Episode 43: Elizabeth Cushing "Shift Aims to Scale Joy"

Unleashing Social Change

Anyone who has attended our workshops on how to design large-scale change is familiar with Playworks, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, CA. With their permission, we present a case study of their plans to go to scale as a way to teach people how to set compelling aims for spread/scale. So we thought we should check in on Playworks and their progress toward their truly ambitious aims.

In this episode, we sit down with the CEO of Playworks, Elizabeth Cushing, and dive into the rollercoaster ride of leading an organization through an astonishing transformation and all the lessons learned along the way. Elizabeth has some edge of your chair stories about the thrill of victory and agony of defeat in the day to day adventures of leading large-scale change during a global pandemic.

We learned so much in this conversation and we know you will, too.

Show Highlights:

• The difference between scaling the organization and scaling the solution (hint: one has more impact than the other)

• Major pivots Playworks accomplished during the pandemic

• Setting an aim invigorates organizations and galvanizes donor support, and is well worth doing, even if the aim is not achieved

• What’s next for Playworks

Show Resources:

• Recesslab.org

• Game Library

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