Art and Science or Art and Process?

Art and science. Combining the creative right brain and the logical left brain. According to Jim Collins, maybe we need to call it "Art and Process."

In the April '09 issue of Inc., the magazine for entrepreneurs, Collins says that creating better processes is more important than building a better "mousetrap." That's something I learned the hard way in my first sales job.

Way back in the day, I started peddling computer systems for a little know CAD company out of New York. They had a great, innovative system for designing and laying out printed circuit boards. But our business practices - our processes - made it tough to work with customers. It was another "learning experience" for me.

A year later, I began work for a CAD / CAE company out of California. They had a pretty good mousetrap, but they really understood how to make it easy for the user. Their business practices were very customer friendly. They got their processes right. Lots of happy, productive customers meant that seven years later, I lead the nation in sales for that company.

Are you trying to build a perfect mousetrap at your nonprofit? Or are you more focused on making what you already have work really well?

There's always room for growth, but sometimes you've got to go with what you've got and make all those wheels spin together. It really helps if everyone is spinning their wheels in the same direction for the same ultimate goal.

Not entirely unlike cyclists in a paceline. Imagine - working together for the common good. Going further and faster with less effort. What a quaint idea.

If you're personally spinning those wheels, it's often hard to see beyond the crowd. If you're a director or manager of any type, you really need to look at the entire group relationship - and its relationships with other groups.

Creating better processes is not just an exercise in logic. It probably means digesting lots of data and finding a way to visualize it simply. Use your left brain to gather the data and your right brain to display it. Now you've got your whole brain working to improve your processes.

Imagine coordinating air traffic around the world. You have to deal with people, weather, machinery, and even the rising and setting sun. Thanks to a God's eye view from a NOAA satellite, here is global air traffic over a 24 hour period.



Your problems may be a little less complex. But if you can get a good view from 150 feet or 150 miles, you can really develop a sense of what you're trying to solve. That video from space is a thing of incredible beauty with an amazing display of dynamic information. It puts it all in perspective. The right and left sides of the brain are working as one.

Can you put your nonprofit and your partners in perspective? Do the processes in your organization need a healthy dose of BOTH art and science to make them all work well together?

Who's on Your Bus?

Voltaire said "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Collins said that "good is the enemy of great."

Most of you know of Jim Collins, management consultant, teacher, author, and rock climber. His books include Built to Last (1994) and Good to Great (2001). In the latter, he studied 11 companies that made the leap from being merely good to being truly great. Their performance greatly exceeded that of their peers and resulted in sustainably extraordinary results for at least 15 years.

Out of his 11 outstanding performers in 2001, two are pretty iffy right now. Circuit City, struggling to remain profitable, is closing 155 stores and laying off 17% of workforce. Fannie Mae was recently placed into conservatorship.

But the rest, Abbott, Gillette (purchased by Proctor and Gamble in 2005), Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris (now a part of Altria Group), Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo, are at least hanging in there during these turbulent economic times. Getting it right on 9 out of 11 is not a bad grade especially in today's economy. The guy seems to know what he's talking about.

Back in the day - when times were good (2005) - Collins wrote an excellent monograph for those of us in the nonprofit world. Entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors, he reemphasized principles that distinguish good (or mediocre) organizations from great ones. Note that he's not talking about business practices. He is talking about disciplines that benefit all organizations.

Today, in the nonprofit world, I believe one of his points is especially important. It's about getting the right people on the bus.

Unless you're living on another planet, you've already looked at your income and expense projections for the coming twelve months. You've undoubtedly looked at the sad prospect of making cuts. This is stewardship 101.

The tough choices get down to decisions on cutting programs or services (which will hurt your mission) or cutting staff (which is your most expensive cost). This is not a good time for anyone, but it is a vital time to ensure you have the right people on the bus, sitting in the right seats.

Nonprofits are often harder to reorganize than businesses for more complex relationship and emotional reasons. How do you tell an employee who's also a donor or church/auxiliary member that their performance is not good enough? What's the ripple effect among other volunteers if you eliminate a position or bring in a replacement volunteer?

Chances are you have some long-time, very nice, barely competent employees. Can you imagine not having that big smile and big heart around every day? But what if that wonderful person is not carrying the load? Or actually hurting the mission?

The bigger question is: during a recession, can you afford the luxury - the outreach to someone who's taking up a seat on the bus? This is the time when you have to be doing more with less. When the team has to be pulling together. When the paceline has to be working together to go further and faster with less effort.

Nonprofits are nearly always challenged by efficiency. This very difficult time may be the very best time to gently let someone off the bus, or move them to a seat they can share with someone else.

Please tell me that I don't sound like Dwight K. Schrute.

Collins concludes with some simple reminders: "The right people can often attract money, but money by itself can never attract the right people. Money is a commodity; talent is not. Time and talent can often compensate for lack of money, but money cannot ever compensate for lack of the right people."

What a remarkable opportunity exists now to strengthen your team for the long haul.

Brobdingnagian Vision

It's easier to call it "BV."

Brobdingnag is that imaginary land that Jonathan Swift claims Lemuel Gulliver discovered in 1703. It's any fictitious place where everything is enormous in size or quantity and especially in scope or extent.

Does it sound familiar? In your own non-fiction world, what is the extent of the problem you're trying to solve? Aids in Africa? Homeless in America? Foster children in Dallas?

Whatever it is, there's a pretty good chance that it seems overwhelming ... completely daunting ... almost unimaginable that it can ever be solved. But are you dreaming big enough?

Kids (and their parents) in the 50's dreamed of rocket packs and space travel. I loved going to Tommorowland at Disneyland. I thrilled at the rocket launch to the moon. It was terrific fun seeing all the time saving devices in the House of the Future. Just 20 years later, we actually got a microwave oven!

All that stuff is so blase now. From jet packs to instant communication, we've made absolutely incredible technological progress in the last few decades. Many of those dreams from "back in the day" have come true or will be realized in just a few more years. (Seth Godin talks about this in his terrific book of thoughts, Small is the New Big - The Future Isn't What It Used To Be. Thanks again, Seth, for stimulating my mind.)

So today, do we dream more or do we worry more? It's probably the latter given that the world is getting smaller. Anyone's problems can affect everyone. It seems that our dreams are not quite as grand as they used to be.

What about you? Are you thinking about just existing, getting along, making it to the end of the year? Or are you dreaming about solving big ... really big ... problems??

You cannot afford to forget the here and now, but if you're not already doing it, I strongly encourage you to use your BV. Brogdingnagian Vision is a multi-syllable way of alluding to "BHAG" (big, hairy, audacious goals).

Between BV and BHAG, I'm pretty sure I know which acronym will stick. Jim Collins (the Good to Great guy) and Jerry Porras coined BHAG for their books on Building Your Company's Vision and Built to Last. I love big thinkers. I'm no Jim Collins, but I do know people who are setting bodacious goals to address some of our nation's ills.

Interfaith Housing Coalition has been addressing the needs of homeless families in Dallas since 1985. They do a great job of helping accountable families break the cycle of generational poverty and transform themselves into contributing members of the community. They do it at a remarkable cost of just $25 per resident per day.

But given the increase in the number and needs of very poor families (the fastest growing segment of the homeless population) and the significant decrease of government safety nets over the last 10 years, something big needs to be done. And it needs to be done fast and cheap.

Interfaith Housing has a big idea. Based on programs in their own residential model that have been replicated nationally, they have launched a prevention model using best practices from their 23 years of experience and three other nationally known nonprofits. They strongly believe that by proactively working with very poor families before they become homeless, they can reach nearly triple the number they have in residence, avoid the huge disruption to the families (especially the kids), and do it for less.

Beyond that, the Interfaith folks think this new program will be an easily replicable model for use across the nation. That's a LOT of people getting some help.

Can they do it? Will it work? Will it catch on with others? Will it really make a difference to a lot of people across the country?

Stay tuned. The potential is enormous! Thank goodness we still have some people dreaming big ... really big.