Change Masters Incorporated - The Blog

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Sweet Potato Comfort Pie

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Miss Rose McGee is the founder of the Sweet Potato Comfort Pie Project. She started baking after the Ferguson tragedy and hasn’t stopped since. 

McGee encouraged people to bake a sweet potato pie and present it to someone they don’t know as a way to honor Juneteenth. She was poised, beautiful, dedicated, and fierce. She expresses her activism through baking. It is a way to comfort those in sorrow or provoke new thinking. 

I bake very well and I like sharing my gift of baking. McGee’s recipe inspires me. It is DELICIOUS and her back story is fascinating. 

I baked a couple of pies using her receipt. I thought hard about who I could give a pie to act as an influencer. Ultimately, I decided to give one of the sweet potato pies to the Plymouth, Minnesota Police Department. Even though I’ve lived in Plymouth for 30 years, I never learned about their attitudes toward race. 

I did some research and decided to contact my local Chief of Police for more in-depth information on their commitments to racial justice. All because of Miss Rose and her “eyes on the pies.” 

There are many creative ways to influence others to take action. Even using your talents to bake a Sweet Potato Pie.

The Choice

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P&G is stepping up their efforts to advance equality for all people, and especially, right now, for Black Americans who face racism, bias, and brutality.

“Where are we to go?
“How are we to respond when we are shown over and over that our lives do not matter?
“Our lives matter.
“Being white in America is not needing to state your life matters.
“And when your life matters, you have power.
“Now is the time to use it.
“Not being racist is not enough.
“Now is the time to be anti-racist.
“Words and feelings are not enough.
“Now is the time to take action.
“Read. Listen. Donate. Plan. March. Vote. Speak out.
“Step in. Step up.
“How you use your power is a choice.
“Choose action over observation.
“Choose progress over perfection.”

Three Foundations

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There are three foundations we build our coaching upon at Change Masters to help people understand and increase their executive presence. They also apply to help us all see others differently. Those three areas we do a deep dive on are:

  • Microexpressions – tiny little moments that make people feel supported or judged
  • Saturated moments – these are moments that are highly significant to others, even if you don’t understand why
  • Metacognition – this is the ability to know what you don’t know, to understand your own thought processes.

When you see these objectively on video, you’ll never be the same!

Executive Presence tip – Carol Keers

Where is Minneapolis?

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Most of our international clients have no idea where Minneapolis, Minnesota is located. Even some US clients are not quite sure. I explain, “The Mississippi River runs through the center of the US starting from near the Canadian border in Minnesota in the center of the country. The river runs south to the Gulf of Mexico.  Minneapolis is in the north-most state along the Mississippi River.”

Minneapolis and St. Paul are called the “Twin Cities.” They are home to 18 of the companies listed on The Fortune 500 Companies. The population is highly educated and high income. The schools are some of the highest-rated in the country. The “happiness score” for Minnesota is second only to Hawaii. It is the top among the healthiest states.

Minneapolis

The Twin Cities has the largest population of Somali and Hmong refugees in the country. We have a Somali US congresswoman, a Muslim State Attorney General, the mayor of St Paul is black as is the Chief of Police in Minneapolis.

Most people are proud of the city and OK with people not knowing where we are located. We think of ourselves as open to diversity. That all changed on Memorial Day.

George Floyd Touched the World

The world saw a policeman put his knee on the neck of George Floyd for over eight minutes as Floyd defenselessly died. The incident occurred close to where I grew up. The stores that burned are in the neighborhood I shopped in as a child.

My brother lives a few blocks from the location of the standoff on the bridge. The demonstrators running from the police ran past my brother’s home. The world has been outraged. Minneapolis is now a city name that most people recognize.

The rosy picture I painted of Minneapolis is from a white man’s perspective. It is very different for many black people in Minneapolis. Racist policing has continued in minority neighborhoods. The public school performance gaps are some of the largest in the country. There has been much angst, but no solution.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Inflection Point

What does it take to significantly change an organizational structure? Companies go bankrupt or get purchased if they are dysfunctional. Democracies have elections. Dictators face revolution. What about police departments?

Minneapolis has tried changing the police culture from the top with the last two reform-minded Chiefs of Police. It hasn’t worked.

A crisis can be an opportunity. If there is enough political will for change, it can create opportunities. Intervention is a bit like a corporate takeover. Part of a takeover is to determine who should stay and who should go to build the future of the organization.

“Senior management” of the state and city government is committed to reform. Perhaps a few years from now, Minneapolis will be known as the city that addressed the problem culture and successfully moved toward their ideal.