The Bamboo Project Blog

A Results Oriented Work Environment is NOT the Same as Flexible Scheduling

Last week I asked if your nonprofit was ready to stop watching the clock in a post discussing Best Buy's Results-Oriented Work Environment (ROWE). As a quick recap, Best Buy is now allowing a significant portion of its employees to work from home or other locations and to work whatever hours they need in order to achieve clearly-defined work objectives. Face time is no longer considered a requirement of most jobs and they are even looking to roll out the concept in their retail stores.

When I wrote the post, one of the questions I asked was if there's a difference between ROWE and flexible scheduling. I've come to the conclusion that there is a major difference, one that gets to the heart of some fundamental beliefs that many organizations have about work.

At many organizations, a flexible schedule is worked out on a case-by-case basis to accommodate life situations that workers may face during their tenure with the organization. It's commonly used to ease women back into work following maternity leave, to provide an employee with time to care for a sick family member or because the employee is dealing with his/her own health problems. Regardless, it's generally a solution that organizations will consider for employees who are currently "not serious" about their jobs because other life issues are intervening.

In the minds of management, people who need a flexible schedule are people who are not putting work first. This means that they are less likely to be considered for promotions, special projects, etc. In many cases, asking for a flexible schedule that allows you to work from home and/or to work "non-traditional" hours is a fast road to a career dead end.

ROWE is a completely different animal. Best Buy is starting from the premise that ALL workers would benefit from having the flexibility to get work done wherever and whenever it makes the most sense for them to do it. They are not assuming that people who want to work from Starbucks or from a den in their homes are trying to shirk work. They are assuming that these are people who are deadly serious about their own performance and are adult enough to know when they need an optimum environment for getting that work done.

While the content of flexible schedules is the same in both types of organizations--it consists of allowing workers to do work at times and locations that work for them--the CONTEXT for a flexible schedule is totally different.

In the first organization, flexible schedules are not the norm and they are based on a belief that the "best workers" are in the office, every day at specific hours. In the organization that embraces ROWE, however, flexible scheduling is part of the fabric and culture of the organization. It is based on a belief that the best workers will get their work done and that these workers NEED flexibility in order to operate at peak performance.

In the first organization, a flexible schedule is seen as a crutch for the "weaker" employees. In the ROWE organization, a flexible schedule is a tool that benefits all workers, particularly the strongest performers.

Why is making this distinction important? In part because I think that organizations interested in exploring the possibilities of ROWE must first be clear about some of their underlying beliefs about work and performance. Knowing if you see a flexible schedule as a crutch or a tool is an important first step.

More on Scarcity vs. Abundance Thinking

In between a grant proposal and a website I'm working on for a client, I've been continuing to think about the issue of scarcity thinking in nonprofits that I started on yesterday as I read what others have to say on the subject.

Allen points out that scarcity thinking is the enemy of change management everywhere, not just in relation to IT projects or nonprofits and I completely agree. He suggests that  good planning can help people adjust their scarcity beliefs, although I wonder if the right kind of planning is possible when management is in the grip of the scarcity mindset themselves.

Michelle Murrain of Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology tells a story about a nonprofit she worked with:

A long time ago (in web years) I was working with a certain CEO of a certain chapter of a certain very-big-nonprofit (whose role in life is to fund other nonprofits - this kinda gives it away, but it's necessary for the story.) We were talking about whether or not this certain nonprofit, who had mondo resources, should help facilitate web development for their client organizations. They had realized that if they did that, the client organizations could begin to raise money themselves, instead of depending so heavily on this certain nonprofit. So, guess what? No web development help. I was, of course, surprised (that's mild, I was frankly horrified - wasn't it the mission of this certain nonprofit to help the client nonprofits raise money? Wouldn't helping them raise money themselves fulfill their mission?) But that's scarcity thinking for you. Even though this very-big-nonprofit was rolling in money, they thought the pie was finite, and that if the money didn't go through them, they'd get less. So the scarcity mentality isn't just for small, struggling nonprofits. It's very widespread.

What's sad and scary about this story is that the nonprofit she's talking about was "rolling in money," yet STILL saw the world in terms of scarce resources. It wasn't a picture based even on its own experienced reality, but on a world-view that I'm sure had never been challenged.

I have to wonder if one of the reasons we haven't seen as much progress as we'd like in achieving our various nonprofit missions is because of this scarcity mindset. Scarcity thinking allows us to make excuses for poor performance ("We don't have the time or the money or the people to do this!"). It isolates us, not only from other nonprofits with whom we might share resources and ideas, but from each other and from our clients. We're so busy maintaining our slice of the pie, we fail to see the ways in which we should be working on making the pie bigger. This scarcity mode is divisive and keeps us focused on the wrong things--on the problems and the barriers rather than on the opportunities and the solutions. I think it even moves us to keep clients dependent on us and our services, as Michelle's client did in the story above.

I've been looking at other resources too. This post from the Chief Happiness Officer is a good one, contrasting scarcity thinking and abundance thinking:

Scarcity	Abundance
It’s every man for himself	We can work together
I never have time	I take time for the things that matter
Mistakes are disasters	I can recover and learn from mistakes
Ideas are hard to come by and must be kept secret	I can always have a great idea
Our company is lacking	Our company has everything it needs to succeed
Look at all the resources we need	Look at all the resources we have
The market is full of threats	The market is full of opportunities
People are out to get me	People are out to help me

How often do we hear or see some version of the left column in our daily work? Far more frequently than we see the right column thinking, I'd guess.

I also found this post by Ross Mayfield who wrote last October about the issue of abundance and how he's spent the last five years blogging from that belief system:

I've been blogging for five years as of this month, and here's what I've learned:

ABUNDANCE

I have discovered I have a lot to give.  And when I give, I notice others give more.  Some of them I've formed relationships with, and trust opens giving, but I have also learned to trust strangers to share in abundance.  Life is iterative, markets are not transactions and scarcity of attention is false. Our learnings compound abundance and there may be no limit to what we can produce.

I think that it's this picture of abundance that I find so engaging about the Internet and social media. A lot of people give generously of their time, their expertise and their support to write their own blogs, comment on others, create videos and podcasts and beautiful art that enriches the rest of us. And they do it for nothing.This is abundance thinking. This is a belief that there is an endless flow of ideas and information that we can connect and shape to create new things all the time.

I'm rambling a little, but it feels important to me to begin thinking differently about how I do my work. I know that I'm as guilty as anyone of scarcity thinking, especially under stress. Patricia Soldati talks about how fear drives scarcity thinking in her post on the "allure of scarcity":

(Scarcity thinking is) a powerful notion that's been with us forever, but has exploded in our consciousness since 9/11. Scarcity is rooted in fear and lives in the world of ego. It says: "The world is not safe, so I am not safe. I need to have greater and greater control to feel safe – over my health, my finances, my family, my work. If you have more, I have less."

Safe…maybe, but a scarcity mentality effectively embraces struggle, and abandons any opportunity for you to have a compelling identity about yourself, or to express your values or passions.

Scarcity is limiting, but safe and I think that most people value safety over just about everything (myself included, far more than I care to admit). So part of the challenge is to override your fear and to recognize when you've moved into that anxious scarcity mindset.

This kind of mindful practice is fine for individuals, but what about for an entire organization? It seems that we can only go so far in having individual people willing to challenge and re-formulate their belief systems, particularly if the leadership of the organization is not concerned with changing those patterns.

So the big question for me is what kinds of activities can organizations engage in to begin moving from scarcity to abundance?

Is the Scarcity Mentality the Biggest Barrier to Social Media in Nonprofits?

Through a circuitous route I won't bother to explain, today I find myself thinking about the impact of scarcity thinking on nonprofit organizations.

One of the most powerful learnings I've had in my professional practice is that our mental models have a profound impact on our work practices. One of the mental models I'm observing at work today is scarcity vs. abundance thinking and  I'm starting to wonder if the biggest barrier to using social media in nonprofits is the scarcity model of thinking that seems to permeate most nonprofit organizations. This scarcity thinking seems to be me to be in direct conflict with the abundance thinking that has created the social web and I'm wondering if the two can co-exist. I'm also wondering if it's the scarcity mentality that is at the root of so much of what's going wrong in nonprofits today.   

Scarcity Thinking vs. Abundance Thinking
This article does a nice job of explaining the differences between abundance thinking and scarcity thinking in organizations.

 Abundance, in terms of business and personal value, is an attitude of growth (my emphasis). I can grow more rapidly personally by banding with others in a business environment as we, together, grow our proverbial economic pie more rapidly than any of us could otherwise do. In the process, although we may have smaller shares of a collective pie than 100% of our personal pies, those smaller shares will be worth more than our individual, personal pies.

That is the theory and that is why doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, business appraisers, and members of many other professions come together in professional service firms. Collectively, they can do more and do better than any of them could do alone.

For professional service firms to grow, however, it is necessary that the concept of abundance that brought groups together in the first place be fostered by and among the individual professionals.

In an abundance environment, professionals work together to provide services to clients and customers. They do so by doing what is best for their customers. The rewards for their efforts are then shared on a collective basis.

While no rewards systems are perfect, if the economic pie is growing, the effects of many imperfections are minimized. If business is slower in a given year, everyone recognizes that the pie is smaller and that their shares will also be smaller. The collective emphasis then is on maximizing growth and minimizing the effects of economic adversity.

  Scarcity, in terms of business and personal value, reflects an attitude of the absence of growth (my emphasis).  Therefore, those with the scarcity mentality tend to think of the pie, whether personal or collective, as fixed, and want to grab the biggest piece possible, even some of the grab takes away from others.

Scarcity is defined as "the quality or state of being scarce; especially : want of provisions for the support of life."   And scarce is defined as "deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand: not plentiful or abundant."

There just isn't enough to go around when the scarcity mentality is present, regardless of the success of an organization.

Abundance vs. Scarcity. Problems arise when a professional with a scarcity mentality joins with an abundance-oriented organization. He or she is not focused on the growing pie because of the perception that at any given time, the pie is fixed in size. That attitude fosters emphasis on individual performance and rewards rather than collective performance.

From what I can see, most nonprofits operate from a scarcity mentality. We are constantly talking about what we lack--money, information, staff, resources.  There's a strong feeling that there isn't enough to go around and so the focus is on grabbing the largest share possible for your organization and holding onto that share for dear life. In a scarcity mentality, the impulse is to hoard, not to share--at least when it comes to anything of value. And the focus is on the individual organization, on survival and limits, not on the collective social mission and on growth.

This post from the Kiva Chronicles describes some of what goes on in nonprofits when scarcity is at work:

For the past two years I've operated in an environment where scarcity was the rule. We had a really small budget and stretched it so wide. We used open source methodologies, we had no IT person, no travel budget, no QA testing, no paid accountant, used furniture, little insurance, no computer budget, no server administrator, low budget hosting, a CEO who writes code, etc, etc. Most of all, we had no free time and all became workaholics. I'd venture to say I saw the sunrise 100 times last year.

Scarcity, while we might complain about it, can become a badge of honor as well. In the nonprofit world, I see that all the time. Nonprofits often compete in terms of their overhead ratios. Most every nonprofit out there advertises to it's funders how it likes to keep overhead low so that the majority of funds it raises goes to constituents. Kiva is not all that different. Last year we raised $2M in loans through our website and spent about $200K on our own staff (aka overhead). Thus, we can advertise that our overhead was no more than 10% of the total funds sent to our consituents. That's golden in the fundraising world.

This kind of competition, while it seems logical to the public, can also be destructive. For instance, is it a good thing that Kiva had no QA testing process last year? Sure, we spent less on dreadful *overhead*, but at what cost? A buggier website?

Web 2.0 and social media, on the other hand, seems to have sprung from an abundance mentality. Our capacity to inexpensively collect, store and share digital information has created a world where the uses of digital resources are limited only by our own sense of the possibilities. As a result, Web 2.0 culture emphasizes sharing, creating collective value, and ongoing growth  via developing networks of people, information and resources. Further, an individual's value is measured by the value that he/she brings to the collective. It isn't measured by how well he/she holds onto information and resources for individual gain (as is the case when we operate from beliefs of scarcity).

Questions That Emerge on Scarcity vs. Abundance Thinking
Some questions that are starting to form for me as a result of this line of thinking:

• Is it possible for an organization to operate in a culture of scarcity and still embrace social media and Web 2.0? My guess is that they can't, except in the most superficial ways. It will either be shift to abundance thinking and really harness the power of social media or stay in scarcity thinking and make ineffective use of social media. I doubt that it's possible to really get collective knowledge and information sharing going when a scarcity mentality says that there isn't enough time, resources, energy, etc. to really make it happen. And I think that there's just a fundamental mismatch there that permeates organizational culture in ways I'm only dimly perceiving right now.

• Are many of these "perceived" barriers to knowledge sharing a result of scarcity thinking? Are these really barriers? Or is it just that we're missing solutions because we're so focused on "lack-of" thinking?

• How would our ability to find new solutions to implementing social media and knowledge sharing within organizations be changed if we shifted to an abundance mentality?

• What are the larger impacts of scarcity thinking on nonprofits? How do we miss possible collective solutions to problems because we're so focused on preserving our own piece of the pie? How do we miss the larger picture of the best ways to address our organization's social cause when we are in scarcity mode?  I keep thinking about Begging for Change and about how so many of the problems that Eggers points out are really rooted in scarcity thinking. What's even more bothersome is that this scarcity thinking seems to move down the food chain into how clients are treated, which in many cases further deepens client dependence on nonprofits.

• What organizational and individual changes would we have to take to move from scarcity thinking to an abundance mentality? There might be some ideas here, here, and here.

I'm feeling a vague discomfort in exploring this line of thinking because I hesitate to appear too "New Age" and so much of what's available for exploration seems to come from the self-help aisle. But the more this all rolls around in my mind, the more I feel like there's something big here that I want to further explore. (Why do my biggest questions come up when I have the least amount of time to ponder them?)

I'd be curious to hear from others about this. Are there any resources you'd suggest that I look at? Any ideas that you have on whether or not I'm on the right track in thinking that this may be a fundamental barrier to true acceptance of social media?

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Stop Managing to the Exceptions and Start Learning from the Consequences

In my work with nonprofits, I've found that there's a tendency to manage to the exceptions. This plays itself out a few ways.

In some cases, entire systems will be developed around what could go wrong. Staff management policies and and practices are based on the few who are problems, rather than the many who are not. Client services are developed to "control" the "bad" client, rather than to meet the needs of the vast majority who are "good."

I've also seen this principle in action when management are evaluating the use of new ideas or  technologies. They immediately consider the worst possible scenario and then use that as a reason to ultimately stick with the status quo. They've already proven they can live with the negative consequences of what currently exists, so in their minds it is often the case that "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

I think it's valuable to evaluate new ideas in light of the potential worst case scenario. You need to be clear about what COULD happen, rather than being all Pollyanna about it. But to me, envisioning worst case scenarios should be a route to planning to deal with them, rather than to shooting down something that could, in fact, serve you better.

I thought about this phenomenon when I was reading Chris Lehman's post on Dealing with the Worst Consequences of Your Best Ideas. Chris is the principal of a newly-opened high school in Philadelphia called the Science Leadership Academy. They are in the process of working through their first year and what Chris has to say about their planning process is applicable to nonprofits, too, I think:

One of the things I always try to keep in mind when I think about school planning and design, and something I said a lot to the faculty as we planned, was "There is no panacea in education and every great idea has a dark side, so what are the worst consequences of your best ideas?" It's important to do for two reasons -- one because I think that many educational institutions become reactionary too often, throwing the baby out with the bathwater when an unforeseen consequence of a really good idea comes along. I'd rather think about every potential dark side so that when they happen, I'm not surprised, I've thought about them first, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a consequence I can live with. And two, because you can look to mitigate them and plan for them, and speak about them before hand.

This is what happens in nonprofits, too. There is no panacea in nonprofit work.  We work with very complex social problems with no easy answers. These problems (should) force us to consider complex solutions with great potential to backfire. But unintended consequences shouldn't make us back away from powerful solutions. Instead, they should invite us to delve deeper and to consider how these consequences can help staff learn and grow to more workable options.

To illustrate this point, Chris discusses a recent issue that the school had with their students using instant messaging on their laptops:

We had some students use the laptops and instant messaging in really inappropriate ways. It was upsetting teachers and students alike, and we saw a creeping loss of a sense of safety. So what did we do? We talked about it as a community on our moodle site. The student forums were suddenly filled with conversations about what was going on, what screennames to beware of, how to block someone in iChat, and (I'm not kidding) discussion by students about how poorly this reflected on our community. The adults chimed in from time to time to give our perspective, and the conversations continued as we did continue to try to find out who was doing this. What was interesting is that as the conversations about the behavior continued, we saw less of the behavior, and I believe that to be two-fold, 1) We, the adults, made it clear that there would be consequences, and 2) (and more importantly) it quickly became obvious that the kids doing it didn't have a ton of support in the community. Kids were really upset.

This is the kind of thing that nonprofit managers fear will happen when staff use social media tools. Maybe they won't say inappropriate things, the way that teenagers would, but what if staff talk about non-work related things? Or link to something we don't approve of? In many cases, the fear of this will be enough to squash the idea before it's even implemented. But if you're willing to use this as a learning opportunity, these consequences can actually help you improve your community and capacity to function.

What strikes me about Chris's response is that the school chose to use this unintended consequence as a learning opportunity rather than to shut down their use of the tool.

Many schools (and nonprofits) would look at the experience and say "See--they're doing exactly what we worried they'd do. This is why we shouldn't have allowed them to do it in the first place!" But Chris and his teachers took a different approach. They used the experience to reinforce the organizational culture they are trying to create, one that is focused on developing students and their critical thinking skills, rather than one that is trying to create unthinking robots:

In the end, of course, this is about much more than how a few students used their laptops. It's about the culture of SLA, and how we create an open culture where kids aren't just told what to do, but have a lot of ability to make decisions in a caring community. There's a Vaclav Havel quote that speaks powerfully to this whole issue:

"Freedom is only one side of the coin, where the other side is represented by responsibility. . .

. . . (This experience)  reminds us of our own values and how we have to strike that balance, and not take away the kids' freedom to express themselves, freedom to make decisions, freedom to take ownership in our community, because that is our best idea, but rather, we just have to make sure we teach -- and embody ourselves -- the responsibility that goes with that."

To me, this story captures the essence of organizational capacity-building--having the courage to try complex new ideas and then to facilitate the organization through discussion and learning about the consequences of those ideas. Bad or good, there's always something to be learned.

Michele

Taking it to the Next Level

When I work with my clients (mostly government agencies and non-profit community and faith-based organizations), we often use a 6 boxes matrix for analyzing organizational issues.

1. Expectations--How does the organization measure success? What are the organizational measures and what are the individual measures? Is everyone in the organization clear about how success is measured? Are these expectations clearly and consistently communicated and measured?
2. Tools and Resources--What tools and resources do staff have access to to get the job done? Is there a policy and procedure manual? The proper forms? Do they have working computers? What about their working environment? Is it conducive to getting the job done?
3. Consequences and Incentives--What behaviors are encouraged? What behaviors are discouraged? What formal incentives and consequnces exist? What are the informal incentives and consequences?
4. Skills and Knowledge--Do staff have the skills and knowledge to get their jobs done? Do they have adequate training not just in the ways of the agency for which they work, but also in core skills and knowledge that may be necessary to get the job done?
5. Selection and Assignment--Do you have the right people on the bus? Are they sitting in the right seats? Are you leveraging people's strengths and helping them to manage around their weaknesses?
6. Motives and Preferences--Are you meeting individual employee needs? Are you using the right mix of incentives, work environment, etc. to motivate each employee?

In this approach, each box is built on the ones before it, so that Box 1 (Expectations) must be clearly developed and understood before the organization should move on to the next one (Tools and Resources). It does no good to work on Box 6, which is related to employee attitudes, if you have not worked on the boxes before it.

Nine times out of ten we find that poor morale is a direct result of the agency not paying attention to one of the earlier boxes, particularly Boxes 1, 2 and 3 If you do not set clear, consistent expectations, provide staff with the right tools and resources and provide the right mix of incentives for meeting expectations, then you shouldn't complain if morale is low. None of us is happy when we don't know what our job is or we're expected to do it without the right tools and training.

In later posts, I'll be taking a closer look at each of the individual boxes. For now, I introduce them because I think that they create the framework for understanding each of the areas that we must pay attention to in running an organization.

In this blog, I want to explore the resources that NPOs can use to improve their organizational capacity. I have a particular interest in the uses of technology and best practices to improve overall performance and want to examine how NPOs can begin to take advantage of the variety of resources that are available to improve their capacity to meet their individual mission.

An ambitious project, no doubt, but a fun one too.