SPNM at Harvard – Final Day
One of our many case studies during the coursework this week had to do with Design Thinking, and it got our group to thinking about how well designed this course – Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management – has been. In addition to the supercharged professors, they carefully make use of the most important learning resource in any institution – the other students.
We come from four countries and represent a dizzying diversity of organizations. As I mentioned in the last blog, one of our tasks this week was Peer Consultation, where we each present a strategic challenge in our organization to the other 7 in our living group and hear their advice. This is another brilliant design move on the part of HBS. If you want to get insight into your problems, ask someone who doesn’t know your organization. Plus, each of these 7 people are brilliant leaders themselves.
Here we are right before the first Peer Consultation. The basic idea: You have a one-page statement of your challenge, you present 5-7 minutes, then you turn around and listen while the group discusses what you should do. It was incredible – these people think so fast, so strategically and so forcefully. You can’t help but get incredible insights.
The view while you are turned around and they are talking about you
Then we added a twist as we completed our first review of Corinne – Sevaun started a list on the big sheet and asked everyone to say what Corinne was. We did it with all 8, and by the end we had these big sheets of affirmations. Not only did you get wonderful insights into a strategic challenge, you got affirmation, something that does not happen everyday to people in our positions.
We are called Team 67 since we are Living Group 67 and we are all fast friends at this point. It has been a great privilege to spend this week at Harvard, and I am very grateful to the Harvard Business School club of San Antonio for making it possible. I am also grateful to the incredible professors, the challenging and insightful case studies, and the analytical frameworks I have gained. But mostly I am grateful to be able to work with 7 brilliant, insightful, powerful and balanced executives in close quarters for a week. Cheers to Mark, Corinne, Dawn, Chienye, Greg, Jorge, and Sevaun!
SPNM at Harvard Day 3-4
Hard to keep up with this schedule! We have four case studies per day and today we also have our peer consultation, where the other 7 people in our living group provide feedback on a strategic challenge within our own organizations. That should be fun!
I will dutifully explain how this is my financial stability plan…
One of the great advantages of a course like this is taking the time to look at organizational issues analytically. This is extremely difficult within the everyday. Plus, the faculty here are giving us excellent frameworks that help us perform these analyses, as I explained in the previous blogs. One of my favorites from yesterday was a triangle that helped diagnose problems within a labor force. It involved intuitive categories like Capability (skills training, etc.) and Motivation (involvement in mission) but added the key category of License. License is what you are allowed to do. License gives the staffer agency and some autonomy, which provides positive feedback to Motivation and ultimately to Capability.
My other big takeaway from yesterday has to do with the purpose of an organization. Feature this:
The purpose of an organization is to reduce the friction that comes when people work together toward a shared goal.
More to come…
SPNM at Harvard Day 2
The energy of these Harvard Business School professors is amazing. They bound up and down the aisles in our classroom, scribble on about 9 blackboards, and exhibit a dynamic range in their speach and mannerisms, endlessly inquiring, responding, teasing, encouraging and laughing. Every one of them has put on an incredible show.
And it isn’t just a performance, although that is what we have on our mind when the soundtrack to Hamilton seems to be in the background before each session. More than performance it is engagement. This is Executive Education, which means we are swimming in a sea of expertise and experience that only begins with the peripatetic professors and continues with a tsunami of colleagues running nonprofits of every size, description and locale.
That’s me, obviously.
We are 161, with 80 per class session, but we have a residential living team of 8 that meets at breakfast and lunch for group preparation. Every one of these people is amazing. Smart, talented, and full of insights and experiences. My living group hails from four countries and we are already fast friends. As I said long ago, education is more than a two-way street – it is like a highway interchange with multiple roads intermingling and soaring off in new directions.
Four classes every day – four case studies. Here are some of my insights and nuggets from today. The first was “purple windows.” from my classmate Dawn. That is when a funder says they like purple windows and next thing you know all of your nonprofit programs are supporting purple windows. The moral is that donor-driven efforts have the potential to push you off of your mission.
Coincidentally, Beacon Hill – the oldest historic district in Boston – is actually known for its purple-tinted windows.
Some nonprofits operate with a lot of donor direction, like our case study of one founded by venture capitalists, whose appetite for risk and experimentation is legendary. But risk is hard to emulate in the social enterprise world. My biggest takeaway from the VC nonprofit was their confidence in investing in human capital – they focus on leadership more that operations, and we all could learn from that.
Another lesson from the business world is the ability to “fail forward,” the subject of our second case. Failing is hard in nonprofits because our mission is basically to…not fail. But failing, as we learned today, is a learning path in business. As one professor said “I hate to fail, but I love to learn.” How can the nonprofit learn to experiment without “failing” the mission to deliver vital services?
Lima
Our third lesson today was on “design thinking,” and coincidentally it was about a Bay Area (where I lived) company working in Lima, Peru, where I did a multidisciplinary design studio six years ago when I was faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. So, I was familiar with design thinking and rapid prototyping, although the “discipline” has grown in the last six years. It is an accordion-like process of expanding and contracting ideas and iterations as you move from an Exploratory to a Conceptual to a Prototyping phase. The takeaway here, next to the importance of inductive thinking, was the importance of keeping ideas fluid and portable. I will take this with me to our Staff Retreat next month.
Not big enough for the Staff.
The final lesson was about entrepreneurship, which was brilliantly defined as “the relentless pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources.” Again, kind of tough in the nonprofit world, but also an essential quality to insure we don’t stay still or complacent.
One question we are asking ourselves two days in: Is there a scenario where a nonprofit is just fine at its current size and operation? So much of what Harvard has been teaching us is about growing the enterprise, going to scale, merging, expanding and exploring. What if we are okay where we are?
I mean, this looks nice – would more be better?
Three and a half more days to go – stay tuned.
SPNM at Harvard Day 1
I have just finished my first full day at Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management, a weeklong course I am attending thanks to the largesse of the Harvard Business club of San Antonio. The course takes advantage of the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative, which has helped conceptualize and provide frameworks for understanding the different “business” of the nonprofit organization.
As might be expected, this effort has produced some pretty amazing outcomes at Harvard and here is a taste of what we can expect this week: FRAMEWORKS for Strategic Thinking; DESIGN thinking; Entrepreneurship; Leading Change; Scaling Impact, and working with Boards. The best things I got out of the introductory sessions last night:
- As we move from inputs to outcomes in our social mission, we move from auditable claims to aspirational claims. We need the latter because they are motivational, but they are a bear to quantify for donors.
- Nonprofits are three circles in a Venn diagram of MISSION; CAPACITY: and SUPPORT. The sweet spot where all three reside is generally small.
Many of the case studies we are looking at – and today they varied between the space shuttle Columbia, a hospital in Massachusetts, a training school in Pittsburgh and a call center in Israel – could be better understood by following these two frameworks.
Frameworks are important.
My biggest takeaway today involved the greatest challenge a leader is faced with: going against human nature. Our natural human impulse is to seek certainty, affirmation and conformity. What a leader needs goes against our nature: ambiguity, dissent and a process to make the right decisions. It is a questioning, uncomfortable process of constant examination.
My second takeaway is that leadership is, in fact, a process, not a person. It is the process of bringing a new unwelcome reality to an organization and helping them adapt to it. This has brought me back to thinking about strategic planning and the many Board roles I have occupied in my life, and even this blog from three years ago, which references those earlier ones and focuses on the nature of my field – heritage conservation.
Interestingly, I am one of only two people in heritage conservation – and one of only a couple from the South, out of 161 participants from five continents. And I am very fortunate indeed to be here. More soon.
School Houses Rock
Not long ago I did a blog about the myriad examples of preserved, adapted historic gas stations. Today let’s look at schools. I remember schools rehabbed into homes from the beginning of my career over 34 years ago.
The Lemont School – front half 1896, rear piece 1869 – converted into residences c. 1980.
The Lemont School above shows how even two generations of school design are easily adapted, since they needed large windows to allow enough light in for instruction – a feature suited well to conversion into apartments or condos. Offices are another easy rehabilitation goal, as seen in this 1874 school in Georgetown, Colorado. (This is from a decade ago – it is rehabbed now)
Schools are a more straightforward rehab prospect than other community-defining buildings like churches and theaters, which tend to have a massive open space inside, although of course more modern schools will themselves include assembly halls and theaters, along with gymnasia. Still, most classrooms are easily made into offices, condos or even retail spaces.
This one is for the birds. I mean The Birds (Bodega Bay, California).
Which brings us to this lovely 1916 school by local architect Leo Dielmann, which was “saved,” or rather “not demolished” 20 years ago when they tore off various additions and built a new school. And then let this one rot. Despite a sturdy concrete frame, the roof was the only wood portion and it turned into a sponge in the last decade. But the walls are there and it is beautiful.
Still the owners – the School District – have pulled a fast one, or more accurately, a really SLOW one. Demolition by neglect. Over more than two decades. Makes it look almost…natural.
Councilman Treviño has been fighting for the school, and our friends over at Ford Powell Carson architects even did some renderings to show how it could be rehabbed.
Many neighbors want to save it, but others have been convinced by the long con that the eyesore is too far gone and must be removed. The real crime here is that no one gets dunned for demolition by neglect – the most common way to deliberately destroy a perfectly usable building. There is also lack of vision – seeing older buildings as obstacles rather than opportunities.
See?
Treviño is fighting a Principal and Superintendent who want to see the building go away, which was perhaps the plan 20-odd years ago. That would be a shame. For the neighborhood, the city, and future resources subjected to the mistreatment of the long con.
MAY UPDATE
Now all the parents are upset because the School District added another fence around the landmark, closing off all open space on the block. This was not due to an incident but the occasion of a structural report that doubted the building’s ability to withstand a tornado.
Yes, really. Can’t make this stuff up! To the long con of demolition by neglect they have added structural scare-everybody-ism. As the first con was strategic, so is the second, because now we have upset children and parents demanding that something be done. Those allies are key, because the structural report itself was a bit of a laugher – it is not clear he even accessed the building! He claimed his report was based on his experience over 40 years. I have to remember that one.
Another structural engineer is taking a look at it through actual inspection and soon we will know what it costs and whether we can find all of the money. Stay tuned.
AUGUST UPDATE
The parents, pressured by the unnecessary closing of the playground, called for demolition this summer and the owner finally filed for a demolition permit. Sadly, it seems the long con is working.
Buildings For The Future
My favorite quote from Donovan Rypkema during our Living Heritage Symposium last month was a marvelously simple recitation about why saving old buildings is economically brilliant. He said simply: “You can’t build new and rent cheap.”
Passive Aggressive
Passive Aggressive behavior is a terrible character failing. It is a sign of immaturity or stunted development. I know something of this and work to avoid it.
The Value of Heritage
When a lover of history, architecture, or neighborhoods sees an historic building or district, they value it. They want to save it, to preserve that value. Continue Reading
Moving Buildings – San Antonio
I am living in an historic building that was moved more than a mile from its original location, from the King William district, the first historic district in Texas.
This is the 1881 Oge carriage house, now located near the Yturri-Edmunds house, which is in its original location near Mission Road. Our San Antonio Conservation Society moved the house here in order to save it. On the same property we also have the Postert House, an 1850 palisado cabin which was similarly moved in order to save it from demolition. In fact, I remember very well in 1985 when San Antonio set a record for moving the largest building that had ever been relocated on wheels, the 1906 Fairmount Hotel. Continue Reading
Lathrop Homes, 3 years after
Full disclosure: Four years ago, I was the Historic Preservation consultant for the Julia C. Lathrop Homes in Chicago, a very important 1937 federal housing project. This past Thursday the Chicago Plan Commission approved the current plan for the project, which I ceased to work on when I left Chicago in July 2012. I took the opportunity to compare the plan to my April 2011 Preliminary Report and to the project at the time I left.