by Susan Detwiler | Oct 9, 2014 | leadership, nonprofit
Ahh, the glorious feeling of looking at the month after next on your calendar and seeing whole empty days. How easy it is to be magnanimous and say “yes†when asked to take on a job that isn’t due for two m
onths. So we say “yes,†and put it on the calendar. When another someone asks us to do something in the future, we again check our calendar, see that it’s still pretty empty, and again say “yes.†This happens a few more times, and all of a sudden, the 1st week in December starts looking pretty full.
Then as December 1 approaches, all the things we want to accomplish – long term projects, researching new programs, reading for professional development – have to get squeezed into the unscheduled times, alongside putting out the inevitable fires that weren’t anticipated, calling our parents, and taking our kid to the doctor.
If we’d scheduled the projects, research and professional development, then that week wouldn’t have looked so free. We might have more carefully evaluated the request, and said ‘no’ to some of them, in order to have time to accomplish our own long term goals.
Almost everyone experiences this phenomenon. Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist who wrote Predictably Irrational, found it so common that he created the mobile app Timeful to help manage making time for the important things in life and work. In Ariely’s words,
“Because of the ways calendars are created, people actually take more meetings than they should… We have this satisfaction of having our calendar seem busy. We have the satisfaction of not saying ‘no’ to things. But at the same time, we’re chasing away things that are important to us for things that are unimportant.â€
When you add together the many individuals on a board or in a department, the problem gets compounded. We all know whole departments and companies that fill their time with tasks and meetings, leaving all the workers wondering if they’ve actually accomplished anything. Similarly, nonprofit boards of directors are often left wondering why their strategic plans are never accomplished.
A strategic plan without concrete, timed, scheduled milestones is a wish list.
Several organizations I’ve worked with want to build a stronger board. The sequence goes like this:
In 2012, they stated that by the year 2015 we’ll have a stronger, more diverse board, representative of the community.
In 2014, they determine that by 2017 we’ll have a stronger board, representative of the community.
In 2016, are they going to say that by 2019 we’ll have a stronger, more diverse board, representative of the community?
Probably. Unless they schedule the time to think through what it will take to make that shift. Then schedule the time to execute each step on that newly planned path.
We all have the best intentions in the world to accomplish our strategic plans. Yet without putting them on the calendar, those planned goals are going to get squeezed out by the so-easily scheduled meetings, the inevitable fires, and the daily tasks that we take for granted and therefore forget that they take time.
Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence and A Passion for Excellence is famous for the dictum, “What’s measured gets done.† Back in business school, I learned this phrase as a component of Managing by Objective or MBO, which requires that these critical questions be answered:
What are you planning to do?
Who will be in charge?
By when will it be accomplished?
The problem is that MBO leaves out the step of scheduling the time to actually work on it. There is still room for procrastination. Even if the objective is accomplished, nothing keeps it from being done at the last minute or squeezed into inconvenient half-hour chunks of time around scheduled meetings. The result is frenetic or burned-out workers and volunteers.
After a recent strategic planning session, a participant approached me and said that it was one of the most intense sessions she’d ever been part of. She really felt that they had the path forward. She said the biggest difference was that they actually set completion dates for every activity, and scheduled when they would work on it.
On the two hour drive home, I remembered Ariely’s column about personal planning. In an aha moment, I realized that while setting milestones may get activities accomplished, it’s:
acknowledging that those milestones exist,
keeping them in front us, and
scheduling the time to accomplish them,
that makes the plan realistic.
Scheduling the time in which to accomplish the milestones forces you to acknowledge that accomplishing these goals will take time. It makes it a lot easier to say ‘no’ to another idea that would divert your time away from the agreed upon goal.
What gets measured gets done. True. What gets scheduled gets done more sanely.
If we don’t plan our own future with things that matter to us, then we relinquish our future to the obligations of others.
Will your plan be accomplished on time? Will your board and staff stay sane in the process? Let me know what you think! Post them here or you can reach me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.
by Susan Detwiler | Sep 9, 2014 | governance, innovation, leadership, nonprofit
With the start of school, education gets a lot of attention. Keeping up with the sector means perusing the legislative, governance and financial news. It also means listening to the people on the frontlines.
While scanning an education site, I was struck by how closely classroom management lessons match the latest in governance wisdom. Those values we learned in grade school have a great impact on the way our boards work together – if we actually bring those values to our nonprofit.
On the first day of school, this grade school teacher* introduced to her class “Six things sixth graders say:â€
I don’t know….YET. In the context of nonprofit board work, are we able to recognize that we don’t know everything, and there is much we can learn? How does that recognition affect our interaction with staff, clients, the community, our peers?
I’ll give it a try. Even if things are going well, perhaps doing something new will be even better. Innovation is key to avoiding stagnation. Are the members of our board open to trying something we’ve never tried before?
Oooh! A Challenge! When things are difficult, do we fall back or step forward? Do we cocoon, or is our board willing to explore the limits of our abilities? Do we reach out to others who may have the resources to help?
Let’s figure this out together. Science has shown that cooperation and trust among team members foster better results. On a board, cooperation allows each person to contribute his or her particular expertise. Do our trustees cooperate and collaborate?
Of course, I’ll help!  Sometimes extraordinary times require extraordinary effort from staff, board and volunteers. Do our trustees see themselves as integral to the success of the mission, and personally take steps to ensure that success?
Thank you.  Quality of life is proven to improve if we recognize that we have something to be grateful for. Of all the reasons to serve on a board, the opportunity to say thank you by helping others is one of the most powerful. Do we each come to our board work with an attitude of gratitude for the work of others and the opportunity to fulfill the mission?
These are simple statements, but science has proven each to be important components to success. I’ve seen innovation, gratitude, and cooperation create successful teams in organizations as diverse as arts, education and social sciences. I’ve also seen the price paid when trustees forgot them.
Think future! Building these attitudes into regular board meetings fuels dynamic discussions that focus on what you can do, instead of what you can’t.
*Special thanks to Aliza Chanales of Yeshivat Noam, for permission to repost her “Six Things Sixth Graders Say†in the context of nonprofit governance.
What are your experiences in building the right attitudes among your board members? Pass them on! Post them here or you can reach me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.
by Susan Detwiler | Aug 24, 2014 | Uncategorized
Whether or not your board acts like a team may actually depend on whether you’ve told them they are.
There’s great research out now that proves that teams are more productive when they’re told they’re working together. In the research, small groups of people met, were then separated and each individual was given tasks to complete. Individuals in one group (the “Together†group) were told they were working together, though they remained physically separated. Individuals who met in the other group were given the same tasks, but were not told they were working together. In each case, the participant was given a hint or clue to help them perform the tasks. Those in the “Together†group were told it came from another member of the group. Those in the other group were told it ca
me from staff.
The individuals from the “Together†group not only did better than the individuals in the other group, but they stayed at the tasks 48% longer, solved more of the tasks, and found the tasks more interesting. In other words, just being told that they were working “together†created an environment in which they were more motivated and more engaged in the task at hand.
In the words of Heidi Grant Halvorson
“The word “together†is a powerful social cue to the brain. In and of itself, it seems to serve as a kind of relatedness reward, signaling that you belong, that you are connected, and that there are people you can trust working with you toward the same goal.â€
As other research has shown, human beings are just naturally social. We have been bred over millennia to be attuned to others. Even when we believe ourselves to be introverts, we want to know that there are others out there to whom we can relate in our own way.
That’s why, when we bring new members onto a board of directors, it is understandable that there is an initial feeling of uncertainty. The other members have a shared history. There are references to previous decisions and previous board members. Shortening the time it takes to overcome these feelings of alienation increases the likelihood that board service will be a positive experience. Introducing new board members by emphasizing that they will be working together with the rest of the team can accelerate building new relationships.
This also holds true for existing board members. Each board discussion and each board decision should explicitly be made “together.†References to working together for the sake of the institution or the mission reinforces the importance of each individual role in building success.
What are your experiences in bringing board members together? Pass them on! Post them here or you can reach me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.
by Susan Detwiler | Aug 6, 2014 | innovation, leadership, nonprofit
I have mixed thoughts about innovation. As much as I tell boards and organizations to be open to innovation, there are risks.
Henry Ford is famous for saying, “If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses.†There’s no evidence that he really said that, but the message is clear and was reiterated by Steve Jobs. Jobs actually did say: “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.â€
The lesson is that innovation comes from an isolated genius; that people don’t know what they want.
But this father knows best attitude flies directly in the face of so much else we get through received wisdom: build relationships; engage the people to find out who they are, what they like, and what they want; build consensus to agree on a vision and work together to achieve it.
Are these actually in conflict?
No. Sometimes you need one. Sometimes you need the other. As Patrick Vlaskovits says in the 2011 Harvard Business Review post, Henry Ford may have innovated, but then he continued to ignore his customers. By not listening to them, he lost out on the market as others, who did listen, built an incremental market beyond Ford’s initial dominance.
Innovation isn’t only the province of the commercial market. If you see a way to radically address a problem in society, go for it. But the paternalism of Ford and Jobs isn’t going to cut it. People may not be able to ‘blue-sky’ what they want – they may still ask for faster horses – but they almost certainly can tell you how your great innovation will work in the real world.
If you want to envision a radically different world – or figure out how to react to the changes you’re already encountering – let’s talk. You can reach me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.
by Susan Detwiler | Jul 22, 2014 | fundraising, governance, leadership, mission, nonprofit
*Big Hairy Audacious Goal
I’m a really big advocate for starting any project with a Vision.
Where’s your horizon?
What do you need to get there?
What steps do you have to take?
Sometimes, though, even the steps to get there require a lot of little steps first. This is especially true when the people involved haven’t experienced much success.
That’s a pitfall of focusing on the Big Hairy Audacious Goal. As proposed by Jim Collins, et al, the BHAG is important for inspiring the troops. I agree, our BHAG – our Vision – is the horizon to which we are pointing all our efforts.
However, when the troops are downtrodden or haven’t worked together in the past, they may not have the self-confidence or a level of trust to focus on an audacious goal. In this case, small successes pave the way.
I watched this in action at a private school with an aging, authoritarian founder. The board of this school is hand selected by the founder and will not take a step without his approval. This founder does not let anyone but himself meet with those he considers major donors. The school is viewed as his school; a cult of personality.
The obvious question is whether the school will continue much beyond the founder’s life. Or rather, the question was obvious to everyone except, it seemed, the founder.
I met with a handful of lay leaders who knew they had to find a way to build supporters with a loyalty to the school, not just to the founder. They also knew the founder would resist every step of the way.
A Big Hairy Audacious Goal for this group would be for the school to have a true governing board, with a succession plan for the founder, deep and broad relationships with existing donors, and plans for growing the image of the school distinct from the founder.
That’s quite a BHAG. But the initial need was to inspire the confidence needed to act without the founder’s permission.
We began with just meeting to discuss the issues. It may have seemed like nothing happened, but the mere fact that the meetings were being held began the process of instilling confidence in the actors and a trust in each other. Having meetings about board and school issues without the founder was a huge step.
Discussions revolved around ways to engage prospective supporters and advocates without relying on the founder. They knew that trying to wrestle existing supporters from his stewardship would cause a head-on collision. Instead, they sought ways to expand the circle. It took six months to get to the point of reaching out to potential supporters, yet those six months of meeting for a shared purpose served to build confidence.
Although certain the new ideas were unnecessary, the founder was willing to let the lay group reach prospective supporters outside his circle. After persevering, they reached one high-profile but previously unappreciated individual who became convinced of the group’s sincerity, the value of the school, and ultimately, the value of their BHAG. Together, he and the lay leaders crafted a process that used his influence to approach the founder and reinforce the goals of the group.
As I write this, there are still many steps to take. The culture is slowly changing. The founder is still reluctant to release the reins, but he has accepted that change is needed.
I don’t know if this school will be able to make all the necessary changes. However, I do know that without first building self-confidence in the lay leaders, they would not be in a position to make any changes at all.
Have you encountered boards reluctant to take on Big Hairy Audacious Goals? Try building confidence with small successes.
And let me know if you have other examples! You can reach me at: sdetwiler@detwiler.com.
Susan
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