Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting

Using Almost Impossible Goals to Produce Breakthroughs

2012-03-16T04:44:00.004-07:00

If you want innovation and breakthrough performance, you should set Almost Impossible Goals – goals that you think only have a 1% chance of being accomplished and you don’t know how to do it.

So how does this work?

You set the goal and then start thinking of new ways to go about it that you never thought of before. Try to get others to help you out. Here’s an example.

When I was a doctoral student at Ohio State I had an assistantship in the campus fund-raising office where they put me in charge of a project that had not been raising much money recently. We set an aggressive goal of $50,000 and we beat it by raising $62,000. Then I started learning about Almost Impossible Goals.

For the next year, I set a goal of raising $150,000 – and I told no one. I started thinking about how we could do things completely differently to raise that amount. And I started meeting with people I worked with and asked “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did WAY better than last year? What would we have to do differently to produce a real breakthrough in our results?” I never told them my actual goal, lest they think me daft. But, they did start coming up with ideas. After a few weeks I had a totally new design for the project – a new methodology about how to raise the money. I took it to my boss and she approved it. We ended up raising $143,000 that year. We were short of my goal, but more than double the previous year.

Here’s another option. The next time you and your team are gathered to set your annual goals, go ahead and do it the way you always have. Then when you are done, ask them for another thirty minutes of their time to do a little brainstorming. Say to them:

“Let’s imagine we can get into a time machine and set it for one year from now. Then we when arrive we find that, somehow, we produced FIVE TIMES better results than the goals that we set. Here’s my question for you: What new, different, and amazing things must we have done during the past year that allowed us to produce those results?”

Then let the brainstorming commence. If you come up with some new ideas that have promise, then try them out and see if they help you produce some breakthroughs. This is a way to “softly” introduce the idea of Almost Impossible Goals, and you can build on the approach from there.

To fully leverage the power of Almost Impossible Goals we also need to conquer our fear of failure. More on that next time. Meanwhile, try some Almost Impossible brainstorming with some of your colleagues and see what kinds of new ideas you come up with.

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost. You can also check out my book, Mission Impact: Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested. And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

SMART v. 3.0, Almost Impossible Goals

2012-03-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

There are times, many times, that setting an Almost Impossible Goal – a goal that you think only has a 1% chance of being accomplished – can be the SMART thing to do.

Let’s quickly recap my recent SMART blogs. First, all goals should be Specific, Measurable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The question is, “What ‘A’ do you use to fill out the formula?”

Attainable Goals are those which you think you have at least an 80% chance of accomplishing. This is a good approach to use when accurately predicting performance is the priority.

Aggressive Goals are those which you think you have a 35% chance of accomplishing. This is a good approach to use when your priority is improving performance. This approach leverages one of the important findings from goal research:

The more difficult the goal, the higher the level of performance.*

But today, improved performance is not enough, especially for a lot of nonprofits who want to make HUGE improvements in the quality of life for those they serve. For individuals and organizations who want innovation and breakthrough performance, this is the time to set Almost Impossible Stretch Goals. By definition, an Almost Impossible Stretch Goal is one that you think has only a 1% chance of being accomplished and you don’t know how to do it.

As you consider this approach, remember one of my favorite quotes:

Great Leaders Have a Healthy Disregard for the Impossible**

How many things can you think of which people said were impossible and yet they happened?

*People told Roger Bannister that it was impossible to run a mile faster than in four minutes. But he set the goal. Not so impossible after all.

*If you told someone twenty-five years ago that many of us today would be carrying around a small device that we could make wireless phone calls from, listen to more than 8,000 songs we had recorded on it, and access The Internet, they would have said “impossible.” Then they would have asked what The Internet is. But people set goals to invent these things. Not so impossible after all.

*In 1961 when President Kennedy set the goal for the USA to land a man on the moon and safely return him, many experts gave lots of scientific reasons for why it was impossible. But he set the goal anyway. Not so impossible after all.

You can think of many more examples. The point is that throughout history, people have dreamed dreams that others said were “impossible.” But they set their Almost Impossible Goals and the dreams came true.

What are your dreams? What inspires you? What goals, if you achieved them, would make a breakthrough difference for you or for those your organization serves?

Almost Impossible Goals ignite our creativity. Since, by definition, we set the goal so big that our current methods of going about them will not work, our creativity automatically kicks in to start thinking of new ways of achieving the goal.

In 1994, when Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric, he commented on GE’s use of the Almost Impossible Stretch:

“stretch is a concept that would have produced smirks, if not laughter, in the GE of three or four years ago, because it essentially means using dreams to set business targets -- with no real idea of how to get there . . . if you do know how to get there then it is not a stretch target.”

“In a company that now rewards progress toward stretch goals, rather than punishing shortfalls, the setting of these goals, and quantum leaps toward them, are daily events”

And these targets “are making seemingly impossible goals exciting, bringing out the best from our teams.”***

Remember: the idea with the Almost Impossible Stretch Goal is to create a new way of going about the accomplishment of the goal – to inspire creativity, not to make you work twice as many hours using the same methods as before.

Intrigued? Play around with setting some Almost Impossible Goals and see if you generate some new creative ideas. But be careful about sharing your crazy new goals with too many people. Remember that most people only set "Attainable" goals and they think this "Almost Impossible" stuff is irresponsible! No wonder innovation is so rare.

There’s a ton more I could say about Almost Impossible Goals, but this blog is already too long. Stay tuned for more tips next time on how to use Almost Impossible Goals to produce innovation and breakthrough performance in your organization. If you can’t wait until the next blog to learn more, then download my Mission Impact book from Amazon onto your Kindle and read Chapter Five. Downloading a book from The Internet? Not so impossible.

*Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

**Thanks to Gene Hoffman for sharing this gem with me

***The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 1994.

SMART v. 2.0, Aggressive Goals

2012-02-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

This blog looks at another “A-word” to fill out the SMART recipe in which the other letters are Specific, Measurable, Relevant, Time-Bound.

Last time we looked at “Attainable" goals as an “A” option. While there are some good reasons to use “Attainable” goals, I pointed out that one important finding from the goal research is:

The more difficult the goal, the higher the level of performance.*

To leverage this finding, my friend Doug Smith uses “Aggressive, yet Achievable” as the “A” for SMART in his excellent book, Make Success Measurable. The more difficult a goal is set, the more persistent and creative people will be. They will work harder and perform better. These are the reasons for setting “Aggressive” goals versus easier “Attainable” goals.

If you are setting goals for yourself, then you will improve your performance by using the Aggressive SMART formula versus the Attainable approach. The exceptions are if you want to want to build some momentum with some “easy wins,” or if you are setting Learning Goals where you are in new territory, or if you are concerned about getting discouraged. But if none of these circumstances apply, then set Aggressive goals and watch your performance improve.

However, if you are a boss and you want to implement Aggressive goals for your team then you need to do so carefully. The first thing you need to look at is your reward system. Do you punish failure? If so, then you can expect lots of push back on Aggressive goals. People will want goals that are easier so they are not punished for failure.

What should you do? I suggest that you change your reward system to reward performance instead of success. What’s the difference?

Rewarding for performance starts with setting outcomes for your direct reports. See my earlier blog about this for more details. Then you can reward them for their actual performance rather than if they meet a particular goal.

Here’s a quick example. One of the easiest areas to set outcomes for in the nonprofit world is fundraising – the outcome you want to reward is “dollars raised.” Many nonprofits use a reward system based on “did you meet your goals for the year?” By doing that, people are motivated to set an Attainable goal. They will set a goal that they are sure they can meet so they get rewarded.

If you change your focus to rewarding the outcome, then at the end of the year you ask “how much money did you raise?” and you reward the actual performance. This gives people freedom to set Aggressive goals. In fact, if they understand that Aggressive goals will improve their performance, then they will be motivated to set Aggressive goals. Again, this only holds if they are rewarded for performance and not punished for failing to meet their goals.

As the boss, you have to ask yourself what you really want. Do you want your team to set a goal of improving your $100,000 annual fund by an Attainable 5% and having them produce the $105,000 successfully? Or would you rather give them the freedom to set an Aggressive goal of a 15% improvement and then having them produce a result of $112,000 that does not meet the goal? The answer is obvious, but you – as the boss – need to shift your thinking and change your reward system to allow for this.

The two SMART formulas we have looked at, Attainable and Aggressive goals, each have their role depending on the situation. If you want results that are highly predictable, use the Attainable goal formula. If you want high performance, then use Aggressive goals. But what if you want innovation and breakthrough performance? That’s the formula we’ll look at next time.

*Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

SMART v. 1.0, Attainable Goals

2012-02-16T06:53:00.000-08:00

There are more than one hundred different versions of the popular SMART Goal formula. I am going to compare three versions in this blog and the next two blogs. The three versions I will review all have the same words for SMRT that I explained in the last blog: Specific, Measurable, Relevant, Time-Bound. The difference in the three versions we’ll look at is the “A” word.

One of the very popular SMART versions uses the word “Attainable” for the A. And many people who teach this version will coach others not to set a goal unless they think it is at least 80% “Attainable.” The reasoning is that you don’t want to set a goal and then fail at it. This seems reasonable enough since we can all think of times when we – or others – experienced significant negative consequences from failing to achieve a goal. Therefore, setting goals which are relatively easily Attainable seems to be a SMART thing to do.

Except for one thing. The goal research does not support this. The research clearly demonstrates that:

The more difficult the goal, the higher the level of performance.*

Hmmmm. So, if we set a relatively easy “Attainable” goal then our chances of not failing are higher – but our overall level of performance may be lower. What to do?

Some would say, keep the goal relatively low. The consequences of failing are too risky. Therefore, try to convince your boss that your easy goals are really hard so you can succeed and look good. (This goes on every year in organizations around the globe!)

Okay – that’s a little cynical. The desire to avoid punishment for failing at a goal is understandable. But there are a number of good reasons for setting Attainable goals that are relatively easy. One is to build momentum. It can be nice to get some “quick wins” on a new project. Another is if you are setting Learning Goals in a new domain where it is difficult to judge what is easy and what is hard. Finally, let’s face it, some of us deal with setbacks better than others. If you are setting goals with a team and you think they lack some confidence, then maybe setting some easier goals for a while is the way to go.

Still, we have to come back to the research – more difficult goals result in higher levels of performance. Next time we’ll look at SMART v. 2.0 which is designed to leverage that research finding. Stay tuned.

*Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

Use the SMRT Goal Formula

2012-02-07T03:40:00.000-08:00

No, it’s not a typo. We’ll get to the “A” in SMART goals next time. But for today we will focus on the SMRT part. In order for your goals to be more effective, they should be:

Specific & Measurable. Vague goals are less effective than specific, measurable goals because they do not provide focus. You need to set a goal in a way that you can be absolutely sure if it has been accomplished or not. You know that a goal is fully specific and measurable when there can be no objective argument over whether it has been achieved. You don’t want to rely on opinions of various people about whether or not the goal has been met. This is another important finding from the goal research:*

The more specific the goals, the more explicitly performance is regulated.

It is simple common sense, backed up by research. If you set a vague goal, e.g., “Do your best,” then people will interpret effort in a variety of ways. If the goal is specific, e.g., “Raise $20,000 from the phonothons by Friday,” then people will expend more intense and persistent effort to meet the goal.*

Relevant. What goals can you set which will catapult you toward the future you want to create for your organization and/or for yourself? Make setting the most relevant goals a priority. Don’t waste time on trivial goals.

Time-Bound. Every goal should have a date attached to it by when it should be accomplished. Simply make sure that you add the phrase “by Month, Date, Year” to every goal you set.

We’ll fill out the complete SMART goal formula with a blog about the “A” next time. But for now, make your goals SMRT and they’ll be ready to be completely SMART soon!

*Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

Set Goals as Outcomes, Not Activities

2012-01-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

You will increase your personal and organizational effectiveness by setting your goals as “outcomes” instead of “activities.”

In my first blog about Goals, I encouraged you to set more goals. Now we will focus on how to set them most effectively.

Setting goals as outcomes makes you focus on what you really want. Consider the simple example of this goal:

“To receive $500,000 for the annual fund by June 30, 2012.”

This is an outcome-based goal. It does not say that 100,000 fund-raising letters will be mailed out that year or that 10,000 phonathon calls will be made. It is an outcome – money will be received.

When you are considering goals for a certain domain of activity – whether it is personal or organizational – ask yourself “What is the RESULT I/we really want?” In the case above, you want money!

Once you set an outcome-based goal then it is totally fine to connect activity-based goals to them. The problem is that, far too often, all people set are activity goals. And just because the activity gets completed it does not mean that the desired result has been produced.

Unfortunately, outcome-based goals are all too rare in organizations. It seems much easier to list the activities that an individual or team is going to work on rather than the specific outcomes that the activities are intended to produce. One of the reasons that we lack outcomes is that our language around performance lacks rigor. When a supervisor meets with their direct reports, for example, the question is typically something like “What are you working on during the upcoming quarter?” instead of “What outcomes will you produce during the upcoming quarter?”

This lack of rigor makes it more difficult for people to be held accountable. Completing a task is easier than completing a task that produces an agreed upon outcome. This lack of rigor exists at the individual level, at the team level, and at the organizational level. People resist setting outcome-based goals because activity-based goals don’t engender much accountability. When we set personal goals, we need to overcome this. And as supervisors, we need to require people to set outcome based goals.

Setting outcomes can be challenging for some types of work, but it can be done. Two excellent resources that can help you in establishing goals as outcomes are Make Success Measurable (1999) by my friend Doug Smith and First Break All the Rules (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999)

Setting goals as outcomes is just the beginning. Stay tuned for much more ahead in this series to help you set goals more effectively and therefore make even more of a Mission Impact.

The Importance of Goals

2012-01-18T04:01:00.000-08:00

Do you want to use your time in ways that are more relevant – relevant to what you care about most in your life? Of course you do!

The best way to do this is to fully harness the power of goal setting. It will make your life more fulfilling, more successful, and – for your organization – more effective.

This seems obvious. And yet, when given the freedom to choose, most people do not set goals or they do not set them effectively.

This blog is first in a series on goal setting which, if you follow the guidance provided, I promise you will improve your performance personally and/or for your organization.

Today’s lesson is that you are probably not setting goals nearly enough. You are probably barely scratching the surface. To maximize performance you should consider setting long term goals (e.g., five – ten years) which you then break down into annual goals, quarterly goals, weekly goals, and even daily goals. To truly maximize performance, you should do this for every important domain of your personal and work life.

“That sounds like a lot, Rob. Sometimes I just like to go with the flow.”

Understood. And every now and then I like to go with the flow, too. Just remember that every time we do that, we let the “flow” take us where it wants, versus where we have intentionally chosen to go. And sometimes we can drift far away from where we would have intentionally chosen to be. This leads us to the first important finding from the goal setting research:*

Goals direct attention and action toward relevant activities and away from non-relevant activities.

If you want your actions to be relevant – to address some aspect of your personal or work life that you care about – then set goals! Isn’t life too short to spend your time on actions that are irrelevant?

If you buy this and think that maybe you can be more effective if you use goal setting more, then stay tuned for the rest of the series which will be devoted to showing you the most effective ways to set goals and focus them on producing results that are most important to you.

*Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

“Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”

2012-01-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

One of the guest speakers we had in for the Nonprofit Strategy graduate course I taught this past fall at the University of Maryland shared this quote with the class, and it was one of the students’ favorites of the term.

I’m not sure who originated the quote, but there are lots of articles with this title and even a new book about to come out by that name. (I have not read it yet, so I can’t make a rec – maybe later.)

Why is this such a popular quote? Well, first of all – it is great imagery. But most important, it is true!

Step One in strategy implementation is making sure to align your culture with your new strategy. This has been recommended by consultants for years. And yet, many organizations stumble here.

If your strategy is stalled, it is time to do a culture check. Ask yourself, “Is our strategy being supported by our . . . . .”

*Systems?

*Attitudes?

*Behaviors?

*Incentives?

*Standard Operating Procedures?

Example: I know of leaders in an organization who, as part of their strategy, needed the organization to be more innovative. But the organization had a legacy of bureaucratic systems and standard operating procedures. The strategy was going nowhere until the CEO made major changes in systems and procedures.

Take some time to start your new year off with a culture check. Making changes can help your organization implement your strategy more effectively and make more of a Mission Impact.

Panic Sooner!

2011-12-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

It is an easy trap to fall into. We are all very busy and tend to focus on the issues that seem to require the most immediate attention today. And sometimes we don’t look out far enough – even six, nine, twelve months – to notice trends of importance. And then all of a sudden – panic strikes!!! And last minute panic is usually not very effective.

One of the great tips from one of my mentors is: “If You are Going to Panic, Panic Early.” This is just one of many excellent quick tips in the book Deadline Busting: How to be a Star Performer in YourOrganization, by Drs. Jeffrey & Laurie Ford. The idea in “panicking early,” of course, is to get people into a higher level of action when it can actually do some good. Jeff was one of the great management professors I had at Ohio State and is wife, Laurie, is a management consultant.

Some of my other favorites from the book:

*“Don’t Give Excuses When Things Go Wrong”

*“Account for Interruptions in Your Schedule”

*“Create a Climate of No Complaints”

*“Get Over it, Clean it up, Move on”

Each tip is explained in a quick one-page read. It’s the perfect New Year’s Resolution gift (available on Amazon) for your favorite Deadline Buster. Or, buy one for the office. You can read one – two tips per staff meeting to help your team improve its performance.

Deadline Busting is an important skill for all of us. Learn some of these great tips and help your organization make even more of a Mission Impact.

Inspiring a Sense of Urgency

2011-12-08T05:32:00.000-08:00

I was inspired to write this prior to the Pittsburgh Steelers football game last Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals. I was worried. The Steelers had shown no “sense of urgency” during the prior week against the lowly Kansas City Chiefs and almost lost. “They cannot afford to do that with Cincinnati,” I worried, “Coach Tomlin better find a way to inspire a sense of urgency.”

Bringing a “sense of urgency” to every one of the sixteen regular season football games has got to be tough. It must be easy to get a bit complacent, day in and day out, when it is not one of the biggest games of the year.

The same goes for the rest of us. How can we remain inspired, with a sense of urgency and focus – day in and day out – and how can we inspire that in others? Here are some ideas I have found to be helpful.

FOR YOU:

*First, if you don’t have one already, write a personal mission statement. Make it simple. Just answer the questions: At this point in your life, what is the difference you want to make in the world and why is that important to you? Don’t overcomplicate it. It is not written in stone, and you can change it in the future if you want.

*Next, create a new routine to take five minutes early every morning to review your mission statement, to think about your day ahead, and focus on how what you are doing connects to your personal mission. Remind yourself of the important opportunity you have to make a difference each day.

*Ideally, you would build on this routine and add some specific goals for the year, quarter, and week that you see connecting to the mission and you would review those as well. I do this nearly every morning as a part of my meditation time and it helps me focus. I think of it as Rebooting Rob.

FOR YOUR TEAM:

*Suggest the above routine with your team (just forward this blog to them).

*Next, make sure every person on your team understands how their specific set of work responsibilities connects to the mission of your organization and helps make your collective organizational Mission Impact.

*Finally, add an agenda item to your regular staff meetings. When I was CEO at LeaderShape, someone on the staff suggested that we make “Mission-Vision Updates” the first agenda item for our weekly staff meetings. The idea was to encourage people to think of something cool that had happened in the past week that was a tangible example about how we were making a difference. We are all so busy working, working, working that we often don’t take the time to appreciate the difference we make. This was a nice way to call a “time out” and reflect on that. Also, it made each of us more aware of those moments when they happened – “Hey, this will be a cool thing to share on Monday morning.”

Even the most dedicated, committed person can lose focus and their sense of urgency from time to time. Use these ideas to help you and your team focus and make even more of a Mission Impact.

P. S. Yes – the Steelers did play with a “sense of urgency” last Sunday and Coach Tomlin even used those words in his press conference after the game. Now if we can just bring it again with the Cleveland Browns tonight that would be great!

Great Tools for Setting Outcomes

2011-11-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

I have been giving the same speech for about fifteen years on the importance of nonprofits setting outcome measures – both for programs and at the organizational level. When a Board asks itself “How do we know we are making a difference?” there needs to be some kind of reliable measure that provides the answer.

Inevitably, though, when I give this “speech” someone says “But for my organization it's really hard!” And they are right. It is more complex for some organizations than for others. Happily, we are seeing more tools come available to assist organizations. For example, a few weeks back I referenced Mario Morino’s new book, Leap of Reason, which is a great resource. Ten days ago at the annual nonprofit researchers' conference (ARNOVA) I got an update on two other web-based resources that I highly recommend.

From http:\\homelessoutcomes.org.uk

The first is a product of The Urban Institute and you can check out the beta version of it at www.oepp.org. OEPP stands for “Outcomes & Effective Practices Portal” and its purpose is to provide “practical knowledge that nonprofit professionals can use to manage their day-to-day performance. Information in the OEPP leverages research-based findings that have been synthesized and simplified by experts in the field. By providing information about program outcomes, effective practices, performance indicators and measurement tools to gauge performance, the OEPP helps nonprofit practitioners to deliver more effective social programs.” The Urban Institute has been a long time leader in nonprofit research and this is a great tool that will just continue to get better when it is officially launched in March.

The next tool is from The Foundation Center, another major leader in philanthropy. Their tool is at http://trasi.foundationcenter.org/ and is dubbed TRASI for “Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact.” It is “a searchable, expert-reviewed database of over 150 approaches to measuring the impact of social programs and investments. It also features a community portal for nonprofits, grantmakers, and social enterprises to connect with peers and evaluation experts.” TRASI was developed in partnership with McKinsey & Company and links to their “Learning for Social Impact" site at http://lsi.mckinsey.com/

This is great stuff. If you have been stumped on how to develop outcome measures, then check these out ASAP. Clarifying your outcome measures will make you more efficient and more effective in making a Mission Impact.

Give Your Strategy a Tune-up

2011-11-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

How are you going to pursue your vision and work toward accomplishing your mission? What is your strategy?

Your strategy is a collection of your answers to these three questions:

*What programs/services do we want to provide to make a Mission Impact?

*How will we staff our organization?

*How will we fund our organization?

The collective answers to these questions describe your strategy. But is it a “good” strategy? Here’s how you know:

First, how well do your answers to the above questions allow you to leverage your organization’s strengths, fortify your weaknesses, seize your opportunities, and block your threats? If not done well, you run the risk of being derailed by a weakness or threat -- or missing an opportunity you could seize with a strength.

And second, how well do your program plans, staff plans, and funding plans support one another? For example, does your funding plan provide enough resources to have the kind of staff and programs you need to make an impact? Look at each plan to see how well they are integrated.

Step back and evaluate your strategy according to these two criteria. If you aren’t happy with your answers, then maybe it is time to give your strategy a tune-up. Take another look each of the strategy questions and update your plans to make sure each plan supports the other and that you are addressing your SWOTs. Your tuned-up strategy will give you a better opportunity to make a Mission Impact.

The Basic Fundraising “Ask”

2011-11-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

It is a simplistic fundraising formula. But I am a simple-minded guy.

The three words I always make sure to keep in mind when I discuss a possible gift with a prospective donor are Problem, Opportunity, and Challenge. Though it is indeed a simplistic approach, I have found it to be very helpful. It keeps me on track during a fund-raising conversation. I have used it as a personal guide and I have taught it as a guide for others – especially for volunteer fundraisers. A conversation with someone about making a gift should be sure to cover:

Problem. This is where the Mission is discussed and it is the perfect place to discuss your organization’s Mission Gap – the unmet needs of those you serve. “You may not be aware of this, but . . . . . and insert your own explanation of your organization’s Mission Gap.” Example: “Twenty percent of the adults in our county are not literate.”

Opportunity. This is where you talk about your organization’s Vision. You explain what you are doing now, but you then paint a picture of what more you want to do so you can close that Mission Gap and meet those needs more effectively. “We have a dream that one day all adults in our community will be literate and we have programs that are proven to make a difference.”

Challenge. “We understand the Problem. And we have a Vision for what needs to be done to address it. Our Challenge is that we do not have the resources at this time to begin making that Vision a reality. Will you invest (insert your vision of their gift) to help us make that Vision come true for the benefit of those we serve?”

The nonprofit executives who do a lot of fundraising know that I am simplifying a lot here, but it is amazing to me how many people skip one or more of these basic steps.

There are many who chit chat and then go straight to the Challenge (“We need money!”) and ask for a gift. The prospective donor is not given the chance to understand the magnitude of the Problem and worse, they are not given an Opportunity to dream about helping to solve the problem.

Perhaps still worse, there are those who explain the Problem in excruciating detail and then go directly to Challenge, without discussing the hope of the Vision. Talk about a depressing conversation!

Vision provides opportunity. Vision provides hope. With Vision, we have a chance to make a difference. Creating an Aspirational Vision for an organization that can help close the Mission Gap is vital to any fundraising effort.

And as we all know, funding is needed by all organizations in order to make even more of a Mission Impact.

Drucker’s Five Important Questions

2011-10-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

The Nonprofit Strategy class I am teaching at Maryland was due to discuss SWOT analysis last night, so it has had me thinking about various assessment tools available for nonprofits.

Peter Drucker spent a great deal of time in his later years working on applications of his management ideas for nonprofits – or, as he called them – social sector organizations. One of the excellent products of that work is The Five Most Important Questions Self Assessment Tool. Through this workbook, Drucker takes an organization on a tour of his five most important questions:

*What is Our Mission?

*Who is Our Customer?

*What Does the Customer Value?

*What Are Our Results?

*What is Our Plan?

It’s much more than a self-assessment tool, however. It is really a guide to helping organizations think through their purpose and performance. Like most anything these days, the Drucker self-assessment tool is available for purchase on Amazon or from the Leader to Leader Institute which Drucker founded.

Clarity on Drucker’s five most important questions can be of great help to an organization as it designs its strategy and focuses attention on increasing its Mission Impact.

Improve Your “Tribe’s” Performance

2011-10-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

Interestingly enough, focusing your organization’s “tribe” on your values can actually lead to higher levels of performance. It makes sense when you think about it.

Imagine that an organization has clearly answered the questions “Why are we here? & What do we stand for?” – and that this is widely understood among the staff and key volunteers; your “tribe.” Establishing those values gives people something to connect with that is beyond our own self interest. This fulfills an important human need. It also gives more meaning to our day-to-day work that enhances productivity.

This idea is underscored in an excellent book, Tribal Leadership, which studies the cultural features of high performance organizations. FYI – a “tribe” is defined as any group of 20 – 150 people. Recently, I had a chance to interview one of the book’s authors, Dr. Dave Logan, in connection with a presentation I am giving next week. As we discussed Level Five “tribes” – those which are the highest performing – Dave said “Getting to Level Five is all about values. People are trying to make a difference and to make a mark that is bigger than who they are as individuals. They want to do something remarkable.”

Is your “tribe” clear on your organization’s values – why you exist and what you stand for? This would be a great thing to check in on during your next staff meeting. Figure out how to keep these values in the forefront of people’s minds. The more connected everyone is to your purpose and values, the greater Mission Impact you will make.

Ritz & Disney at Grandma’s House

2011-09-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

You need to take your seriously ill child out of town to a doctor that will give them the best care possible. Where do you stay?

If Grandma lived nearby it would be nice to stay with her, where you know you would have a loving and caring environment. But she doesn’t live there. It would be great to stay at a Ritz where you know you would have a high quality hotel room and world class customer service. But who has the money for that? After a long day of tests and treatments, it would be cool if your child could experience the magic of Disney when they arrive at their “home away from home” that night. But how could that be possible?

It’s all possible at Ronald McDonald House. “Ritz meets Disney meets Grandma’s house.” That’s how Sandy Pagnotti, Executive Director of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Baltimore, describes her vision of what the ideal “guest experience” would be for families at the “home away from home” that she, their staff, and their legion of volunteers provide.

It was my privilege to recently spend the day with Sandy and other leaders of the RMHC-Baltimore as they initiated their strategic planning process by creating an ideal vision for the organization. It was both thrilling and moving to hear the passion that Sandy and the Board leaders have for providing such a caring, magical, and high quality experience for kids and families who are going through such challenging times.

The RMHC – Baltimore is already a wonderful place for families and children; it is an inspiring place to visit. But the leaders there want it to be even better – more and better space, even more caring, more magic, and even better quality. They truly created a future vision in the spirit of “if we could have it any we wanted it.”

I am not sure how long it will take before the new space they are envisioning is ready with all of the added touches of Ritz, Disney, and Grandma’s House. But I can’t wait to visit. And it better happen soon. Sandy is so excited that “I don’t think I will be able to sleep!”

Ritz & Disney at Grandma’s House. That’s what I call making a Mission Impact.

Three ways that RMHC – Baltimore gets Vision Right:

*It’s from the Heart. The leaders asked themselves what they truly care about and how they want to make a difference.

*Its Bold. It is not a collection of ideas to make small improvements. It represents a “healthy disregard for the impossible.”

*Its Vivid. I can picture a kid arriving “home” after a day of tests with his frowns turning to smiles as he enters a warm and caring place where people know him, where he can have some fun, and where everything is done in a first class way.

How to Predict the Future

2011-09-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

Don’t try to predict it. Create the future!

Some people spend a lot of time and effort trying to predict the future. They study all kinds of data and trends to try to figure out what the future is going to look like. And then they create a vision and goals that they think will fit with their future prediction.

Instead, I suggest that organizations start by identifying their aspirations. I ask questions like:

*What would your organization be like if you could have it any way you wanted it?

* What difference do you want to make?

*What goals do you want to set to pursue those aspirations?

Use your answers to these questions to Create Your Future. Then do your analysis and see what is going on in the environment. Work to adapt the environment to your vision and goals. George Bernard Shaw once said that this approach is the source of all progress.

When you do your analysis, consider trying out Scenario Planning. While you cannot accurately predict the future, you can come up with some ideas of what the most likely future scenarios are for changes to your environment. Identify these and take some time to discuss what actions you will take so that you can prepare for each scenario ahead of time. If you are facing severe uncertainty about the future and feel you need a more advanced approach, check out the book 20/20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World, written by my friend and our Vice Dean at the Smith School of Business at Maryland, Hugh Courtney – a former McKinsey consultant.

Create a future vision for your organization and those you serve based on your aspirations and what you care about. And then do some analysis to help you to be best prepared to make even more of a Mission Impact.

Quick Tips from the book “Drive”

2011-09-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

“Carrots and sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21^st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose.”

That’s the “Twitter Summary” – provided by the author himself – of Daniel Pink’s most recent book, Drive. It’s a good summary, but here are my take-aways along with some of my interpretation added in.

Most organizations today are run like factories were 100 years ago. This is not a fit for today’s work or workforce. Pink argues that successful organizations today will seek to fulfill the intrinsic motivations of their workforce – what they care about.

To do this, organizations first have to be clear on what their purpose is. Why does the organization exist? For for-profit organizations it has to be a purpose bigger than making money. Then people need to see a connection between their personal purpose and the organization’s purpose. Leaders need to help people on their team draw these connections.

Next, people need to be given an opportunity to develop mastery in an arena of their work. For me, this is what the folks at Gallup have been saying for years about matching people into jobs where they can use their natural talents. You can read more about this in StrengthsFinder 2.0.

Finally, once people are working for an organization where they see they can advance their personal purpose and they have a job that fits their talents, let them loose and give them autonomy. A key here is to identify the results, the outcomes, that they person is responsible for producing. Pink gives examples of workplaces that have become ROWE organizations – Results-Only Work Environment. This is again consistent with the Gallup approach which you can read about in First, Break All the Rules and ways to set outcomes are also brilliantly explained in Doug Smith’s book, Make Success Measurable.

Focus your management efforts on connecting to people’s purpose, helping them develop mastery, and giving them autonomy. You will make even more of a Mission Impact this way.

So there’s a summary of one book you don’t have time to read and a suggestion of three more to read once you do make the time. Let me know what you think of any of these if you have read them!

Videotape Your Next Board Meeting

2011-08-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

Okay – I am kidding. But wouldn’t it be interesting to watch if you did? And instructive!

The football season is upon us. After every game, coaches and players huddle around TV monitors to carefully review videos of the game. “What did we do well that we need to keep doing? What did not work as well? How can we improve for the next game?” These are important questions for football teams – and also for Boards.

While videotaping a Board meeting may be unrealistic, there are other things you can do to regularly evaluate how well the Board is working as a “team.” One of my common recommendations is a Board Self-Assessment. BoardSource, a nonprofit which provides services to help nonprofit boards work more effectively, has a great self-assessment tool (http://bit.ly/pz352d) you can purchase so that Board members can provide their confidential input on how well things are going. The report provides summary data so that Board members can see what they think they are doing well and what they can improve upon.

If you don’t want to invest the money on a self-assessment tool (though it’s well worth it!), then at your next Board meeting ask this question of all Board members:

“What behaviors do we need to model, as Board members, so that our meetings run smoothly and we effectively carry out our responsibilities as a Board?”

Make a nice long list of those behaviors and then, importantly, pull the list out every now and then at the end of a Board meeting and take ten – fifteen minutes to ask one another: “How are we doing? What’s working well? What’s not working? How can we make what’s not working, work?”

This list of ideal Board behaviors will help you to work together more effectively and it’s a great thing to share with new Board members during orientation.

A more effective Board helps an organization run more effectively. Try some kind of Board Self-Assessment sometime soon and help your organization make even more of a Mission Impact.

A Cool Tool

2011-08-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

It’s free, it’s been out for about ten years, and yet I think it is still a tremendously underutilized resource. It is the McKinsey/VPP Organization Capacity Assessment Tool. To download your free copy, go to: http://www.vppartners.org/learning/mckinsey-vpp-ocat

The OCAT was developed by consulting experts McKinsey & Company for Venture Philanthropy Partners as a diagnostic to help nonprofits review their operations and identify areas for improvement. You can use it for:

*SWOT Analysis. I find that SWOT analysis is often not very rigorous. Ask your staff, board, and other stakeholders to complete the tool as part of identifying your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats. It will give you a much more reliable way to assess your capabilities.

*General Management. I tell people that if I was still a CEO I would keep a copy of the OCAT in my desk drawer and pull it out quarterly to monitor progress on various items. It gives you an objective tool to monitor your progress.

*Teaching Organization Effectiveness. Part of our job as senior leaders is to help people understand what it takes to be excellent. I suggest using the OCAT in orientation of new employees as a way to say: “This is a picture of excellence – and we are pursuing high scores in every area the tool assesses so we can make even more of an impact. You have joined a team committed to excellence.”

I have used the OCAT in numerous courses I have taught for nonprofit executives and they always comment about how helpful it is. I have also used it in many consulting engagements – both for strategic planning and for general management improvement. The best thing about the tool is that it often uncovers weaknesses that are not obvious to senior leaders in an organization.

One outstanding aspect of the OCAT is that it is thorough. I was talking with a group of consultants a couple of years ago who told me that their clients complained that the OCAT was too long and time consuming. My response was: “Organizations are complex and a thorough tool is needed to assess them. Also, my clients aren’t wimps and don’t mind doing the hard work needed to achieve excellence!” Okay, maybe I went a bit too far there.

Check out the OCAT, see what it tells you about your organization and the improvements you can make to enhance your Mission Impact.

Your Leadership Pipeline

2011-08-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

Next week I will be teaching a two day course on Leadership Succession for NeighborWorks America (www.nw.org) in Atlanta. A few years ago the leaders at NeighborWorks – a national network of organizations which work to provide affordable housing across the country – realized that their local organizations needed to be prepared for the inevitable retirements of Baby Boomers. They asked me to create a course as one way to help their organizations to be prepared for this big change.

Is your organization prepared for this? It might hit you sooner than you think. A recent study by The Meyer Foundation and CompassPoint, entitled “Daring to Lead” (http://daringtolead.org/) found that 67% of the nonprofit CEOs surveyed said that they plan to leave their jobs within the next five years.

And this is not just an issue for CEOs. Baby Boomer retirements will hit organizations at many senior levels. The first Baby Boomers, born in 1946, are turning sixty-five this year. The retirement wave will start slowly at first, and then cascade upon us. We had about 3.4 million births in the US in 1946 – an increase of more than 20% from the year before. That number kept growing until it hit 4 million per year in 1954 and did not fall below that until 1964 – the end of the Boom. That is a ton of senior leadership in organizations – and vast institutional knowledge – that will be leaving the workplace.

What should you do to prepare? I suggest you do two important things:

*Talking about the possible departure of a CEO or any leader can be a touchy subject. I recommend that organizations dip their toes in the water on this topic by making sure they have a well thought out “Emergency Transition” plan what would be implemented when any senior leader unexpectedly cannot perform their duties – either for the short term or long term. This will get the organization thinking about succession and is simply good business practice. The people at Transition Guides have a nice template I recommend in their Emergency Succession Planning Workbook (http://www.transitionguides.com/publications).

*Next, and most importantly, invest in the development of your staff team! This is a difficult thing for some organizations to justify when budgets are so tight, but I will suggest that there has never been a more important time to make sure that you are developing your leadership pipeline. The younger people on your staff are going to be called upon sooner than you think to step up – and they need developmental opportunities now to help prepare them.

Make sure that your organization will have the leadership it needs to make a Mission Impact in the future by preparing for change and investing in Your Leadership Pipeline.

Mission, Vision, Money

2011-07-26T02:46:00.000-07:00

Last week I was asked to serve as the opening speaker for the Major Gifts track at a nonprofit fundraising conference. In summary, I said that an aspirational Mission & Vision are the pathways to Money. In fact, this is the most important path to take if you want to raise BIG money for your nonprofit.

Mission. The aspect of Mission I encourage nonprofits to focus on is identifying their Mission Gap. Mission Gap is essentially a statement of unmet mission needs. It compares the current reality of those you serve with what their ideal condition would be. For example, if your mission was to eliminate illiteracy in your county, then you would want to know your current reality – how many people are currently not literate. You would compare that to your ideal of everyone being literate. If your county matches the national average, then 20% of the adults there are not literate. If you had a county of 100,000 adults, then your Mission Gap would be 20,000 people. Mission Gap gives you a clear way to communicate the stark challenges your organization faces. Instead of asking for incremental improvements in funding to help a few more people read, you can say “We have 20,000 people in our county who cannot read. It’s a big number and we need your big time support to close the gap.”

Vision. Create a Vision – an ideal picture of what your organization would be like – if you could have it any way you wanted it, so you could close the Mission Gap as effectively as possible. In the literacy example above, we would want to know what kind of capacity the organization would need in order to close the Mission Gap. What would your programs, staffing, budget, etc. look like if you were ideally positioned to close that gap most effectively?

Money. Put a price tag on the Vision. “We have excellent programs that teach people how to read – but we need more programs to reach many, many more people. Here’s what we think it is going to take, ideally, to close the illiteracy gap in our community as effectively as we can. (Describe Vision & Price Tag.) Will you help us close the illiteracy gap by making a $10,000 gift to our annual fund today?”

Mission Gap helps articulate the problem your organization is working to solve and an aspirational Vision can inspire donors to make major gifts which contribute to the solution. Money feeds the Vision and that helps close the Mission Gap. Share your Mission Gap & Vision with others and make even more of a Mission Impact.

“We’re Lost But Making Good Time”

2011-07-14T02:34:00.000-07:00

This is the title of Chapter One of Mario Morino’s new book, Leap of Reason. I know that most of you don’t have the time to read a blog much less a book, but I strongly recommend it. He makes a compelling case for the urgency, now, for nonprofits to change the way most operate. As he states: “Here’s the problem in a nutshell: We don’t manage to outcomes, thus greatly diminishing our collective impact.”

“We’re Lost But Making Good Time.” What a great chapter title – and it is fitting. So many nonprofits are filled with dedicated, smart, and hard-working people – staff and volunteers – and yet they do not have metrics which objectively tell them how well they are accomplishing their mission. They know they are busy – making good time – but what kind of progress are they making? If you have attended one of my workshops or read my book you know that I make the same case of the importance of metrics to determine your Mission Impact.

Many of you reading this know who Mario Morino is – a generous philanthropist and co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners (www.vppartners.org), which provides funding for organizations serving the needs of children from low income families in the Washington, DC area. So he is a person who knows of what he speaks.

If you are someone who believes that your organization needs to do a better job establishing outcomes, then this is the book for you. It will help you rally others to help with this and it will give you excellent resources to do the hard work of setting your outcomes.

To get the book, go to http://www.vppartners.org/leapofreason/getit

When I checked the other day, Amazon was out of print copies, but you can buy the Kindle version for $1.00 (that’s not a typo). Even better, it is available as an iBook or a PDF at no charge.

Full disclosure – Mr. Morino lists my book, Mission Impact: Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, as one of six “resources that address how to drive change, improve effectiveness, and achieve greatness.” I am pleased to have my book listed along with resources by Jim Collins and John Kotter.

Get yourself a copy of Leap of Reason today and learn how your organization can make even more of a Mission Impact.

How Are You Listening?

2011-07-06T02:40:00.001-07:00

Do you want to be an empowering leader and colleague? Then I suggest you monitor how you listen to others. Notice I am saying “how” you listen, not “how well.”

There are two general categories of how you can listen to people. You can “listen to respond” or “listen to understand.”

When you “listen to respond,” it is like you are in a debate. You listen for the flaws in the other person’s ideas or a potential weakness that you can exploit to show that you are right and they are wrong. A person who “listens to respond” is not really interested in what the other person cares about or in what they have to say. They are interested in arguing their point and being right.

When you “listen to understand,” you sincerely want to hear the other person’s ideas. You care about them and what they have to say. You listen for something new, different, and/or better than what you had thought of on your own. You want to understand them. Once they have shared their thoughts with you, you may well follow-up with some questions to clarify and deepen your understanding of what they were saying. This doesn’t mean that you need to agree with their ideas or perspectives; you are just making sure you “get them.” You are interested in learning and deepening your understanding of the topic being discussed.

“Listening to understand” is the kind of listening that is the cornerstone of transformational leadership. This is the kind of leadership that can transform organizations and communities, as explained by James MacGregor Burns in his book “Leadership.” Better ideas are generated in this type of dialogue and people develop deeper relationships with one another in the process. They each feel empowered and more committed to the cause they are serving.

One more thing – you can’t fake “listening to understand” any more than you can fake any kind of sincerity. If you don’t legitimately care what the other person has to say then your responses will just sound like karaoke sincerity.

We all want to be heard! Pay extra attention to how you listen today and see if it makes a difference.

The Power of Constructive Conflict

2011-06-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

When I teach seminars on teamwork, I usually break people into small groups and give them a few minutes to come up with what they think are the five most important aspects of a high performing team. What would you say?

Usually groups come up with lots of good ideas, but almost never do they list the importance of “constructive conflict.” Yet, the research on teamwork tells us this is a very important ingredient for a high performing team. Why?

Imagine this. A team is having a meeting and “Billy Bob” has an idea. “Sally Mae” thinks it is a bad idea, but not so bad that she wants to “rock the boat.” She doesn’t say anything, the idea does not work, and it wastes a lot of time and money. This happens every day in organizations and bad ideas get implemented because someone won’t speak up.

Or maybe it goes down like this . . . . . Billy Bob’s next idea is SO bad that Sally Mae can’t stand it. “Billy Bob, that is an idiotic idea. Are you trying to destroy this organization!?!?” And that’s what we call negative conflict – and you have seen the results of that.

What is needed is a “norm” of valuing constructive conflict and developing a team competency to disagree without being disagreeable; to collaborate and create better ideas together. The lack of constructive conflict leads to mediocre or even disastrous decisions. It can lead to “Groupthink” which has been blamed for causing such tragedies as the Challenger explosion.

I’m oversimplifying (it’s a blog), but here’s the advice: don’t be overly polite, but don’t be a jerk, and don’t get upset if someone respectfully critiques your idea.

How do you develop the competency of “constructive conflict” within your organization?

Of course you could hire a great consultant to come in and do a workshop for you. But if you want to try something on your own, I suggest buying the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni for everyone. Lencioni’s formula for a high performing team, which is backed up by the research, is:

*They trust one another

*They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas

*They commit to decisions and plans of action

*They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.

*They focus on the achievement of collective results

Bring your team together and ask these questions: Based on what the book says about teamwork:

*What are we doing well?

*What’s not working?

*How can we make what’s not working, work?

This will give you the beginning of a dialogue that you will have to reinforce over time to develop the competency of constructive conflict and the other four competencies. Over time you can develop your group into an even higher performing team.

Try it for your next off site or summer staff retreat and practice disagreeing . . . without being disagreeable. It will help your team make even more of a mission impact.

The Four Fundamental Questions

2011-06-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

If you want focused, effective, coordinated action from the people in your organization, then every one of them should be able to answer these four fundamental questions:

*Why are we here?

*What do we stand for?

*Where are we going?

*How are we going to get there?

Why are we here? This is the mission question. But we don’t need to make people memorize the mission statement. It’s much more important that everyone can, in their own words, explain the impact your organization intends to make and for whom. Invite people to practice doing this with one another at your next staff meeting. It will help them the next time someone they meet asks what you do.

What do we stand for? If you don’t have a list of articulated values of your organization, then add this to your “to do” list. But don’t just check the box when you are done and file them away. Regularly – maybe quarterly – refer to them and ask one another how well your organization is living up to them. How well have you navigated the inevitable ethical challenges that have come along?

Where are we going? Can everyone state the organization’s most important goals for the coming year, and for the next five years? And what about your vision for the future? Have people been given a chance to share their dreams and contribute to creating a shared vision for the organization? Allowing people to participate in crafting the future of their organization can help develop a more empowered team.

How are we going to get there? This is, of course, the strategy question and most people in most organizations cannot articulate this. Writing in Harvard Business Review in 2008, Collins & Rutland made this observation:

“Leaders of firms are mystified when what they thought was a beautifully crafted strategy is never implemented. . . . They fail to appreciate the necessity of having a simple, clear, succinct strategy statement that everyone can internalize and use as a guiding light for making difficult choices.”

Make the four questions a topic for your next staff meeting or go even deeper on them at your summer staff retreat. The questions are also a great topic for employee orientation. When everyone can clearly answer these questions you have a much greater chance of coordinating action and making even more of a mission impact.

The 7th Deadly Sin of Nonprofit Strategy: “Not Ambitious Enough”

2011-06-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

A strategy and its associated goals and plans should be focused on a vision that is big, bold, and inspiring.

Many strategies are based simply on an analytical forecast of the way things are currently headed. How dull. It was Goethe who said:

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

In his presidential run, Robert Kennedy used to quote George Bernard Shaw at the end of his speeches:

“Some men see things as they are and say ‘why,’ I dream of things that never were and say ‘why not.’”

The way to tap into dreams is through Vision. One of the very important steps in the strategy process I use is for a nonprofit to focus on its commitment to fulfilling its unmet mission needs (aka Mission Gap) and then dream about what the organization would look like in an ideal state – so that it could close its Mission Gap as effectively as possible.

We need to let people dream these big, bold visions. They want to be inspired by something. Ask your stakeholders about their dreams. Ask them what your organization would look like if they could have it any way they wanted it – so they could make even more of a difference for those they serve.

Ask, listen, share your own dreams – and create a vision with others that inspires you all.

I am often told that this approach to dreaming an ideal is a totally unreasonable way to go about creating a strategy. When I am told that, I enthusiastically agree! And then I share another quote by George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in attempting to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

We need big, “unreasonable” visions because – face it – we are trying to solve big, challenging problems. And incremental improvement is just not satisfactory. Not for me, at least. Whether your passion is providing affordable housing, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, or something else – we need organizations to build capacity to address these needs.

Doing this is important because vision – based on the opportunity to close a Mission Gap effectively – drives strategy. And it ignites the “out of the box” thinking that everyone talks about.

Resist the temptation to create a vision you are sure you can achieve. And remember the words of Nelson Mandela:

“Your playing small does not serve the world.”

The 6th Deadly Sin of Nonprofit Strategy: “No Annual Review”

2011-05-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

A major complaint about strategic planning is that it is not worthwhile because no one can predict the future – so why try to set a five year strategy? People who think this way don’t understand strategy correctly.

A strategy should not attempt to tell you specifically what you will “do” during the second week of the tenth month of the third year of the strategy time frame. That would be kind of goofy, right? And yet, when some people hear “strategic plan,” that’s what they think.

As I said in my last blog “a strategy is a general explanation of how you are going to guide your organization’s performance into the future – from here to there. It includes ‘themes’ the organization is going to follow, not exact detailed plans.”

But this explanation is based on certain assumptions you make. And the strategy is also based on your understanding of your internal and external environments – as captured in your SWOTs (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Therefore, an organization needs to regularly monitor its assumptions and its SWOTs for significant changes. This needs to happen at least annually in a formal way. And senior leaders in organizations need to be thinking about these things on a regular basis.

What if assumptions prove to be incorrect or the SWOTs change significantly? Call a time out! It is unlikely that there have been enough changes in the environment that you need to totally revisit your mission and vision. You may need to adjust some of your goals. But then you should rework your SWOTs to see if the strategy you had set still works. If not, then make a new strategy! A strategy is not set in stone.

The other thing to check regularly is your performance on your mission metrics. If your strategy is not providing you with improved results, then – once again – call a time out. Re-examine what you are doing. If you think that you have given the strategy enough of a chance and it is not working, then you need a new strategy.

My favorite story about this is when I was doing some research on Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The group I was studying was very clear on their metrics – they were (and are) committed to reducing the number of deaths from drunk driving crashes. They had a strategy in place and they were following it. But after two years the results were not what they wanted. “What did you do?” I asked. “We called a ‘time out’ and got everyone together to make a new strategy. If the drunk driving death numbers are not going down as fast as we want then we need a new strategy.” Indeed, if the strategy is not producing results then you need a new strategy. These MADD leaders adjusted their strategy and the numbers started going down faster. Of course an organization can only do this if it has done the hard work necessary to design those mission metrics.

No one can see into the future when developing a strategy. And we don’t have to. All we can do is make certain assumptions that we check regularly.

The final deadly sin will be out soon: “Not Ambitious Enough”