Author: whatifconcepts

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

Being Your Best

I have read and been repeatedly inspired by Marcus Buckingham’s books.  I embrace the theory that you maximize an individual’s talents and mitigate their weaknesses.  He recently released a new book titled Find Your Strongest Life that I anticipate reading as soon as I finish Seth Godin’s Linchpin.

I am always searching for the best question to ask at the right moment.  Marcus has a five-point strategy for problem solving.  Number three is listed below: 

Change follows the line of your questioning. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong?” ask, “What does it look like when it’s working?”

Checkout the rest of the steps on Oprah’s website along with tactics for decision-making, switching careers and developing connections.

Filling the Agenda

In the past couple of weeks I have facilitated two organizational retreats that covered approximately the same material.  One was scheduled for four hours and the other was scheduled for seven.  As I sort through my notes and consider what was accomplished during both sessions and the results were the same.

The difference in my mind was the work done in advance by the organizations.  One group was very clear about what questions needed to be answered and what the deliverable was at the end of the retreat.  The other was also focused but tried to cover a wider range of topics during the course of the retreat.  Their outcome was to refresh an existing document.

I came away with an appreciation for clarity and focus.  Group planning sessions are more productive when you take the following steps:

  1. Agree on an outcome before you start planning
  2. Ask for input from the participants.  For example using an online survey, interviews or focus groups
  3. Filter the information and develop specific questions or decision-making opportunities for the group
  4. Have the support and commitment to the outcome from the organizational leadership
  5. Allow the group attendees to react to the information and provide suggestions, alternatives or agreement
  6. Capture off-the-subject items in a “parking lot” list and then return to those topics at the end of the session to decide if they still need to be discussed or assign a plan of action for each one
  7. Create agreement about the expectations for moving forward from the session
  8. Report back quickly and share meaningful updates/drafts for the group to review and approve
  9. Celebrate success

As a facilitator it is almost as much work to prepare a half-day as a full-day retreat.  However, the best retreats seem to honor people’s time and energy levels.  It is easier to keep the tempo high, the energy flowing and a small sense of urgency over three to four hours than seven or eight.


What has been most effective for your organization?  How do you balance scheduling and planning?  Would you consider paying more for the same result in less time?

Training Your Competition

When I lived in a ski resort town in Idaho I was a volunteer member of the local fired department.  The fire department developed a policy that required new members to serve a probational year after which a firefighter who met certain requirements could begin to advance their medical and fire ground training beyond the core curriculum.  At first this policy felt like a glass ceiling because many of the new paid-on-call volunteers had a lot of energy, time and were motivated to learn as much as possible.  After inquiring about the process, I learned the rule had developed partly to comply with professional fire fighting standards but its real roots existed in the classic resort town struggle.  In earlier years volunteers were obtaining their Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification by joining the fire department in September and completing the course over the winter.  When the snow began to melt and the rivers ran high, some of the newly minted EMTs headed to work for the whitewater rafting companies.  Many of these companies required EMT certification or paid more if you had the training.  The volunteers had taken the course at the expense of the fire department and then bolted for the river.  After a couple years of developing frustration the fire department instituted the probational year as an assessment tool to quantify the aptitude and initiative of each member.  This is one method to ensure retention of your staff.

Alternatively, Seth Godin argues that if you hire exceptional people and provide a dynamic workplace retention will not be your issue.  Godin’s recent book Linchpins speaks at length about the old factory paradigm and how it is becoming obsolete.  He points to companies like Zapoos which are almost infectious with enthusiasm.  Places where the people do their best because of the their personal motivations, not because of a policy.

Both systems are in play.  The question is which one adds to your organizational culture?  Which one holds your best and brightest at a average pace that most everyone can achieve?

Are you training your competition’s employees?  Have you created a dynamic environment that attracts talented individuals?  Are your best people recruiting new employees for you?  

Compassion and Enlightend Self-Interest

Would we be more serious about committing and rebuilding Haiti over the next decade if we found that a Taliban training camp had been established inside Haiti’s borders?  Would we be more serious about climate change if a polar bear showed-up in the backyard?  Would we be more serious about addressing homelessness if one received a picture, profile and in-person introduction to the homeless person your tax dollars were funding?  

Paul Collier has a simple formula to address the needs of the bottom billion of the world’s population.

2+7+1= the begining of resilency

Lifetimeswork a UK firm specializing in Executive Coaching circulated the following paper on the topic of being resilient.  The document outlines some key concepts and formulas that are aimed at those in leadership, be it a Chief Executive Officer or a Board Chair.  In the second half of the paper there is an assessment tool for your consideration.  The full paper can be downloaded here. 

  
The 7 part of the formula is an fascinating list to consider with your own leadership.

The ‘7’

 There are seven attitudes whose combination is critical for the highest level of resilience

1.    Takes full responsibility for self, own actions and reactions.
2.    Doesn’t dwell, forgives when necessary, moves on.
3.    Not taking oneself too seriously. Humility and self deprecating humour.
4.    Optimistic.
5.    Grounded, feet on the ground, pragmatic.
6.    High level of independence and independent judgement.
7.    Values others and their opinions.

How to recognize your team and raise money

Thanks to Holderness School in beautiful Plymouth, NH for this creative faculty recognition and fundraising idea.  Instead of a live auction over Parent’s Weekend, the school held a raffle with twelve items.  Most of the raffle items were weekends at ski resorts, tickets to a Boston Red Sox game or lodging for graduation weekend.  Parents, students, faculty, trustees and friends could buy raffle tickets online and distribute them as they wished into the virtual raffle buckets.  The most popular item was a get-away weekend in Sugarbush, VT.  The catch was the winner had to select a member of the staff (at the time of purchasing the tickets) to receive the award.  For example, a parent purchases the tickets, put them in the Staff Get-Away prize, names there student’s History teacher as the recipient and should the parent win the History teacher receives the Faculty Get-Away package.  The house in Sugarbush sleeps 12 so the faculty member can invite friends and colleagues should they wish.


I think this is brilliant for a variety of reasons.  This particular raffle prize honors the staff and faculty.  The “winner” of raffle immediately passes the gift along to the teacher they named.  The faculty member gets an unexpected weekend vacation.  It builds a sense of community, much like a young child with a bunch of balloons walking along handing them out one at a time to strangers.  At the end of the event, the Get-Away raffle package received the most raffle tickets, meaning this item alone was a major revenue generator for the school.

How can you honor and reward your professional team in creative ways?  Can you create a scheme where the organization, donor and staff all win at the same time?  Does you reward program enhance your organization’s values?  Is it expected or unexpected?  What has been successful for you?

What news we want our friends to forward to us

My sister forwarded to me a NY Times article reviewing research that sociologists at the University of Pennsylvania had undertaken to study which news articles readers emailed to their friends and colleagues. The fascinating part was that gossip, news of the weird and sex were not the leaders.  Articles that inspired and were intellectually challenging were the most emailed and seem to generate the most interest.  The researchers were looking of articles that went viral.  An interesting trend was the the balance between emotional and intellectual content.

Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list.

How can you use this study to influence what you put into your email blasts, newsletters and communications?  Are you giving your customers and patrons what they most desire?  Can you invite guests or experts in your field to submit an article that engages your membership?  Can you enter a dialogue that creates energy and interests?

Measuring Impact

I use a metric to measure the exertion of my cross-country ski training (at least when I am not recovering from viral meningitis, then I just use the “am I standing upright” measurement).  I outline a purpose for each workout and give it a percentage grade when I am done with 100% representing my workout matching perfect my purpose.  I multiple that by the duration of the workout, 0.25 to 5 hours and then multiple by the intensity with a scale of 1 very easy and 5 a maximum effort.  An example of the metric: my purpose the other day was to ski a long distance workout at level 2 (relatively easy pace) with minimal stops and focus on a specific skiing technique.  In reality I skied 3.5 hours and focused on technique but the intensity was higher than I planned since I had to fight a headwind and skied harder than I had intended.  The calculation: purpose index is .75 (75% of my purpose) x 3.5 hours x 3 (level 3 intensity)= 7.87 index.  Had I honored my purpose for the workout the formula would have been 1.0 (100%) x 3.5 hours x 2 (level 2 intensity)= 7.0.  That does not mean the intended workout was less effective than the actual session but it puts a metric on the exertion.  I then can monitor the impact of the workouts on my races and recovery.


So how can this type of metric be applied to your enterprise?  Many nonprofits lack a perfect metric (as noted by Jim Collins in his Good to Great and the Social Sector, a follow-up book to his best seller Good to Great).  So we invent our own.  Jim notes that a symphony in the Midwest decided to anecdotally follow the number of taxi cab drivers who mentioned the symphony as an attraction while driving tourists from the airport to downtown.  It would be extremely difficult to track this as a metric.  The symphony’s assumption was that if a taxi driver was promoting the symphony then they were well positioned as an attraction in the community.  So what value works for your cause?  World Bicycle Relief could track the number of bikes distributed into an African community but if nobody is using the bikes then the metric is flawed.  So perhaps you track the number of miles ridden on the bike, the number of times the bike is ridden each day, the gross weight of the supplies carried on the bike, or the time saved by riding a bike compared to walking.  Perhaps these measurements get you more information than just the number on units distributed. 


Return on investment (ROI) is a common refrain in the nonprofit board room, a carryover from the corporate world.  In some cases this is a very effective measurement.  The Robin Hood Foundation targets poverty in New York City.  The foundation employees an economist to measure the effectiveness of their grants.  They have established an index that measure the cost-benefit ratio of their grants and support.  Their approach is very focused and scientific.  The majority of the foundation’s board members come from the corporate world and this is a language they speak with ease.  Presenting the information in this manner meets the culture of the board and staff and can be explained readily to the high-energy, high-fiance world of Wall Street.  They now their audience and they are delivering the message in a business terminology.  


What do you need to measure?  Who is your audience?  How can you most effectively monitor the impact of your programs?  Is it scientific or anecdotal?  Are you collecting right data?  Is it relevant to your donors and customers?

Commonization

Marketplace on American Pubic Media produced a story about the Toyota design theory of commonization.  A single vehicle part is designed and used on multiple models.  It costs less, requires less in research and development and is more efficient to stock.  The practice is wonderful until something goes wrong and then every model is effected.  Toyota now has a billion dollar problem to fix and has been forced to shutdown production of new cars to fix the current fleet.

I wonder if you have seen the same thing in the nonprofit sector?  I frequently hear groups discuss the need to get more grants from foundations.  If every group acted on this strategy it would overwhelm the foundations.  Giving USA provides the following data.  Foundations account for 13% ($14 billion) of the total philanthropic giving in 2008.  About 75% ($230 billion) comes from individuals.  Which piece of the pie looks more attainable to your organization?  Diversification is one model but commonization as a tactic just because another organization is having success is not strategic but rather reactionary.

Commonization has been used very successfully in a community wide efforts.  Charitable events that support multiple agencies are amazingly well received.  Old Bill’s Fun Run in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is administered by the Community Foundation of Jackson.  It provides a way for the citizens of the community to support all the nonprofits with “one broad stroke.”  It is the umbrella fundraising event for the community.  Commonization has been well received and worked extremely well in this application.

Are your initiatives thoughtfully designed and linked to your strategic plan?  Are you reacting to the success or failure of the enterprise down the street?  If you take on a strategy of commonization can you sustain yourself if the “brakes fail” as in Toyota’s case?  If you are serving for the public trust, what is in the public’s best interest?  What are the benefits of commonization for your community?