Growing Your Organization

At the core of every religion, business, family, audience, non-profit organization, spiritual path, board of directors, professional association, and group of people, there's a bright, burning core.

Let's call this the territory.

The territory is where all the experience happens. It's where the members of the group live. It's their prayers, daily work, meditations, playing catch in the backyard, dancing together, listening in awe to a piece of music.

Surrounding that core is a bunch of other stuff: beliefs, perceived repetitive behaviors, stories about why this and that is so, perceptual filters, theories, agreement and argument, mission statements, expected capabilities, financial statements, holy texts, rules of order.

Let's call this stuff the map. It refers back to the territory, but it's somehow different. It's about the territory. It's about the experience. But it's not that experience itself.

NLP has taught me that I can change my map. On good days, I remember this and it's mostly easy now.

On bad days,... well, that's a story for another day!

So, your organization wants to grow? Great. There's only two thing you really need to do. If you accomplish these two things, people will overlook huge administrative errors and typos and weird furniture and sloppy clothes and accents and bad manners.

Help people get to the territory. And then, any time you enter the map to discuss the territory, talk about it in a way that makes the people feel better than they usually feel.

That's it. You do not need a new sanctuary, better-dressed members, more snacks, glossy brochures, a bus plan to bring in people, a class to teach members how to interact with new people, more closet space, leather bound books.... unless those things help people get to the territory and talk about the territory in a way that makes them feel better than they usually feel.

If you miss these two things, your organization may grow a little, if you're lucky. But there is not enough new carpet in the world to compete with direct experience in the territory and feeling good in the map. People are drawn to places that bring them to the territory and have a great time talking about it.

More to come about my own map of how to do this.

What are you thoughts? I'd love to know them. Drop me a line or leave a comment.