Flight plan

If you're piloting an airplane and a bird strike knocks out both of your engines, you don't have a lot of time to think and plan.

You do the best you can, and you hope for a good outcome. You might even have to put her down in the Hudson.

But the possibility of an emergency situation does not obviate the need for good flight plan.

You think carefully about the equipment you have available, your team, the people who are counting on you, flight regulations, headwinds, tailwinds, weather forecasts, fuel consumption — and most of all, where you're going and how you're going to get there.

Surprises will happen along the way. Most plans require some alteration once the journey has begun.

But the possibility of surprises is not a reason to avoid planning. On the contrary, it's a darn good reason to plan even more carefully.

All the best,
A.

Cargo cults, and connecting tools to outcomes

Have you heard the term cargo cult?

The story, usually quite oversimplified, goes like this:

Certain indigenous people in the South Pacific islands, having once experienced the sudden arrival of thousands of World War II combatants and their seemingly endless supplies of food and manufactured goods — followed by their sudden departure at the end of the war — seemed very interested in regaining access to that wealth.

Not fully understanding who these visitors were, where their wealth came from, or why they had left, some began doing what they could to mimic the visitors’ actions, apparently hoping that such actions would cause the the cargo deliveries to resume:

Building mock radios from coconuts and straw, lighting torches along the abandoned airstrips, marching in drill formation with mock wooden rifles.

From their limited experience, it seemed reasonable that doing all these things should once again cause large quantities of luxurious goods and supplies to be brought to their island.

It had worked for the soldiers and sailors, why shouldn't it work for them?

Not entirely unreasonable:

The disconnect here may be obvious to you and me, but we've probably all done something similar.

You may know someone who's seen others play the stock market successfully and decided that they too should start making investments. It doesn't always turn out like they hoped.

I've had clients and prospective clients try the same approach with CRM systems:

If we're going to be a real organization, don't we need a real professional CRM package? Big successful organization X uses fancy CRM system Y — shouldn't we use that too?

Two things might be connected, but not necessarily in the way you think. Correlation does not equal causation.

Here's the thing:

Yes, if you're going to run a successful organization, you do need some system for managing relationships with your people.

But the system itself will not be the cause of your success.

It will be the people, and the relationships, and your ability to use whatever tools and resources you have available to mobilize those people toward specific goals that further your mission.

Tools matter. But what matters more is understanding how those tools will actually support your measurable business and mission goals.

What goals are you aiming for?

All the best,
A.

Satisficing

Everyone would love to have a perfect plan — to know exactly what's going to happen, and to have the steps in place to deal with it.

Many people would be quite happy to put off decisive action until all the uncertainty can be removed.

In the context of a hobby, this kind of delay might be acceptable. Want to restore your grandpa's 1946 Cadillac? Take all the time you need to make a plan.

But when it's time to take action for your organization, you don't have that luxury.

In a 1985 study of how firefighter commanders manage high-stakes decisions under pressure, author Gary Klein expected that the commander would think of two or more possibilities, weigh the pros and cons of each, and then pick the best option.

What he found instead was that they instinctively, and invariably, relied on experience to go with the first reasonable plan that came to mind.

This is “satisficing:” The plan must satisfy minimum set of requirements, and it must suffice. It need not be perfect or even the best. But it must be executed soon.

Here's the thing:

Your decisions are probably somewhere in between. They’re rarely as high-stakes and urgent as a house fire, and almost never as relaxed as a hobby.

Time is always a limited resource. Endlessly debating the perfect plan is not really an option.

But satisficing is. Knowing that no plan can ever be perfect, you can devise a strategy that has a reasonable expectation of success.

Yes, you should expect to learn something and make adjustments along the way. But at some point, even before all the uncertainty is removed, it will be time to act.

All the best,
A.

Owning vs. renting

Terms like “the American Dream” get tossed around a lot when it comes to owning one's own home.

But not everybody wants to own a home. Or a car. Or business equipment. Or software.

Plenty of people rent. There's nothing wrong with that.

Obviously, overall cost is a factor in making this decision.

But a more important consideration can be flexibility — the control you have over these assets.

Do you want to paint your kitchen bright orange, or install heated flooring in your master bath?

Do you want to have the freedom to host as many guests as you like, or own unusual pets, or install beautiful landscaping features?

Do you want the flexibility to decide these things for yourself later, as and when the need arises?

If you want that, then you probably want to own.

Yes, ownership comes with more responsibility. But it also comes with a lot more freedom.

When you're selecting a CRM system, consider your priorities. Do you need flexibility and freedom? Then you probably want to own your system.

Open-source tools let you do that.

All the best,
A.

The cost of doing business

For any community-driven organization, maintaining a CRM system is a minimum requirement.

It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive, and you can decide how you want to do it.

You can do it in Excel. You can build your own customized in-house system. You can even do it on sticky notes if you really believe that will meet your needs.

But the time and effort you spend managing this system is a required budget item, one way or another.

In a community-driven organization, your people are your primary resource. It’s the relationships that matter.

And like anything, relationships that are not well maintained will not last for very long.

All the best,
A.

Distinguishing metrics from strategy

Do you feel like you have the information you need to make smart decisions for your organization?

Do you feel like maybe you have too much information? As in, more information than you can use? As in, so much information that it's just overwhelming?

If that's how you feel, you're not alone. Not according to this study released by Oracle last month.

Tons of business leaders are reporting that data-driven decision making isn't a slam dunk win for them — it's just a headache they wish they could avoid.

70% of them said they wish they had a robot to make all their decisions for them. Others said that there's so much data to consider that they've gone back to just trusting their gut.

It all sounds pretty bleak to me.

But here's the thing:

Metrics by themselves are easily overwhelming.

Their meaning and value only appear in the context of strategy.

What's your goal? What's your strategy to achieve it?

Find the metrics that matter in that strategy.

The rest is, for now, just noise. You can look it over later when you're trying to identify your next big goal.

And there will always be one of those.

All the best,
A.

Your helicopter’s facing the wrong way

I've had leadership reject my battle plans because the helicopter was facing the wrong way in the stock photo in my PowerPoint deck.

— Retired Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf* explaining some of the frustrations of trying to get leadership on board with good ideas

Whatever your organization's mission or structure, when it comes time to get things done you're going to have to get buy-in from other people.

Maybe it's your ED or membership director; maybe it's your board; maybe it's your department heads. Maybe it's just the summer intern or a couple of volunteers at an event.

We want to believe that all decisions are based on evaluating each idea on its merits, or on a common commitment to mission and objectives. But people are complicated.

Before they can really buy into your plans, they want to believe that you're also on board with the things that really matter to them.

Sometimes their concerns can seem petty, or asinine, or irrelevant.

But if you need these people in your plan, the only way to reach your goal is to take a step back and do what it takes to show that you share their concerns.

Here’s the thing:

Andy Stumpf says, “In the end, I was selling myself.” It’s about building trust by demonstrating shared concern.

It's the same thing that you're probably already doing for your donors and potential members: demonstrate that you care about their priorities.

If you can do that, they'll be a lot more ready to work with you to achieve the goals that really matter.

All the best,
A.

* I’ve paraphrased Stumpf’s comment for brevity and context. You can hear his actual comment on Jocko Wilink’s podcast, discussing the importance of “mental Judo” and dealing with the political and bureaucratic reality of organizations, right about here: https://youtu.be/uUC8Heiae9I?t=4526

Success

Success is defined by reaching goals. If you're not setting goals, or you're not measuring whether you've met them, you can't say you've been successful.

And if you are setting goals, and reaching them, take a moment to celebrate. Gold star for you.

Now on to the next one.

All the best,
A.

Spooky duplicates in CiviCRM

The ghost story goes like this:

1. Duplicate records are not usually a major headache on your site, but one day you find a collection of dozens of duplicates contacts that contain no data, except an identical email address.

2. Baffled, you merge all those duplicates and double-check to be sure they're all taken care of.

3. A week later, you find another dozen duplicate contacts in the same situation: they all have no data except an identical email address.

4. Rinse and repeat. No matter how often you merge them, they keep coming back.

What the heck is going on?!

Nope, your site is not haunted. There are no ghosts.

This frustrating and mysterious behavior gets reported now and then, in a few different places in the CiviCRM community. You can find it in the CiviCRM Stack Exchange, in the public issue queue, in the MatterMost chat logs.

The explanation is not simple, but I will simplify:

The linkage between your CiviCRM contacts and your CMS users is corrupted and needs repair.

It may not affect all your users, but it's clearly affecting some of them. And every time those users log in, CiviCRM creates a duplicate record using only their email address.

This is one of the dozens of common issues and I scan for in my CiviCRM Diagnostic Scan. I've seen it come up on several sites, one just recently.

The fix is also hard to describe, but pretty simple from a technical viewpoint: We just need to identify the users that have this problem, and repair the link to their CiviCRM contact.

No ghosts. No exorcism.

Everything happens for a reason. And once we find the reason, the fix reveals itself.

All the best,
A.

Nothing’s faster than paper

Printed reports and paper forms are amazing.

• They're super quick to read. It's right there in your hand!

• They're amazingly flexible. You can take note of anything even remotely relevant with just a pen!

• They're easy to share. Just hand it to somebody!

No complicated searching, no rigid validation errors, no complex permissioning scheme. It's paper!

Of course — in real life — speed, simplicity, and ease of access aren't the only priorities.

At some point, you'll have to make a trade-off. Nothing is perfect for everything all the time.

All the best,
A.

Duty to protect

In the business services world, where every client knows they have a bottom-line profit motive, providers may be able to support the success of their clients by just doing what they're told. Maybe.

But in the world of CiviCRM, that's not enough. In this world:

• Organizations are very often not run by business-minded folk;

• The organization itself does not exist to turn a profit;

• The definition of success for the organization is often hazy.

In such a world, providers who are dedicated to the success of their clients cannot afford to simply do what they're told.

Building features, conducting trainings, custom development, configuration, etc., all need to be tied to actual success metrics based on the mission and business goals of the organization.

And it's the provider’s duty to identify those measurable goals before diving in on billable work.

Anything less is a disservice.

All the best,
A.

Jammed up with choices

Having more options doesn’t always make life easier. It often makes decisions harder.

Maybe you’ve heard of this commonly cited study on decision-making in the face of many options:

In a popular local grocery store, researchers set up a tasting table offering samples of jam: at certain times the table offered a selection of 24 different jams, and at other times only six different jams. The researchers reported that shoppers were about 10 times more likely to purchase from the table with only six options in comparison to the table with 24 options.

Their report presents several theories, but one often cited is that decisions become harder as more options are available; as a result, people are more likely to avoid making any decision at all.

Here's the thing:

Obviously your organization is not in the position to simpy do nothing at all. Decisions must be made.

It's natural to think, "My goodness look at all these different jams! How can I possibly know which one is the best?"

But you can make your life easier by focusing on two simple points:

1. I need jam.

2. I have a limited amount of time and money to make this purchase and leave the store.

With that in mind, you can indeed just grab the first jam that meets your needs and fits your available resources (time and money), and be done.

When you've got a decision to make, you can choose focus on the many choices available, or you can focus on your goals and avaiable resources, and get the thing done.

Your choice.

All the best,
A.

No time to stop for gas.

You're probably not so hectic that you run out of gas because you didn't have time to stop on the way to work. Like the lady I stopped to help on the side of the road today.

But I have spoken with several clients lately who seem so busy with the day-to-day activity of running their organization that they don't take time to think about the opportunities that they're missing.

The everyday work of managing a CRM system is — hopefully — part of your ongoing process to improve your systems, improve your relationships with your constituents, and further the mission of your organization.

As Seth Godin says, you don't get points for being busy.

But you do get a lot of points for planning carefully, setting smart goals, and making the world a better place.

All the best,
A.

Busy?

Do you feel busy in your work?

Productivity is good. But remember there's no real value in being busy.

The real question is, are you focused on — and actually achieving — goals that matter?

All the best,
A.

"If you don't know what to measure, measure anyway.”

Here's another gem from Douglas Hubbard's How to Measure Anything:

If you don't know what to measure, measure anyway. You'll learn what to measure.

- David moore, 1998 president of the American Statistical Association

Knowing what to measure can be hard, when you don't have much quantified information.

But measuring itself — as a way to remove uncertainty — is critical.

If all you have is a gut feeling, wouldn't it be valuable to have some hard numbers — any at all — on the matter?

That will either let you confirm or refute your gut feeling, or it will point you to things you could measure to get that insight.

There are many things you don't know. But you can't let that stop you in your tracks.

All the best,
A.

Problem solving as a learnable skill

Here's a little story from my "smart client decisions" honor roll:

This client is making great use of CiviCRM and his organization’s CMS on a regular basis. He's not a software developer, but he does make sure he's familiar with the features that are available to him through the CRM, the CMS, and the community provided extensions, of which he uses many.

He doesn't only reach out to me for emergencies. He'll often check in with me early in the process of planning a new project, to be sure he's on the right track with a good strategy.

But yesterday he reached out with an urgent task.

The problem:

In the midst of a large and important event registration campaign, many registrants — but not all — were getting a “white screen” fatal error.

The credit card payments went through, but they never saw a completion message. Just a white page that said, in effect, "Something went wrong. Please try again."

So they would try again, getting the same message each time.

Meanwhile, their credit card was being charged on each attempt. And they'd still not have confidence that they were registered.

So organization staff were getting dozens of requests for help, and complaints about multiple charges, and an ongoing uncertainty about who's actually registered.

Getting it fixed:

My client did a great job of trying to debug this himself, carefully reproducing the bad behavior with a known set of steps. But as well versed and competent as he is, hes still could not find the source of the problem.

So he reached out to me with an urgent request. He described the problem clearly, and told me how to reproduce it. He told me the solutions he had tried. He told me this was an urgent matter, and explained the business impact.

I took it from there.

I cloned the site offline for in-depth debugging. I discovered that the bad behavior was caused by a bug in a particular CMS extension. I patched the bug on his live site, and tested to be sure it was fixed. I also reported the bug for the extension author, sharing my fix. And I let my client know the problem was resolved.

They're now back up and running, with confidence that people are actually able to register without error.

Lessons:

Why is this on the honor roll? Because my client did several things right:

• As a general practice, he keeps abreast of what's generally possible and what's not.

• He's hands-on managing the site himself, and therefore well aware of how the side is configured and what extensions it relies on.

• He took steps to debug the problem himself first. This way if he fixes it, he retains the knowledge of the solution and lets it inform his configuration work going forward.

• He was methodical in reproducing the bad behavior, and in documenting the steps to do so. This gives him a clear indication of where the problem may lie, as well as a test case he can use to verify the effects of any corrective action.

• He noted the business impact of the problem. This allows him to assess both the urgency and the business value of getting a solution.

• He shared all this with me very clearly so that I could take action without ambiguity.

• Most of all, because of all of these things, he was able to make an informed decision about the cost/benefit calculation to determine whether it was worth pulling in an outside expert.

Overall, this reads like an absolute winner to me.

Here's the thing:

Naturally we all hope that nothing ever goes wrong. Naturally we look for software systems that are well designed and robust.

But no matter what system you're using, surprises will happen.

Dealing with them effectively is a matter of diligence, careful analysis, and smart business driven cost/benefit calculations.

These are all learnable skills. Practice, coaching, and care will move you in the right direction.

All the best,
A.

My response to "Should I spend X hours on this?"

Yesterday, a client wrote me with this question. She discovered a bug in a CiviCRM extension, and the extension author has given her an hourly estimate of “5-6 hours” to fix it.

So she asked me:

I’m not sure if we want to spend this many hours on this. What are your thoughts?

Here’s my response, edited lightly for a more general audience:

Hello [dear client],

It's a good question — a great question, really!

Most importantly I would say: Don't get caught up in the number of hours here.

The more important question is to identify the business value of getting this fixed — which is probably equal to the business liability of not fixing it.

In other words, how painful is it to just leave this alone as it is? How often does this problem come up? What does it cost you (e.g. user goodwill, lost event fees, staff time, etc.) on average, each time it happens? You may not know exactly, but you might be able to make some kind of rough estimate of this cost.

If that cost is greater than what you'd pay to get it fixed, then you've got a good business case to fix it.

If it's not, then you have a good business case to just leave it alone and deal with any related problems as they comes up.

One more thing:

Hourly estimates are notoriously fuzzy. He may get it done in 5-6 hours as he said, or it may be less, or it may go over. If it would help you by reducing uncertainty, I'd be happy to make sure he fixes it for a fixed total price equivalent to his 8 hours, whether it takes more than that or not. This might be a desirable way for you to reduce the risks of additional cost if it should go far over the estimate.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have more questions.

Thanks,
Allen

“Should I spend 50 hours on this?”

Should you hire somebody to spend 50 hours fixing a problem?

It might sound like a simple question, but you probably noticed already that it leaves a lot of room for uncertainty.

The uncertainty is in almost every word of the question:

• Should: Who's to say? By what standard are we measuring? What are the alternatives? What are the risks?

• You: What's your role in this project? What is your knowledge of the problem at hand? What's your experience handing off tasks to other people? How would success or failure in this effort impact you personally?

• Hire: What kind of business relationship are we actually talking about? Are you conducting a talent search or do you have someone in mind?

• Someone: Who is this person? What knowledge do they have of the problem and of how it's affecting your situation? How much do you trust them to actually get the results you're after?

• To spend 50 hours: Do you really want them to spend 50 hours? Are you hiring them to log hours? Do you care how long it takes them? What happens if it takes them longer, and what reason do you have to believe that it won't?

• Fixing: Do you know exactly the outcome you're trying to achieve? Do you know what a home run would look like? Are you really just looking for a technical "fix", or are you hoping to achieve a measurable business outcome?

• A problem: What's the problem you're trying to fix? What's the business benefit of resolving it? What's the business downside of just leaving it unresolved and focusing on other issues?

This question was paraphrased from one that a client asked me today. She's discovered a bug in a CiviCRM extension, and the extension author is giving an hourly estimate to fix the bug.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a paraphrase of my response.

Meanwhile, ask yourself:

What would you tell her? What would you tell yourself in a similar situation?

All the best,
A.

Work in progress

To folks who don't know where it's going, any work in progress can look a little off.

Like the new restaurant going up across the street from me: while they were just putting up the framework, I thought it looked awful. The shape of it was just all wrong.

This week they started putting on the facade, and it's actually pretty nice.

Trying new things in your CRM system can feel like that too. But as long as you know where you're going with it, that's okay.

If you have a clear goal in mind, and you know how you plan to get there, don't be bothered if it's not obvious to everyone else.

All the best,
A.

The rubber duck

Sometimes just talking through a problem can be enough to point to one or more solutions.

You could talk it through with a coach or mentor, but with a little practice you can also find ways to talk it through on your own.

The trick is to expose all of your underlying assumptions by explaining it to someone who doesn't know much about your situation, and who doesn't have a personal stake in the outcome.

It doesn't even have to be a real person.

This duck has no ears, but is a fine listener. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

I know some software developers who work through difficult coding problems by explaining it all to a rubber duck they keep on their desk.

That's why the duck is there. It's his only job.

Here's the thing:

Some of the biggest impediments to our success are our own unspoken assumptions.

Forcing yourself to slow down enough to explain it to a disinterested party, even an inanimate one, can help you to examine those assumptions frankly, and get to a clear understanding of how everything fits together.

It just takes a little practice, but it's usually worth the effort.

All the best,
A.