BNET has a brief video on how managers should set SMART goals and be explicit in connecting the dots between employee’s goals and how they serve the big picture.
Smart stands for:
- S pecific
- M easurable
- A ction-oriented
- R ealistic
- T ime-bound
Archives for January 2010
Einstein on Simplicity
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
Good word. And a concept worth pondering: “intelligent fool.”
Building Your Organization's Vision
Here is the excellent article by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras on Building Your Company’s Vision, which is a great overall summary of their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
I regard Built to Last as one of the most foundational and important books that you can read on the topic of leading organizations.
Obscurity is not a Mark of Profundity
From If Aristotle Ran General Motors:
Some of the greatest wisdom in life is simple, but it is both profound and practical. Obscurity is not a mark of profundity, however many confused writers have hoped to bully us into believing otherwise. The medieval philosopher William of Ockham was right in his belief that we should never trust an answer less simple than one that will do the job perfectly well.
Why Kiva Works
Seth Godin has a good section in Meatball Sundae on how Kiva serves as a good example of the difference between an organization that is in sync with the nature of the web and one that isn’t.
He writes:
I attended an all-day brainstorming session with one of the oldest, best-known nonprofits in the country. They have a fancy web site, loaded with Flash features, tell-a-friend buttons, and a blog.
Last year, the site raised two million dollars. This year they want to do more.
With a mailing list of five hundred thousand e-mail accounts, this organization has demonstrated that they can extract money from people who sign up for “e-mail blasts.” And the stated goal of the group is to increase the size of the list by a factor of six, to three million. Then, using free stamps (e-mail), they can hammer this list to raise a lot of money for their good work.
Compare this organization to Kiva. Kiva is a brand-new [it was a few years ago, when Godin wrote this] organization that, after just a few months, generated nearly ten times as much traffic as the older group. And they are raising more in a month online than competition does in a year.
Is it because they have a better site?
Nope. It’s because they have a different sort of organization. They created a web-based nonprofit that could never even exist without the New Marketing. One group uses the web to advance its old agenda, while the other group is of and by and for the web.
One is focused on market share, on getting big by controlling the conversation. The other is into fashion, in creating stories that spread because people want to spread them.
And that’s the schism, the fundamental demarcation between the Old and the New.
One organization wants the New Marketing to help it grow a traditional mailing list so it can do fundraising and support a traditional organization.
The other (Kiva) is creating an organization that thrives on the New Marketing rather than fighting it.
Kiva works because the very nature of their organization requires the Web at the same time that their story is so friendly to those who use the web. Kiva connects funders (that would be you) with individuals in the developing world who can put a microloan to good use. Doing this in a world of stamps is almost impossible to consider. But doing it online plays to the strengths of the medium, and so, at least for now, the users of the medium embrace the sotry and spread the word.
Please note that I’m not insisting that everyone embrace these new techniques. All I’m arguing for is synchronization. Don’t use the tactics of one paradigm and the strategies of another and hope that you’ll get the best of both. You won’t.
After just a few minutes of conversation at the older nonprofit, one person realized, “So, if we embrace this approach, we don’t have to just change our web site — we’re going to have to change everything about our organization. Our mission, our structure, our decision making. . . . ” Exactly.
The Profit in Nonprofit
This is a good article on the story of Kiva from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Here’s the summary:
Kiva, the first online peer-to-peer microcredit marketplace, is one of the fastest-growing nonprofits in history. But its nonprofit status was not inevitable. Here’s why Kiva chose to be a 501(c)(3), what this tax status buys the organization, and how being a nonprofit poses challenges.
Swap Control for Accountability
This is from a Gallup Management Journal interview that I recently came across in some of my notes. It’s right on, and is applicable to all organizations of any type, not just government organizations (which is the immediate context):
GMJ: How can government begin engaging the minds of all its employees, managers included?
Mears: The answer begins with swapping control for accountability — and accountability requires ensuring that employees understand the outcomes that are expected of them. When employees understand desired outcomes and have simple metrics to track them, you have accountability.
Employees also should be empowered to think about better ways to reach those outcomes. They can experiment and make appropriate local improvements as long as outcomes are reached. This helps eliminate some of the busywork that builds up when people don’t understand the big picture. Accountability works better than control.
iPhone Suggestions
Andy Naselli recommends some apps and gives some suggestions for using your iPhone more efficiently.
Unrealized Projects
This is encouraging, from Seth Godin.
Workplace Socializing is Productive
Now there is a study to back up what everyone knows: the Gallup Management Journal reports on how workplace socializing actually increases productivity.