The past week felt like a really long week, maybe the longest yet this semester.

Table of contents

• Notes from IDSC
• Notes from MGNPO

We welcomed a new Executive Director at work on Monday. It’s an exciting time there and truly heartening to see the lights on in that corner office again, but I think that periods of intense change are inherently difficult. There’s a dizzying blend of new ideas, welcome meetings, keeping tabs on how coworkers are handling it, and generally wondering what the implications are for the work we do and the direction the organization is headed. As the new boss settles in, new routines and patterns of interaction will too, and the need to be so mindful of daily details will naturally ratchet back. But I suspect that for the next couple of months at least, things are going to feel exciting and different and new, and the daily grind will just be a little more exhausting as a result.

On top of the big event at work, I had a paper due for MGNPO on Thursday and a take home midterm is due for IDSC this coming Monday. As I write this on Sunday evening with my toddler sitting on a knee, trying to tune out the Angelina Ballerina song coming from the TV, it feels like I can’t really remember the last stress-free moment I had to myself. The workload has been nonstop lately. I’ve been keeping my head above water but it honestly feels more like juggling than balancing. At some point it’ll get less busy, I’ll get a chance to exhale, and it will feel glorious.

That moment is likely four weeks away, when this semester comes to an end and I complete the certificate that I set out to earn nine months ago. A decision on whether to continue on to complete a Master’s program can come after, applications are due for next school year by June 15 and I don’t necessarily have to go back next year. The credits I’m earning now can apply to that program whether I continue on now or take a break and go back in a couple years. For momentum’s sake it seems to makes sense to keep going, but knowing that there’s flexibility is comforting.

This coming week I’ll be traveling to New Orleans for the Nonprofit Technology Conference. Upcoming travel is another stressor, and even more so now that my kiddo is old enough to understand and be a little sad about it. That part is heart wrenching, but also a chance to explain that papa always comes back. It’ll only be for a few days and we can video chat at night. My spouse probably has the more difficult week ahead. I do not envy having to do daycare drop off and make it to work for a 7am shift.

It’s also really occurred to me this week that while I truly appreciate the different perspective and scope of knowledge that I’m learning in IDSC, a Carlson School class is an awkward fit and making me feel like not pursuing an MBA was the right call. There are subtle things that don’t sit right with me. Aside from the emphasis on big business management lessons I’m noticing a vacuum in terms of awareness around cultural leadership and ethical responsibilities. The word headcount in particular bothers me. It’s come up a few times and the context is consistent - talk of staffing often gets couched in this phrase that strikes me as dehumanizing, like future business leaders are being conditioned to treat people as commodity resources. To be fair, there’s some balance in the literature about the importance of institutional knowledge and how mixtures of competencies create competitive advantage for a company. But my observation is that there’s less regard for soft skills in this class and more of a focus on the hard mechanisms of big business. The approach contrasts to some Strategic Human Resources lessons taught in Humphrey School. This is admittedly a perception based on a quarter of a semester in one class, and if somebody reading this thinks I’m wrong I’d honestly love to hear why. (There’s a part two to this thought.)

Outside of that class experience though, my professional and academic life is grounded in the nonprofit sector, where intrinsic motivation to make the world a better place is a unifying thread and often a badge of honor. And in that regard, posting this to the Nonprofit Happy Hour Facebook group was a pretty cool moment this week too:

In the gaps while writing this blog I had family dinner, a conversation with my spouse, and helped get bath time started. It’s 7:30pm now and this midterm still needs to get finished. I’m hoping it’s not too long of a night to get there, but really need to shift gears now to make that happen.

Notes from IDSC

• One of the major things to take away from today’s class is the idea of seeing IT as part of the broader transformation of the firm
• Common to see companies lay out long term visions and plans regarding what they will be at x point in the future.
• Making these complex transformations oftens rests on the ability to plan for and implement information technology to support the transformation
• Grander scheme of things - while all of the daily operations are going on, firms are also transforming to get to where they need to be
• A lot of it turns on how well IT is managed within the firm
• IT enables complex transformations
• IT management and governance are mechanisms, but they are not the goal - the goal is the business operations and transformation
• When you talk about capabilities, that’s a high level view of what the firm can do, linked to their specific processes. IT is very powerful at shaping processes, which in turn shapes capabilities
• Setting project priorities is a problem in many organizations
• The real questions in many of these situations is, how do you balance the considerations of the long-term plan with the short term needs?
• The question of governance gets to the issue of balancing this out
• What do you have in place to make sure that both of these views are represented in the organization?
• IRR is important, but you also have to know that some things aren’t going to measure up which are critical to maintain systems or really important for building a base for the future
• Synergies = one of the most important concepts in a multi-unit organization. The performance of the whole is greater than the performance of the parts
• You need to be nuanced in your technology decisions, because when you try to apply a standardized something to a distinctive unit it may cause more harm than good to the brand
• Significant nexus between business capability and IT decision. The business unit needs to come forward and articulate if a decision does or doesn’t make sense for that unit.
• There is a struggle / balancing act between centralization and decentralization
• When you go to a decentralized type of operation, every unit gets what it wants and there’s harmony
• Centralized decision making takes away control but increases cost effectiveness and efficiencies
• However, forcing a business unit to conform to a corporate policy which isn’t appropriate to their use case can create inefficiencies
• We’re not in the business of running elegant systems, we do what it takes to serve the customer’s needs and succeed
• “One face to the customer” - ability to provide that is not an easy capability to develop
• The problem is when customers think they want to deal with one entity as a whole. System fragmentation can serve the needs of an individual unit well while aggravating problems at this higher level. It becomes a problem when it stands in the way of decisions you need to make
• When the metrics for a business switch from being driven by growth to being driven by cost, it’s a different regime. Suddenly the things which formerly helped you are now holding you back
• The point is that these are things you therefore have to plan in advance
• Last week’s guest speaker called governance their decision rights. Important concept. Roles in a company are bundles of decision rights
• Framing of the issue - going to be very unpopular is you just walk around and tell everyone no, but you can ask people to pause and have patience as you implement a vision and steer everyone towards it
• Places that manage to pull off a transformation are places where a leader with vision is able to implement good governance
• When you create mobility and consistency across divisions, you help create loyalty and steep them in a company-wide mindset. The ability to manage a global workforce - when the time comes that you need to pull together a team to create a new cutting-edge product, you can for look for talent company-wide
• The ability to take a broader view of the talent in an organization is extraordinarily valuable
• Inefficiencies happen when you don’t have cross-visibility
• Infrastructure helps build resilience
• By careful selection of the projects you invest in, you actually transform a company a project at a time
• How we move towards broader targets for the whole organization is what governance is about
• One thing that happens in the absence of any strategy across the firm, IT becomes like a shopping cart
• It’s a problem from a capabilities point of view only when you’re trying to leverage synergies
• How do you change the decision rights and patterns of accountability to encourage desirable capabilities in IT?
• Management is about sending signals, getting people to fall into line in a common direction (author note: I would argue that this can be accomplished more effectively by understanding the distinction between management and leadership)
• See this in not just IT terms, it’s about taking the company from operating one certain way to another way
• IT Governance and the way projects are approved has very powerful shaping effects in terms of how companies operate
• As a result, governance itself is a complicated set of factors to line up
• Matrixed approach to IT decision making
  • Five key IT decisions:
    • IT principles
    • IT architecture
    • IT infrastructure
    • Business application needs
    • IT investment and prioritization
  • Governance is understanding that these decisions need to be made. For how these decisions are made - six archetypes:
    • Business monarchy
    • IT monarchy
    • Feudal
    • IT Duopoly
    • Federal
    • Anarchy
• Juxtaposing the process and how the decision is made gives you an idea of how the company makes IT decisions
• Depending on what metric is most important, the nature of governance changes
• Decentralization feeds growth, centralization fosters efficiency
• As the business context changes, the governance needs to change as well. Can move back and forth from centralized to decentralized depending on business phases.
• Having a framework like this simplifies the task of having a common vocabulary around what you’re doing.
• Other piece is the notion of the operating model
• What needs to be standard across an organization as opposed to unique per division is a huge question
• Difference between business strategy and an operating model - strategy is a statement of intent, needs to be translated into what it means in terms of processes, which are guided by the operating model
• At the end of the day, all of this just lines up processes within the business. This gets to the point of what you can actually achieve
• The real problem with not getting enough value out of technology is the disconnect between systems and strategic direction

Notes from MGNPO

In contrast to the previous class session which was almost entirely discussion, this class session was front-to-end lecture. Three subjects were covered; finance, HR, and evaluation

Finance

• Started by asking class how many of us have a finance background. ..nobody
• As a leader, you need to have a cursory understanding and be able to talk the language. He supervises a CFO, has enough knowledge of finance to effectively do that
• If you haven’t spent much time in financial land, do so. As a leader it’s important.
• Some of the elements of an effective financial management system:
  • Having some financial management policies
    • Conflict of interest policy
    • Separation of duties (more difficult in a small nonprofit)
    • Whistleblower protection policy
    • Independent person on your audit committee
    • Document retention and destruction policy
    • Setting of budget reserves policy
    • Investment policy
  • GAAP principles
  • Segregation of types of expenses
    • Program expenses
    • Management in general
    • Fundraising
  • Internal controls
• Nonprofits rarely land exactly on their budget number
• Recommend doing either a budget range, or a periodic review and adjustment (quarterly is common)
• Budgets generally aren’t very helpful without a narrative to accompany them
• Budgeting is a team effort
• If you have a good banking relationship, they may be an event sponsor for you. Banks have some community reinvestment requirements, don’t be shy asking for their support.
• Another area which falls under this finance stuff is risk management
• The audit committee can (and should) select the audit firm independent of the full board
• Audit committee can also seek out and hire independent legal counsel
• Not everyone on the audit committee has to be a board member. You want the outside expertise
• Monthly statement of financial position is important to have
• We need to train our board and train our staff on the financial literacy that relates to our organizations
• Prevention is far better than correction when it comes to ethical issues in the financial arena
• Embedding internal controls into your organization culture is key
• The largest portion of most nonprofit budgets go to staffing costs. Second largest is occupancy

HR

• One thing you need to do in HR as the leader is forecasting the need for talent. How do we forecast that need - not just growing, but replacing? People don’t do that much, more common to address vacancies when people announce they’re leaving
• Looking at performance assessment - been moving away from annual performance reviews, not even called reviews in many cases anymore. Quarterly assessment or conversation. Becomes part of your engagement with your direct reports and improves those overall relationships
• Student question, what is your favorite generative question to elicit suggestions from staff?
  • “What would it take to have your job be a lot easier or more rewarding?” (author note: interesting that this is almost one of the exact questions that our new ED asked me in our introductory one-on-one meeting this week)
• Engagement is something that you as a leader need to build in
• Model the kind of behavior that you want to see in the organization - anecdote about how the professor makes a point of leaving the office at a reasonable hour each day. Even if he’s taking work home, wants to model healthy work-life balance
• Quote from former long-term HR director: “We want every person who leaves this organization to continue to be an ambassador for our organization.”
• Important to follow up with candidates, if only to communicate expectations for when they’ll hear back about the interview. That communication says a lot to the candidate about what kind of organization you are to work for.
• A solid onboarding process is also very important
• Ongoing training and development. Set expectations during the onboarding process regarding what required trainings the person will need to go through and the timeline for them
• Feedback - real time feedback, both reinforcing and corrective, is very important.
  • Always praise in public and correct in private.
  • Often times when we’re doing correction we overtalk, natural tendency to expound and fill in awkward pauses. When you do a course correction with a person, state it clearly, then stop talking. Let the person respond, explain the story. Finish the conversation with the correction plan or consequences and be done with it.
• People hate talking about compensation. It’s okay, you’re a skilled employee and deserve to be compensated appropriately. In those conversations be straight up, accurate, and just address it professionally. Organization should set salary ranges based on midpoints from salary survey data.
• Working conditions and proper equipment are important. If you ask staff what they really want, it’s usually not a big fat raise - more often it’s a better working environment
• Important thing in separating employees is that you’re consistent and fair. And this takes a lot of training to do consistently across the organization
• Question about how, when out in the job market, how do you gauge if an organization has a healthy culture? Hard to get at directly, but can suss it out via asking them about the organization and looking for clues. For example:
  • Is there a complete job description?
  • Has this position been filled before?
  • Where did the previous person go?
  • What’s the communication style in the organization?
  • What has this organization done lately which could be considered social or fun?
  • What do you think the biggest achievement in this organization?
  • Can you tell me about a time an organization has had a dilemma of some sort, and how it was handled?
  • I saw your website, are there other printed materials which I can review? (things like an annual report, strategic plan, etc)
  • Look around - what does the organization put on the walls? Is it photos of people they serve, or photos of the founder?
  • Use all of your senses and trust your intuition

Evaluation

• What do we want to know when we do evaluation? What is our question zero?
  • Do our programs achieve the desired results?
  • What should we be measuring? Who cares what we’re measuring?
  • What’s the gap between our mission and what we’re achieving?
• It’s not just about evaluating, need to answer the question why we’re evaluating it
• Nonprofits need to engage in systematic outcome assessment
• More and more we’re being asked to demonstrate outcomes and to predict what the impact is
• How do we measure collective impact?
• Why do we do this stuff? Most often because funders require it
• We’re in an era where transparency and accountability are drivers, and big data and interpretation (analysis) are becoming more important.
• Evaluation for decision making is what managers want. You may be doing what you need to for your funders or stakeholders, but managers want evaluation which helps improve programs
• Important to question evaluation all the time, use a critical lens, question why we’re doing it and how it’s going to help
• There is a dearth of qualified evaluation analyst talent
• Logic models - asked the class who’s used one at work and what the benefit was
  • Engaging staff in the process of creating the logic model was as valuable as the product
• What can assessments do?
  • They can uncover some uncomfortable truths about your program. Evaluations aren’t always to prove that you’re right. Sometimes people get tied to pet projects or programs that aren’t performing well but they’re unwilling to let go of.
• Have an independent outsider evaluate your data to reduce subjectivity
• Evaluation is only as good as the tools and the question you’re trying to get at, and the tools are constantly evolving
• There’s a difference between organizational evaluation and program evaluation
• Takeaways for the leadership role in evaluation:
  • Determine if an evaluation is worth doing, and can we do it in enough time?
  • Is it a good use of resources?
  • Find ways to secure the resources to do evaluation. Build it in to your grant proposals
  • Leaders must often initiate and support the process to keep it going
  • You may be a member of the evaluation assessment team, to make sure that the right questions are getting asked
  • Determine who will do the program evaluation. Us, a third party, another nonprofit in town (barter with them)?
  • Your role might be to set the goals and review them
  • Determine whether recommended measures appear valid
  • Establish regular reporting and review the data in process
  • Helping people learn to think evaluatively, goes into your culture of everyday conversation
  • Direct the performance measurement conversation towards the future