5 Ways To Get Your Organization Moving At The Speed Of Change

Trouble with most discussions about ‘flattening’ and ‘empowering’ organizations is that the case studies are often high-tech histories:  Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Google,  W.H. Gore.  This makes it easy to dismiss as irrelevant to the leadership issues of today’s nonprofit….”this doesn’t apply to me”.  The sense is that innovation is taking place in some far off locale with little relevance to the day-to-day challenges of a nonprofit endeavoring to do the pedestrian such as feeding the hungry as opposed to the glamorous work of developing the next killer app.

A nonprofit is an affair of the heart.  Ninety-nine percent of the time when we inquire of an individual why they work for their specific organization, the explanation involves some passion connected to the mission. We want to make a difference and have an impact. 

Today's nonprofit leaders face a difficult and unprecedented challenge. The world is changing much faster than our organizations.  Thus examining our organizational design is imperative.  For our success is now more dependent upon the quality of the organization than in the effectiveness of our program.   A “B”-level organization with an ‘A’-level program will produce ‘D’ level results.

Here are a few thoughts about what sharp executives need to concentrate upon in redesigning the organization structure of our nonprofits.

1)      Laser focus on What Does Our Customer Value?  These are the people that we serve relevant to our mission.  What will make their life better?    Nothing more demoralizing than an organization which serves its staff, funders and donors well, but its customers poorly.  Create value and then trust that the money will follow.

2)      Establish What Does Success Look Like? Develop a narrow set of metrics which measure if we’re delivering customer value.  These outcomes provide guidance to every board member, staff, volunteer in prioritizing their activities and guiding their choices.   Accept nothing less than value added activities.

3)      Unleash our native collective intelligence.  Most innovations in organizations come from mid-level and entry level staff, NOT from elaborate strategic planning processes at the executive level.  Great ideas die because of laborious approval processes.   No one should have the authority to kill a good idea.  Lack of ready resources to exploit opportunities is also a problem.  We also need to be establish an off-budget pool of ‘risk capital’, so that when a promising innovation arises we can move fast to take advantage.

4)      Make accountability a collective responsibility.  In a hierarchy, a staff member is generally accountable to their immediate supervisor.   Thus an employee need only satisfy one person.  Evidence shows performance improves when a staff member is accountable to a team rather than to a single individual.   When we remove ourselves from the need to supervise, teams develop their own norms…if you have good people, they develop good accountability norms.

5)      Create a culture which values Speed, Innovation and Collaboration.   As Peter Drucker quipped, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.    The leader sets the culture.  Be quick, be creative and be in partnership.

 With all the buzz about social entrepreneurship and the emerging economy, it’s imperative we move at the pace of change.  It’s vital to understand that we already have what we need and that our success requires us to redesign our enterprises for this new environment.  By doing so, we let loose the talent which surrounds us to create new ways of doing business which ensure that we continue to add value to the lives of the people we serve.

"Today Is Not OK" - Lessons In Driving Change From Martin Luther King

A young MLK explaining why
'We can't wait"

It feels like the ‘Vision’ chapter of every management book sooner or later references Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech at the Lincoln Memorial back in 1963.  Yes, while it belongs in the canon of famous American addresses, but our focus upon it misses something very important….before he could provide a vision of the future,  MLK spent a decade preparing the ground by educating America about  the problem of the present.

Often overlooked is that Black America in the 1950s was reaping the benefits of the post-WWII economic boom.  Maybe not in the same measure as the majority, but for the average Black American their lives were considerably materially better than the 1940s and substantially better than the depression years of the 1930s.  It is in this environment that Martin Luther King stood up to say that even with the monetary gains, life was unacceptable without civil liberties.

Everybody rightfully lauds the I Have a Dream Speech, but more importantly to King’s work were the hundreds of speeches he gave in the decade preceding the big one, where before crowds large and small MLK explained the problem with the present reality.  In a time where people were feeling more materially satiated, he had to drive them out of their comfort zone until they accepted that their present condition was unacceptable.

If you’re a leader, you can’t move people to a new tomorrow if they believe today is OK.  You can’t get them to ‘there’ unless they agree that continuing to stay ‘here’ is not acceptable.  We live in a time of tremendous transformation, but the natural human temptation is to say, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad’.  It’s this mindset which strengthens the Status Quo.   Your job is to break that mentality so that they understand that The Status Quo Is Not An Option.

So even more important that sharing a 'Dream', Martin Luther King helped people understand that 'Today is Not OK'.

One Tip For Fostering Change In Organizations

Today I received an inquiry from one working inside a large government human service agency.   As is frequently the case, they were feeling frustrated by a work environment which is more concerned with maintaining the system rather than bringing about real change in the lives of the people they're suppose to serve.   They asked what they could do to get supervisors and fellow employees to focus more upon successful outcomes for clients rather than just going thru the motions.

My response:

Dear XXXXX,

Thanks for your question.  It's one I get a lot. Especially from those in the public sector.

In public bureaucracies, people get rewarded for 'checking boxes' and punished for rocking the boat (I interact a lot with public schools and see this all the time). The incentives are wrong. Employees rise up thru the system by 'follwing the rules' and thus senior leaders are the ones who've mastered the art of living 'inside the box'.

I find for the most part that the staff in public organizations aren't bad nor indifferent, mostly just beaten down by the system. Morale is poor. I bet if you asked a dozen of your fellow staff to describe a time when they tried to do something different in order to help a client, they'll report the result was getting their hands slapped. Wanting to keep their job, they won't do that again. Or they decide there's more to life than this and move to another organization.

Yours is not an uncommon concern.

One of the strategies you might want to try is asking 'Why?" 'Why' is a powerful question, for it gets people thinking about Business As Usual. So much of what goes on in organizations happens because that's the way it's always been done. We operate with policies and procedures crafted in 1995 or 1975 because no one stopped to ask 'Why are we doing it this way?'

Another positive to asking 'Why?" is that it's not threatening nor demanding. It's not 'We should do it this way" or "You don't care about results". It simply prompts people to think about their work and can get a great conversation rolling.

Give it a shot.

Assessing Risky Strategies

Just got off the phone with an organization I've been advising for years.  They are, like some others, in a panic due to a reduction in their state grant....resulting in a loss of 55% of their income.  Yes, it's a crisis, but it's one of the most predictable crises imaginable.  Their work is tangential to core education, so was always likely to feel the ax....and when the financial meltdown came in 2008 I thought it would provide the motivation for the Board to take some risks in order to diversify funding. 

Although we looked at several projects and concepts, the Board never was willing to move in a new direction.  For them, Business As Usual was the strategic choice...and now there's hell to pay.  In the end, the Board was always reluctant to strike out on a different path lest they encounter failure.  It was easier (and more comfortable) just to keep on what they were doing in the past.

I've said it over and over and over, The Status Quo Is Not An Option.  So how can you encourage your nonprofit to open up to new possibilities.  I find a facilitated discussion of these five questions extraordinarily helpful:

• Why is this risky?
• Why is our new initiative better than doing nothing?
• What's the worst that could happen if we fail?
• Even if we fail, what can we learn from the new imitative?
• Is there expert opinion about our initiative?  What do these experts have to say?

If you're working with your Board on strategic discussion which will really push the boundaries of the organization, try these questions.  You'll make progress.