Danielle V. Minson — Raising the Bar
Fundamental #18: Be A Lifetime Learner
For the better part of two years, our Federation team has been making a deliberate effort to define what drives our work and how we do it. The four core values of Community, Inclusivity, Learning, and Integrity rose to the top. The next step was to identify a list of fundamentals: actionable, daily core behaviors that bring our core values to life and define our culture. Each week, we make a point to focus on practicing a different fundamental, and I kick off that effort by sharing my thoughts on each one at the beginning of each week. Here are my thoughts for our eighteenth week:
BE A LIFETIME LEARNER — Seek out every opportunity to gain knowledge, increase your skills and become more expert. Be resourceful about learning and sharing best practices.
Over a year ago, when David Harris and a team with staff people from each department to prioritize our Federation’s core values, they sifted through over 20 values. 16 had to be eliminated. But there was never any doubt that when it was all over — one would be there — Learning.
This is because learning is fundamental to Jewish culture and tradition. It’s equally because the Federation is a learning organization.
Since May, we have been updating the Federation’s strategies as part of our strategic plan, which we call an OGSP (which stands for Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Plans). One of the key Strategies is for all of us at the Federation to provide “expertise to agencies and congregations in program assessment, business services, fundraising, talent management and security.” This includes the program assessment of our Planning and Allocations work, the business services provided by SBS, the Agency Fundraising and CYJL in our FRD group, the leadership development in our community building group and the security expertise provided by SAFE. Each of these requires us as Federation staff to learn best practices in these and then to share them with the agencies and congregations who we help. That is our role in the community.
The importance of learning to everything the Federation does is also the reason that we take professional development so seriously. Whether it’s our own JNLI course, the day long conferences that we have sponsored with surrounding Federations here and the JPro conference in Columbus this spring, the monthly lunch and learns and other professional development opportunities. That’s why we focus our annual performance assessments on what we have learned and what we want to learn next.
Please make sure speak with your supervisor about your learning goals. They don’t need to be fancy — they can be to play a new role (like leading a meeting or giving feedback). They can be learning more about one of our partner agencies or about how your job is done in other Federations. Or participating in a webinar, on-line course, local seminar or conference. Don’t wait for your performance assessment. Bring it up in one on one and department meetings. Let’s weave learning into everything we do. We all benefit from being part of a learning community.
See here for Shep’s comments on all the fundamentals so far.
