A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 11.3.A.1.A

Who are we? What are we?

David Hurst's questions above are questions I've been asking indirectly since the beginning of this series. That should make trying to answer 'em here-and-now easier (I'll be able to reference my earlier posts) but -- they're more complicated than they look. They're abstruse. And there's no real easy way around it.

Note: It'd be hard to separate "who" UCP is from "what" it is, so I'll be lumping and addressing the two together.

United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) is an international nonprofit charitable organization...

And a whole lot more.

Of my twenty-eight posts to date, "A Tale...4.0" (dealing with UCP's mission, values,  and vision statements) is the only one that directly explores who and what UCP is. Otherwise, my focus has been mostly on the organization's digital forays -- to the exclusion of all kinds of things, including "biggies" like these below that have to be a part of any serious who-and-what discussion:

BASIC STUFF

UCP is a large, complex, organization that has operating expenses, pays rent, hosts events, owns properties, invests, hires and fires, and answers to a Board of Trustees. It's hungry for resources. Its reach exceeds its grasp. It depends to an unknown-by-me extent on government funding...

THE AFFILIATE NETWORK DESERVES MORE OF MY ATTENTION

From the '10-'11 Annual Report: "The mission of United Cerebral Palsy is to advance the independence, productivity and full citizenship of people with disabilities through an affiliate network." From somewhere else: "The UCP national office in Washington, DC supports the affiliate network."

Does this mean that supporting its affiliate network is National's job number one? Maybe. But I'm not sure. In fact, I don't know how to even try to make sense of the relationship. I just have questions:

• There are individual orgs in the affiliate network with relatively small budgets (as little as $125,000) and others with much larger (up to $100 million) budgets. Do they receive equal attention from National? To what extent do the affiliates depend on it? 

• Are the affiliates getting their monies' worth in for their dues? 

• How's the communication and idea-sharing quality between the affiliates and National? What about between affiliates? 

• In what ways is National driving the bus and leading the charge? Who's pushing hardest to realize the Life Without Limits vision?

TOP MANAGEMENT

Usually the relationships among top managers provide a "line of sight" into the mood or climate of an organization. I don't know much about those things, on either the national or the affiliate level. My only observation? It looks like there's been some slight senior-staff turnover at National in the past three-or-so years, whereas, it's my impression is that there are a lot of affiliate Executive Directors who've been at their jobs for quite a while, dating back even to the '60s.

And as for how UCP's top managers actually go about their work, I haven't many clues. Are they able to make and keep commitments? What are their biases? How do they arrive at decisions? Do they have the right skills for their particular times and places? Are they coasting in their jobs? Inquiring minds want to know.

You'd have to be more "in their midst" than I am to be able to answer those last questions thoughtfully. Otherwise, all you're left to work with is what's been PR-filtered, i.e., what the organization's decided to say about itself after it's had a chance to deliberate* -- which is only part of the story. The inside scoop is needed, too. The one that hasn't been smoothed over for prime time.

Why is it important to get to the bottom of all o' this in the first place?

The philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote that "Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control and self-definition is telling stories, and, more particularly, concocting and controlling the story we tell others -- and ourselves -- about who we are." This applies to organizations, too, for the same purposes.

Thus, an organization's narrative center of gravity is super-significant. It provides clues to all who come in contact with it: how they should make sense of who they are; what their role is; and how they should behave. Making meaning / writing that narrative, in Mr. Hurst's opinion, is "the primary role of leadership." 

*  *  *  *  *

I started out knowing next to nothing about UCP and I know next to nothing about it today. I'm surprised every time I snoop around online. I didn't know 'til recently, for example, that between '08-'10 there was a lot of intraorganizational blogging going on. That tells me a little about who UCP is (an organization that tried that experiment, i.e., that has that experience under its belt) -- and a lot about what UCP knows and what it can do.

That's the topic of the next section.

*David Hurst calls them "thin, text-based communications," communications that have been de-contextualized.