Do organizations spend too much time focusing on internal management issues? According to Jan Masaoka, Editor-in-Chief of the online magazine Blue Avocado, the answer is “yes.”
In my latest podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Jan shares her observation that organizations focus way too much on management, and not enough on the needs and aspirations of the communities they work with.
If you think that is heresy coming from the former Executive Director of a nonprofit resource center whose job is to teach organizations precisely those management skills, you will want to catch this interview!
You can listen to the interview streaming online, or download it to your MP3 player and listen on the way to work (or as you’re working out).
Once you’ve listened, please join the discussion that is in progress at LinkedIn – looking more deeply at the issue of where exactly organizations are being encouraged to focus. (If you have not already joined the Making Change group at LinkedIn, you can join the group AND the conversation at this link.) The discussion is appropriately labeled Focusing on What Matters.
So what do you think? Is the focus on management in this sector appropriate or disproportionate? Too much, too little, just right?
I can’t wait to hear what you think after listening to this terrific interview.
If you have heard the term “Social Entrepreneur” but can’t exactly define what that means, you are not alone. I spent some time today on Twitter, trying to find the difference between a “social entrepreneur organization” and a plain old organization – the kind we all know in our communities. I came up empty-handed.
Alison Rapping posted a similar request several months ago, asking, “What Really Is a Social Entrepreneur?” She shared some great links to definitions and lots of ideas. But she, too, found no definitive answer in the responses at her post.
I know many individuals who consider their organizations to be social entrepreneurial ventures. Like other organizations, those social ventures have board problems and funding problems. They see themselves in competition with other organizations doing similar work.
And so aside from the fact that they consider their approaches to be innovative, plus the fact that they are not opposed to using business methods to generate revenues (with confessedly varying degrees of success), I am struggling to find what the difference is between a social entrepreneur venture and every other organization working to create a better world.
My wondering comes from a practical place. I am in the middle of exploring and planning the development of Creating the Future as an organization. (I will be sharing my thinking here as soon as those thoughts are coherent enough to write down!)
The goal of that plan is to help those working to create a humane, vibrant, equitable world reach for their potential to make that change happen.
A pre-requisite to helping people reach for their potential is to meet them wherever they are along that path.
And a pre-requisite to meeting them where they are is to understand where they are and where they perceive themselves to be.
So for us, this is not an academic question. To be able to help Social Entrepreneurs reach their highest potential to create an amazing future for our world, we need to understand what they mean when they call themselves Social Entrepreneurs. We need to know what difference they believe that makes for their work.
So if you consider your work to be that of a social entrepreneur rather than a “regular old nonprofit organization,” could you share what it is that creates that distinction?
What does your board talk about that is different from what other boards talk about?
How is the work you do different on a daily basis than what others do?
Spending time at your organization, what would I experience that is different? What would stand out or make me take notice? What would I feel or see or hear that would make me say, “Oh I get it – this is indeed different from an organization that is not a social enterprise!” ?
What results are you achieving that others are not achieving?
What change is happening because of the way your work is being done, that would not otherwise be able to be achieved?
I look forward to learning from this conversation. Thoughts, anyone?
Last week, an incident involving Rush Limbaugh, Robert Egger, a YouTube video and a small hew and cry led to my blog question asking, “Where, if at all, is the place for anger in social change?”
Individuals Go Where Systems Lead Them
As I discuss in the opening chapters of The Pollyanna Principles, our assumptions and expectations of “reality” are rooted in thousands of years of culture that tell us that “living joyfully together” is impossible. (You can read those chapters for free online here.)
Our history tells us that we will likely find reasons to do battle – by words or by swords – and that true “peace” (i.e. not just the absence of war) is a pipe dream. Across generations, we then hand down those assumptions about how people can be counted on to act.
Assumptions about what we admire and celebrate – the warrior, the savior, the hero, the individual beating the odds
Assumptions about winners and losers, about weakness and strength
Assumptions about scarcity vs. abundance, about possibility vs. inevitability
All those assumptions, and the expectations that arise from those assumptions – including and especially those related to anger, frustration, fear, pain – are rooted in stories we have told for millennia.
From those assumptions and expectations, we also hand down ways for dealing with the inevitable conflict we assume will come our way. While we are encouraged to hope for the best (all the dreams you noted in #3 above), our conflict-driven culture gives us systems and tools and approaches for responding when (not if) the worst happens.
As a result, our everyday responses – as individuals, as communities, as nations – are rooted in those thousand-year-old assumptions. How we respond when an Al Qaida attacks. How we respond when a BP floods the gulf with oil.
And yes, how we respond when a blowhard-for-hire calls us lazy idiots.
Social Change?
I confess that my own questions about the place for anger in social change are rooted in all those cultural assumptions as well. And yet I also know that deep in my questions was my own mind trying to wrap itself around the why’s and how’s.
I know in my bones that every action we take is creating the future. I know in my bones that we can aim our work at proactively creating the world we want vs. living and working in response to what we don’t like about the world.
And yet my experience of the world, as seen through the lens of my culture, simultaneously tells me that social change and anger go hand in hand.
And that’s when it hit me. Re-reading the discussion and then re-reading my own question, I realized that social change is indeed about anger, because social change is about reacting to what we don’t like about the world. Just look at the words themselves:
Social Change. Changing the World.
What is change if not reaction – change FROM something? The words to which we aspire and bring our best work – changing the world – they are a statement of reaction to what we can no longer tolerate. Social change is a reaction to pain and frustration, to inequity, injustice. No wonder we see anger as a force for such change!
Talk about an “aha!”
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with infinite choices and infinite possibilities to create the future we want. Our work doesn’t have to be solely about reacting to circumstances – poverty, war, social ills. We can aim at the world we want, the culture we want. We can work to create a world that is humane and joyful and healthy and vibrant.
It is possible, simply because it is not impossible.
As you watch the video below, consider that maybe that’s the answer (I am thinking as I’m typing – always dangerous, the keyboard equivalent of thinking aloud…). Maybe social change IS about anger, frustration, rebellion against the status quo.
And maybe the thing that is more powerful is the thing that moves beyond that anger – work and words that are not about what we are changing FROM but – as the video notes – what we are moving TOWARDS.
Social Aspiration
Social Dreaming
Social Vision
Social Possibility
And wow does that ever raise more questions to explore!
If you are viewing this in your email or a reader that doesn’t show video, this linkwill take you to the website where you can watch the video.Link to site here.
Do organizations spend too much time focusing on internal management issues? According to Jan Masaoka, Editor-in-Chief of the online magazine Blue Avocado, the answer is “yes.”
If you have heard the term “Social Entrepreneur” but can’t exactly define what that means, you are not alone. I spent some time today on Twitter, trying to find the difference between a “social entrepreneur organization” and a plain old organization – the kind we all know in our communities. I came up empty-handed.
Last week, an incident involving Rush Limbaugh, Robert Egger, a YouTube video and a small hew and cry led to my blog question asking, “Where, if at all, is the place for anger in social change?”
