Dear Share Our Strength and Community
Wealth Partners colleagues:
I want to piggyback this brief note onto Chuck’s email yesterday (about our $50,000 grant to the Houston Food Bank in the wake of Hurricane Harvey's devastastion) because
I am so proud he and his team acted quickly in response to the need in Houston
and because it was not only the right thing to do but also represents an often
overlooked dimension of strategy.
An event like Hurricane Harvey often poses a dilemma about whether we can
respond without distracting or diverting ourselves from our strategy. But
that can be a false choice and a misunderstanding of where strategy’s power
lies. Strategy should allocate and align an organization’s resources against
its top priorities – in our case, our No Kid Hungry campaign. But
strategy should also reflect and reinforce the values of an organization and
its team. Those two definitions can be at tension if you let them be, but for
great organizations strategy is both. It always will be for us, and that’s why we
responded and will continue to respond to the unfolding situation in Texas and
Louisiana.
Effective strategy can’t be formulaic. It must adapt to changing circumstances
while remaining on course toward goal. And it must reflect and express the
values of those implementing it – values of compassion, community and
generosity. So it is incumbent on each of us to not only stay
focused on our priorities but to look up from what we are doing and connect it
to what is going on in the world.
We’ve had an
incredibly positive response to our grant to the Houston Food Bank from some of
our most valued stakeholders. And it comes shortly after grants we made
to Save The Children and others to save lives in Syria and Somalia and deliver
school meals in Haiti. Such grants are only a small fraction of our
budget, but a large part of the values we embody. That makes them
strategic too.
Billy
