Leading by Design

RECEIVING A SUM OF MONEY UNEXPECTEDLY (or half-expectedly) isn't as unusual as it may seem in the nonprofit world. It often comes in the form of a bequest, but it might just as often come as a year-end gift from a loyal member.  Sometimes, it's a grant few thought the organization would ever be competitive enough to get.  Or a local corporation or government acknowledges the efforts of a nonprofit that is making the community a better place. The question that gets some organizations tied up in knots is how to make the best and most efficient use of these funds.  We all dream about how we'd put a few thousand bucks to use if it were to arrive on our doorsteps, but when actually faced with a check in one's hands, the dreams may be...well... too dreamy.  Where should it go, if the donor hasn't stipulated a place for it to land? The director of a small cultural nonprofit asked me this question.  After several years of increased attendance and program income,...

THE TERM 'FORWARD GUIDANCE' IS USED BY central banks to influence market expectations about the future levels of interest rates.  Banks do this by forecasting where markets will go and communicating their forecasts to businesses, governments, and the public.  I can see I've really grabbed your attention now.  But wait -- I'm going somewhere with this concept that has related, but not necessarily financial, applicability to the nonprofit sector. I'm intrigued by the phrase, which I admit I hadn't heard until recently.  I'm also intrigued with the idea of 'forward guidance' -- of articulating how something will turn out or could turn out based upon agreed-upon indicators, is (or should be) one critical component of planning for a sector as much as for individual organizational planning.  As the chart above from the banking industry illustrates, forward guidance is a combination of calendar-based indicators and trends and outcome-based indicators...

I'M A NEW BOARD MEMBER.  I figured after all these years of working with and for boards, and writing about them, too, it might be useful to experience nonprofit life from the other side of the table.  In five short months, the pressures of the duties of care, loyalty and obedience have firmly taken hold.    At a recent board meeting, staff members presented two unbudgeted funding requests for approval.  Both were completely out-of-the-blue, so far as I could tell -- at least I wasn't aware of them.  Just minutes earlier, the board had reviewed and approved the year-to-date operating statement, which already contains an vague amount "to be raised" to cover capital projects beyond normal maintenance.  Acknowledging that these proposals were outside of the approved budget, the staff pressed their cases for the urgency of the two expenditures. Many board members -- myself included -- sat in disbelief that they were being asked to find $50K out of ...

DESPITE TONS OF READILY AVAILABLE ADVICE ABOUT THE WHYS AND HOWS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING, many organizations still engage in planning because someone else told them to do it.  That someone could be a funder, a consultant, a staff leader, a program partner, a board member -- anyone, really, who has the audacity or ignorance to say "money/audience/visibility will come if you have a plan".    Fact is, many of these folks don't particularly care if the plan functions or not, just so long as there's a piece of paper or swell looking PowerPoint to show for it.  The bottom line is if planning doesn't well up from some deep, shared core organizational values, it will be a hollow effort that will ultimately be tossed aside for someone else's shiny, new imperative.  (Did you just hear the thud of the last plan hit the bottom of the trash can?  Or, as the illustration above suggests, it miraculously tumbles like a house of cards, never to be seen again.) The ...

WELL, I GUESS THE SHORT ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION IS 'YES'.  Plans are concocted everyday for all sorts of things from grocery lists to multi-year programmatic initiatives and I can see where many of them can be accomplished with little reflection and less excitement for the results.  There are proponents who assure us that even the most complex plans can be achieved with short, highly focused bursts of effort.  And, indeed, that's possible.  But it seems to me that any plan will lack dimension and luster if it's written as an internal 'beat the clock' exercise or a requirement to satisfy someone else's desire. The best planning is borne of possibility and one's own desire to marry the here-and-now with the what-if's and can-do's.  Its underlying thesis has everything to do with making aspirations reality, even if the aspiration is as universal or as necessary as getting out of debt or revisioning the work of a downsized staff.   When done right,...

I'M GETTING READY TO TALK WITH A GROUP OF BOARD MEMBERS and staff from African-American heritage sites about the importance of planning. My discussion is one small part of a full two-day immersion into all sorts of capacity-building topics. Much credit goes to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Northeast Regional Office for recognizing the need and pulling us all together. All of these sites have some level of historic designation, such as National Historic Landmark status and/or listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Some are newly formed and others have been around for a while. Almost all of them are small, with operating budgets below $50,000 a year.  They're all important to the histories of their communities and our country, yet I know there are days when they must feel as though they're swimming upstream. Few have done much, if any, formal planning. By 'formal' I mean writing a plan as a collective activity. A tiny numbe...

WE'RE ON THE CUSP OF THE NEW YEAR, A TIME WHEN I try to use the next few days to do some reflection and personal mission review and goal setting. Sounds very serious, but I assure you that it's not so much that as it is reinvigorating. Taking a bit of reflective time puts me back in touch with some basic ideas that are foundational to my work and to my outlook on life. I thought I'd begin the process this time around by sharing some quotes with you that have particular meaning for me: Eleanor Roosevelt: It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. When I first came across this quote, I wrote it right down. It clicked with me, because I've worked with so many organizations whose dreams seemed to far exceed their capacities to fulfill them. Or one person has big, vocal dreams, while everybody else is either not yet in dream mode or is completely clueless. No matter whose dream or how big, without an articulated plan to achieve it, it almost certainly wil...

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE IDEAL PLANNING PROCESS includes many voices along its way from inside and outside the organization. Casting as wide a net as possible for stakeholder opinion and insight can help the plan’s developers frame questions they might never have thought of asking, which can lead to the creation of important criteria by which to filter possible future scenarios. It’s also a way to gain broad buy-in to a final plan, because many people will have had an opportunity to put a point-of-view, an idea, or a warning on the planning table. Sounds good, doesn’t it? In practice, few organizations are able to take on as much opinion gathering as they or their consultants would like. If truth be told, all that surveying, benchmarking and focus-grouping is time-consuming work requiring as much (or more) coordination as the actual writing of a plan. But it can be so richly rewarding! Organizations that short-circuit this “research” phase of the process, however, go into p...

I KNOW WHEN MY BRAIN IS ON OVERLOAD to the point that I can't focus on anything, that's the time I start list-making. I just dump the reeling brain onto a piece of paper and start to sort it out. In doing so, I start to focus -- first on making the list, but then on prioritizing and tasking. This exercise is often overwhelming, but it's also calming, because it brings me clarity and gives me a starting point I simply lacked when all of it was stuffed in my head, zooming around in there. It's the same with many organizations. They come to planning after months or years of unfocused activity, often so overwhelming that they are unable to see the future for the forest of the now. "Energy depleting", "chasing our tails", "in seeming crisis-mode all the time" -- these are some of the ways board and staff leaders have described the long-term effects of life without a plan. Other manifestations can include: difficulty in attracting solid board...

The military and the corporate world increasingly employ a tool to help gain the upper hand, be it in war or in snagging more market share. It’s a tool that is particularly well-suited for nonprofits, as well. The tool is called the “strategic narrative”. Military expert Michael Vlahos describes to journalist Kaihan Krippendorff that strategic narratives in the military context are considered to be " compelling storylines which can explain events convincingly and from which inferences can be drawn ." Or alternatively, “ an interlocking framework of ‘truths’ ” that explain how a conflict came to be, where it is going, and how it should be argued and described. Why are they so important and why should cultural nonprofits care about them? As Krippendorff explains, the answer is simple: everybody wants to win…and everybody loves a winner. A compelling strategic narrative, which is, in effect, storytelling, has the potential to draw audiences and keep them coming...

An article in the May 11th issue of Crain's New York Business (" Made in New York ") explores why some manufacturing businesses are surviving despite the economy. It offers up five lessons, which I think have direct application for cultural nonprofits: 1. Be High-End As the article states, "If you want your company to last, you need a lasting reputation for quality." Cultural nonprofits strive for this -- many say so in their missions; it's time to take stock of your Quality Factor and take steps to burnish it or boost it starting at the front door. 2. Be Local "It pays to focus on the big, dense...market in your own backyard." Nurturing your local audience, however you might define that, returns dividends in the forms of membership retention, event attendance, and volunteerism, to name a few. Locals are here whether times are good or bad. 3. Be Networked "It's crucial to surviving recession," the article states. Think of your...

Without question, the common denominator among most -- if not all -- of the nonprofits I work with is that they carry a heavy load of organizational activities.  Staff, volunteers, money, and space are stretched to their limits.  The programmatic calendar is full.  The school buses are lined up at the door.   A public expectation has been created that must now be met again and again.   The load is getting heavier. Let's hope the bottom doesn't drop out.   Does this picture look familiar?  A common trait across the nonprofit sector is that institutions, particularly smaller ones, tend to take on a fair amount of work without first determining its costs and its benefits. The heavy load gets heavier and no one wants to dump any of it.  How do you choose?  Here's what I hear: 'Wouldn't someone be offended if a program, procedure or policy were suddenly jettisoned to make way for something new?' or 'We've been doing this activity so long that it defines us...

We've all read and heard about the importance of planning as a tool to harness focus and energy. We plan in our work lives and we plan in our private lives.  For some of us, the structure of a plan -- knowing the next steps and the next steps after that -- is comforting.   Shortly after 9/11, I  had the opportunity to facilitate a number of discussions among arts organizations about the impact of that tragedy on their work.  Almost all of them were experiencing greater numbers of visitors to performances, gallery shows and exhibitions.  Many were overwhelmed with this new interest...this desire to replace fear with the transformative beauty of art and culture. Those organizations that had rediscovered their footing said they did so because, just prior to 9/11, they had been engaged in planning.  They had been weighing various scenarios of their growth and development.  They developed responses that were helping them cope with audience demand and reconfigured funding. Fast-forward t...

My last post focused on merger as an organizational growth option, not a last-ditch attempt to survive.  Sadly, it's often not considered an option until too late.  But it, along with its cousins collaboration and partnership, ought to be in every nonprofit leader's lexicon.  How does it make it into the ongoing conversation?  Here are a couple of thoughts: Every year, as an organization is evaluating or updating its strategic plan, part of the conversation should focus on where the organization is in terms of its "life cycle" and what its options are for continued health.  I think this kind of discussion goes hand-in-hand with planning, but it could be a stand-alone conversation, as well.  It may be a conversation that begins at the staff level, but at some point it must migrate to the board level.  Institutionalizing such a conversation is one way to enable people to become comfortable with the fluctuating-- and sometimes inscrutable -- dynamic that is the nonprofi...

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:...

" The difficulty in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, but to respond with yesterday's logic ." -- Peter Drucker The American Association of Museums’ Center for the Future of Museums is asking the field to help it “build a picture of museums in 2019 and explore how the field can help society respond to the challenges we face” using Superstruct, the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Game.  To receive e-mail alerts from the Center for the Future of Museums about the museum-specific storyline in Superstruct and to keep it up to date on your game activities, contact AAM at futureofmuseums@aam-us.org To read more about the game visit www.iftf.org/node/2098 . To receive e-mail alerts from IFTF when Superstruct launches on September 22, e-mail superstruct@iftf.org . Futuring underpins anticipatory leadership and management – skills that are increasingly critical to organizational survival and success.   Futuring needn’t been far, far in the futur...

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...