Author: whatifconcepts

Empowering those that inspire so they can excel at the work that matters.

Waiting for a Matched Set

The lost sock sitting on top of the dyer waits patiently for its mate.  Cycles of laundry are completed and yet the matching sock still does not appear. 

The sock appears to be of no use.  Left to its own it is unattended and irrelevant.

How many great ideas sit on your organization’s dryer waiting for the right match?  I frequently see social sector enterprises put some of their best ideas aside like a unmatched sock.  They are waiting for the perfect donor, moment, or partner to appear and give their abandoned project life.  I am certain that if I go search in the sock drawer I have a high probability of finding the missing sock or I have a better chance of finding the mate clinging to a piece of clothing that the odds of it appearing magically from the dyer.

If there is power in the idea or project then perhaps it is well worth the energy to seek out a partner and start searching.  Another organization will gladly take the sock and turn it into their showcase project if you take no action.

 

Regrets

Matt Gross, the author of the Frugal Traveler announced he is leaving the New York Times in Wednesday’s column.  He reminisced about the highlights and also listed a few regrets.  In my mind, regret is a symptom of truly trying to contribute or maximize an opportunity.  We depart with regret when we have not accomplished all that we had set-out to achieve or perhaps we learned of alternative adventures.

As board members, staff and volunteers decided to head for new horizons it might be interesting to ask them for their highlights and regrets.  What did not get accomplished during their watch that they felt was important?  What opportunities do they wish they had taken greater advantage of during their tenure with the cause?

Regrets might tell you a lot about your enterprise’s challenges and opportunities. 

 Photo Credit: http://3.bp.blogspot.com

Supporting Your CEO

Conversations this week have underscored the need to have a couple key documents and processes in place to support your organization’s CEO.

  • A CEO job description- updated if new responsibilities have been added or shifted.
  • An organizational strategic plan.
  • An annual plan- a written plan identifying which strategic goals the organization is planning to address in the coming year.
  • Annual goals- at least one professional and personal goal for the CEO.
  • An annual assessment that includes a review process which collects actionable critique or commendations.  360 degree reviews are becoming best practices (includes feedback from direct reports, clients, donors, staff, volunteers, board members, and community members).
  • Alignment of the review process with the development of an annual budget.  It is much easier to measure the CEO’s fiscal management at the end of one budget year and adjust the CEO’s compensation during the creation of the coming year’s budget.
  • A strong and trusting relationship between the CEO and Board Chair.  I have often heard Board Chairs and CEOs talk about reaching a level of communication and support where there were ‘no surprises’ for either individuals.

Many CEOs concern themselves with the strength of their contract.  I would suggest that if the aforementioned processes and procedures are in place the CEO will have positive and supportive working relationship with the organization.  If the board takes the annual assessment seriously and ties the review to the strategic plan, annual goals and job description, there should be few surprises.  Working for an enterprise that promotes transparency and fairness is a highly sought after environment.


What else would you add to the list?

Photo Credit: http://www.bcps.org

30 Seconds- Your Elevator Pitch

Could you describe your organization in 30 seconds?  Could you do it on YouTube?  Could you produce a video and explain how you would use $10,000? Consumer Financial Solutions put together such a contest and received 120 entries.  They even increased the awarding pool to include a tier of $5,000 grants.  The best part about the contest is that it forced many causes to consider their elevator pitch.  In thirty seconds many enterprises were required to condense their message to the most significant facts and images.  What would your thirty second YouTube video look like?

Recipient or Partner

I just received fantastic information from a cause I support and I have been asked to share it with a major advocate of the organization.  A compelling report shows the organization to be performing exceedingly well when compared to peer institutions.  I was ready to forward the document via email and add a quick message to the advocate explaining how they can clearly see the organization’s success when viewed on the attached spreadsheet.  Then a colleague spoke-up.  My co-worker suggested that an email seems like a rather small return when sharing such valuable data.  Why not frame the information with few detailed points that the cause believes is important and then ask the advocate for their interpretation of the data?  Gain their insights on the benchmarking numbers.  Make them a partner in creating the findings of the report.  Take our joint efforts and share them with a greater audience.

My first hunch was to treat the advocate as a recipient.  My colleague’s focus was on transforming the advocate into a partner.  Partners make for a personalized relationship.  Partners are invested in an enterprise’s success.  Partnerships cannote a more formal relationship.  Recipients are omnipresent.  Being a recipient requires filtering information before one even decides which emails are even worth considering.  Partners provide advice and rise far above recipients.

Do you partner with key individuals and organizations or is everyone a recipient?  Can you partners engage each other in dialogue?  Do you listen to your partners recommendations?

Photo Credit: http://www.kodyaz.com

Authentic

As a fan of professional cycling I have had to recalibrate my enthusiasm of the sport.  Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) have been the bane of the sport’s recent history.  I now watch the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia with the same skepticism that I might watch daytime soap operas or professional wrestling.  Riders suddenly achieve spectacular results going from middle of the peleton to front of the field in single months.

If I knew the performances where authentic I could allow my passion for the sport to roll unhindered but I have learned to guard against the next scandal.  

How do you ensure your audience is experience an authentic result?  Can they trust your cause?  Being authentic is one of the most highly sought values and increasingly is part of an enterprise’s competitive advantage. 

Storytelling and Audience

Great storytellers are quickly bored without an audience to share their craft.  They thrive with interaction and an engaged audience.  The same is true for meetings.  If we simply wish to report out what we already know the meeting could have been summarized in a YouTube video.


How do you make a meeting meaningful?  Do you engage your audience?  Do you tap into the attendee’s wisdom?  Do you seek the advice of your audience?  Are they critical to the story? 

One of the best resources I use repeatedly when it comes to executing a fundraising campaign is Stuart Grover’s book Capital Campaigns.  He does a tremendous job of outlining the key steps, considerations, and resources to execute a successful campaign. What is most effective is about Stuart’s method is that it is simple and focuses on the fundamentals.

When it comes to asking for money, the process is clear that most individuals expect to be solicited for contributions. In fact the average American is barraged by appeals (email, mail, websites, phone calls, text messages, special events, etc). What helps differentiate the truly successful organizations and their fundraising efforts and the ones that just make a lot of noise is the ability to align donors with individuals they trust. If a potential donor hears from a trusted source they are much more likely to give serious consideration to making a donation. If you are the trusted source that is making the appeal, then you ability to communicate that you have invested your time, talent, treasurer and/or touch (as outlined in the Generosity Factor) is a essential. You have put some poker chips into the pot- so to speak. You have made a commitment and now you are sharing the opportunity for others to join you in this tremendous opportunity.

How do you connect with your donors and supporters? Do you have the right trusted source connecting with right donors? Has the person the donor trusts made a significant investment of their own in the project?

Practice Makes Perfect

In the continuation of the discussion inspired by the book Outliers the idea of practicing harder and better than anyone else was proposed as a key to success in Pete Carroll’s 60 Minute interview. Coach proposes that the most prepared players are the ones who succeed on Saturday even though they are not always the best players. The NCAA proposes time restrictions on the duration of athletic practice for student-athletes so the very ability to reach the 10,000 expertise hour threshold proposed by Gladwell (see Lonesome Dove post) is hindered by regulation. Much of the extra training takes place on personal time- weight training, film review, sports therapy, etc. How do you maximize the effectiveness of limited practice time? What does your team need to do that is most fundamental to its collective talents? There is a story about putting the ‘big rocks‘ in first (worth the read if you have not already). Are you putting the big rocks in first and then working with the pebbles and sand or is your practice/day/meeting run by the sand and pebbles? I believe that more than one great meeting has reached a single important decision and had far more impact than a meeting that considered many inconsequential issues.