Tobi's Volunteer Management Blog

Five Ways to Improve Performance

Are you looking for ways to improve your program performance? Maybe it's because a major funder requires accountability to a set of outcome measures, or the Board of Directors is asking why goals aren’t being met, or team morale is at an all-time low.  Or you haven’t yet begun, and feel it’s time to get started.  Whatever your situation and whatever your mission -- whether it be direct service, advocacy, educational, or cultural -- you can enhance your organization's ability to deliver its mission.

 Here are a few ways to do it:

1) Intervene Directly -- The first and most obvious way is to figure out what’s not working and fix it.  Often easier said than done, right?  Nonprofits get work done through a complex web of stakeholders -- boards, volunteers, paid staff, community partners, etc. -- and it’s a challenge to identify the core problem.  

Take Time for Analysis -- One way to do this is to create an affinity diagram in order to systematically analyze the cause and effect relationships at play.  Although this process can be time consuming, ultimately you’ll find the root cause of the problem and not waste your time with “pet solutions” that will not fix things in the end (and will likely frustrate you even further).

2) Start Tracking -- If you don’t know where you’re going, chances are you won’t get there.  If you set some simple goals you follow monthly or quarterly, you’ll be able to pinpoint where your performance is lagging.  Keep these simple, and don’t wait until the end of the year to check how you are doing.  You can't nip things in the bud if you wait until the bitter end.  

Keep it Simple -- Start by tracking three quantitative goals and see how it goes.  If you already have performance measures (check these examples out), or there are ones you funder expects you to adhere to, pick the three most heavily weighted or that will have the most impact.  Develop a quick one-page report that shows your progress visually.  Make sure you share it with everyone -- yes, even your volunteers.  Then, don’t forget to ask questions.  Why does the data look the way it does?  Is there something we can do to “move the needle”?

3) Develop Tools -- Your team simply may not have the tools they need to get the job done.  If you are trying to reach more people, for example, they may need a set of templates they can use to reach out to the media, they may need permission from your organization to begin a foray into social media, or they may need another projector and laptop to make community presentations.  IdeaEncore has tons of free and low-cost templates you can download, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.  

Stay Focused -- Focus your resources, with laser-like precision on providing tools that can actually have an impact -- either in the short- or long-term.  Resist providing what’s merely popular.  If you’re unsure, ask your team to assess the value and quantify the estimated improvement(s) each proposed resource will make to your operation and how it relates to your mission.

4) Offer Training -- If you’re providing tools, give  instructions on how, when and why they can be used.  Don’t assume everyone knows what to do with that fancy Toolkit.  Give them an orientation and some good ideas to get going.  And then check back.  To identify other training needs, conduct a needs assessment either at a team meeting, via and online survey (Survey Monkey is a great, free tool), or through phone interviews.   Tailor your training to meet the specific needs identified.

But, Beware -- Sometimes people don’t know what they don’t know and, therefore, can’t identify what they need.  If that’s the case, use or create a standard self-assessment tool that can check for baseline skills for a particular job (i.e. volunteer management competencies).  This will help unearth what’s missing from the feedback you're getting.

5) Recognize and Reward --  As we focus on what’s going wrong, we sometimes have a tough time acknowledging what is actually working -- even if the progress is incremental or learning is all that's happened.  It’s obvious that achievement should be rewarded.  Why not celebrate “aha moments,” too?  After all, they mean we are one step closer to solving a key barrier to progress.

Share What Works -- Collect best practices.  Make sure they are 1) innovative, 2) sustainable, 3) able to be replicated, and 4) have truly made a difference.  If they cover all four bases, share them with your team.  Best practices can be found outside your organization, and even outside the nonprofit community.  They are the most motivational, however, when they are discovered and promoted from within.  If you start by looking for people on your team who have a certain “knack” for something, you’ll find they're probably using a procedure or tactic that works.  And, they probably don't even recognize it as a best practice.   

Start improving your performance by trying a few of these.  If they work, just grow it from there, and let us know how it went!

 

Four Ways to Avoid the Blame Game and Promote a Culture that’s Ripe for Learning

As you may have noticed from my recent posts, I’ve become more and more fascinated failure and with how people learn from it.  One way to become more resilient is help your team learn from their experiences by making it safe to fail.  Supporting emotional safety is important, and you can do this by avoiding the blame game.

Yesterday, I was reading the Harvard Business Review online and came across a webinar hosted by, with Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School.  I took a look and was intrigued by what she had to say.  She discussed how to best learn from failure, based on research of corporations who are great at it.  

Although, nonprofits certainly don’t have the depth of resources large companies have to delve deep into the world of process improvement, I thought I’d share few takeaways that might be helpful.

During the webinar, Professor Edmonson discussed some key characteristics of the stellar companies she studied -- being comfortable about not knowing and not being right, persistently asking for help, reporting mistakes, and admitting failure out loud.  Failure, furthermore, isn’t about not being accountable.  It's about being highly accountable, owning up, and taking responsibility for understanding project mishaps. 

But there was a subtle twist.  It also isn’t about owning up to who was wrong.  Rather, the focus is on what went wrong.  In this way, we move away from blaming people to getting things fixed.  

Edmondson argued that the gap between which acts we perceive as blameworthy and which are, in fact, truly someone’s fault is wide.  She also noted that one reason we humans tend to gloss over failure is that we have an innate optimism that something will be successful.  Another reason is fear.

But we needn’t be fearful.  There’s a good reason to fail and do it in the open without blame.  If we don’t blame, people won’t be afraid to fail next time.  We need people to fail.  Why?  Because it’s the first step in the problem solving process.  Also, unattended mistakes, that seem minor, can culminate into big failures that may cost us precious resources down the road.

What You Can Do

So, what does Edmonson suggest?  Here are a few things you can do to build a safe, blame-free environment that supports positive growth. 

• Train Your Team to Problem Solve -- Find a process that works for you and use it.
• Reward Improvement Suggestion -- Do not shoot the messenger, ever.
• Unearth Deviations in your Processes -- Minor issues may signal areas that require a second look.
• Promote Vigilant Teaming -- Differing perspectives can cover more area than a single one.  Set up a team to search for vulnerabilities, conduct postmortems of events, or identify new knowledge.  Why not use volunteers to staff your team?
• Regularly Analyze Why Things Go Wrong -- Look at the categories below to get started.

Where to Look for Mistakes

In addition, seriously analyze what led to any failures you experience.  Edmondson mentioned taking a look at the following possible reasons:

• Deliberate Deviation
• Inattention
• Incompetence
• Process Inadequacy
• The Difficulty of the Task
• The Complexity of the Process

Can you see how, in the majority of these situations, it’s probably not one person’s fault?  Or, the issue could have been prevented with some effective training or simplification?  By taking a good look at the root cause for your failure, you’re likely to unearth some pretty good information to make a positive change.   This takes the focus off the people and on the process where it belongs.  

I hope you'll give failure a try.  Ironically, it may be important to your success.  In the current economic climate, developing a resilient learning organization may be more important than ever. 

Working as a Network: What We Can Learn from the Lowly Jellyfish

What if I told you there was a jelly fish that swims upside down and rests on the sea floor most of its life?  Would you believe me? The Upside-Down Jellyfish, or Cassiopeia, does just that.  Not what you expected, right?  Seems to go agains the grain of jellyfish behavior, yes?  But, true just the same.  I saw these at the local aquarium in Chattanooga, and it got me thinking...what can we learn from this amazing creature about our nonprofit work?  Well, it turns out, plenty!

 The Buddy System in Nature

The Upside-Down Jellyfish is the buddy system personified in nature.  Unlike other jellies, this species rests on the sea floor and rarely swims.   Tiny algae live in small sacs in the jelly’s tentacles.  The algae uses sunlight to make food, which they share with their host.  The algae also produce oxygen, which helps the jelly survive in water with poor oxygen content.  The jellies help the algae out by providing safe haven in their tentacles.  The jellyfish also have other sea buddies.  Crabs partner with the jellies, carrying them on their back to defend against predators.  These partnerships have no doubt developed over the years, as these particular jellyfish adopted to the changing environment.

 Nonprofits Need to Adapt, Too

In a similar way, we need to adapt the way we engage volunteers to our new world.  Times have changed.  Not longer can we expect to use the same old and tired tactics to recruit and manage volunteers.  The volunteers of today have high expectations.  They want to give their time to well-managed organizations where they can have a real impact.  Not many volunteers are content with busy work nowadays.  They want new and higher levels of responsibility.  They are also busy people, so they want the flexibility to contribute on their own terms.  

Sounds challenging?  It is, if you continue to operate from the old “command and control,” or top down, model.  Are you having a hard time finding volunteers?  It may be time to break with ye olde status quo.  It just doesn’t work anymore.  It’s time to pivot to a networked mindset and meet your new supporters where they’re at.  Just like the Upside-Down Jellyfish, it’s time to adapt or risk extinction.

 We Need to Adopt a Networked Mindset

Similar to the Upside-Down Jellyfish, we need to find new and different orientations, even if they feel uncomfortable at first.  We need to seek out and find unconventional partners who can work with us in mutually-beneficial ways, and not be afraid to be different than the rest of the pack.  We need to work as an open and transparent system versus a closed down, siloed, manager-to-subordinate supervisory model.  We need to embody collaboration, look to expand and use resources in new and creative ways, and live with the lack of centralized control our new network will require to thrive.  

As Beth Kanter and Allison Fine describe in their book, The Networked Nonprofit, which I have written about here, networked nonprofits “are easy for outsiders to get in, and insiders to get out.”  Upside-Down Jellyfish are transparent, too -- you can see their inner workings, even their partners, the green algae living comfortably in the jelly’s tentacles.  They stick together, everyone has a role in the system, and they’re working for the common good of all.

It is possible to embody the buddy system with your volunteers and network.  Cultivate your new supporters by developing relationships.  Partner with them to work on causes they care about versus recruiting them to volunteer positions that haven’t changed in a decade.  Yes, it will take creativity, flexibility, and risk.  But, consider the payoffs.  The jellyfish and algae have, and apparently they think it’s all worked out pretty darn good.

 

 

Nonprofit Failure: Why Can’t We Embrace it? -- Part II

This is Part II of my earlier post, Nonprofit Failure: Why Can’t We Embrace it? where I discussed the missed opportunities failures present us.  As promised, I’m sharing how to make failure work for you.

First let’s start with a few truths.

Failure is Inevitable

When you innovate, you will fail.  At least to some extent, at some point along the way.  As we chart new waters there’s simply no way around it.  We’ll forget an important cog in the process or neglect to get buy-in from an important stakeholder.  Failure is painful, but you can turn that pain into gain if you are willing to face it head on.  

Failure Isn’t Permanent

Or at least the horrible feelings associated with it aren't.  It appears one of our greatest fears -- to fail at what we really care about -- is unfounded.  The pain we imagine we’ll feel if we fail simply won’t last.  Even in the most traumatic times of our lives, research shows that we almost always have the ability to rebound.  As noted in a recent article Scientific American , covering the work of researcher George A. Bonanno at Columbia University, “[I]n every instance, he has found, most people adapt surprisingly well to whatever the world presents; life returns to a measure of normalcy in a matter of months.”  So, we'll get over it, no matter how big the failure.

We are actually hard-wired to do so.  Our bodies create all kinds of brain chemistry that helps us overcome, even when we cope badly.  Bonanno coined the term “coping ugly” to describe the wide variety of coping mechanisms that humans use to deal with trauma, like denial or narcissism, that may not be healthy otherwise.  Hey, they may not always look pretty, but they work.

Failure Can Be Helpful

Failure has another upside, too.  At the very least, it gives you a bottom baseline to work from.  If you know what failure looks like, you’ll have a better understanding of what success might entail.  If you’re unsure what direction to take to fix a problem, start by analyzing all of the actions that are the polar opposite of what you did when you failed.  A new route may appear.

So now that you know failure is a reality and it can’t really hurt you, let’s talk about how to harness that energy and covert it into gold.

How to Make Failure Work for You

So, if you agree with me that sh**! happens, it's effects aren't permanent, and it can actually help you, here's what you need to do:

• Admit it!!!! -- It’s amazing how many people live in denial.  Although denial is a “coping ugly” strategy that will help you get over trauma, it won’t help you learn what you need to do differently.  So, let go, and fess up.
• Fail Early -- Make formative evaluation part of every new initiative.  When starting new projects, make sure you stop to evaluate early and often.  That way you can catch your mistakes up front, learn from them, and incorporate that wisdom into the project plan. 
• Start Small --  Pilot something on a smaller scale, tweak it, and then scale it to your larger operation.
• Collaborate -- There’s strength and safety in numbers.  Find like-minded partners who can help you experiment and own any success or failure together.
• Show Your Bumps -- If you are a leader, show the way by openly sharing your failures.  To dip your toe in, you may want to start with something way back in the history books and then work from there.  Your team will breathe a sigh of relief and you’ll set the tone for everyone else. 
• Create a Sandbox -- Create a safe area where people can play without consequences.  Designate certain projects as “official experiments.”  Institutionalize your mistakes by starting up Failure Fridays where your team gets together to talk about their recent mishaps.  Make it clear that these times are safe havens from criticism and judgement.
• Always Celebrate Both Wins and Losses -- Accept that you will make mistakes and celebrate your greatest moments of “Oooops!” as part of the positive strides your organization is making to improve.
• Educate Your Funders and Executive Management -- Make sure the people who make decisions about your program understand how failure is actually helping you move forward.  Give specific examples and point them to well-respected sources that agree (as I mentioned in my first post, the Harvard Business Review frequently covers the concept of failure and has plenty of info to share online.)

So, there you have it.  Sally forth without fear, make your mistakes, and grow exponentially. 

Have any failures you’d like to share?  Post them in our comments.