The Unexpected Hits the Unexpected Table How to Pivot—and Persist.
I am resilient, persistent, strong. After Independent Means was ‘acquired’ in late 2015, I flailed around for a year, looking for pieces of my soul lost in the battle for the financial education company I’d spent twenty plus years building. And by 2017 a few sparkly ideas had emerged, new and old friends reached out, I was rehabbing a little retreat in Maine, and new paths were visible on the horizon. After a few false starts and dead end detours, the vision of The Unexpected Table, a gathering place for families to thrive and explore the unexpected, was clear and shining. Purpose and passion had converged again and I was propelled toward a new adventure that took up a good part of 2018 and much of 2019. The Table had yet to be ‘launched’ but a business plan was well underway, a team was beginning to coalesce, and I could see how the foundation that had been Independent Means would be reinvented as a new, fresh way to explore innovation in families.
But the unexpected intruded when two different companies approached; each promising a home for ideas I’d introduced in my early work—and in my book, Raising Financially Fit Kids. I had not yet raised funds needed for The Unexpected Table and those invitations to create a fertile environment for ideas I’d spent a career nurturing were seductive. In late December 2019, I accepted one of those invitations and on January 15, 2020, started a new chapter with the Hawthorn Institute for Family Success. Just six weeks later, Covid-19 arrived, a travel ban was instituted by the company I’d just joined and I’ve spent the spring working remotely from my home in California.
I am beyond privileged. The cataclysm has killed dear ones, disrupted dreams, destroyed businesses—and the economic safety of millions. It has decimated the plans of young people in school, anticipating school, and leaving school. And just as we were all grappling with how to open up society and pick up the pieces, the vile murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has thrown the country into a paroxysm of righteous anger and gratuitous violence.
How can any of us make sense of what feels like the choking sounds of a dying democracy, the seeming intractability of institutionalized racism, reinforced in the highest office in the land, and the unfathomable randomness of nature to inflict pain and destruction? Getting up each morning is a daily act of courage; anticipating more unexpected occurrences practically an invitation for self-inflicted pain.
But I’m a social worker in my bones and Saul Alinksy’s advice to radicals (reprised years later by Obama’s then Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel) is one of my core operating principles: Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Which brings me to why and in what form I’m rethinking and relaunching The Unexpected Table. If ever a time were need to explore unexpected ideas in unexpected ways, this is it. And The Unexpected Table one place to do it.
The Unexpected Table brings together my own brain trust, a vast and varied collection of thought catalysts—with curious and passionate thought leaders seeking new solutions to the wicked problems causing more and more unexpected occurrences erupting in our lives.
Hosting brain trust sessions, book parties, and interviews with thought leaders, The Unexpected Table is an incubator of new ideas and strategies for bringing those ideas to life. We will continue to explore issues of innovation in families. And we’ll grapple with the challenges of new convergences: the intersections of art and engineering; nature and communication; leadership and community. If you’re interested in being part of the Unexpected Table’s community of thinkers and explorers, please sign up here--and stay tuned.