Recently, I had the
opportunity to facilitate AJC’s Strategic Deployment / Prioritization Matrix
and Implementation Plan process for a non-profit. This process aligns Strategy and Execution
for organizations using the classic Hoshin Kanri (Strategy Deployment Matrix),
coupled with the AJC-specific tools: Prioritization Matrix and Implementation
Plan template, and was originally published in this
article.
A Family For
Every Child is a nonprofit
organization focused on finding permanent and loving adoptive homes for waiting
Foster children, specializing in assisting special-needs/challenging-to-place
foster children in finding their own Forever Families. It was a true privilege to help this
organization, with it’s amazing focus on children, align their 3-year strategic
goals with action to begin today. There
were many key learnings on my part, however, in how performing this process
differs for a non-profit versus a for-profit business. AJC is now working with another non-profit,
and is seeing this pattern emerge again.
Here are three differences that I’ve seen so far, summarized as: Drive,
Data, Dollars.
Drive
Many US workers suffer
from lack of engagement, up to 51% in this
freely available 2015 Gallup poll release.
The same release stated that only 32% of employees self-report as
“engaged.” This is actually also a
problem in non-profits, but according to the statistics
cited from Quantum Workforce for 2015, 58% of employees in non-profits were
engaged. While 58% is not a staggeringly
high majority, it still is almost double that of “all” workers, and sets the
tone for this difference seen in for-profit and non-profit Strategic Alignment
work. I often refer clients to Simon
Sinek’s 2010 Ted Talk “How
Great Leaders Inspire Action” before conducting the Strategy Deployment sessions,
or at least start with the CEO/leader’s “Why.”
It is often helpful to the entire Leadership Team to hear why the
company owner/founder/top executive wants to improve, and that sets the stage
for everyone to enthusiastically embrace the goal setting and planning work to
be done.
In the case of non-profit
work, however, the “why” is typically quite clear – that is, after all, the
mission or vision that the non-profit purports to the world in general. The people in the leadership and managerial
teams at non-profits are aligned to this sense of purpose, and feel driven by it. While there can always be stronger alignment
to a clear purpose, it does not seem quite as relevant to spend as much time
motivating the team in this area as there is in a for-profit business.
Data
For all the drive in the
world, however, it has so far been my experience that non-profits may suffer
from the lack of clear data presented in a format that intuitively fosters
understanding. Pareto charts, funnel statistics,
financial metrics, or even number of people served and some quantitative impact
the non-profit is having on these people – this information is harder to tease
out, and many people do not seem to have the engineering, statistical, and/or
financial background to organically collect, compile, and communicate out this
data and use it to drive programs, initiatives, or monitor success. It was actually really fun to talk about how
understanding “drop-off” percentages through the AFFEC workflow could help
drive recruiting and retention of potential adoption families! When explained using the simple tools of
white board and pen, the team really seemed to understand what the data could
show them, and expressed enthusiasm for wanting to start looking at data in
that way going forward. This is a place
where analytical consultants may really be able to add value to non-profits,
especially when the vision is clear and the team can agree on which metrics
indicate success for the organization and its mission.
Dollars
This was probably my
biggest tactical “ah-ha” when conducting the Strategy Deployment facilitation
sessions in a non-profit, and one that I should have expected. Other than wanting to increase their
endowment in order to fund operating expenses, the non-profit world is not
concerned with increasing financial revenue or dollars coming in! Obviously, I’ve been operating in the
for-profit sector so long that the basic concept of “making money” was so
ingrained in my brain that I was caught a bit off guard when the 3-year and
1-year goals had nothing to do with money.
Clearly a learning for me, but possibly there could be a happy medium
here. After all, when Dan Palotta gave
his Ted talk on “The
Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong,” he discussed that there are some big gaps in
financial incentive for good people to go into non-profits. Also, money is often a good metric for
accomplishment. “Bang for the Buck” is a
phrase that comes to mind. In a
non-profit more than a for-profit, it seems to me that one should consider the
impact of work completed by limited resources.
A possible means to measure how much good the non-profit is doing given
the expense of work done is in some kind of financial ratio. Not sure what the right answer is, and my
experience is admittedly quite limited!
However, it does seem reasonable that there is a place for Dollars to be
considered, while not obsessively so, in non-profits.
Conclusion
All in all, it was a
great experience to work with A Family For
Every Child, and continuing
that with the new non-profit is rewarding as well. Here’s hoping that for-profit and non-profit
best practices can combine into harmonious best practices which are used
effectively across the board to make this world will become a better place for
all who inhabit it.
Read
this article and more on AJC’s blog, and sign up for our newsletter online at: http://andreajonesconsulting.com/blog.aspx
