Management Weekly Tip 2007
Compasspoint BoardCafe
This is an article from Board Café, a newsletter designed exclusively for nonprofit Boards. You might want to pass this info onto your board chair and encourage them to sign up for this electronic newsletter. It is a great resource that has been around for years.
This is part one of a two part series and will be continued in the next Manager’s Tip.
This part provides insight into why our boards don’t govern. The article gives the paradox that the very reasons that make boards excellent supporters of organizations are also the reasons why they don’t govern very well. The author goes onto list some of the more common reasons and explains why the board can often step in times of crisis and govern very well but quickly retreat back into inertia when stability returns. It’s an enlightening article. Enjoy!
Board Effectiveness Quiz
If your board is bogged down and getting nowhere they may benefit from taking this quiz. It is designed to stimulate discussion and re-direct boards to being more strategic and productive with an eye on the future rather than rubberstamping the past. This is yet another great article by Help4nonprofits.http://www.help4nonprofits.com/BoardEffectivenessQuiz.htm
Stepping Up: A Board’s Challenge in Leadership Transition
One of the primary responsibilities of the Board of Directors of a nonprofit agency is to hire and evaluate the executive director of the organization. This article addresses some of the challenges that boards face in making the hiring decision and managing the transition from one leader to the next. It has five key areas for board focus and what challenges frequently surround the identified areas. It is filled with vignettes from the author’s experience to illustrate the situation, followed by his recommendations about how they should be handled. It is an interesting and informative read with excellent suggestions.http://www.compasspoint.org/assets/225_steppingupaboardschalleng.pdf
Ethical Guidelines for Board Members of Not-for-Profit Organizations
At the recent RSP topical meeting in New Orleans there was discussion on working with both coalition boards and member program boards. There were a number of issues bought forth and needs identified and so I will begin a short series of my favorite articles around board development. Below is the web link to the first in this series an interesting article complete with a sample code of ethics and statement of commitment for members to sign.
Here is a little sample:
“An overriding area of concern for all not-for-profit organizations is its ethical governance - not only must governance be ethical in all areas, but it must also be perceived to be ethical. The ethical operations of the entire organization will flow from the standards set by both policy and leadership actuality, and the ethical conduct of each board member will determine the perception and to a degree the reality of the ethical conduct of the board as a whole, and through to the not-for-profit organization as a whole.”
Sound intriguing? www.axi.ca/TCA/Mar2004/guestarticle_4.shtml
Change Your Organizational Culture
I live in Seattle and Amazon.com is in my neighborhood.
Every Friday afternoon at 4:30pm, Amazon employees take out toy bow-and-arrows (the kind with the suction cups on the ends of the arrows), blast Journey (Don’t Stop Believe’n) over the loudspeakers, and proceed to have their weekly play time.
Every Friday afternoon, I sit at my computer until about 5:30 or 6:00pm finishing up the last-minute requirements of my work week…and I think about those Amazon employees, running through the halls singing Journey lyrics…I know I am not alone in a work culture that promotes late-night shifts and over-worked employees. And I certainly understand deadlines and deliverables, short staffing and the need for work to be done on a timely basis. But I can’t help but wonder how the corporate model seems to be tapping into an aesthetic that the nonprofit world seems to have missed (or maybe just hasn’t caught onto it yet).
Today’s Monday Management Tip will give you insight into one corporate employee’s efforts to transform his culture into a place of creative productivity, retain employees, and improve work quality. The author provides 7 tips for getting started on the road to a fun and productive work-place culture. I think it’s a great idea, though I wouldn’t recommend playing Journey…who wants to get a classic 1980’s hit stuck in their head all weekend?
Check out the article at:
http://www.sideroad.com/Leadership/change-culture-organizational.html
And if you’ve instituted a fun work-place tradition in your office culture, tell us about it! We want to hear from you!
Employee Evaluations: It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it
By Jerry Jensen
http://www.tgci.com/magazine/Employee%20Evaluation.pdf
This article discusses various forms of employee evaluations. The author offers practical techniques that will assist the supervisor in deciding which evaluation method to use, pros and cons of that method, and how to carry it out successfully.
Demonstrating Creativity and Innovation
By W.H. Weiss
http://www.mppsllc.com/downloads/pdf_files/DemonstratingCI.pdf
If you consider yourself a linear thinker and would like to begin thinking “outside the box,” then this article is for you!
Not only does this article give tips on how to push yourself beyond the four walls of success in the work place, but it also offers ways to inspire your employees towards a more creative approach to productivity and problem solving!
The author offers intuitive (and some not-so-intuitive) tips and suggestions that will push you out of your comfort zone. Weiss actually suggests to not always look for the “right” answer…the very idea makes this linear thinker shudder.
The end goal is to nurture your creative and ingenious side to problem-solving and production, and encourage your employees to do the same.
Host a Board Recruitment Event
http://charitychannel.com/publish/templates/default.aspx?a=12485&template=print-article.htm
I picked this article because I know that board recruitment is a difficult task for many agencies. I have heard it across the country. The article is a pleasant suggestion on doing an event to showcase your agencies and reel in the best volunteers. It may work for some and for others it may not. I am thinking that it may inspire a board to look at recruitment from a different perspective and perhaps come up with a very creative variation that works in your community. If you do have a successful board recruiting event be sure to share it with me. Good Luck!
Sector Worries Over Future
Thanks to Aimee Loya from CalCASA for suggesting this article.
“The nonprofit sector is on the brink of a leadership crisis. That, at least, has been the message behind a spate of recent surveys and reports predicting that the baby boomers who occupy most leadership roles will leave a vacuum behind when they retire en masse. In 2004, the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 65 percent of the executive directors it surveyed planned to leave their job in the next five years. Last year the CompassPoint research and consulting firm put the number at 75 percent...” http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewprintable.cfm?article_id=3289
Do Your Budget First
http://charitychannel.com/enews/v.aspx?SI=74544&E=evelyn@wcsap.org&S=2&N=2355&ID=2600&NL=15
This article brings up an interesting perspective that is often not considered in the hunt for grants. Ms. O’Neill encourages organizations to evaluate the total cost of the activities that will have a lasting impact after the end of the grant, the cost to procure the grant and the cost your agency will incur to operate the grant over the monies received from the grant for administration. Is it a net gain or loss? And it is critical to consider that there are times when the actual costs, even at a loss would be acceptable because of the non-financial gain from the activity. This is a thought provoking article that encourages us to assess total costs and so have a clearer picture of a funding source prior to committing to that particular course of action.
Annual Reports
Below are two links to short, easy reading articles on what to include in an annual report. If this is one of those chores that you procrastinate on then this might just be the inspiration you need to get started. It is not one of the administrative tasks that most of us look forward to but having a little refresher on what to include and things to keep in mind might be helpful. Good Luck!
Nonprofit, Charity and Other types of Annual Reports
http://www.zpub.com/sf/arl/arl-non.html
Critical Components of a Winning Annual Report
http://www.comnetwork.org/verizon_resourcecenter/marketing_winning_annual_reports.htm
Why You Need to be More Entrepreneurial—And How to Get Started
http://www.snpo.org/samples/V190612.pdf
This link will take you to a free resource from Nonprofit World. It is a great little article complete with checklists and scoring tool to assess the social entrepreneurship of your organization. It begins with a definition of a who is a social entrepreneur, a tool to assess if your organization is ready to create this type of funding opportunity and then a series of steps to move you down the road to a different mechanism of funding your organization.
April 30 - Organizational Assessment
This is the first of several articles on organizational assessment. It is easy to get caught up in the daily responsibilities of running an organization and put off doing any type of overall assessment of the organization as a whole. This article is a wonderful framework around doing this type of work and an excellent place to start off this topic.
It is quite a comprehensive tool and may appear rather overwhelming upon opening. One way to handle this is to pull the tool apart and do one section of the assessment each week/month. Obviously this is something your board should be involved in as well. Let me know if you chose to do this, I am curious to hear how it goes.
http://www.emcf.org/pdf/mckinsey_capacitytool.pdf
April 23 - Boards, Strategic Thinking, & the Need for Diversified Revenue
“MAMA SAID NEVER PUT ALL OF YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET: Boards, Strategic Thinking, & the Need for Diversified Revenue”
http://www.snpo.org/samples/V190408.pdf
This is an engaging article that takes fundraising techniques runs them through a filter of variables and then offers a simple gird to assess the appropriateness of that strategy for your organization. It is a nice tool to be used with your board to begin to strategize ways to increase and diversify your agency revenues.
March 26 - Core Skills in Management and Supervision
http://www.managementhelp.org/mgmnt/prsnlmnt.htm#anchor227589
The title says it all. This is a basic article that lays out a framework for problem solving and decision making. It has a step by step guide and ends with more resources for further information. If you supervise someone who hesitates about making a decision then this may be the article they need to begin to develop a process that enables them to be a more effective and efficient decision maker.
March 19 - Importance of Listening
“You Can't Listen With Your Mouth Open. Your associates, your employees, your suppliers, your customers all have something of value in what they have to say. Listen to the people around you. You will never learn what it is if you drown them out by talking all the time. Remember, the only thing that can come out of your mouth is something you already know. Shut up and learn.”
This is a quote for today from F. John Reh, author of about: management
http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/qt/TipL16.htm
More from F. John Reh on this subject can be found at:
http://management.about.com/od/communication/a/WhatTheyNotSay.htm
This article highlights the idea that some of the most important communication you might receive from your staff may not be in words so use care to understand the message being sent to you. John also highlights the easy trap of using a lack of disagreement or even a lack of discussion as an interpretation of agreement when in fact it may not be that at all.
March 12, 2007 - Is your Organization Lawsuit Proof?
http://www.snpo.org/samples/V200132.pdf
We live in a litigious society and please do not kid yourself that your organization is exempt from this type of a situation. This article will give you and your Board a place to begin discussion and evaluation of your agency and how to make it more bulletproof
March 5, 2007 - Study Shows Gaps in Nonprofit Management—and ways to improve
http://www.snpo.org/samples/V190329.pdf
This is a great little article that highlights some research on ways that you can strengthen your agency. Some of the suggestions are really commonsense but they tend to escape us because we have always done business in the same manner and we do not necessarily follow intuitive sense. The article gives five results that became apparent after the author completed a survey of nonprofit managers. I am not going to tell you the five areas because I want you to read this 3 pager so go get a cup of coffee and spend a few minutes with it. Happy Monday!
Hey everyone—Managers’ Institute is coming up in April. If you have not registered but are planning on coming please do so this week. I attached the registration info.
If you are not interested in Day One—dealing with personnel issues but are interested in Day Two—confidentiality and management please register through the attached flyer and then send me an email indicating you will only be attending Day Two.
Feb 26, 2007 - Basics of Time and Stress Management
http://www.managementhelp.org/prsn_prd/basics.htm
As promised, I have left succession planning for now and am lightening up the management tip to something we can all use and that is time and stress management. This article has ideas that you can put into practice today. I certainly came away with a few that I am going to implement this afternoon. I will end the day with a reflection of my “to do” list for tomorrow and mark each item an “A” or a “B” with the “A” items getting all my love and attention the first several hours I spend at my desk in the morning. The “B” items, those that are not an immediate priority, will be relegated to my afternoon hours. That is just one of the practical ideas laid out in this article.
Feb 12, 2007 - Founder Long-time Executive Director Transitions 15 Points to Consider
http://www.transitionguides.com/newsltr/TL_Fall06.htm#feature2
At this link you will find a pair of articles, “Founder/Long-time Executive Director Transitions: 15 Points to Consider” and “Sustaining Funder Relations During Executive Transition: A Conversation with Rick Moyers of the Meyer Foundation”. These articles are part of the website: Transition Guides: Tools, ideas and services to strengthen organizations during leadership change. This is an outstanding website all about organizational transition so if you have been enjoying the past few weeks on succession planning you need to take a look at this resource or bookmark it for future reference.
This will be the last of the articles on succession planning, at least for a while. Next week I will be out of the office the entire week and plan to send the next edition of M2 out on February 26th. At that time I am thinking we will lighten things up a little with info on time management. Something we can all use!
Jan 22, 2007 - Planning Successful Successions
http://transitionguides.com/resources/docs/Planning%20Successful%20Successions.pdf
This will be the first of several articles on succession planning. As the article points out, “A national survey of 2,200 executive directors at charities commissioned by Casey (Foundation) found that more than half of their organizations have no succession plan, even though nearly two-thirds of the executives plan to leave their jobs s by 2009.” There is change coming and it is a fact that nonprofit executive directors are retiring or choosing to leave their work at a rapid pace. Just look around the room the next time you are with your peers and it will be obvious that this phenomenon is not withstanding our work.
The article identifies two components of succession planning; that which occurs in an emergency and the planned transition. Most of us as organizations are unprepared for either. Where are you with this process? This article addresses our reluctance to begin this conversation and why it is important to work through this barrier and have meaningful conversation about the future of our organizations.
Jan 16, 2007 - Work with What You’ve Got: A Model for NonProfit Financial Sustainability
Part one and part two.
http://www.help4nonprofits.com/PDF_Files/SustainableFundDevPt1.pdf
http://www.help4nonprofits.com/NP_Fnd_Mission_Based_FundPt2.htm
The basis of this article is the discussion of grant based fundraising and mission based fundraising and sustainability. How you perform your mission is often guided by your funding and this article challenges you to guide your fundraising by the goals you have set for your agency and establish true sustainable funding.
This is a two part article with part one being the overview and with 10 questions for each organization to address before proceeding. After I read part one it certainly made me think and the wheels began to turn around a number of ideas. And I must admit that many of them were doubts, however, the author does a good job of dispelling the many negatives thoughts that can doom a project like this from the start.
Part Two is the plan and how to work it. There is information there that lends itself nicely to a hearty staff/board discussion. It will lead you to a brainstorming and information on how to set up your own “Magic Matrix” to objectively evaluate ideas and how they fit into your mission.
Overall, this article really excited me with potential. If you do this PLEASE let me know about your outcome. I would love to hear some sexual assault agency examples of how this worked.
Jan 8, 2007 - Friendraising and your Board
http://www.help4nonprofits.com/PDF_Files/ARTICLE-FriendRaising-EngagingYourBoard-EngagingFriends.pdf
This article is quite explicit about not equating being a friend of the organization with being a big donor of the organization. The author takes measures to ensure that the reader is on the same page and it is not about establishing relationships just so you can go back and ask for big bucks. What do you ask of from your friends? I’ll bet it’s not money and maybe that is what your agency should also be aware of as well. You ask friends to engage with you and what is important in your life and in this case it is about engaging them in the work not about tapping their wallets. “If the point of FriendRaising effort is not to ask for money, then what is the point?” Read the article to find out how this can provide a return greater than a donation. It also gives the reader an easy strategy for Friendraising. It’s a great article and puts a definite spin on friendraising that is rarely seen but a notable idea.
December 18, 2006 - “How to be a Better Manager”
This week’s website is a brief article that outlines some traits of a good manager. Quick and easy reading. It is from the “About: Management” website. This website is a general management site with focus on for profit business practice, nonetheless they have good information that is appropriate for nonprofit as well.
http://management.about.com/cs/midcareermanager/a/htbebettermgr.htm
This will be the last edition of Monday Manager’s tip until January 8, 2007. I have sent fairly light reading for these first two but I also have some that are much more in depth so you will get a broad sweep of information coming in 2007. Happy reading!
The very best wished for a happy and successful 2007.
December 11, 2006 - Basics for New Managers and Supervisors to Manage Themselves
I have to say that there are so many websites to pick from that I had a hard time choosing the site for the first M2. I do not have a hierarchy of topics and so I am not sending them in any particular order, just how it hits me at the time. I did decide to start you off gently and this first one is short and sweet and on self care. If you have a request for a topic, please send it to me and I’ll see what I can do.
This week’s topic:
Basics for New Managers and Supervisors to Manage Themselves
http://www.managementhelp.org/suprvise/mng_slf.htm
Okay, so I do know that many of you are not at all new and are very experienced but please don’t just delete without taking a look. This article offers checkpoints that are very appropriate for veteran managers to take a look at and think about. Also some of you are promoting folks to supervising roles and it might be nice to include in new supervisor orientation or something along those lines. In addition there are a number of links to self care websites that might also meet a need that you didn’t even know you had. So take a look and see what’s up.
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