Grow With the Flow

“It’s important to genuinely watch something in order to see what works and what doesn’t,” Ross says in the context of both consulting and managing. “You can learn to adapt good fundraising ideas and discard the bad ones.”

Ross says he learned the value of curiosity from Guy Stringer, former director of Oxfam Great Britain, an international organization that helps improve living conditions for the poor. He once saw Stringer give a speech in which he described observing the wife of a political prisoner in Nepal who would walk every day to the prison to check on her husband’s condition. The prisoner wasn’t allowed to have visitors, but he would signal his wife that he was still alive and well by flying a kite from a prison window.