In May, I took a month-long sabbatical, including nearly two weeks in Morocco. Here's what happened while I was gone — and what a $43M funder investment report says about doing it right. In May, I took my own sabbatical. A month of being (for the most part) completely offline from my business, including almost 2 weeks in Morocco — part solo, part in a group led by Jodie Patterson. I came back different. This wasn’t the elusive “vacation-rested” version of a trip, it was deep, lasting, and...

We have to come to an agreement that the reality is: People Leave. None of us are still at our first jobs, but we treat workplace transitions as though we've never had practice at leaving. -Naomi Hattaway We CAN add joyful moments to departure work. Human-focused transitions do not have to be difficult, and joy can come from proactive planning (we all know that the success of a big trip is more likely if we planned for said trip, right?). I enjoyed my recent conversation with Kyle S. King...

Katie didn't get to plan her departure. She died suddenly, mid-leadership, no warning. What her team did next, during my interim executive director time with them, wasn't in any succession plan I'd ever written. We put a giant sticky note on the wall and asked one question: what did you love about Katie's leadership? The answers repeated, and themes arose. We named the items that rose to the top: Katie's Way. We then asked the next leader to protect two of those pivotal and memorable...