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 Successful Practices in Literacy Award, I experienced that razor-thin moment of professional anticipation. Surrounded by colleagues who defend free speech, who map media literacy across complex communication landscapes, the recognition felt like more than an individual moment—it was a collective affirmation of critical work.
Colleagues from global communication platforms, First Amendment news and journalism defenders, and educational innovators matching reading programs with athletic conditioning and competition filled the room. The award was an invitation to a different future, a public acknowledgment that our approach to literacy and communication represents something generative and important.
Beyond the Moment of Recognition
More recently, at BookSpring, our "Pathways to a Love of Reading" five-year strategic plan launch mirrored and amplified this sensation. Community leaders, medical and communication researchers, and educational practitioners gathered to witness a vision taking shape. We're committed to making sure the strategic plan isn't a fixed document, but a living blueprint of potential interventions in literacy and human understanding. We will revisit it frequently and reference it as we review goals and outcomes in our daily, monthly, quarterly and annual work.
The Neurological Metaphor of Potential
When Dr. John Hutton joined us at our "Pathways to a Love of Reading" strategic plan launch, he brought something remarkable to our conversation. As a pediatrician and brain researcher, he unpacked how reading isn't some magical skill we're born with—it's actually a complex dance of neural connections that must be taught and developed.
Watching him explain how different parts of the brain have to coordinate—visual centers, memory zones, emotional processing—was like getting a backstage pass to how human learning actually works. Reading isn't automatic. It's a learned skill that requires practice, coaching, and intentional connection.
The same goes for our professional work. We're no longer hunting and gathering, we're pushing papers and holding meetings. We're building neural-like networks of understanding how this modern world works. Every conversation, every collaborative moment is like strengthening a synaptic connection across the workplace. We're teaching our team—and by extension, our broader community—how to connect ideas, how to see patterns, how to learn together.
The Real-World Potential
Excitement expands. Anxiety contracts. And somewhere in the middle, we do the real work of creating something meaningful.
Being an effective organization, we focus on how communication, literacy, and human connection can actually transform how people understand the world. One of the attendees said afterwards, "I loved it but I wish I had my 2-year-old brain back," referring to the time when the brain is most plastic and open to experiences. Dr. Hutton's brain science is a roadmap for how we all learn, grow, and connect.
Just like a child learning to read, we're constantly forming new pathways, challenging old assumptions, and finding unexpected ways to understand each other. Each strategic conversation, each collaborative moment represents a meaningful contribution to broader understanding.
Our work in the social sector doesn't merely collect data or develop plans. We participate in a profound act of collective reimagining—exploring how communication, literacy, and human connection can be redesigned.
The Wisdom of Unresolved Professional Potential
The true organizational art lies in holding opportunity and possibility lightly. Like an adaptive strategy waiting to be implemented, we should strive to maintain a posture of open readiness.
Final Reflection
Institutional breakthroughs rarely announce themselves with absolute certainty. They emerge in the spaces between what is known and what might be—a dynamic, breathing landscape of professional potential.
The magic resides not in guaranteed outcomes, but in the courageous act of remaining intellectually nimble, collaborative, and imaginatively engaged.
Note to Colleagues: Our capacity to inhabit professional uncertainty is itself a remarkable form of institutional intelligence. As such, let us strive to maintain a dynamic learning organization - what the Japanese business guru Nonaka called "a knowledge generating organization."