Make it easy for them to say yes

Many of us dream of spending a month on a sailboat but brush the idea off as pure fantasy. We have too much work to do, our boss will say no, maybe we'll rock the boat too much even by asking. Usually all of these things are true, unless you do your homework first. Headwaters' newest staff member recently made this request and I happily said yes. Is it because I am a kind executive director and will happily take over her workload for a month? Nope. It's because she made it so easy to say yes. Here's what she did:

She got a feel for the organization's culture- We have many staff members that have taken extended vacations. I often rave about what a good job they did preparing the other staff for their time away. She took mental notes and used that as part of her strategy when approaching her own leave.

She didn't surprise me- When she first heard about the opportunity to go on the sailing trip, she let me know that she was thinking about doing this and was concerned about missing an event that we are hosting during that time. I appreciated that she was so concerned about the event and wanted to make sure it was successful but I made sure that she knew that, while there was a lot of work to be done to get ready for the event, her attendance on that day wasn't mandatory.

She made a plan- She wrote up a list of all of the activities that needed to take place during that month, figured out who could be alternatively responsible, got their buy-in, and also listed all of the things that she could do in advance to either finish that activity or to make it easier for the person taking over.

She always does a good job- It is much easier as a supervisor to say yes to someone who consistently keeps up with their responsibilities. She does her job well everyday and so that made it really easy for me to trust that she would properly prepare for this leave and be ready to get back to work when she returns.

Do don't give up on your dream of going on a safari, a mission trip to Honduras, or backpacking  in Australia. Just make it easy for them to say yes.

We All Have 168 Hours

I recently received a copy of Laura Vanderkam's book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. A while back Laura interviewed me about my time management techniques to add to the book, as I was reading over my suggestions and quotes I was quickly reminded that time management can be a fleeting accomplishment. When Laura interviewed me I had an amazing executive coach that was helping me put systems in place to make sure that made sure that time wasn't an excuse for not being able to do all of things that I needed to do as the new Executive Director of Headwaters. She helped me set my schedule so I had time for strategic thinking for three large blocks of time a week, time to clean out my inbox everyday, and time for lunch (I know it sounds ridiculous but in my first few months at Headwaters I was packing my schedule so tight that I didn't have time to eat). As I got more comfortable in my new organization it became easier and easier to let those good habits go because things were moving smoothly and I was getting a lot accomplished.

Getting Laura's book in the mail reminded me that good habits only work if they are really habits and not just a fleeting lifestyle change. Her example of how you can really have it all (wife, mother, successful careerist, and connected community member) just by paying attention to how you are spending your 168 hours a week was a needed reminder that I need my good habits back, even when things are running smoothly. She has great examples throughout the book of how to maximize your hours. Check out the book, I bet you'll find new ways to maximize your 168 hours and make it a permanent habit.

Hamburger Helper as a sign of imbalance

I stumbled upon this old post, from when I first started at Headwaters, and it was a great reminder of how far I have come. My family may not be eating gourmet meals but I can happily say we haven't had Hamburger Helped since this post.

I have been busy with work lately, not sleep under my desk busy, but busy enough where I don’t have a lot of spare time to think about what to eat at home. It is not like when I have lots of spare time I am a wonderful chef who makes home cooked meals for the neighborhood but I can get a protein, vegetable, and a starch on the table pretty consistently. For the first three weeks of my new job my husband has been handling almost all of the home duties and when it comes to food that means we had eaten a wide variety of fast food for three weeks straight. I was starting to feel like the guy from Supersize Me, so I finally ventured to the grocery store. I have found that when I have a large number of decisions to make at work, facing the infinite number of possibilities at the grocery store makes my head feel like it is going to explode. Instead of picking fresh food that would require me to figure out what to do with it I gravitated towards the dangerous middle aisles, where there are pictures of completed meals on the box and numbered directions on how to make it happen. At 9pm on a Tuesday night at a grocery store, numbered directions start looking pretty attractive. The next night when I cooked my “1-2-3″ meal I noticed that it had a very unappetizing grey color and it had a nice chemical aftertaste. That’s when I remembered that work-life balance isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

I have no false illusions that I will be running a board meeting, speaking at a conference, and then cooking a three course meal for dinner but I can do a better job of using the same strategic planning that I use to decide what I need to accomplish for the week at work, at home. I can set broad goals about the sort of food I would like my family to eat and how we spend our time together. I can also celebrate those successes at home the same way I celebrate those successes at work with staff. The hard thing about being a parent or a partner is that you don’t get performance reviews to tell you that you are doing a good job. You need to figure out what let’s you know you are doing a good job, is it well adjusted kids, a happy partner who says nice things about you to their friends, or a family without scurvy? Then enjoy those successes.

Harnessing Technology for Change

Great post from Rahim Kanani of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard about the Global Philanthropy Forum: Just a few weeks ago, the 2010 Global Philanthropy Forum convened in San Francisco. The three-day forum highlighted a number of key international challenges and opportunities facing investors and grant makers, NGOs and civil society, and multi-sector partnerships both public and private, as the industry of giving and receiving enters the second decade of the 21st century. While the overarching themes of the conference were not explicitly related to technological advancements or solutions to the world's most pressing problems, having attended a variety of sessions over the course of the conference, one of the most prominent threads was exactly that: harnessing mobile and internet technology for change, social impact, and accountability.

Catalista, for example, has developed a mobile platform to connect individuals interested in timely volunteer work for local non-profits in need, whereas The Extraordinaries pioneered the field of micro-volunteering, which helps organizations and supporters turn spare time into social value from a bus stop, cubicle, or couch. To-date, micro-volunteers have completed over 300,000 tasks for more than 200 organizations. Similarly, but in a reversal of roles and in the space of economic development across the developing world, Samasource enables marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet. The core of this concept is microwork -- little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for their partners. Another example of mobile and social innovation in action is the work of FrontlineSMS, designed specifically to address a widespread communications problem facing grassroots NGOs working in developing countries. By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs -- computers and mobile phones -- FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. The uses for such technology spans monitoring human rights violations, disaster relief coordination, election monitoring, emergency alerts, health care information requests, mobile education, and more.

Read the rest here