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Public & community service

Community & nonprofit organisers

How communities define need, build trust, share power, measure progress, resist burnout, and outlast founders.

12 questions, 153 answers on the record, from 134 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

When you need counsel, who is the first person you call?

Kiri Te Kanawa

Opera singer

Totally. I’d say parents, brothers, sisters, and don’t go far beyond that for the moment.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2008

Francis Collins

American physician-scientist

I surround myself with brilliant people who are wise and whose advice I can lean on at every possible moment. The Genome Project is a wonderful team effort.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2000

Ernst Mayr

Naturalist and evolutionary biologist

Anyhow, I talked it over with my mother, and she said, “Well, if that’s what you want, go right ahead.” She was a wonderful woman. And so I did.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2001

Read all 12 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. How do you distinguish what a community needs from what an organisation assumes it needs? —
  2. What action builds trust slowly but loses it quickly if neglected? —
  3. Which problem are you still chipping away at? 12
  4. Which result would count as meaningful progress even if it produced no publicity? —
  5. When should a leader give decision-making power away rather than merely ask for input? —
  6. When did you last change your mind about something important? 28
  7. Who makes your work possible behind the scenes? 2
  8. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  9. What makes service sustainable rather than dependent on somebody's exhaustion? —
  10. When you need counsel, who is the first person you call? 12
  11. What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
  12. What would allow the work to continue after its most visible leader leaves? —

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

  • Charlie Munger

    Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

    2 answers United States b. 1924

  • David Vélez

    Co-founder and chief executive of Nubank

    2 answers Colombia

  • DS
    Derek Sivers

    Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want

    2 answers United States

  • Desmond Tutu

    Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

    2 answers South Africa 1931–2021

  • Edmund Hillary

    Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953

    2 answers New Zealand 1919–2008

  • FC
    Francis Collins

    American physician-scientist

    2 answers United States b. 1950

  • John Lewis

    U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966

    2 answers United States 1940–2020

  • Mario Molina

    Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995

    3 answers Mexico 1943–2020

  • ME
    Mohamed ElBaradei

    Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997-2009; Nobel Peace Prize 2005

    2 answers Egypt b. 1942

  • Shinya Yamanaka

    Stem cell biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2012

    2 answers Japan b. 1962

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