Cleverness vs Clarity
Many of the nonprofit leaders who come to me for help imagine that a new tool (or a different one) will solve their problems.
But in most cases, they don’t really suffer from a lack of tools.
They suffer from a lack of clarity.
I see it all the time:
Automated workflows that no one on the team understands.
A reporting dashboard that looks impressive but doesn’t answer the imporant questions.
A system full of clever features that quietly and mysteriously break, because no one remembers how they work.
These are clever tools that don't lead to clarity.
Sure, building clever tools feels productive.
But clarity is productive.
Clarity tells you:
who you’re serving
what they need
what you need to track
what you can safely ignore
which one or two workflows actually matter
Once you know those things, the right system is usually simple. Sometimes very simple.
But without clarity, even the best-looking setup becomes a stress machine.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by your CRM or your processes, you probably don’t need more features, or more clever ones.
You need a better understanding of the work itself.
Clarity takes things off your plate.
Cleverness -- without clarity -- adds to it.
All the best,
A.