Not My Potatoes
In response to everyone’s request for MORE GOVERNANCE STORIES PLEASE about UUHS and Flaming Chalice International….
Soon after Fulgence made it to Canada as a refugee, I recruited him to a Board I was sitting on. I have done a lot of aid work with Africans over the years… Often not that effectively. It's actually really hard to figure out the right things to do in another culture. I subscribed to the "teach a man to fish philosophy", without ever quite cluing in to that I am the wrong person to Teach Africans to Fish, because I have no idea HOW to fish in Africa. Metaphorically or literally.
So we get to one of the decision making items... The women in the project have been stealing each others' potatoes. And I am like--"Ah hah! Fulgence will have great ideas! He is from the local culture!" (He is not. He is from urban Burundi, and the project was with the Maasai in rural Kenya).
He did, it turns out, have great advice.
"Well," said Fulgence, "I assume people stole potatoes from each other before we arrived... They must have a way they deal with it already. Have they asked for our help?"
It turned out that they had not asked. A site volunteer was the person who put it on the agenda.
"I think," said Fulgence, "That these are not our potatoes, and we should do nothing."
I have come to think of this as the "Not my potatoes" principle, and it is one of the core things that makes FCI so effective. On that Board, work is divided in a very streamlined, high trust way. People have their areas of expertise, and they stay out of each others' way. It's not that we don't consult, but we are very mindful of how trust can eliminate friction.
A great example is my role. I am there to help with financial things. I'm a good fundraiser, and I'm good at reading financial transactions and being a second eye on the books.
What I am terrible at is deciding HOW to spend funds. Fortunately, the other three Board members are from Burundi, and I get to observe the discussions about those decisions (which are really interesting), but our aid strategy is Not My Potatoes.
In Mirth and Dignity (the organization that runs the Hysterical Society) the "not my potatoes principle" is central to how the Board functions. For example, we choose truly excellent mods, and then we get out of the way. Because you know what is impossible? Humour moderation by committee.
“Not my potatoes” also applies to Mirth and Dignity’s spot within UUism as a whole. UUs, like most groups comprised of humans, tend to have a lot of hands on the steering wheel. Every time a new issue comes up in Larger UUism, I will think "UUHS should weigh in on..." and then I think "Wait. Is this our potatoes?" Is it about humour? Is it about how to do new kinds of content and community creation online? Because if it’s neither of these things, it’s probably not our potatoes. And overseeing someone else’s garden leads to a) their garden being neglected while they argue with you, and b) your garden being neglected while they argue with you.
At it’s core, the question of “how did you grow a Facebook group to 180,000 people?” is a very similar question to “how did FCI, with it’s tiny budget, create such massive change in the region it works in?” Some of the answer is about what you do, but most of it’s about all the things you don’t do.
Not my potatoes.
By Liz James, Mirth and Dignity Board President. (Mirth and Dignity is the legal organization that, among other things, runs the UU Hysterical Society).
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Interested in learning more about FCI’s role in Mirth and Dignity? Check out “How Mirth and Dignity got its name”, or start the story right at the beginning with “Wait, What’s the Connection between Mirth and Dignity and Flaming Chalice International?” or go straight to those rivetting governance tips with “Learning from FCI” and “Not my potatoes”.
Interested in learning more about FCI’s work? Check out “The Not-a-Church we helped build”, or “How Flaming Chalice International got its Name” Or check out FCI’s website. We particularly recommend this story about Fulgence’s mother. It’s really beautiful.