Five staff responses to change you can’t afford to overlook

As a nonprofit leader, chances are at some point you’ve been involved in either instituting or supporting change in your organization. The question is, if the need for change is so obvious to you, why isn’t the rest of the organization jumping up and down with excitement?

Over the years, The Management Centre has carried out a significant body of research on, and change work with, a wide range of nonprofit organizations. And we’ve found that there are five core reactions to change that we call the 5 Cs. To be an effective change manager, you need to understand these five reactions in your colleagues so you can anticipate them and adopt appropriate strategies to deal with them herunterladen.

The 5 Cs: Responses to change and how to handle them

We tend to sell organizational benefits when planning change. But not everyone judges the impact of things through organizational perspectives. To be successful, it’s essential to reflect on how individuals in the organization will react or respond to your change announcement. Be prepared, and plan an approach for each of the 5 Cs:

Champions

Champions – perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the total – are those who are prepared to stick their necks out, run with an idea and own what happens. After announcing the change you propose, these are the people who’ll crowd around you smiling and shaking your hand.

Tempting as it is to embrace their enthusiasm, you need to treat champions cautiously youtube free music download mp3 kostenlos. The advantage of their unstinting support for the change is balanced by some serious disadvantages. For one thing, champions generally champion everything – even painting the office in stripes. Their enthusiasm could give you a false impression of how everyone else is feeling. And champions won’t question you closely on the merits of your proposal. You need some challenge to ensure your idea has rigor.

Give champions something practical to do which absorbs their energy. Be careful about using them as advocates; they’re likely to be treated with skepticism by others bei youtube etwas herunterladen.

Chasers

Chasers – 15 to 20 percent of the total – don’t immediately respond positively to your proposal for change. At the end of a briefing, they look around to see who’s signed up. They want to discuss your idea with others before forming a judgment, and will generally look to a key opinion maker or “trigger” person for guidance.

The great advantage of chasers is they give you a more accurate view of how your proposal is going down. When they join, you’re making progress and, once committed, they’ll stay netflix filme downloaden kindle. And the disadvantages? Well, you’ll have to convince the right trigger person to convince the chasers. And that trigger person may well be someone who has social rather than organizational power in your organization. So, you can’t tell them to back your idea. And still, chasers won’t come on board immediately – they may have their own very specific concerns; for example, if you’re going to restructure, what will be the impact on their team?

Identify the trigger person at different levels in your organization and brief them in advance, so that they encourage the chasers to sign up to your project Preschoolchildren print exercises for free.

Converts

At 30 to 40 percent of the total, converts are the biggest single group in your change audience. They listen in silence to the proposed change and don’t ask questions. But don’t confuse their silence with negativity. Converts want solid evidence in favor of the change in order to come on board. They’ll also need reassurance about what impact the changes will have on them. Their passivity means you often have to ask questions on their behalf and then answer your own question – FAQs spider man far from home herunterladen. They want the answer, but they’re not happy to ask the question.

Converts have two advantages: First, bringing them on board tips a sizable majority of people into the “mostly positive” camp and ensures your change proposal will be adopted. Second, although they can be slow to adopt a change, they are equally slow to let it go. Once they’re convinced, you have momentum.

The main disadvantage with converts is that they may take so long to come round that your initiative loses momentum.

Think about and try to address converts’ concerns before launching a change process wie kann man minecraft kostenlos herunterladen. That way you’ll be able to bring them on board more quickly. Try producing a list of FAQs in advance – it shows you’re thinking about the individual as well as the organization.

Challengers

Challengers – 15 to 20 percent of the total – ask difficult questions initially and then … continue to do so. Their approach is to confront and be awkward, because they have a strong stake in the outcome.

It’s a personality trait not a personal attack, so don’t treat it as an attack amazon video on macbook. Because challenging is a personality trait, it’s unlikely you can convince challengers that the change will be a good thing. What’s more important is that others will be watching how well you handle the challenger’s interventions.

Despite appearances, there are advantages to challengers: Their questions force you to be rigorous in your thinking. And, because they ask the questions others merely think, addressing their issues may enable you indirectly to reassure others.

The disadvantages are twofold: Challengers can carry on asking difficult questions beyond usefulness. They may also ask questions on areas not up for discussion kostenlose serien herunterladen.

Handle challengers’ queries fairly, however irritated you feel; others are watching. Be firm with them about what’s “off the agenda”; provide ground rules and stick to them.

Changephobics

Changephobics – 5 to 10 percent of the total – will not ever be convinced. They can slow down or even derail change. They cause dissent and are essentially immovable. Changephobics are tough. However, if you’re seen dealing with them honestly and fairly, you’ll gain brownie points from others for being evenhanded fitbit alta hr app herunterladen. And, however hard it is, keep in mind changephobics don’t oppose because they’re bad people, but because they feel you’re destroying something they hold dear.

Changephobic disadvantages are legion – doing their best to stop your initiative, providing unstinting opposition, significantly lowering morale.

The harsh reality is that you have to get rid of changephobics as quickly and effectively as you can, whether it’s to another department or out of the organization.

When you lead your change process, you will need to consider how you might deal with the 5 Cs. Think about all the different stakeholders in your organization – staff, volunteer, boards and even users. Which of the 5Cs would they fit into? What can you get the champions to do so they feel positive, but stay out of your way? Who do you need to convince to get the chasers on board? What questions do you need to answer for the converts? Who are the challengers? What flaws might they spot? Who are the changephobics? How can you get them to leave or help them go?

As we all know, implementing change is no walk in the park. Preparing for the individual responses to change will certainly help you leap ahead of some of the inevitable stress – if not all of it.

See also:

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster Moving World

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Ideas from Getting Shot Down

A Sense of Urgency (How to Overcome Complacency In Your Organization)

The Six Secrets of Change

Image credits: hypnosisdownloads.com, globalfit.com, goal.blogs.nytimes.com, innerself.com, tippingpoint.com

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A volunteer movement that genuinely impacts the bottom line

Volunteerism has changed dramatically over the years and Colleen Kelly took notice. She observed a disconnect between organizations’ desires for volunteers and talented volunteers who wanted to give their time.

Volunteers are no longer satisfied with rote tasks such as stuffing envelopes. They are looking for meaningful experiences in exchange for their expertise. Equally important, organizations need smarter ways to meet their missions without always turning to the budget inpa ediabas 7.3 german free of charge. Nonprofits have the potential to both match human resource needs with volunteer talent while efficiently serving their causes.

Stepping up in this way requires a philosophical and tactical commitment from the top down—it requires a movement. Coauthors Colleen Kelly and Lynda Gerty are talking about a major organizational change that involves bold creativity and visionary leadership in their new book The Abundant Not-For-Profit: How Talent (Not Money) Will Transform Your Organization.

Abundant nonprofits:

dispel common myths about volunteers’ potential to contribute meaningfully musik downloaden für auto.

begin with the CEO and board to embrace the abundance philosophy.

focus on human capital to deliver their missions.

transform the way they do business by applying a “people lens” to their leadership.

train salaried employees to lead and communicate with knowledge philanthropists in varying roles such as planners, advisors and facilitators.

enlist and support knowledge philanthropists with training, policies, expectations and key performance indicators kartenspiele canasta kostenlosen.

lead salaried and volunteer talent alongside one another as one collective team.

If you build it, we promise they will come

A tall order for organizational change calls for a big commitment. So the authors make a promise: “If you build it, the talented people will come. And when they do, they will bring incredible joy to your work. They will exponentially increase your organization’s resources. They will generate ideas and suggest approaches you’ve never considered. Your organization—and our sector—will be transformed.”

Walking the talk

The authors tested their own model. In 1999, Volunteer Vancouver employed 14 full-time employees and a handful of part-time facilitators on a stable budget of approximately $500,000. Its 50 volunteers were restricted to stuffing envelopes or interviewing potential volunteers. Twelve years later, after changing its name to Vantage Point, the organization runs 100 percent of its programs by involving a new kind of volunteer, “knowledge philanthropists,” who performs everywhere in the organization: in governance, management and operations. They are planners, advisors, managers and facilitators. Vantage Point now pays half the number of staff at a higher rate. In 2012, Vantage Point had eight employees and 201 knowledge philanthropists in 265 unique roles.

The Abundance Movement: An interview about roles, challenges and surprises

 

In our CausePlanet interview, we asked Kelly and Gerty about who knowledge philanthropists are, what challenges surfaced when transitioning to a state of abundance and what surprises they encountered when testing the abundance model.

 

CausePlanet: Thank you for introducing the abundance movement. Can you describe the knowledge philanthropist? What is the profile? Retired, actively employed, between work or all of the above?

 

Colleen Kelly and Lynda Gerty: All of the above! The term knowledge philanthropist includes people with diverse backgrounds, life experiences and motivations. Some are retired while hinging onto their viatical settlement, or approaching retirement, and motivated to stay engaged and share the knowledge they’ve gained over a lifetime of work. Others have recently moved to the area and want to put down roots and make connections. Some are incredibly busy–at the height of their careers and raising small children–and are seeking time-limited, high-impact opportunities to make a difference. Still others are exploring a career transition and looking to flex new skills, learn and develop their portfolio of work. What all these people have in common is a desire to make a meaningful difference by contributing what they know.

CausePlanet: What challenges do most organizations encounter when setting a course to become an abundant nonprofit and how do they overcome them?

Colleen Kelly and Lynda Gerty: Great question! The biggest challenge in our experience is organizations putting themselves in a starvation cycle by not investing the most they can into volunteers because they believe they don’t perform at a high level, are not accountable, and have a high likelihood of leaving. In fact, it is our low investment and limited belief in volunteers that makes all of this become a reality.

What we have learned is that the more we invest in volunteers, the higher they perform; the less likely they are to leave; and the more worthwhile it is to spend time recruiting, supporting and developing them. Investing means creating a robust recruitment process to ensure the right skills and cultural fit (and saying “no” when the fit isn’t there), providing sufficient orientation and knowledge transfer for volunteers to perform their role effectively, delegating clearly and providing ongoing feedback so volunteers know they are on the right track, and seeking opportunities to develop star performers so they can take on more significant roles.

The reality is that people will contribute to our organizations in equal measure to what we contribute to them. When organizations understand that, they begin to consider their volunteer practices to be as important as their salaried employee practices and reap great benefits as a result.

CausePlanet: When you first tested the abundance model in-house, what were some of the surprises you encountered when managing salaried and volunteer staff side by side?

Colleen Kelly and Lynda Gerty: The biggest surprise was how difficult it was for salaried employees to comprehend volunteers could play a different role than the roles they had always expected traditional volunteers would play. At Vantage Point, it took five or six years of effort before there were salaried employees in our organization who actually could “chunk up” their own job descriptions and begin to engage incredibly talented people to take some of those “chunks” and run with them.

When we investigated to understand what made the first salaried employee actually internalize this idea and implement it, her answer was, “You told me that was the way I was to do my job, and I did it. I love to work this way!” Others learned from her and eventually it became the norm. That process took us almost a decade. We hope The Abundant Not-for-Profit can save other organizations time and allow them to adopt this model much more quickly.

Good to Great author Jim Collins says, “The right people can often attract money, but money by itself can never attract the right people. Money is a commodity; talent is not. Time and talent can often compensate for lack of money, but money cannot ever compensate for lack of the right people.” This quotation is a fitting depiction of Vantage Point’s path to abundance.

The Abundant Not-For-Profit contains a thorough examination of the philosophy necessary to begin the transformation toward abundance and the process involved in getting there. If you lead an organization that is looking for new alternatives to meet your mission without increasing the bottom line, consider taking a closer look at the abundance movement.

See also:

Community: The Structure of Belonging

Wisdom of Crowds

Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message

 

Image credits: dealer-community.com, solelydevoted.net, bejamindefoor.com, troychurch.com

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Lost your responsiveness to change? Apply some World Cup logic.

If you’re watching any World Cup soccer this year, you know the Netherlands recently won a match against Costa Rica in overtime thanks to “super sub” Tim Krul on the Netherlands’ team. Krul specializes in defending the goal against penalty kicks and was put in specifically for this reason at the end of the game shoot-out.  As a result, Krul blocked a crucial kick android rom downloaden.

Change management guru and bestselling author, John Kotter, would have liked this match because Tim Krul personifies his latest strategy to help organizations adapt quickly to change. In Kotter’s new model, which I explain below, “the network” is put into play rather than repeatedly relying on upper management, those with the most seniority (the starting goalie) or hierarchy to seize opportunities or accommodate changes certificate free of charge download.

But first, why is adapting to change so important? We are experiencing exponentially growing change—change for which we are not prepared unless we adopt new ways of anticipating and responding to our fast-paced environment. Kotter’s book, Accelerate, “is about how to handle strategic challenges fast enough, with agility and creativity, to take advantage of windows of opportunity which open and shut more quickly today.”

Kotter shows you how people in leading innovative organizations are maintaining their competitive edge, managing turmoil, and coping with unanticipated challenges while executing short-term objectives, all without exhausting the staff in the process frei wild lieder downloaden.

So what’s behind Kotter’s curtain this time?

A dual operating system. It sounds excessive but, in reality, it’s not. Kotter argues this framework doesn’t require you to eliminate your current hierarchy but, rather, augment it with a more nimble companion that enables you to respond quickly and adeptly to the rapidly changing landscape around you flash player deutsch kostenlosen.

The result is the best of both worlds—a reliable structure for core operations and its flexible equal that is responsive to urgency and innovation.

What does a dual operating system look like?

The actual features of a dual operating system are your traditional hierarchy on one side and “a network” on the other mietvertrag kostenlos downloaden. The dual structure is dynamic: Initiatives coalesce and disband as needed. Since a management hierarchy is well-known in the nonprofit sector, Kotter focuses on how the network side works. It is similar to a start-up in that all people are working together toward a goal and with urgency. Kotter explains the network in this way: “Populated with a diagonal slice of employees from all across the organization and up and down its ranks, the network liberates information from silos and hierarchical layers and enables it to flow with far greater freedom and at accelerated speed.”

Who can best leverage this kind of dual system herunterladen?

Kotter’s dual system helps mid-sized to large organizations get back to their early, nimble roots. Virtually all organizations begin with a network-like structure where founders are at the center and others operate at different nodes working on various initiatives. Individuals work quickly, responding to and seeking opportunity. Over time the organization evolves with the installation of managerial processes. This more mature organization is reliable and well-designed to produce results kostenlos adobe reader herunterladen. However, one limit of this system is that it keeps going back to the same people to move key initiatives forward. In today’s demanding environment, this solution isn’t sustainable. That’s why the network is ideal for organizations that have traditional hierarchies and still want the benefits of a network-like structure. Similarly in World Cup matches, teams don’t go to the same players every time; they put in different specialists depending on what the situation demands alle icloud fotos herunterladen pc. So if you’re a fan of the sport, you can bet on your teams now by going to 메리트카지노.

If you think this is a glorified task force, Kotter answers why it’s not.

Question: We already use something like this sort of structure in the form of interdepartmental task forces, “tiger teams,” “self-managed work teams,” or the like wie kann ich word 2010 kostenlos herunterladen. This is basically the same, right?

Kotter: These kinds of teams and task forces have some characteristics in common with a dual operating system, but overall the two are very different. Interdepartmental task forces and the like are controlled by, and work within, a single-system hierarchy. They are meant to supplement the 20th century organizational form to help it develop and execute new strategic and other initiatives in today’s environment herunterladen.

The people who do the work on these teams are appointed (although sometimes the word “volunteer” is used, the reality is more like “volun-told”). Often they are directed by a project or program manager who is also appointed. Such teams rarely involve more than a few dozen people. They almost always go away after a set period of time. They usually use the standard management processes: creating plans and measurements, defining accountability, setting timelines, reporting progress on all plans and milestones regularly to those higher up in the hierarchy.

Under the right circumstances, these vehicles can be very useful. But in terms of the sheer energy and alignment needed to help you stay ahead of fierce competition in a turbulent world, there is no comparison between them and a dual system.

If you find yourself in a larger nonprofit that’s lost its ability to adapt or respond quickly to change, consider looking at Kotter’s book Accelerate. He not only explains how to build the framework without taxing the staff, but he also presents eight “Accelerators” that keep the network producing for you. Experiment with John Kotter’s dual operating system; you’ll have a fit and responsive team supporting your hierarchy in the field and playing as super subs when the competition gets tough. You don’t have to depend on the same people every time to get a variety of projects or initiatives done. Instead you can assemble a network that wins the match for you.

Read more:

A Sense of Urgency

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Ideas from Getting Shot Down

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Management Café Virtual Book Club returns April 3

You have another chance herunterladen! You can build your knowledge about best practices and recommended books through discussions with other professionals. All from your desk via webcast! The Nonprofit Cultivation Center, teaming up with our Page to Practice™ book summaries, is offering its next virtual monthly book club whatsapp update android herunterladen. It’s a unique professional development opportunity to explore nonprofit management topics with other nonprofit managers in facilitated discussions downloaden in englisch.

The first session starts Thursday, April 3, discussing The Power of Collaborative Solutions by Tom Wolff free office 2007 nederlands.

Don’t miss this innovative opportunity train simulator zumen!

Learn more and register here.

For more information about Page to Practice™ book summaries, visit our summary store or subscribe to our library of recommended reading amazon music app download.

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Is your glass half-full with assets?

“More than 80% of the kids at our school live at or below the poverty line; many of our families have to choose between food/diapers/rent…,” said the parent’s note when it was handed to my husband.

Every December for the past nine years, my husband’s company spends an entire day decorating and preparing a local school so they can throw a holiday party that evening for the students and their families docplayer pdf herunterladen. They host a holiday meal and enjoy games, face painting, portraits and a visit from Santa.

As the parents enter the school with their kids, most look exhausted from a long day, perhaps working more than one job, but their moods lift when their children see the celebration awaiting them. One of the mothers put this small folded note into my husband’s hand as she scooted past him and entered the classroom designated for face painting cursor herunterladen. She’d clearly typed up this message and made copies so she could hand it out to the volunteers that evening.

Once an in-house holiday party…

My husband’s company identified its annual holiday party as an opportunity to provide its celebration to an organization with greater need. After developing a relationship with the school administrators, they discovered how much these school communities need a break from the constant financial strain of living at or below the poverty level herunterladen. Rather than hold a corporate party for the employees, the company decided to offer a party for one school and its community on an annual basis.

One asset leads to the discovery of others

While choosing a different school every year was appreciated, they soon realized the heightened value of continuity and the importance of developing a relationship with one school over time. Plus, they could collaboratively identify other ways of working together. Last year, the company made a three-year commitment to one school in particular because of their shared commitment to education and college-bound students. The partnership provides a forum for discovery of what each partner can bring to the table and a channel for additional educational initiatives, including monetary donations, technology and volunteer hours. Activities and events include support for launching the school’s first library, a Book Trust fundraising drive, reading campaigns, science lab enhancements, teacher appreciation luncheons, learning technologies and teacher meeting spaces. The partnership will also help the school expand their curriculum to include fourth and fifth grades by the 2015-2016 school year.

Focusing on assets versus needs

This partnership between the company and school is a perfect example of identifying one’s assets to address a local need. The authors of When People Care Enough to Act would ask you to pay close attention to a community’s assets rather than immediately and exclusively focusing on needs, which yield limited results. By partnering with this school, the administrators were able to identify and tap into their own strengths as well as pursue a vision they had for their students, one of which was building a curriculum for fourth and fifth graders.

When People Care Enough to Act is based on the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach that focuses on “discovering and mobilizing the resources that are already present in a community,” say Green, Moore and O’Brien. In other words, the authors demonstrate that every community has more potential resources than any one person knows.

What’s inside?

This workbook is meant to be a friendly catalyst to you, the community builder. No matter what your role–agency leader, staff community organizer or citizen—you will learn about your options to act more effectively for a stronger community. You’ll learn about the three qualities of effective community development, the five building blocks of any healthy community and the three interconnected activities surrounding Asset Based Community Development. Finally, the authors will explore key themes that define a framework for action.

Guiding principles for asset-based community building

I asked author, Mike Green, to elaborate on the difference between an asset-based approach and needs-based approach. Below you’ll find his answer and an excerpt of 12 guiding principles:

Green: Most communities address social and economic problems with only a small amount of their total capacity. Much community capacity is not used and is needed! This is the challenge and opportunity of ABCD. Everyone in a community has something to offer. There is no one we don’t need.

Here are the first four of twelve guiding principles of ABCD in action:

1.) Everyone has gifts. With rare exception people can contribute and want to contribute. Gifts must be discovered. Gift giving opportunities must be offered. Strong communities know they need everyone. There is unrecognized capacity and assets in every community. Find it.

2.) Relationships build a community. See them, make them and utilize them. An intentional effort to build and nourish relationships is the core of ABCD and of all community building.

3.) Residents at the center can engage the wider community. People in leadership in everyday life (associations, congregations, neighborhoods and local businesses) must be at the center of community initiatives rather than just helping agency leaders. It is essential to engage the wider community as actors (citizens) not just as recipients of services (clients).

4.) Leaders involve others as active members of the community. Leaders from the wider community of voluntary associations, congregations, neighborhoods, local businesses can engage others from their sector. Community building leaders always need to have a constituency of people to involve. This following is based on trust, influence and relationship. Strong community leaders invite a growing circle of people to act.

I encourage you to use this time of year to evaluate your personal, organizational and community assets and look for ways they can be of service to others. Mike Green and his coauthors would argue a community that focuses on its assets and how they can be best utilized has far more potential than a community absorbed by its needs.

See also:

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Toss your list of needs: Give thanks instead

“Seeing all assets of a community is like looking through a kaleidoscope: many colored chips of glass fit together in many different ways as you turn the scope,” say the authors of When People Care Enough to Act windows 10 64 bit iso datei herunterladen.

One of the guiding principles of this book we are currently reviewing for CausePlanet is grounded in the notion that we achieve genuinely effective community solutions if we focus on our assets rather than solely on our needs epson drucker software herunterladen.

Authors Green, Moore and O’Brien would be proud of the students of Lancaster High School in Lancaster, California herunterladen. The student body recently raised $80,000 earlier this year to design an accessible house for fellow community member and disabled Iraq War veteran, Jerral Hancock. Hancock was paralyzed and lost an arm in combat in 2007.

The entire community got involved soon thereafter. Local contractors, architects and real estate consultants donated manpower, local hardware stores offered discounts on supplies, and inmates at the local prison hosted an art sale to raise proceeds.

In chapter seven, “Building the Bridge From Client to Citizen,” the authors explain that “there is no one we don’t need” in a community. The Lancaster residents are a perfect example of this perspective. The authors further explore the great possibilities with inclusiveness and “seeing with a citizen’s eyes.” The people of Lancaster, California, viewed themselves as equal partners in creating a solution they cared about. When people care enough to act, it’s remarkable what can be accomplished.

Focusing on our community’s assets couldn’t come at a more appropriate time for Americans since we celebrate Thanksgiving this week. Our Canadian neighbors have already celebrated in October but the meaning is the same for both holidays. Thanksgiving commemorates a harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621 and is a time to give thanks for what we have.

Rather than default to your list of needs, I encourage you to look at your organization and community and identify the assets. How does this perspective change your ability to tackle complex issues? What other organizations could be viewed as assets if you collaborate? Green, Moore and O’Brien would say it’s a great week to give thanks.

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Keys to changing organizational habits

Frequently, La Piana Consulting has the privilege of supporting our strategic restructuring and strategy development clients through the implementation phase of the engagement koran mp3. Reactions of managers, staff, board members and other internal stakeholders to the inevitable changes that this phase brings range from excitement, anticipation, and a sense of renewal to fatigue, apprehension, fear and resistance fallout shelter. While all these reactions are within the realm of normal, the challenge is to corral and manage them constructively to maintain forward momentum.

The Comfort of the Familiar

One of the greatest impediments to moving forward after restructuring or adopting a new business strategy is organizational entrenchment in old habits—the source of comfort, familiarity and certainty that ensures homeostasis and predictability amazon filme downloaden pc. We’ve all heard the protestations in defense of “the way we’ve always done it” and witnessed behavioral resistance to change, whether covert and passive or overt and subversive emoticons voor word. No matter how normal and anticipated, an organization’s penchant for clinging to familiar habits presents the most challenging and critical aspect of the implementation phase after effects for free.

By definition, restructuring and/or adopting a new strategic direction are systemically disruptive phenomena. Yet disruption can be positive and can be channeled in creative and transformative ways in spite of the discomfort, fear and defensiveness that sometimes accompany it kaufvertrag für gartenhaus downloaden kostenlos.

Motivation for Change

I belong to a LinkedIn discussion group, Organizational Change Practitioners, that is a continuous source of great insights, wisdom and shared experience herunterladen. As much as I have learned from my colleagues in that group, I am nevertheless struck, and sometimes bemused, by the number of discussions that focus on “making” change happen, whole-systems culture change initiatives and top-down change imagej herunterladen. With all due respect, I fear that we sometimes mistake the trees for the forest. The process of successfully effecting change in organizations cannot be an edict from on high, nor can it be magically created by external consultants or willed into being by managers software youtube videosen. It must begin as a small-scale, localized movement that is driven by intrinsically motivated stakeholders.

I recently came across a Harvard Business Review blog that makes the compelling case for a ground-up approach to changing organizational habits schriftarten sicher herunterladen. The post, To Change the Culture, Stop Trying to “Change the Culture,” explains that sustained organizational culture change happens as a result of small, incremental, successful, and visible employee-driven improvements which provide the foundation for system-wide replication.

How Shift Happens

Jeffrey Hiatt, author of the widely acclaimed ADKAR® approach to change management in organizations and founder of Prosci Change Management Learning Center, advances a similar approach. In his model, the critical factors that change behaviors, and thus habits, in organizations are Awareness of the need for change, Desire to support and participate in the change, Knowledge of how to change, Ability to implement the required skills and behaviors, and Reinforcement to sustain the change. It is a process of winning hearts and minds, one employee at a time.

Finally, and most importantly, trust and respect are necessary antecedents to shifting behavior and loosening the hold of old organizational habits. By honoring traditions and organizational artifacts while making the case for change and by attending to the ADKAR principles, shift happens. It is an incremental process of planting seeds of change, gaining traction through ownership, building momentum through small wins, and reinforcing change through rewards and incentives.

See also:

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

The Six Secrets of Change: What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive

Building Nonprofit Capacity: A Guide to Managing Change Through Organizational Lifecycles

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Diverse relationships: the path to systemic change

A relationship built around a film

Soon after the Trayvon Martin verdict, I sat in a darkened movie theater with a mixed age and gender audience of predominantly, but not exclusively, people of color, watching “Fruitvale Station.” This powerful and highly acclaimed film clearly had drawn a group of people who related to or were curious about the subject matter. Some may have been intrigued by very thoughtful reviews on National Public Radio or urged to attend by a respected colleague herunterladen. Regardless of the individual reasons that brought us all there, as the credits rolled and the lights came up, we all continued to sit in our seats, somehow connected by the anonymous shared experience. The theater crew stood by patiently as weeping strangers exchanged tissues across the rows, wiped their eyes and slowly filed out. No words were spoken steam workshop objekte downloaden. However, a sense of relationship now existed between us as we dispersed and considered the film’s impact on our individual beliefs and actions.

“Fruitvale Station” has since quietly disappeared from theaters. And, I am not writing a movie review. (Although, I urge you to see this excellent film.) Stay with me…

The importance of relationships

Years ago, I wrote for CausePlanet about my personal passion for systemic change sims 4 kostenloses. I spoke of my inclination to try to harness the moon and change the tide as opposed to throwing in starfish one-by-one, as the iconic story describes. It is not a lack of compassion for each one to whom it matters, but rather a deep desire to change everyone’s course for the best. That passion has not waned or herunterladen. At the same time, I recognize no approach to the most challenging issues that face our communities can stand alone. To that end, today I write about the importance of relationships in the context of individual beliefs and actions: relationships to systems, to communities, to neighborhoods, to schools and to each other.

Inclusiveness Project builds relationships and moves toward systemic change

In 2011, The Denver Foundation’s Inclusiveness Project (the 2009 recipient of the Council on Foundations’ Critical Impact Award) joined Dr spiele kostenlos herunterladen minecraft. Vincent Harding and the Veterans of Hope Project in sponsoring Michelle Alexander’s visit to Denver. The dynamic author of The New Jim Crow riveted audiences at Manual High School, Iliff School of Theology and Park Hill United Methodist Church as she spoke about the history and impact of policies related to drug sentencing on mass incarceration of black men. One of the individuals in a pew was Barbara Grogan, a pioneer business woman, trustee and donor to The Denver Foundation. Barbara was not only touched by what she learned, but also spurred to relational action herunterladen. She bought dozens of copies of the book and gave them out to every person of social and political influence she could imagine. At the same time, a local group of residents, law enforcement, advocacy, faith-based, and direct service groups came together to continue the discussion and elevate collective will to amend the devastation of over-representation of men of color in the criminal justice system.

That was Denver, but systemic work was happening across the country. Officials in several states and Attorney General Eric Holder have given voice and taken action to change laws and practices that unjustly incarcerate groups of people—leaving broken lives, families and communities in their wake sdp album download for free. I celebrate these shifts in the tide. And, I believe those systems can be fraught with undercurrents and the tides can change. I also know the re-entry of individuals from prisons to productive lives will require the support of those who, like the starfish I mentioned in my years-ago column, help their neighbors one-by-one.

Today, I grieve again as I read headlines of events or circumstances within our global and local community. We can’t legislate or enforce the elimination of the effects of trauma, injustice, hate, poverty, intolerance, incarceration and violence wish app downloaden.

Other ways The Denver Foundation builds relationships

What can we do? The Denver Foundation has spent years investing in the work of inclusiveness and resident engagement through the Inclusiveness Project and Strengthening Neighborhoods herunterladen. Our new ten-year strategic plan calls for us to become champions of change for those who are most vulnerable and to help our community build racial, ethnic and economic equity. At the same time, we are working with cadres of leaders who are often unseen and unsung but work diligently daily for the common good. These members of our community are young, old, people of color, allies, of varying abilities, LGBTQ, residents, donors, business people, veterans, refugees, immigrants, and other diverse people who care deeply about our region firefox downloaden webbrowser. They are often the strangers who realize that when we are struck by a 100-year flood or an unspeakable tragedy or just winding our way through our lives, we all must reach out helping hands to support and love one another until the sun shines upon us and we rebuild.

As a part of The Denver Foundation’s work in schools, this capacity for good is recognized and supported through practices that divert young people from the school-to-prison pipeline and on to graduation. The visionary Unity Council, comprised of multigenerational men from the African-American and Latino communities, meets regularly to reach deep down to their “rootstraps” to heal wounds and build bridges between cultures. Our Basic Human Needs work includes neighbors who help others navigate systems. The Foundation’s partners show up every day to ensure we are all better for their having done so. The interns in our Nonprofit Internship Program share powerful stories that inspire them to become community and nonprofit leaders. Within the Foundation, we appreciate our individual personal journeys and gifts of time, talent and treasure that contribute to excellence.

How YOU can build relationships

Nonprofits (including philanthropic organizations) often build relationships and community in the following ways:

  • Listening campaigns that focus on assets, not just needs (Asset Based Community Development)
  • Feedback loops with constituents, residents, donors and partner organizations
  • Development of diverse and inclusive boards and staffs
  • Brown-bags, book clubs or movie groups for discussion purposes, not problem solving
  • Encouragement of curiosity and listening

Exploring tools to create dialogues:

www.racialequitytools.org

www.coloradoinclusivefunders.org

www.nonprofitinclusiveness.org

So today, my “cause for the planet” is for relationships connected to a belief in the inherent decency of humankind. Those relationships may form in classrooms or boardrooms, on the streets or the light rail, over a seat or across an aisle.

See also:

The Power of Collaborative Solutions

Community: The Structure of Belonging

Salsa, Soul and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age

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Dare to be different: Dare to dream

This is an excerpt from Kay Sprinkel Grace’s book-in-progress, Dare to Dream.

Lately, it has been hard for organizations to dream. Instead, we have worried. Through the recession and into the post-recession, we have felt dreaming was a luxury. And yet, our organizations were founded on dreams: improved education, compelling drama, accessible music, alleviated suffering among vulnerable populations or the cure of the chronic and life-threatening diseases amazon video prime herunterladen.

We begin with a dream but what happens after that first dream has been turned into a thriving organization? What happens after those first founders move on? What happens when we go into maintenance (or recessionary decline) and we begin the perceptible shift from dreaming about what might be possible to believing that a successful year is one in which we “get back to zero” or balance our budgets?

I believe we begin to lose our edge of excellence. We begin looking in the mirror instead of through our windows. We always do what we’ve always done because we are successful neue emojis whatsapp 2019 herunterladen.

But what if we dare to be different? What if we dare to dream? What if we could strengthen our core while also pushing the boundaries of our thinking to say, What is coming in our community? What is the next big dream we need to have?

It does not cost anything to dream. You can hold on to a dream while still maintaining your commitment to sound fiscal practices and execution of your strategic plan. This is not an either/or–it is a both/and.

Negative messages

The impact of the recession was both financial and psychological iphone bilder herunterladen. It continues to influence the philanthropic investment decisions of many donors. To compound that problem, an alarming number of organizations still struggle with messages that border on begging for funding to keep their doors open and their services sound. These messages come not from a sense of the impact the organizations are having and can have, but from a sense of fear that they will not make their budget and will have to make cuts. These messages fan the potential donor’s fears about the economy and the result is a pervasive syndrome called “psychic poverty.”

I believe that even in the worst of times, people harbor dreams www.office.com/productkeycard herunterladen. And, I believe that organizations, even those whose budgets are strapped, need to set aside time to dream.

Risk

Our sector is about risk. We see a need in the community, and we risk our initial seed money (and engage others to risk theirs) to meet that need. In times of uncertainty we are less willing to take risks. The boundaries of risk are fear and dreams, and when we are fearful about our future we simply cannot dream. And we do not risk. Like many of our donors, we have felt deep psychic poverty as we juggle the uncertainty of the future against our present needs herunterladen.

So, how can we project an image that says we are aware of the boundaries of risk but we will not succumb to fear, which inhibits both risk and renewal? Do we remember that embedded in every organization is a dream that is powerful and compelling? While we have rightfully become more strategic, let us not forget that dreams are what capture the imagination of both donors and our communities. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not say, “I have a plan,” when he spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. He said, “I have a dream.”

Inspiration

We must inspire dreams musiken für ipod. Two recent comments from leading philanthropists offer us little comfort and great challenge. Jean Case, commenting after the 2012 White House Conference on Philanthropy, said that high impact investors are sitting on the sidelines. According to “Motley Fool vs Seeking Alpha“, more than $12 billion are under management for donors in charitable funds operated by large investment firms and community-based foundations. When will more of that money reach the organizations in your community? I believe it will be when we come up with big ideas, big dreams and engage others in big solutions to the growing problems in our society bonitätscheck herunterladen. Carlos Slim Helu, the richest man in the world, commented at the Forbes 400 conference in September, 2012, “We have seen thousands of people working in nonprofits, and the problems and poverty are bigger. They have not solved anything.” I absolutely do not agree with that, but I have to attribute his belief to the fact that we continue to talk about the needs we have, rather than the needs we meet. We fail to focus on impact. We focus on what we want for our organizations instead of what we want for our communities when we convey our vision.

Do you inspire your donors to think big with you, or is “getting back to zero” considered an achievement herunterladen? Are there times during the year where the board and staff dream together? Where they take a hard look through the windows and ask where the next big opportunity is coming from and whether they are ready?

Dreams are a renewable resource. I think more of us should hang a Native American dream catcher in our windows. It would remind us that philanthropy itself began with a dream and that each of our organizations is the embodiment of someone’s dream to make this world a better place.

Native American Dream Catcher

Room to Read is one of the great success stories of high impact social investment philanthropy gratis albums downloaden. John Wood, the founder, recently offered this comment in a blog in the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

I’ve always believed bold goals attract bold people, and that’s why I said we wanted to reach 10 million children by 2020. We’re doing so well that we’ve moved the deadline forward by five years. To date, we’ve reached 7.8 million children….I’m very much against the adage of small is beautiful. I think small is ineffective.  –John Wood, Founder, Room to Read

I believe there are people out there waiting for us to put forth a dream that will connect with what they have long believed as possible for their communities or for the world pdf macbook herunterladen.

See also:

The Ultimate Board Member’s Book

Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

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Highlights from our live chat about collaboration with Tom Wolff (Audio)

“In its simplest form, collaborative solutions means doing together what we cannot do apart,” says author Tom Wolff lied online downloaden. If you find yourself in the position of considering collaboration or you discover your organization is lacking a specific competency or resource, consider Wolff’s book, The Power of Collaborative Solutions, your next read zoom herunterladen. From introduction to index, it’s full of interesting case stories, web-based tools and useful guidance.

Interview highlights

We recently held a lively interview via webcast with Wolff and he answered CausePlanet reader questions teams downloaden windows. Wolff opened our discussion by highlighting his book, why collaborative solutions are encouraged, six principles for effective coalitions and concerns with our health and human service system kostenlos kostenlose musik herunterladen.

Sound bite about what’s broken?

These concerns translate to other service agencies, so I wanted to share them with you in a sound bite from the interview with Tom Wolff facebook videos aus privaten gruppen downloaden. You can follow this list below as you listen (the sound bite covers one through eight):

  1. Fragmentation
  2. Duplication of effort
  3. Focus on deficits
  4. Crisis Orientation
  5. Failure to respond to diversity
  6. Excessive professionalism
  7. Detached from community & clients
  8. Competition
  9. Limited and inaccessible information
  10. Loss of our spiritual purpose
  11. Failure to engage those most directly affected

Professionalism versus democracy

Number six, “excessive professionalism,” resonated with me in particular youtube videos herunterladen chip. Wolff talks about how we’re quick to get a room full of “experts” to solve a problem when what we really need is a more democratic process. In other words, involve those most directly affected by the problem to identify root cause and generate potential solutions herunterladen. Is it messy? Sure, but it will help you arrive at the answers you’re looking for. Wolff says, “When we are facing serious community problems, shouldn’t we just get professionals to solve the problems and avoid the messy process called democracy mw3 kostenlose inhalte zum herunterladen erforderlich? The answer to this question is a resounding no.”

One of our interview attendees, Kim Fossey with Louisiana STEM Works, had this to add to our discussion afterwards:

“This was perhaps the most enjoyable webinar I have attended in some time yahoo music download kostenlos. The concerns for providing comprehensive services and achieving impact are right on as well as the six “common sense” principles.  My biggest takeaway was the need for applying more values-based discussion to our work and use of the six requirements for effective participation.  I see these both as missing –particularly in education-based reforms.  Thanks for a great webinar.  I plan to purchase the book and recommend it to others.”

In The Power of Collaborative Solutions, Wolff says he shares “the ‘highs’ of seeing coalitions gain momentum, attract and hold a solid membership, set a focused agenda, achieve results, gain early, small wins and reach significant changes in program policies and practices like download youtube. The book also covers the ‘lows’ when the opposition is fierce, the membership dissolves, our best plans collapse and we feel like giving up.” Find out more at www.tomwolff.com

CausePlanet members: Register for our next live author with Kari Dunn Saratovsky when we’ll discuss the why and how of Millennial engagement and the book she coauthored with Derrick Feldmann, Cause for Change, on Wed, Sep 25 at 11 a.m. CST.

Find out more about the book, The Power of Collaborative Solutions or our Page to Practice™ summary in our CausePlanet library for subscribers or the Summary Store.

See also:

Nonprofit Mergers & Alliances

 

 

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