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Building Unity: Leading a Non-Profit from Spark to Succession
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereLunghezza: 342 pagine4 ore
- Editore:
- ECW Press
- Pubblicato:
- Sep 15, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781773056067
- Formato:
- Libro
Descrizione
Build an organization that is growth-minded, values-based, and innovative using the six steps to “responsible impact.”
At age 16, Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman, a professional b-boy (breakdancer), completed a school project that would grow to become a hip-hop-inspired mental health charity with global reach. Through a process of continuous discovery and reflection, Prosserman and his team grew UNITY to the point where it benefitted over a quarter of a million young people. In Building Unity, Prosserman breaks down the six steps to discovering “responsible impact” and building an organization that is growth-minded, values-based, and reflective of the needs of its community. Using stories of his own evolution, learning, and growth as a leader over 15 years, Prosserman parallels the creativity found in breakdancing with the innovation needed to build a sustainable non-profit.
Six steps to discovering “responsible impact”:
Spark is the inspiration, the big “why,” the motivation to wake up and do something. Build is the testing ground to clarify ideas, understand community needs, and challenge assumptions. Trust involves building the culture of your organization, leading by example, and hiring people with dreams. Trust sets the stage for growth by empowering awesome people. Grow is about finding the right size for your organization to create a responsible impact. Evolve is knowing when to step back so others can step forward by building a succession plan that leaves your organization in good hands. Re-Ignite is building from past experience and lighting the next spark within yourself.Informazioni sul libro
Building Unity: Leading a Non-Profit from Spark to Succession
Lunghezza: 342 pagine4 ore
Descrizione
Build an organization that is growth-minded, values-based, and innovative using the six steps to “responsible impact.”
At age 16, Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman, a professional b-boy (breakdancer), completed a school project that would grow to become a hip-hop-inspired mental health charity with global reach. Through a process of continuous discovery and reflection, Prosserman and his team grew UNITY to the point where it benefitted over a quarter of a million young people. In Building Unity, Prosserman breaks down the six steps to discovering “responsible impact” and building an organization that is growth-minded, values-based, and reflective of the needs of its community. Using stories of his own evolution, learning, and growth as a leader over 15 years, Prosserman parallels the creativity found in breakdancing with the innovation needed to build a sustainable non-profit.
Six steps to discovering “responsible impact”:
Spark is the inspiration, the big “why,” the motivation to wake up and do something. Build is the testing ground to clarify ideas, understand community needs, and challenge assumptions. Trust involves building the culture of your organization, leading by example, and hiring people with dreams. Trust sets the stage for growth by empowering awesome people. Grow is about finding the right size for your organization to create a responsible impact. Evolve is knowing when to step back so others can step forward by building a succession plan that leaves your organization in good hands. Re-Ignite is building from past experience and lighting the next spark within yourself.- Editore:
- ECW Press
- Pubblicato:
- Sep 15, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781773056067
- Formato:
- Libro
Informazioni sull'autore
Correlati a Building Unity
Anteprima del libro
Building Unity - Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman
Building Unity
Leading a Non-Profit from Spark to Succession
Michael Piecez
Prosserman
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Part 1: Spark — Hip Hop + Mental Health
Part 2: Build — Building the Plane While Flying It
Part 3: Trust — Crews and Cyphers
Part 4: Grow — Planting Seeds for the Future
Part 5: Evolve — Steps to Succession
Part 6: Re-Ignite — Launching Epic
Tools & Resources
Timeline
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Dedication
To my mom, Michelle; my dad, Ron; my wife, Melissa; and my dog, Olive — the pillars of my life and the foundation of my resilience.
In memory of my late therapist, Dr. Joseph Regan, who saved my life. You will be remembered forever.
Introduction
This book is about building something that didn’t exist, something that would bring about new forms of justice, something I doubted I could really build until I began to see it coming together in front of my eyes, one small piece at a time. This is not a book about failing fast or testing things quickly and moving on if they don’t work. In fact, it’s the opposite; it’s about slow, heart-wrenching, long-term growth through dedicated work and believing in something at its very core. It’s about loyalty. It’s about sticking around for something you believe in so deeply that you don’t just give up on it when it doesn’t work out the first time or even the second time. It is not about hacks or shortcuts. It is about perseverance and always learning.
The idea of making the world a better place can be problematic. Sometimes our good intentions can lead to unintended damaging results. But I believe the work we do, our words, and actions can be transformative. The journey of learning is constant with the communities we aim to serve.
For me, the process of discovery and reflection was constant. The intersection of identity, strength, and skill was the spark that turned an idea into reality. Our team at Unity flipped
impact: learning the foundation of how to do something and then making it our own by adding our style to it. We need innovative ideas to address the world’s most pressing problems — flipping impact to match the need of the communities we serve while challenging the status quo.
This book includes flexible frameworks and stories of how we created the most responsible impact we could as a team of community-minded hip-hop artists. It acts as a window into my learning journey as a b-boy and an entrepreneur, a view to how creativity on the dance floor paralleled my progress building an organization with social purpose.
I try to use plain language and avoid buzzwords. This is not about complex theories. It’s about practice and self-reflection. Throughout my storytelling, I’ve compiled learnings, practical tools, and reflection questions to support you on your journey. Our team created something out of nothing, just as we do in hip hop. We led with our hearts and learned the hard way.
I invite you to take any of these ideas and lessons and remix them to make them yours. Flip them. To me that’s the common thread between breakin’ and entrepreneurship. Take a pre-existing idea and flip it into something new, something relevant to your story, your experience, your context.
In breakin’ there is a foundational move called the Six Step. By no coincidence, this book’s structural framework comprises the six steps we took in growing Unity, the six pillars that have been my foundation for turning ideas into community-driven impact:
Spark: hip hop + mental health
Build: building the plane while flying it
Trust: crews and cyphers
Grow: planting seeds for the future
Evolve: steps to succession
Re-Ignite: launching EPIC
This image captures my journey of building Unity from the ground up. It mirrors elements of my creative process on the dance floor. It is a process of discovery. After working with a wide variety of clients, I began to realize there are common threads in the journey of discovering impact. The process of building Unity was highly contextual and nuanced. The environment in which we worked was constantly changing and we needed to be responsive, so our approach could never be linear or follow a one-size-fits-all model; it was always evolving. I began to realize it was a process of discovery, reflection, and constant learning. Always challenging ourselves to do better. Ultimately, it was something we needed to do to understand. Experience was our teacher.
I’m sharing this framework not as a linear solution, but as a flexible lens through which to discover impact. There are reflection questions at the end of each chapter to give you the opportunity to reflect on your impact. Challenge yourself, push your limits, move the dial. Every action matters and there is no action too small.
While we built Unity, we were constantly discovering the way forward based on the strengths of our team, while taking the time to reflect on the impact we were having and how we could do better. This helped us discover and fill gaps, and we did our best to apply learning in real time. Reflection helped uncover barriers, challenge assumptions, and create space to address issues. Reflecting on our impact every step of the way helped us understand how we could be responsive and better serve our communities. We built the plane while flying it.
Flipping Impact
Hip hop culture is a metaphor for life, leadership, and innovation. It has some powerful and universal philosophies and lessons to pull from. I applied the values I took from hip hop to my process in building Unity from the ground up.
In hip hop, when someone does a move that inspires me, I flip it.
To flip something is to build on someone else’s idea or innovate a common concept that has been done before. I take inspiration from what I see on the dance floor or learn from my peers and add to it from my own experiences and strengths: I flip it. Instead of starting from scratch, to flip something you first seek knowledge and then add new ideas based on your own story, creativity, personality, and context. Understanding the basics enables you to build from strengths while identifying weaknesses and filling gaps. It is a constant process of discovery through doing paired with critical reflection on how to always do better.
It’s not copying others’ ideas or recreating something that already exists in the world. It’s about innovating from the foundation of a concept rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. I acknowledge history and ideas that came before me while adding my own unique flavour and style. I work to understand the ecosystem in order to figure out where new ideas might be needed, to identify the existing ways of doing things that are no longer relevant, and then I add something new. Flipping an idea creates space to innovate.
Breakin’ is a culture that respects learning, the idea of always being a student and seeking knowledge from other members of the community. It is incredibly adaptive and nimble. Unlike in traditional education, there is no formal system to teach the foundation. Knowledge is passed down from mentors, crews, peer exchanges at practice sessions, and from elders. In breakin’, this is often referred to as each one teach one
: dancers take what they learn and add their own unique style, flipping ideas to make them relevant to their personality and way of telling their stories — how they express themselves and speak their truth. This is in direct contrast to biting, which is highly frowned upon in breakin’. Biting is copying someone else’s unique moves exactly, and it is completely disrespectful to the originators of those moves.
Flipping is also an opportunity to transform a negative into a positive. This is done in hip hop culture, because people often find themselves in situations where they must build something out of nothing. It is about transforming or flipping these situations with a strong will and hard work and by denying the path that others set for you. It is even used in slang in hip hop. We often say words like bad,
ill,
sick,
and dope
to describe something good. We flip negative words to describe something positive.
Flipping ideas directly parallels my creation process at Unity. I learned everything I could about how to start a non-profit and then built Unity with our team, drawing on all our strengths to do so. We filled gaps constantly as we identified areas in which we needed to learn more. When we felt the pressure to grow without the right knowledge, we gathered information in any way we could. Instead of starting from scratch, we tried to learn from what was out there, flip it, and make it our own. It was a constant process of discovery and reflection, flipping what we learned into new ways of doing things, building from a foundation of non-profit sector knowledge. We flipped boards of directors, flipped fundraising, flipped leadership. The cycle continued. We learned, we flipped, we grew.
Throughout the book I will reference how we flipped
impact, leadership, operations, and all functional areas of running an organization. How we took inspiration from mentors in areas like finance, fundraising, program development, and evaluation, and flipped what we learned to make it relevant to Unity. I’ve also created sections that highlight lessons learned through discovery and reflection. These sections are entitled Flipping Leadership,
Flipping Operations,
and Flipping
any other functional area of building an organization. These lessons are a direct parallel between how we innovate and flip ideas in hip hop.
One last thing. If you’d like to dig deeper into building tangible processes around your social impact ideas, you can access tools and resources at epicleadership.ca/bookresources.
Part 1
Spark — Hip Hop + Mental Health
We all have our own coming-of-age story, and for me many of the lessons that turned out to be the best felt horrible at the time. These were moments that challenged me to my core. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t experienced those life-defining moments that challenged me to bounce back — and felt the pain that often came with them — and, on the flip side, those moments I got to celebrate unimaginable wins.
Throughout the book, you will meet different families. I’d like to start the book with the family I was born into.
Momma G
In breakin’ you are given an alias, often defined by your crew or those who know you best. Like an alter ego. When I was younger, I gave my mom her b-girl name, her a.k.a.: I called her Momma Goose. This eventually evolved into Momma G because, for lack of a better explanation, she is a G.
Over the course of my life, on my path to building Unity, I’ve been moulded not only by my experiences, but also by people — specifically, my parents. My mom gave — and continues to give — me hope. She instilled courage and resilience in me, and I often reflect on how it is her strength that gives me strength when I need it most. She is my guardian angel. I am so proud to see her living and loving life after everything she has endured. She is my rock of support, even though she may not always see it.
When I was six years old, my dad drove my mom to the emergency room in the middle of the night. I remember my dad telling me that my mom was sick. I learned she had a mental illness called schizophrenia. I didn’t cry. I was stunned. I held my silence deep in my chest, where it lay dormant like a cat in the night, tucked into a place of refuge in an alleyway.
I remember my dad telling me that my mom was sick. I learned she had a mental illness called schizophrenia. We visited her in the hospital, and it was scary and confusing. I loved my mom so much, and I didn’t know what this all meant at the time. My mom often tells me that she wouldn’t wish a mental illness on her worst enemy. At the darkest times, my mom told me that my brother and I were the only things keeping up her will to live when she was in and out of the hospital, as doctors tried to find the right balance of medications to keep her stable. My Bubby, my mom’s mom, always told her, You gotta get better! You have two boys who need you.
This experience pushed me to mature at a young age so I could be there for my mom.
When my mom would stop eating, I knew things were taking a turn for the worse. She thought her food was being poisoned; this was a sign her schizophrenia was taking over. She thought people were trying to hurt us or steal from us. She heard voices. Every time her medications were changed in an attempt to find the right balance, to keep her stable, Mom would have another breakdown, and we would need to take her to the hospital. Visiting my mom in the hospital was always scary.
I remember walking through a poorly lit hospital hallway and down a long staircase to a corridor with a locked door. The air was stale and cold. The door buzzed, and we stepped through. We had to check in at security. I didn’t feel welcome. I heard someone screaming as we walked through the hallways. I wanted to cry but held it in. I was a quiet kid, but there was a lot I wanted to say. I felt a kind of pressure or constriction in my throat, a feeling I got used to.
I remember seeing my mom sitting on a bench in the hallway between several rooms that looked like prison cells. We sat there together and didn’t say much. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t understand what. My mom embraced me tightly. I told her I loved her. I felt safe in her arms. We cried in silence. Our shirts stained with tears, we walked around the facility. I was startled by an older lady in a hospital gown shouting in a room with a ping-pong table. My mom showed us her room and then walked some more. As we passed by the central hub with a glass window, the nurses watched us. It wasn’t a long visit, but it is one I’ll never forget. My mom taught me the power of a good hug.
When we left my mom at the hospital that day, I felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind. I felt confused, sad, and empty, but I kept my feelings to myself.
After my parents divorced, in 2003, I moved back and forth between my mom and dad every three days, alternating Sundays. Soon after the divorce, mom had one final breakdown. I remember going to the hospital alone after school to visit when I was in high school. I bottled up my stress in a pressure chamber of silence. It was so bad, my stomach ached. I would have done anything to help her get better.
Mom’s doctor finally found the right balance of meds that enabled her to stay stable, and she hasn’t had a breakdown since I was a teenager. My mom lives a happy life, even after all she has endured, filled with dancing, painting, and spending time with family. Her psychiatrist told her, It’s because of people like you that I come to work every day. Not everyone with schizophrenia gets better. God gave you a second chance in life.
I see my mom as a warrior of light and love. She always tells me she thinks guardian angels watched over her when she was sick. She is my guardian angel.
I love to see Momma G experience joy after everything she’s been through. When she remarried, I danced with her at the wedding. I cried uncontrollable tears of joy on her shoulder as we moved in rhythm, celebrating the rollercoaster that is life. She told me she was happy. The contrast between that moment and the struggle she endured brought about in me a deep and profound appreciation: All those hospital visits, breakdowns, surviving breast cancer, and now this moment. I knew then, as I know now, I will never forget this dance.
Several years later, her husband tragically and suddenly passed away. He was so kind to my mother — he was kind to everyone, and honest and hard working — I couldn’t thank him enough for being there for her. His passing brought another very difficult time. Our family was becoming familiar with tragedy, but that’s not how my mom experienced life. She enjoyed the life she had, even as these events put things into new forms of perspective. She was always focused on the simple yet profound elements: family, dancing, hugs. I worried that the stress of my stepdad’s passing might lead my mom to another mental health breakdown, but somehow, she stood strong. To this day, she pursues her hobbies and fills her time with painting and dancing. She orders a large double-double at Tim Hortons every day.
After many years of ups and downs, she has built a new life. She has a new boyfriend, and every day of the week she is either going out dancing, going to a street festival, or drinking white wine at some karaoke bar. These days, she goes out later and more often than I do!
Whenever I’m deeply struggling, I ask myself, How would Momma G deal with this?
This reflection has helped me through some of the toughest times. To me, Momma G is an embodiment of hope, strength, and resilience.
Papa Piecez
My dad has always been proud of me. He always told me as a kid, When I grow up, I want to be just like you.
My dad’s ongoing battle with Parkinson’s disease affected our entire family. Parkinson’s is a progressive illness, meaning there is never a road back to health. There is no cure. Throughout my twenties, my dad’s Parkinsons started getting worse a lot faster and I began to lose the father I knew growing up.
My dad is everyone’s favourite person. He’s my favourite person, too, next to Mom. He’s everyone’s mentor. He’s my mentor. He is the centre of all social circles he’s part of. But Parkinson’s has slowly begun to change this. Parkinson’s causes him to freeze up and limits his ability to move and walk. But this wasn’t what changed things. Where things really took a turn for the worse was when he lost his drive, his will. He began to give up. How could the strongest person I know give up? I’d have never thought it’d happen, but I was seeing him lose hope more and more every few weeks.
In 2015, my dad learned about an incredible and relatively new surgery called deep brain stimulation (DBS), where doctors implant an electric-shock device (almost like a pacemaker for the brain). When successful, this surgery can increase a person’s ability to function dramatically, but the effectiveness varies from patient to patient. Although there is still no cure for Parkinson’s, this surgery could improve my dad’s quality of life. But like any brain surgery, it has its risks. Dad underwent several tests to see if he qualified for the surgery. We got the great news that he qualified, and a date was set for the surgery. Before his operation, I remember him saying, Follow your passion and do what you love, no matter what.
He always said this to me, but this time it sunk to my core. When he came out of surgery, the doctors said the operation was a success, and that he would get a lot of his function back.
A few weeks passed, and my dad began to heal, but we noticed there was yellow pus coming from his incision. The doctor gave him antibiotics and told him to stop scratching.
At 2:45 one morning, my phone began to buzz on the table next to my bed. I looked at the screen. It was Katherine, my stepmom, calling. She told me that my dad needed to be rushed to the hospital.
Mel, my fiancée, and I drove immediately to the hospital, which was only five minutes away. We arrived before the ambulance. I was there to see him as the ambulance came around the corner and pulled up to the emergency doors. As I stood beside the gurney and held his hand, he had a seizure. I thought he was dying right there and then, and I was going to see it happen.
What the hell happened? I’d thought the surgery was a success. We waited for hours before the doctor told us that Dad was having seizures and they were looking into the cause. They found an infection in his brain. His surgery was the one in a thousand that goes wrong. After seeing him have that seizure, all I could think was the worst, replaying it in my head again and again.
Day to day, we weren’t sure if he would make it. After over two weeks in the hospital, my dad began losing hope, and there were some really dark days. I couldn’t believe the outpouring of support from thousands (yes, thousands) of people. It was truly overwhelming. It was so overwhelming that we created a website to give updates. People could also post comments there, and I could read them to my dad, so he didn’t have to expend his strength on a lot of visitors. My dad needed to rest.
After many months, his brain infection slowly healed, his condition stabilized, and he was finally sent home. The next few months, he recovered at a snail’s pace. I got my dad back and he slowly began to get back his drive for life.
He got a second chance in life, and I appreciate every day we have with him.
My dad always told me before every b-boy battle I entered as a teenager, It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, as long as you win.
I would then go on to win every one of those battles. I won over twenty battles with
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