Matthew Savage's Blog

When I was first starting out in a new career, I joined a professional association in my area that had used the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as inspiration to form something called a Success Team. A Success Team is simply 5-7 individuals meeting together consistently over time around a common interest area.

In another life, I was a photographer, so my first experience with Success Teams was in that industry. This association made us each pay $300 to belong to the group, which I thought was rather steep, BUT they did supply a facilitator – who was also a career counselor– for our first meeting, and also formed the group for us. We were instructed on how to conduct the sessions efficiently around a set structure.

The structure is as follows:

1. Each person speaks for 10 minutes about what they are doing and what their goals are. This time is not designed for complaining or venting, but on moving forward in your career.
2. The discussion is opened up to the group for 5 to 10 minutes for feedback, comments and support. Then you move on to the next person.

Note: It is helpful to meet monthly or bi-monthly. This keeps up the momentum. It is good to follow this set structure for the following reasons: time efficiency, focusing the group on one person at a time, and forcing you to get to the heart of the issues quickly.

It is a very simple concept, but I have found it to be a powerful tool for my career in several areas, including:

• Being held accountable for goals and goal-setting.
• Being validated for what you have done and encouraged to push further.
• Sharing knowledge and best practices.
• Networking.
• Brainstorming.
• Developing your own leadership skills and becoming a better team-player.
• Organizing events and getting involved in the community.

Watch out for these three pitfalls in setting up a group:

1. When forming a group, it is hard to find people that are going to be on the same page in terms of skills and goals, but don’t worry about that too much. A lot of this is an exercise for you to go through by setting your own goals and forcing you to be accountable for them.
2. Group members must be enthusiastic and motivated and not skeptical about the idea. It is important that you like them as people as well!
3. Meet consistently and try to not skip meetings. Be serious, because the Success Team is a powerful tool if you use it right that could really benefit you.

I am currently researching how groups can come together locally and create change, build communities and do this on a mass-scale. The main ingredient in this possibility is a strong desire to push your career forward in a dynamic and beneficial way to the world. A perfect Win-Win situation! If you have any ideas, please comment.

My most recent Success Team is a Clean Tech career group in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is pushing me forward professionally, with the added benefit of helping to solve environmental issues.

I think the word “Green” should just be replaced with “Community” – that is what is lacking the most.

Maybe we needed to wake up to how much damage we are doing to our surroundings, but are any of us really that surprised? We have been over-worked and have not invested properly in family life, nor our local communities. If we prioritized theses things, given an example by the right leaders, we might be able to start from the bottom up. Nobody has taken the leadership reigns in this country to show us values beyond mindless consumerism and the hunt for wealth.

Talk to the guy in the check-out line. Reach out to someone. Start small and build up confidence to lead by example in your local area. Do all you can to audit your ecological footprint [http://www.myfootprint.org/en/], but don’t feel you need to make it a career unless you have some true value to bring to the table.

Check out BetterTogether.org, which was founded by Robert Putnam “calling for a nationwide campaign to redirect a downward spiral of civic apathy. Warning that the national stockpile of “social capital” – our reserve of personal bonds and fellowship – is seriously depleted, the report outlined the framework for sustained, broad-based social change to restore America’s civic virtue.”

Going Local can present a wonderful opportunity. And we can harness the amazing power of the internet to build and strengthen our local communities.

I recently discovered meetup.com which is just that, an on-line venue that facilitates the process of meeting up face to face around a common interest. Taken from their website:

“Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.”

I think that this is a great idea. No matter what your interest, you can form a group and meet people in your local area consistently.

The only drawback is that you have to pay. It is a nominal fee of $12-20 a month, depending on your membership type and you can collect this fee as the organizer from the attendees of the meeting.

This blog’s mission is to provide community-building ideas for a venue like meetup.com or maybe eventually start our own community-building website that is totally free and more customizable. Stay tuned.

In Memory of my sister, Jessica Brigida Stevens.

When my sister died last summer suddenly, I was struck by the most amazing realization. She had lived in Alaska with her family, my brother lives in Sydney, Australia with his family, and the rest of the family lives here in San Francisco. It seemed ridiculous to be so spread out as a family. How could the most important people in your life be the ones that you saw the least?

Asian cultures view the family differently. It is not uncommon to support your parents in China, for example. Actually, many people don’t have a choice. But, in our western culture with everything at our fingertips and supposedly little free time, how did we separate so much from our families and friends?

Everything can change in an instant. I know that when I came into close proximity with death, my priorities changed. My whole outlook changed, actually. I wanted to be close to family and friends. I wanted to get more involved in the community and build something special right where I lived.