What’s Actually Missing?
Recently, I’ve had similar striking conversations with multiple non-profit leaders. These decision-makers lead well established organizations with ambitious goals. They have the skills to help their organizations get to the next level and yet, are overwhelmed by what they can’t control.
“We have a lot of things and yet we are falling short of where we want to be.”
Mission and vision language, a brand one-sheet, consultant-drafted website copy, a strategic plan, a style guide, a fundraising goal—these are all things that an organization often has at the ready. Yet, even with the complete non-profit arsenal, it’s not coming together. They know, instinctively, something is still missing. They are right.
Maybe you, as an organizational leader, are having similar feelings. Even if you can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, your instincts are likely spot on.
So, what’s actually missing?
Things without Connective Tissue
Having your mission, vision, and logo is not enough. These kinds of elements, by default, don’t have the connective tissue to build a strong organization. Connective tissue has to be built intentionally, thoughtfully and strategically. Shared language and processes, clearly mapped-out goals, connection points between departments and consensus points across a company ensures your staff can work in active harmony to achieve common goals. And these things have to travel in every direction, from the most senior person in the organization to the most junior. Non-profits often have lots of moving pieces and context that can change quickly—funding cuts that affect programs or resources that have to be rapidly allocated elsewhere, for example—and what allows you to move quickly and pivot as needed is the connective tissue that unifies your organization. Strong connective tissue is your root system. It grounds everything that is visible in your organization; your junior and senior team, your brand, your mission, your vision and more. It very literally roots you down when your organization faces heady winds of uncertainty or change. It points to the people you exist to serve and what lets you grow toward where you need to go.
You have lots of things. But do you have the right things?
Understanding your organization’s connective tissue is your root system is important. But clarity about your organization is so much more than that. To further explore the efficacy of your brand, ask yourself: Do you have brand guidelines that highlight how to use your logo and visual language to further your overall mission? When you ask your staff and/or audience what your logo stands for, are the answers consistent? Are your brand guidelines communicating the core of your organization? Is your mission language in your strategic plan, on your website, and in an accessible document that outlines how the mission connects to every part of the organization? How do new staff, at every level, learn this information when they are onboarded? Do they know why it's important for them to know?
Remember, your brand guidelines, even when short, can answer all these questions and be a strategic document that helps everyone within the organization stay on the same page.
Things in Silos
Your fundraising department has goals.The communication arm also has goals.The program arm has goals too. But do the department-specific goals work together to further the overall mission? When departments are working in silos instead of in partnership, it creates cross purposes. Despite the best of intentions, a host of meetings, endless notes and lots of conversations, lack of collaboration often results in entities going in different directions within one organization. You need a method of cross-departmental communication that supports one central aim. And this method cannot only be present in the strategic plan. Firmly established cross-department communication is about ways to activate how your teams will execute on larger goals in partnership with other teams in your organization. When executed well, this thing looks like department alignment on the inside and crystal clear communication on the outside. Each department’s support for the other will be apparent.
Organizations are living breathing entities. Often, we focus on singular things we’ve collected over time—mission and vision statements, strategic plans, brand visuals, and so on—that we forget all the elements need to work together to fulfill our urgent and important missions. Instead, we hope that great investment and hope will do that for us. But without the right things, such as interrupting siloed ways of working and building connective tissue, things are just language. Your systems, processes and brand have to work in concert with each other. When they don’t, it creates confusion at the top and traps people in the middle in execution mode with no way out. Important things in our organizations are rendered inert and powerless if they are not activated in the right ways. They become tactical pieces of execution, rather than drivers of our missions.
So, how do you start?
You start by looking at what’s already there.
That’s how we start when we’re working with a non-profit partner. We don’t come in to tear everything down and start anew. We want to understand your mission, give you the tools to take the next step, and empower you as an organization. Sometimes, that does entail making something new. Sometimes, it’s about supporting what’s already there. But it always entails making something visible that was there all along.
Whether, like us, you’re working with partners or you’re working alone, the starting point is the same. Look at what's already there. Understand what things are already present, what they’re actually doing and what they aren’t. From there, build up a shared language that lives across the whole organization. Set goals that every department marches towards, not parallel goals that quietly work against each other. Make the most important ambitions visible—not locked in leadership's heads, where they create pressure without creating momentum. The right things, working together, activated. That's the difference.