May 16, 2010 | Read Time: 5 minutes
A problem well defined is a problem half solved, in the words of the adage. But how do you get the people in your nonprofit organization both to agree on the critical problems your organization hopes to solve and to agree on the priorities it will take to deal with them?
When everyone is clear on the answers to those questions, it’s easier to make a compelling case for money. It’s also easier for senior managers to agree on the most effective way to allocate people’s time and the organization’s financial resources. “Holes”—in terms of roles and skills—are more readily revealed, as are vague or misleading reporting structures.
Perhaps most important, at a time of tight resources, it’s easier to say no to any proposals, programs, or other activities that are not essential.
Yet for most nonprofit groups, universal agreement is rare. Even among highly focused organizations, it is possible for the organization’s leaders to shift priorities without the rest of the organization’s knowledge. The reasons are as diverse as budget pressures, donors’ desires, shifting beneficiary needs, or other influences.
One way to figure how much your organization’s priorities are shared by everyone is to conduct a simple experiment: At the next meeting of your top team, ask everyone to write down the organization’s top priorities for the next one to two years—no conversations, just write them down. If there’s significant convergence in the answers, that’s good news. But your group would be among the few nonprofit organizations to achieve such a result.
If your management team lists widely varying priorities, that might mean that you need to engage in strategic planning. But not necessarily. In our experience, you are likely to be facing one of three situations, each of which requires a different approach.
First, you might have a strategic plan with well-defined priorities, but those priorities might not have been clearly communicated to everyone in the organization. Or perhaps you’ve had turnover in the management team and the newer members need to understand prior thinking.
To get everyone on the same page, leaders must size the effort to the challenge. For example, you might be able to simply work with a few individuals to get them up to speed. Perhaps taking the management team away from the office for a day or two for focused discussions would help refresh and refine the team’s understanding of the strategy and key priorities and set in motion a communication process to others in the organization.
Second, you may have a good strategy, but with changing times, such as the economic downturn, you may need to modify or clarify the goals and specific priorities for the next few years. This scenario would probably involve a series of off-site meetings involving the management team and possibly key board members or other stakeholders. You may also need some analysis of the current situation to confirm that the fundamental strategy is sound and to help guide the setting of goals and priorities for the next few years.
Finally, if it has been some time since you have developed a strategic plan, or if the environment has changed, then it might well be time to update your strategy and set new priorities.
That is what Dan Cardinali, president of the organization Communities In Schools did in 2004 when he engaged the whole organization in a strategic-planning effort.
Mr. Cardinali realized that true alignment comes when everyone participates in shaping the priorities. Indeed, while it might have been more expedient to set new goals for the organization by himself, or with feedback from a small group of people, Mr. Cardinali felt that an inclusive strategic-planning process would both encourage an earlier and deeper level of understanding and engagement throughout the organization and result in a plan that reflected a true synthesis of top-down and bottom-up points of view.
He included the management team and all staff members at the Communities in Schools national office, directors of its state and regional offices, directors of local affiliates, and board members of the organization. As Mr. Cardinali recently reflected, “Looking back at what we’ve accomplished since 2004, it’s clear that the complexity of the process was worth the effort,” he says.
“Our strategy is stronger because it reflects knowledge from all parts of this organization about the way things get done on the ground. Our organization as a whole is stronger because our constituencies understand why we have the priorities we do and that they accurately reflect the needs of the people we serve.”
James O’S Morton, chief executive of the YMCA of Greater Springfield (Mass.) is another nonprofit leader who focuses on getting everyone in the organization to follow a common path.
Mr. Morton was fortunate in that he became CEO shortly after a new five-year strategic plan was completed and approved by the board. (Mr. Morton, in fact, had participated on the strategic-development committee to represent the views of Springfield residents.)
As he explains, “For everything we do, my job is to make sure that it rings true with and is connected with one of the strategies set out in our plan. If it isn’t a part of the strategic plan, then I don’t do it and I don’t move forward with it.”
So when he was asked if his Y was interested in teaching English as a second language, something he himself used to do, he instead offered to lease space at the Y for such a class but not to teach it.
Mr. Morton emphasizes that “I’m trying to be very intentional in the work that we do so that we don’t try to do too much.” Most nonprofit leaders agree with Mr. Morton’s observation that such deliberate focus is a critical element of success for today’s nonprofit organizations. Indeed, alignment on priorities was deemed a must in a recent Bridgespan organizational diagnostic survey of the leaders and staff members of more than 200 nonprofit organizations.
But it is not an easy task. Setting priorities requires leaders to synthesize multiple valid and important points of view and convincingly articulate how the organization’s vision can be achieved in concrete terms.
It is not a one-off proposition. Constant examination in light of changing circumstances and monitoring performance in achieving top priorities are essential. But, ultimately, persuading everyone to push together in unison is the best way to do what nonprofit groups were designed to do: tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
