You can’t force it

Overheard this week:

Yeah, I tried that, and it was like trying to stuff a cat into a dryer.

Okay, I've never tried to stuff a cat into do a dryer.

But I know some little kids who have. It never goes well.

Sure there's enough space. With limited life experience, I suppose it might seem like a good idea.

Here’s the thing;

Sometimes, your great idea — for data management, or people management — just doesn't work.

You may not always understand why.

But if it feels like trying to stuff a cat into a dryer, take it as a sign.

There's probably a better way.

All the best,
A.

Easily describe any problem

When you see something odd in your CRM system, you might want to ask your specialist for help.

To make that work well, you have to describe the problem. Otherwise, how can anybody fix it or explain it?

Here are three easy ways to describe a problem with your CRM:

1. Write down the specific steps you take to observe the problem.

• Is it happening for a certain contact? Write down the contact ID.

• Can you make it happen if you take certain steps? Write down those steps — for example, "I log in with this username. I see X. I click on Y. Then I see Z. Then I click on A …” etc., etc.

• Are you expecting to see one thing but actually seeing another? Write down what you're expecting to see, and what you're actually seeing.

2. Take a picture

If some part of the problem is easily visible on the screen, take a screenshot.

Whether you're on Windows, Mac or Linux, or on your phone, there's a way to take a screenshot. You might have to Google "how do I take a screenshot on my Mac?", but that's faster than trying to write a long description of what you're seeing.

In the worst case, just pull out your phone and take a picture of your screen. It's not beautiful or slick, but as long as it's in focus and shows the problem, why not?

3. Record a screen video

This may just be the best thing ever: A video of 30 seconds or 2 minutes showing the problem from start to finish.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.

If you have a microphone and can narrate, great! If not, make a silent movie. It worked for Chaplin, and it can work for you.

If you don't know how to record a screen video, I recommend you just go to screencapture.com, where you can push a button and record your screen and download the video without giving them so much as an email address. (They have a thousand competitors, but this one's the easiest I've seen. And nobody pays me to say this stuff.)

The rest is easy:

Put all of that together in an email, or a support ticket, and send it with your request for help.

You may get some clarifying questions from your CRM specialist, but you've gone a long way toward painting a clear picture.

And describing the problem well is, after all, the first step in getting it resolved.

All the best,
A.

Succession planning

I have life insurance.

When I’m dead I probably won’t care about the living, but while I'm alive I do care. And I want my people to be taken care of if I happen to make an unexpected departure.

If you should ever have to leave your current organization — for reasons happy or sad — wouldn't you like the organization to proceed well without you?

As the in-house expert for your CRM or any other system, you can take steps now to make that happen.

1. Share your vision

Help people to understand what makes your CRM system great.

Why you love it. Why you chose it. What you're hoping to achieve with it. Where you see it going in the next year or two.

Talk about this often. It gives people something to buy into, and something to shoot for, which is great whether you're there or not.

And when you're not there, it will give them a path they can follow while they're learning to manage things without you.

2. Document stuff

Yes, we know people don't read documentation. It's long and boring, and normal people would rather figure it out themselves than read your 500-page treatise on how to do everything.

So a long list of how-to's is probably not helpful here.

But specific configurations are worth documenting, for example:

• User roles and permissions:
  What is the purpose of each role? In short simple terms, who are the people who need one role or another?

• Tags, groups, and relationship types:
  What is the meaning of each of these? A relationship type named "Contact of" doesn't have an obvious meaning. Write that stuff down somewhere.

• Vendors and external services:
  Just what is it we're paying these people for? What's the best way to reach them? How do these services fit together? How do you know which vendor to call for which kind of problem?

In other words, document the answers to questions that you could answer simply, if you were there.

3. Train "one level above"

Every time you train someone on a new task or procedure, make sure they understand it.

And then take a minute to explain how this task helps whoever is above them on the org chart:

• Once this task is done, who else uses that data?

• How does their department — or another department — benefit when this task is done in this way?

Again, this is a great thing to do in general. It gives team members a sense of value in the work they do. It helps them understand why their work is important.

But if you're ever “no longer around,” it will matter all the more.

Here's the thing:

We all love our work, our teams, and our organizations. Most of us have no intention of leaving them.

But circumstances change. Surprises happen. Opportunities arise.

Take steps now to make sure that this organization, into which you've poured so many late nights and weekends, is ready to excel in its mission, no matter what happens.

Think of it as life insurance for all of your hard work.

All the best,
A.

Departures

How is it possible for an organization that's been using CiviCRM for years to find itself without a staff member who fully understands the system?

Two things, at least:

• Retirement

• Career advancement

I'm working through this issue now with three of my clients.

Two of them have recently seen the departure of their primary CiviCRM in-house expert — one of them retired, and the other moved up to a higher position at a new employer. See yesterday's email for a description of the fix this leaves them in.

The third one knows that retirement is coming and is making plans now to do it better.

Here's the thing:

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

If you can see it coming, it's worth planning for.

And when you add in the unforeseeable — health issues, accidents, sudden departures — it's worth planning for anyway.

What are you doing now to help ensure that your systems can survive the departure of a critical staff member?

All the best,
A.

Dealing with system sprawl

I spoke with two clients last week who were lamenting the same problem. Maybe it will sound familiar to you too.

It goes like this:

We're using a different system for every little thing. It's all spread out, and we really have a tough time with reporting, analysis, and moves management.

And they're right.

Imagine using EventBrite for events, MailChimp for mailing lists, Google forms for volunteer sign ups, SurveyMonkey for program inquiries, and 5 other systems for other things.

All while you're running CiviCRM as your central CRM.

How did this happen?

Interestingly, both of these organizations are in a similar situation:

• They've been using CiviCRM for several years.

• They each recently merged with a larger organization with an overlapping mission.

• After the merger, they each saw the departure of their in-house CiviCRM expert, who had pioneered the use of CiviCRM and its ongoing development within the organization.

So what they have in common now is:

• A powerful centralized CRM;

• A whole new set of departments, programs, staff, and business functions;

• A collection of disparate systems that were used pre-merger by the larger organization; and

• A staff member who's responsible for their CiviCRM situation but who’s still learning what it can do.

What to do?

Just as interestingly, they've decided to take a similar approach to solving this problem:

One program at a time, I'm working with them to identify priorities, design a strategy, and then configure CiviCRM to support that program in place of one of their many "one-off" systems.

It's the "start small" approach I've described here recently.

If they wanted, they could also go for the "start big" approach. We discussed that, with all its pros and cons, and it turned out that starting small was a better fit for both of them.

Here's the thing:

Big sprawling disjointed systems can make for real organizational headaches.

But trying to solve it all at once can seem like too much to take on.

Starting now and starting small can take a little longer, but it’s a great way to increase usability, efficiency, and effectiveness, one step at a time.

All the best,
A.

Decisions

Overheard this week: "Committee is where decisions go to die."

Committees can be great for getting work done, and even for gathering input on important decisions.

But if you've ever watched hard decisions languish endlessly in "committee review", you might wonder why it's so hard for even small groups to make a decision.

I'm not sure that knowing why would help. People are complicated. That's enough explanation for me.

Here's the thing:

Instead of wondering why, it's enough to know that it's usually true.

High-stakes high-value decisions are made by individuals who have big goals and are willing to take risks.

As nice as it would be to avoid the hard decisions, somebody has to do it.

Yes, get the input. Yes, do the research. And then yes, for heaven's sake, make the decision.

All the best,
A.

Good enough

Your CRM system — is it good enough?

And the results you're getting with it — good enough?

If it's good enough, you can leave it alone. There's no need to improve it.

That's what "good enough" means.

And if it's not good enough, how can you fix that? What will it look like when it's good enough?

Because if it's not good enough, you need to fix it.

That's what "not good enough" means.

Here's the thing:

Whatever tools and systems you’re using, they're either good enough, or they're not.

You can decide what good enough looks like. You can measure outcomes to know if you've gotten there.

Instead of looking for perfection, you'll make a lot more progress by leaving the "good enough" alone, and focusing your resources where they're needed most.

All the best,
A.

Small vs specific

Yesterday I asked: Start big or start small?

Another way to think about starting small is: start specific.

Pick the one thing you want to fix first.

• One headache to solve.

• One department to help.

• One program to augment.

• One staff member who's work you’ll make easier.

Sure, you can't just skip over long-term planning, but even the longest journey begins with one step.

You don't have to leap a chasm every time.

All the best,
A.

Start big, or start small?

CiviCRM can do a lot out of the box, but sometimes you need to push the limits.

• Specialized and streamlined event management workflow?

• Unique membership management policies?

• Integration with third-party systems?

When you've got a big idea to leverage CiviCRM for your programs, you have a choice:

Start big, or start small?

Starting big:

With this approach, you sit down with your CiviCRM expert and map out what you need, why you need it, and how you'll make it happen.

You’ll need to discuss timelines, staff roles, workflow optimizations, and of course measurable business outcomes.

If you're really making significant changes to your system, this can be a big project. It's an investment of time and money that you'll make up front in order to get things working as they should for everyone involved: staff, users, marketing, C-suite, whomever.

The advantage is that you can launch a new feature set, train your staff, and have everything working smoothly from the beginning. This reduces staff and user frustration; and it increases confidence and morale. No fuss, no muss, just a sizeable investment time and money.

Starting small:

The alternative is to start small. Work with the software in its current form. Squeeze everything you can out of existing features.

With this approach, you can get going almost immediately, with very little up-front investment or delay.

Of course, this means someone on your staff will surely have a lot of work to do: managing the data manually, remembering any configurations, sharing data between systems or departments, because you haven't built custom features that fit your unique needs.

The advantage here is that you can get started quickly with little investment.

And along the way, you can identify the choke points that really need to be addressed. This slower approach can give you more bang-for-buck on any custom features you eventually do decide to implement.

Here's the thing:

There is no right or wrong in this question. It's simply a matter of applying the limited resources you have to get the business outcomes you want.

Starting small can work great, if you have the time and staff members who are happy to put in the extra work.

Starting big can be great if you have clear and high-value business goals, and the resources to make a larger investment in the beginning.

Either way, it's about getting results in the most effective way possible.

All the best,
A.

Referrals and recommendations

I've been asking folks I know for recommendations of providers in services I don't normally provide.

I just ask them: I'm looking for people who have a great track record helping non-profits and professional associations with annual revenue in the $100K - $200K range, for any of these services:

• Bookkeeping and accounting

• Legal services

• HR and Payroll

• Employee health coverage and benefits

• Marketing

• SEO

• Graphic design

• Photography

• Grants management and fundraising

• Printing and mailing

• Branded swag

Sometimes they have a recommendation, sometimes they don't. But they're usually happy to share.

This is a win-win-win for everyone:

• I can make better recommendations to my clients,

• my friends are happy to connect providers they love with great new clients,

• and those service providers are of course happy for the referral.

Here the thing:

Connecting people with others who can help them is almost always rewarding.

What related services are you recommending to your members, donors, and service recipients? How hard would it be to refresh or augment that list, and make more use of it?

A little effort, a little care, and you could have a valuable resource on your hands.

All the best,
A.

Events: recording participant relationships

A question at CiviCRM StackExchange asks (edited for brevity):

I would need to create relationships between participants when registering for an event in the CiviCRM online registration form.

I have seen there is an CiviCRM extension [link to blog post from 2012] that promises to do that, but it seems it is not fully developed yet. …

Is there any CiviCRM extension that allows to create relationships between participants to an event?

And here's my answer:

The "Group Event Participant Registration" extension does create relationships among contacts in a multi-participant registration.

(I'm the author. The extension has been in production use for a couple of years by a client, but I've never bothered to promote it or list it in the CiviCRM Extensions Directory.)

The basic intent is to allow one person (who may not even be attending) to register others from their family or workplace for an event.

From the ReadMe:

• Allows registering user to indicate whether they will attend the event or not.

• Provides list of related contacts as optional pre-filled additional participants.

• Related contacts may be related directly to the registering user, or (optionally) through a mutually related organization.

• Records all additional participants as related to user, with relationship type selected by user.

… See beta demo video here: https://youtu.be/2zd3bENs0Ow

The StackExchange question has a few other answers you might want to check out as well. Here’s the link.

All the best,
A.

What your CRM can’t do

If any of the following is your primary problem, your CRM software isn't going to fix it for you:

• Inconsistency

• Defeatism

• Apathy

• Indecision

Sometimes the big blocker is your people (or your own limiting mindset) and not your systems.

Fortunately, there's still a way forward. Just be sure you're addressing the right problem.

All the best,
A.

Separate hosting for CiviCRM security

Yesterday I said that there's not much security value in merely hosting your CiviCRM on a separate website.

Such a move might make sense in the context of a larger security effort, but that assumes you're talking with a qualified security specialist who knows your unique threat profile.

But for now let's talk CiviCRM security in general terms.

The trade-off

Like everything else, security is a trade-off. Usually the biggest trade-off is with convenience.

You could, for example, take your CRM offline, store it on an encrypted drive, and keep it in a safe deposit box at your bank.

In the real world, your CRM needs to be accessible by the people who use it — and they're probably going to be accessing it through a browser on a website.

Unlikely scenario

I can only imagine one scenario in which you'd get a security benefit hosting CiviCRM separately from your main website:

If the people who access your CRM are more willing to jump through hoops to use it than the people who use your main site.

That's because additional security will surely work out to a trade-off in convenience. To actually reduce the chance of inappropriate data disclosure, you'll have to limit access to the system in some way: additional passwords, two-factor authentication, or even taking it offline for local in-office use only.

Of course the problem with this is that you probably want as many people as possible to use your CRM: to make contributions, to register for events, to sign up for memberships, et cetera.

Here's the thing:

If you have a unique situation, with security concerns that you can reasonably articulate, it's important to address those concerns.

Feel free to write with any questions you have.

But in general terms, there's no almost never a situation where simply hosting CiviCRM on a separate site will get you any realistic security benefit without crippling the use of your CRM.

Instead, it's probably better to apply your resources to increasing security on your main site.

All the best,
A.

Separate CiviCRM for security?

Here's a question that came up on a client call yesterday (paraphrased for simplicity):

CiviCRM is part of our main WordPress site. Some of our board have asked whether that might present security concerns. For example if someone were to hack into our main site, wouldn't that give them access to all of our constituent information? Would it be better to run CiviCRM on a separate site, to reduce the chance of that happening?

I'm always glad to hear clients thinking carefully about security. So let's unpack this a little bit.

The short answer is: It probably doesn't matter.

The way I've paraphrased this question, there's not much security benefit to be had.

It's rather like saying: I'm concerned that if someone broke into my house they might steal my jewelry; would my jewelry be safer if I bought the house next door and kept it there?

The thing you're trying to protect has to live somewhere. And that place has to be accessible somehow.

A separate website, like a separate house, works exactly the same as your primary one. So it has all the same vulnerabilities.

On top of that, managing two properties is significantly less convenient, and more expensive (in time and money) than managing just one.

• You need two sets of keys (or passwords).

• You need to monitor both properties (or websites).

• Both properties (or websites) need routine maintenance and upgrades.

• Your own belongings (or constituent data) are now harder for you to access and use.

• Anyone who can break into your primary house (or website) can just as easily break into the other one.

• Moving valuables between one house (or website) and the other can present additional opportunities for thieves.

Here's the thing:

Merely storing your valuables in a second property, will only increase your workload, decrease convenience, add no real security value, and potentially increase the risk of theft.

Naturally, there are cases where having two separate sites could be an important component of a larger security plan.

More about that tomorrow..

All the best,
A.

Standing ovations

When you want to make an improvement, it helps to know your current metrics as a starting point. (Otherwise, how can you tell if you've improved — or if you're even moving in the right direction?)

But if you haven't been tracking metrics carefully, how can you even know where you're starting?

It's probably easier than you think.

Imagine you're the artistic director for your city's symphony orchestra, and you want to increase the quality of your performances (probably because you want to increase ticket sales and season memberships).

You could take steps to improve your performances, but how can you measure that?

Hire a big firm to conduct randomized surveys of a statistically relevant sample of your patrons? Ask patrons to rate ready performance from "poor" to "excellent" and compare the results over time?

Douglas Hubbard, in his How to Measure Anything, explains how the Cleveland Orchestra did it:

They counted the number of standing ovations.

Hubbard writes:

While there is no obvious difference among performances that differ by a couple of standing ovations, if we see a significant increase over several performances with a new conductor, then we can draw some useful conclusions about that new conductor. It was a measurement in every sense, a lot less effort than a survey, and—some would say—more meaningful. (I can’t disagree.)

Here's the thing:

For any outcome that you really care about, you could spend a lot of time and money measuring exactly that thing plus a long list of contributing factors leading up to it.

But there's probably a relatively easy proxy you could measure instead.

It wouldn't be an absolutely precise measurement — but nothing is, really (Neil deGrasse Tyson makes a good point).

Any measurement at all is still a lot better than no measurement.

What's so bad about a low-effort low-cost measurement that tells you most of what you need to know?

All the best,
A.

New extension: Contact Dashboard Tabs

CiviCRM’s contact dashboard is a great way to let your logged-in contacts see a quick summary of their recurring contributions, activities, even registrations, etc.

Unfortunately, the shear volume of information in the dashboard can be a little overwhelming.

To solve that problem, the Florida Public Pension Trustees Association sponsored the creation of the Contact Dashboard Tabs extension. It collapses all the dashboard sections into tabs, making the whole thing a lot easier to use, like so:

It also allows for inserting one or more profiles as read only sections into the dashboard. With that, they're able to show their contacts important information about their membership status that isn't usually available in the contact dashboard.

If that sounds useful to you, take a look at the extension’s listing in the CiviCRM Extensions Directory.

It’s just another way that the CiviCRM community is working together to make life easier for your consituents and staff.

All the best,
A.

It’s the outcome

Business consultants love to draw distinctions between goals and objectives.

Go down that rabbit hole if you like. (And if you enjoy that, you'll probably get something good out of it.)

For now, it's enough to make the distinction between tasks and outcomes.

You can stay pretty busy focusing on tasks:

• Coordinating speakers at your next big event

• Composing and sending the monthly newsletter

• Recording the contributions that came in by check

• Reviewing new donors and planning effective follow up

• Reporting, deduping, training, supporting, on it goes.

But after all of that is done, what's the real outcome?

What are you achieving that you actually care about?

Here’s the thing:

Completing tasks is the only way to get anything done.

But the real value of any task lies only in it's effect on a real-world outcome that betters the lives of people you care about.

Otherwise, it's just work.

All the best,
A.

Starting over

The restaurant across the street caught fire a few months ago. This week they reopened, better than ever.

Your organization is going to hit some surprising difficulties sooner or later. You don't know what it's going to be, but you can bet it will happen.

When it does, you may be able to patch things up and move forward. But sometimes you have to tear the whole thing down and start over.

Maybe that means replacing your entire board and rebranding under a new name. (I know some organizations that have done it — successfully.)

Maybe it just means canceling one event or discontinuing a long-running program.

Or it might mean admitting that your current feature set is inadequate, and investing in something that really meets your needs.

Here's the thing:

Most problems don't just go away on their own.

As with your health, your relationships, and everything else, the longer you wait to solve a business problem, the harder it gets.

Sometimes the best way forward is to take a step back and reassess.

All the best,
A.

Building momentum with conference attendees

Building capacity as an organization is often a matter of capitalizing on opportunity: getting results A is great; so how does it help you to get closer to result B, C, and D?

If your organization hosts one or two big events per year, it feels wonderful just to know that youre attendance is increasing, or that your total income from the events is meeting or exceeding your goals.

But are you missing an opportunity to leverage your relationship with those event attendees?

• Could you inspire them to greater involvement by offering targeted sessions for first time attendees?

• Would offering a discount on their first year of membership encourage more of them to become members?

• Would tracking their session attendance tell you more about their interests and help you deliver more effectively targeted follow-up emails?

Here’s the thing:

They've already shown that they care about your work by attending an event.

What steps can you take to make it easier for them to take the next step?

All the best,
A.

Just-in-time training

The limitation of most training programs is that you spend a lot of time examining features and possibilities in the abstract, usually long before you'll ever actually use things you've learned.

This is definitely better than nothing, so its greatest value is in one situation only:

When you've already selected the system and know almost nothing about it.

In that situation you get one substantial benefit:

You can go from “I know nothing about this system" to "I think I remember there's a way to do that in this system" pretty quickly.

But when it comes time to actually do that thing:

• How likely is it that you'll just be able to go and do it?

• Do you have the knowledge to just dive in and make it happen?

Probably not.

That's why some of the most effective training and coaching is done for people who have a specific goal in mind, and need help making it happen soon.

Contrived examples in training are still just contrived examples.

When it comes to clarifying your learning and mastery, there's nothing like digging right now in on a problem you care about right now.

All the best,
A.