Great Assumptions

5 Great Assumptions

Ken Burnett is one of the Fundraising Guru’s from the UK and has travelled extensively since he published his book, ‘Relationship Fundraising’. It was not a new concept but it was published at a time when people were starting to get over-awed by technology and our profession was, to my mind, becoming overly professional and slick.

I found these the other day and thought that they may be of help to us

The Five great Assumptions that Underpin Effective Fundraising

1. Donors usually are generous caring people

2. They are intelligent and so know when they are being taken advantage of

3. They expect to be taken seriously

4. They are individuals, therefore are varied in their interests, habits and responses

5. They are most likely to respond better when they get from us what they want top receive, rather than getting from us what we want them to receive

Makes good sense doesn’t it?

Harley's, Starbucks, Club Med & Guinness

I have been reading some very interesting stuff of recent weeks and a lot of it revolves around taking business to the next level. Tom Peters is a business Guru from the States and I have been reading his take on the Tragedy of the ‘Common’, and he suggests that we need to take what we are doing to another level to reap the rewards of our efforts. In business he says that there needs to almost be a universal change from the term ‘customer service’ even if it is prefaced with exceptional or great or fantastic and use the word experience. We do not provide good customer care we give them an experience. He uses illustrations that many would be familiar with and turns them on their head and asks us to think about what it could mean for our organisations.

He talks about the fact that Harley Davidson does not sell motor motorcycles. Starbucks do not sell coffee. Club Med does not sell vacations, and Guinness does not sell beer. Think about it for a minute. One of the head honcho’s at Harley Davidson says that they “do not sell motorcycles they sell experiences. The ability for a 42 year old accountant to dress up in black leather, ride through small towns and have people afraid of him” It’s not the motorcycle its the experience.

Starbucks have identified a third place; it’s not home and it’s not work, but it’s the place that our customers come to find refuge. They have transformed the innocent cup of coffee into a Starbucks way of life. Club med is more than just a resort, it’s a means of rediscovering yourself, or inventing an entirely ne “me”. Guinness, as a brand is all about community. It’s about bringing people together and sharing stories.

Now when I think of how my organisation, and many others in the Not for Profit sector, markets itself I get very worried because so much of what we do is grounded in ‘old fashioned’ thinking that is not keeping up to speed with current thinking.

I am going to give some serious time and thinking as to what we should be doing in the near future, let me encourage you to do the same.

If you come up with anything let me know.

Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast

I was talking with one of the senior team at Gloria Jeans Coffees last week and she made a memorable statement as we discussed the different ways leaders can view the challenges facing their teams. Sadly it’s something many organisations don’t seem to understand- “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I’m not one of these leaders that describes themselves as being a “big picture person” in an attempt to gloss over a lack of attention to detail. In fact, I love strategy. I enjoy problem solving. I care about scoring every point I can, not just winning the game.

But if I had to choose between culture and strategy as my primary weapon there is no contest. I will choose culture in a heartbeat.

1. Culture Is Soil
The culture of every organisation is to its team what soil is to the plants that depend upon it. Focusing on strategy without addressing culture is rather like planting a palm tree in a swamp. No matter how good your strategic initiatives may be in their own right, the likelihood of their sustained success comes down to culture more than just about any other single factor. I’m no horticulturalist, but it’s common sense that unsuitable, barren or toxic soil will eventually kill even the best plants. The leader that ignores culture is often the same person who rants about the ineffectiveness of their team, blames HR for poor hiring, moans about “Gen Y”. Their team are stunted, fruitless and impotent. And culture is their silent killer.

So what’s the true condition of your soil?

2. Culture Is Life Blood
The culture of your team is its life supply. Its essential role, like blood in your body, is to bring life to every area and to carry away the toxins that would otherwise destroy it. For better or worse, when a team is injured they bleed the true culture. Who we are when things go against us says everything about our actual values, regardless of what mission statement we put on our website. A healthy organisation has potent culture pumping through its veins, mostly unseen yet nourishing every part. No hardened managers blocking arteries. No internal bleeding quietly draining life away.

So do you need a blood test?

3. Culture Is Ideology
If we elevate strategy without giving attention to culture, we’ll win the battle but lose the war. Down through history the empires that have truly altered the world as we know it were those who ideas, world view and beliefs impacted the cultures that came into contact with them. The best teams have a pervasive passion about them. They get the big “why”, and as a result “what” and “how” tend to flow quite naturally. When we live our values its easier to develop people because everything we do and say is part of their training. Great ideology creates a contagious culture.

So what’s your infectious ideology?

From http://www.theleadershipcoach.com/

Artful Leadership

I spend a lot of time in second hand book shops. There is something magical about reading a book that already has someone else’s notes in it, that has been underlined and thumbed with an intimacy that speaks volumes about the person or people who have read those words before.

I found one a few years ago that is called ‘Leadership is an Art’ by Max DePree. It is not a along book, neither is it new so it does not have the more modern language of recent management or leadership ‘speak’, ‘The seven secrets of great leaders’ or ‘The 15 steps to being a creative leader’ or even ‘How to be a successful leader’. In its stead it makes excellent use of ‘the narrative’; the story telling about what Leadership involves and the ‘Tribal Story Telling’ that sometimes happens around the water cooler or in the lunch room. There are some amazing stories that speak about how a company or its leadership can be successful without resorting to a list of ‘do this and you will be successful’; very refreshing.

He tells the story of a city in America who would invite business leaders from around the country to look at their state and invite them to transfer their operations there or do more business with them. As part of this promotion he talks about one committee where they were discussing how they could dress up a particular facility that needed some dressing up. Some well meaning individual suggested that they put pink ice in the urinals. Strange though this may sound they were quite serious but the writer took it into another and related a question that was asked of him as one of the main leaders in his company; “what is one of the most difficult things that you personally need to work on?” His response was ‘The Interception of Entropy’

He was using the word in a very loose way and for him he explained that what leaders need to learn is to recognize are the signals of impending deterioration. He then goes on to list a number of things that are signs of this condition. Among them he talked

• A tendency toward superficiality
• No longer having the time for celebration and ritual
• When people stop telling ‘tribal stories’ or cannot understand them
• When problem makers outnumber problem solvers
• Leaders who seek to control rather than liberate
• Manuals
• Leaders who rely on structures instead of people
• Etc etc

The list goes on and if we were looking at some of the organizations that we are familiar with I guess we could come up with a lot more. His final statement is that we need to beware of putting ‘Pink Ice in the Urinals’.

Those of us who have positions of leadership in an organization could take note of some of these signs and address them before it is too late and we daily fill our own urinals with pink ice.

So much has been said about leadership that a single definition is hard to come by but one of his quotes resonated with me, in that he simplifies it into two responsibilities. The first is to define reality and the last is to say thank you. How simple is that? But he goes on to say that in between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor; that sums up the progress of an artful leader.