‘The Road Not Taken’ is a Poem About Nonprofit Strategy. Hear Me Out
In another life Robert Frost might have been a consultant
Too many posters and notebook covers of well-meaning people feature some version of the final line from Robert Frost’s poem. Usually it’s paraphrased about taking the road less traveled. The real line goes like this:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
We think about nonprofit planning and strategy like that, sometimes. About taking “the road not taken” and what a big difference it will make. Nobody is doing it this way or that way, so there will be a lot of opportunity for us there!
But the final stanza of Frost’s poem begins with a remarkably important modifier. He wrote, “I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence…” In reality, Frost did not take the road less traveled. He was musing about a story he might tell one day, because he didn’t actually take either road.
Another Robert (Robert Greenleaf, who coined “servant-leadership”) wrote about strategy — especially nonprofit philanthropic strategy — as the space between creativity and prudence.¹ If we focus on the misunderstood part of Frost’s poem, we might think the less trodden path…
