sign that you’re headed for burnout.  But if you know that what you are doing is growing you and your organization in some way, you are much more willing to do it.  This is equally true for your employees.  Connect the action of the employees to the greater purpose of the organization – remind them why they are doing it and what their role is.  Have them reflect on it. 

There was a point in my leadership where I would just do.  There was very little time for reflection.  There was just “stuff” that needed to get done.  I said yes to things that came my way without really thinking through their purpose and how they related back to the bottom line impact I was trying to make.  This included setting up unnecessary recurring meetings with teams that I did not realize were an inefficient use of my time.

I’ve since changed how I work.  Each morning, as part of my practice, I write a list of the 6 things that will make me most happy and most productive in my business.  Those become my targets for the day.  Because I am such a “doer” and love the sense of accomplishment, it is important for me to be strategic about what it is I get done in a day.   And sometimes, I make sure I reflect and do a little journaling at night.  I don’t just DO.  I have a purpose and I reflect so my actions seem less like they are coming out of a loose cannon and more like they are strategic darts. 

2.  Have walking meetings

One of the things that leadership often does to you is pin you to your desk, or to meeting after meeting, or to eating out a great deal.  Many leaders I talk to have trouble figuring out how to build self-care into their work lives.

One of the best things to do is to try going on a walking meeting.  When we are up and moving, different parts of our brain are active than when we are idle.  We may think of new ideas and even become more creative.

Give yourself to a different environment and the opportunity for other parts of your brain to ignite.  Walking meetings have become such a staple in my life that when I set up meetings with people, I usually recommend we meet and walk somewhere instead of meeting somewhere to get a coffee.  I have also integrated walking into my coaching sessions for my local clients.

One of my friends and thought leader, Nilofer Merchant, gave a Tedx talk on this very topic.  She is a staunch advocate of the walking meeting.  Check it out here. 

3.  Do not multitask

There are several studies that have come out proving how detrimental multitasking is to our brains because it can overload our working memory.  Check out this article for more on that topic.  I remember years ago listening to women’s leadership talks about how women are better leaders and have an innate ability to multitask.  It was always positioned as a good skill to have. 

Undoubtedly, the ability to multitask can come in handy.  However, this means you are overloading your brain’s circuitry, and not fully in concentration on one thing.  You might make mistakes, you may not be thinking things through fully, and believe it or not, you’re probably going to burn yourself out over time. 

4.  Work smarter

Pacing and working smarter is the name of the game.  And a big part of working smarter is working more strategically.  Ask yourself, do I have to have this meeting NOW?  Ask yourself, do I have to check my e-mail NOW?  One of the recommendations I have is to read e-mails as they come but to schedule time twice daily to respond to them.  (And please, do not make responding e-mail a first thing in the morning priority.  Use the morning time to do more creative, expansive work). 

For me personally, I decided to only link my personal e-mail account to my phone, and to disconnect my work e-mails from my phone.  I understand that may be difficult for some of you to do given your line of work, but try reading your e-mails during the day and picking strategic times to answer them.  (You can check out this article for more tips on managing e-mail). 

Also, remember that we have attention spans that last about 20 minutes.  So, taking frequent breaks is a great way to rest and keep you going, as is sectioning off uninterrupted bouts of time (90 minutes) to get your work done – no e-mails, calls or meetings during those 90 minutes; just work!

5.  Celebrate!

Often, as leaders, we forget to look back and celebrate our accomplishments.  I remember one of the greatest exercises an executive coach did with me was having me and my board list all the things we had accomplished in the past year.  The list just kept going on and on, and I hadn’t even realized we had done so much and at what pace we were running.  It almost gave me license to slow down a bit and pace myself.  It was also a great exercise because it made the board see how far we had come as a team as well. 

6.  Set boundaries with regularly scheduled activities

Having a regularly scheduled activity can be a great regulator for managing burnout.  One of my colleagues who is the CEO of a renowned national nonprofit told me once that she always left the office around 4 or 4:30 every day to get her kids from school.  She made the choice to be that type of mom.  She had a boundary in place yet I’m sure she could have easily found reasons to work more. 

When I was running my organization in the early years (when I was working all the time), I used to leave the office early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to get to dance class.  It was just the right break I needed, and it kept me motivated throughout the day because I was equally as passionate about dance as I was about the work I was doing.

7.  Know when your time has come

This is not an easy thing for many leaders.  Some people are starters, implementers, maintainers, or growers.  Know where you are at, and when the lifecycle of the position no longer warrants your skill, so you can move on.  It’s more important for your company or organization to have fresh thinking and leadership, vs. someone who is tired and at the helm.  I realize this deserves its own post at some point, so I will come back to it. 

What have you done to manage burnout in your work or life?  I touched on some strategies, but know there are many more from the trenches.  I’d like to hear from you!

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Feeling Stuck? What's Your Lie?  Here's Mine.  

11/29/2013

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I asked this question to a recent client of mine who was feeling very stuck with what she wanted to do regarding a major life decision.  She couldn’t answer it on the spot; it was meant to be thought over with some amount of time.  It makes you think, even if you don’t have a lie.  I do.  Let me tell you a little about mine. 

For 11 years I worked to build a non-profit organization in service to helping immigrant and refugee women start their own businesses.  They faced systemic challenges in getting their businesses up and running - mostly due to language and economic barriers.  In 2010, I took a sabbatical from my organization to recover from burnout, and to figure out what was next for me.  I took a break from the everyday hustle and bustle of fundraising life and burning the candle at both ends.  I was relatively free of stress during my sabbatical; it gave me the opportunity to really experience life in a way I had never been able to in my adult career, and to really realign my passions with my work.

What became clear to me was my commitment and support to women’s empowerment.  I also valued freedom and independence greatly.  (Yes, I was the type of kid who would look at our shed outside my suburban NJ home and wish I could live in it by myself.)  I wanted to empower and work with women, regardless of whether or not they were immigrants.  When I came back from sabbatical, I realized my lie was that deep inside, I believed I was not the one who should be running this organization.  Somewhere in me I felt that it should be led by the people it sought to serve – by fellow immigrant women in the community.  Only they really knew and understood their circumstances and challenges and could organize and represent themselves in a way where they shared power and were the ones making change; not in a model where they were receiving “charity”.   

We had developed an innovative curriculum in the process, and I believed that could be spearheaded independently of the organization, by a motivated entrepreneur who could build it to its next level.  At first, I thought that entrepreneur was me.  Upon further reflection, the thought of raising capital and driving forward another start-up, which would take everything I had in me, made me cringe.

This realization only came to me after stepping away from what I was doing, and giving myself a break.  I actually had no idea about the amount of financial stress I had been under all those years to run the organization.  Don’t get me wrong; we did AWESOME work.  The team was even more AWESOME, and our clients – amazing. 

When I started working with low-income women entrepreneurs and was thinking of starting the organization, the focus on immigrant women initially came from the suggestion of an early donor, who herself was an immigrant.  With that suggestion came a donation.  She hadn’t seen anything substantial being done for the community in this way.  In some way, it had felt as if I had been partially carrying someone else’s agenda all these years, and not one in which I felt my full authenticity.  There were elements I felt I owned, but in the spirit of a non-profit, at the end of the day, I worked on behalf of the interests of donors and institutional funders.  I never felt stuck, per se.  The year upon returning from my sabbatical, I knew it was time for a change.  I knew what my “lie” was and what the right decision for the organization was. 

Getting clear with myself on what I really wanted to do was key.  It took time and space to figure this out.  But when I figured it out, everything seemed to flow like a river.  No more getting sick.  No more stress.  No more feeling like I was pushing a boulder up a hill.  I could just flow, knowing I was set forth on a path to live my truth.  That truth was to work deeply one-on-one with successful women and leaders, in service to their personal and professional transformations, and to guide them to use their success toward making positive social impact on individuals and the planet.  Whereas all these years I had dedicated myself to working on behalf of women with few resources, I knew my calling was to somehow work with women who had resources, in service to adding value to the planet. 

Sometimes we do good work, and it is not exactly the path that we know will most fulfill us.  Sometimes we do work that sucks the life out of us.  It’s what Greg Levoy, author of Callings calls a parallel path.  It’s like the dancer who becomes the dance critic, or the novelist who instead ends up in journalism.  Don’t get me wrong -  sometimes parallel paths are very necessary.  But what is your truth that keeps popping up in the process?  What are you avoiding that keeps showing up? What parallel paths do you keep creating for yourself to avoid your real path?   You have to give yourself space and reflection to ask yourself if you are living your truth.  When you don’t, it leads to feelings of stuckness, lack of motivation, and even sadness. 

I was fortunate to have the time and space to figure this out.  I was able to explore and make so many different discoveries about my next steps.  If you cannot make physical space, or take time off, it’s critical to make mental space.  Journaling and adding a self-reflective process to your regime will help immensely with this. 

If you are feeling stuck, take the time to reflect on this question: What’s your lie? Really mull it over, and journal on this point.  See what comes to you.  You may be surprised at what pops up and how this bit of information can help ignite momentum for your next big leap, whether it is a career change, or new business idea.  The other way to explore this (also great advice from Greg Levoy) is to have someone ask you over and over: “What do you KNOW to be true?”  Have them keep asking it, and see what it uncovers in you. 

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    Social Entrepreneur & Executive Coach | Dancer, Drummer, World Traveler & Surfer

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