Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

Jan

2012

12

Category:

Guest Post, Leadership, Transparency

Tags:

2 Comments

Learning Out Loud – Guest Post by Linda Wood – Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund

Note from Beth: One of the themes I’ve been exploring over the last few years related to networks is transparency.   We devoted a whole chapter to the topic in the Networked Nonprofit. In my next book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit”  my co-author KD Paine and I take a look at how you measure it.   First it requires understanding the definition.  Transparency is more than disclosure.  It includes participation in acquiring, distributing, and creating knowledge or what my colleagues at the OE Program at Packard have dubbed “Public Learning.”       Linda Wood, Senior Director of Leadership and Grantmaking, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, calls it “Learning Out Loud,” and has shared this reflection on one of the foundation’s programs.

“When you don’t know what you don’t know, you’re going to fall over yourself and make mistakes, and that’s what we were doing.” That’s the candid assessment of Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, in a new video from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.

We at the Haas, Jr. Fund asked Kate to share her experiences with our Flexible Leadership Award in this video because we knew it could benefit others to hear her story. To hear how starting in 2004, this well-respected but relatively small organization suddenly found itself at the forefront of the movement for marriage equality. How Kate and another leader at NCLR, Shannon Minter—two of the best legal and political minds around—struggled to address all the challenges and opportunities presented by the organization’s explosive growth. How through taking a deep breath and admitting what they didn’t know—and being willing to learn—NCLR has emerged stronger than ever.

The Fund established the Flexible Leadership Award program in 2005 to help our social change grantees cope with the twin challenges of organizational growth and movement leadership. Since that time, the program has served more than 50 nonprofits, helping them to strengthen everything from fundraising capacity to communications to staffing and board development.

Let’s be blunt here: investing in leadership can be a tough sell. For one thing, when you’re scrambling to address pressing needs every day, it can be hard to see how taking the time to broaden your leadership base, assess strengths and weaknesses, and develop a plan for change is anything but a luxury. As Kate says in the video, “The last thing I wanted to deal with was leadership. We were just doing the work.”

There’s another reason organizations may be hesitant to invest in leadership: it means having to actually admit you are facing challenges. Too often we mistake a steely resolve for leadership. Leaders are supposed to just get things done, whatever the personal or organizational cost. And certainly, in today’s tough funding climate, it can seem foolish to admit to anyone—least of all funders—what you don’t know or what you do need help with.

NCLR took that risk. And in so doing, Kate and Shannon strengthened the organization by cultivating leadership in existing staff and bringing in new staff. They learned how to share responsibility and developed processes for decision-making. They developed a senior leadership team with increased capacity for fundraising and communications. Now, Kate says, she knows she doesn’t have to make tough decisions on her own, and she doesn’t even try. Says Shannon in the video, “we are exponentially more productive than before we learned these lessons.”
As foundations, we wield a lot of power. We can use that power to intimidate our grantees into thinking they need to have all the right answers – or we can encourage our grantees to tell us when they are struggling.
I hope our new video – and the detailed information accompanying it – will help other foundations take steps towards greater transparency and learning out loud.
Because in the end, by welcoming the kind of candor that Kate and Shannon exhibit, we can all learn right along with them.

 

– Linda Wood is senior director of Leadership and Grantmaking at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a family foundation based in San Francisco that is dedicated to providing fundamental rights and opportunities for all people.

 

Jan

2012

09

Category:

Leadership, Measurement, Movement Building, Networks

Tags:

7 Comments

Metrics for Building, Scaling, and Funding Social Movements

Investing in movements or networks for social change is a strategy that some funders are using.  But, how do you measure the results?

Marino Morino, who wrote “Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity” pointed me to this recent report, “Transactions, Transformations, Translations:  Metrics That Matter for Building, Scaling and Funding Social Movements” by Manual Paster, Jennifer Ito, and Rachel Rosner with the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and funded by the Ford Foundation.   The report addresses metrics for success for investing in broad field social movements or networked approaches to social change.  The report is written for funders and those on the ground doing the work in the context of networks, although it doesn’t go deep into practice.

The report captures a conundrum in measuring social change movements or networked approaches.    Outcomes for “wicked problems” can be easily counted – policies passed, housing the homeless, educating children.  But there are less tangible results such as “we changed the frame” or “we shifted members’ consciousness” which for grassroots organizers on the ground view as the vibrancy of the network .   The report lays out some new metrics for movement building – that are paths to the more easily counted tangible results and where the unit of analysis is the movement or network, not an organization.

As the report points out,  movement organizers are grappling with big questions.  It is less about how to raise funds for their organizations (although that’s important) but focused on the big picture:   What is the long-term change that we want to see?  What is needed to achieve it?  What roles do different organizations play?    The report identifies metrics to measure progress around this these questions – it asks and answers – “What exactly are the right metrics for today?

“Amazing large numbers of members, staging marches, and winning campaigns – all these remain important measures of a successfully growing movement.  There are, however, other equally important aspects that are often missed in the numbers alone, including the fundamental changes that a leader, organization, or community experiences through their involvement in organizing and advocacy.”

The report suggests that one needs metrics that represent two sides:

Transactions: These are markers, both internal (number of members) and external  (voter turnout).    While the data is not always to collect, such measures tend to be easier to track because they are more tangible.    But they only tell part of the story and skip over the richness of experience and momentum that can be a prelude to social change.

Transformations: These are important, but often “invisible” work.   They should how people, organizations, and movements have been altered through the collective efforts.   They can also show how societal or political views have been shifted.   These metrics are more qualitative in nature which makes them more difficult to define, capture, and track.

The report argues for using a combination of metrics to tell the fuller story of a movement’s success.  It goes on to define both transaction and transformation metrics in different categories for movement or network building which serves as the meat of the report.

  • Community organizing
  • Civic engagement
  • Leadership development
  • Alliance building
  • Campaigns
  • Research and policy analysis
  • Communications and framing
  • Media
  • Organizational Development
  • Movement Building

One of the most useful parts of the report is a two-page spread that illustrates sample metrics for transformations and transactions for each of these categories or a “metrics tool kit.”   The metrics are not intended to be prescriptive, but the reports recommends that movements need to co-create their metrics so the metrics transcend the organization.   For this to happen, organizations need to the space to begin to work together to build the common language and frameworks for these metrics to hold up against different approaches and models.

There is a category for traditional and social media and a couple of paragraphs in the report.    That’s exactly what the book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” that I wrote with KD Paine and will publish later this year is about it.

The report included a section on recommendations, including building the metrics tool box and building movement capacity to use metrics.   One of the resources that is mentioned in the book is a Progressive Technology Project’s database technology set up to track this work.   Here’s what the report said about capacity building:

Of course, metrics tools only work if you have skilled craftspeople who can use them effectively.   The presence of such metrics mavens varies across the landscape of movement organizations.    Metrics and measurements need to exist at every level of organization, but it makes a different when someone is in charge and helps organizations stay on track.   While community organizers often find themselves pressed to take the time to assess in light of daily crises and immediate problems, movement builders have learned the power of reflection and refreshing.  Metrics can help, and building them into organizational culture can be facilitated by having someone with responsibilities to make it happen – and to steep others in the new practices.

We spent a chapter or two talking about exactly how to put this into practice because is this a very important point.

The point that the report makes and I agree is that measurement needs to value both transformations and transactions – and that requires new attitudes and approaches.

Anyone out there using metrics to measure movements?

Update:  Special thanks to Victoria Vrana who shared the report with Mario who shared it with me … a networked approach to sharing of networked metrics!

Oct

2010

13

Category:

Leadership, Networked Nonprofit, Organizational Culture

Tags:

6 Comments

The Networked Nonprofit Board

The last chapter of the Networked Nonprofit is on networked governance.  We thought this would be an easy part of the book to write – all we’d have to do is find examples of how boards online, opening up decisionmaking to outside influences.   There were no examples – so the last chapter of the book is speculative, based on the best thinking of the people who have looked at networked governance.  I dreamed up some scenarios of boards and social media in practice.

As part of my work as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation and coaching grantees on becoming a Networked Nonprofit and using social media effectively,  I’ve also been talking to boards including the museum board above.   We had an amazing conversation about the ideas in the Networked Nonprofit around social culture, transparency, and simplicity.

When we moved from the theory to the on the ground nuts and bolts,   we took look at what the organization was doing on Facebook and the ladder of engagement.  I did ask how many were using Facebook, and almost everyone on this board raised their hands.   (And if I asked who was a member of the baby boom generation or beyond, I”m sure most would have raised their hands as well.)   The next question, “How many of you have “liked” the museum’s Facebook Page?”   Not too many hands went up.

While you may find strangers on Facebook who will climb the ladder of love and go from liking your page to being your organization’s best evangelist,  should your board on the top rung as well?   This prompted a very productive discussion about how this board could use social media to support the organization.

I think you have to crawl before you fly.  So, this is a great first step.  In addition a social media policy,  education and training, maybe a live demo showing how social media works and why it is important.   But getting to networked governance  governance is a big step.

The OnLine blog published an intriguing post called “Social Media and Accountability” where Zachary Wales imagined a couple examples where social media might be injected into governance of a nonprofit.  Not many examples of  live tweeting board meeting minutes or nominating committees looking for a slate of officers on LinkedIN or getting feedback for strategic plans We’re not seeing these governance tasks infused with social media as a  common practice in our sector.   Sounds like science fiction doesn’t it?

How can boards effectively incorporate the use of the social networks and social media to govern?

Resources:
Great Governance:  How Board Members Can Use Social Media by Beth Kanter
Blogging and Tweeting An Open Board Meeting by Beth Kanter
Catching the Wave:  Twitter at a Packard Foundation Board Meeting by Beth Kanter
Social Media in the Board Room by Beth Kanter
Three Ways To Prevent Brain Drain from Nonprofit Boards by Smart Blog

Jun

2010

02

Category:

Guest Post, Leadership, Networks, Organizational Culture

Tags:

8 Comments

How can we prepare organizational leaders to work in a networked world?

Photo by Eugene Eric Kim

Guest post by Patti Anklam

Guest blogger, Patti Anklam, author of  Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World, explores the role of organizational leadership in a network world. This post is part of a series of articles exploring topics related to network leadership hosted by Leadership for a New Era or LNE, a collaborative research initiative launched by the Leadership Learning Community (http://leadershiplearning.org/) in 2009.  LNE focuses on promoting leadership approaches that are more inclusive, networked and collective.

The principal task of preparing organizational leaders is to provide them with the language and tools they need to be able to discern and describe network activity, the insights they need to understand network structure, and an appreciation for the vital yet often subtle tasks of managing a network’s context. When leaders can take the network view, or (as we like to say) look through the network lens, they can distinguish the ways in which networks – both formal and informal – are supporting or detracting from the work at hand; they can also identify and leverage the people who are key brokers or connectors in the network or work to stimulate or weave the network to increase connections supporting knowledge flow, innovation, and social capital.

We have always had, and will generally always need, two forms of networks in organizations: the formal and the informal. The formal organization is represented by the (usually) hierarchical organization structure. The links, or ties, in these structures are reporting relationships. They represent commitments and obligations that go in both directions. Formal structures are essential for processes and tasks that require discipline, measurement, and decision-making. This formal organization provides the illusion of control; however it is the informal organization, the organization between the lines and in the white spaces that supports the scaffolding of the hierarchy. Leadership in a networked world implies being able to distinguish the formal and the informal and to understand how to balance the two.

Leaders also need to work at three levels of network: the personal, the organizational, and the ecosystem in which the organization lives.

Without a strong and diverse personal network, a leader will lack the ability to influence decisions, be unable to bring expertise into the organization as needed, and may not have the emotional resources required to thrive in a complex environment. Leaders need to learn how to cultivate their personal networks, and know when and how to manage the time required to maintain these networks.

The organizational network is best served by a leader who can manage the “net work of leadership:” that is, they create the capacity in others to understand and work in networks and they know how to steward the network by creating conditions for networks to emerge and succeed. These include intentional “weaving” of organizations by developing joint project work, initiating linkages between organizations, creating incentives for people to collaborate across boundaries, and so on.

Successful leaders know that the organization does not succeed or fail on its own, that it is part of an ecosystem of groups and organization that extend well past the boundaries of the corporate hierarchy or even its formal partnership agreements. This value network, or web of formal and informal relationships that must be managed, is the third level of network a leader needs to understand and articulate.

At all three levels of network, and across the formal/informal dimension, leaders need to learn to leverage technology. Social media in its many forms – blogs, Twitter, social networking sites, wikis, etc. – can strengthen existing networks as well as stimulate new networks. Collaboration sites and communication services enable networks to circle the globe, enhancing personal and organizational networks with channels for information flow, listening, and feedback that were never before possible.

This is what it means to live in a networked world. There are tools that leaders can learn to use that will help them see the structure of networks as well as models for network stewardship that emerging from practice and evolving through technology. It is among the greatest challenges that leaders face; harnessing this knowledge also provides some of the greatest opportunities for innovation, learning, and sustainability.

What other elements should we consider when preparing organizational leaders to work in a networked world?  Please share your ideas!