One Life Can

Week Review

A quick review of the week reinforced our commitment and gave us confidence in a week well spent. The review gave us a chance to reflect on the fluidity and alignment across the things we had discussed.

Plan Our Future
This is a journey that will take us through our lifetimes. To fully realize the unstoppable tide we want to create will take time. We talked about where we’d like to go and what the world will look like when we have finished. It was perfect to wrap our week to remind ourselves of the change we wanted to create in the world.

Next Steps

Every journey begins with a step and so we decided that we would start with a handful of makers. We would start with our personal networks, asking folks to name the first person who came to mind when asked who had the greatest potential to be a maker of a movement. Who, with the right help and coaching, would change the world. Finding mentors to pair with those makers up will be absolutely critical so we also will ask our friends and colleagues whether that person was someone they felt so strongly about that they would not hesitate to mentor, to give of their free time, coaching and expertise to help support to be successful. And, if their answer was no, then clearly that was not the right candidate for us to consider just yet. When starting small and scrappy, being selective and picking the low-hanging fruit helps ensure that you prioritize and deploy your limited resources effectively. Finding worthwhile candidates who people felt so deeply about to mentor without hesitation, those folks are our low-hanging fruit. From there, we will build success stories and expand our network.

In five days, we took a journey that led us down unexpected and wonderful paths. We emerge more committed than ever in our purpose. This will be the fuel that helps us keep pushing. to incite the makers of movements.

Jump to a section of our retreat by clicking on a link below:

• Agenda
• Set Rules of Engagement
• Brainstorm
• Define Our Mission Statement
• Identify Our Audience
• Set Our Success Criteria
• Create our Culture
• Incite a Movement
• Setup the Program Framework
• Week Review
• Plan Our Future
• Next Steps

Setup the Program Framework

We started going down the path of defining all the tools and resources it would take to help our makers be successful but quickly decided that at this stage we didn’t have enough information to do it justice. Rather, our effort was better spent thinking about what it was going to take to incite our makers. Once they got going, they would help us define and create the tools and resources they would need to be successful. That way, we’d have many hands at work instead of Will and I killing ourselves trying to create, refine and drive every project plan, workshop or report card.

A network would be necessary for the movement. Not necessarily a rigidly structured network but one that would create the relationships across the three disciplines described earlier (mind, body and soul). Central to this would be a mentoring network that would help extend our work and be in places where Will and I could not. This mentoring and maker network will certainly require more considered thought but it helps focus where we need to spend our energy first.

Next: Week Review, Plan Our Future and Next Steps

Jump to a section of our retreat by clicking on a link below:

• Agenda
• Set Rules of Engagement
• Brainstorm
• Define Our Mission Statement
• Identify Our Audience
• Set Our Success Criteria
• Create our Culture
• Incite a Movement
• Setup the Program Framework
• Week Review
• Plan Our Future
• Next Steps

Incite a Movement

When we wrote our agenda prior to the retreat, little did we know that it would be aligning so perfectly with our purpose and mission statement. We spent this time thinking about the characteristics of the makers of movements, what it took to inspire and sustain them and what it would take to be successful. Will and I could spend our lifetimes driving every new exciting program we could come up with, but ultimately we knew that to have the impact and reach we wanted it was about setting things in motion so that others could be inspired and empowered to take up the call and take action. We wanted a simple model that could be easily understood and shared with our community. Creating and sustaining a movement needed balance across mind, body and soul. Few individuals possess exceptional qualities across all three, so even at the group level this resounded with us because if the visionary provided the strategy, then an operator would be necessary for the implementation, and a conscience for the purpose. Creating movements would be about helping individuals find balance across the three from within and seeking complementary partners to fill in these critical functions.

Next: Setup the Program Framework

Jump to a section of our retreat by clicking on a link below:

• Agenda
• Set Rules of Engagement
• Brainstorm
• Define Our Mission Statement
• Identify Our Audience
• Set Our Success Criteria
• Create our Culture
• Incite a Movement
• Setup the Program Framework
• Week Review
• Plan Our Future
• Next Steps

Create our Culture

The most successful companies and groups have a very strong grounding in their culture and it guides them in their decisions and unifies their people. For something as nebulous, far-reaching and, frankly, unpredictable as the making of movements, having a shared purpose and culture is critical. A shared culture will sustain you in difficult moments. It will uplift you when you need it most. And it will unite you as your movement grows. Surprisingly, our mission statement came quite easily compared to defining our culture. We knew that defining our culture would be pivotal in our efforts so we spent a tremendous amount of time deciding the content, intent and impact of our words. Even still, we’re going to need more time refining our guiding principles.

Next: Incite a Movement

Jump to a section of our retreat by clicking on a link below:

• Agenda
• Set Rules of Engagement
• Brainstorm
• Define Our Mission Statement
• Identify Our Audience
• Set Our Success Criteria
• Create our Culture
• Incite a Movement
• Setup the Program Framework
• Week Review
• Plan Our Future
• Next Steps

Define Our Mission Statement

No one wants to read a long mission statement full of trending buzz words that might sound good on paper but comes off disingenuous or contrived. Besides, a mission statement should try to be concise, memorable and easily recalled. This is the exercise that took us the most amount of time but as it would guide our whole purpose was a critical investment. Once we had our mission statement, both of us knew it immediately. Our full agenda for the week seemed to go so much more quickly and easily because it was guided by our mission statement.

Next: Create our Culture

Jump to a section of our retreat by clicking on a link below:

• Agenda
• Set Rules of Engagement
• Brainstorm
• Define Our Mission Statement
• Identify Our Audience
• Set Our Success Criteria
• Create our Culture
• Incite a Movement
• Setup the Program Framework
• Week Review
• Plan Our Future
• Next Steps