How to win friends and influence people

Was in a discussion about the future direction of the Unitarian community.  The thread started by an EC member (the only one who engages on Facebook) begins thus


I'm on the EC. Throw things if you like!


(But I think he was only joking!)


My contribution was summed up by him as 


Louise Rogers questions's Jen's view that youth are essential to our future .... 


In fact I argued that we should not be supporting young people just so that at some point in the future they should take over the running of a congregation.  In the case of the Newcastle-under-Lyme congregation the vast majority of active adults are adult converts. I actually wrote


I think that providing support to youth is vital but not so that they can run anything.


You'd be hard pressed to summarise this as not thinking that youth are essential to our future - but I guess that if you try hard enough you can.  He goes on


... and (Louise Rogers) argues that we should not say that the choices we need to make are difficult.


I actually wrote 



Our choices are no more difficult than those that the majority of organisations have to make. Once we call things difficult choices we imbue them with an emotional content around struggle and anguish. The situation that we have today is what we live with, we are hoping to make things better - this is about a brighter future not a difficult choice.



So I did not say that the choices weren't difficult just that they were similar to what other organisations had to make and that how you define things creates a different emotional picture.  You'd be hard pressed to summarise this as me saying that the choices weren't difficult - but I guess that if you try hard enough you can. 


I also wrote about how to take forward strategic development.  I suggested that we should start with what needs young people had.  This person then responded 


Please, tell us what needs we have, what outcomes are required, and how we should best fit those into the available resources (or expand the resources).


I replied 


I do not sit nationally with a view on what our needs are. The EC has done at least two listening exercises over the past few years. If the EC does not have a view on what the needs are then to put it bluntly either you weren't asking the right questions or you weren't listening. (He did suggest that we throw things - clearly he was joking!) It is not for me to say what outcomes young people want, it's for the young people. Once this information was available then I think that the EC should lead the debate on how to do this but I would be happy to help as I am sure others would.


No response to that one.


I then rewrote the summary of my contributions as 


Louise Rogers thinks that support to youth is vital. She suggests a needs-led strategic approach to our development and also suggests that we entitle our strategic development as (creating) brighter futures. 


I remain disappointed with this member of the EC.

Measuring what we do

I was meeting with colleagues last week discussing how we were going to measure the performance indicators that our paymaster had set us.  We are working with local voluntary organisations mentoring senior staff and boards to help them to become, in the jargon, more sustainable.  The first indicator was 'financial stability'.  We discussed this and some thought that asking people at the beginning to rate their financial stability at the beginning of the work and then to rate it at the end was the way to go.


Rating scales such as these should only be used when you can't think of anything else or if you ask for evidence.  Our response to such questions can depend on all sorts of things - in this instance if an organisation just got turned down for a grant people may be feeling temporarily gloomy or they may have just got a grant and may be feeling unusually optimistic.  It might even be something in their personal life which is affecting their mood. And anyway what is financial stability?


Those organisations which do best financially are those which have financial management in place and an active approach to finding funding.  They also understand about spreading risk.  If you only have one funder there is a higher risk than if you have many because that funder may stop funding you and then all you money is gone rather than just, for example, 10%.  Here are my thoughts of how we might measure financial stability.

• Responsibility taken by trustees for monitoring finances - as a minimum quarterly in times of difficulty monthly or perhaps more frequently
• Active financial management – budgets and cash-flows which are updated as actual figures emerge to replace projections (estimates)
• A good understanding of finances and some financial skills amongst trustees and staff
• A history of overcoming financial difficulties
• Diversity of funding sources
• The length of funding contracts (some times fixed and sometimes on a rolling basis)
• A mix of restricted (for a specific purpose) and unrestricted funding where core costs can be covered by unrestricted funding
• Policies and procedures in place which ensure the integrity of resource management
• A well-considered reserves level - too little and there is a risk to your operations and too much and you are not fulfilling your charitable objects
• A good public profile with plenty of political support - not to be used often but there as a backstop if things look really bleak
• And overall - everyone within the organisation understands that finances are what keeps the show on the road and are 100% committed to helping out if called to do so.  Once when an organisation whose board I chaired was in deep financial crisis as expected grants had not come in or were delayed.  I instructed the chief officer to get all the workers to stop doing what they were doing so that they could concentrate for two weeks on fundraising - either activity stopped for two weeks or forever.

Whilst we may struggle to measure financial stability the health of our faith communities is much more difficult to measure.  I am interested to know what proxy measures we may use to assess how well our faith communities are doing.  Bums on seats and ...  

Active trusteeship

I am currently working with a voluntary organisation which is facing an uncertain future (like many) because of the uncertainty of funding from health agencies and local authorities.  This year it is likely to have to spend £10,000 of its reserves.  I have advised that this is brought to the Board's attention and it is minuted that this situation is understood and agreed.  My advice was for the worker to make recommendations but be clear that it is the Board making the decisions.


I have also suggested that he do a monthly cash-flow for next year to show the Board when the money runs out.  His first attempt included in it money that they hoped to get.  I suggested that this gave a much rosier picture than was the case and that the Board had to know when the balance of funds went under their reserves figure and when the balance figure became a negative number.  If anything would spur me into action it would be knowing that we were running out of money.  I hope that this has the desired impact on his Board and that at some point they grasp the urgency of the situation.


I was reminded of when I was brought in very late in the day to help a long-running local organisation to stave off closure.  I asked the chief officer and the chair of the Board, 'How much does it cost to run this organisation every month?'  Neither of them knew.  The chair of the Board was then surprised to find out that all the reserves had been spent.  I wondered at this point what management information was provided at Board meetings.  A couple of months later the organisation closed not because they did bad work but because they had neglected the most basic of issues - how much money do we spend and how much money have we got coming in.


In neither instance are/were people knowingly being irresponsible but in reality that's what it is.  To act responsibly you have to know what your responsibilities are and then you have to  act.  I have observed quite a few trustees over the years and there are a significant number who think that their work is done once the board meeting is over. In these times of financial uncertainty trustees more than ever really need to step up to the plate.  

Outside help

This morning I met with someone whose organisation has been going for six months.  They have achieved a lot and have several learning institutions and health agencies interested in working with them.  Their problem is that they could do so much (as there is a real gap in the field that they work in) but as yet they are not a registered charity and have no permanent staff.  My job this morning was to reflect back what they are doing, to suggest that this is too much and to help the person to vocalise their core purpose.  Less than an hour talking through things and the woman leading it had a much clearer idea.  

This is the value of having an outsider to talk you through your difficulties.  It's another pair of eyes and another body of experience and knowledge which will look at things differently.  In my work I cannot afford to hang around.  I have in the first instance three meetings to get some real change.  More often than not I am only saying what they would say if they were not so busy just keeping the show on the road.


The other thing that I am able to do because I am paid to do it is to take action.  This organisation has the near-offer of some money if it can produce a business plan.  I can do this fairly quickly as long as I know what it is that they want to do and what they want to achieve through their actions.


In our communities and congregations it is worth getting an outsider in to review what we are doing and how effective we are.  We may not have the resources to pay someone to get something like a strategic plan together but we may get some pointers about this and could perhaps ask our district or the General Assembly for some help. 

Conflicts of interest and loyalty

In small organisations it is easy to slip into an informal way of doing things when people who are keen on following procedures are seen as killjoys - ruining the 'party'.  I am all for informality but I am also all for ensuring one's own integrity and that of our organisations.  There may be situations when we have a conflict of interest - but more often than not our trustees do not get any benefit from their involvement.  Although some may get an honorarium and some may have paid roles within the community such as the organist, paid warden or gardener.  However I think that these are fairly straightforward and people would understand the issue.  


It is with conflicts of loyalities that we need to be on our guard.  In small communities there are people who are married, who are related in other ways, who are close friends and perhaps who help us out, by giving us a lift, giving us flowers or a listening ear.  How do we ensure that we make decisions based on what we think is good for everyone rather than just those people we are closest to or to whom we think we owe a debt?  There are not many times when we have contentious decisions to make but these are the times when we show the level of maturity that our organisations are at.


In some way we need to take a level of emotion out of decision-making.  Forget who our friends and family are, forget that we usually vote the same way as person X and take a dispassionate view of the situation.  We cannot be wholly objective but we do need to try.  As trustees (committee members) we are not deciding what is good for us but deciding what is good for everybody.


I have written recently about the volunteering that I'm doing at a local community centre  and the discussions over governance structures.  The chair has told me on several occasions not to upset one particular person who has done a lot of work on this.  I have asked him how I give people my honest opinion that their proposal just will not work, as I have tried many approaches.  If we are talking models of governance it is clear - good practice is clear - and how similar charities work is clear.  This is not personal but professional.  In some situations I have been in, not this one, I have been with people who have chosen to invest emotional capital in a situation - making it very definitely personal rather than professional: a test of personal loyalty.


If we are talking about people's feelings being heavily invested in being right or being in control then what can anyone do?  Our loyalty always has to be to good working practices - we don't need to be unpleasant about it but we do need to be clear.  We are not making a decision because of a loyalty to one person's feelings but to the organisation.  Some people choose the decision which causes least upset - this is not what the law says trustees should do.


So in preparing ourselves for objective decision-making our communities need to understand how good decisions are made and that the focus of any decision is the health of the organisation, in our case our faith community, and not the feelings of any one individual.  We need to ensure that the decision-making process is understood and agreed with everyone beforehand.  In psychological terms we are making rational, adult decisions. After a decision is made, if there are people feeling upset, then we need to be compassionate whilst remaining 100% committed to the decision.

Back to policies

I wrote briefly about writing policies in February of this year.  Here I am again writing about the importance of writing your own - or at least being heavily involved in what gets written.


I have just written a conflict of interest policy and procedures for a voluntary organisation that I am working with.  There's nothing like actually writing a policy yourself.  Many people search the Internet and copy someone else's.  This has two major drawbacks - (1) you are assuming that it's a well-written document; (2) you are assuming that for each organisation the issues are the same.


In my experience of writing and researching policies and procedures there's a lot of copying and so a lot of very badly written documents.  People more often than not confuse policies with procedures - there are overlaps but there are also some clear dividing lines.  In fact most people's policies are procedures and there's no policy document at all or there's just one paragraph.  Policy documents are vital because they tell you what to take into account if you are dealing with something that hasn't been thought of and has no procedure.


Essentially policies are about why and the big issue whats - why has the policy been written, what principles and values of the organisation does this reflect, what are the issues that need addressing and what do we need to keep in mind when making decisions or carrying out actions.  Procedures are about how - how is the policy to be implemented - and this then brings in when, where, who and the specific whats.  Who does what (specific thing), when and where.  


It is certainly worth looking at other people's polices and procedures and seeing what they have covered.  It is also useful to critique these - to help you to understand what a good policy and procedure may look like.  Because I do this for a living I have a fairly standard format which separates the policy from the procedures.  Having a standard format is helpful but you mustn't be bound by it - writing a policy on trustee behaviour may look quite different from one on computer-use health and safety.  


You need to think - 'Who will use these, how will they use them and what will make it easier for them to use?'.  You may want some appendices and just keep the basics in the main documents.  Appendices may contain information about the law on certain issues in more depth than in the main document, for example equality issues.  Or they may contain some guidelines from a good practice document.


You need to think of your specific situation, your organisation's values and the way that you actually do things.  As long as what you currently do is safe, legal and in line with your principles you would probably be best writing up what you actually do as your procedures.  When I write procedures I try to reflect what people have told me about what they do and then ask them to check carefully what I've written.  An external consultant should not be telling an organisation how they do business - we can inform and advise - but ultimately it is the trustees of the organisation who need to assert how they will do things and how they will ensure that those things are actually done.


Like anything it becomes easier with practice but if you always copy someone else's you won't get much practice.  It is important that organisations have some policies and procedures but they need to be good quality, fit for purpose and owned by everyone within the organisation.  It is better to have a few good quality policies and procedures than a full set of someone else's that no-one has read let alone implemented.

Simply does it

I am volunteering with a local Community Centre which has been open for three months - I am on the events team.  Because I chair this I get to sit on other groups and get the opportunity to input into more general issues. At the moment the trustees are developing the structure and processes for governance.  It is important to remember what stage organisations are at - starting a charity is very different to being with a well-established charity which has all its structures and processes in place.  


Much of the experience that people are bringing to the Board table comes from their experience with other charities which weren't new. Also some of the trustees were holding trustees for the previous village hall so had no management responsibilities.  The organisation is now a company so no need for holding trustees as the company owns the land and the buildings.  Therefore these trustee need to be very clear about what is expected of them from the Charity Commission and from good practice guidance.


The building cost over £1.5m to build and is fantastic. It has a lovely big hall with several smaller rooms.  The Police have their post there and the County Council runs a Children's Centre.  There is a cafe and a bar.  It is built to a very high spec. This all gives the idea of a big place - it is an extensive building on a large piece of land and there is loads of activity.  The aspiration and the reality are that this is a big thing.  But the organisation is small.  There are less than five whole time equivalent staff and although there are quite a few volunteers - many of us get recycled into different roles.


Any governance structure has to reflect the particular stage that an organisation is at and its size - not the size of the building it inhabits but the size of the organisation - what is the financial turn-over and how many people are involved.  For such an organisation as the Community Centre any structure needs to be simple.  The Board needs to be very active in leading the developments and understanding what their role is.  This group of people (the trustees) are used to talking about building a community centre not running it.


I have been quite tenacious in attempting to get them to think small and simple - to ensure that the Board has a handle on what is happening and that those decisions which are not delegated to sub-groups or staff are actually made by the Board and not some other group.  There only needs to be two tiers of governance - the Board and then sub-groups and task and finish groups and the staff team implementing board decisions.  Any more and confusion arises.


Once this structure has been agreed the bigger portion of the work begins on getting the processes right.  This is much easier with a simpler structure.  A more complicated structure may emerge but it will emerge in response to need and can be managed.  I appreciate that many of the trustees would like to relax a bit now that the building is open but this phase is key.  Board meetings should be monthly and tightly managed.  


The best approach is to encourage action plans to be written by each group meeting under the Board and to ask for exception reporting.  The Board therefore knows what should be happening and only gets alerted to things not getting done (that should have been done) or new things being done (that weren't planned for).


Every time I make a proposal which differs from what is being suggested I write a full paper explaining why.  It is often these active exchanges which are more educational than any training that could be offered.  It's learning on the job which works really well for most of us.