The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Non-governmental organization’

Today I present Carrie Katz, and one recurring theme in her interview is the importance of relationships. She has a circle of close friends who rely on each other. She mentions interpersonal relationships in the workplace and having the ability to work with people who you do not like. We can learn a lot from Carrie because of the wisdom that often comes with age. When problem solving, Carrie loves to take her time and this reminded me of the paper I wrote on What Kind of Problem Solver Are You?

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

When I lived in Montreal I was always involved in community affairs. From when I was a child my mother would take me when she went from door-to-door under the heading of UJA requesting money for the poor. My mother has three children, and for some reason, I’m the one that that resonated with. So from a young child I was always involved in something in the community. As a young mother I started the Montreal Career Women’s Network in 1984. At the time, there weren’t any similar services of its kind. In Quebec it was more difficult to get it going because of the line between French Quebecois and the Anglophones, so that was a lot of work, but it was fantastic how we brought the two groups together. The Network is still operating today so I am very proud of that.

I also started a successful business with a friend called Origami Plus which operated for 19 years until it closed in 2009. Origami Plus was synonymous with people who were interested in paper. It was the first paper store that people could come in and do creative things, like make invitations, anything that had to do with paper.

I moved to Toronto and once again became involved in community work. For me, I think it’s my essence, it helps me to feel like I’m participating in the world.

What’s a typical day like for you?

Since I’ve become involved in ORT, a non-governmental organization seven years ago, most of my days are taken up with various components of what is involved with my programming at the organization, whatever my position is. At one time I was the ORT Toronto President, and now I am the national Co-President of ORT so most of my days are around those kinds of things.

Now having said that, for me friendship is very important, and I am fortunate to have a wonderful circle of friends, and it’s very important to keep in touch with them. I always arrange three or four days of my week where I get to spend some time with them. I find this very nourishing just chatting about our lives together, the political scope, what’s going on in Canada and the world, and knowing about our children. So this for me is my ice cream all the time, it keeps feeding me, it nourishes me to do whatever I have to do. But I’m a big procrastinator, I do that very well and then I get so concerned, making sure that I did everything correctly then questioning myself if I did it well enough.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I don’t think that I think too much or else I’d still be sitting in my chair. I think what happens is that something comes to me, and I think, how can I do this, and it’s almost like jumping out of the chair and saying where are you going to go with this and how are you going to do this and since I love the telephone – my friends call me Telephona – I get on the phone and start talking about it. And, before I know it it’s becoming something.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Many things! I thought if I came back in the world, I want to be thin, tall and the

President of a country because I think I know how to do it better than anyone. Or I’d like to be an orchestra leader. So if I were to do it over again I think, as a child, I would want to be more focused and have the passion that I have now.

What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Learning to be more compassionate of other people, and understand their frailties, and not to take what they are doing as something they are doing to me, but rather that they do not have any other way to communicate, so that I can transcend into another place.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

People are becoming more aware of the importance of giving. I think the world has come to a place where people see you can make a difference whether you give $5 or whatever it is because the industry itself has recognized how clear you have to be as to where someone’s money is going. So if you’re giving me $5 you need to feel comfortable that that $5 is going to a particular place rather a whole big umbrella, and that’s something we’ve worked very hard at doing. It’s the dignity of receiving money, and the dignity of giving it that we’ve worked on in our particular area with what we do.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

There’s one major threat and it is always having enough money. Fundraising has been a problem. For example, we are doing a program in Russia at the moment, and the threat there is not getting enough funding because the people in North America do not have an attachment to Russia. If you talk about children in Africa it’s almost an easy explanation, but going into Russia is not an easy way for us to sell that. So if we create a program and don’t have the funding for it, it becomes a big problem.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

ORT provides an extremely unique service because it’s the largest non-profit Non Governmental Organization worldwide that takes kids who are disadvantaged that would probably find themselves on the street with no skills set, and nourish them not only financially, but also with a support system that helps them to understand and believe that they can do it, and this I think is very unique.

What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

I never look at what someone is doing badly. I always look at somebody who is doing better than we are and learn how we can do it better.

Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.

My big challenge was that I have three children who live in western Canada who would like me to move to Vancouver. The solution is that every two months I plan to be out there for a week, rather than move there because it was rather disorienting to pick up and move to another city. It was a huge challenge because it was, should I be there or here in Toronto. I mentioned that my friends nourish and I nourishone another, so in speaking to a friend, she wrote up a synopsis of how I could do my life to keep my friends happy and make me feel alright.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

• You have to taker things slowly. You cannot jump into things because if you do, you do not want to feel like you did the wrong thing. For me it’s about making sure that everyone is happy. I have three children and it was about orchestrating this so that it worked.

• I learned that it’s okay to discuss things with people who you feel safe with, who have great ideas, and who can help you through the process.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Bluma Appel gave me my biggest break, in being my mentor and offering me a position to work with her in 1976, The Year of the Woman. She was the Liaison of Women and Industry and I became her assistant. That was definitely a turning point in my life.

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

I think my biggest failure was the end of my marriage. And when I look back, it was because there were two stubborn people. I learned that it’s okay for a woman not to be in charge of everything and be able to let others take care of certain things, and you can still have sense of well-being through that.

What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?

The biggest disappointment was the end of my marriage and my husband died shortly after that so I didn’t have the opportunity to connect after that. I think what happened from experience was that my listening skills about other people and how they are in life puts me in a different place. I think I understand them, understand what goes on for people more, and that’s what I learned after that particular experience.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

The toughest decision that I had to make was moving from Montreal to Toronto, but it was one of the best decisions that I made, so it was great. I had my mother, sister, brother and many friends in Montreal, I had a business that I was running and very proud of, and I fell in love with someone who lived in Toronto. I had to make a decision whether to stay in Montreal or move to Toronto. It took about three years before I was able to move, and I love my life here. And I still get I get to see my family a lot in Montreal.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. Watching my son graduate from Columbia University
2. Running my business
3. Being involved in community work

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Having Bluma Appel donate $1.3 million to ORT. And she said, “It’s only because of you that I’m giving it Carrie.” That felt WOW!

How did mentors influence your life?

Bluma Appel influenced my life in so many ways. She was very savvy and passionate about giving back to the world. She had the ability to learn from other people, and that’s what I learned from her. One day she called me and said she needed to talk to me about something. I said yeah and she said that we needed to talk about my self-worth because I didn’t get it, you don’t get how great you are, and that put me into a whole new realm of thinking. It was a new paradigm for me, those words coming from her.

What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Listen to others and pay attention to what they are saying, and do not have a preconceived idea about what is and who they are. And always give yourself space before you make decisions.

Which resources (books, movies, training etc.) did your mentors recommend to you?

Bluma was my key mentor, and she would make sure that I read the right material for whatever project I was involved with so that I would get a thorough understanding. If I was working on a project about kids with computers, I would read to get an understanding of what happens to children when they start working on a computer. Reading allowed me to go beyond the surface of understanding the subject.

As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

What I hear a great deal about is what someone does that is not right to another person. It could be in the workplace or somewhere else. Instead of being annoyed or angry, I think you need to take a step back and just say, “What can I do to make this situation better?” and ask yourself, “How can I speak to this person so that they understand what I’m saying?” rather that attacking because attacking doesn’t work for anyone, and nobody hears what you’re saying anyway. Working on interpersonal relationships in the workplace is important because the stories that I hear sometimes are hair raising and it’s important to learn how to be in that place with people who you do not know or may not even like. For you to learn to do something with someone you do not like is taking 20 steps up the ladder.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected? What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Spending the time to do quality work and build a good reputation matters. Over a year ago, I interviewed Bob Fugere who was hired as an Interim Executive Director for a Non-governmental Organization. The interview drives home the point that a good reputation matters, what do you think?

Interview With Dr. Robert Fugere, Consultant

Challenge: I had been managing and advising Canadian and international NGOs for more than twenty five years until I retired, but my most challenging assignment came when I offered to be the six-month interim Executive Director for a local environmental group.

This group had a seventeen year history of excellent secondary research, good neighbourhood projects, and most of all, effective lobbying of city councillors. A bookkeeper and canvass manager (with five contract street fund-raisers) were the support staff; most of the content work over the past seven years had been carried out by four campaigners.

I knew when I started that two of these campaigners had just moved on to better positions elsewhere and the third one -whom I was replacing- was going off on maternity leave. My assignment from the Board was to “hold the fort and prepare for a strategic planning process”.

Within six weeks, I discovered that our $500,000 budget seemed to be overspent by $100,000. After two months the remaining senior campaigner informed me that he was leaving to run in the municipal election.

That left me with one part-time replacement campaigner, two challenging reports to prepare for our major donors, and a lot of sleepless nights, trying to figure out what to do to keep this noble but battered ship afloat. There were only three options to put to the Board:

1. Borrow some staff from other NGOs;
2. Set up an emergency fund-raising campaign;
3. Or quietly close the shop.

Resolution: I leaned toward the last option. That Board meeting was crucial. Two canvassers pledged to increase their door-knocking for the next three months. One Board member from the labour unions declared that this NGO’s work was so crucial for its worker/members that they would put up a line-of-credit loan to see us through the next six months.

Those votes of confidence were enough to permit the hiring part-time of two experienced campaigners who helped prepare two successful grant submissions and the raising of $20,000 from a few key friends who also valued the work we had done.

Lessons Learned

1. In my NGO management classes, I had long taught that our major asset as NGOs was the quality of the work we did, and this experience had proven that thesis
2. The excellent work this NGO had done over many years had built its reputation -and its acknowledged presence- in Toronto’s civil society, so that even with an almost complete turnover of staff, it still merited others’ support. It was this reputation, not the salary level, that attracted the new campaigners, that garnered the unions’ support
3. For me personally, I saw how important it could be to maintain an open, fully-informed and calm hand on the tiller when the seas run high. Though I couldn’t provide either the money or the technical environmental knowledge required, the staff, the Board and the donors all needed to sense that a trusted person would provide the information and maturity to bring each of their partial contributions to a common result

Formula for Success

Good quality work builds your reputation which is a major asset.

If you were in Bob’s position, what would you have done different, and why? Let’s keep the conversation going, I value your comments.