Ed Batista

Mike Ditka's a People Person

NFL Hall of Famer Mike Ditka on tonight's Monday Night Football broadcast from San Francisco:

Head coaching isn't about X's and O's as much as people think.  It's about dealing with people.

The pic notwithstanding (a cheap shot, I know) Ditka's offhand comment touches on an important truth: Domain expertise, in football or in finance, gets you only so far and no further.  At a certain point in your field of endeavor, your success depends less on your mastery of tactics and strategy than on your ability to manage, inspire and lead people who are smarter and more highly skilled than you are.

Forces for Good and High-Impact Practices

What common practices are shared by "high-impact" nonprofits?  And can organizations in other industries benefit from these same practices?  Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant tackle the first question in their soon-to-be-published Forces for Good (due out October 19), and based on an excerpt that came out today in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, it's clear that the answer to the second question is an unqualified yes.

In the SSIR article, Crutchfield and McLeod Grant discuss the six high-impact practices that make up the heart of their book, and in my opinion all of these concepts have relevance beyond the nonprofit sector.

Their key theme is that what's happening outside an organization is more important than what's happening inside, and yet so many of our efforts aimed at improving effectiveness are focused on activities within an organization's formal boundaries.  (And not, I suspect, because that's where we can have the greatest impact, but because that's what's easiest.)

Here's are the six high-impact practices identified by Crutchfield and McLeod Grant, with brief excerpts from the SSIR article and my interpretation of how these concepts could be applied more broadly:

1. Serve and Advocate

High-impact organizations may start out providing great programs, but they eventually realize that they cannot achieve large-scale social change through service delivery alone. So they add policy advocacy to acquire government resources and to change legislation. Other nonprofits start out by doing advocacy and later add grassroots programs to supercharge their strategy. Ultimately, all high-impact organizations bridge the divide between service and advocacy. They become good at both. And the more they serve and advocate, the more they achieve impact.

So what's the equivalent of "advocacy" outside the nonprofit sector?  Lobbying.  Just take a stroll through the Lobbying Database to see how much "high-impact" companies are spending.  Microsoft has topped $8 million annually for the last 4 years, and Google went from $200K in 2005 to over $800K last year.  I'm not saying this results in good public policy, but it's reality.

2. Make Markets Work

High-impact nonprofits have learned that tapping into the power of self-interest and the laws of economics is far more effective than appealing to pure altruism. No longer content to rely on traditional notions of charity, or to see business as an enemy, these nonprofits find ways to work with markets and help companies "do good while doing well."

Not much to add here.

3. Inspire Evangelists

High-impact nonprofits build strong communities of supporters who help them achieve their larger goals. They value volunteers, donors, and advisers not only for their time, money, and guidance, but also for their evangelism. To inspire supporters' commitment, these nonprofits create emotional experiences that help connect supporters to the group's mission and core values.

What jumps out at me is the emphasis on "emotional experiences."  Is your organization creating any emotional experiences for your supporters?  And if not, why would you expect them to evangelize on your behalf?

4. Nurture Nonprofit Networks

Although most nonprofits pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other groups as competition for scarce resources. But high impact organizations help their peers succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their fields.

This is more industry-specific.  If you're in a mature industry and focused on stealing market share, collaborating doesn't make as much sense.  But if you're in an emerging industry and growing the overall market is a quicker and cheaper path to success, you need to take a broader view of the competition.  A zero-sum perspective will limit everyone's growth potential.

5. Master the Art of Adaptation

High-impact nonprofits are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success. They have responded to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. Along the way, they've made mistakes and have even produced some flops. But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn, and modify their approach on the basis of external cues.

I love the phrase "external cues."  What cues are you picking up from beyond the boundaries of your organization?  But listening is just the beginning--what are you doing with that information?

6. Share Leadership

The leaders of these 12 organizations all exhibit charisma, but they don't have oversized egos. They know that they must share power in order to be stronger forces for good. They distribute leadership within their organizations and throughout their external nonprofit networks, empowering others to lead.

I'm reminded of this comment on from Bill George: "To me, the great leaders today are able to align people around a sense of purpose and values and get that consistency all around the globe, and then empower other people to step up and lead.  And I've found that in organizations that are really effective at generating leaders, there are thousands of leaders because people empower them to step up and lead."

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good People

Why do so many well-meaning people give such bad presentations?  Last year Andy Goodman and Cause Communications sought to answer that question in Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes, an outstanding book that I can't recommend highly enough.  (Ironically, I've been involved in planning a series of presentations this year, but I only just rediscovered Goodman's book because my wife and I are moving to a new apartment and sifting through all our belongings. Timing really is everything.)  The title's emphasis on good "causes" stems from Goodman's work in the nonprofit sector, but his conclusions are broadly applicable in any industry.

Goodman's perspective is similar to Seth Godin's Really Bad PowerPoint, but he dramatically expands the scope of his critique with the help of data generated by 2,501 respondents to a 43-question online survey in Q1 2005.  Here are Goodman's "Fatal Five," common problems that can derail a presentation, with comments from survey respondents:

1. Reading the slides. ("Watching someone read PowerPoint slides is a form of torture that should be banned under the Geneva Convention.")
2. Too long, too much information. ("Too many slides with too many words, too many points, too much data, too long, too didactic.")
3. Lack of interaction. ("Presenters have a responsibility to mine [their audience's life and work experience], direct it, and facilitate the economical sharing of that information among the group.")
4. Lifeless presenters. ("Even if I'm interested in the topic...if the speaker is boring, I'm easily distracted by other goings-on in the room like someone's cool shoes or outfit.")
5. Room/technical problems. ("The frequency with which respondents mentioned these kinds of problems suggests that...presenters often do not anticipate them or fail to have a backup plan.")

But Goodman's respondents didn't just complain about bad presentations--they also told him what factors contribute to an excellent presentation.  Their "Three Most Wanted" list:

1. Interaction. ("Interactive presentations that create opportunities for the audience members to work together and with the presenter are almost always top notch.")
2. Clarity. ("Clarity of three to four well-framed key points the speaker wanted the audience to take away, coupled with smart use of metaphors/anecdotes that helped drive them home.")
3. Enthusiasm. ("Whether respondents used the words energy, passion, engaging, dynamic or lively, they all wanted the same thing: presenters who were enthusiastic about their topic and conveyed that interest to the audience.")

If an audience and a PowerPoint deck are in your future, "Bad Presentations..." is well worth your time.  And if you're a full-time employee at a nonprofit, foundation, government agency, or educational institution, you can get one free copy.  (If you work for The Man, it's still just $17.50.)

UPDATE: A digital version of "Bad Presentations..." is available for free from Andy Goodman.  Printed  copies are no longer available from Goodman, but you can usually find a few copies on Amazon.

Ground Rules for Meetings

What makes a meeting successful?  A team I'm a member of kicked off a project a few weeks ago, and before the first meeting the team leader asked everyone to come with two "ground rules" that would govern how we work together.

I've been through similar exercises before, but I was struck by the usefulness of this particular list, which I've reproduced below.  I've fleshed it out a bit to make it more self-explanatory, but this is basically what we came up with:

GROUND RULES

• Be clear about how decisions will be made.
• If one person (particularly the team leader) owns a decision, make that clear from the outset.
• If the group is going to make the decision, specify the process to be used (consensus, majority, etc.)
  
• Use good brainstorming practices; specifically, don't criticize suggestions when we're in idea-generating mode.
• Begin each meeting by checking in.
• End each meeting by reviewing what went well and what could have been done better (and don't allow other work to bump this review off the agenda.)
• Rotate facilitating and note-taking roles.
• Raise any concerns as thoroughly as possible.  If a discussion has to be taken offline, update the rest of the team at the next meeting.
• Everyone's free to challenge the productivity of the meeting.
• Distinguish clearly between "thinking" mode and "doing" mode.
• Two key words to bear in mind: "realistic" and "sustainable."
• Load-balancing is encouraged, and we'll revise assignments as needed.
• Bring your calendar with you so we can schedule future meetings efficiently.

Unfortunately, conflicts with other projects have kept some us--particularly myself--from attending many of this group's meetings!  But the culture we established at the outset with these ground rules seems to have helped the group stay focused and productive despite the disruptions.

Photo by Michael Sypniewski of the Asbury Park Press, from A Day at Bangs Avenue School.

Making Lemonade

A colleague of mine runs a nonprofit that's staffed almost exclusively by people who are formerly homeless and seeking to stabilize their lives.  The organization is both a training program that allows its employees to re-enter the working world and a social venture that runs a successful online business to support its operations.

The database that supports their online services recently melted down, resulting in several agonizing weeks of technical troubleshooting that my colleague said she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy.

But she also found a silver lining in the experience: it was an incredible training opportunity in crisis management for her employees.  She wasn't minimizing the frustrations that her team suffered or the negative impact on their business, but she was determined to see the upside as well.

The nature of her organization's work compels her to look at the big picture regarding the impact on her staff, but that's hardly the exclusive prerogative of a training program manager.  It makes me wonder what opportunities the rest of us routinely miss because we're conditioned to focus on the downside of a crisis.  I'm not advocating a Candide-like approach to management, but there's something to be said for looking at a bowl of lemons and realizing you're about to make lemonade.

Photo by Alanna St. Laurent.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Successful Debriefing: Ask, Don't Tell

You've just helped lead a team through an experience, and now you want them to debrief what happened and draw some conclusions that will allow them to be more effective the next time.  This sounds simple in theory, but it can be tough in practice, particularly if your team members aren't predisposed to self-reflection.

I recently exchanged emails with a second-year student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business who will soon be leading a team of first-year students through a number of exercises and debrief sessions.  She's concerned because in past debrief sessions that she's led the discussion came to a halt well before the allotted time, and the team didn't learn all they could have as a result.  Here's my response:

Could you be pushing them to the "right" answer too quickly if they don’t appear to be headed in that direction?  Remember that it's OK to let them struggle and to feel frustrated.  There's always the temptation when leading a debrief to tell people what happened--that's an efficient way to get your points across, and yet it's an inefficient way to help people actually learn from the experience.  The learning isn't internalized, it doesn’t stick, and you may wind up shutting down the discussion before the debrief time is up. 

It's generally more effective to ask questions that help people reach their own understanding of what happened, even though this may feel like a less efficient process.  You can share your observations as well, but then ask them to interpret those observations--don't jump in with your own interpretation unless it's absolutely necessary.

I'm reminded of a challenge that I encountered as a reporter in my first job after college.  To get people to talk in clear, readily understandable and quotable language, you have to ask really simple questions that can have the effect of making you look uninformed at best and foolish at worst.  If you give in to the temptation of showing an interview subject how smart and well-informed you are, you'll do all the talking, they won't say anything useful, and you don't really make any progress.

Leading a debrief (and coaching in general) is somewhat similar--the more you talk, the less effective you are.  And when you do talk, you should be asking questions more often than making statements.  And those questions should be open-ended, not leading questions that are really statements in disguise.

Photo by twofivesevenzero.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

 

Dancing Your Way to a Better Team

How do you maintain team cohesiveness during periods of extensive turnover?  Well, you could try dancing.

The Oakland A's Triple-A affiliate in Sacramento, the River Cats, have seen an astounding number of players pass through their clubhouse this season--a player has been called up or sent down 174 times, according to a recent article in the SF Chronicle by Susan Slusser.

Despite this turmoil on the roster, the River Cats won their division and are about to begin the Pacific Coast League's playoffs, a feat that A's assistant general Manager David Forst calls "incredible."  So how did manager Tony DeFrancesco keep his team together?

Infielder J.J. Furmaniak, who's bounced between Sacramento and Oakland this summer, said that DeFrancesco was proactive about making sure new faces felt included. He did that by having every addition introduce themselves during pre-game stretching - and then doing a dance.

"Even the big-league guys did it," Furmaniak said. "Well, (Mark) Kotsay did some dancing, anyway. Tony made sure no one was sitting alone in a corner, everyone was interacting."

I love this idea, and it's relevant even if dancing wouldn't fly with your team.  The underlying concept is twofold: first, as a leader you need to take proactive steps to connect people when turnover is high, and second, that process will have a greater impact if you find a shortcut around the interpersonal barriers that exist among strangers.

Having new players introduce themselves to everyone is a good plan--and most managers would have stopped there.  The brilliant wrinkle that DeFranceso added was having them do a dance as well, which got everyone laughing and brought the new guys into the fold much more quickly.

I haven't danced in front of my current colleagues, but a few weeks ago we did an improv session with Chris Sams of BATS Improv that included a lot of physical movement and a lot of silliness as well.  It was a great opportunity to get loose and have some fun, and afterwards we felt more connected as a team, even though we'd been working together for the better part of a year.  There's much more to be said about the value of improv in a team-building context, but the relevance here is that the exercises allowed us to see a different, less formal, more personal side of ourselves than we usually present at the workplace, and I imagine the River Cats' dances had the exact same effect.