CKcm Associates

Getting More Effective Using the Covey matrix

We believe this quadrant matrix to be one of the single most powerful framework for nonprofits in dealing with change.  It’s deceptively simple, many people have come across it or heard of it, but few people actually practice it.

Planning & evaluation are the keys to effective change.

Planning & evaluation are the keys to effective change.

That’s not a typo.  We’re repeating it because it’s so important, we can’t stress it enough.

We have seen many organizations, especially in the nonprofit sector, spend so much time dealing with urgent matters, regardless of whether it’s important or not (quadrants I & III).  This focus on urgency causes stress.  In turn, the buildup of stress makes people want to escape which leads to time wasted focused on not important, non-urgent matters (quadrant IV).  Very little time is spent in the important though non-urgent quadrant II on matters such as visioning, planning, researching, preparing, replenishing, evaluating.

If an organization wants to become more effective and efficient, the single most important thing to do is start spending more time planning.  Twenty percent or more is not too much time to spend there.  Thoughtful plans—fund development, program workplans, board development, communications, infrastructure update plans, technology plans—will dramatically change an organization’s ability to be fluid and maximize resources and opportunities.

Chris Tuttle’s Donor Engagement & Technology Resource (NTEN)

The key to increasing dollars through the door is engaging potential donors.  In our technologically immersed world, it’s sometimes overwhelming to think of all the online activities we are supposed to do to keep in touch with our constituents.

The link below will take you to the presentation from one of the most useful workshops we attended last year that helps outline some simple critical online strategies.

Chris Tuttle’s 25 Tactics to Better Engage Constituents Online:  tuttle.co/25tactics

The workshop was co-presented by NTEN, one of the best nonprofit service organizations out there for all things technology related.

NTEN:  http://www.nten.org/

Shut Down for a Week to Increase Effectiveness

While this may not be feasible for some organizations, most of us do not deal with life and death emergencies on a daily basis.  Yet, in the nonprofit sector, we often operate as if we are in emergency mode too much of the time.  For smaller and mid-sized organizations, this relatively simple and low-cost strategy, along with the usual vacation benefit, can yield a much bigger return than can be expected.

We’ve all experienced, or at least seen, the pre-vacation anxiety induced by the pressure to clear the piled up desk, pass on important work that can’t be put on hold, or fill in colleagues about ongoing issues and projects in case something comes up.  This anxiety is also enhanced by the expected stress of having to catch up after the vacation.

Afterwards the pressure of having to get through the pile of work that accumulated during the vacation quickly erases any benefits gained and soon becomes such a distant-feeling memory that it leaves one pining for the next vacation.  As staff take vacation on a rotating basis, the above is repeated around the organization throughout the year.

However, if the whole organization is closed for a week with the clear message that everyone is expected to take that time to really take a break from work, the payoff is bigger than might be expected from the relatively small amount of time allotted for the following reasons.

• No one has the nagging sense that they are falling behind because everyone else is working.
• The staff feel valued and respected as human beings, because it feels more like a gift rather than a reward that has to be earned.
• The organization is sending out a clear message that they are walking their mission statement (often something along the lines of improving people’s lives) by improving the organizational culture.
• The built-up stress within the organization is released, as if some of the air were let out of a overblown balloon.

The result will be staff who come back to work more relaxed, better able to think creatively, and a organizational culture that feels more expansive.

The Lab Approach

Actually, we mean laboratory, but we couldn’t resist these good looking dogs.

We came across a 2/25/2013 Business Insider article by Max Nisen that caught our eye (link below) about the most mysterious corporate laboratories in the country.  Beyond the technical and design innovations hinted at, we were most intrigued by some insights it gave us into how more successful businesses operate, and how these ideas might translate into the nonprofit sector.

The companies featured put enough of a premium on innovation and the edge that they think this will give them that they have created divisions, these laboratories, with valuable resources allocated to them to think ahead—to the future, to the sustainability of the company.

While not all corporate business practices are useful for nonprofits, in this case we feel that the mindframe of allocating resources to laboratory work focused on developing a competitive edge which contributes to long-term sustainability is a lesson that should be incorporated more often into nonprofit operations.

Current practice in the nonprofit world is focused so much on thinking fairly short-term, about raising enough money for the current fiscal year especially within smaller and mid-sized organizations, consequently leading to relatively short-term pragmatic thinking about programs.

We suggest some alternative thought approaches.

Courtesy of BonhamsFord’s

At Ford, a small group of crack engineers, product planners, and marketers all housed under one roof, apart from the rest of the company, are tasked with creating the company’s highest performance vehicles for an extremely discerning clientele.  They work on tight deadlines, and innovate in ways that end up affecting less specialized vehicles.  The company’s Silicon Valley Lab aims for a start-up type environment, with whiteboard walls and an open floor plan, and aims to bring big data and an innovative user experience into Ford’s vehicles.

Nonprofits might consider putting together diverse teams with the best representatives of various departments such as programming, finance, communications and fundraising to work on key projects collaboratively.  Having the different perspectives on an ongoing basis, while messy at times, can help shape projects into something much more dynamic and exciting than one that is planned and executed from the top down.

Nordstrom Labs/YouTube

The Nordstrom Innovation Lab is meant to be a lean startup inside a Fortune 500 company.  It exemplifies the lean start-up philosophy because it tries to rapidly create products in real time.  In one case, the small team went to the company’s flagship store in Seattle and in just a week created an iPad app to help customers pick out sunglasses.  They use whatever technology makes sense at the time to rapidly execute disruptive ideas.  They aim to build a product every week or two, expect 80% to fail, and for the 20% that succeed to have a huge impact.

What if nonprofits built in expectations of 80% failure in order to reap spectacular results on 20% successes with a small program within the larger programmatic framework that maybe deals with the most difficult issues and challenges of the organization?  Carving out that freedom to explore could be a tremendous gamechanger when your team hits that 20%.  Meanwhile, if that 20% is elusive, you’re still carrying on with business as usual, so nothing lost really.

HP Labs/YouTube

HP Labs, the company’s advanced technology arm, exemplifies the new, frugal, globally-based approach to innovation.  Director Prith Banerjee has a lab in India to “innovate for the next billion customers,” because people in Palo Alto may forget that the whole world isn’t developed.  Instead of focusing entirely on basic research, his core 500 researchers spend a third of their time looking five, ten, or fifteen years into the future, a third of their time improving existing products on a six- to eighteen-month timeline, and a third of their time working in between.

If a nonprofit were to take more of an approach of spending even 10% of its time looking 10 years into the future, 15% of its time looking in the near future, and the rest of the time on business as usual, we expect that the work, results and culture as well as the perception of the organization would change dramatically.  The organization would be  actively transforming into a more compelling, sustainable concern, and therefore attract more funding.

We can hear the chorus of people crying out that they don’t have current funding for this.  Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  The world, and the nonprofit sector with it is changing.  Funders and donors are looking for forward thinking organizations, practices and programs that will excite them about the future and give them hope.  We believe that if you can develop a coherent vision of an innovative future, you can make a compelling case for the need to maybe fund a lab, a new way of operating, rather than just programmatic products.  Some food for thought…

In future blogs, we’ll address the importance of vision, along with mission and goals, for an organization, and how that plays out in the programs, fundraising and operations.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/17-of-the-most-mysterious-corporate-labs-190826629.html?page=1&desktop_view_default=true

Happy New Year! Now Pause…

Happy Year of the Serpent or Snake!  A year to think deeply, in keeping with the serpent nature.

Whether you celebrate according to the lunar or western calendar, New Year generally is a time to look back, take stock, and think ahead.  And we’ve done that ourselves over the holidays.  In this coming year, we’ve resolved to be more active with our clients and colleagues through our blog.

We resolve to provide critical insights and tools on deeper change issues that affect the long-term future of an organization such as visioning, succession and finances.  So please share our info widely with others and follow us on tumblr and/or Twitter by clicking above to keep up with our posts, or subscribe to get CKcm Updates delivered to you via email by subscribing here.

We leave you with this thought to start the year.  Though these days, our work tends to pull us in all directions at tremendous speeds, we’re big advocates of pausing occasionally.  Planning and visioning especially is a continuous, ongoing process requiring that we regularly, at a minimum yearly, evaluate, vision and plan.  This is how an organization prepares to take advantage of opportunities in the year ahead.  Otherwise, you will find yourself struggling to stay afloat and miss or not even recognize chances when they come.  It is a bit of a paradox, as is true of much of life—one must sometimes slow down in order to push forward.  So invest in yourself/your organization and pause a bit now before leaping ahead.

First Steps

The first and probably the most important aspect of change management is to consciously prepare for it.  Most people give a lot of lip service to making changes, but don’t commit to preparing for that change.

As an illustration, let’s look at New Year resolutions which are essentially always about changing something for the better.  Most people make them, but few people actually realize them.  Why?  Most people don’t make the space in their lives and minds to prepare to incorporate the resolution into their routines.  Humans are truly creatures of habit, and in order to really make something happen, we have to make them part of our routines.  If a person wanted to truly make the resolution reality, s/he would need to not only make the resolution, but also prepare for the resolution with a few critical steps.  

These steps apply to change management as well.  In upcoming posts, we’ll discuss some concrete examples of critical changes organizations face and how best to prepare for them using these steps.

• Really make a conscious decision to commit to and allow time for that change.  Spend some time thoroughly envisioning and thinking through how that change would affect your organization.
• Plan for and make time to have open discussions about proposed changes with key stakeholders to get their early buy in and support.  Invest time and effort into disseminating information about possible changes to all those who’ll be affected to innoculate against conscious and unconscious, inevitable resistance.
• Plan to build in orientation/training/counseling when implementing the changes.  Plan for and be open to set backs and the unexpected during the implementation.
• Plan time to reflect on lessons that will be learned during the process.  Plan also for a process to incorporate those lessons into revised strategies for managing the changes in the future.
• Bonus work in order to become a learning organization:  develop a way to document the process into a usable system that will help streamline change work in the future.

Ask the Consultants launch

CKcm Associates is a holistic collaborative change management practice focused on helping organizations hone, build, expand and clarify their social change visions by focusing on strengthening infrastructures, systems and processes to sustain change long-term.  We help nonprofits deal with organizational changes, and the attendant myriad of issues and interconnected complexities that arise encompassing finances, funding, resource management, systems, communications, processes, training and executive coaching.

To celebrate the launch of our Ask the Consultants blog, we would like to reach out more widely to the nonprofit sector.  If you have questions regarding organizational changes you are experiencing or are about to, ask us here or email us at ckcmassociates@gmail.com.  Please be sure to include your name, organization, email and phone so we can follow up for clarifications as necessary.  We will keep your identity and information confidential unless you wish otherwise.  Then, we will discuss your solutions and issues in this blog.  Eventually, we hope to build a wide-ranging dialogue and a community of change management veterans.

Please help us spread the word about this blog.  We look forward to discussing organizational change management with you!