Issue No. 44 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting focuses on results. Please put down your new iPhone for five minutes and think about how you communicate organizational results to your customers. Reminder: you can read the mini-reviews of more than 40 books at my Buckets Blog at www.JohnPearsonAssociates.com.
What’s the big deal about results? John Wood was Microsoft’s director of business development for the Greater China region, before he founded Room to Read in 2000. The nonprofit organization’s mission is to provide under-privileged children with an opportunity to gain the lifelong gift of education. They work in Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
In his book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children, Wood reflects on his quest to build the “Microsoft of Nonprofits.” He writes about Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO: “Steve lives, eats, breathes, and sleeps results, results, results. Like a dog with a chew toy, he is manically focused and not willing to let anything distract him from performance. It was a lesson I kept top of mind as I began building Room to Read and sought to differentiate us from the thousands of other nonprofit organizations out there.”
You must focus on results, not activity. When you speak, share anecdotes—but highlight your results. Some donors respond to hype, but all donors want to see results. Take your cue from Ballmer: results, results, results.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Do the results of our organization leap out when we give our 60-second elevator speech?
2. Look over the last few issues of our publications. Do we talk about organizational results enough?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience
Steve Ballmer mentored John Wood well. Wood also lives, eats, breathes and emails results! Below his standard email signature lines (name, phone, etc.), Wood also includes a jam-packed paragraph of recent organizational results at Room to Read. It’s a brilliant idea. John Wood’s results blurb is not about fundraising needs, events or hype. The final paragraph in his email simply documents their profound results.
My thanks to Larry Entwistle—a connoisseur of results—for alerting me to this book and passing along an email he received from the author. A Starbucks gift card is enroute to my roving reporter friend.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: The Results Bucket
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. What results blurb should we add today to our email signatures?
2. Are there any other creative ways to communicate our results to our customers (donors, volunteers, members, etc.)?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Future dates will be announced this month for the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (two days) and the Nonprofit Board Governance Workshop (one day) at the scenic Blue Lantern Inn in Dana Point, Calif. If your organization would like to co-host a workshop, please email me.
Download the Management Buckets brochure
PS. Click “Forward Email” below to recommend this free eNews to a colleague.
