I've been absent from here for a while, but there are a few good posts in the work, so stay tuned.
First is a piece of wisdom from City Year. It is from City Year's book of idealism, Putting Idealism to Work, by one of our founders, Michael Brown.
Below is the text of the PITW that I used for my speech this past Friday. It holds good information to think about when planning a project.
PITW #10: Success means being deliberate, programmatic and accountable.
This is the best recipe for success when implementing anything at City Year. Only by being deliberate, programmatic and accountable can City Year, or any organization or person, achieve anything important. To be "deliberate" means to do things with a purpose and on purpose. To be "programmatic" means to have an effective and creative, step-by-step plan for achieving a specific result. To be "accountable" means to establish a set of timely and effective consequences to ensure that those results are really achieved. Almost any success or failure at City Year can be traced directly to how deliberate, programmatic or accountable we were. In general, however, the most common failures are usually ones involving a lack of accountability.