​Teams, boards, task forces and other working groups often stumble over decision-making. It is often not actually about making decisions. Rather it is that the group has never had a conversation about how they make decisions – what is their process? Are they working on consensus? Majority rule? The boss decides? Often the group has a practice. Yet if that practice is not made explicit, then misunderstandings frequently occur. 

​A very useful model for understanding what often happens comes from Sam Kaner’s book, Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision Making.  When a group is considering an issue, ideally there is a discussion that considers a wide range of options. Then the discussion comes to a clear end point with a decision. Once a decision is made the group moves to action. This image illustrates this ideal.

What happens more frequently is that those who are more action oriented believe a decision has been made. At the same time those who want to consider more options believe the item is still under discussion. This image shows this too frequent reality of group process
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​I was once on a large cross-functional team working together on an enterprise wide IT project. In doing some work with the team, I uncovered that one of the team members’ biggest fears was that each person, representing their department, would have wish list items. They feared the group would end up in conflict over priorities. And feared that a political process would override considering options on their merits. We took time before we had to make any specific decisions to talk through how we were going to make the decision.  We framed overarching project goals and then agreed to prioritize the options/wish list items based on how they aligned with the goals. We then created a decision tree out of the criteria the group had jointly discussed.  When it ultimately came time to prioritize our features list, the group was able to make the decision is just one meeting. The time we had spent up front saved the group time when it was decision making time and spared the group the conflict it feared.

​Taking the time to have a discussion about how your group makes decisions helps take the guess work out of the equation.  For each decision the team needs to be clear what issue is being decided.  In the course of the discussion, multiple issues may have been raised making it a bit cloudy what is actually being discussed and decided.  Then clarifying who is deciding this particular issue – is it a team decision? Would it be helpful to have a subset work on the issue and bring back a recommendation? Is the discussion serving as an input while the decision ultimately lies with the person in charge?  Groups often want to jump to action and resist taking time on ‘process’ issues. Yet taking the time can actually save time in the long run.

I work with teams and organizations to improve their effectiveness, by identifying challenges that impede progress and helping the group create processes that will work for them. Have a team or group that needs help? Let's talk.
 

​I allowed myself to take a break yesterday. I had been traveling for a chunk of the week and felt weary.  My body and mind were telling me I needed a pause. Yet our go go culture abhors the break. When you are at your job and you are not being super productive instead of encouraging people to listen to your body and take a break, most work cultures want you to power through. Or at least pretend you are busy. 

​Powering through was what I have done most of my life. I’ve played the “I’m more busy than you” game. I remember the one-up manship as early as when I was in college. ‘Oh geez got a paper due tomorrow and I haven’t started.” “Oh you think that is bad – I have a paper due and a test tomorrow.” And it continues – the endless cycle of bragging who is more overwhelmed by work. Multiple articles and studies have been done recently on the idea that busyness is a new status symbol. “I am a very busy and important person – you have two minutes to make your pitch.” I spent much of my teens and twenties sleep deprived. I’m not interested in winning this game any more. 

​And today I just proved it doesn’t work anyway. After just 24 hours of a little rest and relaxation, I came back to my to do list fired up and moved through it with ease. I got more done today than I have in a while. And certainly more than if I had plodded through yesterday which would have spilled over into plodding through today.

​A work ethic is critical. Yet lots of science is demonstrating that through our economy is made for machines – we have to remember we are actually NOT machines. In addition, much work today is now knowledge work that requires creativity and innovation. These require white space. They require all the things you were either told not to do growing up – day dreaming, for example. Or the things that weren’t necessarily valued - time away from work – play – time in nature. I don’t need to go to Arianna Huffington’s extreme of collapsing from exhaustion to agree with her assertion that our constantly busy ethic is killing us.  

​At the same time, my argument is a little perverse – or at least still representative of our culture. My reason for a pause is to recharge to be able to get back to work and be more productive. I would call myself a recovering ‘productivity-a-holic.’ I can aspire to relaxing into taking a pause for the sake of taking a pause, rather than to just make me more productive later.

​Most organizations believe they keep their end user, audience, members or customers front of mind when they are creating new programs or service offerings.  Yet often this is based on preconceived notions about members, beliefs developed from a staff member’s time in the field, or based on interactions with a few of their volunteer leaders.  It is rarely based on an in depth exploration of the day-to-day work life of their members. Qualitative research digs into their experience and has the opportunity to uncover unmet needs. 

​Organizations may have survey data and other feedback from members and participants.  This is useful for setting a baseline of knowledge but doesn’t often provide the insights into the challenges that your customers really need help with.  Using a human centered design approach for innovation provides tools to investigate what is really keeping your customers up at night and getting in the way of them achieving the success they seek.  Identifying these ‘pain points’ provides you will the opportunity to brainstorm how your organization might help solve the problem.

​Start with your customer and learn about their lived experience today. You can do this by interviewing them, getting them to tell you about they interact with your organization - their customer journey -- and how they feel about it or providing them with a way to capture their experience each day for a specific period such as a video or web journal.  With this rich information in hand, a program design team then analyzes it for themes, looking specifically for the pain points that participants describe. These pain points are rarely uncovered from a direct question, such as, “what do you need help with?”  Too often people say they need something and then when it is offered, they do not end up buying it.  It is the challenges that emerge through inquiry that is less direct that are usually more fruitful for program or service development.

​For example, I was working on a project to design new offerings for a niche audience key to the association’s future. Other smaller organizations were providing services to this influential audience and the association did not want to lose their participation and membership. We started by interviewing 12 people that represented a cross section of this audience.  With the interview narratives complete, we gathered a group of staff to analyze the interviews for insights. We asked each person to note 30 items of interest on post it notes. Then we split the groups into teams and each team was to come to agreement on 4-6 themes that they saw in their insights. Engaging this wider group of staff had additional benefits of sharing the insights from the research with those beyond the core program development team. From the five sets of themes, our core team then synthesized the information, especially looking for statements of need. One need we identified was the need to connect with colleagues at their career level outside of the organization’s main conference. With this in mind, we created a number of options. After vetting and iteration through focus groups, the organization then launched a topic-focused retreat using the ‘unconference’ model. The program has since been successfully expanded to other senior audiences.

Taking the time at the front end of an innovation process to really dig into your member, your audience, your participants, your customers’ world sets you up for success.  Program or service prototypes still need to be tested with your end user before full development occurs.  But this important step helps ensure that you are looking for ways to solve problems your customer actually cares about.
 
Want to learn more? Let’s talk. I work with associations and nonprofits to help them put the customer at the center of their new program and service development initiatives. 

Which would you rather – be described by what you are or what you are not? “Nonprofit” is a legal term. The norm in the US is corporations designed to make a profit.  Thus “non”-profit is the description of a corporation whose purpose is NOT to make a profit for its shareholders. What if we were to focus instead on what nonprofit organizations are? What they are designed to do?

​Mission driven nonprofits contribute to what many term the ‘social sector.’ They are designed to provide a social good, to address an important issue, to work towards change in society. 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations are registered in the US according the GuideStar and the sector contributes over 9 billion dollars to the American economy. While the majority of nonprofits are small organizations with budget sizes under 1 million, a few ‘block buster’ organizations have budgets over 5 billion dollars. The largest nonprofits are primarily universities and hospital systems. 

People commonly discuss the ‘private sector.’ This includes businesses working with the profit motive. The public sector encompasses government. The social sector includes nonprofit organizations – from well-endowed universities to small community based organizations providing services to society’s marginalized.  The sector is also sometimes called the ‘third sector.’  I prefer the term social sector to ‘third sector.’ Again this says what the sector is. To know what the third sector is, you have to understand the reference to the other economic sectors.
 
Grace Social Sector Consulting works with social sector organizations that want to become more strategic, effective and innovative so that they can have greater mission impact. Helping you further your mission that contributes to the greater social good is what we are motivated by.  Let’s talk!