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September 2006. Issue # 3
IN THIS ISSUE:
News: NYC UJA-Federation Features KrasnePlows & Client
Tools for Success: Frameworks for Strategic Decision-Making
Transitions: Coaching Helps Ensure a New Leader's Success
Welcome to our Fall Newsletter!
Regardless of the challenge you face, we believe it is important to lay a strong foundation for your organization’s long-term success. The first step is to set the context and address the larger questions. This issue provides examples of questions we often find relevant. Feel free to share this with your fellow board members, colleagues, and friends. As always, we value your feedback and suggestions for topics in future issues. And be sure to visit our website, www.KrasnePlows.com to read more about our work and its impact.
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Customer Loyalty - an Overlooked Tool for Viability and Growth
We recommend Fred Reichheld's The Ultimate Question, an interesting and highly readable book that connects customer loyalty with successful organizations. He underscores the importance of promoters, those who will refer your organization to others, as well as the negative impact of detractors, those who give you low marks, and how you can identify both. Although written for the corporate sector, it provides food for thought for nonprofits, particularly organizations that depend on filling seats or selling memberships. We think Reichheld's concepts can be extended well beyond traditional customers, to your board, staff and volunteers, whose support and advocacy can open so many doors for you.
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News: NYC UJA-Federation Features KrasnePlows & Client
UJA-Federation of New York showcased our work with Footsteps, a high impact, limited resource success story in its Fall newsletter. Footsteps' founder, Malkie Schwartz, was introduced to KrasnePlows when she sought help building her young organization that provides educational, vocational, and emotional support to young people entering or exploring the world beyond the ultra-orthodox religious communities where they were raised.
Using bi-weekly coaching, we worked together to separate longer term, strategic issues from immediate, distracting concerns. We helped Malkie step back and think about what she wanted to accomplish so she could set priorities for the coming year. Those goals provided a framework for her to move forward, keep focused and measure progress. As a result, Footsteps raised over $100,000 last year, compared to $15,000 the year before, is about to hire its third employee, and was admitted to a prestigious incubator for new Jewish organizations.
Understanding what you need to do and staying focused is key to building a successful organization. Read More
Tools For Success: Frameworks for Strategic Decision-Making
Time and again clients come to us to help them answer the wrong questions. It doesn't matter whether the assignment is a merger or a leadership transition, the issue is the same -- how to frame the problem so clients can address the challenges they face. It isn't easy. We're like an architect for your new building. First we'd ask how you would use it -- do you want to live there with your family or use it for your agency's theatre productions? Next we'd find out how many rooms you need and how big they must be and then we would start sketching. Worrying about paint colors should come much later, but often it is analogous to the first question asked.
For example, a client may seek our help in negotiating with a merger partner. We start the conversation by asking what they hope to accomplish with a merger: why this prospective partner, not another? If the organization wants to develop an earned income stream, we ask, "What business are you in? What do the people you serve want, what do they value, who will pay for it?" We try to frame the conversation, establishing the "four corners of the map" to ground us. Then we can work in greater detail with the client, moving from strategy to planning to realistic execution. In this way, everything from overarching goal to detailed implementation is aligned and supports your organization's objectives - just like a well-designed house.
Setting the framework lays a strong foundation so you can address your strategic challenges - now and in the future. Read More
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Transitions: Coaching Helps Ensure a New Leader's Success
Transitions are hard. It isn't easy to decide to create a deputy director position and then delegate real responsibility to your new lieutenant. Making the leap to your first executive director job can be particularly challenging, especially if you're being promoted from within and now have colleagues reporting to you.
We encounter situations like this frequently when we're initially engaged to take on a recruiting assignment. But as we work with the board and executive, it becomes clear how critical a role they play in welcoming, orienting and supporting their new leader, often extending our assignment to coach them and their new executive or deputy director. They want their months of investment in recruiting to pay off with a successful executive who stays for years to come.
Coaching helps both the organization and the new hire adjust to the inevitable shift in roles and "the way it's always been done." One-on-one and together, we work with the new leader and board in framing their goals for the organization, setting priorities and tasks for the initial months, and agreeing on how they will measure success. We coach them in establishing strong communications and in identifying when and how the new hire will need board support. Both sides benefit, and the next time a senior executive is hired, managing the transition will be part of their normal activities.
Coaching provides gentle guidance for the board and executive as they negotiate the transition to new leadership. Read More
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