Nonprofit Performance 360 Magazine Vol 3 No 2

improve, and gives a variety of positive benefits from a relatively short conversation. It is hugely beneficial to a nonprofit because it costs very little other than time. We are learning that you don’t need to implement an expensive, formal system to get benefits that are better than those systems would be. Most nonprofits already write organizational charts in pencil. There was a time when most nonprofit work was inflexible and unchanging. That time has passed. The org chart was invented by the railroad industry, which is the ultimate definition of a rarely changing industry. It is incredibly costly to pull up track and lay it somewhere else. Once the methods of delivering that product are set in stone, you don’t need to change it very much, so they didn’t. Most knowledge-work organizations, for- profits, and nonprofits and public sectors, took with them the assumption that we can continue to design around the product and draw relationships that don’t change. We are finding that is not true. The project is a better unit of design. For a project that we need people engaged in for the next 12-24 months, let’s assemble a team of people, based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities. When the project is over, we will shuffle the deck and create new teams. That is why you write it in pencil. It doesn’t mean there is not an org chart. It does mean we are willing to erase it much more frequently so that we can adapt to changes and respond to threats or opportunities much quicker. This is something that again limits itself to the nonprofit sector, more than the for-profit sector, because we tend to think of campaign drives and other projects, not on ongoing things. There already is a sense of management by project, not product, in the nonprofit sector, lending itself to the idea of forming temporary teams. There is also research on why the best teams for coming up with new ideas and solving problems might actually be temporary ones that have known each other for only 12-18 months. That is around the average life cycle of a project, so they fit each other very well. Nonprofit Performance Magazine: Have you read Teaming by Amy Edmondson? There are similarities between writing the org chart in pencil and her teaming principles,

which I think is a part of this whole wave of the future. I am in an org chart that is not written in pencil yet. How do I make adaptations in my organization if I don’t have the positional power to make the changes from a structural perspective? What little things can I do to begin to implement these things? David Burkus: Just because you have a certain reporting relationship doesn’t mean you have to shun people who are in very different functions working on different projects. IDEO, an industrial design firm that used to write the org chart in pencil much more frequently, found that, as they grew, they couldn’t overhaul the whole thing. It is harder to do that with an organization with hundreds of people, although Eden McCallum figured out how to do it with an organization of thousands. But IDEO allows a certain percentage of giving time. Giving time is you working on somebody else’s project. That creates a cross- functional thing that works exceptionally well for getting a lot of benefits of writing the org chart in pencil. Even if you can’t roll that out on a company- wide level (although I think it is a pretty good idea to get organizational support on it), it doesn’t mean you can’t look at your overtime. If you are paid on salary, the assumption is we are paying you for roughly 40 hours a week of work. Nobody has a right to tell you what to do with the extra five hours in a 45-hour workweek. You can volunteer and spend your time working on another project, getting the benefits of that. It will also build a huge amount of social capital across the organization because you will have connections outside of your silo. I see that more and more. A former student of mine called because she was working in sales for a for-profit, and the training department approached her about creating a role for her that was almost a liaison between two things. She didn’t know if she wanted it or not. I told her she had the opportunity to span a gap, which is huge; it will be an incredibly valuable position. Regardless of what your function is, find the time to volunteer on projects that are not part of your function because you’ll have the benefit of meeting other people.They will benefit from your outsider experience. You will benefit from learning from them, leaving

you better prepared as you move through the organization. If you can’t roll it out entirely, it doesn’t mean you can’t practice it yourself just by volunteering on certain positions.A nonprofit lends itself even more to that because of the way nonprofits interact with the people who - even if they are paid - volunteer to work for your organization. Nonprofit Performance Magazine: If you can give one closing thought, what The biggest truth is that great leaders don’t innovate the products; they innovate the factory. This is what Frederick Taylor did 100 years ago. You can’t have the assumption that you do it once, and it’s done. The nature of work changes, so we need to look back at the systems we have designed and probably innovate them. Innovative ideas, whether it is products, services, for-profit, nonprofit, public sector, it doesn’t matter, are always preceded by an innovation or a factory and the systems leaders put in place. Great leaders don’t focus on the products. They let their people focus on that. Leaders focus on the factory and giving their people what they need to be innovative. would that be? David Burkus:

David Burkus, author of The Myths of Creativity , LDRLB , and Under New Management , writes for The Creativity Post and 99U. His passion is leadership, innovation, strategy, and the transfer of good ideas. DavidBurkus.com

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