On the Brink - One Nonprofit's Story (Right Now)

My conversation with the director of a small museum was disheartening. The institution is staring at closure before year's end. The director continues to explore all possible options -- from fundraising to merger to closure -- but admits any option other than closure will take longer to accomplish than there is time on the clock. Most disheartening of all is the apparent inability of the board to pull together to raise some money. And, we're not talking millions, at least not for the short-run. Less than a couple hundred thousand would plug their operating shortfall for the rest of the year and buy them the time to nurture some of those longer-term options. On some levels, a sort of organizational paralysis seems to have set in.

Not easy stuff. The current financial condition of this organization has been in the making for a dozen years. Some poor decisions were left to fester against hopes for a brighter tomorrow. Course corrections were too little and often too late to make a significant enough impact. Each year of deficits only increased the momentum toward disaster. The question on the director's mind now is 'Is it too late to pull this organization back from the brink?"

This is organizational change writ large. It's disorganized and punctuated by a mix of reactions. What I see from my seat on the periphery is a board and staff that may be trying to manage this change in different ways and at different rates of speed. If you were to ask the director, the board is not moving fast enough to address a cashflow so tight it squeaks. The board seems unable or unwilling to accept the reality of a greatly truncated or dissolved mission -- and many of its members are bitter. Board members may feel that the director isn't doing 'enough' (whatever that may be) to lead them out of the forest. Staff may be feeling helpless or abandoned (and certainly in fear of losing their jobs). I can only imagine the stew of emotions -- anger, guilt, fear, numbness, confusion.

These responses are typical and most likely critical to what could, should and hopefully will come next -- reframing and reorganization. Without them, there is no crucible in which to forge a transformation.

Here's a helpful matrix from from Peter de Jager, a change management consultant, who encourages organizations to examine the level(s) of control they have over change as a way of reframing the discussion and beginning a reorganization process:

In Reality we have no control

In Reality we have control

We Believe we have no control

Type I.a

Normal Grief Cycle... and we work through it.

Healthy

Type I.b

Normal Grief Cycle... and we work through it.

Healthy

but... we can miss opportunities, some minor, some huge.

We Believe we have control

Type I.c

Very frustrating -unrealistic –

doomed to failure –

Unhealthy

Type I.d

Empowering –

Life affirming –

stimulates growth –

the stuff of heroes –

Very Healthy

Photo: teetering on the edge by Dr H

Back in the Saddle

MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin. We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week. If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014. It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog. I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs. Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management. Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, where nothing is qu

Change for Your Board in 2010: A Polling Update

WE'RE A DAY INTO MY LAST POLL (SEE RIGHT) AND the responses are clustering in two areas: 1) removing dead wood from the board and 2) using better/different tools to make decisions/evaluate performance. There are still six days left for your colleagues to cast their vote! In the meantime, those of you who are in need of tools for decision-making might want to check my posts on taking stock here , here and here .

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for? This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.) Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although

Leading by Design

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