180MG Content

4 Reasons Why Your Nonprofit Needs A Holistic Operations Consultant

mdicks@180managementgroup.com (Miriam Dicks) — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 20:30:39 GMT

Traditional vs. holistic

It’s unclear how many nonprofit consultants and consulting firms are currently operating in the United States, but by a quick Google search it appears to be hundreds . There are numerous articles on different types of nonprofit consultants and their specific niches of how they serve nonprofits. In essence, these services are typically performed in silos , and sometimes this is all an organization needs.

If your organization needs to improve its grant writing skills, it is likely you are only going to seek grant writing consulting . If you organization needs to create more intriguing messaging, you will likely only seek out a communications consultant. Many consulting firms, however, provide many different services because of the complex nature of operations. But are they holistic?

Most of us are familiar with the term “holistic” when it comes to the field of medicine. Instead of being prescribed medication after a 10-minute consultation with a doctor, a holistic provider may do a deeper assessment into all factors that could be creating a medical issue. A holistic provider may ask more probing questions than a traditional doctor.

A holistic operations consultant operates in the same way. Instead of placing a Band-Aid on a bleeding wound, a different approach to healing is taken to addressing pain points in a nonprofit.

A nonprofit executive may hire a consultant because there is consistently high staff turnover and due to this, planned initiatives are failing. The wound on the outside may appear to be high staff turnover , but a deeper dive into the entire organization’s operations and culture will likely reveal the true reason behind the staff turnover.

That is the promise of holistic consulting: finding the cause of the pain, making a plan that fits the organization’s culture, and executing strategy to stop the pain.

Here are 4 reasons why hiring a holistic operations consultant is vital to a nonprofit’s success

1. Leadership engagement

Every nonprofit leader is in their position for a reason. Many have been part of the organization at a grassroots level and worked their way into executive positions. Some have years of experience and are leading with the knowledge and resourcefulness they have acquired over time. They know what they need to do.

But there are typically some pain points in nonprofits:

Low staff morale
High staff turnover
Failed or stagnant initiatives
Lack of funding or resources
Something else you may be thinking of right now as you’re reading this

How those pain points are identified is extremely important. Instead of asking a nonprofit leader, “How’s your organization doing?” a holistic consultant will ask these kinds of questions:

“What is keeping you up at night?”
“What is going on in your organization that is causing pain?”
“What is causing you the most stress at work right now?”

When you start with a pain point, you have a different conversation. A more meaningful conversation. Nine out of ten times a senior leader can quickly engage in a full conversation with these simple prompts. A holistic consultant can hear those pain points and then speak to those pain points about the possible root issues that might be at work.

2. Organizational culture & values

Have you ever worked with a vendor that did not take into consideration your organization’s culture and values? Many of us have! This is because a vendor is typically hired to take on one task that is being asked of them.

A hired vendor can very easily change your accounting software from QuickBooks to Intacct. That is a very specific project. The vendor can teach you how to pull all the data out of one system and put it into a new system, based on how you want the reports to look. They can tell you that you are going to need some controls as to who is going to have access to this data.

Nonprofits may have the tendency to use operation consultants the same way they do vendors.

What they are not going to do is solve your issues surrounding data entry issues and data quality. Changing systems from QuickBooks to Intacct is not going to solve a “bad reporting” issue. However, changing culture will. Changing from one system to another is a process change . Managing people appropriately so that data entry and data quality is improved is a cultural change.

If you are going to build a house, you first examine the blueprint before you go out and buy equipment. Many people will go out and buy equipment and want it to build a house without looking at the blueprint.

The blueprint for a nonprofit organization is its culture and values. Nonprofits need a blueprint, to understand the direction of the organization, and how to build operations to get there. A holistic operations consultant not only takes this into consideration but will consider it the fundamentals for addressing pain points and ensuring successful change management.

3. Assessing it ALL

Since the approach of operations management consultancy differs from vendor services, a proper assessment is critical to addressing pain points. If you never do a full assessment, you will always think the issue is surface level.

We simply don’t know what we don’t know. If low staff morale is prevailing at your organization, a senior leader will likely have a difficult time finding the root cause of this issue. A holistic consultant can provide a deep dive into an organization’s culture and operations to find the root cause:

Low staff morale may be the result of a poor work environment.
If too many initiatives are going on at once, employees may not feel like they know what to do or end up feeling overwhelmed and cannot get their work done.
Staff may not feel like their thoughts and opinions are valued, creating an environment of brewing resentment .

A senior leader will never know the root cause without a comprehensive organizational assessment. Many different assessments are used by consulting firms, but a holistic consultant will make sure to incorporate the following in an assessment:

Detailed surveys/interviews with all staff
Trending feedback responses
In-depth interviews with executive leadership and decision makers
Ongoing, inclusive conversations with leadership
Asking questions they may not think to ask themselves
Looking to find what the true pain points are, not seeking to create a narrative that aligns with pre-set beliefs of the issues at hand

In doing this type of assessment, an organization can be provided with realistic solutions that fit their culture and current state of operations.

4. Providing solutions that are actually solutions

In our personal and professional lives, often we are given “bad solutions” (i.e., advice that doesn’t consider the full picture) that don’t work to promote growth.

A simple example of this is how a consultant may approach how staff are using various platforms to store and report data. If one person is using Google Drive and another is using OneDrive, the systems are not talking to each other.

Without a full assessment, a consultant may provide a way to manage key information on a spreadsheet to have a more succinct way of reporting. While this may seem like a solution, without a full assessment of an organization’s hardware, software, or network, this may be posed as a “solution” but cannot be implemented because the entire scope of operations wasn’t considered.

A holistic operations consultant aims to meet their clients where they are to give solutions that actually work. The steps should mirror something like this:

Conduct a detailed organizational assessment.
Provide multiple solutions that can be implemented to bring them back into operational balance.
Deliver as many options as needed to get an organization up and running or back on track, based on their financial situation.

Ongoing consultation, project management, administrative support services, or additional staff may be required depending on the scope of the pain points identified or how the organizational culture is impacting operations.

A holistic operations consultant will provide a great plan and strategy to meet their client’s needs, which is half the battle! To choose what path is best, whether that be implementation with or without additional consultation, is always the client’s choice. A great holistic consultant will set their clients up for success whether additional services are desired, or not.

The c aveat to successful consultant collaboration

Before you begin sending proposals to hire a holistic operations consultant for your organization, consider if you are ready to accept their approach and expertise.

Ask yourself these 3 questions:

“Are we willing to grant this person access to fully assess our organization?”
“Are we ready to see potential pain points that we may not have been aware of before?”
“Are we in a position to take feedback and implement it into our organization?”

If you can answer YES to these three questions, you are on your way to transformational success for your nonprofit!

4 Necessary Culture Shifts To Help You Navigate Change Management

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 17:22:24 GMT

The first lesson I learned while working in the healthcare industry was this: Expect change. Every year there was guaranteed to be a policy or procedural change that required change management , which led to the second lesson I learned: Figure out how to make the change last.

Organizations that successfully navigate change management have also made culture shifts to ensure lasting change.

There are 4 culture shifts that a nonprofit organization needs to make to maintain change management.

1. Adopt a culture that values feedback.

Many of us have been in the position of loving an idea on paper but later realizing it doesn’t work so well in practice. The initial idea on paper may not capture nuances of day-to-day work rhythms, or it may collide with current processes or services. The staff who may be working these day-to-day tasks may not be key decision-makers, which could create a communication gap.

Maintaining a feedback loop to ensure that you as a leader know what is happening at pavement level will do three things:

Creates confidence in your staff that they are a part of the change process.
Provides a sense of ownership in making the change work.
Signals any needs to make future adjustments during planning phases.

Remember: Obtaining feedback from your staff is not the same as using their feedback. Have you ever been told by someone that they value what you say, but then take actions that prove otherwise? At some point you disconnect or disengage, and in doing so, distrust seeps in and can create a toxic workplace culture . Regardless of the feedback, make it a practice to acknowledge it, address it, and when appropriate, implement it.

2. Adopt a culture that supports flexibility.

Flexibility and structure are not mutually exclusive. A nonprofit with a culture of flexibility embraces “new;” a new way of doing, thinking, and being, without compromising the organizations mission. When change has been initiated there must be flexibility in how the change is carried out.

How does a culture of flexibility look? Here’s some examples:

The ability to scrap a new design and start over when it’s obvious that it doesn’t meet an objective.
Relinquishing control to the best person for the job when it was not initially obvious that they would be the best choice.
Inviting creativity. Creativity fuels flexibility!

3. Adopt a culture that values training.

A major pitfall for maintaining changes in an organization is a lack of training. Many organizations tend to provide a quick overview of how things are supposed to work without a proper system to evaluate their staff’s understanding of the proposed changes.

Training as demonstration without evaluation is only an overview. Without this, people will revert to what is easiest, most familiar, or most comfortable to them. There is no accountability. Regardless of whether a change will require a lot of training or not, it’s a good practice to take time to identify any training needs.

Ask these questions to determine when training is needed:

Are we asking staff to do something they’ve never done?
Are we expecting staff to figure out anything on their own? If so, can our current staff manage figuring things out on their own?

To create a lasting change within your organization, a culture that values training with evaluation will develop more proficient staff and maintain change.

4. Adopt a culture of accountability.

Don’t have a heavy hand without a soft heart. This is one of the fastest ways to lose great employees. Holding staff accountable for work that they have not been prepared to do is downright unfair.

Recently I was talking to a friend who disclosed she was leaving her job. Her response to me asking, “Why?”, was this: “I didn’t get hardly any training on what they were asking me to do. And then I was expected to jump right in to my new duties without having hardly any time to practice and get familiar with it. It was too stressful.” Not only did she feel as though she wasn’t adequately prepared, but her boss also berated her on her performance in front of her co-workers.

When it comes to having a culture of accountability it only serves the company well when there are two things present:

Clear expectations.
Adequate training.

Without these two things, people will feel as though they can’t excel.

When people feel as though they can’t excel, one of two things typically happen: They quit, or perhaps even worse, they stay, storing up resentment, performing at the bare minimum level. When an organization has clear expectations and adequate training, accountability helps to make change lasting.

An accountability system that maintains change creates the following:

Involvement. It promotes the idea that everyone’s work matters and is an important contribution to the organization. Everyone must do their part.
Commitment. It undergirds the notion of how important the change is to the organization. The change is important enough to measure and monitor its performance.
Excellence. It emphasizes that how the goal is met, matters. The point of change is to make the organization stronger, not weaker!

Are you currently making decisions about what changes need to be made within your nonprofit organization? If so, take the time to evaluate whether your culture will be able to maintain the change that is desired. It is beyond frustrating as a leader to invest time, energy, and money to make changes that can’t be maintained to meet the objectives. Take heart in knowing that with a little effort and tweaking your culture, it can be done!