I wanted to pull together a couple of threads from my online readings. Last week Al Kamen, who writes a daily column for the Washington Post, reported, “Change is coming to FEMA.” He noted that

“[FEMA], a tragicomic disaster since Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 – and even before then – looks to be getting a facelift under the Obama administration… First off, the likely plan is to break off the agency from the Department of Homeland Security…”

Andrew Taylor, whose blog The Artful Manager is one of our favorites, says:

“For four decades now, nonprofit arts and culture organizations have focused on a corporate ideal. But what if, all along the way, we fundamentally misunderstood what it meant to be run “like a business”? What if our management metaphors actually contribute to the problems we hope they will solve – separateness, disengagement, inflexibility, entropy, and stress?”

Running like a business once meant long-term plans with multi-year budgets, departmental competitiveness, and an intense focus on the bottom line. As we watched the city of New Orleans flood, and as we now watch corporate America drowning in red ink, we wonder: What are the lessons learned? What is “the same” about the government’s response to Katrina; the financial industry’s ethical stretch with sub-prime mortgage lending; Detroit’s continuing production of gas-guzzlers?

In all of these examples, large, multi-layered institutions continued to pursue business-as-usual in the face of rapidly unfolding, disastrous situations. All three involved “human eco-systems” that chose to ignore early warning signs, expert counsel and predictive and unassailable data.

The further we get from the ground, the closer we get to pie-in-the-sky. It didn’t take reading tea leaves to see that gas-guzzling dinosaurs were reaching their end game or that New Orleans was only one hurricane away from breaching the levees. My husband says, “When the writing’s on the wall, ’tis no time to be illiterate.” He’s right. Making choices and making change requires a kind of practical creativity that starts from a stone-cold sober examination of the ground you’re built upon.

David Brooks, the New York Times op-ed writer, suggests these are among the attributes in Obama’s stellar cabinet. He sees open-minded people who are persuadable by evidence and leaders who have practical creativity. Brooks says, “Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give… a list of concrete steps to do day by day…”

A person – or an organization – that has “practical creativity” engages both left and right brain thinking. Being practical, a person (or a non-profit organization!) stays connected to the physical, tangible reality of here and now. The dishes get washed, the leaves get raked, reports are generated in a timely fashion. Being creative, the same person or organization envisions a new future, solves problems, and innovates new approaches.

The capacity to learn is the capacity that links practicality and creativity. The practical person may be able to accomplish tasks from sun-up to sun-down, but without creativity, will not adjust, adapt or learn. The creative organization may routinely imagine and implement new programs and methods, but a practical examination of the results is necessary to learn from all that innovation.

Perhaps non-profit organizations should not try to “run like a business”. Perhaps what we should be seeking is practical creativity. Perhaps it is only when we harness practicality and creativity that learning is possible. Perhaps we cannot tell what the future may bring, but we need to build organizations that can accomplish, innovate, examine, and adapt. Perhaps non-profits have some of the answers the private sector is seeking. Perhaps….