Episode 118: Process that LEADS to Results

Welcome to the latest edition of "Around with Randall". Of course I'm Randall. We want to chat today a little bit about process versus results. And this is becoming a more important conversation in our non-profit world as we're realizing, based on the economy, based on inflation, based on a decreasing population of individuals who are making charitable gifts, that there's pressure on particularly fundraisers but the organization maybe in terms of of reducing expenses to get to a better result. And what we're finding, well at least I'm seeing, is that we spend so much time on the result that we forget about the process, and so I want to talk about this maybe in general terms a little bit to give you a sense of a manner in which you can kind of help yourself in figuring out how to get to the challenge, the answer to a challenge that's being presented to you.

So let's talk about this for a second. I am not here to say that process is overridingly more important than results. What I am saying is it's hard to get to the best result without a process. What we spend most of our time thinking about is what we're trying to accomplish, the end objective, the end dollar figure, the end of the how we're going to measure a particular plan or strategic initiative or adjustment that needs to be made. And things, because they may happen fairly quickly, may not allow us or maybe move us. There's a better way to put it towards thinking about tactical, knee-jerk reactions rather than building a simple process that can help us figure this out. I am not talking about taking six months to solve a problem that should take 15 minutes. What I'm talking about is how do we think about how do we get to results and particularly when things have to be done somewhat quickly. Why is process important?

So let's talk about that for a second. I'm not here to indicate again that let's just ignore the results because we'll talk about that specifically, something, maybe a way to think about it here in a moment. Number one is that process develops a road map. How in the world are we supposed to know how to get somewhere without a map? Just the simplicity thought, because I happened to travel maybe more often than the average bear, is that I have to have my phone sometimes help direct me to where I'm going. It's a map. Now in olden days for those of you who are young enough you've probably never held an atlas. We had them in our cars. It was how we knew how to get from A to B, and that's really what we're talking about. It's not much more complicated than that. It creates a road map.

Number two, it focuses us. It focuses us into the moment, into that moment, instead of always looking way down the road. What we're able to do is look at what we need to do today to get to that objective rather than just staring at the objective and not quite sure what the next step is. It naturally creates steps in a process that will lead you to better results.

Number three, it allows us to evaluate as we go. If we know the process is in place what we can do is adjust when things come up that we're not aware of, instead of just putting our head down and driving towards what we think the best map towards the objective we're aiming at. We have a chance to take a little bit of a left or a little bit of right. I tell clients quite often that the the difference in success is usually only a change of two, three, four, five degrees. Meaning, if a circle is 360 degrees we're only changing three or four degrees left or right when we want to make that adjustment, but that could be the difference if you think about two, or three, four, five degrees as you go out away from the circle that gets to be a big difference. But immediately it's just a small adjustment number.

Four it reduces the possibility of luck. One of my favorite analogies in when we talk about luck and process and why it's important is the story of the two gift officers. You have a gift officer that does everything right and the gifts just don't come and they miss their goal by, let's say ten percent. And the gift officer who's lazy and doesn't do a darn thing but walks into the right three gifts in the right year and they end up meeting all the objectives, which would you rather have? Which would you rather be? And that's exactly the point of process. We'll talk about individual metrics and some intermediate goals here in a moment. Process eliminates luck over time and will allow organizations and people to be more successful in a repetitive, ongoing endeavor, or need, or effort.

Number five, it really builds more long-term success if you have a great process that is repetitive, time over time, over time. You're going to be looking at longer term success. It's not again back to that luck factor. You're building in behaviors. You're building in steps that are going to create success. If you build the right process that becomes repetitive, all those things are important, and that's, I'm a pro. I'm such a process-oriented person and I talk about it all the time, but I don't want to offset or to negate the need for a result. If we're doing our job correctly we can live by the words of John Wooden. John Wooden was the legendary basketball coach at UCLA who won 10 of 11 national championships from 1964 to 1975 and follow Athletics at all think about somebody winning at the highest levels of sport, winning 10 of 11 championships. They were going to happen again in this Pyramid of Success, and one of his favorite sayings that he would use quite often was don't confuse achievement for activity. Activity are things we do, but part of process is creating in that, in that mapping, or setting the stage,, or figuring out where we're headed is creating accomplishment not just activity. If process is done correctly it actually eliminates the activity that isn't productive, or moderates it in a way that you know brings it down in terms of how much it impacts us. So what does process look like because it's kind of this nebulous thought.

So I want to talk for a few minutes about ways in which no matter what, and we'll get to some of the details, but whether it's dealing with fundraising and budgets or changing in goals, whether it's about how you deal with your gift officers and their productivity, how about strategic planning and vision and goals for a board, or even employee challenges. How do you build a process? It's not that nebulous if you really kind of think about it and know what you're doing. So something you can do is write down these nine steps, keep them really simple, very easy. But I use these nine steps all the time and figuring out how to help clients, how I help gift officers, how I help boards, how I help CEOs to get to where they want to go.

So the first thing is, number one, is just identify the overall objective and keep it a high level, and that's output. What are we trying to do? We try to reduce expenses. We're trying to raise more money. Are we trying to help employees be more successful? Do we need more productivity with our staff? Keep it in general. Don't get very specific because one thing that'll defeat process really quickly is a very narrow defined goal that actually is not the goal, it's a part of the the goal, and it's actually should be part of the process. If you want to start start big we need to raise more money. We need to reduce our expenses. We need more productivity. We need better efficiency. We need to create a better way of doing X, very broad, 50,000 foot view.

Number two is identify the inputs. What is it you're gonna need to be successful. So if in the non-profit world when we talk about non-profit dollars we need people. How many budgets? How much partnerships? Who else needs to be a part of this for us to be successful? In just one example, if your CEO or you're the CEO and it's maybe the board are trying to figure out how do we raise more money, well that's pretty easy. The the overall objective is we need a million more dollars this year. We'll kind of use that as a consistent referral as we go through this. What are the resources to do that? Well we want to cut all your people. Is that realistic? Is that going to get us to our goal? Inputs help us identify what's needed to be successful. It also helps us figure out what's realistic and what's not. What I'm running into when we talk about inputs or particularly in fundraising and healthcare and education, social services where they're a little bit bigger organizations, where they have a fundraising office or philanthropy office, is a part of the larger organization, are being told we need more money. But we're going to give you less to do it with. Really, how's that work? We need you to be more efficient. I'm all for efficiency, but I've had multiple conversations with CEOs recently who somebody in finance says we need you to cut 25% of your budget and I've helped them strategize about the inputs. You want more money but you want to reduce my budget by 25%. So on that million dollar revenue based on $250,000 expenses you want me to reduce it 25 percent, you're asking me to reduce it by more than by about $60,000-$62,500 that's a person. How does that work? That makes it really hard a lot of times. Finance will only see the expense side. They don't see the income side, and that then leads to some hard discussions. But you have to fight for the right inputs to make the overall objective, number one, the Big Goal possible.

Number three is to set a timeline. How long do we have to do this? Is that reasonable? We need you to raise a million dollars more next week. We can try but I'm not sure that's reasonable. We need a million more dollars over the next year in the budget. That's something we can talk about, how feasible is that number. One the big objective. Number two what are the things you need to do, the inputs. Number three, set a timeline. Number four is creating intermediate results. When you want to lose weight every expert in the world says what's your goal. Well I want to lose 25 pounds. Well they don't say great we're only going to talk about 25 pounds. What they talk about is well can we lose a pound a week so let's measure it by the week and it's going to take 25 weeks, or if I want to do it faster what is it you need to do. The inputs, or exercise, eat less, how are we going to track that to get to two pounds or two and a half pounds per week, so we can do it in a shorter period of time. What are the intermediate ways we can measure what we're trying to accomplish, and that gets us into things you've heard me talk about in former podcasts, leading and lagging indicators, the idea that a leading indicator helps project where we're going to be in the future and what are the steps that we have to go through in trying to create these intermediate results. The last thing that comes with intermediate results are kind of the many goals that build you to your long-term objective, and identifying them is this idea we can adjust back to the Wade example. Let's say that one of the weeks or let's say two weeks that is to be part of your weight loss plan happens to be over Christmas and all of a sudden you don't eat quite the same during the Christmas holiday as you did maybe a week or 10 days before or a week or 10 days after. Maybe you don't lose that weight. How do you adjust? How do you adjust coming out of the holiday? That's an important question. And how do you not do things that could really harm you? To use the weight situation again as an example, if all that you think about and do is this weight coming out of the Christmas holidays and you don't eat anything because well I ate too much during the break that's actually bad for your health and your body will begin to adjust and will make it harder to lose weight. So we can adjust if we set the timeline into the results that are intermediate. What are things we can judge or measure as we go? After you set results those intermediate opportunities.

Number five is what are the hurdles or challenges we're going to go through? Write them down, evaluate them, think outside the box. Consider different options. If you can identify the hurdles before you get to them you can get over them, which may seem like kind of an odd metaphor. But the hurdler isn't thinking about the hurdle for the first time as they come up to it, it's a part of the plan. And when they plan for it correctly, what ends up happening is you're able to get over it. The more you identify the challenges and hurdles on the front side, the more likely you are to have better solutions when you get to them.

Number six may sound strange. I recommend you draw this out. Now there's a process called lean management or Six Sigma, which is a way in which you draw using shapes. So circle, squares, diamonds that each represent something, a stage in the overall process, a decision point which is a diamond. I'm not saying you have to become a black belt or a green belt and all the other things that demonstrate Six Sigma, but I've used it in philanthropy where somebody said we were the hospital, or the medical center, university medical center we use Six Sigma and they said you can't be exempt for this. I said I don't see how it fits in, and I went to these classes and they said walk us through something you do and I, you know, okay, let's just do grateful patient. How do we identify there's a process? What I didn't realize is we could actually put it on paper and then it illuminated the challenges, the inputs, the timeframe that we needed. And I was like, wow it actually comes to life, particularly if you're a visual learner. Don't worry about the shapes. Just, we're going to do step one. Here's what we do in step two, we draw this and then we come to a decision point. Do we do a B or C if A happens? What do? What do we have to do if B happens? What do we have to do if you write it on a simple piece of paper? This diagram of what's going to happen, and what are the steps, you'll be surprised how quickly you illuminate the challenges and what needs to happen for you.

Number seven is to consider innovation. I'll go back to the dieting example. Maybe you need to track all your food on an app on your phone. 20 years ago that was impossible. Immediate understanding of input, what calories, and then you're tracking your steps, part of a pedometer in your phone. So you can see a goal on a daily basis. What innovations out there, artificial intelligence, to better identify prospects? Prospect management software, budgeting software, technology, what is it that innovation can bring to make it more effective?

Number eight is to communicate. Eight through one million should be communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate. What is it you're trying to do? What are the steps in the process? What are the hurdles? What's the time? If this is being close held in a way that the organization, department, the group, the team can't see and understand, how do you expect anybody to buy-in, communicate, be open. Put the metrics out there.

And number nine is monitor, and evaluate, and adjust, and then monitor, and evaluate, and adjust. Don't be afraid to change the map a little bit. You get to a hurdle and it's not quite what we thought. You're going to keep running into the wall, or you're going to walk around it. Don't be afraid to adjust those nine simple steps, can really help you build a series of really reasonable processes to overcome or challenge the situation. Identify the overall objective. Keep it big. ID what you need to be successful. Set a timeline. Create those intermediate results and contemplate what hurdles will be a part of the process. Draw it out so you can see it. Consider how innovation and technology might help you communicate it to all and evaluate as you go. This applies to things like when finance is coming to a lot of people saying we need you to raise more money but we need to do it with less dollars, less input. Okay, what's the process? Who are the partners? How are we going to accomplish this? This can work towards the idea of gift officers. What is it we need them to do during the year? Intermediate planned giving, major gifts, doesn't make any difference.

I've built out a process at two spreadsheets that help us identify how they can build a repetitive, year long with intermediate monthly goals, process, be successful not just for the office but for the gift officers, strategic envision and boards. We want to get here all right, what are the 15 things we got to do to get there. How long is it going to take? What are we going to need to do? It is that goal. Reasonable with what we're putting in. Finally, even if you have an employee who's a challenge HR uses process all the time. We have all kinds of steps to help the the particular employee possibly improve. It's just not, hey you're out. There's a process in that that allows for education, for improvement, for understanding of the responsibility, understanding the job description, opportunity to time frame, timeline to improve all of these examples from more fundraising dollars, gift officer planning, strategic vision, and goals, employee challenges, process will help you. if you put it on paper you can kind of follow these steps you'll be surprised how easy it really is.

Don't forget the blogs are on the website Hallettphilanthropy.com. Two or three a week, 90 second reads, always pushing about understanding, and thinking, and educating yourself. That's one way to do it. You're listening. Here that's another way and if you'd like to reach out to me it's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Glad to answer any questions. Got a subject? Got an idea? Let me know. We're interested. We're in some interesting times in our economic culture here in the United States and around the world. What we do in terms of things like today, in process and identifying the challenges and building some solutions, it's going to be really important to our nonprofit work to the philanthropy into the ability for us to help people and the things that are important in our community. Remember my all-time favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. And at the end of the day we are people who make things happen. We partner with people who are trying to make things happen for the people and the things in our community that are wondering what happened. And I'm afraid there's going to be a lot more of those in the coming days. What are you getting ready for so that you can be one of those people, and I'm hoping today gives you a way to think about it. I appreciate your time, appreciate your interest. Thank you so much for joining me. We'll be back again next week on another edition of "Around with Randall". Don't forget, make it a great day.