Do you have a cringeworthy teenage moment captured forever on film? I used mine as an inspiration last week when I was honored to guest post on the 5 by 5 Design “Inspirations” blog. Thanks to Wendy & Diana for the opportunity, and for the work you do every day to help your clients look “wow”! (Go ahead, click through to read the entire post!)
Image credit to Clara Natoli
(Images of my own angst-filled teenage years will remain unindexed by Google)
A few years ago, my husband and I became fascinated with the TV show The Colony. It created a mostly-realistic (it’s TV, people, let’s suspend a little disbelief) post-apocalyptic disaster environment, put real people with a variety of skills in and told them to figure out how to survive as a group over a series of weeks. Each person had to look inside themselves and ask, “what skills did I have in my old life that are relevant here to our group’s mission of survival?” As the season unfolded, the group gathered food, built shelters, started fires, filtered water, created small engines, protected themselves from marauders, and generally figured out how to survive. It’s a modern day interpretation on surviving the military ‘scorched Earth’ philosophy.
One of the major challenges I see facing nonprofit organizations today is that many are surviving almost entirely on momentum and history. They’re doing things that have always been done (electing the new committee, producing the annual report, running the tradeshow at X venue) because inertia and momentum keeps things moving. Multi-year contracts exist. Some volunteers feel entitled, others go unengaged. Staff resources are stretched thin. The infrastructure is complicated and relies on many people playing their individual parts, not unlike an assembly line. Staff and volunteers generally are not incented to ask “what should we be doing differently?” In the meantime, the for-profit world has stepped boldly into direct competition for community, eyeballs, subscribers, participation, sponsor/ad revenue. The competitors are leaner, hungrier, and have cultivated better skills for the fight ahead. (With some slight nuance, this is true for both charitable nonprofits and trade association nonprofits.)
Honestly, I doubt that most traditional nonprofit organizations could survive a ‘scorched Earth’ scenario. Most have cultivated neither the creativity nor the competitive spirit to survive. Joe Rominiecki observed in a blog posting this week that Associations by nature have “a workforce that discovers, likes, and comes to depend on the comfort of the status quo. And it goes without saying that comfort breeds complacency.”
Your team’s creative skills, sense of competitiveness, and risk tolerance might be sharpened with a little ‘scorched Earth’ exercise. Ask yourself: if literally every dollar of revenue (and expense obligation) that your organization has coming in was gone tomorrow, what would you do? Where, precisely, would you start rebuilding? (I’m betting it wouldn’t be a 2 hour staff meeting with highly paid executives debating whether or not your annual report should be printed magazine-style or delivered in an interactive video series.)
In a scorched Earth scenario, you’d ask:
When you can answer these questions with some tangibles, list them and prioritize where and how you would start to rebuild your community.
If there were such a thing, the "Doomsday Clock" for old-school nonprofits has ticked notably closer to midnight in recent years.
With the competitive landscape for most organizations out there today, is this really such a far-fetched scenario? Sure, it might not evaporate overnight, but with very few exceptions, the revenue is drying up (let’s stop kidding ourselves that it’s just economic constriction, a lot of it is shifting to other outlets.) If there were such a thing, the Doomsday Clock for old-line nonprofit associations has moved notably closer to midnight in recent years.
If these answers to the ‘scorched Earth’ exercise don’t align with your current organizational structure and division of resources, you have just found the opportunities to make some difficult and likely very painful changes. But the roadmap you have just created is an alternative to near-certain death. You can’t go back to the ‘good old days’ but you can find different ways to thrive that WILL turn back the hands on that Doomsday Clock. A three-or-five year plan isn’t going to cut it. Revenue victories are going daily to the nimble. Are you among them?
Just as the post-apocalyptic scenarios may be a little farfetched (for all but the least optimistic among us,) I do still feel a little comfort knowing I have multiple gallons of freshwater and a generator in the basement. With some courageous leadership, virtually ANY organization can create a team that will not only survive, but thrive in a ‘scorched Earth’ scenario – but you’ll have to burn some old ways of doing things & be ready to eat some of your sacred cows for nourishment along the way.
(Stay tuned for Part II – How to Start a Bonfire & Grind Up the Cow)
Cover photo credit: George Schick
A few weeks ago, my oldest niece (4 1/2 years old) skipped soccer practice. She had her first loose tooth and was afraid “something would happen.” She was simultaneously fascinated with wiggling the tooth, captivated with it to the point of distraction, and paralyzed with the fear of losing it. Would it hurt? Would it bleed? How would her mouth look with an empty hole? Tales of the tooth fairy sneaking into her room at night to take the tooth & leave money were further unsettling (and I can hardly blame her on that one.) All the ‘rational adults’ were trying to coax her through it: “We’ve all done it, and it didn’t hurt at all!” “It’s a part of growing up!” (And she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to grow up.) She stopped eating. She used it as a crutch to avoid other experiences.
In any moment when facing change or uncertainty, we’re all just some version of that little kid again – we can become fixated on a challenge in front of us. The challenge can propel or paralyze us. Taking on a new client, losing a job, learning a new skill, developing a new program, starting a fundraising campaign, joining a new network, giving a presentation … uncertainty is the breeding ground of fear, fear is the breeding ground of paralysis, and paralysis equates to not growing.
Growth is hard, but change is the only constant. You already know this, but in case fear is clouding your memory, here are a few ways to make it easier:
Get educated
Whatever it is that’s giving you the butterflies – learn everything you can about it. It’s not just a catchy tagline, knowledge really is power: information is the quickset in the foundation of concrete confidence. You can’t control whether or not you’re the smartest person in a situation, but you CAN choose to be the best informed. Push yourself purposely to look beyond your normal reliable sources for insights, follow a few Google searches down rabbit holes and see what you find.
Invest in a network
Build yourself a diverse & trusted network long before the metaphorical tooth starts wiggling. Find people in real life that you admire, that you can rely on for advice, and pointedly ask them for it. You’ll be surprised how generous people are with their insight, and how much they want you to succeed. Steer clear of the bullies who will taunt you with tales of doorknobs & string.
Imagine the worst
Play the “and then what happens if” game with yourself: once you can articulate exactly what the worst outcome would be in any situation, it’s not quite so scary. You’re better prepared to deal with whatever result comes your way – and it’s rarely as bad as you imagined it to be. If the worst comes to pass, see #2, above: You’ve got a support system.
Practice uncertainty
Confidence is a muscle you need to exercise. Purposely put yourself just a little bit outside your comfort zone regularly to make yourself more comfortable navigating changes. Identify for yourself an hour a week minimum where you focus on a smaller discomfort goal (as simple as learning a new app or going to a different place for coffee). Put it on your calendar as your professional development.
ACT. And remember what you feed will grow.
Keep wiggling that tooth: control your own destiny. There’s nothing quite like the endorphins released when you successfully conquer even the smallest of your uncertainties. The second hurdle isn’t quite as scary as the first one. Above all, remember that fear breeds where energy is stagnant: keeping up your momentum will feed your confidence.
You just might surprise yourself.
You just might surprise yourself.
Take a minute and think: what’s the “loose tooth” in your world that you’re avoiding today?
Back around the turn of the century (HAH! That seemed to fun to write, but now just makes me sound … ancient), I spent a few semesters teaching a college level “Introduction to Meeting Planning” class, required for students in the Travel & Tourism degree/certificate program. One of the not-in-the-book lessons was an overview of the psychographic qualities required to be a truly successful meeting & events professional. I spoke candidly about the fact that great meetings professionals need be very comfortable with the idea of failing dramatically in a very public way (1000 people will be in the ballroom for dinner at 7pm: ready-or-not, here they come!)
Today on ‘tax day’ (in the US), I’m reminded that in the meetings & events business, there is no option to “file for an extension if you don’t get everything done on time” – they are immobile deadlines. 500 people are heading to San Diego on the 26th for a three day conference, 20 people land at the airport in Coeur d’Alene Thursday night to start their executive retreat weekend. The planning timeline starts from those immobile deadlines and works backwards. There’s no calling attendees to say, “gosh, could we just shift that 2 days later, we’re not quite done.” These immobile deadlines force prioritization decisions about what’s “good enough” – decisions that we may not have the discipline to make if deadlines are flexible.
Need to make a personal or professional change in your life? Launch a project? Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard is “put it on the calendar” (a variation on the “ship it” philosophy from Seth Godin.) When something is on the calendar, you think differently about it. It’s integrated into the work plan. You marshal resources accordingly (bring in subcontractors, outsource what you can’t do yourself,) delegate better, waste less time, and prioritize more smartly.
Talking to a client yesterday, he quipped, “GOAL is a four-letter word.” He has a project that launches in 15 months. It’s on the calendar: everything works backwards from there. In areas beyond meetings (and daily publishing,) there is a pervasive culture of comfort with deadline slippage: “Just a few more weeks won’t hurt.” “The programmer ran into a technical issue.”
Nonprofit organizations can be among the worst offenders with nebulous goals (“we’d like to launch XYZ, but we don’t have the resources right now.”) An additional layer of decisionmaking (The Board) can be a convenient excuse for inefficiencies or management’s failure to prioritize. Expectations plummet. Time is wasted. XYZ goes ‘on hold’ while the can just keeps getting kicked down the road. The next Board meeting looms, and the tyranny of the urgent takes over. Soon, customers – both internal and external – don’t know what to expect. Or rather, they know that “whenever” (or never) seems to be just fine with the powers that be.
They’re not ‘goals,’ they’re deadlines for specific things that you will accomplish.
Stop cheating yourself, and your customers: Put it on the calendar.
This ‘Life’s Little Instruction’ from March 27 has sat there for weeks now on my countertop, taunting me.
Do I?
Dare I?
(But what’s on the next page? And what if I don’t like it as well as I like this page?!)
I laughed at it again this morning: “When you think you have things figured out, turn the page.” <—– That sentence reflects the essence of the reason MonkeyBar Management was founded. Because here’s the secret: none of us have “it” figured out. And yet, we have to turn the page anyway. Life only lives in one direction.
Each day, in big and small ways, we must leap across the gaps in front of us, grab the next bar. We must keep up the momentum, or we stay stuck and withering.
Whether it’s an entire industry, an organization, a project, or something as simple as cleaning out your closet as the seasons change, we’ve all felt that moment of panic, of doubt: “Do I have it figured out?” “Do I have the courage to let go?”
In my 20+ year career working with nonprofits and small businesses, I have seen more projects and ideas and entire organizations fail (or fall into decline) because of a lack of courage. The courage to let go of a toxic team member, to confront a problem, to break from tradition (euthanize that sacred cow), to turn down a major financial supplier whose money forces ethical challenges. Courage in the face of daunting gaps is what separates incredible from forgettable.
What page are YOU ready to turn? What’s stopping you?
The calendar lies to us: there is no such thing as “all figured out.” Some questions will always remain. Success is found when you conjure up courage in spite of the questions. So now, let’s go forward into the gap of uncertainty, and turn the page together.
