My Two Cents_08

What’s your best “guesstimate” as to the amount of raw work it’s going to take for us to beat CP? Any idea how you’d even express it?

I think it’s going to take more work than most of us would imagine. Way more than our organizations as they’re currently construed could possibly handle on their own. So let’s do something about it. 

Let’s figure out how to get dramatically more work done.

Jerry Hauser and Alison Green, co-authors of Managing to Change the World, say “effective management” is about “getting work done through other people.” What work are they talking about? Ultimately, all the discrete tasks and projects organizations do (or would like to do) in trying to fulfill their missions.

Good managers are good at delegating tasks and projects. We, i.e., the leaders of our organizations whose work revolves around CP, can start here. We need to become master delegators.

“If you can delegate it, you should delegate it.” How many of us operate by that rule? How many of us know which projects or tasks we should delegate to create the greatest organizational benefits?

If we’re to have bigger impact, we’ll need to know these things. The good news is that delegation has the attention of the big-time consultancies I’ve been talking about. I recommend these brief intros to the subject: 

• this Bridgespan piece about Hauser and Green’s work (take special note of their free tools for making it easier to delegate well) 

• this roughly 3-minute video introducing some interesting work done by Julian Birkenshaw (London School of Economics) and Jordan Cohen (PA Consulting) about effectively addressing “the work that matters.”

Next: To whom should you hand your work off?

My Two Cents_05B

I have to credit United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) for always fueling my fire. I literally get upset every time I visit its site.

I thought it would be helpful all the way 'round to start this section by recommending its Mission Driven Business consulting services, which the national office offers its affiliates and other nonprofits (outside the network) in areas such as finance, strategy, and leadership. Two would-be advantages of engaging MDB vs. one of the previously mentioned consultancies? I'd expect a higher level of understanding of what it's like to operate within the CP sphere. And -- at a lower cost. Probably much lower.

In true UCP fashion, however, online references to this offering haven’t been updated in years. Crawl the web the way I just did and you’ll get...

Crickets. 

Pathetic.

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Doing more with less and working smarter -- not than, but -- with the next guy will be dominant themes of this series. As I've written before, "Our CP community may very well be under-funded, under-appreciated, and under-other-things. But those of us in it don't have to be under-ambitious, under-clever, or under-hard-working." There are other, less-expensive ways to take advantage of the leading consultancies' stocks-in-trade. 

For examples, they write books and white papers. They host webinars. And I still like -- for tips and tools you can put into practice right away -- newsletters. (digital) I say you can't go too far wrong subscribing to these four (4) today: The Bridgespan Group's Knowledge Letter, TCC Group's E-News, FSG's eNewsletter, and The Management Fix by The Management Center.

*  *  *  *  *

Who are you gonna call, on the other hand, if you want to become a more effective special needs parent? Probably not the wise guys and gals I've been referencing. You could, however, get up to speed with David Allen and his Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. Mr. Allen is a management consultant and coach, and, since the publication of his first book in 2001, a "personal productivity guru". I'll have a lot more to say later about the personal productivity of the millions of us. For now, you may want to explore his company's various offerings @ gtd.com.

My Two Cents_05A

There are so many avenues for learning what the best and brightest management thinkers may have to teach us. Let me start with consultants and what they offer.

BTW: I’m no consultant myself, nor do I play one on YouTube. However, I do keep fairly close tabs on 'em -- like a political junkie in some ways -- and believe some are doing compelling, interesting, and promising work.

What do consultants do? Generally speaking, they:

• study how individuals and organizations address key challenges and opportunities 

• look for and help bring about success stories  

• rub elbows with top managers and academics

• create frameworks, tools, and techniques for others to use (to get the favorable results they seek).

We'd be foolish not to avail ourselves of the good ones' know-how and know-what.

Ideally, I’d like to see rich, vibrant, and ongoing exchanges between the CP and consultancy worlds. We should be clamoring to build relationships and to make connections, specifically with big-time, reputable firms that specialize in nonprofit management. If we want to get better faster, we should engage the services of a Bridgespan Group, FSG, The Management Center, or TCC Group. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Any could swoop in and help our organizations or multi-stakeholder networks adopt "better ways of doing." 

What’s to hold us back? Well, the cost for one. 

Consultants’ services come with high price tags attached. They go where the money is. And none of us seem to have it, which may explain why we don’t seem to be on their radar and vice versa.  I haven’t done an exhaustive study, but I've never come across a consultant's case study or white paper to the contrary, and I see very few even casual associations. (The Bridgespan Group “likes” The New York Stem Cell Foundation on Facebook. There's one.) 

So, what do we do? Just throw up our hands and say, “Oh well, too rich for our blood?"

Nope.

We learn from them in other ways.