Nonprofit and mission-driven
The same problems hit harder
Mission-driven organizations have the talent problems every organization has. The same work, with more meaning attached, more emotion in the room, and every dollar spent on it coming out of the mission.
Mission-driven organizations
All four cost more to get wrong here
Nothing about the work changes at the door. The right people in the right seats, able and motivated to perform, in teams that function, inside a culture that keeps it going. What changes is that most of the people involved took a pay cut to be there, which makes all four harder to get right and more costly to get wrong.
- Talent decisions
- Executive assessment, success profiling, successionA director retires after eleven years and the board is choosing among three people it already knows, which makes the decision harder rather than easier. Assessment against a profile of the actual role, so a choice everybody has a personal stake in still holds up a year later.How this runs
- Performance enablement
- Performance management, goals and feedback, coachingLeaders here are often promoted for their commitment to the work rather than for any evidence they can lead, and then left to work it out. Coaching for the ones whose next step matters most, and goals and feedback built for an organization where nobody is motivated by the ladder.How this runs
- Team effectiveness
- Leadership team sessions, cross-functional workThe leadership team, and the places where program, development and operations pull against each other without anyone saying so out loud. Board and staff in one room with real data in front of them surfaces more in an afternoon than another retreat does.How this runs
- Culture and engagement
- Engagement measurement, culture design, survey analysisWhat is actually holding people, measured properly, because pay is the harder lever here and the rest are the ones within reach. Volunteers follow different rules from staff, and an employee survey measures them badly.How this runs
How I got here
I went into psychology because I wanted to understand why people make faith decisions, and why they follow the leaders they follow.
Years ago I was on a mission trip where the missionary’s job in-country was teaching business at a university. He taught from the parts of scripture that describe how people and organizations actually work, and the relationships that came out of that classroom were how the rest of his work got done. It was the first time I saw the two things reinforcing each other rather than competing.
I tried starting ministries of my own, with varying degrees of success, and came round to the view that vocational ministry was not what I was called to, at least not then.
What put it together was a church leadership conference. The speaker’s argument was that too many churches set science aside and wait for God to fix things outright, and that the trouble with that view is what it implies about every church that is not growing. God gave us reason and evidence to use as tools, and the most effective churches and Christian nonprofits are the ones that use them. I could see the whole thing at once: learn the science of making leaders and organizations work, then point it at the places I care about most.
That is where the name came from.
Since then I have found that most of what goes wrong inside a nonprofit goes wrong inside companies too. People have goals and managers. They have to prioritize, learn, handle the politics and work with teams that do not report to them. Organizations still have to hire well and keep the people they hired.
What is different is the temperature. Most people here could be earning more elsewhere and chose this instead, so very little of it is transactional and all of it lands personally.
What a misfire costs here
The same misfire that costs a company a quarter costs a nonprofit somebody’s sense of calling.
A corporate survey asks the wrong questions
It asks about career path and total rewards. Neither one is why anybody stays at a nonprofit, so the report comes back technically accurate and practically useless.
The instrument gets rewritten around what actually holds people: the work itself, whether they believe leadership can get there, and whether the people beside them are worth staying for. Those are the three that move retention where pay is the harder lever, and a standard engagement survey measures none of them.
Same instruments, same statistics, same standard of evidence. What changes is what the measurement is pointed at, and how hard we work to keep every question on it to one you will act on.
Where Spherikal fits
Same science, at a cost that scales with the number of people rather than the number of days on site.
A practitioner in the room is the expensive way to deliver all four of these, and for some of it there is no substitute. For a good deal of it there is. Spherikal is the system we built to run the assessment, the coaching and the analytics continuously, for everyone on your staff rather than for the few who get a project.
Tell us what you are working with and you will get a straight answer about what fits.
Chris facilitated a team effectiveness workshop for our senior leadership team where we delved into our leadership styles. His thoughtful approach to bridging individual and team effectiveness helped us identify opportunities to capitalize on our strengths, work on our development areas, and unlock better communication within the team as a whole.
Tell us what you are facing
Describe it and you will get an honest read on whether we can help, including when the answer is no.