The challenge all causes have is making the organizational cost of going from 1 to 2 as low as possible.

A couple of summers ago I was away on a four-week assignment in the US. When Sunday rolled around I began googling for a local church to worship at with my wife.

However, a colleague, also on the assignment, had a different idea. We could download the vodcast and sermon notes from his church back in Canada and have a discussion together. He send out word to those on the assignment and a dozen or so joined the group in the common area of our accommodation. We enjoyed great teaching and discussion together.

My colleague’s church had cracked the marginal cost issue. It cost his church practically nothing to resource a small group of a dozen people gathering together at our satellite location, 1000s of kilometers from the church’s base. Hundreds of other ad-hoc groups could theoretically do the same and it would cost the church pennies.

Collecting donations, recruiting volunteers, training leaders, spreading ideas. The challenge is the same. As you grow, can you drive the marginal cost of adding more participants to zero? When you can confidently say yes to this, I think you’re onto something big!

Deferral is actually making a decision. Usually the decision means “no”.

Deferral is often used as a passive aggressive way to say “no”. Not returning calls, emails or continually saying, “we need more information” are how deferral manifests itself in organizations and personal lives.

The courageous leader learns to say “no” without deferring. Clearly, concisely, respectfully and refusing to play the deferral game.

If you grew up in North America, you were probably taught in school that if you wanted to speak, you needed to raise your hand.

In today’s connected economy, you need to learn to speak without raising your hand. No one needs to give you permission.

Today you could:

• begin the journey of becoming a trusted source of information about your cause by writing 250 words
• invite 100s of people to give money towards something bigger than themselves in 140 characters
• share five best practices from your last six months of work changing the world by uploading your slides
• engage your leadership with practical solutions to organization problems just by hitting the “publish” button
• get in front of a camera, introduce yourself and convince me why I should give the 10 bucks in my pocket to your initiative

If might be uncomfortable, but you’re going to have to unlearn what they taught you in school.

Why are you keeping silent?

Photo by Professor25

Too often non-profits ask, “How much does it cost?”

Cost is important, but secondary. The main question causes ought to be asking is, “Does it work?”

Being able to identify effectiveness and progress is paramount. The reality is that making things work, costs. We shouldn’t be ashamed of that. However, too many causes don’t work because their starting point is making sure they don’t spend more than X per Y.

Do I care if my sponsored child costs me $40 or $42 per month? Not really. I care that my child is getting fed, learning to read and developing appropriately. In order to get that result, tell me what it costs and I’ll gladly pay.

I don’t care how low your overhead cost is if you aren’t producing. Maybe increasing overhead would increase effectiveness and yield better results.

I think too often causes are slaves to donors in reporting how much things cost, instead of telling the story of how what they are doing is really making a big impact.

Step 1. Figure out if it works.
Step 2. Can I do it more effectively (and efficiently).

I just finished writing a major proposal on how the organization I work for ought to think about approaching evaluating our effectiveness in light of some major goals we set.

Ironically, three posts came out in my blogroll today that deeply resonated with me and related to this topic. They are all worthy of a read.

Reward Value, Not Face Time (Schwartz)

If you define clear deliverables, and give people full responsibility for achieving them, my experience is they’ll over deliver far more often than they fall short.

Never Fall in Love with the Medium (Brogan)

We seek to connect with people. We want to reach them for whatever our goal might be. It’s our effort to connect with them in a meaningful way that benefits our mutual needs that should be the goal. It’s never about the delivery mechanism.

The map has been replaced by the compass (Godin)

It doesn’t pay to memorize the route, because it’s going to change soon.

Applications

• If the results an organization wants are not very clear, it’s really hard to empower the tribe.
• A tool must never become sacred. The message and content that a tool delivers is what must be canonized and ultimately assessed for impact.
• Teach a man how to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime. Make principles applied, the focus in training.

Thoughts? Disagreements?

How many clicks does it take a donor to give your cause money?

How easy can your volunteers invite a friend to participate in your cause?

How many approvals are required to get staff their money for expense reports?

How many hoops do you have to jump through to send a communication to your tribe?

How many steps removed from the leader is your tribe if they wanted to connect?

How much do I have to zoom to see your site on my phone?

There is likely more friction than necessary in your cause. Smells like opportunity.

Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee once quipped that Samsung needed to, “change everything except [their] wife and kids.”

Bold statement. Easy to say. Hard to live out. Even harder to lead others in.

Three ways to evaluate change:

1. Comfort test – Does this just make me uncomfortable or do I have some data point, moral persuasion, or experience that disconfirms a proposed change?

2. Measurement test - Can a proposed change’s effect be measured? After X days of doing Y activity we hope to see Z result. Try. Assess. The key, of course, is to define your criteria before running the test.

3. Capacity test – Will making this change affect my ability to make other necessary changes? Perhaps I am only getting at a symptom and not a root and need to consider making other changes first.

Bonus: Opportunity cost test – Can I afford not to do this right now?

I like the way Gary Hamel put it in a speech I watched. “The job of the leadership team is to make change more palatable than staying put.”

How do you decide which changes to embrace?

A few years back my father went to see the doctor for a routine checkup. The checkup revealed high blood pressure levels.

Exercise and diet modifications were prescribed as essential treatments as to avoid future complications and problems. My dad set out immediately to get running and be more careful around his intake. He knew his long-term health was at stake.

What would happen if your leadership blood pressure was taken?

Would it reveal activities that needed to be activated immediately or reduced indefinitely?

Learning twitter. Communicating by video to your staff. Inbox zero. Making meeting agendas. CRM. Mobile.

Continuously hitting send/receive. Informational meetings. Paper memos. Synchronous communication. Legalese. Desktops.

Failure to adjust to what your blood pressure checkup is telling you might mean your cause could become irrelevant in five-years if you don’t start or stop something today.

What do you need to start or stop today?

If you hired me as your geek, some of what I might show you.

1. Gmail shortcuts. Learn how to check, send and file email without ever using your mouse. Every time you reach for your mouse, you burn valuable seconds. They keys, c, j, k and s should become your best friends.

2. The find feature in every modern browser. Command + F or Ctrl + F. Expedite getting to the location on a page that really matters.

3. Conditional formatting in Google Spreadsheets. Most people use spreadsheets because they are a convenient way to create a table. Automatically adding colour to the table when values change can make the information actionable and/or insightful without added mental work.

4. Putting as many documents as possible in Dropbox. Your computer could be lost, stolen or die tomorrow. Most of you reading this would be crippled if this happened. It is avoidable. Install it today.

5. Lastpass. “The last password you’ll ever need.” Most people don’t realize that storing passwords in your browser is silly and unsafe (in my opinion). Making sure I never use the same password for any site is only possible with the help of such a tool. As a bonus, it makes it really easy to safely share logins without needing to transmit passwords in plain text.

Which is more necessary?

I think some leaders make vision vs quick wins seem mutually exclusive. Both are important.

Because vision leaks, we must always be motivating our tribes with reminders of what it will look like when our mission is accomplished. On the other hand, we must make sure we are making progress and quick wins along the path to seeing our vision fulfilled.

If people don’t feel like they are winning, the vision doesn’t matter no matter how grand the vision is.

If people don’t have a vision worth aiming for, showing up isn’t fun either.

The challenge then is to build a team that will keep vision high, but also be in the trenches ensuring advance is happening.

Easy to say, hard to sustain.