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3 Cornerstones of Leadership Effectiveness: Why, Way, Will ...
The Key Ingredients to Organizational Effectiveness and High Impact Results, Pt. 2

3 Cornerstones of Leadership Effectiveness: Why, Way, Will…

"Forty-seven pounds!" I exclaimed, mouthing the figure again. "You’ve lost that much in a year?" Phil assured me that was how much he lost. He went on to describe his formula for success – it included a large dose of personal discipline, old fashioned will-power.

Phil knew why he was determined to lose the weight. It was his blood pressure, heart, and early stage diabetes that were all signs that his weight was costing him quality of life – and potentially life itself if he didn’t do something. The way for him was moderating his eating and walking daily, rain or shine. A short distance at first, Phil began to extend his walks upwards to 4 miles or more, now even jogging short bursts. But it was his will that impressed me. Like the US Postal Service, Phil chose to walk daily – regardless of the weather - whether or not he felt like it.

For more than a decade our leadership team has lead the transformation of a century-old church into a Christ-centered, community-focused organization. Communicating a vision that extends beyond our walls, initiating new governance, a new name, and an environment of hope and empowerment have encouraged everyday people to accomplish exceptional deeds. We have also learned a number of things about leadership in the 21st century.

Like Phil, who understood the why of his weight loss regimen, the why of an organization is usually found within its values, mission, and vision statements. For instance, global consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble's mission statement opens, “We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improves the lives of the world’s consumers…” Cities, schools, and non-profits all have similar whys. Evangelical Protestant churches argue that theirs is found in Jesus' "Great Commandment" to "Go and make disciples…"

When leaders forget their organizational why - their mission - they slip into ‘mission drift’. Forgetting the why of one’s organization can lead to serious, sometimes fatal consequences to both the leader and the organization. Today only one company that was included at the inception of the Dow Jones Industrials in 1896 exists. The rest, like dinosaurs, have all but disappeared.

The way Phil adopted was simple, time tested exercise. The way for leaders comes in the form of seminars, coaches, great authors, and speakers. With thousands of leadership book titles, there is no shortage in the way to lead your organization. Leaders are life-long learners I am told, so a leader who fails to discover and embrace the way that best fits his or her context is doomed to irrelevancy.

What amazed me the most with Phil’s feat was his will to succeed. Of the three, will is clearly the most difficult. Imagine getting up every day, rain or shine – feeling like it, or not, and walking vigorously by oneself. That’s will power! Our current economic, social, and political climates are the results of leaders who failed to do the ‘right thing’, who were all too willing to kick the proverbial can down the road – past their term.

I love to sail on San Francisco Bay and on more than one occasion, I have been out in very stormy weather. Cold rain mixes with cold salt spray as huge waves break over the bow drenching me regardless of my foul weather gear. The temptation to turn, and run with the wind – letting it push the boat, so much more comfortable – neglects one thing, my destination lies at the other end of the stormy seas. Over the years I have learned one important lesson on the water – anyone can sail in calm seas and warm breezes, but only top sailors can navigate stormy seas and bring the boat and crew safely into the harbor.

This season, as a new year approaches, what one thing do you know your organization must do to excel? I would wager, you not only know why it needs to be done, but you also know the way you would do it. The question is do you have Phil’s will?

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The Key Ingredients to Organizational Effectiveness and High Impact Results, Pt. 2

by Cassandra O'Neill

Part 1 of this article covered the key findings from the books Built to Last and Good to Great on organizational effectiveness. Part 2 summarizes the findings from Forces for Good by Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, reviews key findings from the article "The Networked Nonprofit" by Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marciano, and synthesizes the collective findings. These findings inform best practice for Executive Directors and Boards of Directors in the social sector.

Forces for Good was published in 2008. The focus of this book was to discover the practices that high impact non profit organizations used to create social change. The research methodology was similar to that used by Jim Collins in that the study design included (1) development of a criteria to select high impact nonprofits, (2) selection of a group of non profit organizations, and (3) a study of these organizations to determine what they did to achieve this high impact. An interesting similarity between the findings in this book and the Jim Collins books was that once again, the conventional wisdom was wrong.

The conventional wisdom for non profit effectiveness focused primarily on increasing efficiency and budgets. This conventional wisdom is based on the following myths that were disproved by this research including: (1) perfect management was necessary for high impact, (2) brand-name awareness was necessary, (3) a breakthrough new idea was required, (4) textbook mission statements led to high impact and were required for it, (5) high ratings on conventional metrics led to high impact, and (6) large budgets were necessary for high impact. The authors found that none of this was true.

The authors discovered the following six practices that the high impact non profits used to create high impact:

Networked Nonprofit

The Spring 08 Stanford Social Innovation Review article “The Networked Nonprofit” shows on how nonprofits can greatly increase their impact, not by getting bigger or raising more money for their organization, but by cultivating networks with others that have a shared mission.

The article presents case studies of three nonprofits that increased their impact by cultivating these types of networks. To do this, they had to see the shared mission as the hub of the network and their organization as a node, rather than their organization as the hub.

One example they studied is the microfinancier — Women’s World Banking. By cultivating networks with other banks and microlenders they went from reaching 50,000 clients and lending $25 million through network affiliates in 1990 to lending 18 million people over $8.5 billion in 2003 — a more than 350-fold increase! And how much did they grow their own budget and staff? They went from 16 employees in 1993 to 50 employees in 2003, and from an organizational budget of $3 million in 1993 to $10 million in 2003. This is clearly not about going to scale by doing the same thing for the same costs to more people. This is about exponential growth by collaborating in meaningful ways with others who share a common mission.

Some great quotes from this article:

“By mobilizing resources outside their immediate control, networked nonprofits achieve their missions far more efficiently, effectively, and sustainably than they could have by working alone.”

“Management wisdom says that nonprofits must be large and in charge to do the most good. But some of the world’s most successful organizations instead stay small, sharing their load with like-minded, long-term partners. The success of these networked nonprofits suggests that organizations should focus less on growing themselves and more on cultivating networks.”

“Many traditional nonprofits form short-term partnerships with superficially similar organizations to execute a single program, exchange a few resources, or attract funding. In contrast, networked nonprofits forge long-term partnerships with trusted peers to tackle their missions on multiple fronts.”

Synthesis of Findings

While each book and article is useful on its own, collectively these findings provide a comprehensive blue print for organizational effectiveness and identify the key ingredients for high performance and high impact. One of the findings consistently across all the research discussed was that the conventional wisdom was wrong, in every case. This is significant, because it means that the majority of literature on organizational effectiveness and high impact non profits is NOT based on or aligned with what research has shown to lead to high impact.

When looked at collectively this research provides the key ingredients for high impact which are based on research and refute conventional wisdom.

The following is a summary of the highlights of the conventional wisdom which was found not to be true:

Strategic planning does not lead to great results; the strategic planning that the great organizations did was a result of their greatness and did not cause it.
The highest impact organizations did not always start out with a great idea or radical innovation. Sometimes they experiment until something stuck, and sometimes they took old ideas and tweaked them until they experienced success.
Visionary and charismatic leaders who provided a vision that others followed - were not responsible for the organizations success.
Following the money did not make organizations great.
Efficiency alone did not lead to high impact.
Traditional marketing and branding strategies was not used by many high impact non profits.

The following is a summary of the highlights of what research found led to organizational effectiveness and high impact includes:

Leaders who create work environments in which people can perform at their best leads to greatness.
Shared leadership where people pursue a shared passion and vision that aligns with their individual and organizational strengths led to great outcomes.
When looked at together the hedgehog principle (sticking with passion and strengths) and the 6 practices of high impact non profits provides a blueprint of how an organization can develop a big vision or a Big Hairy Audacious Goal – and then use the practices to make this vision a reality.Collaborating with others to reach shared goals and visions is much more impactful than focusing on growing a single agency’s budget and services.

Conclusions

While resource development for any non-profit is challenging, it is particularly challenging to raise money to support social change through advocacy. Government agencies do not fund advocacy. While most non-profits have government funding, this funding pays for service delivery and not advocacy. Foundations also primarily fund services and rarely fund research or advocacy.

Research has shown that conservative foundations have a much bigger impact with their funding than progressive foundations. In fact, a conservative foundation was one of the 12 high impact non profits studied in Forces for Good. Conservative foundations invest large amounts with a small number of organizations over long periods of time, and they focus on creating change that has a large impact, which includes funding research, advocacy, and policy work. In contrast, progressive foundations fund small amounts of money spread out over many different organizations and focus on service delivery rather than the types of investment which would lead to policy change and bigger impact. (Lakoff, 2004)

This supports the following conclusions, organizations wanting to achieve high impact, high performance, and be effective should:

Abandon practices that do not align with these findings.
Adopt the practices that are supported by research to support effectiveness.
Create Movements rather focus narrowly and exclusively on delivering services. One of the findings in Forces for Good was that these 12 high impact non profits created movements. Jim Collins in a recent article in Inc. said the same thing about what businesses need to do to be successful – create movements.
Abandon outdated ineffective marketing and communications approaches which rely on “convincing” and “selling to” others. The book The Contrarian Effect by Michael Port and Elizabeth Marshall, published in 2008 explain why the old approaches to marketing and communication no longer work in our technologically transformed global economy, and what does work.
Abandon incremental or arbitrary increases in budgets as goals and think big – Adopt Big Hairy Audacious Goals.
Align how funding is distributed in this sector with what promotes high impact, rather than what detracts from or inhibits it.

Why is this SO important?

This is important because many of the practices of foundation and government funders and the direction provided by Boards or resulting from typical stakeholder involvement is based on conventional wisdom, and NOT what research has found to increase organizational effectiveness and impact. If leaders of organizations in the social sector want to increase their impact it is critical that they know what is the truth and what is the fiction about how to do this.

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