Management via Panic

I knew a manager once who liked to start the day with her team by saying “What’s on fire!?!”  It was said enthusiastically, expectantly – almost hopefully.

There is a certain “jazz” that some people get from addressing an “emergency” situation.  But trying to “motivate” your team on a regular basis by inflicting panic on them is not a winning management style.

Unless you work in a real ER, then your “normal” days should not be filled with managing one panic situation after another.  If there is too much panic in your work life, then here are some possible causes and solutions:

*Over-reacting to non-urgent issues.  People will bring you issues that they think are urgent.  Don’t fall for this every time.  Take a few minutes to carefully evaluate the situation.  Many times the best response is “I understand, but this can wait.”  Sometimes these issues actually resolve themselves in time.

*Poor systems & SOPs.  This is such a common problem and takes discipline to fix.  Budget time to create Standard Operating Procedures and train staff on them.  Common breakdowns in the system need to be studied and addressed with new procedures.  The causes of constant panic are often systemic.

*Panicy Bosses.  You need to learn how to manage your boss.  The first step is having an agreement with your boss on the most important priorities that you should be working on.  When your boss brings you an “urgent” issue, then make sure to respond positively.  But then make sure that she/he understands the tradeoff involved and how it will impact the other work that the two of you agreed was a high priority.  Let’s face it, sometimes you can negotiate this and sometimes you cannot.

The problem with constant “fire drills” is that it does not give us time to give the thoughtful consideration needed to successfully address the significant, thorny challenges that face organizations today.  And it certainly does not provide time for any strategic thinking.

To learn more, a great book on how to devote more of your time to important issues (vs. regular “panic”) is Steven Covey’s First Things First.

Good luck devoting more time to important matters and less to panic!  As you do this you will definitely be making more of a Mission Impact.

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.

Leadership is Fragile

I am blogging today from Columbus, OH, home of one of my alma maters, The Ohio State University.  Later today I will be doing a one day workshop based on the Mission Impact book entitled “Clearing Hurdles to Innovation & Strategy” for about sixty-five nonprofit executives from Central Ohio.

 Usually when I visit here, the buzz is about football or basketball.  But not today.  The buzz is all about the recent announcement of the retirement of the incredibly popular Ohio State President Dr. E. Gordon Gee.  In case you are one of the few people on the planet who have not heard about the recent controversy surrounding Dr. Gee, negative comments he made about other universities at a meeting of Big Ten presidents and athletic directors back in December recently became public.  Depending on your perspective, the comments were either “unfortunate attempts at humor” or “mean spirited.”  Regardless, they factored into his decision to retire.

Dr. Gee is an incredible leader.  I had the opportunity to meet him when he first became President in September 1990 and I was a Ph.D. student at Ohio State – he is an amazing, charismatic leader.  He has led the university impressively and with impact.  He has thousands of fans in the Buckeye world.  TIME magazine named him the most outstanding President of a university in 2010.

And yet, these comments helped to bring him down.  What can we learn from this?

Leadership is fragile.

I recently read where someone said:

“Every time you do something good as a leader, it’s like you put a pebble in your pocket.  And when you do something bad, you take a pebble out.  As a leader, you need to keep pebbles in your pocket, so people will follow you.”

This advice is incorrect in one important way.  Doing something good, does “give you a pebble.”  But doing something bad can cut your pocket open and all the pebbles will fall out.  We have certainly seen this with other public leaders (e.g., Eliot Spitzer among many others) whose acts are far, far, more egregious than Dr. Gee’s.

If we want to lead others – or causes – we need to be ever vigilant to monitor our behaviors and censor actions which can cause the loss of our credibility.  Otherwise, we will be unable to help make the Mission Impact to which we are committed.  Leadership is fragile.

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.

When More Duct Tape Won’t Do It

A number of years ago I was flying to Rockland, Maine with a couple friends and we needed to take a small puddle jumper for the final leg of the trip.  Before we took off, the pilot got out a ladder and went over to the wing near the window where we were sitting.  Then he pulled out some duct tape and applied it to something we could not see on top of the wing.

Duct tape as a “fix” to the wing of an airplane?  We kind of shrugged at each other, the plane took off, and we landed safely.  Over drinks later, however, we decided it was really dumb to not at least have asked what was going on!

How often does this happen in organizations?

My good friend, Dr. Gerald Suarez, has a favorite comment when discussing organization dysfunction: “They are tinkering with an unstable system!”

I love it.  “Tinkering with an unstable system.”  So often that is what happens in organizations!

Here’s how to avoid it.

Create a vision for your organization in its ideal state – describe what it would it look like, right now, if your resources were unlimited and you had no obstacles to making it happen.  Dr. Russ Ackoff used to call this an “Idealized Design.”

Once you have your “ideal” in mind then move toward that.  Rather than fixing problems with bailing wire and duck tape when they arise, develop new systems, programs, and processes that take you toward the “ideal” you have invented.  It's the difference between being proactive and reactive. 

If you do this, you will stop “tinkering” and begin taking your organization toward a future where you can make even more of a Mission Impact.

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.

"Now Let's Go Fail"

I have heard six different commencement speeches during the past couple of days.  They were all very good, but the best one was from an undergraduate student (now a new graduate) from the Smith School of Business at Maryland, Manas Kulkarni.

The theme of Manas’ message was “Now Let’s Go Fail.”  You can hear the entire speech at this link and fast forward to the 54 minute mark.

Some of the great thoughts and sound bites:

*Failure is not necessarily the opposite of success

*Failure and Success are “two points on the same learning curve”

*Failure can help accelerate success

*We should actively try and fail – this is a means to achieving and appreciating success

*When we embrace and understand failures, we can use the understanding to seize success

About a year ago a wrote this blog entitled “We Celebrate Noble Failure.”  But I like the way Manas says it even better.  We need to transform our relationship with failure if we are going to innovate and achieve even higher levels of Mission Impact for those we serve.

In a few weeks, Manas will start his new job with Teach for America in San Francisco where he will be teaching math to kids in the inner city.  I have no doubt that he will experience failures, but I am totally confident that he will be a great success – and those children he teaches will be the great beneficiaries of that success.  Good luck Manas!

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.

Should Nonprofits Run Like a Business?

As a professor in a business school who is a former nonprofit CEO and consultant to nonprofits, I am often asked: “Should a nonprofit be run like a business?

Easy answer, “No.”

A nonprofit should be run like effective nonprofits are run. 

However . . . . .

There is a lot we – in the nonprofit world – can learn from business best practices.  Far too many nonprofit executives dismiss many “business practices” because they think that nearly everything businesses do is “tainted” by the profit motive, and therefore “wrong.”

This is short-sighted thinking.  We can study business best practices and then figure out if and how they fit the nonprofit world.  Some may not fit.  But plenty practices fit perfectly.

How about the importance of making data driven decisions, or managing our finances effectively, or using sound human resources practices?  This is just a short list of business best practices – but they are also nonprofit best practices.

Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk, “The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong,” (check out the link here) in which he encourages the use of business thinking for the nonprofit world, is going viral in the nonprofit world lately.  I don’t agree with everything he says, but he is rattling a lot of cages and getting people to rethink some key assumptions. 

Don’t assume that all business practices are wrong for nonprofits.  The whole concept behind the Mission Impact book was to take business best practice in the area of strategy and retrofit it for nonprofits.  We can learn a lot from businesses and – as I frequently tell my business friends – they can learn a lot from us as well.

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.