Despite the fact that I myself am a consultant, I’ll admit I’ve carried this secret stigma. I am proud of the work that I do, am obsessed with making an impact, but am also secretly afraid of what the label connotes: large invoices, minimal contact with the client, a shiny glossy report on the shelf, and me on to the next big score.

This is why I welcomed the opportunity to work with Eugene Eric Kim helping Shiree Teng run a collective exploration into how the field of nonprofit consulting is currently delivering impact in the sector, and to find opportunities to increase our impact.

Shiree suspected that the process of finding a good consulting match needed updating, and she wondered about potential online resources to address this need. We took a step back from this possible solution and turned to the field to uncover more about the problem, asking:

• How are nonprofits currently finding, working with, and evaluating consultants?
• What are possible opportunities to improve the field?

We worked with CompassPoint to deliver a survey with explored the first question, then hosted a design workshop to explore the second. We interviewed consultants we respect to help inform the survey, we hosted focus groups to validate the resulting data, and we brought together a diverse group of stakeholders (nonprofits, consultants, funders) to make meaning of the results together and brainstorm possible solutions in a fun design competition.

What struck me most on March 7 — as 30 diverse, intelligent, and motivated individuals dedicated an entire day to exploring how we can make nonprofit consulting transformational — was how much this group of people cared. The House of Lies stigma about consulting might be based on certain realities, but it is not this reality. These folks get up every day to make an impact. Clearly there is huge potential in the field, and simply creating the space for shared learning around what’s working well and what could be improved proved powerful.

What was also striking, although not surprising, was how much funders, nonprofits, and consultants all share responsibility for the state of the sector. It was clear that a perspective focused on partnership is powerful in helping consulting / nonprofit relationships achieve success.

Finally, it was evident that there are small things we can start doing right now that will make a difference. At the workshop we hosted a design competition, and all six groups came up with potential products that could help shift the nonprofit / consultant relationship immediately. I’d love to share those six ideas here:

• Bill of Rights. Not only did this team charm the group with an entertaining skit, they were able to provide an immediately useful bill of rights and responsibilities. The theory is that if we sit down and have a conversation about this bill of rights at the beginning of every engagement, we’ll be more successful. I haven’t tested the hypothesis, but I think they’re onto something, and I’d love to see a larger dialogue around this bill of rights.
• Everybody needs a coach! This team developed a training program to spread the important capacity of coaching to a more diverse set of practitioners. They want to normalize coaching in the nonprofit sector. While we wait for this program to launch, we can explore resources on their wiki page above.
• Are you ready? This team developed a tool to help nonprofits determine if they are really ready for a consulting engagement, highlighting the importance of nonprofit readiness. They even thought through some tough questions about distribution! The “are you ready” tool is a button that’s prominently displayed on common sites and takes you through a series of reflective questions.
• Idealist.org meets Match.com. This team is bringing us the best of Idealist.org and online dating to help nonprofits find the right consultant. We all agreed they may be on to something powerful, and are excited to see where Shiree Teng’s explorations and passion might lead next.
• Toolkit for reflective processes. This is a deceptively simply tool that I can see myself using at the beginning of every engagement to help ensure I’m creating the space in the relationship for genuine partnership, thus setting up a project to be successful. Special kudos to our smallest team for providing an immediately actionable checklist I’m already using.
• Go deeper learning package. This team envisions a package that consultants can use to help their work go deeper and ensure the nonprofits also learn from the engagement. The theory is that if we deepen the goals of any consulting engagement to include learning, and then provide a package that supports consultants in achieving this, nonprofit consulting engagements will be more transformative. The team showed a commitment to capacity building and learning that I for one would love to see spread.

I’d also like to thank the Packard Foundation for modeling a commitment to learning in community by hosting their organizational effectiveness wiki. A common refrain after an invigorating workshop like the one we hosted last March is, “This was nice, but what does it mean for my work moving forward?” Having a resource like the Packard Wiki makes a big difference. Instead of the ideas from March 7 just existing in that room, we are able to share them with anyone who is interested. Now I can use the toolkit for reflective processes, or reach out to Belma Gonzalez to get her help with coaching. It was a joy learning from this diverse and committed group of nonprofit leaders, and I sincerely hope this is just the beginning of our collective conversation.

We’re hosting it at the Capital One 360 Cafe, 101 Post St (see map). Please let us know if you can join by RSVP’ing in the comments below so we’re sure to have enough space! The brown-bag will officially run from 1-2pm, but we’ll be around and have time afterwards to chat until 2:30.

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Joe asked me a fascinating question: How would an organizational development consultant provide the cardinals with a better decision-making process in choosing the next pope? It was a critical moment for the church. The new pontiff would face many strategic questions, not to mention a seemingly constant stream of sexual abuse scandals. Debate was rampant about who the best candidates were. We both assumed that it would take the cardinals at least several days, if not a couple of weeks, to choose the next leader of the Catholic Church.

Boy, were we wrong. Before the moon could rise a second time over the Sistine Chapel, the white smoke unfurled through its chimney, signifying that the next pope had been chosen.

© Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk

Alas! I didn’t get my chance to influence their process. (But it did crack me up to imagine a woman, hailing from California, no less, telling the ecclesiastical princes of the Catholic church how they could have a better conclave.)

So even though this is now yesterday’s news, I wanted to share the article because it is also an excellent example of how we practitioners can disseminate our thinking to a larger and less traditional audience. It’s as simple as tying what we know to an interesting current event, soliciting the help of a professional writer, and publishing the piece in a place that is not directed at practitioners.

Zocalo, the e-zine where my article appeared, publishes online pieces and hosts events targeted at young people and minorities. I think their mission is best summed up here:

“We explore connection, place, big ideas, and what it means to be a citizen, be it locally, regionally, nationally, or globally. We are committed to welcoming a new, young, and diverse generation to the public square.”

Zocalo reminds me of what “This American Life” has done for radio and what “The Daily Show” has done for TV–it brings a personal, direct, and fresh voice to written journalism. Definitely check it out. Whatever the topic, it is sure to impact your thinking–especially around something you thought you were clear on.

I hope you enjoy the article, “Cardinals, Don’t Squander This Conclave … With a Professional Facilitator, Flip Charts, and Breakout Sessions, You Could Put the Church On a Much Better 500-Year Path.”

• Are nonprofits able to find the help they need?
• How is the working relationship between nonprofits and consultants?
• Is the work sticking?

We had a small (264), but diverse (in size, age, and focus) set of responses. The majority of respondents had an operating budget greater than $1 million, with almost 20% in the $500,000-1 million range, and a similar percentage in the $100,000-500,000 range.

As the graph below shows, the majority of engagements with respondents were with strategic planning consultants. The next two largest categories were communications and fundraising consultants.

Not Budgeting Enough for Consulting

Nearly 60% of respondents said they needed more consulting services in the past two years than they were able to contract for. The primary barrier to employing more consulting was financial. Nearly 90% said they had to forego more consulting because they “did not have sufficient funding for the project in my annual budget.” 25% also found the existing consultants to be too expensive.

No Problem Finding Consultants

Almost 75% of our respondents said that it was easy to find and select their consultants. The most important factors listed for selecting consultants (as shown below) were budget, good cultural fit, and a strong track record of success.

About 75% of surveyed organizations do not use RFPs to find consultants. The majority do check references, including references that are not provided by the consultant.

Given that the majority of organizations are finding their consultants through referrals (from funders, from board members, from folks outside of their organization, from resource centers), we were curious about their behavior when it comes to sharing references, both online and off.

As illustrated above, only 30% are very candid. 13% are somewhat candid, meaning they are less willing to share the bad things. When we dove into the above question, we found that people’s willingness to be candid decreases as they move further away from their organization. When asked about willingness to share negative reviews, respondents were less certain they’d be willing to share negative reviews with colleagues outside their field (as opposed to those inside it), and less certain they’d share negative reviews with outside funders (as opposed to their project funder).

Doing Good Work, but Will It Stick?

Overall, the organizations we surveyed are satisfied with their consultants. It seems to be standard practice for the consultant to provide a clear, written scope of work, and respondents are satisfied with consultants’ ability to deliver on this work. In one question, we tried to get more granular around the different aspects of the consulting relationship that were working well or that could be improved.

As you can see, satisfaction levels are fairly high across the board. Room for improvement seems to be in improving the organizations’ capacity to do this work internally.

There were three regrets that drew significant responses: the cost of the projects, difficulty providing real feedback during the project, as well as regrets that the work was good but didn’t stick.

Conclusions

From what we’ve seen, the field of consulting to nonprofits is important and considered valuable by the recipients. The enduring challenge is ensuring — given very real and pressing budget constraints — organizations are engaging consultants for work that can be truly transformational.

Our partner, CompassPoint, shared these results with a group of nonprofit leaders. As they dove in, they were particularly curious to find out:

• If as leaders we keep returning to our personal networks to find consultants, how will we find consultants who are diverse from us by age, background, and expertise? Are we stuck in like hiring like? What are the consequences?
• Do the power dynamics between consultants and executives prevent nonprofit leaders from giving necessary feedback and ensuring course corrections throughout  important consulting engagements?
• What stops us from giving candid references on the consultants we’ve used. Are we just being polite? Strategic in some way? What are the consequences?

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions. We’d also like to know, do these results resonate with your experience? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

For those of you curious about how a practitioner thinks about a multistakeholder conflict, join Eugene Eric Kim, Rebecca Petzel, and myself, as we talk about the real story behind the design and facilitation of the Delta Dialogues. How were the participants chosen? How were they convinced to give their time to a once-a-month conversation that had the exquisitely “modest” goal of shared understanding, in a sea of well-funded and well-connected organizations, including such heavyweight players as the California governor, all aggressively advocating for their desired future of the Delta? How was conflict handled? What were the critical factors that enabled this project’s success? What were the biggest challenges? Why did it take a team of seven to pull it off? What would we do differently if we could do it all over again? What is next for the Delta Dialogues? Are there any lessons that are relevant for other organizations?

We’ll be meeting Wednesday, February 20, in San Francisco to discuss the project from a practitioner perspective, from 3:00-5:00 pm. RSVP in the comments below if you are interested in joining the conversation, and we’ll let you know the location.

For decades, multiple interests have battled out the fate of the Northern California Delta in courtrooms, public meetings, and even private homes.

Since April 2012, Groupaya has been working with a wide-ranging group of twenty stakeholders in the California Delta in a process called the Delta Dialogues. From farmers and fisherman, to environmentalists and levee engineers, to state and federal agencies, to locally elected officials, they have been been in conversation to develop a shared understanding of the Delta’s problems, and potentially find new ways forward.

Though most Californians have never heard of it, the Delta is a critical shared resource, providing water to 25 million people throughout California and spanning three million acres of fertile land. It hosts 750 species of plants and wildlife, including more than 55 species of fish. It hosts half a million acres of farmland and is home to half a million people and 200,000 jobs. Most of the Delta is below sea level, protected by over a thousand miles of levees that need maintenance and upkeep. Should they fail on a massive scale,  Silicon Valley would flood and Southern California would lose a significant source of water. The stakes are high for everyone.

On February 6, four of these stakeholders who have participated in the Delta Dialogues will visit the UC Center to discuss what happened and whether the dialogues point to the way to peace and progress in the Delta wars.

The event is free of charge, and a light lunch will be provided.

We’d love to see you there! Please register for the event here.

It has been 3 weeks since Eugene’s official announcement to the world that he is leaving Groupaya. Many have asked me, “What is next for Groupaya?”

Before I answer that, I want to acknowledge some of what we created together in Groupaya 1.0, the first two and a half years of Eugene, Rebecca, Amy, Betty and I, and more recently, Natalie and Dana, working together on client projects, and in building a company.

It has been an amazing journey. We have delivered great work together. We have learned so much together. We have consistently exceeded our client’s expectations. And most meaningful to me, we have developed a really sweet community, with permeable walls, that takes care of its members.

Part of what inspired Eugene and I to create Groupaya together was a shared vision about “organizational development on steroids.”

For me, “organizational development on steroids” means expanding what groups can do together, both within and beyond face-to-face meetings. It also means experimenting with ways of making development and change faster and more fun. While we experiment with our clients, we have learned the most from our experiments with ourselves.

Some of the ideas Eugene and the team have implemented, both within Groupaya and within clients, include:

• Cross-organization project wikis – improving communication and knowledge creation, while saving a ton of time.
• Internal chat pages – enabling us to be a virtual team, yet stay connected with what each other is working on, how we are feeling, and what we are learning.
• “Kangaroo Court” – making a game of providing feedback to colleagues, improving both the quantity and quality of feedback, as well as the fun quotient in giving and receiving it.

Groupaya 1.0 has been all about doing great work with clients, experimenting on ourselves, and building a culture that supported the learning and growth of the team.  It was challenging to build a company from the ground up, but we learned a ton, and had a lot of fun in the process. I will be forever grateful to Eugene for starting this journey with me.

I’m still living in the question, “What is next for Groupaya?” We’ll see! Whatever comes next will build on what has already been created. And we’ll let you know when we know.

Earlier this month, I made the hardest, most gut-wrenching decision of my professional life. Effective today, I am leaving Groupaya, which I co-founded in late 2011 with the amazing, wonderful Kristin Cobble.

My reasons for leaving are simple, although the decision was anything but. I have a set of things I want to accomplish, both personally and professionally, and I did not feel like I was on the best path to accomplish all of them.

My goals are to be the best human being I can possibly be and to do things that are joyful, impactful, and nourishing. With Groupaya, I was accomplishing the latter and then some, but at the expense of the former. I wasn’t finding the balance I wanted, and as I looked inward and ahead, I realized that I wasn’t going to get it unless I hit the reset button and found a different path.

In explaining to my team my feelings, I told them the story of Göran Kropp, as described by Jon Krakauer in his book, Into Thin Air. In 1996, Kropp attempted to go from sea level to the top of Mount Everest using only his own power. That meant riding a bike from Sweden to the Himalayas, then attempting to summit the world’s highest mountain without additional oxygen. He got an hour away from the summit, but realized that the conditions weren’t right, and had the discipline and wisdom to turn around. Famed mountaineer, Rob Hall, ran into Kropp on his way back down the mountain, and, in expressing his admiration for Kropp’s decision, explained, “With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill. The trick is to get back down alive.”

I don’t claim to have done anything as challenging as Kropp did, but I at least have an inkling for how he must have felt. Leaving Groupaya feels a bit like turning around just an hour away from the summit. We surpassed most of our goals for 2012, our first year in business. We had amazing clients, we did top-notch work, and we were constantly learning and improving. We had succeeded in building a high-performance organization with the kind of culture I had always dreamed of. We were collectively practicing what we preached, and we had built a platform that would enable us to leap even further forward. Thanks to my peers and the structures we had put into place, I was doing the best quality work I had ever done.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t practicing as an individual what we were practicing as a group. I need different structures to help me find that balance, and I’m leaving Groupaya and most likely this field in order to find those structures. I have devoted the last 10 years of my life to studying and practicing the art of effective collaboration, and helping others do the same. I’ve given it everything I’ve got. I wish I could have accomplished more, but I’m proud of what I did accomplish. I have zero regrets, and — regardless of what I choose to do next — I will continue to practice this craft. It’s too important not to, and I love doing it.

I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I have some client commitments over the next few months that I need to complete, and I’d like to spend some time writing down what I’ve learned over the past 10 years. Beyond that, I have no idea. Regardless, I will surely share stories about future adventures on my personal blog.

What I do know is that I’ll miss the team terribly. Kristin, Rebecca, Natalie, Amy, Dana, and Betty, you guys mean everything to me, and I will feel forever grateful to you for being such an intimate part of my life and my learning. Many thanks to you and to all my friends who made this past year so rich and rewarding.

One of the things she observed, especially in her role as an advisor to the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness Program, was that nonprofits seem to use consultants quite a bit. If consultants are doing a good job actually helping nonprofits build capacity and do their work more effectively, then this is great news. The problem is, we have no idea if this is true. There’s very little data, and there have been very few studies.

We want to do more than study this. We want to know what opportunities there are to improve how nonprofits work with consultants, and we want to experiment with ways to actually do this.

As a first step, we’ve drafted a national survey in partnership with CompassPoint. We’re asking nonprofit organizations to take 10-15 minutes of their time to tell us how they select consultants and how satisfied they are with their work.

If you’re a nonprofit, please fill out the survey by Friday, December 14, 2012. If you know of others at nonprofits, please share this with them, as we’d like as robust a sample as possible.

We will publish a summary of the survey results, so we all get to learn from this. And if you need any more incentive to fill out the survey, everyone who fills it out will be entered in a drawing for a free iPad. If you’re interested in learning more about this project, we are doing our work openly on the Packard Foundation OE Wiki.

Many thanks!

Building a Culture of Openness

Storified by Eugene Eric Kim · Wed, Oct 31 2012 07:35:11

To expand on what I wrote on Twitter, one of the points of open data is to tap into the power of emergence. If your data is available and compelling, then other people will find useful and interesting things to do with it.

That’s the theory, at least. Open data helps create the conditions for emergence, but it’s not sufficient. Without a culture of openness, your data will likely lie fallow. If you already have that culture, you’re lucky. If you don’t, you have to build it. Building culture is hard.

There are lots of ways to build culture. There are no set formulas, and so my rule of thumb is to take every opportunity you can to do it.

That brings me to the original point that provoked this conversation: Should a conference on open data also be open to any participants? No, it doesn’t have to be. No set formulas, right? But it’s an opportunity to build culture, to get people out of the comfort zone of closed. And I generally think that people overrationalize the need to be closed.

The beauty of this little ecosystem we live in is that pockets of closed can beget openness, just as Foo Camp inspired Bar Camp, which launched the unconference movement. That’s what openness is ultimately about.