Why Organizations Thrive Lessons from the Front Lines for Nonprofit Executive Directors ppt

Table of ContentsIntroduction How to use this book About the author Lesson 1: Relentlessly focus on relationships Lesson 2: Communicate excessively with your board Lesson 3: Transform yo

Why Organizations Thrive Lessons from the Front Lines for Nonprofit Executive Directors

By Jonathan Poisner

Smashwords EditionCopyright 2013 Jonathan Poisner

Smashwords Edition License NotesThank you for downloading this free Ebook You are welcome to share it with your friends This book may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for non-commercial

purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form

Table of Contents

Introduction

How to use this book

About the author

Lesson 1: Relentlessly focus on relationships

Lesson 2: Communicate excessively with your board

Lesson 3: Transform your organization through one-on-one meetings

Lesson 4: Embrace your role in the network

Lesson 5: Long-term and short-term planning are both essential

Lesson 6: Pick some aspect of your program and get exceptionally good at itLesson 7: Synergize

Lesson 8: Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate

Lesson 9: Excel at personnel management

Lesson 10: Build a fiscal management system that connects to strategic making

decision-Lesson 11: Invest in a great contact management system

Lesson 12: Manage one big institutional change at a time

Lesson 13: Know and tell your stories

Lesson 14: Become a very good public speaker

Lesson 15: Give away your power

Acknowledgements

On January 2, 1997, I showed up for my first day of work as the Executive Director of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters (Oregon LCV)

The Board shouldn’t have hired me

I was only 30 I had zero fundraising experience, virtually no personnel supervision experience, and had only been involved previously with one other nonprofit

organization

A few weeks into the job, I had the good fortune of attending a four-day boot camp designed for nonprofit Executive Directors The boot camp was very valuable –

almost a lifesaver as I struggled to learn new skills The boot camp covered

traditional areas of responsibility for an Executive Director, such as fundraising, financial management, personnel management, strategic planning, and board

Of course, part of what separates thriving nonprofits from others will always be

better performance at the discrete skills that go into being an Executive Director All things being equal, the better fundraiser will raise more money More money allows organizations to do more good

But in my own experience over a dozen years as Oregon LCV Executive Director, and

in collaborating with, volunteering with, and consulting for dozens of nonprofits, I’ve come away convinced it’s not primarily about the skill set

It’s about how those skills are applied, with what emphasis, and with what mind-set.Ever since I launched my organizational development consulting practice in late 2009, I’ve been working to encapsulate my thinking into a series of Lessons that any new or newish Executive Director would benefit from learning Together, these Lessons attempt to give an Executive Director a path by which they can transform their

discrete skills into effective leadership

In the end, this is the book I wish I’d been able to read in my first year as an

Executive Director Or my third Or my fifth for that matter

Of course, the book has clear value as well for board members thinking about their role overseeing an Executive Director and for nonprofit staff who’re contemplating a future as an Executive Director.

How to use this book

This Book’s fifteen Lessons are based on my observations of both organizations that have thrived and those that have gone astray, and the more common group in the middle that muddle through doing good, but not great

Of course, my observations aren’t based on statistically valid experiments

The book is intentionally short so that it can be read in a single sitting My suggestion

is to read it, let the concepts marinate in your mind, and then re-read it again

perhaps a month later At that point, I’d consider writing down a half-dozen things you should do differently in reaction to the book

If possible, it would be even more valuable to find three or four other Executive Directors with whom to discuss it, either immediately or after thinking about it

Several reviewers of an early draft of this book asked about the priority order of the Lessons, in some cases presuming that Lessons presented earlier must be higher

priority

In reality, I am reluctant to declare any one of these lessons as most or least

important Instead, I present the Lessons thematically

Relationships are at the heart of managing a nonprofit organization You should

relentlessly focus on relationships (Lesson 1) But not all relationships are equal In particular, you should place extreme emphasis on your board by communicating excessively with them (Lesson 2)

You should transform your organization by developing relationships through one meetings (Lesson 3) Relationships are particularly important as you embrace your role in the network (Lesson 4)

one-on-In this book, I use the word “strategy” as a catch-all term for deciding what it is your

organization does Good strategy requires you to equally emphasize both long-term and short-term planning (Lesson 5) In deciding what to do, you should pick some aspect of your program and get exceptionally good at it (Lesson 6) You should make sure your various efforts are synergistic (Lesson 7) No strategic thinking can be optimal unless you also evaluate, evaluate, evaluate (Lesson 8)

In managing organizational nuts & bolts, you should excel at personnel management

(Lesson 9) You should build a fiscal management system that connects to strategic decision-making (Lesson 10) You should invest in a great contact management

system (Lesson 11) You should also manage one significant institutional change at a time (Lesson 12)

Superb communications are also critical That means knowing and telling your stories

(Lesson 13) and becoming a very good public speaker (Lesson 14)

Lastly, I close with an overall lesson I call: Giving away your power (Lesson 15).

About the a uthor

Since 2009, Jonathan Poisner has worked as an independent meeting facilitator and organizational development consultant, with a focus on fundraising, strategic

planning, coalition building, and communications for mission-driven organizations In the last 3 years, Poisner has worked with more than 45 clients in the Pacific

Northwest and around the country, ranging from small volunteer organizations to large organizations with a national scope

In 1997, Poisner became Executive Director of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and its sister organization, OLCV Education Fund During his twelve years leading OLCV, he grew the combined revenue of OLCV and OLCV Education Fund from

$200,000 to $1.1 million per year

During his tenure, OLCV’s staff grew from just one and a half full time employees to more than 11, while dramatically increasing its capacity to involve thousands of

volunteers in its work Under his leadership, OLCV's electoral program defeated more than a dozen anti-environment elected officials and helped elect many more

environmental champions to office

Also during his tenure, OLCV spearheaded the conversion of the Oregon Conservation Network from a loose collaboration of environmental groups playing defense to a strong coalition that brings forward shared priorities to the Oregon Legislature every session “Priorities for a Healthy Oregon” has had significant success in passing

legislation to promote renewable energy and energy conservation, to establish a system for recycling electronic waste, to protect farmland from sprawl, to safeguard clean water, and to protect marine ecosystems, among other things

From 1997 through 2007, Poisner served on the board of the Federation of State

Conservation Voter Leagues, where he was a strong voice for launching and growing other state LCVs around the country From 2007-2009, Poisner served on the boards

of the League of Conservation Voters and LCV Education Fund He chaired LCV’s State Capacity Building Committee, while serving on its Executive and Finance Committees.Poisner holds dual degrees in Economics and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania He has a J.D from Boalt Hall School of Law at the Universrity of

California Berkeley

Prior to his leadership of OLCV, he practiced law as an associate attorney at the law firm of Arnold & Porter, served as Environmental Law Fellow at Lewis & Clark Law School, taught as an Adjunct Law Professor, and worked as regional staff for the Sierra Club during the 1996 election year

Poisner can be reached via his website: www.poisner.com

Lesson 1: Relentlessly focus on relationships.

Organizations that thrive relentlessly focus on relationships This must begin with the Executive Director and the Executive Director’s relationships

What do I mean by that?

I mean that successful organizations are constantly expanding their pool of

relationships and strengthening existing relationships Then they consciously activate those relationships

To understand why, it’s helpful to take a giant step back and talk about network theory and social change A wide variety of books have come out in the last decade detailing the various ways in which social change happens via networks of people

connected by relationships The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, is a good

example from this genre

While people receive information outside of relationships, relationships have a

powerful role in how people react to information

People listen more to people with whom they have a relationship

People are more likely to be persuaded by people with whom they have a

As a practical matter, the power of relationships can impact organizations in many ways One example related to Executive Directors: An Executive Director may give a pitch-perfect donation request to John Doe A board member may give a mediocre donation request to the same John Doe If the board member and John Doe are friends, the mediocre board request is more likely to succeed

Yet, it would be a mistake to think of relationships as just about fundraising

Relationships impact an organization’s interaction with volunteers, media, allied organizations, elected officials, and people the organizations are working to serve Any time you’re trying to shape behavior, relationships matter

So how should an organization systematically expand the number of relationships its Executive Director and other key leaders have with those that matter?

Here are a few examples of ways I expanded my pool of relationships as an Executive Director.

* I attended fundraisers for peer-organizations, if possible sitting at the table of

people I didn’t already know well

* I instigated lunch or coffee with the leaders of current and potentially allied

organizations, particularly those I didn’t already know well

* I asked board members to invite me to any non-fundraising parties they were

throwing so I could meet more of their friends

* I asked elected officials for advice, as a way to get to know them

* I attended conferences more with an aim towards meeting new people during breaks and social times than out of a desire to tackle the subject matter of the conference work sessions

None of this would have worked if I hadn’t been genuinely interested in getting to know these people You can’t fake authenticity in building relationships

Of course, relationship building isn’t just about the Executive Director’s relationships

In planning programs and fundraising, relationships by everyone on the staff and

board should be front and center Some Oregon LCV activities, for example, never made sense as stand-alone activities

Examples:

* Hosting brown bag lunches to compare notes with allies;

* Volunteer appreciation parties;

* Trainings for members of the community;

* Hosting happy hours;

While they had some value, their primary value was to build relationships that our staff could subsequently tap into in other ways

If you’re using this approach, staff should know their role at events like these is to get

to know new people rather than hanging out with existing friends

There are three other practical implications that follow from relentlessly focusing on relationships

First, you need to be systematic in planning for relationship-building and tracking relationships As an Executive Director, that means setting specific goals (e.g 5 per month) for how many new relationships you want to develop in the most important categories (e.g peer Executive Directors, elected officials, potential major donors)

And it means actually using a “database” – whether your donor database or otherwise – to track relationships.

Second, you need to recognize that not everyone is equal when it comes to

relationships In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes about three types of

people who play a particular role in social change:

Connectors have an unusually large number of relationships.

Mavens have a strong need and ability to help solve other people’s problems.

Persuaders are particularly likeable and charismatic.

In hiring, in recruiting board members, and in recruiting volunteers, Executive

Directors should keep an eye out for people who fit these descriptions and put an extra emphasis into developing relationships with them

Lastly, the organization should think hard about how to maximize the value of

relationships once they are generated

In my experience, the key step in maximizing the value of relationships isn’t the initial “ask” you might make of someone (e.g donate, volunteer, etc.), it’s in having your relationships tap into their own relationships on your behalf

As I write this, I have 581 people in my Linked In network Those 581 people have 127,965 direct LinkedIn connections Of course, LinkedIn is just being used as an illustration of a point: the people with whom any individual has relationships open them up to a vastly larger network of relationships than they can ever tap directly.Organizations that thrive don’t just systematically build and activate first-order

relationships – they get first-order relationships to tap into a further network As a practical matter, thriving organizations tend to turn donors into fundraisers and

volunteers into volunteer recruiters

How do you make that happen? In the online world it’s seemingly easy – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and dozens of other sites are specifically geared to allow people to spread information and “asks” throughout their social network But while easy to spread information and asks, online response rates are abysmal

The real payoff comes when people spread information or make requests where way communication is happening in real-time – which usually means on the telephone

two-or face-to-face

How do you get your first-order relationships to turn around and ask their friends for donations, to volunteer, to attend an event, to write their Congressman, or just to talk up your organization when at a cocktail party?

At the simplest level it’s by having a compelling message that motivates them (More about this in Lesson 13, Know and Tell Your Stories)

But beyond message, you need to structure their involvement in ways that motivate

At Oregon LCV, we did this first and foremost by organizing teams of volunteers at the local level who took ownership of certain organizational decisions, thus motivating them to act With their help, we grew from an organization with a few dozen

volunteers in 1996 to more than 1000 by 2004

Of course, you can have all the relationships in the world, and your organization won’t thrive without many other elements But organizations that thrive almost universally place a very high value on building and strengthening personal

relationships

Lesson 2: Communicate excessively with your board, but be smart about it

The most important set of relationships for an Executive Director is with their board

To maintain and strengthen this relationship, Executive Directors should communicate excessively with the board, but be smart about it

I sometimes think of the Executive Director as the conductor and the board as the orchestra If they aren’t on the same page, they may still play, but it won’t sound very good

One common mistake that new Executive Directors make is failing to recognize the gap between what they know about the organization and what the board and other close friends of the organization know

The Executive Director lives and breathes this stuff Board members and other key stakeholders don’t

Even if a newcomer to the organization, the Executive Director’s organizational

knowledge usually surpasses the board’s in a few months

And as the knowledge gap grows, dangers abound When it comes to setting the organization’s strategic direction, a board and staff that are seriously disconnected about the basic facts about the organization’s work are far more likely to disagree

I once spoke with an Executive Director who feared their board’s involvement in strategic planning “They don’t understand what we do, so how can they set our strategy?” Yet, I’d characterize his own communications with his board as

intermittent and scattershot

So my advice to new Executive Directors is to communicate excessively with their boards, but be smart about it

Here are my top eight tips about how to make that happen:

1 Board packets should be complete and get out on time

Reading is a much more efficient way to convey information than speaking at a board meeting Board packets should be thorough and given to board members sufficiently

in advance of a meeting so they can digest it For most boards, that’s a week

To use this strategy, though, you must be disciplined in having your board chair create

a culture that board members read packets prior to meetings The first time your board chair brushes aside a board members’ question or objection because they

didn’t read the packet, it may create some hard feelings But I witnessed first-hand early in my tenure at Oregon LCV how doing this just once in an open way can change subsequent meetings for the better

2 Write for them, not you.

To borrow a phrase from a mentor of mine, Joel Bradshaw, you should write your memos starting where they are, not where you are Put yourself into the head of a board member and give them the information they would want to know That means staying focused on information relevant to the board’s role, not information that’s important for staff

3 Repeat yourself

Remember that you live this and they don’t Just because you told the board

something the prior meeting, doesn’t mean they’ll remember it The average person must hear something seven times to remember it If there are key facts, strategies,

or other things you think the board should know, communicate them multiple times in different ways over the course of a few meetings

4 Communicate after board meetings with those who didn’t attend

One of the biggest barriers to a board and Executive Directors staying on the same page is that board member attendance at board meetings will be inherently uneven

In nearly thirteen years running Oregon LCV we held approximately 50 board meetings and, ironically, the only meeting where there was perfect board attendance was the one where I told them I was leaving

The danger is that board members who miss meetings aren’t aware of key decisions and become disconnected from the latest happenings of the organization Minutes usually don’t come out quickly and for most organizations the minutes are solely focused on action items where the board voted

In my experience, Executive Directors should provide a written update (a short memo) the day after every board meeting entitled: “What happened at the [Insert Date]

board meeting.” These are not minutes, which should be separately produced by

your board Secretary or other designated board member

The memo should explicitly state that it was prepared primarily for the benefit of those who didn’t attend, but everyone is encouraged to read the memo to let the Executive Director know if they think something that happened at the meeting was mischaracterized

The memo structure should lay out the most significant things that took place at the board meeting, including all the action items, as well as other discussions of

importance In my experience, it took me about 30 minutes to write a memo like this covering a 4 hour board meeting

That 30 minutes was well worth it, both because board members really appreciated it and it also served as a quick place for me to search back and recall what we had done and when

5 Don’t rely just on email

People are busy and not all emails get read or dealt with – not out of a conscious choice to ignore you, but rather just from excessive competition from other demands

on their time

I once spoke with an Executive Director complaining about their board’s lack of

engagement and it became clear that his evidence amounted to: “I emailed them, and they didn’t respond.”

Pick up the phone and call them Meet with them in person

6 Remember it’s about relationships

Lesson 1 of this Book was: Relentlessly Focus on Relationships

Nowhere is this as important as it is with board members, particularly your board chair

Lesson 2 isn’t “talk” to your board excessively,” the lesson is “communicate” with the board excessively

Communication is a two way behavior You need to talk to them and listen to them, continually taking their temperature about the organization This will help you fine-tune your own communications with them, and help keep the board pointing in the same direction

More importantly, it also allows for you to develop an authentic relationship with them based on mutual respect and shared values Having a real relationship with them places you in a far better position to push them to greater levels of leadership

on behalf of the organization And yes, leadership includes fundraising

My personal goal as Executive Director was to meet at least once each year with every board member informally over lunch or coffee for an open-ended chat I met much more regularly with the board chair, although those meetings were more focused on specific topics than open-ended

And with new board members, I always did an “orientation,” which was as much about my getting to know them as their getting to know the organization

7 Be candid when things have gone wrong

If you or your staff screwed up, own up to it, and be timely about it

I made a couple significant mistakes at OLCV, both times costing OLCV real money For example, after one election, staff and I concluded one of our vendors had failed

to perform services, so I withheld the final $1,500 payment on a $25,000 contract The vendor forced us into arbitration and it became a he said, she said situation Unfortunately, the arbitrator rules against us, costing us not just the $1,500, but nearly $8,000 in legal fees In hindsight, I shouldn’t have taken the risk of fighting the payment without slam dunk proof that we had been wronged

Some boards might have freaked, but I think mine appreciated how up front I was about the situation, what happened, and what lessons we had learned from it.

If board members grow to lack trust that their Executive Director is presenting an honest picture to them, it’s very hard to move forward

The opposite situation is learning how to be candid when it’s the board that has made

a mistake It’s easy to ignore these mistakes since the board, after all, consists of volunteers In my experience, though, the better path is to be clear about the

mistake, and let peer pressure be a means to hold board members accountable If your board develops a culture where nobody is held accountable, it’s almost always a challenge to reverse that culture

8 Quantity of communication isn’t as important as quality

This is the “be smart about it” part of the lesson

Burying your board in paper isn’t the same as communicating with them You can communicate so many different things that they throw up their hands and tune you out

I once read an Executive Director’s yearly report to their board and it was

mind-numbingly detailed, exceedingly dry, and I can’t fathom it was digested by anybody.When a board member asked a question at a subsequent strategic planning session I facilitated, the Executive Director’s response was: “that was in my annual report, haven’t you read it?”

Your board should be thinking about two things predominantly for your organization: big picture strategy and fiscal health/fundraising Focus most of your

communications on those areas

So communicate with them excessively to build the relationship and make sure they understand key details that effect strategy, but that’s not the same as burying them

in information and trivia

Lesson 3: Transform y our organization through one-on-one meetings

If relationships are your focus (Lesson 1), then a corollary lesson is to transform your organization through one-on-one meetings

While Lesson 1 outlined variou methods to expand your pool of relationships, one meetings are so critical they are worth a lesson of their own

one-on-Why are one-on-one meetings so important?

Two things happen in one-on-one conversations that don’t happen at events and certainly not via mail or phone

First, you can form a stronger personal relationship Second, you can most effectively ask people to take personal responsibility to assist your organization

Forming a relationship is the more obvious benefit of one-on-one meetings

It’s not rocket science to understand forming relationships is easier in-person

Legions of studies have demonstrated the role of body language and facial expressions

in communication – neither of which works over the phone or in writing

And in one-on-one meetings, you can make the communication truly two-way – asking questions of a potential organizational supporter and not just talking to them You can and should do this in an authentic and not a staged way

This formation of a personal relationship is half the magic The other half of the magic is something I’ve discovered more recently

When meeting with somebody one-on-one, you are asking them to take personal, and not collective responsibility

At an event, it’s about how all these people in the room can help One-on-one, it’s about how the individual can help

Studies done in the 1970s and 1980s focused on personal versus collective

responsibility in a different context Scientists had people fake epileptic seizures in public places to see who would help The interesting finding is that the “victims” were more likely to get help if they had the seizure when one person was there to observe than if several people observed

This is contrary to what most people would predict But it rings true upon further reflection When something unusual happens and other people are around, you tend

to look around to see how they’re responding If everyone else is just looking around, you may think: I guess it’s not my problem But if there’s nobody to look at, you have

no choice but to understand the responsibility is yours

The same dynamic works with fundraising Organizations across a wide array of issue areas, whether local, state, regional, or national, have found that generating truly large, meaningful donations happens most effectively at one-on-one meetings For small organizations, “large and meaningful” might mean $500 or $1,000 donations For large national organizations, large and meaningful might mean $100,000

donations

From 1997-2009, I served on the board of a network whose mission was to launch and grow state conservation voter organizations As I talked to Executive Directors of the new and growing organizations, I noticed a very clear pattern: When I asked them about how their fundraising was going, Executive Directors from those that were truly growing fast tended to speak about their one-on-one major donor fundraising, while those from the organizations that were floundering tended to talk about their

fundraising events

Of course, meeting with people one-on-one isn’t always about fundraising as

measured by immediate donations As you get to know people through one-on-one meetings, you’re in a better position to ask them to get involved in other ways – as volunteers, as evangelists, as board members, as someone who’ll connect you to their friends, etc You will also learn considerably more about the community, as those you meet with share their own views about the challenges you’re facing and the

strategies you’re using

So stop putting your time into the next great event and banking on social media

revolutionizing your organization If you want to thrive — get out and meet with more people one-on-one and invite them to take responsibility

Lesson 4: Embrace your role in the network

Organizations that embrace their role in their network are more likely to thrive Lesson 1 emphasized the importance of relentlessly focusing on building personal relationships

Just as individuals form personal relationships, organizations have connections to other organizations If you were to “map” out all these connections into a network, you would get a glimpse at how an organization interacts with its connections

Organizations that understand and embrace their role in their network are more likely

to thrive than those who view themselves in isolation

Why should you embrace your role in the network? And how do you embrace it?

Let’s start with the why question: What benefits flow from embracing your role in the network?

Margaret Mead was right that a small group of people can change the world

But they’ve done so by generating movements and being part of them

Every organization I’ve ever encountered has identified a problem it is addressing that

is bigger than it can address within its planning horizon

This is true whether your organization has global aspirations (e.g save the planet) or

a very a narrow niche (e.g direct mental health services to individuals who can’t afford them in your local community)

Indeed, we are rarely inspired to build a thriving organization if the problem to be addressed is an easy one Yet, how can we then avoid being paralyzed by fear as we recognize the enormous gap between what we hope to achieve and our current

capacity?

From a staff and volunteer morale perspective, you do this by identifying the unique role your organization plays as part of a larger network of organizations and people Just as people feel pride in being part of an organization, that sense of pride can grow if they can picture how the organization is playing a role in a broader

movement

Embracing your role in the network also leads to better strategic choices

Just as no man is an island, no organization stands alone In every example I’ve ever imagined, I can think of many other organizations (nonprofit, for-profit, government) whose mission, purpose, and work somehow interacts with the organization in

question

Those interactions can be entirely positive in the form of alliances for a shared

purpose

Those interactions can be competitive, organizations that somehow fight for the same resources you need

Those interactions can also be negative in the form of opposition

Taking these interactions into account when setting your strategic direction leads to better strategy

A really basic example: I recently met with an organization whose mission has very substantial overlap with another nonprofit Their response: strategically position themselves as the “bad cop” to the other organization acting as “good cop” when advocating to elected officials for policy change

Conversely, failing to take into account these organizations can lead an organization astray in setting strategy I once was on the board of an organization that developed

a brand strategy for their organization without reference to its larger allies, with whom the organization was also competing for resources

Rather than developing a brand focused on the organization’s unique role within the broader set of allies, the branding decision took place as if those allies didn’t exist The result was a recommended brand for the organization that blurred the distinction between it and its allies, making fundraising even harder

In hindsight, I believe the organization would have been far better off actually talking with its allies about how its brand could be developed in relationship to its allies, focusing on the unique role it could play in the network

Which leads to the second question: How do you embrace the network role?

I think there are two key steps

First, explicitly make this part of your strategic planning process, as you assess the lay

of the land Just as you want to figure out what economic, political, demographic or other trends create the landscape in which your organization plans, you should assess the organizational landscape

Ask:

* Who are the major organizations that serve as allies and opponents?

* For allies, what distinguishes our role in addressing shared problems from their roles?

* How can we best take advantage of the work they’re doing?

*How do we account for the interactions we have with these organizations when

competing to secure resources (e.g fundraising)?

Of course, identifying your role is only half the challenge A second critical step is then building enduring connections to those organizations that positively interact with your organization.

Organizational connections are fueled first and foremost by personal relationships Get to know the leaders of allied organizations by having coffee, lunch, or a drink Ideally, find ways to let your boards know each other, not just staff

Organizational connections are also fueled through more formal coalitions and

partnerships Be conscious in determining when a coalition of organizations would be helpful and, if a new one is warranted, launch it Sometimes, the answer will be a partnership with a single additional organization rather than a grand coalition

Bottom line: as you develop both formal connections with other organizations and lots of personal relationships, your organization will be far better positioned to thrive

Lesson 5: Long-term and s hort-term planning are both essential

Some organizations have a personality that is frenetic They are always doing

Everyone’s very busy Lots of things are getting done, but many tasks are being

triaged (consciously or by neglect) Long-term investments are not made And the left hand, too often, doesn’t know what the right is doing

At critical junctures, information necessary to move forward is either missing or inadequate Time is wasted in meetings discussing next steps Making positive

change becomes harder The organization runs like a rat around the wheel, but never gets the wheel to the next level

In my experience, these organizations fail to hit the next level because they fail to recognize the critical importance of both long-term and short-term planning

Given the fact that my consulting practice focuses significantly on strategic planning,

my belief in the importance of long-term planning shouldn’t surprise the reader

Working without a strategic plan brings to mind a favorite exchange from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when she first meets the Cheshire Cat

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Yet, knowing where you want to go is a far cry from having a well-designed plan to get there

Most nonprofit organizations I talk to have a strategic plan, or at least acknowledge the desire to have one At its core, strategic planning asks “Who are we? Where are

we going? What should we be doing? How will we do it?” Usually over a longer time frame, anywhere from 2-5 years

Different consultants will use different terms (examples include: mission, vision, values, goals, strategies, objectives) What matters is not so much which terms you use, but that everyone in your organization uses consistent terms so that you can communicate internally

The planning process should include some level of research of both the external

environment (the lay of the land) and internal context (strengths, weaknesses,

evaluation of past work, etc.) It should include some facilitated process to identify key strategic assumptions and/or a logic model by which to explain why the activities you’re doing will lead to the goals you’re pursuing And it should ultimately include some measurements of success, so you’ll know if you’re making process

The biggest fear I hear about strategic planning is that plans too often sit on the shelf, unused.

Three steps come to mind to insure the strategic plan is used

First, explicitly utilize the strategic plan when doing budgeting (More on this in Lesson 10, Build a fiscal management system that connects to strategic decision-making)

Second, develop a culture of evaluation, a key part of which involves consistently (e.g every 6 months or year) re-presenting the strategic plan to the board as part of evaluating how you’re doing (More on this in Lesson 5, Evaluate, evaluate,

The very next day his point was proven to me: I was talking with the Executive

Director of a client and asked to see their strategic plan and any work plans they had adopted She sent me the strategic plan, but told me they were so busy when the strategic planning process ended that they just dived in and, with the exception of one staff person, produced no work plans

This brought to mind one of my favorite sayings – allegedly by The Buddha: “There is

so much to do, you must move very slowly.”

In my mind, planning isn’t just deciding what to do, it’s equally as important deciding what not to do When you’re really busy is precisely the time when it’s most

important to stop, plan, and focus like a laser on those activities that are essential in the short-run given your long-term strategy

In my experience, groups that carve out the time to adopt yearly work plans for individuals and/or yearly operational plans for specific programs or functions are far more likely to thrive than those who don’t

When individual and operational planning is done, staff members are more likely to stick to clear timelines They are more likely to have clarity about roles and

responsibilities They are less likely to stray into low payoff activities They are less likely to burn out And the Executive Director will have far more information from which to do a good job evaluating and boosting the performance of staff (More on this in Lesson 9, Excel at personnel management)

If this sounds time-consuming to you, that’s true and it’s false It does take time to

do operational work plans But in my experience, and from talking to other Executive Directors, you will save time in the long run A day spent work planning once a year can easily save far more time over the year as the Executive Director repeatedly answer door knocks from a staff person asking: “do you have a minute.”

Of course, yearly work plans won’t eliminate mid-year decisions But making more of the big decisions up-front, consciously, thinking through the interaction of decisions, particularly as they relate to allocation of staff time, is far more likely to lead to a thriving organization

So how does an organization adopt a culture that equally prizes both long-term and short-term planning?

The easy answer is it starts at the top with the Executive Director and board

leadership The Executive Director must lead by example with his or her own work planning

But here are some additional ideas:

When you get ready to do strategic planning and lay out a timeline and budget for the planning process, don’t let that timeline and budget end with the adoption of the strategic plan Incorporate additional staff time to develop work plans either by function, program, or at the individual staff level

In years when you’re not doing strategic planning, consider conducting one other significant planning project Examples might be: a long-term technology plan, an organizational communications plan, or a long-term development plan Plans like these always take more staff time the first time you create them, so don’t roll out more than one of these in any given year If possible, stagger them so that they don’t expire in the same year

Reward staff for planning Evaluate staff performance in part based on whether they achieve the measurable objective of completing timely and solid work plans around specific programs and tactics When one of your staff develops a format and plan that’s particularly well done, share it with others as an example

Lastly, don’t let perfection become the enemy of the good It’s far better to do some decent planning than to wait for the stars to line up for you to create the perfect plan Dive in

Lesson 6: Pick some aspect of your program and get exceptionally good at it.

Lesson 5 emphasized the importance of both long-term and short-term planning, but without regard to the content of the plan: e.g what to do Obviously, there’s a different “what to do” answer for every organization – no two groups are the same and every group faces a slightly different lay of the land

In deciding what to do, one of the key observations I’ve made about why some groups thrive while others don’t is that thriving groups tend to pick one aspect of their work

to which they heavily commit

No organization can realistically be the best at everything it does Yet, it’s important

to be the best at something Of course, it should be something where you can

articulate the strategic rationale for why the activity furthers your mission and it needs to be something that the staff can feel passionate about

An example: At Oregon LCV, we made a conscious decision in 1997 (when we were a small organization with just two people on staff) that we were going to get

exceptionally good at grassroots politics We were never going to write the largest checks in Oregon politics But we would tap into the passion Oregonians have for their natural legacy by creating the largest and most effective volunteer force in Oregon politics

We invested heavily in staff whose primary job was recruiting and managing

volunteers, along with data systems to support them Our programs were designed to maximize the number of volunteers we would effectively engage in our election work

By 2004, we were involving more than 1000 volunteers in our election activities – generating more than 100,000 contacts with voters that cycle I couldn’t prove for sure that Oregon LCV was the largest and most effective grassroots force in Oregon politics, but I heard repeatedly from outsiders that we were perceived as a real force

to be reckoned with

Other groups with whom I’ve interacted have done similar things They sought to and became exceptional at:

* Bringing people together from different sectors of the economy to work together;

* Mastering the latest communication technologies;

* Using the best possible language to communicate;

* Understanding the legal levers by which to help the people they serve

With Oregon LCV and with each of these other examples, the organization made a conscious, strategic choice that they’d be exceptional at the one thing and pursued that strategy over several years