All organizations face tough decisions. Certainly, the jobs of most leaders revolve around decisions. In a previous Tools issue, we gave you Peter Brinckerhoff‘s decision-tree from his book, Nonprofit Stewardship: A Better Way to Lead Your Mission-Based Organization.
This issue of Tools focuses on one aspect of decision-making: involving the right people, including when and how to involve outsiders.
Every decision can’t be made by committee
You can’t make every decision by committee. You can’t make every decision by consensus. You can’t make every decision alone. So, what is the appropriate consultation? The following advice is adapted from pages 34-36 of Nonprofit Stewardship.
Consultation is a balance challenge. You want the insights and perspective of others, yet you don’t want decisions to be undermined by endless discussion. As Max DePree says in his wonderful book Leading Without Power, nonprofits far too often “seek acceptance rather than agreement.” DePree means that reliance on consensus subjects the organization to a jury model of decision making in which everyone must be convinced before the organization can do anything. That’s a 500-pound weight around the neck of any manager.
Stewards must make decisions and be held responsible for the results of those decisions. One of the benefits of working in a nonprofit environment is that you can call on lots of people to help you in your decision making, depending on the situation.
When should the wise steward consult with others?
A successful organization will use a variety of people resources as it pursues its mission, including staff, board members, and nongoverning volunteers, all of whom are insiders with regard to the organization. But people who are outside the organization have a perspective that can be vital to good decision making. They are also less prone to inherent conflicts of interest than insiders.
When to consult with insiders
- Decisions on borrowing, new programs, purchases, budgeting, or policies should involve the board of directors and committee structure. The idea of a board is to provide outside, objective checks and balances on your staff work.
- Involve staff at every level in decision making to get feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Ask, consult, and put staff from all levels of the organization on your internal committees.
When to consult with outsiders
- Consult your community and your service recipients about marketing activities. Only by asking these people what they want can you provide services in a manner that will ensure wide use and mission outcomes. Whether through surveys, focus groups, or informal information gathering, asking questions is a very real engine for organizational improvement and efficient and effective mission provision.
- Use outside consultation for decisions on annual audit, legal advice, or keeping your personnel policies current. For example, if you have to lay off some staff you have a conflict of interest. Presumably you know these people and their families, and you may be tempted to take extraordinary, and sometimes organizationally unwise, measures to keep them employed. Similarly a board member who has a relative served by the organization may not bring complete objectivity to discussions about the services received by that family member. Neither of these situations is unusual, nor are they inherently bad. But an outsider can help provide a less emotional, more detached analysis.
Ways to use outsiders
1. Convene groups of stakeholders to collect information and perspectives that can help you make decisions. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter says that what savvy leaders really need to do is: “think across borders and through boundaries, almost as if turning a kaleidoscope to examine the same basic set of circumstances in a hundred different new ways. The kaleidoscope is a symbol of ever-changing patterns and endless new possibilities, powered by human imagination. Leaders who want to stimulate more innovation within their companies need to look beyond the organization’s walls. It’s not reality that’s fixed, its our view of reality that is fixed.”
2. Add non-board members to certain board committees to help with decisions. For example, find people who are interested in a particular issue, such as finance or fundraising, and have them give their time and energy, but spare them the responsibility and larger commitment of being on the board. (Added benefit: some of these people may go on to become board members as they build their personal investment in the organization’s mission.)
3. Use “targeted volunteers” — people with special connections or expertise required for only a limited time. For example, you need a survey of service recipients, but you don’t know how to do it. You find a local recruit to work just on this project for a limited time. Note: Never use this technique if the work product might result in a liability — for example, don’t recruit a volunteer for legal work, accounting, architectural drawings, or a review of your personnel policies. For those kinds of needs, be prepared to pay.
4. Hire consultants to provide technical assistance — to fill a short-term need such as conducting focus groups, conducting an audit, or doing a site analysis, or to provide organization development assistance such as facilitating planning processes, decisions, and change.
Outsiders can provide expertise and perspective. In some cases they are paid, in others they are volunteers. Always be looking to bring resources from both inside and outside the organization to bear on your problems and challenges.
This article first appeared in the December 2008 edition of Fieldstone’s Tools You Can Use e-newsletter, and is reprinted with permission.
