THE POWER of MISSION by Frances Hesselbein and Jim Collins

JC: Can you tell us a little bit about how you made the Girl Scouts relevant to today’s world without giving up the values?

FH: Not I, WE. You don’t sit in New York at a desk and say, “let there be relevance or let there be diversity,” no. right! It happens on the ground, in the neighborhoods where the people are.

Together we fashioned a vision and we all caught fire, and with a powerful distilled mission, it had nothing to do with bigness—bigness doesn’t inspire anyone—but had to with helping each girl reach her own highest potential. We knew why we did what we do and that, that was step one. We mobilized around vision and mission—had just a couple of powerful goals that they helped develop. It was theirs.