How to be a formidable future-maker and other reflections on Spitfire’s 24th birthday

Get oriented with someone who gets it. When things seem chaotic, rather than amp up the chaos, it helps to know where you are and what time it is. For me, this means doing mind melds with people like Trabian Shorters, CEO of Bme. He and I came up professionally together in Washington, D.C. and were part of the push to make national service a thing back in the day. He’s my friend who keeps it real. He doesn’t bullshit. We’ve recently embarked on learning together about how meaning-making happens in society. How do we decide what is what and what it all means? Who decides? Whose norms? Whose rules? Engaging  purpose-of-life pursuits with trusted friends is always a good way to see chaos as one more thing you’ll get through together.

Make this shit less scary. Fatalism is tempting when things get scary. For me, AI was becoming a real bogeyman. I turned to two friends who see AI not as a dystopic James Bond villain but as full of potential. Former Googler and future Queen of something Di-Ann Eisnor and creative strategist who has AI’s number Omri Marcus have led workshops for Spitfire that have us creating soul files so we know that our values are not lost when we use the power of AI and learning how we can use AI to do power-building and majority-making at unprecedented speed and scale. Di-Ann and Omri are the friends who, when I am in a real pickle and might start crying, they say with the utmost confidence: “We are going to laugh about this later.” And they are right.

Embrace new perspectives. We can’t see what’s next if we don’t open up our views. For me, I have two view pushers: The first is Stace Lindsey at the Aspen Institute. He is the person who taught me to moderate, and this year, introduced this book Ask to me. It offers ways to uncover unspoken information by asking better questions. People often say curiosity is important but give little guidance about how to BE CURIOUS. The people behind the book Ask turn questions into a superpower, and when you don’t know what you are doing, it may be tempting to fake it — but why not learn instead? It’s so much less stressful.

And under the category of learning, I have to bring in Rebecca Taichman, a theater legend. She asked me this spring to join her at movie writing class. I pointed out that democracy was on the brink and that I had no time to write a movie. She told me I was being dramatic and that, because she is an expert on this, I had to trust her judgement. Taking a moving writing class while I was trying to offer guidance on saving democracy was life-changing. It made me realize that I can create the endings I want. You can too. How cool is that?

Get shit done. When chaos hits, I look to people like Navyn Salem, founder and CEO of Edesia Nutrition. Her calling is to eradicate child malnutrition. When the government dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (US AID) seemingly overnight, she did not engage in hand-wringing or making excuses. She was clear-eyed that she needed to get nutritious food to children in war-torn areas. As Fast Company noted when it honored her, despite humanitarian aid in disarray, Edesia expedited emergency nutrition in 18 countries, with the help of 240 nongovernmental organizations, producing and shipping 3.5 million pounds of food, or 32 million packets, to treat 222,000 children. When the going gets hard, Navyn shows how to get to work.

And Miguel Santana, CEO of the California Community Foundation, shows how to put it on the line when it is time to demonstrate who we are and fight for the world we want to live in. He does this in so many ways, but I am particularly inspired by his leadership on the Am I Next? campaign, where he not only got others to show billboards of people asking this question in regard to immigrations raids but put his own face on the California Community Foundation’s building in Los Angeles. As a society, we need people to hold up the mirror and force us to reckon with what we are doing and who we want to be when we are our best selves.

Carve new paths. “What got us here won’t get us there” is a mantra I live by, and it means getting off the tried-and-true paths and making new ones.  But making paths isn’t so easy. There is inevitable resistance. That is why I love having role models like Carmen Rojas, president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Desmond Meade, civil rights activist and candidate for Florida governor and David Weinstein, Trust for Public Land’s Northern Rockies Program Director.

Carmen wants to unleash the power of philanthropy, so she needed to get off the path of minimum payout and the iron grip of perpetuality that kept the Marguerite Casey Foundation from using all the resources it could right now when people so need them. She worked with her board to ask the questions, “What is the minimum we need to stay around forever, and can we spend whatever is above that?” She got a yes and, just like that, a whole new way forward.

For Desmond, president and executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), he could have stopped after FRRC posted the largest civil rights victory since the civil rights era by putting more than 1.4 million returning citizens back on the voter rolls. But when he sees something that isn’t working, he doesn’t sit by; he jumps in. And that is what he has done by announcing he is running for Florida governor as a people-affiliated, not party-affiliated, candidate. While people might count him out for running outside the party, Desmond finds paths people want to go down. A lot of people are tired of the polarized politics that have politicians doing everything but the business of the people. I’d put money down that people will follow Demond in this new direction.

And David is literally building a new trail. There is this beautiful valley in Montana near my home, Paradise Valley, and you can really only see it by car or on the river. David and a host of neighbors and partners of his, came together to create the Yellowstone Heritage Trail that over 61 miles will connect Livingston with one of America’s best ideas ever, Yellowstone National Park.  Now residents and visitors alike can hike, bike or mosey down this bit of heaven. Creating life experiences centered not on cars but on connecting all of us with nature is something worth passing on.

Generate credible hope. When we have to move forward in low visibility, we may instinctually freeze. Stand still. But to get to a place where there is more visibility and more possibility, we have to move. This requires what Harvard Business Review (HBR) calls “credible hope,” and Jen Carnig, Spitfire’s president, is highly skilled at this.

HBR says the trick is to ensure that reality does not extinguish hope and that hope does not outpace reality. In this productive space, people can feel that aspirations are possible; that they have the agency to achieve; and that obstacles, while inevitable, can be overcome. Watching Jen walk this line is a master class — whether she is talking to Spitfire staff or movement leaders. The adage is that leaders need vision, but with leaders like Jen, that vision is believable and actionable … just what people need to move away from paralysis and toward progress.

Agree to go just because of who is asking. I hope you have a colleague and friend like I have in Peter Loge, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. If I call and say, “Let’s take on resetting the norm against political violence,” he answers: “How is next Tuesday?” He has never not said “yes … and” to an idea I have had. When it is scary to stand up or get started, it is invaluable to have a person at your back who says, “Wait up. I’m coming.”

Acknowledge it might be crazy and have support to do it anyway. Times like these require leaps of courage. We have incomplete information about almost anything we might do. If we want to build what’s next, we won’t have blueprints; we have to create those along the way. And it helps to have someone by your side to support in creating those blueprints. My dad is this person for me.”

When I said I was going to start a company in my early 30s, he said, “Let me get you incorporated.” It’s good to have a lawyer in the family. What he didn’t say was: “Have you really thought about this?” That is kryptonite to an entrepreneurial leap of faith. When I asked him, “What if I fail?” He answered matter-of-factly, “You’ll find another job. You were an Irish history major for the love of God and found a job. Apparently, you can make something out of very little. And that’s a good skill to have in this world that is ever changing.” Thanks, Dad.