Carry a Big Basket

Does the name, Frances Hesselbein, ring a bell? Probably not. Which is a tragedy. Because Ms Hesselbein is a national treasure. For she led the resurgence of an organization known as the Girl Scouts of America.

Frances is as good a leader as exists today. Which has rightfully earned her her current centenarian status. Back in 2002, she wrote a very interesting article titled, "Carry a Big Basket." Here is the article in full:

Long ago, when my first community involvement was leading Girl Scout Troop 17 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, I met a wonderful woman at a training seminar for new leaders. When I mentioned to her that Jane, another new leader, said she was not getting anything out of the course, Rose responded with words straight from her southern mountain wisdom: "You have to carry a big basket to bring something home."

I was a young mother of a small boy at the time, and through all the years that followed I've remembered Rose's wisdom and language. I have carried big baskets made of many materials, of differing designs and shapes. Each basket bears a tag; the tags change with the context. Four leadership imperatives--innovation, inclusion, opportunity and equal access, and values-based management--merit their own tags. And mission focus, the leadership essential, guides us in how we use what we have gathered in our baskets on the journey home.

When I carry my innovation basket, there is no lid; it is wide open to the many dimensions of change and performance. (In fact, the tag hanging on my innovation basket is a definition by Peter Drucker: "Innovation: change that creates a new dimension of performance." The power of language to break barriers and unleash energy continually amazes.) Change is opportunity; I have a basket waiting to be filled with new ideas, straws in the wind, different partners and new practices, and a willingness to dump out the old and irrelevant to make room for new approaches. This flexible basket grows to contain all we need to keep leadership and organizations viable.

Another I am eager to carry (our baskets are never too heavy) is the basket tagged "inclusion." This one I grab with both hands for the ideas, models, and processes that create richly diverse organizations and spell relevance, continuity, and effectiveness. Building the inclusive, cohesive, vibrant institution does indeed require the biggest basket in town. For it has to have room for all of us. Not just the favored few, those who like alike and think alike, but all who are a part of the community of the future. When equal access prevails, the synergy of inclusion propels us far beyond the old gated enclaves of the past into the richness of opportunities that lie beyond the walls.

When the opportunity tag hangs on my basket, and here we each define and redefine opportunity in our own terms, Emerson's call comes clearly across the centuries: "Be ye an opener of doors." In my opportunity basket, I pile the opportunity for every child to learn, of every man and woman to find work that dignifies and delights, the opportunity to move and travel and explore without fear, to seek opportunity not just for ourselves but for all others. Every day, this leaderships imperative grows, multiples, and invigorates. A big basket it is, but with each contribution it almost carries itself because the momentum of changed lives through new opportunities lifts both basket and carrier.

Every time I lift my values basket, I know it is a time of testing. I am very careful about what I put into and take out of this basket, for it holds who I am, why I do what I do, what motivates, guides, moves, and challenges me. The other baskets, too, are indispensable. But the values basket carries my beliefs, principles, spirit; the values I struggle to live by. Of all the basket a leaders carries this has the most profound meaning. In meeting the daily challenges of leadership, wherever we are in this tenuous life, work, and world, the values basket sustains and encourages us. The contents of this basket remind us that leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it, and that, in the end, it is the quality and the character of the leader that determines the performance, the result. This basket is woven from the innermost strands of our lives.

I happen to love baskets of all kinds, from anywhere in the world. We can study the baskets on our shelves and see the fine work, the design someone somewhere meticulously crafted for the receiver. Whether it is Hopi baskets from northern Arizona or Guatemalan art expressed with reeds or Kenyan precision in rushes, most baskets are still made by hand, by men and women and children far from where I am at this moment. So even the metaphorical receptacle for our thoughts, dreams, plans, frustrations carries a message about involvement, caring, and partnership.

The size of each basket is limited only by our own reluctance to lead fully, to lead from the front. They grow as our horizons expand until "limitless" becomes the best descriptor. If we practice planned abandonment the contents will be viable, relevant, and passionate even as our organizations and we grow and change. "Planned abandonment" is another lesson we learn from Peter Drucker and carry in our innovation basket. For if we are to remain mission focused, as we must if we are to be relevant in an uncertain age, then abandoning those things that do not further the mission is a leadership imperative.

For "mission focus" is stamped indelibly on each basket, on everything we carry, on the journey itself. If it doesn't further the mission, over the side it goes. Mission focus gets us where we want to go. For many leaders, the destination is a place where work, people, and challenge converge; mobilizing around mission, changing lives, building community, coming. In these turbulent, and often violent times, we recall with certitude that "it is the set of the sails and not the gales that determine the way we go." I don't know who wrote this in the treasured, obscure past, but the message illuminates the course of the future.

Great challenges, great opportunities, great ambiguities embrace us as we sort out what to carry, how to carry it, and with whom to travel. On this journey into the future, the small vision, the small scope, the small expectation, the small impact, the small basket is not for us. What we carry in out basket and what we bring home can change lives and build community. It can transform the organization and the society. In the end, we ourselves are transformed.

Carrying a big basket is a metaphor for living, for leading, perhaps even for the secret of a well-lived life. A long ago observation from a then-young community leader who had discovered that learning was the great adventure comes whispering across the years: "You have to carry a big basket to bring something home."