Author: whatifconcepts

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

Specialist vs. Generalist

Specialists are experts in a very specific area.  Specialist can wax an Olympian’s skis to run .01 faster, enough to win a gold medal.  Doctors specialize, you have a pediatric anesthesiologist in surgery as opposed to just a general anesthesiologist.  A travel agent can customize a vacation on cruise line in the Caribbean that best fits a client who uses a wheelchair. 


Generalist have a level of comprehension that covers a wide range of information.  According to Wikipedia, a generalist species may survive in a wide variety of environmental conditions.  Generalist are small town doctors who are miles from the big city hospital and must handle whatever walks into their clinic.


The world appears to be headed towards developing more specialists in the years to come. Have you seen nonprofit fundraisers specializing in annual fund, capital campaigns, planned giving, alumni relations, major gifts, leadership donors?  Look in the Chronicle of Philanthropy classified section and you can see the diverse requirements and specializations within the field of Development and Advancement.


Nonprofit boards are being made-up of more specialists.  The matrix many boards use for selecting new board members includes professional skills such as accountant, attorney, builder/architect, business owner, technology, human resources.  These are tremendous skill and clearly add value to the expertise of the board.  Rarely do you see the matrix list the attribute of ‘generalist’.  Who has the expertise to manage all the specialist information and mold it into a format from which a board can make the best decision?  Who has the vision that considers as many of the opinions and views before reaching a conclusion?


In the coming years, I believe generalist, an individual with the ability to think strategically and globally will become a specialist.  The available pool of generalist is being reduced every year as more individuals train to develop technical skills.


How does your enterprise balance the specialists and generalists?  Do you have the specialists necessary to tackle the details?  Do you have a generalist to bring the conversation back to 30,000 feet if necessary?

Checklists

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a great reminder of how a simple approach builds long term performance and consistency.  Although the checklists reviewed by the author were developed and tested in the medical world with an aim at reducing infections and deaths the tactic is applicable far beyond the ICU.  The application of a checklist strategy to business and nonprofit worlds are evident and meaningful.  When preparing for a consulting engagement I often use a checklist to outline the client’s outcomes and manage the process.  Although it feels a bit like baby-steps it helps reduce the number of times a board retreat tries to do a 180 in the middle of the day because I missed the client’s intended outcome.  Why re-invent the wheel every time you appoint a new Chair for your organization’s largest fundraiser.  Imagine how much easier it would be to recruit a new volunteer to lead your next major event if there was clarity about the role and a template to follow.  Another opportunity exists with the orientation of new board members.  Many new board members take a couple meetings to get up to speed and begin contributing to the board’s deliberation.  Does a document exist within your organization to get the newest members involved more rapidly and effectively?  A few examples of unique checklists:

  • An outgoing Board Chair leaving a checklist for the incoming Board Chair.  The checklist outlines some basic strategies for general responsiblities over the course of the coming year.  Illustrations from the list: meet with each board member individually twice a year to hear their needs and thoughts; hold an annual gathering with the Advisory Council.
  • Board nominating procedures.  Have a checklist for the process that starts with identifying new board members and continues from cultivation to nomination.  Few boards have a wait-list of potential new board members and therefore the process is best not left for the last minute when it appears unprofessional and the pool of potential new board members may not be as anticipated.
  • Assessment of the CEO should be a consistent and transparent process.  How un-nerving for a CEO or Board Chair if the proceedure needs to be recreated each year or is only considered when a problem exists.
  • Roles of the board.  Give a checklist to each board member and allow them to mark the responsibilities as they accomplish them:  80% attendance of board meeting, Annual Fund contribution, serve on one committee or task force, attend three programs, advocate for the enterprise in a peer or business circle, write thank notes to 20 donors… the list is customized to your organization’s greatest needs but the steps are clear.



I have encouraged clients to take a few moments to design a simple checklist for some element of their organization that is critical but deemed reasonably simple.  One enterprise created a checklist for reviewing the financial statement during a board meeting.  Initially, only a few board member really knew what they were looking at during the report.  Now the Finance Chair walks step-by-step through the reports and everyone at the meeting understands the information and can truly fulfill their responsibility as a fiduciary.


What checklist might be most meaningful to your organization?  How would it change your organization’s effectiveness if you got the process correct almost every time?

Inertia
Most organizational planning sessions have the noblest of intentions. I frequently hear the following phrases in the preparation stage for a retreat.

Let’s really get our hands around the future of the organization.
We want to solve the big problems.
Everyone will know exactly what to do when we leave.
We can do this in a day.

I noticeably shutter when I hear those words. I am the first to champion enthusiasm and passion. An energetic group is usually a positive when facilitating as I do not have to spend lots of time getting the participant’s energy to somewhere above consciousness. As you enter and depart the retreat, the delta between an organization’s expected outcomes and that which was accomplished during the retreat is often sobering. Sometimes the list of expected outcomes looks like the paint the house, clean the garage, and mow the lawn in a Sunday afternoon schedule. A fact that has become increasingly clear to me is that the organization are going forward down their respective highways at 65 or 70 MPH. Nobody is going to pull off the road for a retreat. There is no motivation to come to a full and proper stop. The inertia of the organization’s speed is rarely taken into account when the planning process commences.

American Public Media’s Markeplace radio show had a facinating interview with K.C. Cole. She gave the following example,
“We all know that it takes energy to get started on something, whether it’s propelling yourself out of bed or propelling a rocket to Mars. What we don’t tend to appreciate is how hard it is to stop what you’re already doing. In fact, it’s relatively easy to blast your way to a distant planet compared to what it takes to slow down your spacecraft once you get there.”

Many organizations never calculate the force required to slow or alter their organization’s current path. The end result after the planning retreat is that the enterprise plots a path for the moon but remains in its current orbit with a few adjustments. It is not cyncial, it is science. Few people in the room consider the enormous amount of energy and time required to get people to act or move in a different direction.

Our current economic times have put tremendous pressures for change on financial institutions and yet the resistance to change has been extraordinary. Few calculated how difficult it would be to help banks dramatically alter what they had always done.

How do you account for your organization’s momentum when you commence planning? Which forward motion can serve you organization? Who is going to monitor the changes you wish to make? Do they have the power necessary to alter the organization’s course? How much energy is it going to take?

The K.C. Cole Marketplace interview can be listened to here: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=marketplace/pm/2010/01/21/marketplace_cast1_20100121_64&starttime=00:18:36.0&endtime=00:21:29.500


Absence

No entries, a dying blog, abandoned, left for another to do list, no more ideas, new projects, time crunch, no readers, new medium, got a book deal, asked to stop, forgot to post, traveling, working, lost…..


Although many of these could have been true, the reason for the long stretch of no activity was simply a holiday sickness that turned into a medical adventure.  Recovered now and finally able to speak and type slightly more coherently than the daze of meningitis and other fun, I resume with a sense of appreciation for sharing, a hope of adding value and living in balance…

Martin Luther King Jr Day

Yesterday, I caught an NPR radio interview of a class of primary school children.  The radio journalist was asking the students what question they would ask Martin Luther King Jr. if they had the opportunity.  The clip played a succession of the student’s responses.  The last response caught me as remarkable, “what are you going to do next?”  I first I thought it was cute.  Then I found it profound.  An civil-rights leader who dies in 1968 has a living legacy that continues to be molded and adapted to the current times.  So much so that an elementary student today can ask “what next.”  Where is your legacy going to take us tomorrow, will it lead the way?  To me, that sense of presence and context is remarkable.  Unlike a fading sports stars who finds their statistics frozen in time and re-count their best years at trading card shows, a movement transported Martin Luther King Jr. like a bookmark through a novel.  As we read the pages it appears that his presence was able to follow along in real time.  The cute question made me ponder.  Who in our respective lives has moved along with us and not been left as a time stamp in a history book.  My father who died suddenly and unexpectedly when I was in my twenty’s has certainly been as present today as when he passed away in the mid 90’s.  What makes these individuals and their impact so transportable?  Do we carry them forward or were they so remarkable that some force sweeps them along?  Is it legacy or do they continue forward because their work is not done?