Airfork One. I thought you'd rather see a picture of a fun fork and happy kid than a tray of airline food.

I subscribe to a daily email that sends me a random factoid or piece of history each day called “Now I Know.” Yesterday I found out that pilots and co-pilots get different meals on commercial airlines. I had never thought about this, but once I did, it was totally rational and brilliant: if one pilot’s food is spoiled in any way and they get food-sickness (or worse), the other person qualified to fly the plane has eaten something different, is less likely to have the same issue, and will be able to fly the plane. The only downside is that they’ve both had to eat airline food, but you’ve got to hope that they are generally getting to choose from first class’ options to mitigate that situation.

I think all kinds of nasty things about the airline industry (like why can’t we just figure out what it should cost to fly from Austin to Boston and call it a day already?!), but I think that in this case, the airline industry could teach something to the nonprofit industry. In our nonprofit career trends survey last year,  52% of respondents reported that they either do not know if they have a Succession Plan or know that they do not have one; 48% of EDs said they know that they do not have one. Although food poisoning is less likely to be the culprit to blame for the departure of an Executive Director or another key leader, nonprofits need back-up plans to cover both planned and unplanned departures, which can be both temporary or permanent.

I like to reframe the “hit by a bus” line of thinking to the “won the lottery, set up an endowment, and moved to her dream home on the Italian Riviera” paradigm, but it is more likely to be leaving town to care for an elderly parent who had a serious trauma, a cancer diagnosis, maternity or paternity leave that turned into an unplanned resignation, discovery of mismanagement and financial woes leading to board termination, or a well-deserved retirement. Nobody will stay in a job forever,and in fact, 49% of EDs will likely leave their organization in 4 years or less; 73% in 8 years or less. Furthermore, we found that 73% of non-EDs will likely leave their organization in 4 years or less; 81% in 8 years or less.

It is time for nonprofits to get just as logical as pilots in having a back-up plan for our key leaders.

What can you do?

Boards should designate a committee or special task force to develop a plan for Executive Director succession. This could be tackled by the Executive Committee, a Personnel Committee, or a task force that will handle this and then hand it off to the Planning Committee–or any number of other approaches that might work for your organization. This group should ensure that they have an understanding of the Executive Director’s current job description, roles, and responsibilities, and a plan to keep this up to date. They should discuss how they would handle a planned vs. unplanned departure, become informed of options for interim leadership, ensure that the financials are transparent and accessible in case of a transition, and budget for staff development and skill-building to prepare future leaders. Your Finance Committee should also review the Executive Director’s compensation against the market so that you have a sense of whether you’ll need to significantly increase the compensation line-item to adjust for changes in the market or what your organization might need in its next leader.

Executive Directors can work with the leadership team or designate a staff task force to discuss cross-training, communication planning, leadership development and skill-building needs, and other key areas to focus on (with a timeline) to ensure that key staff are prepared to step up on a interim or official (never use the word permanent when you talk about a staff position) capacity in the time of transition.

Succession is as inevitable as the elimination of free meals on airplanes, so take time to prepare your organization and incorporate the preparation into your routine activities so that when your pilot gets a bad meal, you have a plan for controlling your flight and ensuring you soar.

I use this notepad from knockknock.biz to track my work during the week.

Some facts about me include:

• I love making lists. I love checking them twice, but mostly I love checking things off. (I use two lists in this blog post alone, and I’m telling you about it in list format. I’m feeling pretty meta.)
• I have favorite pens for different types of writing surfaces and tasks. Fine-point sharpies, colored gel pens, a nice blue Papermate… they each have their place in my world.
• I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to paper.

So, I’m not the gal that you’d expect to be looking for a way to abandon my paper lists. Although I’m not a technophile and tend to be an early adopter of new gadgets and gizmos, I am also a lover of classics–including the aforementioned Papermate pen, navy-striped sailor shirts, Little Women, and Harrison Ford before the earring.

Over winter vacation, I had a chance to start using a program called Trello with a new group that I’m part of, and I was struck by its easy interface, classic good looks, and the bonus iPhone app. Oh, and the fact that it’s free. Using Trello to manage a group of volunteers across the country as we launch an organization has been remarkably easy.

Would you...? Green Eggs & Ham, Dr. Seuss

And I started thinking. Could I… should I… would I enjoy using Trello or something like it to manage my assorted work projects? Would I keep up with it and remember to use it? Would I be able to easily add to my lists while I’m in meetings? Would it make me easier to keep up with my work from different locations since I’m often working away from my desk? Would it be flexible enough for me to use for different kinds of projects?

I’ve decided to research different tools during the month of January and transition to a new system on February 1–that way the groundhog won’t be able to delay me by 6 weeks. Here are the criteria I am looking for to evaluate a new system:

• Able to manage multiple projects of different types (ex: board development, strategic planning, leadership transitions)
• Free
• App available for iPhone and iPad to help with remote usage
• Clean, crisp look
• Intuitive commands without redundancy (ie, I don’t want to work hard to figure out how to delete something, and I don’t want to have to delete it more than once or keep confirming that I really, really, really want to delete it.)
• Bonus: Able to share lists and collaborate with others
• Bonus: Able to communicate with Salesforce and Outlook

If you have had any good or bad experiences with any tools, I’d love to know about it here or in the 501(c)ommunity. And I promise I’ll report back to you with my decision, so you know where I end up come February 1.

Charles Barsotti cartoon for the New Yorker, available at http://www.condenaststore.com

Although most of us might be wondering if there’s a ghost, ghoul, goblin, or a kid dressed as a Harry Potter ballerina lurking around the corner ready to yell “BOO!” as we walk around, the thing that we should actually be quaking about each day is the fact that 52% of Central Texas nonprofits do not have a Succession Plan and are unprepared for the dreaded call from their current ED saying she’s moving on, the board needing to give the ED the bloody axe, or the ED getting hit by the proverbial bus.

This scary statistic is compounded by others that we unearthed in our career survey earlier this year:

• 48.9% of EDs will likely leave their organization in 4 years or less; 72.8% in 8 years or less.
• 72.8% of non-EDs will likely leave their organization in 4 years or less; 81.4% in 8 years or less.
• 32% of nonprofiteers are unsatisfied with the opportunity for advancement in their current position.
• Less than 10% of Executive Directors have participated in a conversation about leadership transitions at their organization.

If you’re not scared about what’s coming next, you should be.

Although it might be scary to approach your Executive Director or Board Chair about succession planning, they’d rather talk to you about it now as one of the items in the check-list of keeping your organization stable and prepared for emergencies than later when you have one foot out the door or over a cliff. (I’m enjoying my liberal use of dramatic metaphors for Halloween.) Well-managed organizations maintain laser-focus on their mission through transitions (whether they be economic, leadership, or location) by being prepared. That means you should have a Strategic Plan, Fund Development Plan, Communications Plan, and yes, a Succession Plan.

A good Succession Plan prepares for different types of succession: emergency and planned (often called “departure-defined”). You may have many similar elements in each, but do think about what you would do differently if you had notice that a change was a’ coming.

Often the conversations around Succession Planning open up conversations about changes to put in motion now to prepare. For example, do your staff leaders need cross-training or skill-building in any areas, are you paying your ED enough to be able to hire your next ED without a tremendous leap, and do you have a clear communications channel to your stakeholders?

If you’re not sure how to start the conversation, consider dressing up as an elephant for Halloween. (So you can be the elephant in the room, get it?)

"Dropped Numbers" clock from CB2, which doesn't seem to be for sale any longer

I read an article in the Guardian a few weeks ago about Hofstadter’s Law. I’d never heard of it before, but it resonated quickly.

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Hits like a ton of bricks doesn’t it? I can see ol’ Hofstadter booming it “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion!” style at anyone who tried to challenge him.

The article illustrates the law by sharing the story of the delayed openings of Sydney Opera House and Wembley Stadium.  But as someone who loves plotting things out on a timeline and does a lot of strategic planning projects, the planner in me is thinking about what the implications are of this law’s cyclical warning with regard to nonprofit strategic planning.

The author suggests some tactics:

• Plan with less detail and specifics.
• Avoid planning altogether. Ready, fire, aim, and correct course as you go.
• Just do it. (I’m paraphrasing. Sorry, Nike.)

The process-lover in me finds theses responses unsatisfactory. Instead, I turn to nonprofit muse David La Piana. In his book The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution, he acknowledges the difficulty of planning for specific times in an unknown future and advocates that rather than creating formal, time-bound strategic plans, nonprofits develop a Strategy Screen, a tool that enables nonprofits to address strategic questions on a day-to-day basis, in “an atmosphere where ongoing strategic thinking and acting can flourish.”

At Greenlights we know that planning and timelines go hand-in-hand, and we are unlikely to abandon them completely. However, by incorporating real-time tools like Strategy Screens into our strategic planning efforts with nonprofits, we are able to help them mitigate Hofstadter’s Law and the general difficulty in predicting the future that most of us are plagued by.

Have you used or seen any other tools that help organizations plan in real-time or be less reliant on prescribed timelines?

Team Greenlights at the Do Gooder Games, simultaneously masquerading and displaying our organizational identity

On the Harvard Business Review’s blog, Gianpiero Petriglieri refers to the concept of Identity Workspaces as “groups or organizations where we can both acquire valuable expertise from others and also address fundamental questions with others.”

Greenlights embraces this concept whole-heartedly: Our core values include both learning and collaboration.

To support these aspirations, our internal Team Charter includes the following commitments:

• We pursue knowledge and skills to improve our craft and ability to serve the community.
• We proactively seek learning moments with our coworkers, clients and fellow nonprofit professionals.
• We are dedicated to sharing our skills and knowledge, and working to develop a stronger nonprofit.
• We seek others’ ideas and opinions to enhance the quality of our work.
• We create and participate in brainstorming, project development, and problem-solving activities as a staff, with partners and constituents, and in the community.
• We maintain the highest level of quality throughout each stage of collaborative efforts.
• We make ourselves available and accessible to others, both within the organization and outside.
• We are actively available to support each other’s work to further our mission.

According to Petriglieri, those who find an identity workspace within their organization become truly aligned with the organization and find it harder to leave. For those who don’t, the workspace feels “empty, uprooted, [and] deprived of meaning.” These considerations are relevant to our sector, where most nonprofiteers have been in their current positions for two years or less.

Could creating Identity Workspaces improve employee retention and job satisfaction in the Central Texas nonprofit sector?

Petriglieri says yes: “If you do, they’ll not only be more satisfied, creative and productive—they will also think twice before leaving, as they may not grow as fast and express themselves as fully elsewhere.”

So what can you do at your organization to build an Identity Workspace?

1) Create ways for your team to easily share and acquire expertise by promoting learning and collaboration, budgeting for both, and making time to share ideas. At our staff meetings, we set aside time for team members to share things they have learned–whether that’s new content from a conference or developing new technology or presentation skills.

2) Reward those who personalize their work and make it meaningful for others. Our annual evaluation includes a 360 review from the whole team on how we have embraced and modeled the core values, and end of year decisions on compensation include this feedback. And our annual Nonprofit Excellence Awards recognize others in the community who do the same!

3) Encourage people to find their voice. As you probably know by now, most of us blog, tweet, and make presentations about Greenlights, the nonprofit sector, and best practices, but more importantly, we blog, tweet, and present about our perspectives on these issues and with each of our own styles and spins. Sure I can rattle off the Greenlights’ mission statement verbatim (“Greenlights strengthens nonprofits for extraordinary performance and impact”), but I can express it easily in my own words and style, along with my thoughts on board development, strategic planning, and staff transitions.

And since organizational culture, learning, and career development are some of the areas that I’ve prioritized developing expertise, making it personal and useful to others, and adding my voice to the conversation, I’d love to hear other ideas for developing Identity Workspaces that others have tried.