Five Lessons for Effective Staff Management

April 22, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Uncategorized — jonathanpoisner @ 2:30 pm

Business author Jim Collins, in his monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors identified getting the “right people on the bus” as a core attribute of highly functioning nonprofits.

Of course, once you get the right people on the bus, there are many elements that go into turning them into an aligned, effective team that advances your mission. 

I was recently asked to summarize some of my past writing on nonprofit leadership as a guide for Executive Directors who’re building staff teams. At a high-level, here are five lessons that I believe every nonprofit Executive Director should take into account when building their team.

Lesson 1: Prioritize building on strengths instead of mitigating weaknesses

All employees have areas of strength and areas that, for lack of a better term, are weaknesses when it comes to delivering on their intended role.   Instead of focusing on mitigating weaknesses, my experience has been that identifying strengths and adapting work to take advantage of those strengths better maximizes team performance and results in higher job satisfaction for employees. 

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t identify weaknesses or blind spots with employees that can be worked on.  But more of your time and energy should go into aligning the work with employees’ inherent talents. 

Lesson 2: Foster Autonomy and Mastery as Motivational Tools

By and large, the nonprofit sector more than the for-profit sector can rely on the nonprofit’s mission as a built-in motivator for employees.  Almost always those employees motivated by money or status could better achieve those in the for-profit sector.

Yet, even with the mission as motivator, I’ve seen huge differences in nonprofit employee satisfaction.

Dan Pink has written and lectured about motivation in a broader context and highlights the concepts of autonomy and mastery as key.  Nonprofit leaders should keep these in mind when thinking about their own staff supervision.  (Here’s a video for more background).

Autonomy: Employees who have freedom to make decisions within the a broad strategic framework are more likely to be motivated than those who are continually constrained to simply implement decisions made by others. 

Mastery: Employees who have the opportunity to develop and exercise expertise are more likely to stay motivated than those who feel like they’re able to go through the motions.

Lesson 3: Building and Sustaining Relationships

Strong interpersonal relationships are vital for effective staff management.  People are more likely to respond well to those who they like and trust and to dig deeper to help a team with which they feel a sense of community.

That can all emerge spontaneously, but leaders who nurture relationships are more likely to succeed.  That means not neglecting regular activities that are designed to further the relationship, including both one-on-ones in the workplace and opportunities to engage beyond the workplace.  That doesn’t mean you have to become “friends” with those you supervise.  It does mean consciously working to draw connections within your staff based on open communication and opportunities to engage in informal activities.

Lesson 4: Time Management Matters

Time is a precious commodity in any organization as most nonprofit staff could probably work twice as many hours as they’re being paid for without running out of productive things to do.

To address that, choices need to be made as to where to prioritize time, preferably by looking at a strategic plan or other functional plan that identifies goals and top strategies for achieving them.

Even within those choices, too many nonprofits waste time and fail to adapt tools to save time.

Several time wasters relate to meetings:

  • Overly long meetings that could be done in half the time if there was a clear agenda, active facilitation, and a willingness to call the question rather than allow people to drone on.
  • Unnecessary meetings that could be eliminated with a few short emails and/or shared document editing.
  • Meetings that involve several people that really only need 2-3 participants. 
  • Executive Directors who feel compelled to be the organization’s face at every partner/allied organization meeting when they should be delegating that role to others.

There are also tools to save time that many nonprofits fail to use. Mostly these fall into the area of technology.  I’ve been amazing that in this day and age some nonprofits are still having multiple people edit Word documents sequentially rather than adapting to tools that allow for multiple people to collaborate at the same time (such as GoogleDocs).  Project management tools (like Asana, Trello, etc.) and communications platforms (like Slack) can also allow for a lot of project planning and task list accountability in ways that cut back significantly on the need for drafting/reading/responding to emails and meetings.

Lesson 5: Embrace Strategic and Functional Planning

I’ve seen too many nonprofits whose staff are frenetically doing lots of things, but those things are not strategic and thus not advancing goals. While this can bring temporary satisfaction to a team, it rarely does so over the long haul. 

While they serve other purposes as well, do not underestimate the value of strategic and other forms of planning as a staff management tool. 

  • They are a means of honing your staff’s thinking, to the extent you involve staff in this planning.
  • They are way to bring your staff into alignment (with each other and with the board), so their work is less likely to be at cross-purposes.
  • They produce products that are invaluable as orientation tools when you have staff transitions.

What do you think?

If you have a high-level staff management lesson you’d like to share with my readers, please comment away! Or shoot me an email for me to incorporate in an updated post.

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Short-term planning and project management 101

March 31, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 10:47 am

As a strategic planning consultant, I focus a lot of my energy on helping groups grapple with a 2-5 year time-frame.  Too often we’re so focused on the current moment that we never look beyond to define who we are, where we want to go, how to get there, and how we’ll measure progress. 

Yet, even as I write that sentence, I know that the current moment matters.  This year perhaps more than most. 

And as I talk to Executive Directors, I often find a haphazard approach to how they prioritize their work and track their to-dos on a daily or weekly basis.

Nonprofit leaders – more than just Executive Directors – need workable systems for short-term planning and to-do management.

Too many just wing it.

I recently was challenged to describe the elements of a useful system.

Here are four essential requirements for a nonprofit short-term planning and accountability system

1. Tracking to-dos

This is the basic building block.  This should include a nutshell version of the task, an opportunity to provide more details (preferably with a hyperlink to external information of relevance), a due date, and the ability to track progress (including marking the item as completed when appropriate).

As tasks are completed, they should be archived, but not deleted, so that it remains possible to search them or even reopen them if it turns out something wasn’t actually completed.

Ideally the system should allow for recurring to-dos, that automatically get a new due date upon completion of the prior one or that always occur on specific dates of the week, month, etc.

2. Project level organization of tasks

A flat to-do list with hundreds of tasks (as most Executive Directors probably could identify if pushed) can feel overwhelming and makes forward-looking planning challenging.

Ideally tasks should be categorizable by a list of “projects.”  I’m using the word project largely because the various online systems that can be used are often referred to as “project management” tools. 

For most nonprofit Executive Directors, the projects might be the bigger categories of their work (fundraising, board governance, fiscal management, communications, etc.).

Ideally, the projects should be able to be broken down into sub-projects, so that fundraising from individuals can be kept separate from grant fundraising.

The point of breaking things down into categories is so that you have the opportunity to view all your tasks either as one long list, presumably sorted by due date, or alternatively to just see all your tasks within a specific project – or even sub-project. 

While the long daily task list is great for when you start your day and want to see what needs to be done,  the “project” view is nearly essential when it comes to forward-looking planning that involves adding things systematically to your to-do list. 

Did you just schedule your next board meeting?  Take 5 minutes to add all the tasks associated with the upcoming board meeting (crafting the agenda, pulling together materials, sharing the agenda, etc.).   Did you just get invited to submit a grant proposal, take 5 minutes to add all the tasks associated with pulling together the proposal and accompanying materials. 

Yes, you could do this with an entirely flat list, but it’s much easier to think of all the to-dos when you’re looking at a partial list focused on just that project.

I used to accomplish the above in an Excel spreadsheet where I had a column for the broad area of work, a column for the task, and a due date column.  I could sort the Excel spreadsheet either by due date or by the broad area of work and also due date.  And then re-sort back when appropriate.

Of course, in the pre-computer age you could also accomplish this with detailed handwritten notebooks. 

3. Collaboration

While the above three requirements are sufficient for an individual, organizations are team endeavors and whatever system you utilize needs to provide some means by which multiple individuals within the team can share with each other what they’re working on and even collaborate on the same projects and to-dos.  This is where the dozen or so most robust online project-management tools really shine.

Reassigning tasks, sharing deadlines, showing how task A by person A needs to take place before person B can begin Task B, sharing links/comments on tasks taken on by others.  These are just a handful of the most basic boosts to collaboration that can now be secured at a very low cost.  I can only wish these tools had been realistically available in my years as an Executive Director leading a team!  

Getting everyone onto the same system and getting them to use it isn’t necessarily a hill to die on, but if I were a nonprofit leader I’d push really hard to make that happen, absent a really compelling reason otherwise.

4. Some connection to longer-term planning

The above system is a great way to plan for and accomplish a lot of things.  But how do you know that you’re prioritizing the right things?  When you’re an Executive Director staring at the long to-do list and realizing that 3 out of the 10 things you put into your to-do list for the week you’re just not going to be able to do, what gets triaged?

Or better yet, never gets put in at all because you’re thinking about your own capacity as you identify to-dos.

Whether it’s a strategic plan or some other tool, you (and your team) need some method to identify priorities.  This may show up in your project management system where you pre-identify the essential tasks from the “icing on the cake” tasks. 

What system to use?  There’s nothing magic here.  But having alignment around your broad, long-term aims, the major methods you’ve identified to advance those aims, and how to measure progress is a great start. 

Then taking stock – probably monthly – and saying: what’s most important in the next month or two?

Then going back to your project management system and verifying that the things you want to prioritize are definitely incorporated into your projects/tasks. And perhaps deleting or moving out in time those tasks that you’d still like to eventually do, but that aren’t priorities in the short or medium-term.

Is this too much planning?

I can already hear a couple people I’ve known saying: “Who has time to do all that planning? As an Executive Director, if I’m not running 100%, things will fall apart.” 

My response: Better to spend 4 hours/week planning and 36 hours/week doing.   You may do 10% less “activity,” but you can feel far more confident that you’re doing the right activity, especially in alignment with your team. You’re also far more likely to be proactive than reactive to events.

In my experience, leaders who operate with a higher degree of planning and project management also feel less stress.  Not zero stress.  But less, because they can more easily take stock and see with their own eyes what needs to be done by when and make adjustments accordingly, rather than relying on intuition and hope. This means less burnout and a longer-term ability to stay in the role.

If you have specific project management tools or approaches you recommend for others, please share as a comment!

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The Leadership + Plan + Team formula

March 6, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 10:45 am

One of the lessons I took away from the last few years is what I’ve come to think of as the Leadership + Plan + Team formula.

Organizations lacking any one of these elements are unlikely to thrive on a sustained basis.

Leader + Plan but No Team: I’ve seen leaders who’re personally impressive and have a plan, but who don’t cultivate a team around them. The result is an organization that thrives in fits and starts, but not on a sustained basis because there’s only so much one person can do.   The organizational challenge becomes particularly acute when the leader in question decides to move on.  

Leader + Team but no Plan: I’ve seen leaders who’re personally impressive and do cultivate a team around them, but who never take the time to develop and use a long-term plan.  The result is an organization that does a lot of things, many of them well, but the lack of planned focus leads to lots of activity, but often misaligned and poorly thought out.     

Team + Plan but no Leader: I’ve seen great teams, who have a focused plan, but who fail to secure a top leader who has the leadership skills to attract new resources around their shared vision and to keep the team aligned over time.  The result is an organization that chugs along, but doesn’t shine.

Every example I can think of a nonprofit that thrives over a sustained period of many years the formula has always included Leadership + Plan + Team.

If you see your organization missing one of these elements, address it.  Don’t wait for the situation to somehow resolve itself. 

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Don’t drop the glass balls

January 29, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — Tags: , , , — jonathanpoisner @ 11:13 am

A client recently used the following phrase when discussing the challenge of being an Executive Director.

“I’m constantly juggling balls.  Too many to keep in the air.  The key is knowing which balls are glass and which balls are plastic.”

I loved the metaphor and doing some online sleuthing believe it originated with the author Norah Roberts, who used it to discuss the challenge of being a successful writer and raising kids

I’ve thought about the metaphor and would like to suggest several implications for how a nonprofit leader should approach their work.

Bottom line: there are steps you can take to be an excellent nonprofit juggler who rarely (or never) drops a glass ball.

About the Metaphor

The metaphor is pretty self-explanatory.  Drop a glass ball and it shatters.  Drop a plastic ball and it doesn’t.  The plastic ones can be retrieved and picked back up if necessary, or perhaps kicked out of the way if unnecessary.

Glass balls are your tasks where mishandling them would have significant consequences.  Plastic balls, in contrast, might be annoying to “drop,” but the consequences would be comparatively minor.

Of course, if you’re a nonprofit Executive Director (or anywhere in nonprofit management), you’re not just juggling your own balls.  You’re also setting in motion members of your team (at least those you supervise) to juggle their own balls.

So even as you have to scan the balls to make sure your own glass balls don’t drop, you also have to be cognizant of who among your team has glass balls that are at risk of being dropped.

Of course, you might say: “well the answer is to just never drop a ball.”  And I’d say: “good luck with that.”  Seriously, I’ve never seen an executive doing their job who isn’t consistently faced with triaging tasks to either let them go entirely or to push them off to some future date.

Distinguishing Glass from Plastic Balls

As you scan your tasks, identify which ones are glass.

Here are some examples of glass balls: 

  • Key activities for mission-critical programs.  If these go awry, it would significantly detract from your mission impact.
  • Activities where failure could seriously harm the reputation of the organization, thus threatening its future funding. 
  • Key donor relationships.  Work to maintain those relationships can be thought of as a series of glass balls.  Plus, activities of the organization that any of your very top donors particularly prioritize. 
  • Financial oversight, to some extent.  Not every task within your fiscal management system represents a glass ball.  But collectively, ensuring reasonably accurate, reasonably timely financial reporting definitely would count.
  • Losing top-notch staff.  Dropping balls that could cause your top staff to leave would fit in this category, as would loading up those staff with so many balls of their own that they feel compelled to leave.

Dropping these glass balls can lead to irreversible damage, loss of trust, financial instability, or failure to advance the mission.

What are your plastic balls?

They can be important too, but failure (or neglect of them) won’t be so harmful.

  • Many minor administrative tasks would fit into this. 
  • Meetings where your participation would be nice, but is not essential.
  • Minor events.  You want these to happen, and of course you want them to go well, but if you have to either cancel them or let them go forward in a middling way, there’s no permanent harm.

How to avoid dropping glass balls

Here are a handful of strategies to consider:

1. Don’t juggle so many balls!

This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to overlook. 

Use work plans to lay out what tasks you’re taking on and don’t commit to activities that are beyond what’s realistic.  If something emerges new, can you safely offload something else (in our metaphor, catch a plastic ball and either hand it over to another juggler to handle)?

This applies not just to you, but also the people you manage and their balls.  Don’t establish expectations that are unrealistic. That’s hard to do unless you require some level of work planning by them from which you can help them assess and manage their work and workload.

2. Don’t try to make the perfect throw every time

Juggling (literal juggling, not metaphorical) is something I learned to do at a summer camp as a teenager.  One of the things I had to learn was to get the basics down of the throwing motion, but not be so focused on the perfect throw that I wasn’t simultaneously able to track where the other balls were and prepare to catch/throw them.

Perfectionism is a common failing that many people face when it comes to how they approach tasks.  As a nonprofit leader, I often found that I could accomplish 90% of the benefit of a task at 60% of the time necessary. The remaining 40% of the time might get me to perfection, but that time was unavailable for other projects.

3. Use technology/tools to track your balls

In the real world, juggling balls blindfolded is beyond challenging.

Yet, I sometimes see nonprofit leaders who aren’t blindfolding themselves, but are definitely hamstringing themselves by not continually tracking and planning for their tasks.

Just last year I was asking a nonprofit leader how they organized their work day/week and pretty much it was: I show up to work, do what’s in my calendar, and respond to emails.  I wasn’t surprised to hear that balls were being dropped.

Back in the olden days when I was an Executive Director in the late 1990s, I relied on a paper “Franklin Planner” (bonus points for anyone who remembers those!) to keep meticulous notes around to-dos, organized within major categories and tied to a calendar.

As soon as possible, I gravitated to computer solutions, which at first for me were Excel spreadsheets that I used to keep track of the “balls” and could identify those that were critical.  I didn’t know the glass/plastic ball analogy, but I behaved like I did by bolding some spreadsheet rows to emphasize their importance.

About 15 years ago, I moved to online project management systems.  For the last 5 years I’ve been very dependent on Asana.  I use it to plan and track projects, activities within those projects, sub-tasks within the activities, etc.  I use priority-level settings to identify my “glass balls” as a consultant.  

Every day begins by looking at what I have to-do.  When any task is completed, I return to Asana to mark it done and immediately create any new follow-up tasks that are appropriate.  When I agree to take on new projects or tasks, I’m in Asana within a day or two laying out the tasks needed on a timeline.

I’m not telling you to be as relentless in using a tool like this as I am.  But you need to have some tool and don’t just use it half-heartedly.

Bottom line: if you’re not consciously identifying your balls and tracking their flight, you’re a lot more likely to drop one.

4. Consciously remove or let drop balls, particularly plastic ones

As a nonprofit leader, you should be regularly identifying plastic balls (or even glass!) that you can catch and hand over to someone else on your team.

Some balls you may not be able to delegate, but if you’re feeling out of control, you can still consciously catch the ball and instead of immediately rethrowing it as a juggler, you can set it on the counter next to you, to be picked up later. 

Of course, some balls are still dropped.  That’s okay.  When a ball does drop, it’s important to be aware of it, though, so you can perhaps kick it off to the side in a deliberate manner, so it doesn’t get underfoot and trip you up. 

Whether you’re temporarily setting a ball aside or dropping/kicking it off to the side, be sure and communicate to anyone else who had expectations you’d complete something that it’s going to be delayed.  (Note: some technology tools make this really easy!).

5. Recognize that some plastic balls can turn into glass

The same task may change on you over time.  Board recruitment at a time you have a really strong board may be plastic as a ball, but if you neglect the task for too long, it may become glass as your board strength deteriorates. 

So don’t just think about the relative level of importance of tasks as you take them on initially, but rather have some sort of process on a periodic basis (quarterly?) to spend a few hours taking a harder look at your overall work plan and see if anything needs more attention than you had originally envisioned.

6. Get help learning how to be a better juggler

You can juggle more balls if you’re a better juggler. And some of that is just practice.

But you can also get training to be better and handle more.  Sometimes finding time to get professional development is absolutely worthwhile to be a more effective juggler. 

In my early years as an Executive Director, I had the benefit of a lot of training thanks to a national organization with which we were affiliated. Those trainings absolutely set me up for greater levels of success, even as the time spent at the training meant I had to juggler fewer balls in the short-run (setting some aside).

Where the metaphor breaks down

I think the analogy breaks down, in part, because it may lead you to focus too much on the urgent things (that seem like glass balls), while plastic balls that are really important get neglected. 

Paul Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People wrote about a time management technique that divides tasks into four quadrants.  One axis is urgent versus non-urgent, with urgency about time sensitivity.  The other quadrant is important versus non-important.

The challenge for some executives is they fail to work on things that are important, but not urgent.  Because of the lack of time sensitivity, you may feel the ball isn’t glass.  Or you may see the ball is really high in the air so there’s just plenty of time to get to it.

Even as you think about the glass v. plastic ball metaphor, I’d encourage you to also recognize that some types of relationship-building, planning, etc. represent a series of activities that may individually be “plastic” balls, but collectively they are “glass.” Drop one or two, no biggie. Drop most or all, that’s big.

So recognize that you can’t just focus on this one management technique, but apply it in the context of others that make sure you’re focusing on the right things.

Feedback

As always, please share your thoughts on this metaphor or techniques you use to either distinguish between more important and less important tasks or to avoid “dropping glass balls.”

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Scary Nonprofit Quotes 2024

October 24, 2024

Welcome to the 3rd not-quite annual edition of Scary Nonprofit Quotes.

I authored the original edition in 2021 as Halloween approached and a follow-up in 2022.  After a one-year hiatus, I’m back.

I’ve wracked my brain and reviewed notes from the year. So without further adieu, here are the scariest things I’ve heard uttered by nonprofit leaders during the last couple of years.  Some of these may seem made up, but they’re not!

If you have a scary quote of your own, please add them as comments!

Scary Quotes, 2024 Edition

  1. I knew 10 years ago our fundraising database was a mess and needed to be replaced, but it just never seemed like the right time.

  2. I know this is what most of the people we had you interview said, but I don’t think they get nonprofits.  (Note: the people interviewed actually had more nonprofit experience than the board chair who uttered this].

  3. I can’t continue to be board chair of this organization unless the organization starts paying me as a contractor.

  4. I don’t believe we should work with deadlines or agreed upon objectives. 

  5. I don’t use talking points or write up what I’m going to say at our fundraising events. I prefer to wing it.   I’m not sure I could tell you what I said after the fact. 

  6. I know it’s a headache, but I’ll just leave that to the next Executive Director to deal with [after I leave in about 2 years].

  7. I don’t care if our board minutes are accurate.  Nobody will ever read them.

  8. I like to just use general topics for meeting agendas rather than specific questions.  I prefer to just let the meeting unfold.

  9. High staff turnover is something we just have to accept given we’re a nonprofit and therefore don’t pay well.

  10. I think I should be able to bring my wife to the board meeting. [notwithstanding the confidential information/topics that will be covered].

Let’s do a poll!  Please vote for your favorite Scary Quote of 2024.  I’ll be sure to post the results on Halloween. 

Please also comment if you have your own scary quotes you’d like to share!

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Why volunteers before how volunteers

September 25, 2024

With a few exceptions, the vast majority of nonprofits with which I’ve worked have viewed volunteers as both an important resource and strategy. 

Almost always, they immediately get to the question: how do we get volunteers?

In my experience, if you start by answering that question, you’re getting off on the wrong foot.

Instead, you should first ask the question: why volunteers?

How you go about getting volunteers will greatly impact what types of volunteers you secure.    You may recruit lots in raw numbers, but not meet your needs.

At the same time, understanding why you want volunteers will help you identify the right recruitment priorities.

So before designing the how, start with the why.

And to answer the why, I generally counsel asking two other questions in combination:

First, what do you most want out of your volunteers?

Second, what level of volunteer do you need?

Let’s take those questions in turn.

What do you most want out of your volunteers?

Here are five potential reasons I’ve experienced first-hand:

  1. To do the work staff just can’t get around to doing (either back-end administration/fundraising or programmatic).   The most recent statistic I found (from 2021) featured 60.7 million adults volunteering 4.1 billion hours.   A well-designed volunteer program should get more work done than could be done with the staff time necessary to recruit the volunteers.

  2. To be authentic voices.   Whether in fundraising or program, volunteers can speak authentically in ways that staff simply can’t. 

  3. To tap into their relationships.  Relationships drive fundraising, volunteer recruitment, advocacy, and other areas where nonprofits often focus.  Volunteers bring with them all of their relationships with friends, colleagues, etc. and can likely be heard by those people in ways that aren’t possible if the organization were to communicate with them directly. 

  4. As sources of local knowledge.  Particularly if your organization is trying to make a difference over a relatively large geography, volunteers are uniquely positioned to become your eyes and ears on the ground to help you make sure you deploy your resources in their geography in ways that will work.

  5. As sources of specialized expertise.  Whether it be graphic design, accounting, information technology, or a dozen other areas, organizations can sometimes meet their needs for technical expertise through high-level volunteers that save them money.

There is also a second question worth asking:  what level of volunteer do you need?

My very crude short-hand is there are three levels of volunteerism: participants, activity leaders, and organizational leaders.

Participants show up and do something for you.   Often just once, but sometimes repeatedly.   This is the bread and butter of many volunteer programs, particularly if they aim to generate lots of activity.  This looks wildly different based on the type of nonprofit.  A conservation nonprofit might have tree planting or cleanups.  An advocacy nonprofit (no matter the topic) might have phone banks or door-to-door canvassing. 

Activity leaders are the next level up: these volunteers are willing to lead all or part of some activity.  They may provide the training for participants, they may provide food for a fundraiser, they may take responsibility to recruit other volunteers, to cite just a few examples.

Organizational leaders take ownership for the long-term health of the group, overseeing either a series of activities or overall organizational health.  Board members are inherently organizational leaders if they’re doing their job.  But nonprofits shouldn’t assume that only board members will fulfill organizational leadership roles.  Other volunteers can be cultivated and given non-board authority in ways that allow them to take on organizational leadership as volunteers.

After answering these questions, it’s now appropriate to go back and set up a program that answers the how of volunteer recruitment.

If what you most need is local knowledge from people who’ll take organizational leadership, it argues for a very different volunteer recruitment strategy than if what you need most are activity participants who’ll do basic grunt work.

In a future blog entry or article, I’ll write more about effective volunteer recruitment programs.

But no matter your skill-set at recruitment, you’ll go further in setting up your program if you start by answering the question why.

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How to relentlessly focus on relationships

July 25, 2023

Filed under: Communications,Fundraising,Human Resources,Leadership — jonathanpoisner @ 3:42 pm

I’ve previously written about the value of relationship-building to nonprofit organizations.

Organizations that thrive relentlessly focus on relationships. Successful organizations are constantly expanding their pool of relationships and strengthening existing relationships. Then they consciously activate those relationships.

I was recently talking to a nonprofit leader who seemed to grasp this in theory, but struggled with execution.

As such, I’ve repackaged in this article some of my prior writing about the value of relationships with the aims of providing more practical advice people can use when it comes to building relationships that matter for your organization.

But first, why relationships?

It comes down to human nature.  While people receive information outside of relationships, relationships have a powerful role in how people react to information.

People listen more to people with whom they have a relationship.

People are more likely to be persuaded by people with whom they have a relationship.

People take action more when requested from people with whom they have a relationship.

Of course, the quality of the relationship matters too. The deeper the relationship, the greater the odds that we will listen to someone, be persuaded by them, or take action at their request.  Conversely, a bad relationship makes someone even less likely to listen or act upon a request.

Here’s a practical example of how this may impact fundraising for a nonprofit.  An Executive Director may give a pitch-perfect donation request to John Doe. A board member may give a mediocre donation request to the same John Doe.  If the board member and John Doe are friends and the Executive Director has never met John Doe, the mediocre board request is far more likely to yield a significant donation.

Yet, it would be a mistake to think of relationships as just about fundraising.  Relationships impact an organization’s interaction with volunteers, media, allied organizations, elected officials, and people the organizations are working to serve.  Any time you’re trying to shape behavior, relationships matter.

So how do you go from theory to practice?

Here are seven ideas worth considering.

First, build into your workplans (especially Executive Directors) time set aside for relationship-building.  If you don’t set aside time for it, you’re less likely to make it happen.  Examples of relationship-building activities that take time:

  • Attending fundraisers for peer organizations.
  • Going to lunch or coffee with allies who you don’t know particularly well.
  • Asking for advice from elected officials or other decision-makers.
  • Attending conferences and focusing on relationships more than the conference substance.

Second, create events with relationship-building in mind.  This could be:

  • A volunteer appreciation event. 
  • A “Meet the Executive Director” or “someone else important” event. 
  • A workshop or training where time is set aside for people to get to know each other. 

Every time you plan or attend an event, a standard question should be: “how can this event be used to meet someone new and/or strengthen my relationship with those I already know?” 

Third, train your staff about the value of relationships and events.  If they’re attending an event while working for you, they should understand they should be focused on new people and not just standing in the corner chatting with folks they already know well.  Challenge them to come back from every event with a couple examples of new people they met with whom they should do some follow-up.

Fourth, set relationship goals.  When I was an Executive Director, I had a goal of having lunch or coffee with one allied Executive Director per month with no agenda other than getting to know them (and their organization) better.  By putting this goal in writing as part of my annual goals with the board, I “forced” myself to stay on track.

Fifth, use your organizational database to record what you learn.  Even with the best intentions, it can be challenging to meet people and remember everything of relevance you learned six months or a year later. Your organization should have a CRM (constituent relationship management) database (probably primarily for fundraising, but for other things too) where you can keep track of who you met with of significance and add notes of anything significant you learned where you may wish to follow-up at your next meeting. Taking notes in your database doesn’t make your relationship any less authentic. It just recognizes we have fallible memories.

Sixth, seek out and bring into your organization those who’re obviously good at relationships.  You and I know them.  I’m a natural introvert.  But we all know those extroverts who seem to know everyone and like playing a connecting role between people. They are golden for your nonprofit if you can excite them about your cause.  If you see somebody who fits that bill express interest, put extra time and attention into cultivating them.

Lastly, be committed to asking those with whom you’re in a relationship to activate their relationships on your behalf.  As I write this, I have 1,345 LinkedIn Connections.  Those 1,345 have more than 477,000 unique connections!  Of course, LinkedIn is just being used as an illustration of a point:  the people with whom any individual has relationships open them up to a vastly larger network of relationships than they can ever tap on their own. 

So don’t just rely upon this “activation” of relationships to happen by chance.  Directly ask your supporters to reach out to their friends and neighbors.  This could be as part of a Peer to Peer fundraising effort, as part of volunteer recruitment, recruiting people to attend events, sharing online news, or some other method.  Bottom line: turn donors into fundraisers and volunteers into volunteer recruiters. 

Do you have other ideas for how to build and strengthen relationships? I’d love to hear in your comments.

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Tools for an Executive to Stay Focused

April 24, 2023

Filed under: Board Development,Human Resources,Leadership — jonathanpoisner @ 3:46 pm

Quite a few times I’ve encountered Executive Directors who come across as very competent.  Their writing is cogent. Documents they produce are always well-formatted. They are well-spoken in person, laying out clear ideas. They get a lot of stuff done. Many tasks are clearly getting crossed off their to-do list. They clearly work a lot of hours.

Yet, their organizations flounder.

Almost always, it’s because they’re getting the wrong tasks done.

By wrong, I don’t mean they are doing tasks that are inherently counterproductive.  It’s that they’re doing tasks that should be priority 6 through 10 when priorities 1 through 5 are crying out for more attention.

Peter Drucker wrote extensively about this 50 years ago in his seminal book: The Effective Executive, which I have reviewed.  The effective executive not only does things right, they do the right things. 

How can an executive stay focused on the top priorities in order to be more effective?

In every organization I’ve encountered, the Executive Director (or CEO) could work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and not run out of useful things to do on behalf of their organization. Of course, in the real world you have 40 hours per week on a sustained basis, with some executives able/willing to let that spike to 50-60 hours for extended periods.

How do you decide what to do within the time available?

My first recommendation for an Executive Director when evaluating a potential tasks/projects is to filter it through three questions to determine whether to not do a task.

Question one is: is the task/project essential to our organizational strategy. Whether or not the organization’s strategy is embodied in a written strategic plan, you should know what your goals are and the strategies you’re using to achieve them. If a task doesn’t squarely fit within one of the strategies to achieve one of your goals, it is almost always suspect.

Question two is: should I be the one to do this task? Just because it fits within the organizational strategy doesn’t mean the Executive Director should tackle it. What tasks should fall to the E.D. and what to other staff, to contractors, or volunteer leaders?

Even in an organization with no other staff or contractors, an E.D. who isn’t finding ways to delegate tasks to the board or other volunteers is almost always going to tackle tasks that take them away from higher priorities.

A question any Executive Director can ask: is this something that requires the E.D.’s participation either because of my unique skills or relationships? If not, your first step should always be to ask: who else would be better to do it?

This filter is especially important for an Executive to use when receiving requests that they participate in meetings. More often than not when I encounter a floundering executive, they are heavily scheduled into meetings where they aren’t essential participants. They just don’t want to miss out on the “action.”

A third filter to apply is to ask the question: is the task the cake or the icing on the cake?

Put another way, is accomplishing this task an essential building block to the overall success of the organization or is it just one nice outcome we want? Unless and until the essential building blocks are achieved (or on track for achievement), tasks that are simply positive should be shelved.

Think about posting a sign within your eyesight at your desk with these three questions:

  • Is it strategic?
  • Am I essential?
  • Is it the cake or just the icing?

In addition to using these filters to nix involvement in some tasks, there are three other tactics I recommend to Executives looking to become more focused.

First, identify up-front what are the most important tasks you struggle to complete. (Oftentimes that’s major donor fundraising). The solution: calendar large blocks of time to focus on the activities you struggle to complete and rigorously stick to that schedule. Force yourself to stick to a schedule where everyone on your team knows you aren’t to be disturbed.

Second, cut out the easy time-wasters. Examples of these include:

  • The meeting that takes an hour that could just as easily be accomplished in 30 minutes.
  • The half-dozen times during the day checking your Facebook because there might be something relevant to the organization’s work.
  • The extra 15 minutes formatting a document to be perfect when it was already good enough to be understood. (Occasionally, that extra 15 minutes matters, but usually not).

Lastly, beware shiny objects. These are the opportunities that come along that seem exciting on the surface. Perhaps you’re asked to speak to a group. Or to put together a media release on some breaking news of relevance.   Often, these are things that may gratify the ego, but really aren’t essential building blocks to organizational success. Get used to saying no and feeling good about it because when you say no to something new you’re saying yes to the core work you already have underway.

Do you have techniques of your own to share? I’d love to hear them.

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Tools and Techniques to Boost Efficiency

March 22, 2023

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership — jonathanpoisner @ 10:54 am

Guest Blog by Karen Graham

I had never thought of myself as an especially productive person. Like most of us, I often felt like there wasn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything I needed to do, much less the things I wanted to do. 

But after colleagues called me out as an example of someone who is organized and efficient, I realized that I have in fact learned some helpful habits and discovered some helpful tools. I’ll share a few of them with you here, and I hope you will share your own tips in the comments, so we can help each other get better.

Start with your inbox

Whether you’re really struggling with productivity, or you’re already pretty good at it but want to improve, I recommend taking a look at how you manage your email inbox. Why? Because this is the low hanging fruit, an activity on which people tend to waste a lot of time, and where small changes can win back minutes or hours.

When it comes to email management, less is more. 

  1. Fewer touches – Check email less frequently, and when you do, try to either handle the message immediately or mark it for later, then get it out of your inbox. I use an adaptation of the Getting Things Done method, processing my email first thing in the morning and after lunch, and making sure my inbox is empty at least once a day.

  2. Fewer folders – Years ago, someone essentially dared me to delete all my email folders. I discovered that the search functions in Gmail and Outlook are so effective I really didn’t need folders, and I was wasting my time moving things to folders and sorting through them. Now everything that passes through my inbox either gets archived or deleted.

  3. Task apps – A task application or plug-in that integrates with your email system makes it easy to convert messages into tasks. I like Todoist for Gmail and Microsoft’s To Do for Outlook Web App, because they integrate tightly, preserving the link to the original message.

  4. Less email – Consider moving conversations to Slack, Teams, or other chat-style apps, especially if you’re living that reply-all nightmare.

Call in the robots

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can do a lot of mundane tasks for you, though you’ll want to set this up carefully so it doesn’t leave a trail of destruction in its wake. Here are just a handful of ways to use automation and AI.

Consider using Zapier for sharing data between systems. For example, when someone signs up for a webinar on platform A, a Zap could pass their contact details over to the CRM.

Set up triggers and actions in a CRM, marketing system, or case management system. For instance, when a donor makes their first gift, the system could create a task or reminder for your development director to personally welcome them, and automatically add them to a series of welcome emails. You might be surprised at how much automation your data management software offers.

Redesign processes to be more efficient

When you’re implementing a new technology tool, that’s a great time to also look for ways to streamline your processes, improve quality and consistency, and even make them more enjoyable. 

Let’s say you want to improve your donation acknowledgement process. You might use a time tracking tool, such as Toggl, to record how much time the current process requires and how much you gained through improvements. You could also use software such as Lucidchart to make process maps, so you can visualize where the tasks and decision points are. Or just use a pencil or a whiteboard. Once you’ve identified a potential improvement, try simulating or prototyping to see how it might work. Tools for storyboarding, such as Canva’s free storyboard creator, are a fun way to bring the envisioned process to life.

Establish good habits

Look, all the fancy technology in the world is not going to compensate for your poor habits. Productivity experts have written plenty about time blocking, eliminating distractions, and creating deadlines and rewards. Read up on it, find something that works for you, and don’t beat yourself up if the habit doesn’t stick the first time around (or even the second or third time).

One of my most fruitful habits is writing down daily highlights. I use Evernote to keep a note for each month, with a numbered list corresponding to the days of the month. At the end of each day, I jot down one thing I accomplished, big or small. Looking back at this helps me realize that even when I felt like I was spinning my wheels, I actually was doing something worthwhile.

Wrapping up

Here are a few key points to remember.

  • Check email mindfully, avoid endless folders, and use integrated task apps to keep your inbox clean.
  • Take advantage of automation for mundane tasks. 
  • Streamline processes with the aid of time tracking, process mapping, and storyboarding tools.
  • Establish personal habits that amplify your productivity.

Go ahead, practice this now. Make a commitment to try one of these techniques, perhaps using time blocking or a task management app to remind yourself to complete it. And then think about all the wonderful things you can do with your extra time!

About the Author

Karen Graham is a nonprofit leader and technology strategist who loves helping people solve problems – from making their work easier and more enjoyable, to enabling their organization to more effectively achieve its mission. She writes and speaks on technology leadership, software selection, user adoption, innovation, and strategic IT alignment. Karen owns Karen Graham Consulting, providing technology coaching and consulting for mission based organizations.

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Board members in management roles – updated

February 28, 2023

Filed under: Board Development,Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning,Volunteers — jonathanpoisner @ 8:53 am

Originally published in August 2022, this edition of the post expands upon the suggestions I offered in August.

A challenge unstaffed nonprofits face is that board members necessarily take on roles that are not board governance.   These other roles are hard to categorize with a singular term.  They include management, administration, coordination, program administration – pretty much anything that one would expect to be done by staff in a large organization. For purposes of this article, I’m going to lump them together as “management.”

This challenge isn’t just for unstaffed organizations.  It is also true for many small or even medium sized nonprofits where the group’s ambitions exceed the staff capacity, leaving board members playing additional non-governance roles.

I have often been tasked with assisting clients on how to help their boards be more effective.  For smaller organizations, I have repeatedly found that confusion regarding the additional non-governance roles taken on by directors is a problem that metastasizes in a variety of ways to make the board dysfunctional.

This article is my attempt to both explain the challenge and to point nonprofits towards some practical steps to address the challenge. I have seen a few nonprofits employ at least some of these strategies, but rarely have I seen them deployed aggressively in combination.

The Challenge

Let’s start with a basic premise:  in any nonprofit, there is a need for governance and management.  (Here, I’m using management as a catch-all term for everything that is not governance). 

The board must govern.  Everything else can be delegated to either staff or other non-board volunteers.

It would take an entirely separate article (or book) to fully explore what fits into the governance category.  I’m fond of BoardSource and the way they lay out 10 responsibilities of nonprofit boards. Big-picture, governance is making sure the organization has the right boat, the boat is pointed in the right direction, and it’s well-provisioned. Management is rowing the boat.

If all an organization did was governance, though, that means the boat would simply sit in place. The actual mission “work” of the organization would never get done, nor would much of the behind-the-scenes administration necessary to support that mission work. 

The result in small organizations:  board members take on management roles in addition to their governance role.  Board members necessarily row. And this leads me to my most important point:  too often, in board meetings and board governance discussions, these extra “rowing” roles are treated as part of the governance role, rather than as a separate non-board role.

Why is this a problem?

First, board meeting time gets filled up with discussing and coordinating management and programmatic tasks, which often seem more urgent.  The result: the board doesn’t spend as much time on governance as is needed to meet governance responsibilities.

Second, even between the board meetings. board members spend so much time addressing management, they lack the time or mental energy to perform their governance roles to the level required.

Third, the board applies to management the decision-making and communication norms meant for governance.

What do I mean by decision-making and communication norms? Norms are the ways we generally operate culturally; they are what seem normal.

In particular, governance “normally” tends to operate by consensus, with ample input from everyone before a collective vote.  That’s really important, particularly around governance responsibilities where all board members have legal duties to engage.

Yet, consensus and high-input decision-making processes are a recipe for inefficiency (or even paralysis) when it comes to management tasks.  I sat through a board meeting where an agenda item was to receive everyone’s input on a draft email newsletter and it was a deadly waste of time. Don’t even get me started on the board meeting that turned into a detailed conversation about table arrangements for a fundraising event.

Bottom line: meetings become bogged down in the wrong topics. Board members tune out listening in on decisions/discussions that really should involve a small subset of the participants, if they should involve discussion at all. Governance responsibilities get neglected and it becomes harder to recruit new board members being asked to take on both governance and management tasks. It becomes a vicious circle.

Suggestions to Address the Challenge

So how do you get past this conundrum? After all, if the organization had funds to pay for staff, it probably would.

Suggestion 1:  Be clear about roles and that these roles include both board roles and management roles. Management roles will vary wildly by organization, based on your administrative and programmatic needs.

One person may take on two (or more) separate roles that fit into separate categories. For example, Person a might be both (a) a board member and chair the board recruitment committee and (b) also serve as newsletter editor.

The important point: when playing the “management” role (in this case newsletter editor), the “board” member is not acting as a board member, but rather as a volunteer. After all, there’s no inherent reason the newsletter editor needs to be on the board. (Conversely, the chair of the board recruitment committee really should be a board member).

Suggestion 2: Treat these management roles held by volunteers as quasi-staff in how they work. There should be written “job/position” descriptions laying out their general responsibilities and areas of authority. 

People playing these roles should be given authority to operate as a leader and make decisions within their area of responsibility, without having to get pre-approval from the board. With the added authority should come some responsibilities. Most importantly, people playing these roles should be asked to provide something in writing that serves as the equivalent to a “staff” report prior to meetings so that meetings aren’t taken up with oral reports that are of no value to those not at the meeting.

Accountability, as with staff, should be after-the-fact, with potential removal from their role.

Suggestion 3: Recruit for these roles. Identify what you most need from these roles, write the descriptions, and share them with those who may be interested. Treat this as importantly as you treat board recruitment, if not more so.

What if some board members opt not just to take on this second management role, but to leave the board because they’d rather do “program” than “governance. That’s okay!

Suggestion 4: Formally separate out the board meeting from a second management coordination meeting that addresses non-governance topics.  For efficiency sake, these can be back to back, since many of the same people will be involved. Take a 5-minute break between these two meetings.  The latter meeting may just be a subset of the board who are actually needed for it; and it ideally should include some non-board volunteers who’ve taken on an ongoing management role.

Importantly, for the “management coordination” meeting do not use the norms you use in the board meeting. The fundraising coordinator doesn’t get equal say on the newsletter content as the newsletter editor. The newsletter editor doesn’t need to weigh in on what someone is doing with regard to a specific program. The purpose of this meeting is to share essential updates and to ensure coordination is happening where needed between several people playing various roles, not to make collective decisions.

Suggestion 5: Just because a volunteer takes on a “management” role with the organization (e.g. leading on some program), doesn’t mean you should elect them to the board, especially not to “fill a slot.”  Reward and acknowledge people playing these non-board roles on your website, in your communications, etc., but don’t fill up your board with people who aren’t fully committed to the “governance” responsibilities that come with service. 

This may mean jettisoning some people from the board who really just want to volunteer in a management role.  It’s better to have a smaller board that focuses on governance than a larger board with uneven participation on governance because some “management” volunteers are sitting around the table without the time or expectations to actually govern.

Of course, it’s okay for some people to have dual roles – if they have the time to do so and understand they have two sets of responsibilities – governance (board) and management (volunteer).

Suggestion 6: Focus on Communications

The strategies above don’t work if you don’t adequately communicate across roles. Written reports prior to board and management coordination meetings should be the norm. They should be shared across the team. Short memos should be written after board meetings and management coordination meetings encapsulating key decisions and action items. (With the board, this should be above & beyond the formal minutes).

While your management team doesn’t have to include board members, you probably need one board member to attend those meetings and serve as a liaison if they are truly separate.

Suggestion 7: Efficient Meetings

Clear agendas. Written materials shared ahead of time with an expectation they will be read so that meeting time can be focused on discussion and decisions, not oral reports. Active facilitation to keep people on topic. Stay out of the weeds unless absolutely essential.

I’ve sat through too many 2 hour board meetings that should have been 90 minute board meetings with even halfway decent facilitation. The collective time saved can be substantial.

Suggestion 8: Embrace collaborative tools

Small nonprofits that embrace technology spend a little time up-front for large time-savings down the road.

Most importantly, technology now allows “asynchronous” planning where multiple people can be working together on the same document at different times, without having to email it back and forth and not knowing who’s working on the latest version.

Example: Googledocs and googlesheets stored in GoogleDrive.

Example: GoogleGroups for email lists for just those board/management & program volunteers focused on a specific task, so that everyone else’s email inbox doesn’t get cluttered up with topics they really don’t need to track closely.

The above tools are free.

There are many even more robust tools for collaboration and communication that cost a bit, but can take you to the next level.

I’ve seen boards composed of older, tech-averse board members take the time to force board members to learn these tools and they’ve always been really, really happy 6 months later.

Suggestion 9: Set realistic expectations

For all of the above, and for your governance responsibilities, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Be realistic. As you make plans, a little boldness is good and can inspire. Excessive boldness can sap your energy when you inevitably fail.

If your team is naturally all optimists who historically have led you to bite off more than you can chew, assign somebody the role of “pessimist” who’ll be charged with the task of asking hard questions during board meetings.

Recognize that you don’t have to do everything everywhere all at once. If you realize you’re not doing well fulfilling 4 of the 10 board governance responsibilities, phase in doing better over the course of a year or two, not over the course of a month or two.

Suggestion 10: Keep the purpose in mind

There’s a bricklayer parable.

Short version: Bricklayer 1 is laying bricks. Bricklayer 2 is building a wall. Bricklayer 3 is building a school.

Who’s likely to be happier and stick with their task the longest? Obviously bricklayer 3 (unless you’re a MAGA trying to destroy public education, but that’s a different topic.;-))

What’s that mean? Find opportunities to make sure that your board and your management volunteers learn about and experience the positive good your organization is seeking to bring to the world.

Your feedback

I’ve only seen a few instances where organizations have gone full-in on the suggestions I’m recommending in this article. I remain genuinely interested in hearing from others who have addressed the challenges I’ve raised either via something along the lines I suggest or some other method.

Shoot me an email or go ahead and comment on this blog.

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