02:49
Faizan
I had coffee the other day with a fundraiser who recently started a new job at a large nonprofit. I asked him how things were going. Before he began, he was told by the CEO who had been in that position for less than a year that there were going to be definite challenges in changing the culture of the organization. He did not fully comprehend what he was getting into until now.
"Wayne, the place where the development team has its offices is pretty dark. People are still working with computers that look as if they were made 20 years ago. The minute it is 5PM, everyone is out the door," he said. "It's a dreary environment that does not give someone the feeling of creativity that you need to be successful in today's world".
"And you know what the operations team said to me when I told them that I wanted to brighten up the place and actually turn on all of the lights throughout the ceiling of the office?" he asked.
"What?" I replied.
"They told me that they always kept the lights low and to ask the CEO for permission to install the bulbs in the empty sockets".
No matter what he asked to change, even if it was seemingly small and innocuous, he had to contend with a staff member who had been there for a long time and told him that things were always done a certain way. Why change?
Change for the sake of change may not always be necessary. But, in today's world especially when "disruption" and "innovation" are so common and people are making careers out of being "disruption consultants", establishing "innovation firms" and attending "disruption seminars and conferences", any nonprofit staff member who says to someone who is looking to improve processes that "it's always been done that way", should be performance managed at best or fired at worst.
If you look in groups on social media and networks, you see the tension and debate that has arisen between those who are looking to shake things up, improve processes, procedures, metrics and impact and those who want to stick with the world as they know it, even if that world is only a mirage of past successes.
For better or for worse, today's environment means that not only the Millennials, but also those from Generation X and the Boomers need to constantly reinvent themselves and the reality where they work.
Forward thinking organizations, for example, have their CEO sending out tweets and easily communicating with his or her constituents using various social media platforms. Yes, they likely send emails and letters, but if it's Saturday and today's successful nonprofit CEO happens to be home and sees a great story in the news that his or her donors and supporters would want to hear about, that CEO knows at the minimum how to promote it on the nonprofit's Facebook page, can send out a tweet from his or her Twitter account or post a picture to the organization's Instagram account.
And, it's not just the CEO that matters. All staff within nonprofit organizations should be empowered to promote their organization to their respective social media networks, in this example. I bet if you asked each member of your staff to write down how many followers they had across all of their social networks, when you aggregated all of these numbers, it would total in the tens of thousands or even more.
Now, I am not at all suggesting that nonprofit executives should require staff to promote their organization as part of their job on their personal social media accounts. But, what I am suggesting is that if you foster an environment of change, innovation and creativity, if you break with the way things have "always" been done, you will likely get the majority of your staff to join you in developing a culture of forward thinking professionals who are not satisfied with the status quo and want to do things better and make a deeper, broader and more significant impact. They then will become your best ambassadors.
"Wayne, the place where the development team has its offices is pretty dark. People are still working with computers that look as if they were made 20 years ago. The minute it is 5PM, everyone is out the door," he said. "It's a dreary environment that does not give someone the feeling of creativity that you need to be successful in today's world".
"And you know what the operations team said to me when I told them that I wanted to brighten up the place and actually turn on all of the lights throughout the ceiling of the office?" he asked.
"What?" I replied.
"They told me that they always kept the lights low and to ask the CEO for permission to install the bulbs in the empty sockets".
No matter what he asked to change, even if it was seemingly small and innocuous, he had to contend with a staff member who had been there for a long time and told him that things were always done a certain way. Why change?
Change for the sake of change may not always be necessary. But, in today's world especially when "disruption" and "innovation" are so common and people are making careers out of being "disruption consultants", establishing "innovation firms" and attending "disruption seminars and conferences", any nonprofit staff member who says to someone who is looking to improve processes that "it's always been done that way", should be performance managed at best or fired at worst.
If you look in groups on social media and networks, you see the tension and debate that has arisen between those who are looking to shake things up, improve processes, procedures, metrics and impact and those who want to stick with the world as they know it, even if that world is only a mirage of past successes.
For better or for worse, today's environment means that not only the Millennials, but also those from Generation X and the Boomers need to constantly reinvent themselves and the reality where they work.
Forward thinking organizations, for example, have their CEO sending out tweets and easily communicating with his or her constituents using various social media platforms. Yes, they likely send emails and letters, but if it's Saturday and today's successful nonprofit CEO happens to be home and sees a great story in the news that his or her donors and supporters would want to hear about, that CEO knows at the minimum how to promote it on the nonprofit's Facebook page, can send out a tweet from his or her Twitter account or post a picture to the organization's Instagram account.
And, it's not just the CEO that matters. All staff within nonprofit organizations should be empowered to promote their organization to their respective social media networks, in this example. I bet if you asked each member of your staff to write down how many followers they had across all of their social networks, when you aggregated all of these numbers, it would total in the tens of thousands or even more.
Now, I am not at all suggesting that nonprofit executives should require staff to promote their organization as part of their job on their personal social media accounts. But, what I am suggesting is that if you foster an environment of change, innovation and creativity, if you break with the way things have "always" been done, you will likely get the majority of your staff to join you in developing a culture of forward thinking professionals who are not satisfied with the status quo and want to do things better and make a deeper, broader and more significant impact. They then will become your best ambassadors.
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