Mastering CiviCRM #1: Focus on mission value

The wonderful thing about open-source systems like CiviCRM is that you can make them do whatever you want.

That's also one of the most troubling things. You can spend a lot of time and money making them do whatever you want.

The question to ask is not, "Can I do it?" but "Should I do it?" — or even better, "Why should I do this? What will it get me?"

Getting what you asked for

In my early days as an open-source developer for hire, I believed it was my job to build whatever the client asked for. As a result I can point to several features that I built for CiviCRM and other systems that did exactly what the client wanted, met all the stated needs … and then were never used.

Those clients never had a complaint. They never blamed me for failing to deliver what was asked for.

But the fact is that, in the end, they were not happy with what they got. Even though it all worked 100% correctly, it was not delivering any real value for their mission.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if …”

It can be very easy, and a lot of fun, to get caught up in making your tools "better." Even the expert CiviCRM specialist you hire — usually at a substantial expense, I might add — can be easily distracted by the prospect of doing "something very cool" with CiviCRM.

But does anybody else care about that?

No, they do not.

Nobody cares that you can now have a checkbox on your donation forms to ask for an additional percentage to cover processing fees.

If they care about it at all, it's because it actually helped you to meet your bottom-line mission. But if it didn't, or if you can't point to exactly how much it did, why would they care?

(There is, by the way, an extension that does exactly that. I wrote it, and it's still pretty widely used. But the client who paid me to write it … never really used it.)

Shifting the focus

The good news is that you don't have to wait until after you've invested in these changes to find out it wasn't worth it.

You can ask yourself that up front. The simple way is to ask, "If I hire someone to build this feature, what will I get out of it? What measurable result will I be able to point to as evidence that it was worth it?"

And after you've done that a few times, you can ask an even better question:

What measurable outcome am I actually trying to achieve? Other than just adding a button or a checkbox or a report, how might I actually achieve that outcome? Could I get 80% of that result with 20% of the effort?

Here's the thing:

All the nice-to-haves are only that — they're nice. But are they valuable?

Ask yourself: What needle are you trying to move? By how much? How will you move it? What will that get you?

Remember, "better" and "more" are nice, but they aren't goals.

Goals are measurable and specific, usually with a number and a unit, often with a timeline.

If you want to win, you have to define what winning looks like.

And whatever it is you're trying to achieve, you'll be a lot happier if it's specific, measurable, and related to something that you and your people actually care about. Not just “cool” or “better.”

All the best,
A.