There is a lot of talk these days about the difference between thinking of ourselves as consumers vs. citizens.

And while we may sense that this difference is a pretty big deal, no one I know is able to immediately put their finger on what that difference actually means. What would change in how we live our day-to-day lives if we were to see ourselves as citizens first and foremost? What would change if our view of being a consumer was seen through the lens of being a citizen?

What’s the Difference?
Growing up in an economy so dependent upon personal consumption, most people I know have little difficulty describing what it means to relate to the world as a consumer. People talk about expectations of exchange and quid pro quo. They talk about transactional relationships, a sense of entitlement and WIIFM.

Almost every time I ask about what it means to be a citizen, though, my friends become quiet. They take a moment or two to collect their thoughts. (This alone is interesting – my friends skew towards the socially conscious and articulate end of the spectrum. When such individuals can far more easily define what it means to be a consumer than what it means to be a citizen, that is telling, in and of itself.)

The word “citizen” has its roots in the word “city” – an inhabitant of a city, a member of a community. Being a citizen isn’t about doing something (consuming); it is about being something. We don’t “do” citizen; we BE citizens.

As a member of a community, being a citizen means being part of something bigger than oneself. We may have a choice about whether or not we consume, but we have no choice about affected by the communities that surround us. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, everything and everyone is interconnected, interdependent.*

Through the lens of the consumer, there is only one way to participate – to buy stuff.

As citizens, there are infinite ways to participate. And while one of those ways is indeed to buy stuff, we can participate as citizens not just with our money, but with all that we have – our money, our time, our possessions, our relationships.

As citizens, we can also participate with what we do – our work, our play, our interactions with others. And we can participate simply in how we be – open or closed, kind or miserly, judgmental or tolerant.

When we are participating as citizens, we are not “buying healthcare,” but making sure everyone in our community is healthy, because if there is sickness, it is bad for everyone, including me.

When we are participating as citizens, we are not “giving back by donating / volunteering” (i.e. I get, therefore I give), but participating in how our community functions, in all the critical ways required of a 21st century community.

When we are participating as citizens, we are not demanding that others be actively engaged while we slack off. Participating as a member of my community means being the community I want to see, to the best of my ability, in everything I do.

The difference between choosing to see ourselves as citizens first vs. consumers first – the choice between participating and engaging vs. consuming – will make the difference in creating a healthy, vibrant community.

But perhaps even more applicable to how we live our day-to-day lives is the fact that one of those lenses will fill up each day with a bit more joy, while the other will fill those days with a sense of scarcity and longing. And that’s because participating and engaging with family and neighbors and friends is not something to do while we’re waiting for the big reward. It is what makes life itself the reward, right here now.

And you can’t buy that.

* “Everything and everyone is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not” is Principle #3 from The Pollyanna Principles.

Listening to yet another pundit on yet another soapbox about corporate personhood today, I found myself talking back to the television. “The real issue isn’t that corporations are people,” I told the guy on the screen. “It’s that sometimes they are really crappy people.”

The words startled me as they left my mouth. And they led me to wonder, “If a corporation were to actually be a person, what kind of person would I want it to be?”

The more I considered it, the more reasonable the question became. Unlike we “natural people,” corporations are inventions of our human desires. That means we could program corporations to have whatever traits we would want them to have!

I began to imagine those corporate “persons” living as my neighbors, right there on my street. What kind of people would I want those neighbors to be?

At the very least, I would want my corporate-person-neighbors to be considerate. Clearly I would want them to be responsible, honest, respectful. Ideally I would want them to understand my boundaries, but I would also want them to be generous if I run out of milk or need to borrow their ladder. And I would absolutely want them to share their gardening secrets.

If those corporate-neighbor-persons were going to be around my kids a lot, I would want them to think first of what’s best for my children, before they would think about what’s good for themselves. The same would hold true for my 88 year old mom.

And that is when the next question struck me:

If that’s the kind of people I wish corporations would be, am I being that myself?

Am I being considerate, honest, respectful? Am I being a generous neighbor, a thoughtful and listening leader? If these are the behaviors I want to see in others – corporate or flesh-and-blood human – am I walking that talk? Am I being that myself?

I confess I have trouble accepting the whole issue of corporate personhood. Yet, while the general public becomes more aware of the dangers of this concept wrought large – as we talk with legislators and sign petitions for a constitutional “personhood” amendment – perhaps the more powerful thing each of us can do right now, to create the world we want, is to remember that we humans can choose, every day, to be the kind of people we wish those corporations would be.

Which led me to one last question. In every interaction with my colleagues and with my employees, with my kids and with my mom, with my neighbors and with the guy at the convenience store… what will I do to be the kind of person I wish everyone else would be, whatever kind of “person” they are?

Image Credit: Image via the Story of Stuff Project Story of Citizens United v FEC

“I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment.”

The conversation stopped. The room tensed up. The person to whom that line was delivered immediately got defensive, trying to maintain polite composure in a room full of people.

That devil’s advocate was my friend Joe, and after everyone had gone back to niceties, Joe told me the response had surprised him. “I just wanted to explore another possibility,” he told me. He never realized that an expression that seemed simply idiomatic to him – a segue of thought – had thwarted him before he even began.

Language is a reflection of our culture, a culture handed down over the many millenia of humans being humans. We think of culture as current, but I often imagine going back hundreds of thousands of years and seeing kernels of those behaviors even in Neanderthals. While some of our behaviors are indeed biologically induced, a great deal of what we take for granted as “just the way things are” is nothing but a story we tell ourselves.  

And from that story comes our language.

Which means that we can tell ourselves a different story – a more effective story. And that there is no reason that story can’t start by our using different language.

Imagine the difference if Joe had said precisely what he told me: “I want to explore another possibility.” Or, “I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. Can I share what I’m seeing, so we can explore this together?”

Which leads me to wonder…

What is happening with language that moves us along together vs. tearing us apart? What assumptions undergird language that creates win-win – language that assumes that just because I am obviously brilliant, the person to whom I am speaking might ALSO be brilliant?

“When our communication supports compassionate giving and receiving, happiness replaces violence and grieving.” Marshall Rosenberg, founder of the Center for NonViolent Communication

So then what does such language look like? What are its characteristics?

And is it possible that in settings that create tension and turf and mistrust, that changing our language might change – well – everything?

The path in our lives will twist and turn, but the future does not have to look like the past. We can create the future we want. It just takes asking two simple questions…  

As you head into staff meetings or board meetings, community meetings or partner meetings – or as you simply plan out what you want to accomplish this week – ask those two simple questions. Start walking the path to create the future you want.

And then please let us know what happens!

As we transition this blog to become Hildy’s blog (vs. Creating the Future’s blogs), we will share highlights of what is going on at those other blogs. If you find these topics interesting, please link to those blogs and subscribe there!

Philanthropy
There are two new posts at the blog Philanthropy that Creates the Future:

Philanthropy as “Love of Humanity”
If we assume that “philanthropist = donor,” are we suggesting that only those of means can “love humanity”? What would it make possible if that were not the case?

Do We Really Want “Donations”?
Do the unspoken assumptions in this sector’s requests for donations actually harm our ability to create the world we want?

What Creates Miracles?
Regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof, most of us doing community benefit work have witnessed “miracles” – someone appearing with what we need, just when we need it the most. But are these really “miracles” or are they something more practical and reliable?

Consulting
There is one new post at the blog Consulting that Creates the Future:

Faculty Qualifications
As Creating the Future seeks to expand its training programs, to make it as easy to find a local workshop on “How to Be the Change You Want to See” as it is to find workshops about fundraising or boards, we’re seeking qualified teachers for those courses. Which raises the question: What qualifications would we need?”

Walking the Talk
There is one new post at the blog Walking the Talk to Create the Future:

Being Human
Just a few words of reassurance – words that let someone know, “I believe in you” – can make all the difference in the world.

* * *

If any of these blogs intrigue you, please subscribe to them directly.

Updates like this one will continue for the next month or so, but more often, you will begin to see posts that are just my own ramblings and explorations and are neither sanctioned by nor necessarily representative of the views of Creating the Future. (And in the next week or so, the name of this blog will officially change to reflect that change.)

Photo Credit: Author Unknown, per Wikimedia Commons

Reminder: Hildy’s blog is no longer the official blog for Creating the Future. Please link here to find all the great Creating the Future posts you may be missing!

What follows is a story of what it looks like when a well-respected organization fails to walk its own talk. And it is a story with direct application to anyone who runs an organization or a business of any kind.

If you used the internet at all today, you noticed something different. Wikipedia’s site is blacked out. Google has a huge black bar across its page.

The darkness is a protest of 2 pieces of legislation that are so poorly written that the result could literally shut down the internet.

According to small business advocate Mark Riffey,

“The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) have a noble and necessary cause behind them: To protect intellectual property created by U.S. citizens and businesses – Movies, music, photos, books, blog posts, computer software, and so on.”

So what’s the problem? Isn’t it good to have those works protected? As someone who has personally suffered unbelievable plagiarism, the answer is obvious.

But here’s what sites like Wikipedia and Google are protesting:

The legislation will allow internet service providers to simply shut down your website or blog if they believe you have done something to violate the law.

No hearing. No right of appeal. Not even a word of explanation. If someone accuses you, even if they are 100% wrong, BAM your website could be shut down.

But Wait – Google Has Already Put That into Effect!
While Google blacked out their site today, joining the massive protest against SOPA, the reality is that Google has already put SOPA-like rules into effect.

They have shut down the web activity of innocent people who use Google for everything from email to document storage, from their calendar to their ability to post videos to YouTube.

They have done that with no warning, with no explanation – and with absolutely no way of asking, “What did we do, and how can we get our stuff back?”

I know because they have done this to us.

Two weeks ago, Google “disabled” all service to the account Creating the Future has there.

Suddenly we cannot access our calendar or the years of appointment records we have stored there. We can’t access the email we receive there. We can’t access our YouTube videos – videos that have, as of today, almost 15,000 views.

We tried to contact Google through their site. Truth be told, we’ve tried 3 times a day for weeks.

We tried to contact them via their Facebook page and via Twitter. We tried to get hold of them through Google+. We talked to people on Google forums.

We finally found a phone number and called them. The person we spoke with seemed startled that anyone had found a number to call. She told us there was nothing she could do, that we would have to go to the same website at which we had been filling out the form for weeks. We asked to talk with her supervisor, and she told us, “My supervisor is not allowed to talk with you.”

This is disappointing on a number of levels.

First, Google has the reputation of being an amazing company. We all hear of their great work environment. They have been at the forefront in areas like introducing mindfulness in the workplace.

People also speak about Google’s philosophy – its Ten Things We Know to Be True. Again, this is the mark of a company with a soul.

And then there is the fact that their products are amazing. We love them. We want to use more of them.

As a matter of fact, when all this happened, we were in the process of moving all the stuff that is stored under our old name – Community Driven Institute – to our new name at Creating the Future. Migrating all our YouTube videos. Creating a storage area for all the Google documents used by the various teams at Creating the Future. Creating a Google+ presence. And so on.

Now, we are in despair. We have no recourse. We have no way of appealing. We have no way of even asking, “Why did you shut us down?”

Sadly, Google, you may be protesting SOPA today, but you are already putting it into action, right now, against a tiny organization that is only trying to do good in the world.

And maybe that’s their intent. Maybe by showing a tiny group like us what SOPA would look like in action, you are encouraging us to protest this draconian and ill-written piece of legislation – showing us directly what it would look like to wake up one morning and have your whole internet presence gone.

So, Google – we are with you. We promise to get solidly behind killing SOPA.

Now can we please have our stuff back?

Update: Look at that! One blog post and several well placed retweets, and we have regained access to our stuff!

And while that is all well and good, that does not get to the point of this post. And that is the connection between walk and talk, and the message that disconnect gives to those around you.

Yes, Google has a reputation as a great place to work. But knowing that, I want them to be equally a good place to do business. I don’t want them to act like the bumper stickers we used to see for the phone company: “We don’t care; we don’t have to.”  Unlike the phone company or the banking industry, most of us want to like Google (while we LOVE hating the phone company!!)

In your own work, if you’re wishing others would act in a certain way, the best way to encourage them to do so is for YOU to act that way first.

So, Google, take note – it’s not just what you do once, but what you do all the time that counts. And for those of you who are not quite as gigantic as Google, the same goes for you.

Being Human
In a post in Inc. Magazine, Jeff Haden talks about feeling “completely out of your depth.” The post is about simple words of praise and reassurance – how those words can make all the difference, and what an easy gift they are to give. Read more here…

We hope you will subscribe to receive ongoing posts at that new blog.  And please check out our other new blogs, accessible from this page. We look forward to continuing to connect there!

Hello, dear readers – I have missed you!

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on several projects that have kept me from blogging. The good news is that you are going to love the results of those projects (and even more, you will find them incredibly useful!).

The first is a series of blogs at Creating the Future, to replace this one.  After 4 years of being the sole voice representing Creating the Future’s work, I will now be just one among many voices, writing at several blogs. Those blogs will be posted at Creating the Future’s site, and I’ll be sharing them with you one at a time, to give you the opportunity to subscribe to those new blogs as new items are posted.

Walking the Talk
The first blog to go live is our Walking the Talk blog – the place where we will put our values into action by engaging openly and transparently about pretty much everything Creating the Future is doing.  If we are holding ourselves accountable for creating a future that is more cooperative, engaged, open, trusting – it only makes sense to be precisely that in doing our own work.

We have copied many of the posts about that subject from this blog, to also reside at the new blog. If you don’t find a post that was a favorite in that area, please let us know and we will make sure you have it!

Payroll?
The first new post in our Walking the Talk blog is about our search for a payroll processing firm. If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, we’re sharing what we’ve learned, and we’re seeking the good, the bad and the ugly of what you know. We hope you’ll add to the list of “things to look for” (and things to avoid!).

The Future of This Blog
With Creating the Future’s blogs all residing at Creating the Future’s site, this blog is going to become my own personal blog – a place for my own pondering and wandering. I invite you to stay connected here.

Over the next few months, I will also use this space to alert you to new posts at the new blogs, until the transition has been fully completed. I encourage you to subscribe to whichever of those blogs you will find helpful in your work.

So stay tuned, as we continue to build the movement for making visionary community improvement the norm for organizations, rather than the exception. We know you will be inspired, energized – and that your work will become more effective – as we continue to roll out new programs for creating the future of our world.

I’ve stopped thinking of myself as an optimist. That will surprise those who know my work, but there it is.

I am prompted to share this because of a thoughtful-as-always post by Jean Russell, wherein she reflects on the power of positive thinking.

To which I will share that I also no longer believe in the power of positive thinking.

Here is what I DO believe: I believe in the power of PRACTICAL thinking. And from that, I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am simply a pragmatist.

Focusing on how badly life sucks is simply impractical for moving forward to create anything of use. That’s not a positive or negative statement. It’s neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It’s just practical.

The only practical way to move forward is to move forward. So we can label that as “positive” or “optimistic” or “Pollyanna.”  Or we can simply say, “I’m moving forward. The train is leaving the station. Want to come along?”

Unless something is physically impossible, it is possible.

We can either move forward or stand still.

That’s not about optimism. It’s not about positive thinking. It’s just reality – practical, pragmatic reality.

I’m moving forward. Want to come along?

If creating the world we want means getting people to change what they currently do, how can we get people to change?

That’s a question we hear a lot when we tell people what we’re doing at Creating the Future. We share that we are building a movement for making visionary community results the norm in social change work, rather than the exception. And the standard response is, “That sounds great. But how will you get people to change their ways?”

Consultants and funders and people involved in capacity building work all seem to live with the same frustrations. How do we get people to change?

Here’s what we’ve found about “getting people to change.”

People will change their habits if they are inspired to change.

People won’t change because you tell them to. They won’t change because it’s best practice or because that’s what other groups are doing. They won’t change if you scare them into doing it (they may DO something differently, but they won’t change how they feel about it, which I can guarantee will rear its head somewhere else, when you least expect it…).

But people will move mountains if they are inspired to do so.

So if we want to change norms, change culture, change habits, the recipe is simple:

1. Meet people where they are, with what they think they need.
2. Open the window just a crack, so they can see what’s possible beyond their comfort zone. Create the environment that inspires them and gives them the confidence to take that small step.
3. And for those early adopters who are absolutely ready to take huge leaps forward, provide the means for them to do so as well.

Think about your mission from the top down and from the bottom up. From the people who can’t wait to make massive changes, and the people who believe they just need a little tweak.

Whether it’s about eating one more helping of vegetables a day or changing food policy; about quitting smoking or banning smoking; about learning 3 new consulting tricks or transforming your practice…

How can you meet people where they are, with compassion and wisdom, and then inspire them to just take that next small step into what is possible?