Orgforward Opines

Several years ago I had the opportunity to work with a small nonprofit in the local area on a comprehensive organizational identity and strategy alignment process. As they explored what they valued and how best to advance their work in alignment with those values, focus turned to the board and any implications the newly articulated vision and values might have on the board itself. At one point, one of the board members asked if they should start thinking about the board as an opportunity to develop the leadership of young women (a clear extension of their mission and values). This was one of the most brilliant questions I had heard in many years of doing board development work. Not just because it indulged my own passion for developing leadership among young people, but because it also demonstrated a deep desire to have the board be aligned with AND integrated into the vision and values of the organization as opposed to the proverbial steward/caretaker of those values.   In pre...

Many of you may have had an experience with a common strength demonstration activity that I first experienced when my freshman English teacher, an Aikido master, asked me to help him make a point - I honestly don’t remember what the point was…so much for that lesson - but I did walk away with an understanding of strength (hmm, maybe that was the point…) Anyway, he asked me to stand in front of him, extend my arms out straight, rest my wrists on his shoulders, and resist his attempts to bend my elbows. Of course, my first reaction was to clench my fists, flex my muscles, and probably make an awkward anxious facial expression. He bent my arms easily once I ran out of juice and my muscles fatigued from flexing – plus it hurt. Then he said to do it again, but this time, open and relax my hands, don’t flex my arms, and just concentrate on breathing. Again, he eventually bent my arms, but I lasted a whole lot longer and nothing ever hurt. Simple moral to long paragraph – there was gr...

You are all doing incredible work , finding ways to continue to provide vital services AND maintain viability even when confronting the reality that the current fiscal year’s budget is gaining greater irrelevance under the extraordinarily ‘abnormal’ operating conditions of the COVID-19 response. The current reality of what predictable expenses and revenue are, is not only different, but wholly unimagined. So then, what does a healthy & realistic budget process look like given that many of you are approaching the close of your fiscal year and the demands of drafting and approving next year’s budget in a time of so much ‘unknown.’ I want to start with an observation … Your organization is not the organization’s budget. The organization is the day-to-day operations that put assets to work creating benefit in the world, not the prediction that was made several months ago about the sources and allocation of money for a given 12 month period (aka your budget) - nor are you the predictio...

"Houston, we have a problem"   While this may never have actually been said on the Apollo 13 mission, it holds a great deal of meaning in our society. It is our shorthand for expressing that things are not going as we had planned, and, in fact, our situation is dire and potentially life threatening. So, here is a statistic from BoardSource's 'Leading with Intent' research - 2021 * Only 31% of nonprofit CEOs report that their boards have a very positive impact on their organization's overall performance (Pause and re-read that) While that sinks in, let me introduce another concept: asset . Usually, we think of an asset as something of financial value. However, in our world of community benefit, we rightfully consider assets as 'anything valuable or useful' (thank you Collins English Dictionary). Specifically, assets are things that positively contribute to our ability to advance community benefit (aka achieve our mission outcomes). This lens helps cla...

Wait, did a leadership guy just say “values don’t matter?” Yes, in terms of how we generally approach values. Read on if you’re curious. You will be hard pressed to find research in the Organizational Design/Development world that doesn’t outwardly examine or at least make a strong nod towards values and culture. The general prescription we get is that values shape culture and culture shapes outputs (i.e. productivity) and outputs lead to outcomes. I am all-in on the concept that values are at the core of organizations. But (because there is always a but in a blog post) … my concern is that values get cast as a set of prescriptions, an input to the system, that, if right, will make for a healthy, productive organization. As long as people have the instructions - values posters, norms statements, principles of conduct, etc.- people should be able to “value” the way we need them to and our culture will go from icky  - toxic in the worst case - to awesome . How’s that working for you...

I love aha moments. As a learner and teacher, it is like a Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza in my head when suddenly an idea crystallizes, and things fall into place – sense-making at its best. After teaching financial leadership for a decade with a headstrong desire to find more ways to make people more confident, competent, and comfortable with the financial side of organizations, I recently had an aha present itself to me about organizational budgets and how we engage with them. (I know some out there will be aghast that it took 10 years) First, some context Few things create anxiety and stress as much as budgets. In my early years, budgets happened to me and I knew little about where the numbers came from. Later, as a senior director, I was expected to build budgets and come up with revenue and expense predictions to impose on myself and others. Even later, I was presented with budgets and asked to approve and monitor progress as a board member. Rarely, did I feel confident an...