The dandelion versus the banyan.

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Many seedlings, one trunk.

We all know the dandelion. It starts as a nice yellow flower and, as it matures, sprouts thousands of seeds. It expands by spreading those seeds all across the yard. After the seeds disperse, new dandelions are spread far and wide. The original stalk withers away.

The banyan tree is a different. It starts as one trunk and, as it matures, spreads an incredible, lush canopy. It expands by dropping seedlings from the canopy. As the seedlings take root, the canopy, in turn, continues to grow. New trunks are formed and yet the original trunk continues to expand. Everything is connected to the same canopy.  

Great organizational strategy is like a banyan: Operational initiatives, programs, and tactics come from an overarching set of shared principles.  

Avoid the dandelion approach. When you start spreading things in every direction, you risk losing what made you cohesive in the first place. Ultimately there won't be anything left. 

The Way Out

This article was previously posted on Event 360's blog. Read more here.   

It has been a hectic year at Event 360. We’ve launched three new projects and a new training series – each with its own set of accomplishments and challenges. Further, we have seen this theme of challenge transcend our own company as we’ve partnered with one of our key clients to right-size a major project in response to their changing needs. And most importantly and closest to home, we’ve been tragically reminded of our mission through the loss of one of our team members to cancer.

All in all, it has been one of those quarters that seems to have stretched on for months. Our team is resolute but tired. We’re trying to keep our bearings in a changing landscape.  

Most of us have been through times like these at various points in our lives – times when what we think we know is rapidly replaced by a new order. Some of us are better at recalibrating than others. The ones who can adapt to a new deck of cards are crucial for the team, because they help lead the way for others. At the same time, during periods of intense change it is more important than ever to have people who are still holding onto the old deck; people who remember where we are and how we got there. In times of change we need equal parts respect for the past and willingness to innovate into the future. 

I am a huge fan of quotes and over the years I’ve collected thousands of them. Perhaps it is the poor person’s wisdom; maybe I’m too simple for philosophy and too distracted for genuine literature. Nevertheless, there’s something comforting and inspiring to me about advice that is distilled into a sentence.

One of my favorites is a line from Robert Frost’s A Servant of Servants: “The best way out is always through.” We can worry, and complain, and stress ourselves to pieces. Or we can stick out our chins and keep walking. The way out is just ahead.

It is tempting to think that life is like a video game, or perhaps a television show. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just change the channel? But there isn’t an “off” button for existence. We can all be grateful for that.

We’ve had a hectic quarter, but we’re walking on, and in so doing I’m reminded of why I started walking in the first place.

Over the next few months I look forward to sharing more about what we’ve learned. Some of the themes will be familiar, but I think others will be surprising – and helpful.

Until then, my best to you and yours for a wonderful summer event season.

All the way to zero.

It has been a rewarding and busy quarter for me. Already this year I've had quite a number of intense, immersive meetings with our nonprofit clients.

Growth has been the central theme of every meeting. There's optimism in the air again, and groups are looking out of the bunker window-slit to try to decide what to do next.

Our engagements include a review of current growth forecasts (along with, eventually, a heavy bit of re-engineering of those forecasts). When I pull up an organization's spreadsheet, I ​almost always see that some number -- 4%, 8%, 12% -- has been added to last year's results as "baseline growth." When I ask where that number came from, I invariably hear that it came from the C-suite. The more frustrated staff will roll their eyes; the ones plucky enough to play along will say, "Our normal expectation is growth." I've had this experience a number of times this year. 

​This will sound a bit harsh for a Friday, so bear with me: The normal state of things is not growth. It is decline. My skin will not get better as I age; my 401K will not automatically double every five years; my Betamax video recorder will not be cutting edge technology indefinitely. 

Even worse, it is very possible to take things all the way to zero. It happens quite often, actually. Remember Bear Stearns? Palm? Hostess? Blockbuster? Small errors can create massive problems. Small issues can mushroom into monumental failures. My house could end up being worth less than my mortgage. 

We've all lived through a massive, five-year economic example that demolition is quicker and more definitive than construction. And yet I fear we may have missed the lesson. 

The natural state of your program is decay. This is especially true in fundraising, where  participant and donor retention might be 30% or less. In other words, we need to replenish 70% or more of our constituents just to stay even. Making no changes to your fundraising program -- or worse, pulling funds and staff from it -- will speed the deterioration. 

This is a great time for fundraising because as the economy picks up the results of the entire sector will pick up. But please don't let that convince you that you can put things on autopilot. "Organic growth" is seldom organic and almost never comes from just riding a wave. Growth comes from hustle, ongoing investment, and constant innovation. When I hear nonprofits say they are going to "take a conservative growth strategy" I get a nervous twinge, because it is usually code for "we're going to wait and hope." 

Waiting and hoping is not conservative -- it is incredibly risky, because it will almost certainly accelerate your decline. And it is a patently irresponsible strategy.​ It's time to get out of the bunker. Investment is your most sensible approach. 

If you're game, I'm going to bravely take on this topic – and a few others – in thirty minutes or less at next week's Run-Walk-Ride Fundraising Conference. I hope to see you there. 

Livestrong shows us how it's done.

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Everyone knows that Livestrong​ hasn't had the easiest go of it lately. And so I was interested to see what I'd find at last night's Livestrong Assembly reception and dinner in Chicago. (I was actually quite touched to be invited – we've worked with Livestrong in the past, but it's been a few years.)

They nailed it. Doug Ulman, Livestrong's CEO, was open, honest, realistic about the six months they've had, and optimistic about the future. Everyone I met looked humble and a bit tired, but I didn't sense one bit of defensiveness or defeatism. And the crowd was fired up.

​Sadly, we've seen lots of examples of nonprofit brand problems recently. Livestrong's response to theirs is a case study for how to respond gracefully and confidently. Well done.

Being Big.

This probably doesn't need to be said, but here goes: Being big is not the same thing as being great. This applies to most things and all organizations, and certainly applies to all nonprofit organizations. If your primary rationale for support is that you are the largest -- or the oldest -- nonprofit in sector X, then it is time to rethink your value proposition. If your primary goal is to get to Y size, then it is time to find a goal that actually relates to impact rather than appearances. 

Corollary: I have noticed that there is an inverse relationship between organizational size and organizational passion. This is not a universal rule, but it does appear with notable frequency. 

There's nothing wrong with growing, and there's nothing wrong with large organizations. But size is not the purpose of anything we strive to do. Impact is. The challenge is to endeavor to be great and to grow while doing it -- while not breaking the things that make you great in the process.

What I've learned about business after ten years in business.

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Somehow, unbelievably, Event 360 – the company that I founded with two of my most loyal friends – turned ten years old today. It is amazing to me, and for one of the few times in my life I find myself at a loss for words. 

I woke up this morning early so I could head downtown for a meeting. It took me a few minutes to remember what day it was, but it hit me while I was fumbling around the coffee maker. When I remembered, my first thought was to call a few people to say "thanks" and "happy birthday." My second thought was about my long to-do list. And maybe that's the sum total of my advice: Recognize the people you work with, and keep plugging away. 

Frankly, I feel like I should write a long, thoughtful post about all the hard lessons I've learned. But as I sit down to type, I realize I don't have that list. My list is pretty short. 

Here's what I've learned about business after ten years in business:

• Love what you do.
• Love the people you do it with.

That's it.

Wait! I know it sounds trite, so before you move on let me offer a bit more exposition. When I write "love," I don't mean it as the kind of passive, reactive, "I hope I fall into it" love that we often think will come and seek us out in our lives. I mean LOVE in the sense of a powerful, active choice we each can decide to make every day. 

To all would-be business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, and change agents, let me tell you this straight up: What you're trying to do is going to be hard. If it weren't, you wouldn't need to do it; someone would have already solved the problem you're trying to solve, or created the product you're trying to create. Nope, let's be honest and say, wow – it's going to be hard.

And so I've learned to make an ongoing, passionate, persistent, proactive choice to fully engage with what I do. You have to choose to love your work, particularly during the challenging times. Otherwise you're going to be employed at best and miserable at worst. You're too good to just be busy. Decide to be passionate.

More importantly, you have to choose to love the people you do it with, because without them you're sunk. I know they have their faults, but let's be honest, you have plenty too. Nothing, zero, zilch gets done alone. If you can set yourself up to be the least important person in the organization, then you've achieved one of the great accomplishments of leadership. 

I'm grateful for what I do and who I do it with. I wish you the same. It's onwards and upwards from here.

Just another seashell?

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Shells.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend our family took a short trip to the beach. The kids were getting restless, Jeanie and I were running out of amusements, and we all needed some fresh air.

We parked the car and walked 200 feet or so over the dunes to the ocean. After a few feet, one of our kids spotted a shell sitting on the path. "Look! A shell! Cool!" Everyone gathered around to see this unique and wonderful ornament of the beach. It was a bit dirty and cracked in half, but it was the first shell of the trip. The kids ran down the path, excited to see what else they would find.

As we approached the shore, they began to realize that the sand they were walking on was entirely covered in shells. Shells were literally everywhere.

As this realization dawned on them, guess what happened? The kids lost all interest in most of the shells. Oh, they spent 30 minutes or so combing the shore, but they passed over hundreds if not thousands of shells far prettier than the one they had discovered on the path. The only shells that attracted their attention were the ones that looked markedly different than the rest.  

The episode stuck with me. Does it speak to our inability to see the precious right in front of us? Or how easily the novel becomes boring? Or how quickly we can take beauty for granted?

It probably speaks to all of those things. But I can't help but think that it is a quick lesson in strategy, too. Our organizations spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with everyone else, when most of the time imitation is the quickest way to blend into the beach. If you want to get picked up, you have to be willing to be different.

An overused narrative.

Perhaps it is the fact that the 2012 presidential campaign is underway in earnest, along with its ongoing torrent of analysts parsing every word. Or perhaps it is because I find myself reading more and more business blogs that are really pseudo-marketing blogs. Or maybe it is simply that my subconscious vocabulary overflow meter has finally been triggered.

Whatever the reason, I find myself mechanically tearing clumps of hair out of my head whenever I hear what has to be the most abused, overused word of the year: “Narrative.”

We are told that the Romney campaign has to find a “narrative that resonates with Middle America,” while the Obama campaign needs to find a “narrative to respond to the Romney campaign.” Marketing leaders are looking for a “narrative that resonates with consumers.” The Olympics provided us with a “rich narrative of personal achievement.”

I finally reached my personal limit when I started seeing the word pop up in the nonprofit space. “We have to find a mission narrative that donors will respond to.” Honestly, when I hear nonprofit executives talking about a “mission narrative,” I want to scream. 

“Narrative” is a word for our times. It sounds grown-up. Sophisticated. But it is also, basically, meaningless. Is a narrative a story? A theme? A conversation? A pitch? A lie? It is a word that offers little but self-importance. It is a word designed to be deliberately vague. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not sure where “narratives” fit in politics, business, or particularly, the nonprofit world. Campaigns need platforms — a worldview that is supported by policies, not stories. Businesses need strategies — unique, defensible positions supported by operational activities that fit together. And nonprofits need a mission — a specific way of changing the world. 

It is important to be able to talk about how you can help change the world. But it is much more important to actually have a way to change the world, and then to go about doing it. It could be that your problems in fundraising (or marketing or selling or operating or campaigning) have less to do with the way you’re telling the story and more to do with the actual subject matter. Are you making a difference? Does your organization actually help people, directly and impactfully? If the answer is yes, we can find a way to powerfully tell the story. If the answer is no, then no amount of marketing, writing, editing, or creative manipulation will help you grow. 

Leave the narratives to the authors. The world needs help — what are you doing about it?

Complexity does not equal sophistication.

We live in an era that encourages complexity. Are your “channels integrated”? Are your “constituents networked”? Did you make sure that you’ve “leveraged multi-level communications”? Is your staff “incentivized for program output”? Is your mission “oriented towards impact”?

In the modern world there are an abundance of ways to add complexity to your organization. It is increasingly easy to append layers and layers to your technique, communications, program, and mission. But complexity does not equal sophistication. Unless you have a rare clarity of vision and dogged focus, you will find that too many layers create a great big giant muddled mess.

Years ago, I read an interview with pianist and composer David Foster. He related a lesson from producer Quincy Jones:

He made me play a song for him once with one finger. I was playing it with a lot of flash, and he said, “Wait a minute. I just want to hear the song.” I’d taper it out and cool it more and more, but finally he grabbed one finger and said, “Play me the song with this finger!” Now, that’s hard to do. You can play Moon River with one finger, no problem. But try and play some funk tune, with no melody and no real content, with one finger. You can’t do it.

I love the mission of charity:water. When the describe themselves, they say: “charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.” Boom. That’s it. Simple. That’s not to say that their approach isn’t driven, sophisticated, and thoughtful. It’s all of that. It is also elegant. It is simple.

Complex is easy to do. Sophisticated isn’t. It starts with stripping everything down to the melody and saying to yourself, would I hum this tune?

Perspectives on 2012: Health Problems Will Increasingly Become Operational Ones

This article is the second in a short series of musings about 2012, its opportunities and challenges, and how to best meet them.

Healthcare has been one of the most widely debated topics of the last several years. What I find interesting is that most of the debate has centered around — and I think been largely driven by — healthcare legislation rather than health. Google Trends (a good research tool and also a fantastically potent time sink) shows that interest in “healthcare” peaked in March 2010, coinciding with the passage of the healthcare reform bill. Interest has tapered off a bit since then, but I’m sure healthcare will return to the national stage as the presidential race picks up speed. 

But what about our focus on health? Ironically, the more important question of “how to help people live healthier lives” has been largely obscured by debate on “what to do about healthcare.” I’m not sure whether this says more about our tendency to get sucked into political theater or our reluctance to focus on root causes. Or perhaps it just speaks to the difficulty in tackling what seem to be insurmountable problems. 

What I am sure is that this is a shame, because the imperative to help each other (and ourselves) live healthier has never been more pressing. While the last twenty years have brought progress on many fronts, from reductions in smoking to premature death to infant mortality, during the same time frame there has been a 137% increase in what is now one of our country’s top health problems: obesity. (See the bottom of this article for full references, including a link to the enlightening and sobering America’s Health Rankings site from the United Health Foundation.) 

This is notable for two reasons. The first, of course, is that obesity and its resultant health complications, such as diabetes and heart disease, are hugely urgent health issues. One in three American adults is considered obese, and according to a study published last year in the American Journal of Preventable Medicine, the overall health burden of obesity now outweighs the health burden of smoking. 

The second reason is only starting to become apparent. Obesity is beginning to impact operational decisions throughout our landscape, sometimes literally. Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story about the Coast Guard’s decision to change regulations regarding average weight. In short, in response to the rising prevalence of obesity the USCG has raised its Assumed Average Weight Per Person from 160 pounds to 185 pounds. This means, among other things, that ferries, cruise ships, and even recreational boaters will face new restrictions on the number of passengers they can carry.

“Who cares?” you say. “I don’t own a boat.” Well, neither do I. But this is one example of how our country’s deteriorating health — and its increasing waistline — are going to become issues of not only health but of operations, marketing, finance, legality, and customer service. Are our organizations prepared for that? Is our infrastructure ready? How about our attitudes?

The worst part is that obesity, like smoking, is preventable. That’s not to say “easily preventable” — far from it. Anyone who has ever tried to lose five pounds can hopefully only empathize with someone trying to lose 20, let alone 50 or 100. Losing weight takes incredible determination and support, which means that over the coming year we’ve got to make progress towards extending and democratizing the tools to fight obesity. It is a problem that literally remakes people; in 2012 it will increasingly become a dynamic that remakes our country.

Add to this the growing problems of stress, mental illness, depression, and sleep deprivation, and you have quite a handful of work for us to tackle. 

For a start, we’ll need as much discussion about “health” as we’ve had about “healthcare.” What can each of us do today to improve the health of all of our stakeholders?

Talk to the Hand

As I write this, I am watching Ohio State begin to get very humiliated by a Gators team that looks like it might lead the NFC were it a pro team. In any event, the new Office Depot ad just came on. Have you seen it?

A pair of people are at work and one is staring at a very cluttered desk. He says, “I need to clean this up, but I could really use a hand.” Presto! An office depot box appears and a hand pops out of it, ready to guide the way to a pristine office. Cut to a scene where the now happy and peppy guy walks around Office Depot, pushing a cart in which sits the hand-in-a-box, pointing at file folders and plastic bins like some kind of dismembered zombie intern.

The effect on screen is not so much creepy as it is just plain dumb.

This ad can only be called a blatant rip-off of the Staples “Easy Button” campaign. I mean, it is just a total rip-off. Even worse, it is stupid. The “Easy Button” idea is pretty funny, and Staples has done a great job with it. But to take that idea, steal it, and somehow decide to blend it with the Addams Family, can only be called a colossal mistake.

Anyway, I decided to write a post about it because it reminds me of two things:

• Groups of presumably smart people (e.g., the ad agency for and the leadership team of Office Depot) can work themselves into such groupthink that they talk themselves into believing that dumb ideas are good; and
• The path to a bad idea often leads through an earlier good one, and sometimes leadership is about knowing when to stop walking down the path and say, “let’s try something else.”

In the meantime, will someone give Office Depot a hand?