I'm a volunteer for a non profit that works with mental health as part of a ragtag bunch of men who have been affected by mental health. I'm also a solo entrepreneur with a very 'get shit done' mentality in my own world. The latter doesn't always mesh well with the former, and it's causing me some frustation with how long things take to get done.
I report to a board of directors who aren't business owners, and they regard our organisation almost as a good cause whereas in reality it's a small business. There are donors (investors), customers (attendees) and staff (volunteers).
Without going into too many details, I've had to step back from some internal tasks since I was compensating for a director's lack of action / insight. I've done this for my own wellbeing, but I know ultimately sometimes things need to break before they come to light, and then they can be fixed.
I have no desire to cover for the ineffective director, and I'd like to avoid a personality conflict with them. I can split the person from the tasks (or lack of action / insight on the tasks), so I don't see any vendetta on the horizon, but I'm struggling with lack of practical experience here since I've been solo since 2006.
How do you deal with superiors at your organisation that appear to be without direction, strategy, awareness and action?
Thank you.
> in reality it's a small business
In your reality/mental model, not other people's.
That you have a functional/strategic view of a particular organization/situation- honed no doubt from other experiences unique to you- has nothing to do with the view/mental model that others in and around the organization have of the organization.
More critically, your view is no more valid than anyone else's view (and in functional terms, is less valid than the mental models of your superiors), and, you have almost no power to change other people's mental models.
This isn't a unique statement about you, it is just a universal truth.
In re:
> How do you deal with superiors at your organization that appear to be without direction, strategy, awareness and action?
Once you understand that all people in an organization are independent, autonomous entities with their own mental models, and therea are no magic buttons or injections that can change those mental models, it should become clear that the only way to engage and potentially to effect anything is to build relationships with people, With relationships, you start to understand what the mental models are of the other people in the organization, what is important to them, what is not important to them, and you and they can build a shared trust.
With superiors, this practice is sometimes called "managing up." It involves setting up conversations, asking questions, learning what's important to them in the context of the organization.
It may seem like there are people who lack direction/strategy/awareness/whatever. That is a failure of one's own perceptual machinery. They may not share your direction or priorities or whatever, but they very well have their own. Mental models that lack ambition are very often the result of learned helplessness (the causes of which especially in non-profits are myriad).
When there is sufficient understanding of their mental model, and trust around shared goals, one can present to them distillations of problems that are important to them, along with solutions or win/win framings of decisions or opportunities.
Understand what success looks like to other people, and then help them achieve it.
This applies not just to superiors but to all colleagues. Understanding what is important to other people and then applying your own initiative and capability to enable their success is the secret to happiness in life.
You very quickly find that your org will attract seemingly random types of people, not united by skill but by whatever the cause is. Many of them will have no applicable skills that can help your org.
If the org is relatively small, the best you can do is find out who the most skillful people are, what exactly they’re good at, snd advocate / influence / pressure the org to slot the right people into the right place.
It takes enormous patience and organizational skills, because you can’t order anyone around in a non profit successfully.
And in particular, get a good person as Treasurer and a leader for whatever version of Operations you have, and competent folks leading whatever major cost centers you may have.
We put a poor choice in charge of overseeing legal teams (our biggest cost by far), and they blew the entire budget on a frivolous lawsuit that was thrown out by the judge eventually.
Things are different to a degree in much larger non-profits, they are closer to regular corps, but they are still their own beast.
And often the org will be fatally flawed and it is best to just walk away.
There's something in it for you, though : not only it will make you feel like you did something significant with your life, but if you manage to get things working despite the shortcoming of this team, you can make it work with any team. That's a skill (especially if you ever want to hire).
It's a not-for-profit centered on mental health - they probably are in it for the good cause. You are right that the governance of a non-profit can be a lot like a business, but it doesn't have to be. If you really don't like the vision the directors of a non-profit have for it, you probably should either change the vision (by getting involved at the board level) or stop volunteer there.
Answer isn't anything helpful. They just don't. How does conflict actually go down internally? If you're lower on the totem pole, bad. It's verboten to say anything within 100 yards of even "without direction" Same sort of omerta as why it's a bad idea to tell your mother-in-law their Thanksgiving menu is horrifically bad. Your manager's manager picked your manager, your manager hired your coworkers.
This also would be a horrible, horrible quality to have as a startup founder. It's a fundamental blindness and lack of accountability.
I learned to do exactly what you did: reframe, recognize limits, bite my tongue, adjust my commitments.
There's also a point at which you can decide to "just go for it", i.e. if I want a certain project to do well and the leader involved seems like they're on a different planet, I just go do the work for it. This inevitably had ~0 professional payoff and short-term psych costs, but so does throwing in the towel, and it's okay to carefully weigh it sometimes and come out as "I'd rather see this get done / move on from this relationship if they can't handle me tactfully having a real talk about this"
Sorry but let’s be real they are using other people’s money to do stuff.
When there is no tangible incentive (helping other people is noble but isn’t an incentive at greater than an individual level - it is an emotional response) it’s impossible to be effective.
I think you should recommend that you should hire people. Even one or two hired people with a bonus incentive will be far more effective. That’s why most successful big “volunteer” organizations have paid employees who give a shit and rally the free volunteers. Their job depends on them making other people motivated to do the job.
If it’s not possible then I’d suggest you try other ways to help.
I am a volunteer myself. I only volunteer at places where I know they’re staffed and not wasting money.
My time is limited. I’m not going to waste it being triggered by incompetence.
I worked in non-profits, founded a few, and had several social entrepreneurship startups over two decades.
You are completely correct and almost all successful non-profit leaders would agree with you. There are differences, yes, but those are mostly additional challenges like volunteer management.
Generally you could ask for advice of Board members or directors of other non-profits. You’ll learn quickly that large non-profits are competent fundraisers. Small ones may be competent problem solvers, but they are plagued with all the problems of small organizations in general. They are not good at fundraising.
Fundraising is a long climb, almost entirely a marketing challenge, and requires an organic appeal to High Net Worth Individuals.
If a non-profit is not a successful fundraising organization, it must be an effective organizational one. Sometimes you can just outwork the problem.
Your experience as a volunteer is not unique and you learned a valuable lesson - the real problem most non-profits struggle with solving is how to function at all.
Sometimes the cause and the community around it makes it worth it. Not every cause needs a well organized institution to coordinate action that makes a difference.
But if you serve on the front lines you quickly learn the shocking degree to which that is not the case. If you serve multiple non-profits or speak to other super volunteers you learn it is common.
I don’t mean to be negative, many people do have a great impact through non-profits. But in general, the non-profits that are small and thrive (even if they struggle) are run by a deeply passionate founder who is constantly loaning it money and fundraising over holidays.
Just like you wouldn’t offer to help a non-profit without some level of skill, I’d suggest giving yourself the gift of finding an organization with leadership that has the skills to lead.
It’s so easy to get lost in the drama instead of directing the precious hours you have to give towards the reason you are volunteering in the first place.
Good luck!
One option is to bring up those todo items that are not getting done. You aren't necessarily in personal conflict by explaining their priority and the fact that they are not getting done.
There is also a very likely possibility you should think of, that sometimes the director sees the big picture and what you think is important is actually lower priority.
If you considered paragraph 2 and 3 and they don't help, do the first one.
Supply direction, strategy, awareness, and action.
It is crucial to understand the social contract involved. People are swapping time/money for a feel-good experience and camaraderie.
If you make that experience resemble their day job, with goals, metrics, project managers, you've broken the contract and squandered the good will.
I've seen this happen, where an upstart go-getter comes drag into a group and tells someone who has been volunteering their time for decades, that they are not up to scratch. This results in the volunteer leaving, which is a huge loss and a failure to understand the forces at play.
No need to go beyond this -doesn’t sound like this is the place to commit your time if you think they aren’t functioning at the level you expect. Short of joining their board or donors where you might have some pull, take your volunteer hours elsewhere.
One of our cultural principles is, literally, “Get shit done”.
Another is, “Your mom’s a donor”.
In your position, I might recommend associating with other volunteer based non-profits and gather some good, concrete concepts around how they plan, their guiding values, how they organize and conduct activities, how they source supplies and execute logistics to support their volunteers, etc.
These relationships and ideas may give you some concrete feedback and examples to share; and offer a conduit for your leadership to engage other leaders and learn from them the lessons & challenges ahead.
Good luck
Know that the latter is a thing. If you care about achieving things, rather than just going through the motions, then bad orgs aren't worth the cost to your health.
I decided to leave because I was in the wrong place. But that was my learning to do. No hard feelings.
Hide : accept the situation and stay strictly within the boundaries of your job. So be it.
Fight : try to change the hierarchy by proving that some managers are incompetent in regards of their responsibilities. You'll win or be seen as a "Non-team player".
Fight : quit for somewhere better. You'll be forgotten in a few days.
Personally, I can't hide, it's not in my nature as when things are obviously wrong, they have to be fixed.
I tried to fight and couldn't make a dent in the "idgaf organization" I was working for.
I quit.
One thing to keep in mind is that non-profits working with volunteers are built on relationships rather than structural power. Yes, all organisations rely on relationships but in non-profits structural power is very weak, typically. There are many things I could say about this, but I will only touch on one. First, in no way do I defend or condone your current leader, I simply don’t know enough to make any judgements, but let me give you an example from my own experience. I was once at a conference for non-profit leaders and the keynote speaker started with this “before I get started let me just say that every one of you could further the mission of your organisation if your first act upon returning home was to fire someone in your team.” This led to the room erupting into a high level mummers and chair shuffling. The keynote laughed and said “every one of you just had a face pop into your mind - now go fire them” This single statement became the topic of side conversations for the rest of the event. Now jump ahead a few years and I’m talking to a senior leader of a non- profit about a volunteer on my team who just won’t stay on task no matter what job you give them. His recommendation, “You need to get rid of them because they are not showing respect for your leadership and they are demoralising the team”. However, this person was a friend and beloved by many on the team. In the end it was the right thing for them and the team and the overall mission of the group for them to go but it damaged our friendship and it hurt the feelings of many on the team. I got questions from many staff and partners and donors. I needed to protect the privacy and reputation of the individual and try to help all the parties move on. In the end it was worth all the disruption but it was very hard - much harder than a layoff or separation in the for profit world. Now for the flip side, I had a volunteer who I recruited who was a 1% person - super high achiever - with a passion for our mission. He had an MBA and a ton of leadership experience. He was used to leading a 1% high performance team and “getting shit done”. He made many recommendations to me and I tried to take on board as much as I could. He was frustrated with our volunteers and project tracking and processes. So we got tracking software, we implemented new processes, we restructured one of our big projects on his recommendations. It was taking up huge amounts of my time and it was roughing up the feathers of many volunteers. And one of his first big innovations totally failed. I was ok because I know things fail but it was high profile because so many feathers were ruffled. But we really started to get some traction within a few months and I was becoming hopeful that all this investment was going to get us to a new level. Then he quit - he was frustrated that things were not moving fast enough and wanted to go do something else. I was was deeply impacted. I never felt as discouraged as I did that week. Now I was left with a complex and expensive tracking system that only he fully understood. Our big project was only 50% done and all the ruffled feathers developed beaks as well. At the end of the day as CEO of this small group all these problems belong to me. Failure to manage a volunteer effectively - whether a friend who won’t stay on task or a super high achiever who walked away in frustration - it all comes down to my lack of effectiveness. I don’t just live there, I seek to learn and grow but when I see problem in my org I always have to look at what I have done to allow, create or mitigate the issues.
I hope you find the right path forward for your passion for the mission and your frustration in trying to bring that to pass.
Because ineffectiveness is not disqualifying in these organizations.
Honestly I believe this to be irreconcilable.
Donors are not investors. Clients are not customers. Volunteers are not employees. They just aren't. Their motivations and their goals are completely different.
I have also seen well-managed non-profits, but only those with large budgets who had a fairly even employee-to-volunteer ratio, and produced goods or services that could be reliably measured for quality and quantity.