The Bamboo Project Blog

It's Not Just About "Good Enough," It's About Empowerment

My post earlier this week on disruptive innovations and "good enough" solutions sparked an interesting response from Niels Unis:

"Bamboo gives the example of micro-lending which has changed many people’s lives. What is so effective about micro-lending, among other things, is that it empowers people to change their own lives finding solutions in situations that they know and understand. This empowerment, however, is a radical idea, and much more than a “good enough” solution. Mother of Peace has built a self sustaining farm. They make their own bread. . .

What I think is at stake is that in wanting to provide the ultimate solution, we want to feed our ego, increase our power over the world. The shift in thinking is not from “perfect” to “good enough.” The shift is one that recognizes that creating more power for the powerless, ultimately empowers everybody."

I think that Niels is right on with this insight. While the original intention of my post was to share the concept of catalytic innovations and "good enough solutions," , Niels accurately points out that the power of many of these innovations may lie in their capacity to empower the powerless.

"Good enough" solutions by their very nature will not be able to breed the same level of dependence found in more comprehensive programs. They are meant to be less fully-featured, easier to use, more simplistic. They are meant to get a specific job done and in the process, they empower the recipients to be the ones to do that.

I think Niels is also right that there's a touch of ego in wanting to provide more "comprehensive" solutions. On many occasions I've worked on designing education and training programs for TANF recipients and disadvantaged youth. Time and again I've been told that these people aren't "capable" of learning like other people--that we need to set up a system that basically does everything for them because they aren't able to do it for themselves. When I've been able to successfully fight this mentality and create a more empowering, more loosely-structured program, the naysayers have always been astounded by the results. Not that it doesn't mean I don't often have a fight on my hands again the next time I push for more customer control.

So another reason for us to pursue more catalytic innovations--because they empower the people with whom we are working.

Michele

Creating Nonprofit Skill Networks

Lately I've been exploring the concepts of nonprofit networks here, what it takes to form and nurture connections among various nonprofits and between nonprofits and individuals. We've talked about building connectivity networks that link people to people, affinity networks that reinforce commonalities among network members and production networks that move affinities into collective action.

The other day I was researching learning management systems for a client interested in tracking staff competences and training needs. I started thinking about the need for skill networks within the nonprofit community and what would have to happen in order for us to develop such networks.

What Do I Mean by a Nonprofit Skill Network?
Very simply, a nonprofit skill network would bring together the knowledge and skills of individual staff at all member organizations and make those skills available to the members of the network. For example, a staff person at Agency A might have skills in developing organizational newsletters. This skill would be cataloged in an online location--either a database or in some other form, such as through a wiki using tagging. When Agency B needs someone to do a newsletter for them, but they lack the internal skills for this to happen, then they would be able to find the staff person from Agency A who could then assist them in implementing that project. 

Why Do We Need Nonprofit Skill Networks?
Staff knowledge and skills are the lifeblood of any organization, but this is particularly true for nonprofits. The more skilled our staff are, the more access to good information they have, the more likely we are to be successful. But many nonprofits are small. They don't have the capacity within their individual organizations to cover all the skill needs that may be necessary to create an effective organization. This is particularly the case when we venture outside of traditional program areas into more functional skills, for example, IT, human resources, marketing and public relations, staff training etc.

With the creation of a skill network, member organizations would be able to expand their capacity to access particular knowledge and skills. In some cases, I could see organizations sharing a collective pool of staff. For example, Agency A might employ a marketing person who splits her time between several members of the network. Network members who used the marketing person would either reimburse the employing agency for the staff person's time or they could trade for services, perhaps offering the use of their finance person in return.

Agencies would also be able to access specialized skills and knowledge for special projects. For example, if an organization needed to run a training on case management basics, they might be able to "borrow" a staff person from one of the other organizations to provide the training. Again, they could either pay for the use of the staff person's time or they could trade for other services.

How Would a Skill Network Operate?
The first order of business would be to find a way to catalog the knowledge, skills and abilities of staff from all network member organizations. The network members would need to agree on a common taxonomy for describing skills so that member organizations are comparing apples to apples.

Ideally, these skills would be cataloged in an online system, either a shared database or by using something less sophisticated, such as tagging. If tagging was used, I could see the creation of a network wiki or blog. For each staff person there would be a detailed biography and maybe a copy of their resume, work samples, etc. Their entries would also be tagged with the appropriate knowledge and functions. Interested agencies would then be able to access the biographies by looking under the appropriate tags.

Other issues that would need to be addressed by the network would include:

• Processes and procedures for collecting the information from staff, including what information will be collected and how it will be shared.

• Will participation in the skill network be voluntary or required for individual staff?

• Processes for accessing staff from other agencies to work on various projects

• Acceptable exchanges--will trading be allowed or would it be strictly a financial arrangement? How will the organizations handle the financial side of things?

• Who will be responsible for maintaining and updating the skill database?

Cons of a Skill Network
There would be a number of challenges to creating such a skill network, not the least of which would be getting past the often siloed, territorial thinking of many organizations. Clearly this would be a complicated endeavor with logistical and practical concerns galore. Many organizations might be uncomfortable with the idea of hiring a staff person in the hopes that they would be able to share that person with other agencies and be reimbursed for those costs. (One way around that would be to look into sharing freelance consultants who would not be employed by any single agency). For various reasons, individual staff might also object to providing their services to another nonprofit. And a significant number of nonprofits operate in crisis mode, making the idea of setting up a skill network a pipe dream they feel they have little time to pursue.

Pros of a Skill Network
For all the potential problems in setting up and maintaining a skill network, I think that there are also significant benefits that make it a worthwhile endeavor. Clearly it would expand the capacity of individual organizations to provide higher quality services. They would have access to knowledge and skills beyond their organization that could give their individual organization a new lease on life.

There's also a benefit to individual staff. In many cases, nonprofit staff get burned out from dealing with the same people and problems on a daily basis. The opportunity to provide services in their strength areas to other organizations could re-energize a tired career. They could also give staff an opportunity to stretch and grow in ways that would in turn benefit their employing organization.

Some Possible First Steps
When I'm thinking about possibilities, I tend to take them to the furthest degree. I see the end result, which can be overwhelming to a lot of people. I think there are smaller steps that organizations could take, however, to start moving in the direction of a larger skill network.

Create an Internal Skill Network--The technologies exist for individual organizations to create their own internal knowledge and skill networks. Using wikis and blogs, individual organizations could take it upon themselves to catalog their internal staff knowledge and skills to make this information available to others in the organization. I would suggest delving deeply into what staff know--you may be surprised at the skills that people have developed in other parts of their lives that could be utilized within the organization.

Create a Skill Network with 1-2 Trusted Partners--Most nonprofits have developed relationships with other organizations already. To expand outside of the individual organization, they could reach out to a few of their trusted partners to build a smaller shared network of skills. You may already be doing this on an informal basis. However, making it a somewhat more structured process could reap bigger benefits for all members of the network. It could also create some major value-add for grant applications.

I think that there are a lot of possibilities for this concept and I'd love to hear from you about your thoughts, if you've seen anything like this being developed anywhere, etc. E-mail me or leave me a note in comments.

Michele

Nonprofit Networks Part Three: Using Technology to Build Connectivity

Yesterday we discussed connectivity networks and how they are the foundation of all collaborations. As you'll recall, connectivity networks link people to people and people to information. They are characterized by loose ties between people and they tend to form around "hubs" or people who are able to connect people to other people and to relevant information.

All networks, especially connectivity networks, are strengthened by face-to-face interactions. These in-person connections help people form more trusting relationships with each other and they are often the most effective way to conduct certain kinds of work. In this post, however, I want to talk about how I believe technology can support the creation and development of connectivity networks.

Two Major Elements to Connectivity Networks
To form strong connectivity networks, you must have two key elements--a strong informational/navigational element and people responsible for nurturing the connections between people and between people and information. In other words, you need useful, valuable information that people are looking for and you need at least one person to help them connect with that information and with other people in the network who can also serve as sources of information and connection.

It's important to remember that relevant, timely information and access to "the right people" are the major currencies of connectivity networks. People and organizations want to join  networks that connect them to these two things. Further, they will not maintain their connections to a network if they do not have access to good information and helpful people.

Supporting the Spread of Information in a Connectivity Network
The explosion of the Web has created an associated explosion of information. It has also created new tools for gathering, managing and sharing information in ways that are more meaningful and useful. For nonprofits wishing to create connectivity networks, these two developments create great opportunities.

What Information Should You Be Sharing?
To create your connectivity network, consider who it is you want to bring together and what kinds of information they may need. Think about:

• Potential gaps in information needed by network members

• Opportunities to put information needed by different organizations into a central repository to be shared by all network members.

• Sharing of best practices and common resources. 

• Consider creating communities of practice among people with common issues and needs, such as a case manager network or a network of grant writers and then focusing on their information needs.

 

One example of what we're talking about here is told in NetGains:

Chris Lynch has spent three years weaving together the hundreds of organizations that provide after-school sports programs for youth in Greater Boston. His work was supported by the Barr Foundation, which was concerned that thousand of youth were not being served, especially urban youth and girls. Lynch's assignment was to start connecting the scattered after-school sports organizations to each other and to resources they could use. In early 2006, he published the 25th e-newsletter of Sportsnet, part of a website that provides information to network members and facilitates communication between members.

Another example is the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which has created interactive hunger maps showing the locations of hunger resources throughout the city.
As described in a recent TechSoup article,

"(Through this project, they sought) to compile a comprehensive list of all known soup kitchens in the area, but also to facilitate collaboration and communication between local pantries to help them reduce duplication of efforts, better target their limited resources, and unite in their public-advocacy efforts."

The key is identifying the kinds of information that are considered useful, relevant and timely for your nonprofit network. Think about the information you wish you had. Ask other potential network members what information they think is missing or too fragmented to work with.

How Do You Gather and Share the Information?
Newer web technologies provide great opportunities for both finding and sharing the kinds of information that will build a strong connectivity network.

To gather information, consider using tools such as Google Alerts and RSS feeds to keep yourself updated on the latest news and stories from around the Internet. Find blogs that are written by knowledgeable people in your nonprofit field and get in the habit of reading them to find useful information you can share with network members.

You must also be prepared to go "off-line" for valuable information. While there's a lot of information readily available online, great sources of information in the nonprofit world will also be found in print materials, at meetings, and in other "real-world" interactions.  In fact, some of your most valuable information may be "hidden" within your individual network member organizations and the key may be finding ways to move this information into a shared, central location that is accessible to all.

To share information, you have many options. Like Chris Lynch above, you might start with an e-mail newsletter and a basic network website for sharing links to resources and to other members of your network. Blogs, wikis and "mashups" provide other options for sharing information in ways that can be more useful and relevant for your network members. You can also use tagging or social bookmarking as strategies for sharing information on common topics.

Supporting the Development of Community in Your Connectivity Network
The other major component of a connectivity network is the development of connections between people and organizations. It is critical to recognize that connections between organizations are based on the connections between individual people.  To foster connections between nonprofit entities, you must foster connections between the individuals within those organizations.

Remember that the creation of community in a connectivity network depends on the work of  "weavers." These are individuals who are like the hosts of your network party. They introduce people to one another, explain the culture of the community, and help people connect to the information they are looking for. Weavers pay attention to process and to ensuring that there's ongoing access to good, relevant information available to the members.

How Can Technology Help Build Community and Make Connections Between the People in the Network?
The development of community is based on interactions with other people. While sharing information (as we described above) can start to help network members develop a sense of common needs and approaches, simply providing information to members is not going to build community. This requires 2-way communication that allows network members to "talk" with other members.

Obviously in an ideal world, these interactions would take place face-to-face. But limitations of time and location can be a barrier to in-person interactions. Technology allows us to overcome these barriers. It also allows connectivity networks to form between organizations and people that might otherwise be isolated from one another. These connections are often the source of great innovations and growth.

There are a few technology options that can start to build that sense of community:

• E-mail is probably the simplest strategy. Weavers can use e-mail to answer individual questions and to connect network members to one another, suggesting, for example, that one member of the network might be a valuable contact for another. E-mail listservs (like Yahoo Groups) can further support this community development as individual members are able to interact with the entire group for advice, information, etc.

• A network blog is another potential option. Network members can easily contribute articles and resources. They can also use comments to respond to the information that members share and to begin conversations that may be followed up via e-mail or through other means.

• A wiki may be a great tool to develop if your network needs to create a repository of shared information. Wikis are excellent ways to share resources and best practices. They make it easy for members to add their own content and comment on the content added by others.

• Using photosharing with sites like Flickr allows network members to  post pictures and information about themselves and their organizations. This creates a new kind of connection as members are able to "see" other members and what they do.

• More "advanced" users of technology may want to consider developing and sharing relevant podcasts or using tools such as Skype to generate free, online phone calls between members. Use of social networking sites like Care 2  or MySpace may be another strategy to consider, depending on the members of your network.

The technologies a network selects to support the development of community will depend on the needs and capacities of the network members. It also depends on the level of commitment the network is willing to make to developing and supporting the growth of community.

It's critical to remember, though, that more "advanced" networks--the ones nonprofits rely on to get work done--first require the successful development of connectivity networks. Failure to pay attention to the initial development of connectivity will create a very shaky foundation for later collective action.

In my next post on this topic, I'm going to go into more detail on the development of affinity networks, which build on the foundation of connectivity to create a common value proposition.

Michele

Building Nonprofit Networks--Part One

I've been reading NetGains: A Handbook for Network Builders Seeking Social Change by Peter Plastrik and Madeleine Taylor and I think it has some interesting things to say about building networks. One of the most important is the notion that there are three kinds of networks "that form a progression that a network's evolution is likely to follow." While networks may not move through all stages of the progression, we do know that to reach the third stage successfully, you must first progress through the previous two.

Connectivity Networks
This type of network connects people to allow the easy flow of and access to information and transactions. The focus is on developing ties between people so that they can develop trust and gain understanding of one another prior to moving to another level of connection. This is the "base" network that must be formed in order to move to the other levels of networking.  Without connectivity, you cannot develop alignment or move to action. These kinds of networks are particularly important when you are concerned about the isolation of particular individuals or groups from other people.

The task of a network builder in a connectivity network is to "weave," that is, to help people meet each other and to increase their ease of sharing and searching for information. Flickr's start-up story offers a prime example of a connectivity network:

But even beyond the product and (user interface) Flickr emphasized making new users feel welcome. Caterina mentioned how there would be a member of the Flickr team moderating the Flickr forum 24/7 just to make people feel part of the community. While this might sound a bit exaggerated, you get the idea. Flickr put a tremendous amount of effort into community development and support.

Alignment Networks
In this type of network, the focus is on aligning people around collective values to develop and spread a common identity. This identity usually reflects some of the individual interests of members, but in this network, they've come together because they share some common values or identity. Their goal is then to develop and spread that identity, both among the members and outside of the community. College alumni and professional associations are examples of alignment networks.

Network builders in alignment networks are facilitators. They help people explore their shared identify and meaning so that they can define and communicate their common core values. They are listening to the individual members and helping the group arrive at a collective vision of their identity and shared purpose.

Production Networks
A production network "fosters joint action for specialized outcomes by aligned people." In other words, it is designed to move people who are united on a common cause from affinity to action. 

Network builders in production networks act as coordinators. Their primary work is to help people plan and implement their collaborative actions. Network members actually do the work of the network. The coordinator provides the glue to hold their actions together. They pay attention to the activities that are required to keep the group focused on collective identity and collective action.

The Critical Lesson
It's been my experience that because many nonprofits form collaborations in response to funding opportunities or requirements, they move immediately into developing a production network. However, network research indicates that such networks are doomed to failure because a production network is based upon having developed first a connectivity network and then an alignment network. In other words, to create a production network, you need connectivity and alignment first.

The other key thing here is that the activities that it takes to form each of these three types of networks are different. You cannot build a connectivity network by immediately moving to the strategies that are necessary to build a production network. They are not the same.

In another post, I'm going to share what Plastrik and Taylor have to say about the strategies for building each type of network. But for now, to me the important piece of this is to understand that networks evolve and that attention must be paid to developing first connections, then alignment before a network can become focused on action.

Michele 

Playing To Your Staff's Strengths--Help them Develop a Career Plan

Yesterday, we talked about some great resources for identifying employee strengths and using them for more effective management. Today I want to follow up with some thoughts about how career planning can be used to make that process even more effective.

Why Should My Organization Care About My Employee's Career Plans?
When individuals prepare a career plan, they must start with an understanding of themselves. What are their values, passions and skills? What are their strengths that they can build on and what are their weaknesses that they need to manage around?

This process of self-discovery can provide two major benefits for the organization:

1. Staff and managers get a clear picture of the staff person that can be used to redesign work responsibilities and find new avenues for staff to explore. In many cases you get a renewed sense of commitment to the job and greater excitement about exploring learning opportunities and new responsibilities.
2. In some cases, people find out that they are really not well suited to the work they are currently doing. In my experience, the people who discover this are the ones who are considered to have "attitude problems" or to be "burnt out." On several occasions I've ended up counseling people out of their current professions and this has turned out to be a tremendous service both to the individual and to the organization that employed him/her.

Resources for Developing Staff Career Plans
In another post, I'll discuss a holistic process for working with staff to develop and implement their career plans. For now, I'm going to share a few resources that staff can use on their own or working with management.

Explore Values
Find Their Calling is a great article from Fast Company on how to identify and honor staff values. In most cases, job satisfaction and performance is tied to the extent to which the job and organization jibes with the worker's values. This article discusses how you can use this process with staff and describes some of the benefits.

Be Bold
The Be Bold Career Planning Journal is a nice piece geared specifically toward people in the nonprofit sector. Developed by the Be Bold Team,  this workbook helps staff:

• "Find their Truest Self"

• Identify their "Moment of Obligation" (what are their passions or sources of inspiration?)

• Develop the "gall to think big"

• Find Solutions that are New and Untested.

They also have an online quiz to help users figure out if they're "bold."

The advantage of this handy guide is that its focus on commitment and finding solutions can also fit in well with an organizational planning process. I'm a big believer in the idea that organizations run better when the goals of individuals are aligned with the goals of the organization. This provides a process for doing that.

If You Aren't Feeling Bold
Bold isn't for everyone, although I think it offers significant benefits when it comes to translating individual career plans into benefits for the organization. If it's not your style, though, you might want to have staff work their way through the Career Development e-Manual developed by the University of Waterloo. This great resource has been around for a while and provides step-by-step guidance for developing a plan.

We Want Your Feedback!
Drop us a line in the comments to let us know if your organization helps staff develop their own career plans. If you do, how's it working for you?

Michele

Playing to Your Staff's Strengths

Last week I did a training/planning session with one of my Job Corps clients. This group is responsible for attracting applicants to Job Corps and then helping them through the admissions process.

These two aspects of the job require very different skill sets. The outreach piece is essentially sales--staff must be able to go out to a variety of applicants and organizations and "sell" Job Corps. The admissions component of the job is more about counseling and preparing young people for the demands of a Job Corps education.

In the course of our planning, we got into a discussion about these two disparate job responsibilities. I asked how many in the group enjoyed the admissions/counseling piece. Two thirds of the group raised their hands. Then I asked who enjoyed the Outreach piece. One third raised their hands. And there was basically no overlap between the groups. They either liked outreach or they enjoyed admissions. Only one or two liked both.

"How many of you," I asked, "spend more time on the piece you enjoy and find that you do a better job at it?" They all raised their hands.

Later I was speaking to the manager of the department. He reported that he wasn't surprised at the results. The people who enjoyed counseling applicants were the ones who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing outreach. The outreach people, on the other hand, tended to not do as well with the applicants and their families.

"Why," I asked him, "do you then split the job this way. If you know you have a group of people who love and are good at doing outreach, why not have them doing that full-time, while the others are doing what they love and do well?"

It was like a lightening bolt had hit him. Like most organizations, his has defined jobs according to organizational needs, rather than the skills and talents of the workers. But as we talked, he began to realize that he would be able to better meet the needs of his organization if he worked WITH the strengths of his staff, rather than fighting their "weaknesses."

This is a common mistake at most organizations. Even those nonprofits that specialize in helping clients with career and job search plans do nothing to ensure that their own staff have a career plan that clearly identifies their strengths. Further, even if they do, little is done to actually capitalize on those strengths.

I've come to believe, though, that if we tap into staff passions and strong points we can actually boost our organizational performance in ways we never imagined. When people love what they do and feel like they're doing what they are good at, they will naturally become your top performers. In many cases this can happen by accident, but why not be more deliberate about it?

Resources for Managing to Staff Strengths
If you're going to explore how to manage to staff strengths, your education should begin with First Break All the Rules (if you don't have time for the book, then at least try this summary). Then follow it up with Now Discover Your Strengths, which includes a free code for taking the online Strengths Finder to discover your own personal strengths.

These two books by Marcus Buckingham describe in easy-to-read terms how successful, high performing managers help their staff identify key strengths and then structure the employee's job responsibilities to capitalize on these strengths and minimize weaknesses. They give explicit step-by-step instructions that can be used by any organization to get the most out of their staff, something I think is key for many nonprofits.

_______________________________________________________________

Tomorrow, I'm going to talk in some more detail on how to use a career planning process to engage staff and management in talking about strengths and engaging them in what their areas of passion. This is another way to approach the strengths process that I think is also very in line with some key themes of the 2.0 revolution.

Michele

Volunteerism in America at a Thirty-Year High

New report from the Corporation of National and Community Service states that volunteerism is at a 30-year high! Twenty-seven percent of Americans are volunteering. The report found that older teenagers (ages 16-19) have more than doubled their time spent volunteering since 1989; that far from being a “Me Generation,” that Baby Boomers are volunteering at sharply higher rates than did the previous generation at mid-life; and that the volunteer rate for Americans ages 65 years and over has increased 64 percent since 1974; and the proportion of Americans volunteering with an educational or youth service organization has seen a 63 percent increase just since just 1989. Go to their web-site to get a PDF copy of the full report.

Jann

Fast Company's 2007 Social Capitalist Awards

On the long flight home yesterday, I was finally able to spend some time reading the latest Fast Company, which features their 2007 Social Capitalist Awards:

Our fourth annual Social Capitalist Awards honor these leaders, who combine savvy business models with solutions to pressing social needs in ways that challenge our assumptions about making a profit and making a difference. . .

On these pages, you'll find evidence of a movement that's not just changing the world, but changing how we think about creating change. Increasingly, we're witnessing the blurring of commerce and charity: Companies now tend to their citizenship; nonprofits hitch income-earning solutions to markets. That phenomenon led us this year to assess the most innovative corporate partnerships among our winners--alliances that represent both business value and a choice about what kind of future to create.

There's a lot to explore in this comprehensive article, not the least of which are all the ways in which nonprofits are incorporating business practices and developing deeper partnerships with business to be more effective at accomplishing their missions.  Winners include:

• Hands On Network, a 17-year-old group that links national corporations and local nonprofits to fuel volunteer efforts in community-service projects. Last year, Hands On marshaled 168,000 employee-volunteers to work more than 1.4 million hours at 48,538 projects.

• The Housing Partnership Network, a peer network and business cooperative of 87 of the most accomplished affordable housing nonprofits in the country. Members operate on a citywide or regional basis and share a similar public/private business model that forges entrepreneurial partnerships among the business, community, and government sectors to create and sustain affordable housing.

• Springboard Forward partners with employers and community-based organizations to improve job performance and promote upward mobility for the low-wage  workforce. They provide coaching services for business and career management services to low-wage workers.

• EcoLogic Finance, a nonprofit offering affordable financial services to community-based businesses operating in environmentally sensitive areas of Latin America and select countries of Africa and Asia.

• First Book, which gives low income children the opportunity to read and own their first books.

There are also some great resources for social capitalists and a nice slideshow on lessons learned. Well worth a look.

Michele

 

How Do We Learn in the 21st Century?

Kathy has an interesting post on why the U.S. is falling behind in preparing math and science workers for the future. Her point is that the educational system we've set up doesn't teach people the skills that they actually use as mathematicians, scientists and engineers.  There's a focus on a rote/drill and kill, problem-solving by recipe approach that has nothing to do with the kinds of right-brained, holistic, design and intuition skills that are necessary for true success in the field.

I think that what she has identified is a problem that's applicable to all workers in all fields. As she points out:

Our educational institutions--at every level--need drastic changes or we're all screwed. The generation of students we're turning out today need skills nobody really cared about 50, 40, even 20 years ago. Where we used to prepare students for a "job for life", now we must prepare students to be jobless. We must prepare them to think fast, learn faster, and unlearn even faster("yes, that drug was the appropriate way to treat the XYZ disease, but that was so last week. THIS week we now realize it'll kill you.")

The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.

This is where I think nonprofits need to be thinking differently about how they're preparing their own workforce for the future and how they use technology to do this. Reality is that we need structures in place that support knowledge management and "just-in-time" learning. Speed and adaptability are of the essence. We must be unlearning and re-learning on an almost daily basis. But the question is, how do we do create the right kinds of learning opportunities?

According to Jerry Wind and David Reibstein of the Wharton School of Business, in the new world of work, organizations must adapt their training strategies to:

• Provide learning opportunities that are tailored to the backgrounds, interests, learning styles and motivation of individual learners.

• Create learning that is active, experiential and based on the real-life contexts in which workers will use their skills.

• Use mechanisms for delivering learning that staff can use anytime, anywhere as the need for that learning arises.

So times have changed. How do we adapt? While I think that nonprofits have been at a disadvantage in the training arena for years, this is where Web 2.0 technologies can finally put nonprofits on equal footing with their private sector counterparts.

Tools such as wikis and blogs are now ridiculously inexpensive to access. A Typepad account is $15 a month.  Some wikis can be had for free.

Audio and video options are equally accessible. With a $13 microphone and free recording software, I can create "just-in-time" learning podcasts that can be stored on the web and made easily accessible to staff anytime, anywhere.  Decent video cameras can be had for around $200 and through free video hosting services like YouTube and VideoEgg , I can easily and quickly create simple training/learning videos that can again, be accessible to staff as they need the information.

The real issue that we're dealing with here is the paradigm shift in our thinking about learning that we need to make in order to operate in a world like this. We aren't used to thinking that we could create and share audio and video on a dime. We're not accustomed to the idea of having a wiki where staff could collaboratively create knowledge and problem-solve around their learning needs. We simply have not adjusted to the fact that we must be constantly alert to where learning needs to be happening and then considering how we can use technology tools to provide those learning opportunities as workers need them.

Our other problem is that most nonprofits and their staff have not had experience in designing effective learning experiences. Having grown up in the "drill and kill" days, they don't necessarily have the background and skills to design learning experiences that will have the most impact. But again, this is where Web 2.0 technology can step in.

The community aspects of being able to share and access solid knowledge about training and learning ACROSS nonprofit organizations is a huge opportunity for leverage that we're simply not accessing. Yes, it can be expensive to design good learning for a single organization. But why do we have to design it for just one anyway? Why can't nonprofits create learning consortia that allow them to share knowledge and skill development opportunities among many different agencies? Why, for example, can't they share a "learning consultant" who designs learning experiences and manages the tools for delivering that learning for a group of agencies that share similar skill development needs?

I think there is a lot of untapped potential that is just waiting for us to find it. The challenge we're facing, though, is less about learning the technologies and more about changing our thinking about how we use them.

Michele

Time vs Money

All organizations are constantly battling the cost issue. I am often struck by how  much we waste in order to save a little. This is especially true in government, my home base. Whether we are government, non-profit, or for-profit we live by budgets and the image of how we manage them. Let me illustrate. In government today, there is a constant pressure to cut spending especially around election time. We tell constituents that we're cutting the budget another 10% to lower their taxes. What we don't tell them is all they are losing as a result of trying to meet a short-term goal of a tax cut. For-profits do the same thing when they cut personnel and research costs so that a business looks leaner and meaner for acquisition. In the non-profit world many organizations are so accustomed to doing without that they seldom look for a better way. Non-profits are also keenly aware that the image of fiscal responsibility is important to keep donors.

The problem with these short-term, often image driven solutions, is that your organization runs a strong risk of burning people out. For the non-profit this is a critical issue as human resources are so hard to recruit and retain. There is a better way. Equip and train your staff adequately to do the job. You can prove the return-on-investment you get by upgrading your computer system and software by the staff hours you will save. That is more time they can devote to your organization's mission. Convince your Board that working smarter, not longer benefits everyone. I propose that "smarter" not "thrifty" is the image to work toward in the 21st century. Continue to look for more innovative technologies that can make your work, and that of your staff, more efficient and easy.

The following book is an engaging read regarding how organizations waste the professional, and then consequently the private time, of their staff.  Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices by Leslie A. Perlow, makes a strong case for the fact that our high pressure work culture places our employees in a chronic state of crisis, that actually costs the organization and the individual. I saw my own organization in the situations presented in this book.

A final point on this discussion for non-profits. This field constantly discusses the lack of talent and the problem of competing with for-profit salary structures. By using technological innovation, you can attract bright people interested in learning. It can be a selling point for your talent recruitment strategy. The other side of that coin is burning out good people because they get tired of making due and realize that they are not learning new skills. From a human resources point of view, that is a lose-lose position.

Jann