What's Best Next

You are here: Home / Archives for 5 - Industries

Massachusetts Vote Could Bring an End to the Health Reform Bill

by

Very interesting turn of events, which could prevent the very wrong-headed health reform bill from being able to pass:

Voter disenchantment in liberal Massachusetts with President Barack Obama’s policies has turned a Senate election into a nail-biter that could imperil U.S. healthcare reform.

Democrats envisioned a smooth passing of the baton in the January 19 special election to fill the seat of the late Edward Kennedy, a political giant who died of brain cancer in August after holding the seat for 46 years.

A victory would maintain the Democrats’ 60-seat Senate majority, allowing them to overcome Republican procedural hurdles that could block reform of the $2.5 trillion healthcare sector, Obama’s top legislative priority.

Instead, some polls say the race between State Attorney-General Martha Coakley, 56, and her Republican opponent, State Senator Scott Brown, is too close to call.

“The closeness of the race reflects deep voter dissatisfaction with how the president and the congressional majority are dealing with vital matters,” including healthcare and the war on terror, said Mark Landy, a political science professor at Boston College.

For my view on health reform, see my posts The Worst Bill Ever and How Health Savings Accounts–Not New Laws–Are the Key to Health Reform.

Why Pixar's Movies are So Good: Company Culture

by

A great post at 37 Signals from a while back. Here’s the first paragraph:

More on why Pixar’s movies are so much better than the competition: According to “Pixar Rules — Secrets of a Blockbuster Company,” the company has created an incredible work environment that keeps employees happy and fulfilled. The result: “A tightknit company of long-term collaborators who stick together, learn from one another, and strive to improve with every production.”

Review Once or Twice a Year What You’ve Actually Done

by

Peter Drucker, from Managing the Nonprofit Organization:

All the people I’ve known who have grown review once or twice a year what they have actually done, which part of that work makes sense, and what they should concentrate on.

I’ve been in consulting for almost fifty years now and I’ve learned to sit down with myself for two weeks in August and review my work over the past year. First, where have I made an impact? Where do my clients need me–not just want me but need me? Then, where have I been wasting their time and mine? Where should I concentrate next year so as not only to give my best but also to get the most out of it?

I’m not saying that I always follow my own plan. Very often something comes in over the transom and I forget all my good intentions. But so far as I have become a better and more effective consultant and have gotten more and more personally out of consulting, it’s been because of this practice of focusing on where I can really make a difference.

Only by focusing effort in a thoughtful and organized way can a non-profit executive move to the big step in self-development: how to move beyond simply aligning his or her vision with that of the organization to making that personal vision productive.

Executives who make a really special contribution enable the organization to see itself as having a bigger mission than the one it has inherited. To expand both the organization and the people within it in this way, the top executive must ask the key questions of himself — the questions I ask myself each August. Indeed, each member of the staff must do it, and each volunteer. And the senior people must sit down regularly with each other and consider the questions together.

Business as Missions in the Wall Street Journal

by

This was a good article from last month on business as missions in the Wall Street Journal. Here are three interesting excerpts:

Faith-at-work movements have been popular at least since the 1857 businessmen’s revival in New York City, in which noon-hour prayer meetings were so full of the city’s professionals that many businesses closed during the gatherings. But churches have typically kept business people at a distance, needing their money but questioning their spiritual depth. With the business as mission movement, that has changed. In 2004, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism, founded by Billy Graham, featured a track on business as mission. At a recent missionary conference in Hong Kong, Doug Seebeck says mission leaders apologized to the business people present. They had been guilty of asking for their money while keeping them in the foyer of the church, outside of the sanctuary.

….

Now Mr. Seebeck says, “Business is the greatest hope for the world’s poor.”

….

While advanced economies question capitalism, Christians who work in developing countries see how essential business is to provide jobs and health care, build communities and even minister to souls. For these business owners, a desk job overseas has become a full-time ministry.

It's the End of the Year: Give

by

My local Christian radio station was asking for money yesterday.

There are two ways to look at that. The first would be to say: “Stop asking. You just had your share-a-ton two months ago. You’ve received enough from the people of this city, and if it wasn’t not enough to make your budget, deal with it.”

This way looks at society as doing the radio station a favor to let it be on the air. Sure, we’ll help you a little bit when it’s convenient, but please don’t ask for too much. We have other things going on.

Looking at things in this way would be wrong. Very, very wrong.

The second way to look at this says: “This station is worthy of being supported. Giving to this cause is not simply a discretionary act; the station deserves it’s support. It ought to be the case that many people give.”

This second way to look at things is the right way. For it realizes that we are not the ones who are doing the radio station a favor by “letting it exist if we give,” but rather the radio station is doing us a favor.

It is doing us a favor in two senses. First, it is doing us a favor simply by operating and proclaiming it’s message — even if we ourselves are not the primary listeners. It’s existence serves the public good. Second, it is doing us a favor by not insisting on its rights.

It is not insisting on its rights because it doesn’t require payment, but instead humbly asks for support, without creating a sense of obligation. I realize that there wouldn’t be a practical way to require payment to listen to a radio station. But to focus on that would be to miss my point.

What I mean is this: If you go to Target, you have to pay for what you get. So also if you go to Applebee’s or Amazon. They have a right to charge, and they do.

But when you benefit from a non-profit (either directly, in the case of a radio station, or indirectly, because it is an avenue through which we can help make the world a better place), you often don’t have to pay for what you get. This can have the side effect of making it look like what they do is not as worthy of payment as what Target or Amazon or Applebee’s does. It makes it look like they exist simply by virtue of the sheer grace of our society and a few generous donors, whereas for-profits deserve to exist (assuming people are willing to purchase their goods at a profit).

But, as is often the case, the appearances here are upside down.

It is not that “payment optional” means “less worthy to exist” and “payment required” means “we are the greatest thing since sliced bread — people pay for what we offer.”

“Payment optional” may in fact be a humble indication, in God’s design, that says: “The work this organization is doing is so important that people aren’t charged for it. The fact that the organization has to depend upon gifts is not a sign that it is less important, but is actually an indication that what they are doing is even more worthy of existing than many of the things that you pay for every day.”

This is not to diminish the great work that business accomplishes. Business serves society and is a high calling. It is a fundamental component not only of how society operates, but also for how we need to address many long-term societal problems (such as poverty in the developing world).

My point here is simply this: don’t conclude from the humble, simple requests that so many non-profits are making this time of year into thinking that non-profits are merely “nice-to-haves” that we do the favor of keeping in existence. Instead, realize that the fact that they are dependent upon gifts is, perhaps, precisely the mark that they are doing great work, perhaps some of the most important in the world.

Which means: your opportunity to give is an opportunity to be a part of something great. Take this opportunity at the end of the year to give.

And, since it’s also the end of the decade, maybe even give a little more.

What's Not Best: Hospital Billing

by

We’ve been getting the bills now from when we had our third baby a month ago. The “nursery” charge alone was $2,000. He was in the hospital nursery for a total of about 20 minutes.

Grateful for health insurance — but of course that is also one of the reasons that such exorbitant bills exist.

Recommended Books for Non-Profit Leaders

by

I’ll be doing some posts this week and next recommending some of the top books I’ve read on various subjects. First off are books on managing non-profit organizations.

Here I have three primary recommendations:

1. Managing the Nonprofit Organization, by Peter Drucker

2. Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant

3. Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins

Get Out There and Try Something!

by

A good word from Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies:

Just as you don’t learn anything in science without experimenting, you don’t learn anything in business without trying, failing, and trying again. The trick, and it’s a tough one, is a common cultural understanding of what kind of failure is okay and what kind leads to disaster. But don’t kid yourself. No amount of analysis, especially market research, will lead to true innovation.

Or, as Jim Collins puts it, “try a lot of stuff and keep what works.” That is, branch and prune:

The idea is simple: If you add enough branches to a tree (variation) and intelligently prune the deadwood (selection), then you’ll likely evolve into a collection of healthy branches well positioned to prosper in an ever-changing environment. (Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, 146).

And this doesn’t just apply to your business or organization. It applies to the rest of your life as well. Try stuff. Make things happen. Build on what works.

My Interview with Tim Challies

by

I recently did an interview for Tim Challies’ blog on Desiring God, where my role is senior director of strategy.

I talk about how DG began, our core purpose, our philosophy of being here to serve rather than for how we can benefit, why we post everything online for free, and some thoughts on organizational effectiveness.

In regards to the latter, one of the things I talk about is how an organization should navigate the future in light of the fact that it cannot be known with clarity — and therefore detailed strategic blueprints become outdated almost right away. I discuss three ways that we do this:

  • Evolutionary progress, which happens incrementally and organically (rather than according to a predetermined plan) through the principle of “try a lot of stuff and keep what works.”
  • Building on the strengths of the staff.
  • Intentional and planned progress, through the concept of BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals) that paint in broad strokes the envisioned future.

The core idea here is to combine incremental progress, which progresses organically in response to the environment and needs as you experience them, with intentional and bold goals (BHAGs) that paint in broad strokes but do not blueprint things out in detail. This provides intentionality about the future without attempting to script everything out, so that the organization can remain flexible according to reality as it actually is while still progressing toward a bold envisioned future.

There is a great quote in Built to Last on how Jack Welch utilized both of these concepts effectively at GE, which I think explains the concept very well:

Instead of directing a business according to a detailed … strategic plan, Welch believed in setting only a few clear, overarching goals. Then, on an ad hoc basis, his people were free to seize any opportunities they saw to further those goals. This crystallized in his mind after reading Johannes von Moltke, a nineteenth century Prussian general influenced by the renowned military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, who argued that detailed plans usually fail, because circumstances inevitably change.