When your priority is managing numbers, inputs on a spreadsheet are all that are required. If you lead people, you must prioritize a human-centered approach and balance resources. One is easy, but the results are not visible until the numbers equate to human action. The other is more challenging but builds trust and loyalty, which means people deliver more than the resources provided.
Your choice.
What is the inflection point between hoarding and securing additional resources? In the social sector, this tension plays out when an organization with a significant endowment requests funding for distinct initiatives. For example, a summer camp requiring deferred maintenance of its facilities may be questioned about the criteria for deploying the endowment for the upkeep and maintenance of the facility versus seeking new contributions.
How might we be prepared to communicate with our supporters when we are building up caches to provide fuel for our journey and when we are stocking a storage room for a pandemic we hope never occurs? Knowing how we intend to deploy resources may differentiate a donor’s perception between contribution and aggressive panhandling.
A water fountain requires little maintenance but provides essential fuel (hydration) for those who pass. A thirsty hiker, cyclist, runner, hot canine, and many others benefit from a good water source’s self-service, always-on nature.
What services do you provide that are easy to use, simply designed, and require little labor to monitor?
The impact is muted if I eat all my energy bars and drink all my sports drinks in the first half-hour of a six-hour bike ride. If I wait until the final half-hour to consume all my nutrition, the fuel arrives too late to produce a substantive difference. However, the result is much greater if I plan to eat one bar and drink one bottle each hour throughout the ride. A nutrition strategy for my journey allows for a more consistent and sustained effort.
How might we apply this strategy to our own work? How do we ensure we have fuel for our journey delivered at the right intervals?
What-if-concepts 