Supporting the Sparkle - Newsletter #57

Community alchemy, courageous champions, and the legacy of creating more leaders than followers.

Every organization has them.

The person who won't stop talking about the thing.

The champion. The catalyst.

The one who keeps raising their hand, asking the uncomfortable question, making the introduction, creating the program, launching the pilot, or advocating for the community long after everyone else has moved on to the next shiny object.

They're often loved, sometimes exhausting. And they're often hated.

Because every company says it wants innovation. Few know what to do with the innovators.

The people who move the needle are rarely the people who color inside the lines.

Organizations are designed for consistency. The people who change organizations are often designed for disruption.

Think about a program, initiative, employee resource group, community, or movement you've seen thrive. Chances are, there was a human attached to it. Not a strategy deck. Not a mission statement. Not a governance document.

A person.

Someone who cared enough to keep showing up.

Someone who wouldn't stop talking about it.

Someone who was willing to hear "no" and keep going anyway.

Someone who occasionally asked for forgiveness instead of permission.

The uncomfortable truth is that many of our most successful initiatives aren't powered by process. They're powered by passion.

We call these people community leaders, evangelists, MVPs, board members, regional leaders, intrapreneurs, founders, champions, builders, troublemakers, connectors, or visionaries.

But what they really do is create belief.

They make other people care. And that's where the magic lives.

The Community Alchemists

Community alchemy is the ability to transform individual interest into collective momentum.

It's the mysterious force that turns a meeting into a movement.

A customer into an advocate. A volunteer into a leader. An idea into a legacy.

Every successful community has alchemists.

They're the people who create energy where there wasn't any before.

The people who see possibilities where others see bureaucracy.

The people who ask, "Why not?"

And sometimes, the people who ask, "Who says we can't?"

These individuals can be frustrating. They challenge assumptions. They expose gaps. They question sacred cows. They create tension.

Sometimes they're labeled difficult.

Too passionate. Too loud. Too much. Not a team player.

(And let's be honest, women+ are often the first to receive those labels while simultaneously organizing the meeting, mentoring the team, carrying the institutional knowledge, remembering the birthdays, and making sure everything actually gets done. The same dynamic often shows up at home, too. The person being called "too much" is frequently the person carrying more than anyone realizes.)

Yet years later, organizations point to the communities, programs, and initiatives these same people built and wonder how they became so successful.

We celebrate outcomes. We often resist the people who create them.

The irony is that innovation rarely arrives wearing a name badge that says "future success."

More often, it arrives disguised as the person making everyone slightly uncomfortable.

But tension isn't always a problem. Sometimes tension is evidence that something is growing.

The Risk of Building Around Heroes

There is, however, a danger.

When an initiative becomes inseparable from the person driving it, succession becomes impossible.

What happens when the champion retires?

Changes roles? Burns out? Gets promoted? Leaves?

Does the community disappear? Does the program stall?

Does the movement lose its momentum?

Too many organizations mistake passion for infrastructure.

The champion becomes the process.

The leader becomes the documentation.

The relationships live in one person's head.

That's not sustainability. That's dependency.

The goal isn't to eliminate the sparkle. The goal is to spread it.

Not a sprinkle.

A glitter cannon.

The goal isn't to create heroes. It's to build hero factories.

To spread belief so widely that no single person owns it.

To create so many advocates, mentors, builders, and future champions that the movement survives long after the original champion moves on.

Community alchemy isn't charisma; it's stewardship.

The most powerful champions aren't the loudest people in the room.

They're the people who create more champions.

They don't protect the spotlight. They hand out flashlights.

They teach others where the magic came from and trust them to create their own.

Because every meaningful movement eventually faces the same question:

Can this survive without me?

AI Won't Replace the Spark

As we rush into an AI-powered future, there's a temptation to optimize everything.

Automate everything. Standardize everything. Scale everything.

And we should. And we are, and I am all in.

But there's something machines can't manufacture.

Conviction.

Courage.

Authenticity.

The moment when a person stands up and says what everyone else is thinking.

The energy that inspires hundreds of people to care.

The willingness to take a risk on an idea that doesn't yet have data behind it.

AI can accelerate information.

People create movements. Movements are created by moments.

Moments are created by people.

The future will belong to organizations that know how to combine both.

Systems and soul. Scale and humanity. Process and possibility.

Supporting the Sparkle

So how do we support the people who move the needle?

The answer isn't to control them. It's to protect them.

Give them room to experiment. Allow them to fail. 

Reward curiosity. Celebrate constructive dissent.

Create pathways for their knowledge to be shared.

Help them build successors.

Most importantly, don't mistake their passion for noise.

Many of the things we value most today started because someone was willing to be "too much."

Too enthusiastic. Too persistent. Too vocal. Too hopeful.

The people who create change are rarely comfortable.

But they are often necessary.

And sometimes, they are exactly the people everyone loves to complain about while benefiting from everything they built.

Movements are created by moments. Moments are created by people.

And people create magic.

Not the fairy-dust kind.

The kind that transforms communities, companies, and lives.

The kind that can't always be measured.

The kind that leaves a legacy. The kind worth supporting.

The sparkle.

Empathy makes us human; actions make us warriors.