All over, I see middle management being urged to “get on the social media bandwagon” because they may get left in the dust. But, often the senior management of the organization is skeptical or downright hostile to the idea. By understanding the fears that are driving this hostility, you might be able to break through.
This is from an excellent transcript at the Chronicle of Philanthropy on nonprofits’ use of social media. I’ve pulled out the fear-based questions that people asked. I recommend you read the whole thing, because there’s lots more!
Worries organizations have about social media:
My organization is concerned about putting our name out there to possibly be “manipulated” in a negative way on . . . these social networking sites.
Is it bad if members within the organization don’t always speak with a unified voice?
[H]ow can an organization that has no experience with these media options “get started?”
I would like to get my organization started in social networking, but my boss is skeptical. How can I show her it’s not a waste of my time?
I work with nonprofits whose executive management teams are resistant to the idea of social networking as none them are willing to invest staff time in the effort. Also, none envision value-added results.
[H]ow much staff time need be committed on a daily basis?
Our main concern with social networking are the liability issues that may arise. . . . [H]ow can we utilize a social medium like Facebook, without having to worry about any of our service recipients leaving comments that are crisis issues.
[H]ow does a development director or volunteer get management to trust (give up control)?
This adds up to just a few real fears:
We’re out of control (of friends, of supporters, of staff)
It’s a waste of time and money (and diverts us from better pursuits)
Something bad will happen and we’ll be blamed (a friend may harm another friend)
What You Can Do
The best suggestion I have, as someone who’s been both middle and senior management in nonprofits, is to take baby steps. If you see utility for your organization in pursuing social medi, you’ll need to cover these bases:
Start small so consequence of failure is low and the dislocation to the organization is minimal. Here are ten tips for new Twitter users, for example.
Make sure you are ready to monitor performance. That means you will have to decide what success will look like. And you will have to spend time listening — but you can decide how much.
Point out that it’s more likely you’ll be able to use your social network to respond to bad news than it is you’ll be the victim of your social network. The story of Domino’s is a good example of both the power and necessity for respect.
I used to direct a project that accounted for more than 2/3 of the revenue stream of my organization. It was a big, high-profile, multi-year initiative that we were understandably rather proud (and fond) of.
But the effort was only tangentially related to the organization’s core mission.
By Flickr user Auntie Shadrach
I remember a number of times the thought crossed my mind, “We should kill this. It’s distorting our operations.” Which was silly, in some respects, because I would have been firing myself.
Eventually, the initiative went away of its own accord, the victim of a passing fad in foundation grantmaking.
Many years later, the organization is thriving, but it took a bit of time.
Looking back, I still think I was right. While the organization got some good visibility out of the project, it sucked up management attention and resources that other efforts could have used. We should not have taken the job and, once we did have it, we should have used a natural break-point to end it.
How many projects are you working on that are off-mission or off-topic for you? Why don’t you kill them? Are there clients you should fire, foundations you should let go?
As some of my readers know, this is an area where I have worked for some time. Some people enjoy strategic planning, others don’t. I enjoy it and like to think about it. I learned how to do it from one of the people who was at GE when they created a planning revolution in the late 1960′s — by daring to look outside the organization, rather than starting with what widgets they wanted to build.
The report I am working on will provide an overview to nonprofit leaders as they think about how best to implement their own strategic planning efforts. It will be based on a survey, one-on-one interviews, group discussion, and other research.
I’ll make the report available here on my website, but I will make it available first to my email list. (To join, just fill out the form to the right.)
Heart: What is the overall intent of the program? Is it on target?
Head: Do the plans make sense and hang together? Do they have a reasonable connection to the goal?
Hands: Are the right people on board to execute, do they have what they need, and are the proper controls in place?
Some time ago I wrote about the importance of hands when you are looking at why something failed. Especially in the nonprofit world, there’s an aversion to clear feedback. But often, plans fail not becuase they were poorly developed or ill-intentioned — but because someone goofed in the execution. These episodes need to be looked at. Sometimes the answer for next time isn’t a “better plan,” but “tighter controls.”
These days, that can seem anachronistic and old-school. But, execution is often about the hands.
Among the things that I learned and picked up from my friend, colleague, and former boss, Rich Harwood, this is one of the most useful when it comes to day-to-day work. I am not sure Rich stresses it very much any more, but it’s one of those ideas that just hit me as useful when I learned of it and it has stuck with me. Over time, it’s come to be second nature to me.
Here’s the idea. Every document should be checked along three dimensions: Overall, Across, and Within.
Here’s a quick video explaining what I mean:
Overall: does it make sense, from 30,000 feet? What overall impression is left? (If a program evaluation, for instance, revealed that an initiative was astoundingly successful — does the report convey that overall impression too, or is it dry and academic?)
Across: From point to point, does it hang together? Does one section stick out as odd, perhaps cut-and-pasted from somewhere else? Are the facts cohesive? How about tone?
Within: When you drill down, do arguments make sense and actually go to support the across and overall dimensions? Are they the right facts? Are they presented properly?
It’s worth looking “Overall” again at the end, too, just in case the Across and Within reviews altered your perspective.
This approach works equally well for reviewing plans for projects and plans, too. It’s especially useful when reviewing strategic planning documents.
Especially among nonprofits and community organizations, meetings are a plague. They seem to be called at the drop of a hat, they run over time, and all too often the chief result of one meeting is another meeting.
By Flickr User tiarescott
But if you focus on the purpose of the meeting, and follow some simple guidelines, meetings can become useful.
Here are nine tips to consider:
Be prepared to lead. It’s been said that a committee is a beast with many stomachs and no brain. You need to provide the brain — leadership. In today’s workplace, there’s a lot of talk about “collaboration” and sometimes that is a smokescreen for not stepping up when it’s time to lead. Be prepared to follow the agenda, keep to the time, and shut people off who ramble when it’s not time to do so.
Use smaller chunks of time. In most organizations, there’s a “default” length of time that most things take. In most nonprofits it’s an hour, though one I have worked with assumes that any meeting will take 90 minutes. You can shrink that time and it won’t hurt anything. When you call the meeting, give a start and an ending time — and make the ending time be earlier than the norm might be. Is your default length an hour? Try scheduling a 45 minute meeting.
Have an agenda. You must, you must, you must prepare an agenda. Think about the purpose of the meeting: are you making a decision, getting information, sharing updates, brainstorming? Put the agenda together accordingly. Put fewer items in than you think you can cover. Don’t make it long just because you think the items look lonely on the page.
Share material ahead of time. If the meeting is to review material, it must be shared ahead of time, with enough leeway for people to read and think about it. That means at least a full day before, in most cases. It does no one any good to receive materials for a morning meeting the night before. If the meeting starts and it is clear that the materials have not been shared in enough time, end the meeting (if it is the main subject) or skip that item (if it is one of many on the agenda). Next time, people will share their materials, I guarantee it.
Start on time. Every meeting that doesn’t start on time is a guarantee that the next one will start later. Often, due to anxiety or other factors, people will want to “wait five more minutes.” Instead, just start. When they do saunter in, don’t back up just for them. People will get the idea and show up on time.
Follow the agenda. Your job as leader of the meeting is to follow the agenda and pay attention to time. If the conversation moves off of the agenda and it seems fruitful, step in and make sure people are aware of this. “We are shifting to a new topic. That probably means one of the remaining topics won’t be covered. I just want to make sure we know that. OK?”
Recap decisions made. If there is no outcome to the meeting, it was more than likely wasted time. Even if the meeting’s purpose was open-ended, like brainstorming — capture what was decided or discussed. Make sure everyone understands the decisions made or the key items talked about. Allow time at the end to do this.
End on time. One reason people hate meetings is that they run on and on . . . and over. Adhere to the end time you advertised. End early if you can (people will want to come to your meetings).
Follow up. After the meeting, as soon as possible, share notes on the key items discussed, key decisions, or key questions (depending on the meeting). If you take good notes, you can do this in your sleep. (Or designate someone to do so.)
Some optional things to try to really compress your meetings and make them more efficient:
Hold the meeting standing up. (You’ll be more efficient.)
Limit the meeting to fifteen minutes. (You’ll get to the point!)
Institute an anyone-can-leave-if-the-meeting-is-useless policy. (It forces meeting planners to hold a useful meeting if they know everyone can just walk out.)
Hold the meeting by chat. (People can multitask easier and won’t resent the time spent as much.)
What are your top meeting tips? Share in the comments!
In my very first job, I worked for the field office of a large organization. It was 1990, and we actually had email. This was long, long before email was ubiquitous. It was a curiosity. One day, our boss’s boss’s boss came into town for a series of events. When it was over, he sent us an email critiquing how it went.
By Flickr User ella_marie
It was my first brush with just how crushing the intimate and flat nature of words on a screen could be. The boss gave a fair assessment of our performance in setting up his meetings. There was some positive and some negative. But in the office we read it as a scathing review.
Why? In the privacy of your computer screen three factors collide:
Everything is very intimate so you take it to heart more readily
In the absence of vocal intonation, the reader assumes a negative intent
Most people don’t compensate for this when they write their communications
The Big Boss was actually trying to be helpful, and thought we had done a pretty good job. He wasn’t mad. But to us, it felt like it was time to polish the resume.
Think about how many emails you have received that made you mad — only to discover actually after talking to your correspondent that they didn’t mean anything. Think about how many email list flame wars could have been avoided — if the people in question actually talked on the phone. Think about the people you’ve unfriended because they made an irritating comment about something you posted — and then regretted the move.
All avoidable.
We live in a world where people aren’t about to give up the ease of text-based communication like email, IM, and social network postings. So, we need to establish a few etiquette rules. These rules are already well on their way to being formed, but here are a few that I have found help me.
Go overboard with positive messages. Why? Because they are ignored if they are subtle. If you are saying something that CAN be construed negatively, it WILL be construed negatively. Explanation points! Smileys! Goofy jokes! They aren’t silly — they help make the point to your reader that you aren’t mad and that your intent is to be helpful.
Shift the conversation to the right medium. If you find yourself typing volumes into an IM, say, “Let’s shift to email.” Then you can compose longer messages more thoughtfully. If something is getting a little too complicated in email, pick up the phone!
Remember that “no response” is usually interpreted negatively. If someone sends you an email and you want to take a few days to compose a reply, OK. But send a noted right away saying you got the note and need some time! Otherwise the sender will think you’re mad. Promise.
Pay attention to your subject line. Say you work for The Widget Corp. Don’t send a note to your subordinate about next week’s staff meeting and title it “The Widget Corp.” They’ll think they’re about to read about the company’s bankruptcy filing! And then later, it it will be hard to retrieve the email because the subject line does not describe the email’s content.
Be nice. Do not ever, ever, ever write something unfair about a person in an email, IM, or social network post. It WILL get shared and you WILL regret it. I have!
What rules do you have for email and other computer communications? Let me know! Add them in the comments.
This is the last of my three-part video series on challenges and pitfalls facing nonprofits and other mission-driven organizations.
This segment focuses on the problem of waste:
As an independent consultant with no real apparatus to speak of (which is by design), it’s easy to spot expenditures in organizations that simply don’t need to be made. Nice conference rooms, class A office space, behemoth IT departments — often it seems to just accrete over time and become part of how the organization values itself.
But, these dollars don’t flow out to the mission, they get diverted into organization-building. Some amount of that, when done strategically and thoughtfully, is important. But at the same time, many expenditures don’t need to be made.
The trick is, as I say in the video, to think about how you would manage if you had only five years left before you disbanded. How would you pursue your mission then?
I am in the middle of a three-part video series on challenges and pitfalls that nonprofit organizations face.
This second challenge is (like all these pitfalls), not unique to nonprofits, but it does afflict many. That is the tendency to begin to confuse the health of the organization with the effective pursuit of the mission. In other words, the organization begins to believe that anything that’s good for it must by definition be good for the mission. I discuss that here:
This can be a real problem, because it really sneaks up on people. It can befall founder’s organizations, as the entrepreneurial itch that got the organization off the ground continues to flower.
One way to see this in your own organization is to pose this question, as a group: Say we did not exist. Why would someone need to invent us?
(Andrea Jarrell asks a version of this question with her clients.)
Next, and last in this series, is the problem of waste.
I am doing a three-part video series on challenges and pitfalls that face nonprofits and other mission-driven organizations.
The first pitfall is “inwardness,” as I discuss here:
This is not a new idea. Indeed, one of the drivers of the whole strategic planning movement of the late 1960′s was the notion that businesses needed to begin looking outward rather than planning based only on their internal goals.
More recently, my friend and colleague Rich Harwood has had a lot to say about the problem of inwardness among civic institutions, and much of his work involves getting organizations to turn outward. I highly recommend Rich’s report, The Organization-First Approach, written with John Creighton, that goes in-depth into this problem.
(This issue was also at the root of an interesting project we worked on together last year.)
Next up, the problem that faces all too many nonprofits: when organizations confuse their mission with their existence, and begin to believe that whatever is good for the organization must by definition be good for the mission.
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