April 2010 – Page 9 – Management Library

April 13, 2010February 9, 2023

The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communications – Part 2

A blackboard showing an incorrect math calculation | 1 += 3

7. Don’t Listen to Your Stakeholders

Make sure that all your decisions are based on your best thinking alone. After all, how would your clients/customers, employees, referral sources, investors, industry leaders or other stakeholders’ feedback be at all useful to determining how to communicate with them?

8. Assume That Truth Will Triumph over All

You have the facts on your side, by golly, and you know the American public will eventually come around and realize that. Disregard the proven concept that perception is as damaging as reality — sometimes more so.

9. Address Only Issues and Ignore Feelings

* The green goo which spilled on our property is absolutely harmless to humans.

* Our development plans are all in accordance with appropriate regulations.

* The lawsuit is totally without merit.

So what if people are scared? Angry? You’re not a psychologist…right?

10. Make Only Written Statements

Face it, it’s a lot easier to communicate via written statements only. No fear of looking or sounding foolish. Less chance of being misquoted. Sure, it’s impersonal and some people think it means you’re hiding and afraid, but you know they’re wrong and that’s what’s important.

11. Use “Best Guess” Methods of Assessing Damage

“Oh my God, we’re the front page (negative) story, we’re ruined!” Congratulations — you may have just made a mountain out of a molehill….OK, maybe you only made a small building out of a molehill. See item 7, above, for the best source of information on the real impact of a crisis.

12. Do the Same Thing Over and Over Again Expecting Different Results

The last time you had negative news coverage you just ignored media calls, perhaps at the advice of legal counsel or simply because you felt that no matter what you said, the media would get it wrong. The result was a lot of concern amongst all of your audiences, internal and external, and the aftermath took quite a while to fade away.

So, the next time you have a crisis, you’re going to do the same thing, right? Because “stuff happens” and you can’t improve the situation by attempting to improve communications… can you?

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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April 12, 2010April 29, 2022

Does Your Organization Have A Director of Development Who Isn’t….??

So many non-profit organizations are hiring Directors of Development without really knowing/understanding what “development” is supposed to be about and how a DOD is supposed to function.

For many organizations, the Director of Development is the person hired to write the grant proposals, or create relationships with corporations, or create/run the event that’s going to raise the big bucks.

The misunderstanding is the belief that “Director of Development” equates to “income generator.” So many NPOs hire DODs with the belief that they’re getting someone who will raise the needed funds; and, the sad thing is that so many NPOs hire DODs so that organizational leadership (board and other senior staff) won’t have to be involved in (or even think about) fundraising.

Hire a person to raise the money, and the amount of money that can be raised is limited by the time/effort that one person is willing/able to give to the process.

Hire a person to create and/or direct a development program and there’s no theoretical limit to how much money can be raised … considering the person’s level of experience and expertise.

A Director of Development creates and/or plans-for-and-directs a development program … an effort that incorporates many (if not all) of the elements of the development process: mass solicitation (mail or telephone), grants (government, foundation and corporate), events, major gifts, bequests, donor cultivation, etc….

How many organizations do you know of that have a Director of Development who isn’t !!??

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Have a question about starting or expanding your fundraising? Email me at AskDCA@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll work to answer your question.

April 12, 2010February 17, 2022

How to Start Strategic Planning: Plan for a Plan – Part 4 of 5

Two businesswomen planning a strategy in an office

In the previous post (Part 3), we covered questions 7-9 of the 15 questions to address in the “plan for a plan.” This post (Part 4) explains questions 10-12.

10. What Materials Will Be Needed?

For example, think about:

Materials (books about strategic planning, flipcharts, markers, etc.)
Equipment (overhead projectors, flipchart stands, white boards, etc.)
Facilities (conference rooms, retreat centers, etc.)

11. What Terms/Titles Will You Use?

For example:

Will the top-level priorities be called “goals” and subordinate priorities (associated with the goals) be called “objectives”?
Will the objectives, and the responsibilities and deadlines to achieve them be called “action plans”?
Will you refer to “mission”, “vision” and “values” or are there more culturally compatible terms?
What other terms are unique to your culture and organization that you want to use in the planning process, e.g., “trust advisor” rather than facilitator or “team members” rather than planners?

12. How Will You Train the Planners?

Far too often, people jump in to the planning process, expecting to learn about the process along the way. That’s like handing someone a map that the person has never seen before, not saying a word to them about the trip or how to get there, and then expecting the person to efficiently navigate you to your destination. Participants in the planning should get an overview of:

The basic purposes of the strategic planning process.
The planning model being used.
The schedule to produce the plan.
Any special terms being used in the planning and their interpretations in the process.
How decisions will be made during the planning process.
Their role in the process, along with the role of the Planning Committee.

An upcoming post (Part 5) will explain questions 13-15.

What do you think about the “plan for a plan” in the planning process?

April 12, 2010August 14, 2022

Offering Your Gifts in Service

Two-work-colleagues-having-a-work-conversation

I usually start my workshops by asking people why they are interested in the topic of spirituality and work, and have them say what kind of work they do. One woman said she was a bus driver as well as a Reiki Master. When I asked her about that unusual combination she said it was a perfect fit for her. She could drive around the town sending Reiki (healing energy) to people in her community and get paid to do it! I loved this example of someone understanding her gifts and purpose and finding ways to offer her gifts to others in service.

Here’s another examples of how someone shared her gifts and passion in service. I met a woman some years ago who had worked as a waitress at Cracker Barrel. She told me the story of one night that was really busy and the wait staff was flying all over the floor trying to keep up. Everyone was harassed and orders were arriving late. It was turning into a miserable night. She noticed how stressed out everyone was feeling and how chaotic it was getting and decided to do something about it. After taking a few deep breaths, she started saying to herself “I’m a Light, I’m a Light, I’m a Light”. She said that to herself several dozen times to help bring herself back to a place of balance and composure.

After she started feeling more grounded and peaceful she then focused her energy on her co-workers and the customers. She again repeated “I’m a Light” only this time she envisioned that she was sending that Light out to everyone in the room. Her night went so much smoother after that. As some point, still in the middle of the busy rush, one of her customers commented how peaceful she looked and that she seemed to have a sort of glow around her. He asked what she was doing. They struck up a short conversation about related topics and she realized the man understood what she was doing.

After things died down, she went back to talk to him. He asked her why she was working as a waitress. He challenged her to use her gifts in some other way to do other kinds of healing work. From that conversation she started thinking about how she could come to work every day and work from that place of peace and balance. She eventually got trained in energy healing work and moved to the town next to mine to start her business. You never know what you will discover when you stay true to your gifts, purpose and passion.

Please share a story from your life when you’ve stayed in touch with your purpose and was able to offer your gifts for others. Was there a transformative moment when you realized you could use your gifts to serve a larger purpose or were truly living your life purpose in your work?

When we use our gifts in alignment with our passion and purpose, that offering is done as spiritual service.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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April 12, 2010March 13, 2023

Customer Service Basics

The first question you should ask yourself…How do you measure customer satisfaction?

If you are measuring by the # of complaints you are or are not receiving, you are in trouble. Not everybody bothers to take the time to tell you about his/her horrible experience. If you are asking your customers if they are satisfied, you are telling them that their satisfaction matters.

There are many different ways to ask: post-purchase and post-support surveys, enclosures in the monthly invoice, follow-up phone calls, and quarterly or annual surveys. The right method depends on your business and your customer base in customer service skills. Try different ways. Just do it.

4 Tenets For Your Customer Service Mission

A few basic rules about customer service:

Honesty is the Best Policy. Integrity

Be honest and own up to your mistakes. Communicate what you plan to do to change or prevent the same mistake from happening again. Don’t be fooled into believing that a regular ‘mea culpa’ will get you off the hook. At some point, the plan to fix the problem must take effect because customer service is important always!

Break Glass in Case of Fire. Response Time

The best tact is to quickly get on the phone with the customer to explain your company’s mistake and accept their customer feedback. Don’t rely on email for this communication if it can be done quickly one on one. If you are communicating to a large customer base then email is certainly the fastest and most effective way to quickly notify your customers that you are aware of the problem. Frequent updates if there is a protracted issue and a brief overview of how you will prevent it from happening in the future will give your customers confidence that you are aware of the customer impact as the customer service manager with the customer support team.

Keeping it Real. Set a Realistic Expectations

Customers who have been promised something that isn’t delivered as promised are far more frustrated and disappointed than if they are notified at the outset they won’t have it sooner than later. In other words, under-promise and over-deliver is the best policy. This may take some arm wrestling with other departments who want to take a feature or product to market before it is ready. Set the expectations correctly internally as to what the fallout may be so everyone understands the impact on customer satisfaction and ultimately customer retention with the excellent service you provide.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Everyone in your company should love your customers. Without them, you have no company. This doesn’t mean you won’t have difficult customers who will push the limits and try everyone’s patience. But if you don’t have a company philosophy to respect and appreciate your customers for great customer service, the opposite tone will infect customer interactions from all departments specifically with the customer service professionals or the customer service managers. All departments, customer-facing or not, should care about customer satisfaction and good customer service.

From Gandhi, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”

Use these 4 tenets as the foundation for your excellent customer service mission. What do you do to ensure your customers are treated as your most important asset with your exceptional service? When will you say why customer service important?

April 12, 2010January 26, 2022

The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communications – Part 1

All organizations are vulnerable to crises. You can’t serve any population without being subjected to situations involving lawsuits, accusations of impropriety, sudden changes in ownership or management, and other volatile situations on which your stakeholders — and the media that serves them — often focus.

The cheapest way to turn experience into future profits is to learn from others’ mistakes. With that in mind, I hope that the following examples of inappropriate crisis communications policies, culled from real-life situations, will provide a tongue-in-cheek guide about what NOT to do when your organization is faced with a crisis.

To ensure that your crisis will flourish and grow, you should:

1. Play Ostrich

Hope that no one learns about it. Cater to whoever is advising you to say nothing, do nothing. Assume you’ll have time to react when and if necessary, with little or no preparation time. And while you’re playing ostrich, with your head buried firmly in the sand, don’t think about the part that’s still hanging out.

2. Only Start Work on a Potential Crisis Situation after It’s Public

This is closely related to item 1, of course. Even if you have decided you won’t play ostrich, you can still foster your developing crisis by deciding not to do any advance preparation. Before the situation becomes public, you still have some proactive options available. You could, for example, thrash out and even test some planned key messages, but that would probably mean that you will communicate promptly and credibly when the crisis breaks publicly, and you don’t want to do that, do you? So, in order to allow your crisis to gain a strong foothold in the public’s mind, make sure you address all issues from a defensive posture — something much easier to do when you don’t plan ahead. Shoot from the hip, and give off the cuff, unrehearsed remarks.

3. Let Your Reputation Speak for You

Two words: Arthur Andersen.

4. Treat the Media Like the Enemy

By all means, tell a reporter that you think he/she has done such a bad job of reporting on you that you’ll never talk to him/her again. Or badmouth him/her in a public forum. Send nasty emails. Then sit back and have a good time while:

* The reporter gets angry and directs that energy into REALLY going after your organization.

* The reporter laughs at what he/she sees as validation that you’re really up to no good in some way.

5. Get Stuck in Reaction Mode Versus Getting Proactive

A negative story suddenly breaks about your organization, quoting various sources. You respond with a statement. There’s a follow-up story. You make another statement. Suddenly you have a public debate, a lose/lose situation. Good work! Instead of looking look at methods which could turn the situation into one where you initiate activity that precipitates news coverage, putting you in the driver’s seat and letting others react to what you say, you continue to look as if you’re the guilty party defending yourself.

6. Use Language Your Audience Doesn’t Understand

Jargon and arcane acronyms are but two of the ways you can be sure to confuse your audiences, a surefire way to make most crises worse. Let’s check out a few of these taken- from-real-situations gems::

* I’m proud that my business is ISO 9000 certified.

* The rate went up 10 basis points.

* We’re considering development of a SNFF or a CCRC.

* We ask that you submit exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.

* The material has less than 0.65 ppm benzene as measured by the TCLP.

To the average member of the public, and to most of the media who serve them other than specialists in a particular subject, the general reaction to such statements is “HUH?”

(to be continued)

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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April 11, 2010August 14, 2022

As a Consultant, What’s Your Blindside?

A businesswoman having a meeting with a consultant

Watch the following situation occur in conversations among consultants.

Many consultants place extreme value on people’s feelings, beliefs and perceptions. That’s their natural “lens” on organizations. Many of them are from fields of psychology, human resources and coaching. In my experience, they often conclude their clients have problems primarily with, for example, interpersonal conflicts, emotional intelligence and authenticity. It seems this group has grown substantially. Maybe because of the many consultant trainings that focus almost exclusively on the “human” side of things, with very little, if any, attention to the “business” topics. Also, because we’re all human — maybe many of us believe we’re already experts at consulting in this area, too.

In contrast, are the consultants who highly value strategies, structures, plans and policies. That’s their natural lens. Many of them have extensive experience in management. They might conclude that their clients have problems primarily with, for example, strategic planning, organizational design and workflow. (Unfortunately, this is the “business” side of things that seems so lifeless and icky to the other type of consultants.)

Very seasoned consultants have learned to look at organizations through both lens. One of the most useful resources to explain these perspectives is the book, Reframing Organizations by Bolman and Deal. The authors explain how there can be very different perspectives among researchers, writers, educators, consultants and members of organizations.

I highly encourage consultants, especially those who have complete disregard of either lens, to read the book. We consultants – and especially our clients – will be much better off.

Understand Your Preferred “Lens” Through Which You View Organizations

All About Consulting – Types, Skills and Approaches

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

April 11, 2010May 21, 2022

Calculating ROI

(This post has been moved to https://staging.management.org/trng_dev/evaluate/evaluate.htm#roi.)

April 10, 2010February 17, 2022

How to Start Strategic Planning: Plan for a Plan – Part 3 of 5

In the previous post (Part 2), we covered questions 4-6 of the 15 questions to address in the “plan for a plan.” This post explains questions 7-9.

7. What’s Your Schedule for Developing the Plan?

Too many organizations do planning by gathering planners into one retreat where they tweak wording on the mission statement and brainstorm fantastic ideas. Too often, that generates a plan that’s full of fantasies with little grounding in reality. Take time to do it right.

Usually, the best time to start strategic planning is near the middle of your fiscal year, so you can produce an updated annual budget in time for the start of the next fiscal year.
If the purpose of your plan primarily is to verify or expand products, then take time to do some basic market research – to hear from consumers. That could add several weeks or months to the schedule to complete the plan, but it’s critical. Otherwise, your plan could build “a beautiful ladder, but on the wrong roof.”
It’s often better to have several short meetings between periods of research, rather than one long meeting for planning that involves little external research at all.
For small organizations, aim to have planning done in several weeks or at most 2-3 months.

8. Who Will Be Involved? How? When?

The contents of the plan are determined in large part by who takes part in planning. Also, the people involved often learn a great deal about the organization. (In Part 1, we talked about who should be on your Planning Committee.) In the overall process, involve:

Those with authority to make decisions – and this should include your Board members.
Those who will primarily be responsible for implementing the plan. This is critical.
People who are knowledgeable about products and services. They ground your plan and make it real.
Someone to champion the process – to keep up the spirits of the planners. Planning can be tedious, especially when strategizing or talking about how to achieve goals.
As much as possible, involve some stakeholders, including some customers, funders and collaborators. Involve them especially when establishing goals about products and services.

9. Will You Need an Outside Facilitator?

Get an outside facilitator if:

You’ve not done strategic planning before.
Your last plan was not implemented.
People struggle to come to consensus.
People believe an outside facilitator will help planners be more open and honest during their participation.
Planners want an objective perspective on their situation.
(A note about facilitators – don’t require your facilitator to know a lot about your industry, products and services. You’re better to have an expert in planning who knows little about your organization, than the other way around.)

The next post will share questions 10-12 of the 15 questions to address in the plan for a plan.

What do you think?

April 10, 2010February 17, 2022

10 Practices for Successful Board/CEO “Strategic Partnership” – Part 2 of 2

Young business professional presenting to the CEO

In the post, Part 1, we reviewed the first 5 practices. This post is a continuation from that post, and reviews the remaining 5 practices.

6. Ensure strategic plan that includes action plans

The action plan part of an overall strategic plan specifies who is going to do what and by when in order to achieve the more top-level goals in the plan. Too often, strategic plans stop short of producing action plans. Yet, one of the biggest reasons for conflict in the workplace is confusion about roles in the organization. Action plans can help greatly to clarify the working relationship between Board members and their CEO.

7. CEO should participate in certain Board committees

The CEO and other managers can provide great value as members of various Board committees, especially those focused on finances, planning, public relations and human resources. Other committees, such as compensation, audit and governance are best staffed entirely by Board members.

8. CEO should provide information to members before meetings

Some CEOs have learned that one of the best ways to incapacitate a Board is by giving members new materials during a Board meeting, so that members are quickly overwhelmed and confused. As a result, members often end up agreeing with whatever the CEO suggests. Seasoned CEOs share materials with members well before Board meetings.

9. CEO and Board Chair mutually develop Board meeting agenda

Far too often, the CEO develops the agenda. This practice can inadvertently cultivate yet more Board dependence on the CEO – a Board that is not effective. The agenda drives what Board members work on. It it’s not on the agenda, Board members often don’t know about it. The Board Chair and CEO should each draft a version of the agenda and then combine them into the final agenda. Each topic should have a time limit for discussion, debate and decision. If members haven’t addressed the topic within that time, then delegate it and move to the next topic.

10. Annually evaluate the performance of the CEO

Board members often don’t evaluate the CEO unless the CEO is not performing well. Then the evaluation is used as some form of punishment. This can lead to a lawsuit for discrimination. There should always be Board-approved personnel policies that, in part, guide how employees (the CEO is an employee) are hired, evaluate and fired. A fair and equitable performance evaluation of the CEO can greatly clarify mutual expectations and enhance the quality of the working relationship between the Board members and CEO.

What do you think?