For the 140 of you who joined us for  last week, THANK YOU. We’re thrilled you chose to spend your morning with us and Halley Bock, President and CEO of Fierce, Inc., and hope you came away feeling inspired to lead some Fierce Conversations of your own.

Check out the recap  from our very own participants.

A theme of the morning was that as a sector, we certainly are unique – both in our challenges, but also our opportunities.

We are often challenged by a condition of scarcity thinking – “there isn’t enough money,” “the funding sources we do have are precarious,” “there isn’t enough time/people,” “people are already doing so much good work with so little,” “we can’t ask a volunteer to do that”…The list goes on.

Have we become too timid to rock the boat, suggest a bold change of course, or say “no” to opportunities (or funding, or people) that may not be mission aligned? Why are we hesitant to have an honest conversation with a funder about unrealistic expectations? Or with staff and volunteers when performance doesn’t meet our expectations?

How do we prioritize a Fierce Conversation when time is so limited? This question was posed at Leaders Forum and Halley responded, “A conversation takes time. Anything else takes longer.” Wow.

This is part of the reason we chose Halley Bock and Fierce, Inc. as the keynote for this year’s event. We set out to prove that as organizations we can be compassionate, and work for extremely emotional causes, while also embracing that it is through bold thinking, and fierce conversations, that we make the best progress toward our missions. If the conversation is the relationship, what happens when we shy away from the difficult conversations that stand in the way of tackling our toughest challenges today?

Have you started putting Fierce principles into practice? What has been your experience so far?