The riddle:

Five frogs are sitting on a log.  One decides to jump off.  How many frogs are left on the log?

The answer is five.  Deciding to jump off is not the same as jumping off, so all five are still on the log.

This is an especially appropriate riddle for a planning consultant.  The best made plans are meaningless unless there is a commitment to action and an ability to hold people accountable to follow through on their decisions.

As a practical matter, that means decisions shouldn’t be considered “done” until it’s very clear who will take action and by when.

In the first week, more than 100 individuals downloaded it.

If you read it, please give me feedback.

What did you find helpful?  What did you find confusing?

Feel free to just email me at jonathan@poisner.com, or use the comment sections to leave a review.

Thanks!

A recent article suggests the same problem exists in the for-profit world.  In 5 Keys to Recruiting the Best of the Best, Langley Steinert writes about best hiring practices from the perspective of the high-tech world.

Steinert’s second point hit home for me:

“Companies often put too much emphasis on finding employees with “relevant experience.” Your top performers will end up being smart, resourceful, and innovative–three elements that have nothing to do with prior experience.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Time after time in my own work, both as an Executive Director, as a board member, and as a consultant, I’ve found that the best leaders are those who are adept at thinking strategically, motivating those around them, and are driven to succeed.

These are, of course, harder to evaluate in a traditional hiring practice — by looking at resumes and cover letters.

But it’s worth taking the time to figure out who will most thrive in a role.

Once, when hiring somebody to lead Oregon LCV’s political program, I had the two finalists spend an hour reviewing a scenario and then writing a memo with advice on how to spend political resources.

One of them emerged from the office where he had been working and said “that was hard.”  When the other emerged on the day of his final interview, he said, “that was fun.”

It  wasn’t my only clue, but it was  big final clue that led me to hire the one who thought puzzling through political challenges was “fun.”   And time proved it to be the correct hire.

So don’t be afraid when hiring to be creative in how you evaluate candidates.

The question I keep asking myself after repeatedly re-watching this video is: what are the implications for nonprofit organizations?

Some implications are fairly straightforward:

For example, with very few exceptions, nonprofits tend to eschew the use of financial performance bonuses as a means to spur better future results. The video suggests nonprofits are right to avoid financial bonuses.

Also, nonprofits have an inherent advantage over for-profit entities, in that their “purpose” is hard-wired into their reason for existence, unlike the “purpose” examples Pink cites from the for-profit world.

But how about mastery and autonomy? I think one of the deeper meanings of the video is that nonprofits can’t simply play the “purpose” trump card as a way to motivate volunteers and staff, if there is no effort to take into account the other two motivators.

If purpose, mastery, and autonomy are three legs of a stool, the nonprofit can’t survive on just one leg.

Another way of putting it is: if you strip away autonomy and mastery as a way to motivate your nonprofit team, what will result?

A nonprofit I’ve known for some time recently changed its decision-making structure to remove a great deal of authority (e.g. autonomy) from volunteers, even as the nonprofit continues to tout volunteers as a critical part of its strategy. Over time, what will that mean for the nonprofit’s ability to attract high quality volunteers? My prediction (which hasn’t yet had time to be born out) is that it will have a significant negative impact.

Aside from giving decision-making control to volunteers, are there other ways to meet their needs for autonomy and mastery?

What about employees? Are there lessons for how to engage them beyond the usual generalities about not micromanaging them?

Your feedback is encouraged.

It’s well worth the read.

Here’s the nutshell version:

Engagement Organizing in their words is a set of inter-related practices that are designed to simultaneously use the latest technology to organize and drive real-world personal one-on-one conversations that, in turn, lead to organizational supporters moving up a ladder of engagement in support of the organization’s mission.

Here are 3 points Stahl and Price make that I think are worth elaborating on:

1. You must invest in data management.  Organizations that underinvest in data management are in far worse shape than those that overinvest. And the data management system must be one that everyone in your organization can utilize — not just a database administrator.

2. You must have a culture that emphasizes personal relationships that are built in-person, with the phone a major tool as well.  I’ve seen too many organizers in the last few years who think that organizing begins and ends on the internet.  The internet makes certain things much cheaper.  But in the end of the day, the phone is a critical means of reaching people, and only in-person relationships are the type that generate true organizational buy-in.

3. You must trust your volunteer leaders if you want them to take responsibility to lead.  I like to call this my Spiderman theory of organizing: “with great power, comes great responsibility,” to quote the comic book character.  Organizations that empower individuals outside staff and board to advance their program are more likely to succeed.  And that will only happen if you give them real responsibility.  I recently heard an Executive Director justify a decision to strip away power from volunteers by saying: “we had to do that because the tail shouldn’t wag the dog.”  In my opinion, this is setting the organization up for failure, as dog is entirely the wrong metaphor for an organization.  Organizations that centralize decision-making and control at a time when the world is becoming more networked are setting themselves up for decline.  Organizations that understand Engagement Organizing will get this.

I’ll be curious to hear what other folks think about the White Paper. If you’ve had a chance to read it and have thoughts, please comment here or shoot me an email.

The book is part fable and part logical argument about a series of dysfunctions that Lencioni believes lay at the heart of teamwork challenges facing many organizations.

For the full review, read onward.

By way of example, a strategic planning process that aims to get the staff and board past disagreements about mission and strategy should look different than one whose primary aim is to help a smaller or medium sized organization figure out how to get to the next level.

So here are five potential “top” reasons to do strategic planning.  Before launching a planning process, I advise organizations to make sure that they’ve identified the top one (or perhaps two) reasons and make sure the process they’re undertaking will be tailored to address the reason.

• To help with fundraising.  A good strategic planning process should strengthen your relationship with top donors.  And more importantly, a good strategic plan can be an effective tool to go to your largest donors and convince them you have a solid plan to get to the next level if they invest.   (As an aside, “next level” doesn’t have to mean larger, it could mean more effective).

• To prioritize. A good strategic planning process can help the board and staff collectively determine priorities among what are often too many laudable goals and strategies.   This can then provide a useful tool for future budgeting and work planning.

• To reestablish consensus around the mission.  Often as groups grow, mission creep sets in, for both good and bad reasons.  As board turnover happens, you can easily wind up with a board and/or staff that has disparate opinions about the fundamental purpose the organization is seeking to serve.  Over time, this can lead to all sorts of inefficiencies and conflict.  Strategic planning is a great way to resolve these differences, or figure out what to do if the differences are unresolvable.

• To get the board more engaged. Even the best boards go through cycles of less engagement.  It’s hard to overcome that through one-on-one meetings (thought they’re critical).  And regular board meetings can be improved to generate more engagement.  But to take a the board up a notch usually requires a reboot using something like “strategic planning” to excite the board, build community among the board, and convince them that stepping up their involvement will help lead to more success.

• To develop new strategies or better articulate existing strategy.   A well thought out strategic planning process should either help you identify new strategies to initiate or, at the very least, better articulate how your existing strategy or strategies are designed to lead to achievement of your goals.   Without a strategy, you’re not likely to be effective.  And by better articulating your strategy, you’re far better prepared over time to stay on track as new opportunities and threats emerge.

This is not intended as an exhaustive list.  And I don’t want to suggest you have to pick one of these to focus on.

But thinking through why you’re doing strategic planning remains a key piece necessary to design a useful process.

Talkers tend to talk a good game at first, but then remain remarkably passive in actual implementation of their ideas.  Often, when you ask them why something hasn’t happened, they revert to the passive voice.

“My board wasn’t engaged.”

“The donors weren’t enthusiastic.”

When you poke behind the surface, it’s often because the passive voiced talker sat on their buns expecting everyone but them to get it done.

I remember talking to one Executive Director who complained about their board’s lack of engagement and quizzing him about it.

Me: “Have you sat down with your board members one-on-one to talk about what they want to get out of service and to get to know then?”

ED: “No.”

Me: “Why not?”

ED: “I don’t know.  I guess I was waiting for my board members to call me”

Likewise, I recently engaged with a fundraiser who was great at building relationships, but it was never the right time to make an ask.

Fundraiser: “I spent the last year building relationships with these people.  If I ask them for money this year, they’ll think fundraising is all it was about.”

Now I’m all for relationship-based fundraising — indeed, it’s at the heart of what I train.  But you build the relationships as you ask for money, not as an alternative to asking for money.

In the end, the people who have get it done mentalities tend to do a bit less talking, and more time setting up clear plans, clear objectives, and then engage actively to get things done.

So one question I’ve come to ponder is this: how do you identify the talkers versus the “get it done” mentality in the hiring process?  Let me know if you have any ideas.

In my experience, it’s equally if not more important to identify the traits or personality characteristics you want.  Skills can be learned.  Personalities evolve infrequently.

So what traits/characteristics would I look for first?  Admittedly, this may vary based on the size and needs of the organization.  But this list is a pretty good starting place that any board could adapt to fit their own situation.

1. Self-Starter.  Good Executive Directors do not need somebody else to motivate them.  They are driven to be successful.

2. Passion for the mission.  Some people are highly professional, but it’s exceedingly rare that an Executive Director will excel if they do not feel a strong passion for the organization’s mission.  This will impact everything from their own motivation, to understanding the motivation of their board, donors, and volunteers.

3. Ability to motivate others.  No thriving organization relies upon the Executive Director to carry the load him or herself.  Rather, thriving organizations involve a team of staff, board, and other volunteers working together.  The key to all that is an Executive Director who values teamwork, is excited by watching their co-workers develop professionally, and who puts the team first.

4. See the forest and the trees.  An Executive Director must be able to view the world at two levels.  They must see the big picture (e.g. the forest) and think strategically about how to get the organization from here to there.  But they must also see the trees, being able to wade into the details of budgets, task lists, databases, and other nuts and bolts.   Very large organizations may be able to get by with a visionary Executive Director who has an assistant and is also paired with a Chief Operating Officer who handles the “trees.”  But for smaller or medium sized groups, having this dual personality is critical.

5. They have a service mentality.   They’ve probably volunteered for other nonprofits.  The questions they ask should suggest they are mostly concerned about how they can make a difference through the organization.  If a prospective Executive Director mostly asks about compensation or demands more than the organization can afford, this should be  a red flag.

6.  They are very comfortable and competent fundraisers, particularly with regard to individual major gifts.   Some may think this belongs in the list of “skills” instead of “traits.”  Perhaps it’s so important it belongs in both lists.  Regardless, the knack for being fearless in both forming relationships with prospective donors and a willingness to ask may be as much a personality trait as it is a skill.

7. Deal well with conflict.  All organizations have setbacks.  Thriving organizations handle them well, learn from them, and move on.  Since setbacks often involve conflict, Executive Directors need to be calm under fire, yet not be averse to conflict when it’s sometimes the right choice.

8. Doggedness.  They don’t let the little things get them down, but keep plugging away.  It is rare that a nonprofit thrives overnight.  Rather, it’s the accumulation of smaller victories over time that gets the boulder rolling downhill.  That means an Executive Director who works hard day in and out and not just at the obviously critical times.

What do you see as missing from this list?

Look for a future blog entry on how boards can use the hiring process to identify which candidates have these traits?

But it’s harder to say that than to do it.

If you want to encourage out-of-the-box thinking in your organization, here are some ideas I’ve gleaned over time.   I’d be curious to learn what other ideas you have.

1. Be explicit about when you’re experimenting and how to evaluate it.  If you’re trying something innovative, have clear goals and think ahead of time about how you’ll know whether the innovation was better than whatever standard practice you’re putting aside.  Of course, true A/B experiments when you can compare the results are possible in some situations (e.g. testing email formats), but not in others (testing an innovative board meeting or conference call format).

2. Set aside some professional development time to attend conferences, particularly those OUTSIDE your core field.  It’s when you get out of your core network that you’ll be most likely to be exposed to something truly new.  Or to have that flash of brilliance that somehow connects something new in one field to an opportunity in your own.

3. Set aside reading time.  This can be anything from books or blogs.   This is best if you can get a few people in your organization to read the same topic and then have a discussion about what it means for your organization.

4. Ask a funders if they’ve heard of any innovative projects from which you could learn.

5.Recognize employees who’ve done something innovative or interesting, even if it fails!  As long as you’ve learned from the failure, this should be counted as a victory.

6. Get together as a staff and watch a dozen TedX videos on subjects that are tangentially related to your organization and see what ideas come up.

7. At least once a year, make sure to set aside a true staff retreat where out-of-box thinking is encouraged, preferably in a non-corporate setting.

Of course, innovation for innovation’s sake doesn’t make sense.  If something’s working, sometimes the answer is to scale it up, not change it.

What other practical ideas do you have for how to encourage innovation withing a nonprofit organization?