by Susan Detwiler | Jul 17, 2017 | leadership
Traveling from Wilmington to NYC is a great time to catch up on reading, and I used it to absorb an interesting mix of articles. Two apparently very different articles stood out as having a lot to say about the same thing: leadership and diversity.
Does Diversity Harm Execution?
In this Harvard Business Review article, Does Diversity Actually Increase Creativity?, author Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic contends that while diversity is great for generating new ideas, implementation bogs down in diverse groups. This observation is based on a meta-analysis of more than 108 studies and 10,000 teams. While I don’t have the knowledge base to review the data, he states one conclusion that belies the entire premise that the problem of poor implementation is due to diversity:
           “Good leadership helps. The conflicts arising from diversity can be mitigated if teams are effectively led.â€
Further, yet another conclusion states,
           “Knowledge sharing is key. No matter how diverse the workforce is, and regardless of what type of diversity we examine, diversity will not enhance creativity unless there is a culture of sharing knowledge.â€
So, while the data shows that diversity is great for creativity, but bogs down in implementation, the correlation does not necessarily mean causation. The cause may not be diversity, but the lack of leadership and the lack of knowledge sharing.
Do We Cheat Enough?
Which leads me to the second article, in ForbesBrandVoice, Trust, Diversity and Passion – The Three Ingredients of Successful Organizations. Here, author Richard Bliss tells the story of a team of highly intelligent, forceful young leaders, who, in a military test, failed spectacularly. There was great diversity of thought and passion, but instead of sharing their knowledge with each other, each contended to prove that they had the right answer. They wanted to show that they were right, instead of working together.
Why is it so hard for smart, intelligent people of diverse backgrounds and thought processes to work together? Bliss quotes Vivek Wadhwa, of Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering:
            “When you and I went to school, we were taught to be individuals. … If we shared knowledge with each other, it was called cheating.â€
How true! Our educational system rewards individual achievement. If we share our knowledge with others or ask for help from other students, we are cheating.
What is the Leader’s Role?
Bringing together diverse viewpoints, experiences, mental processes, and aptitudes; sharing what we know; allowing others to also contribute – these all go against our childhood training.
Does diversity lead to more creativity? It appears yes. Does it take good leadership to make the most of the diversity? Again, it appears yes. Merely creating diverse teams is not a magic bullet.
Leadership is fostering the growth of the team so they can listen to, acknowledge and learn from each other, in order to achieve extraordinary ends. No one person has all the answers. No one type of person has all the answers.
by Susan Detwiler | May 30, 2017 | collaboration, inclusion, leadership
How well did you know the other people on your board before they (or you) joined?
Were you good friends? Did you live near each other? Did you work together? If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll probably expect me to tell you – again – that boards need diversity.  It helps with innovation, it avoids tokenism, it promotes sustainability.
I’m not the only one writing about it. Many studies, like here and here, show that diversity increases the success of a group or an organization. Whether we say we need diverse viewpoints, diverse backgrounds, diverse experiences, or diverse voices, it all translates into this: groups perform better in the long run if they are not homogeneous.
Network analysis gives us an insight into why this might be especially true when it comes to finding knowledge and resources.
Mark Granovetter posited that information flows through weak ties more than through strong ties. If you travel in the same circles and have the same friends, you are said to have strong ties with each other. If you happen to know someone whose circle is different, but don’t interact frequently with them, you are said to have weak ties.
These acquaintances are exposed to different ideas and different information than you are. So when you interact with these acquaintances, you are then exposed to new information that your strong ties do not have. In the words of Skye Bender-deMoll,
“although your close friend may work harder to help you get a new job, it is likely to be an acquaintance that actually gets you a useful lead.â€
Let’s extrapolate that to your organization. If most of the board travels in the same circles, their knowledge of resources is more likely to be similar than when members of the board come from diverse communities.
But if different members of the board have different networks, they bring those networks with them when they come to the board table. Along with their different experiences, they bring different knowledge and different entrees to resources.
As boards emerge from the founding stage, they tend to seek people with ‘deep pockets,’ implying that money is the only resource that matters. However, dollars are only one kind of resource; they are often a proxy for the resources that are really needed. They seek dollars because dollars can buy the resources that are needed to fulfill the mission: staff, rent, supplies. But resources come in many forms: community good will, contacts with particular skills, potential clients, individuals with elbow grease, advocates in different communities.
In many cases, the tangible resources themselves are available, without having to expend dollars – if you have the contacts that can bring them in.
By diversifying the composition of your board, you increase the number of weak ties for your organization. Weak ties multiply the opportunities for finding and developing resources that make it possible to fulfill your mission.
Why is diversity on your board important? More voices, more viewpoints, AND MORE KNOWLEDGE AND RESOURCES.
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by Susan Detwiler | Feb 13, 2017 | leadership
Change the question; change perspective.
With a pile of work in front of you, or any job that needs doing, do you automatically ask, “How am I going to get all that done?â€
In years of working with very different nonprofit leaders, I’ve noticed that’s a common response. It’s especially true among people who are givers at heart – you know, the ones who are quick to volunteer and give their time, or those who went into community benefit work because they’re innately programmed to help others.
Consider these three recent situations:
- The executive director of a start-up nonprofit looked at everything that needed to be done, and said, “How can I do all this?â€
- The board chair of a mid-sized nonprofit, seeking new board members, asked, “How can I get people to serve on the board?â€
- The facilitator of an online community asked herself, “How can I get more people engaged?â€
In each of these [real] scenarios, there is a common thread. In each case, the protagonist used the pronoun, “I.â€
We all do this. From the person putting on the gala, to the volunteers in our house of worship, to the grantwriter, to the team leader, to the CEO and board chair. When we’re asked what we’re working on, we talk about a project and then say, “I have to…..,†and list all the things we have to do
Faced with everything we have to do we get a knot in our stomachs. Sometimes, it’s downright terrifying. The burden is on our shoulders, and if we don’t get it done, we’re letting down our clients, our coworkers, our fellow volunteers, ourselves.
Is that really true? Is it really all on our shoulders? What if we reframe the scenarios and ask a different question?
In the case of the start-up nonprofit, consider what changes if we ask,
“What would it take to get all this done?â€
When the ED heard that reframe, it opened up a host of new opportunities. Instead of feeling alone with the job, he listed what would need to be in place for the job to get done, then objectively considered different ways to get them done – by anyone, not just himself. Instead of diving in, he started thinking of others who could make it happen.
For the board chair, we reframed the question from “how do I get people to be on the board?†to “what would it take for people to be able to join the board?†Instead of presenting the yes-no question to a prospect, the board chair started asking them, “what would it take for you to be able to say yes?†Potential board members started considering the possibilities, instead of the constrictions.
The facilitator of the online community completely reframed the engagement question. Instead, she invited all the participants of the community to online meetings in which she asked, “what would you like to be engaged in?†“What would you like to see and be part of?†“What would make it possible for people to be engaged?†With the different iterations of the reframing, the discussion became more dynamic, as participants saw themselves stepping into roles they may never have considered before.
What would it take to……?
This simple reframing moves the thought process away from burden and toward possibilities. It works for individuals, and for entire organizations.
The next time an opportunity arises, try moving from ‘we can’t do….’ to ‘what would it take for us to be able to do…..?’
Let me know what happens!
Or if you’d like to know more about facilitating these kinds of discussions.
by Susan Detwiler | Dec 27, 2016 | leadership
Is this a familiar scenario? You follow up on every obligation to your boss, or your board chair, or your spouse. But when you vow to do something for yourself, it keeps moving to the bottom of the list.
Promises to others are easy to keep. You want to help. They’re relying on you. You see and feel the disappointment on their faces when you don’t deliver. That’s true whether it’s a work obligation or a promise to your family.
But when you make a promise to yourself, somehow it doesn’t happen. That promise to make time to plan the future stays just that – a promise. That vow to take an hour a week to keep up on best practices in board governance falls by the wayside. Somehow these promises keep being put off. We’ll get to them “when I have time.â€
After all, it’s not going to affect anyone else. Or is it?
You may think you’re only disappointing yourself, but what about everyone who relies on you to be at your best? What about all the people whom your newly gained knowledge or deep thinking will help?
That time you spend on self-discovery or professional development are obligations to others, as well as to yourself. It is part of the fabric of our world that what we do for ourselves affects those around us.
Of course, we can resolve to make obligations to our own self-improvement as high a priority as obligations to others. But if this resolution is like most others, by February it will be broken.
Instead, make a more fundamental resolution. Resolve to find the system that will lead you to making that time for self-improvement.
People go where systems lead them. Great baseball players know that merely resolving to randomize their pitches doesn’t work. But giving themselves a trigger – like pitching a curve ball every time they glance up and see a ‘3’ on the scoreboard clock – they’ve created a system to randomize the pitches.
People go where systems lead them. By creating a system that works for you, you’re creating a condition for success.
- It may be finding an accountability partner; finding someone whom you respect who will hold you accountable for the promises you make to yourself.
- It may be finding a trigger that prompts you to take time whenever that trigger occurs – like immediately following a regularly scheduled call.
- It may be scheduling, far in advance, a series of half-day trips.
Instead of resolving to improve yourself, resolve to create that system that will lead to that self-improvement.
Happy New Year! Â May we all go from strength to strength in 2017!
Photo credit: By Desde mes de diciembre – Canal 1 Posadas Misiones, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23538873
by Susan Detwiler | Sep 26, 2016 | leadership
Professional development? What professional development? Nonprofit organizations often shortchange the budget line for professional development. And if there is a professional development line, it’s not always extended to the whole staff. Nor is it common to budget for board education.
But here’s one organization that figured out how to parlay a small professional development investment into a win-win for the whole community.  It’s a great example of being what Seth Godin calls a freegiver, as opposed to a freeloader.
Faced with a desire to educate her staff and board on fundraising and planning, Bonnie Hilory, Executive Director of the Institute of Flight, figured out she could send 2-3 staff members to national conferences – or create a conference right in her county.
With this idea, she went to the Community Foundation of Snohomish County (WA). What if, together, they brought in national speakers on fundraising and strategic planning, and invited all of the nonprofit organizations in the county and surrounding area to the conference?
As one of two speakers at this Philanthropy Takes Flight conference, I can tell you: It Worked!
The Community Foundation jumped at the chance to create an educational opportunity for the small nonprofits they supported, and became a key sponsor. With the foundation on board, and additional community supporters, the Institute of Flight created the philanthropy conference. More than 150 individuals from small to large nonprofits attended – including the full board and staff of the Institute of Flight.
For not much more than it would take to send 2-3 individuals to national conferences, Bonnie Hilory educated her staff and board, gave back to the community, and further established the Institute as an anchor in the county.
- Her board learned from individuals beyond herself and her staff.
- The nonprofit organizations had an opportunity to learn together.
- The Institute modeled the possibility of working together instead of competing.
- The Community Foundation found a partner in building up the experience and knowledge of the agencies it supports.
In the framework of Catalytic Thinking, this spirit of bringing together the resources of the community is called Collective Enoughness – the philosophy that together we have everything we need, that it is only on our own that we experience scarcity. Looked at this way, we are not only collectively assembling the requirements for whatever project we want to accomplish, we are building the relationships that make it possible to do even more.
Truly building the community in which you want to live takes more than just your organization. What can you accomplish together, that you can’t accomplish on your own?
How can you be the catalyst for that coming together?
by Susan Detwiler | Aug 2, 2016 | leadership
Mid-summer. The time of transition. While we enjoy the ease of summer days, Labor Day looms on the horizon, with all the busy-ness that autumn brings.
Many nonprofit organizations take the summer off. Or rather, the Board does. If you generally meet monthly, you skip a meeting in the summer. Or you anticipate that people will be on vacation, so you don’t schedule important votes for the summer meetings. Understandable.
But that doesn’t mean that the work stops.
If your organization is anything like most of the ones I’ve worked with, the Executive Director is busy gearing up for the fall. Behind the scenes, planning meetings are being held. The staff you need to fulfill the newly funded program has to be hired and go through orientation. The new software system has to be run through its paces and tutorials given to staff. That foundation with a September deadline wants a lot of information that won’t write itself.
The Board chair is also busy. That board retreat you’re anticipating in September isn’t going to magically appear. The new board members need to be oriented. The dashboard you want to see each month has to be crafted. That same foundation wants to meet the chair and hear her passion for the work.
“The single best sign of a healthy nonprofit is a strong relationship 
between the Board Chair and the CEO.”
— Joan Garry Consulting
What could be possible if the Board Chair and the Executive Director were to make a point to meet this summer and see what’s on each other’s plates? What would it make possible if the Chair and the ED were to talk about how they can support each other in their respective roles, particularly as the busy season starts? What would it make possible if you then continued those meetings – not just about immediate concerns, but to maintain and deepen the working relationship, talk about broad issues that may be on the horizon, consider how to shape the board and administration to enhance mission delivery, reinforce the focus on ultimate goals?
What would that make possible for the organization as a whole, and for the people you serve?
Working together, the Board Chair and Executive Director have enormous influence on the personality and aspirations of an organization. As the Chair orchestrates and influences the board, the ED orchestrates and supervises the staff. When they are in concert with each other, the entire organization is building toward the same goals.
Yet in many organizations, a new Chair steps into the role with little understanding of the pressures on the Executive Director. In return, the ED often has little understanding of the particular strengths and passions of the Chair. Mistakes and missteps happen because they haven’t taken the time to build the rapport that allows them to call on each other as needed.
It’s hard to schedule around many people, and summer is especially hard. But the relative quiet of summer gives the Chair and ED many opportunities to meet. Iced tea? Lemonade?
The Board Chair <-> CEO relationship is so crucial, that the strength of the organization can fluctuate depending on the strength of the relationship. In Delaware, the Delaware Alliance for Nonprofit Advancement has a Fellowship for strengthening just that relationship. How might YOU strengthen that bond? Let’s talk. Â
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