Emily Ball Cicchini - Continuity Works

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Emily Ball Cicchini

I run a book access and family reading nonprofit, serve in the leadership of a national association, and write plays. My dissertation was on how organizations avoid talking about endings. This is where I keep working on that.

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Maybe It Wasn't the Whole Thing

On revisiting your failures, and why it's okay to repeat them There's a particular paralysis that sets in after you've tried something new and it hasn't worked. It isn't despair—it's caution gone afoul of wisdom. You start

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The Puritan in the Machine

Why We Can't Stop Producing With AI There's something almost feverish about the way we've adopted AI. Not in the way we hype new technology—we've always done that. But in the urgency of it. The executives who immediately ask "how

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When Small Changes Feel Big

Navigating the Loss of Work Relationships Sometimes the most disorienting changes at work aren't the dramatic reorganizations or major pivots. They're the quiet shifts, such as when a trusted colleague takes a new position, a favorite vendor changes contact people, or that one partner who just

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The Burden of Leading When Leadership Fails Us

I love my team. They really pour their hearts into work that increasingly feels like building sandcastles against a rising tide. Yesterday, one of them asked me point-blank: "Will my checks keep coming when the federal grant ends and we just got three grant declines this week?"

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"Scrappy": What a Board Member's Word Choice Reveals

A board member recently started calling our organization "scrappy." They meant it as a compliment, they assured me. And I do think there's something to celebrate there—we're resourceful, persistent, rough around the edges in all the right ways. But I've been

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Trust, Curiosity, and the Work Ahead

At the start of the year, instead of arriving with a neatly packaged set of goals, I asked my staff a different question: What themes should guide us this year? I wasn't going to focus on metrics or resolutions. Just, plain old themes. What they offered back was

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Rethinking Performance Evaluations

I'm not the first to note that traditional performance evaluations often feel like being handed a map with only the destination marked, no context about terrain, and no indication that the journey itself matters more than where you end up. The form that I inherited in my current

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Mastering "Temporal Rhythm" to Face Uncertainty

We live with genuine uncertainty. Markets shift. Projects pivot. Priorities change overnight. Yet the people who seem to navigate this chaos most gracefully aren't those who eliminate uncertainty—they're those who create reliable rhythms around it. Think of temporal rhythm as the heartbeat of a meaningful

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Your Story of Impermanence is Your Strength

This year, on All Saints' Day, I honored my mother the best way I know how: through small acts of delicious ritual. I cooked her favorite meal: broiled marinated flank steak sliced thin against the grain; crispy pan-fried diced potatoes; peasant peas in butter sauce; and a nice

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Between Promise and Performance

In the professional realm, our most transformative moments exist in the delicate space between the emergence of recognition and realization of a reward—where potential vibrates with unrealized energy and institutional promise takes shape. The Threshold of Professional Possibility Standing before an audience at the Library of Congress, receiving the

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When Paradise Calls

I was twelve when my father first floated the idea of moving to St. Thomas permanently. We owned a condominium there—a rental property that doubled as our family's annual escape hatch from frigid Midwestern winters. The year was 1979. Gas lines stretched for blocks. Inflation was crushing

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The Invisible Cost of Assumptions

In the mission-driven world, there exists an exhausting tension: the chasm between the Program team, who are the beating heart focused on direct service, and the Development and Admin team, who are the survival engine focused on funding and compliance. The stakes are structural. Our organizations rely on how

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Knowing and Not Knowing

A reflection on staying grounded when everything feels fluid I was in a meeting last week where a simple question derailed everything for twenty minutes. We were discussing outreach using some new communication tools, and someone asked: "So for the contact collection—are we supposed to gather everyone'

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When Fear Comes Into Work

The text alert comes in during your Tuesday morning meeting: "Active shooter situation, 2 miles from your office building. Shelter in place." Within minutes, you notice the change—employees checking their phones, whispering in hallways, some quietly leaving for the day to pick up their children. This is

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Too Much Compassion Hurts Everyone

Let's be honest: writing about compassionate leadership is way easier than actually doing it. Especially if you're naturally empathetic. You've either been there or seen it happen—saying yes to every request, absorbing your team's stress as your own, making exceptions that

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Building Institutional "Wabi-Sabi"

There's a concept in Japanese aesthetics called wabi-sabi that traditionally refers to the beauty of imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete things. While it's often applied to ceramics or architecture, I've been thinking about how it might help us understand and appreciate our evolving institutions.

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Navigating the Constant Current

Life, as we all know, is a perpetual state of becoming. One moment we’re tending a garden with hopeful anticipation, the next we’re adapting to unexpected weather patterns. This truth that change is not an anomaly but the very fabric of our existence is at the heart of

Follow Compassion

Follow Compassion

Compassion is feeling together with others. It's not passion, and it's not empathy, but the perfect balance between these two essential states. Compassion is a condition that directs us not just to care, but to act. While passion fuels our energy and commitment, it is compassion

Lead with Reflection

Lead with Reflection

Reflection is essential when working with others, activating executive thinking so we respond with intention rather than reacting impulsively. It helps us prepare for meetings thoughtfully, and afterward, assess not just outcomes but the layers of meaning in every exchange—with coworkers, stakeholders, and clients. Unlike rumination, which is repetitive

Serve with Commitment

Serve with Commitment

Acting with commitment means throwing yourself wholeheartedly into a project—not for personal recognition, but to bring a vision to life that others can believe in too. True commitment is contagious; when people see that you genuinely care and are willing to do the work, they’re inspired to join

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