Leading by Design

WHAT'S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT A NONPROFIT'S MISSION STATEMENT ANYWAY?  A recent exchange of emails with a museum client about their mission statement underscores the potential they can play in a nonprofit's growth and development.  I've been encouraging this client to go beyond the usual, inward-focused litany of activities that virtually every museum in the world cites as their mission.  Yes, museums collect and preserve stuff.  But if that's all they did, they'd be more like mausoleums than museums. The museum director and his staff have had several robust discussions about what the museum does and the audiences they serve.  It's clear from their conversations that the museum is much more than a place full of stuff.  There's meaning and resonance there, too.  Sorting through that has been both an intellectual and emotional exercise. Museums are not the only victims of tepid mission statements.  There are plenty of nonprofits of all stripes t...

LOTS OF PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU (myself included) that an overarching organizational mission is the logical starting point for developing a course of action.  The deep understanding of the need an organization can fill, along with the resulting impact from filling that need, typically form the bedrock for the planning, programming and evaluation that is to come.  But I'm willing to bet that there are loads of nonprofits who find themselves meeting a need and making an impact without ever fully articulating a mission statement (or a vision statement, for that matter). An arts organization I'm working with may be a case in point.  The founder, who is no longer on the board, but occupies a revered place in the organization's universe, has an extremely articulate and sophisticated idea about the importance of integrating the daily artistic process with the public.  The result of her desire became a successful grassroots artist project that eventually, for reasons having mos...

A CLIENT OF MINE IS WRESTLING WITH REVISING ITS mission statement. And wrestling is a good word for it. Writing a deceptively simple, but truly meaningful, statement is not easy. So many mission statements are mired in the what's and how's of an organization's activities that they barely acknowledge an audience or rarely talk about the whys of their existence. (Hint: audience and the whys of existence are the two most important things.) I've written (and spoken) a lot about this here . One of the connecting themes to all those posts is about digging deep to taste and savor meaning; to layer in texture and color; to make the statement connect on some emotional level with the people who read it. In fact, the mission statement is not so much about helping the folks within the organization decipher what the organization is, as it's about helping folks outside the organization discover your power and purpose. Here are some of the words from the image above that ...

I FREQUENTLY USE THIS INTRODUCTION/ icebreaker at board-staff retreats and it almost always results in a new level of mutual understanding and respect: I ask participants to talk about why they care about the organization and want to be a part of it. Emotional connections to the importance of the organization and to its mission are often revealed in heartfelt ways. Participants revel in newly discovered information about each other. Boards and staffs rarely allow themselves the opportunity to talk in such a way, yet their underlying desires to play a part in an organization are, in fact, the connective tissue that holds the enterprise together. It's a worthy thing to share. This activity is also a great pick-me-up for those times when a group has just plain run out of steam. It helps bring the energy level up, because it asks people to get in touch with what they deem is personally important. This discussion is also an effective opening to the creation of vision and mission stat...

THIS PARAGRAPH FROM A RECENT post by Dan Pallotta (his blog is Free the Nonprofits ) has my head spinning. So, I’m just going to lay it all out there as best I can. Pallotta uses the Apollo space program as an example of a success because it had specific parameters – and resources – for achievement. He doesn’t see either in the current nonprofit sector. Nearly 100 new nonprofits are created in the U.S. every day — about 35,000 a year — most of them doing the same things as existing organizations wrestling with the same social problems. Over 90% are very small — with less than half a million dollars in annual revenues. In his recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review , Mark Kramer wrote that, because of fragmentation, redundancy, and the plethora of small organizations "there is little reason to assume that [nonprofits] have the ability to solve society's large-scale problems." I would argue that it is precisely because we aren't committing o...

THIS VIDEO EXPLORES SOME MORE ways to make your mission statements more compelling. If your organization's got a flat mission statement, I hope you'll be energized to rethink it with an eye to adding layers of color, texture and vibe!

IT HIT ME THIS MORNING -- MISSION STATEMENTS ARE LIKE good wines or craft beers; they're meant to be savored. A lot of care goes into making truly wonderful things and that's no less true for the noble statement of purpose. Yet so many mission statements are nothing more than cookie cutter iterations that lack true craftmanship and, ultimately, true meaning. If you can't get jazzed about your organization's mission statement, who do you think will? How can you break out of the old mold? Let the tasting and the savoring begin! Try this and see if it helps: make some copies of your mission statement and give it to staff and to some of your board members and volunteers. Ask them to carry it around with them for a day and use it as a comparison to what's really happening at your institution. Does the statement capture and mirror the enjoyment, the learning, the level of activity, the sense of wonder and discovery, the intensity and the humanity of what's goin...

Just like the daffodils in my garden this spring, a few stories about nonprofit mergers can be found offering bright respites from the reams of gloomy headlines about cultural nonprofits in trouble.   The Boston Globe's April 15th story about the successful merger of two social welfare organizations made the point that the notion of merger seems to be a relatively new concept in the nonprofit world.  From my vantage point, merger is generally not an option to be found in the toolkit of most cultural nonprofit leaders.  As the Globe article rightly points out, mergers tend to be seen as a sign of failure; nonprofit leaders worry that mergers mean loss of autonomy or identity.  Indeed, one Globe reader summed up the distaste many have for merger, " Social service agencies can more typically be combined without anything essential being lost; arts institutions exist to fulfill a certain artistic vision, and combining two similar size groups usually means one vision endures and th...

I'm here to tell you -- if you didn't already know it -- that the word "unique" has pretty much lost its punch.  Because it's used to describe an overwhelming amount of otherwise mediocre or mundane subjects, I find myself treating sentences containing the word with some suspicion, even disrespect. One finds the word "unique" used a lot in mission statements. The intent is to garner support by implying that a program, a building or a collection has no equal.  However, declaring uniqueness doesn't necessarily make it so. The sheer number and variety of cultural institutions in this country generally cancels out the uniqueness factor.  Chances are, if there's one of you, there's probably more.  And for some types of organizations, there's A LOT more.  We certainly know that about historic house museums and children's museums, community theatre groups, and kids art camps.  Just because your organization exists doesn't make it unique....

I spent yesterday with an enthusiastic yet mired board and director of a small heritage organization. After doing a quick round of strengths/weaknesses about the organization, it became clear that many (most) of the weaknesses stem from one, big absent strength -- a clear vision and mission. Equally telling, no one noted that anything even approaching a long-range or strategic plan was a strength (they have one, too!). Here's a short list of this organization's symptoms (aka weaknesses):  can't seem to focus; can't seem to follow through on what plans there are; poor internal communication; committees don't function well or at all; uneven or weak leadership, etc.  You get the picture.  A  list like that can undo the good intentions of any board member or director. So, what to do?  Well, you can certainly start to address the symptoms.  But they are symptoms after all -- the underlying problem is still there.  So, I encouraged the group to take a two-pronged attack:...

I first read Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith's book, The Wisdom of Teams , years ago when I was preparing to lead a team of museum educators through a five-institution collaboration. Ever since then, I've asked myself whether or not boards of directors can meet the standards the authors identified as critical to the high-performing team. The Wisdom of Teams looks primarily at the for-profit workplace and how groups of workers combine in teams to get work done.  Teams function at a variety of levels -- or not at all -- from the innocuous working group , whose purpose is to share information, to the high-performing team , which can reach astounding feats of accomplishment. Okay.  We know boards are groups that come together to get work done.  And some boards are highly effective and productive.  But since boards members are serving voluntarily, would they ever have enough skin in the game to be one of Katzenbach and Smith's high-performing teams? And do they need to be anywa...

If you search the Internet for the term "Shiny Object Syndrome" you'll learn that it refers to the penchant many people have for latching onto the latest tech toys and social networking media no matter the cost in dollars, time or productivity. Email and websites?  Old school.  How about Facebook, Flickr and Twitter?  What's next and how fast will it get here?  Applied to the world of cultural organizations, how well will shiny objects facilitate relationship-building among and between audiences? When used in the broader context of attention diversion, Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS, for short) has been alive and well in the organizational environment for a very long time .  SOS can just as easily be about introducing costumed interpreters to increase visitation as it is about inaugurating a wild and whacky fundraising event to bolster the bottom line.  Funders, too, are all potential shiny objects.  In other words, shiny objects can take an organization to the next level...

When you see these two words - values and principles - is your first inclination to say they are the same thing?   While they share a critical connection – in that you can’t have one without the other – there is an important difference between the two.   And, it might be quite important to know the difference when thinking about your organization. When we talk about institutional values , we’re talking about strong and enduring beliefs based on assumptions or understandings about what is worthwhile or desirable.   For many nonprofit cultural institutions, values tend to focus on understandings such as respect, excellent, authenticity, community, education. Here’s the values statement from the Ohio Historical Society: Customer service and focus Respect and opportunity for Society employees Excellence Action- and results-oriented Authenticity Teamwork and partnership Continual learning and improvement It’s unlikely that these value...

Non-profit organizations  are only as donor-worthy as the strength of their missions and the focus of their programs -- both have to be compelling, of high quality, serving a defined need, and measurable in their outcomes.  This requires an organizational commitment to building and enhancing internal capacity as well as to being responsive to members and other stakeholders, as well as to the community (including oversight/regulatory agencies and funders).  The competition for dollars and audience is great, and getting greater.  There are more than 2000 arts organizations in New York State.  Think of all the nonprofits in your community or region -- schools, hospitals, religious organizations, museums, libraries, social service organizations. Each one has a mission, a need, and to greater or lesser degrees, each is seeking funding.  Now think of all the fundraising material you personally receive each week or month.  What appeals came in the mail or over the telephone last week?  ...