Category: communications

Telephonitis

~ Sasha ~ 16 Comments

Twice in the last week I’ve been on important conference calls where severe “telephonitis” set in.  “Telephonitis” is the process whereby otherwise conversant, engaged, active people become silent in the face of a group conference call.

Maybe someday videoconferencing will become the norm, but I think phone calls are here to stay – at least for the next few decades.

You probably conduct enough business with meetings by phone that this is worth correcting.  Here’s where you can start:

  1. Create an “in the room” role.  You assign someone (or have them spontaneously volunteer) to be the voice of the sentiment “in the room,” explaining to people on the phone what’s going on.  This person fills in the silences with comments like, “Yes, everyone agrees,” or “Angela, you look like you’re not convinced by that last remark, can you tell us what’s on your mind?”
  2. When silence starts to set in, start cold calling people.  This has two effects: making sure you’re hearing from people, and creating an incentive (for those who don’t like being called on) for people to speak up when they have something to say.
  3. Create a norm that when an important question comes up, you’ll go around the horn and ask everyone to say something
  4. Have people who are not “in the room” lead the call.  Keeps them engaged and validates that just because they’re on the phone doesn’t mean they are less important.
  5. Never equate silence with agreement. It’s bad enough to do this in person.  Worse still on the phone.
  6. Keep calls short.  More than 30 minutes on the phone and you’ve probably lost the person dialing in.
  7. Keep groups small.  Less than 4 is ideal, but 6 or fewer seems to work.  After that, see above.

It’s almost impossible to overestimate how hard it is for someone on the phone to stay engaged in a conversation without visual / physical cues as feedback.  And if the person on the phone is not engaged (if they are a listener) or not getting feedback (if they are a speaker), you’re missed the entire point of a meeting – to inform the people who are on the call and, often, to get their input or assent to a set of decisions.

And one last suggestion: if you’re asking people to call in to a conference call at an inhumane time (very early or very late), be religious about starting the call on time.  It’s the easiest way to show respect for people who aren’t in the room.

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I’m beginning to wonder

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

If blogging is “here is what I think.”

Is Twitter “here is what I think is interesting?”

Very different, both influential.

(Food for thought: why is it so much easier to get Twitter followers than blog subscribers? Does it feel like a smaller commitment to follow someone on Twitter? Does that mean that in the endgame Twitter wins?)

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I have no idea what “DA and Operator Services” are

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Here’s the text from some SPAM I got yesterday:

[You’re invited to a] special conference that will focus on defining new strategies to not only sustain current DA and Operator Services operations, but to generate new directions for future revenue growth.  We believe our industry is on the cusp of a major paradigm shift.  These two days will be dedicated to spelling out how DA and Operator Services organizations can benefit from that change and provide an exclusive forum unparallel in networking opportunities.

I have no idea how I got on this list, and I had to read it over three times to figure out what “DA and Operator Services” means.

Clearly I never should have received this email.  These folks bought a list and spammed people.  First, they’ve violated the core tenet of permission marketing, which Seth Godin describes as “Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them.”  But that’s not my point here.

Instead, I’d like you to ask yourself: how often do I say or write sentences that are the equivalent of “This special conference will focus on defining new strategies to…sustain current DA and Operator Services?”  You know, sentences like, “Our M&E team’s analysis showed significant impacts on women’s empowerment indicators and childhood mortality statistics in line with our broader pursuit of the MDGs.”  Huh????

Language defines who’s in and who’s out.  There’s someone out there for whom “DA and Operator Services is self-explanatory.”  That person ain’t me.

There’s also someone who knows what M&E (“monitoring and evaluation”) and the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) are.  But that person probably isn’t most people, and you have to be very conscious of when you are and are not speaking to a specialized audience.

In truth, even the people who get the acronyms would benefit from you speaking clearly and using plain English.  Acronyms and industry-speak are usually a crutch, and there’s almost always someone in the room who’s too timid to admit that they don’t know the acronyms and what they mean.

Better yet, you might discover that writing (or speaking) in a way that most people will understand forces you to sharpen your own thinking AND makes you a better communicator to boot.

(Oh, and if you’re desperate to go to the “DA and Operator Services” conference, let me know.  I’ve got all the details.)

Why overhead ratios are meaningless for Kiva and Acumen Fund

~ Sasha ~ 8 Comments

Matt Flannery, the CEO of Kiva, wrote an excellent post on nonprofit overhead over on the Social Edge blog.  Kiva has been a game-changer in the poverty alleviation space: they use Kiva.org to connect donors to microfinance loan recipients in the developing world.  What’s important is the loan part — rather than getting a grant the borrower has to pay back the microfinance organization, which in turn pays back the funder.  Conceptually, this is similar to Acumen Fund, where I work – we raise philanthropic donations and then make debt and equity investments in enterprises that serve the poor in the developing world.  When we’re paid back, we recycle that capital into new investments.

One of the challenges that Acumen Fund and Kiva both face is that our models – focused on innovation, accountability, investment, and better leverage for each philanthropic dollar – are in direct opposition to the traditional metrics that rate nonprofit efficiency.  This is because invested capital (loans and equity), unlike grants, don’t factor into ratio of “overhead costs as a percentage of total cost.”  It just stays on the balance sheet but is not part of the annual budget.

The conventional nonprofit wisdom is that “best in class” nonprofits will spend no more than 20% on “overhead,” breaking down roughly to 10% on fundraising and 10% on administrative costs.

As Bridgespan, one of the leading consulting organizations to the non-profit sector, reports, “Many organizations and their funders are locked in a vicious cycle in which nonprofits are pressured to under-invest in overhead and to under-report their true overhead costs, even when those costs are still below what their senior managers feel is needed.”  Worse still, Bridgespan reports that “The majority of nonprofits [75-85% they studied] under-report overhead on tax forms and in fundraising materials.”

If we’re going to break the cycle, we have to uncover how flawed the underlying logic is.  Here’s where the logic falls apart:

An example: Both the Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh are world-class organizations that have changed the lives of tens of millions of poor people (mostly Bangladeshi women) through the provision of microfinance services.  Both organizations were founded by visionary leaders upon whose shoulders my generation stands in our work to bring an end to global poverty.

Yet, if forced to choose, I would argue that Grameen had the greater impact on the world because Mohammed Yunus, Grameen’s founder, won the Nobel Prize.  This was a major marker that “mainstreamed” microfinance and allowed the world, and not just the development community, to understand that lending money to poor people could change their lives in new and exciting ways. The result was a huge influx of commercial capital, and significantly more growth in the sector – ultimately leading to millions more served.

My question is: in the 30 years prior to Yunus receiving the Nobel Prize, does it sound right to you that every meeting Yunus had with a world leader, a powerful donor, or a leading journalist would have been counted in Grameen’s “overhead” cost, as separate from the “program” cost of delivering microfinance services to Bangladeshi women?  Should Grameen have “stuck to its knitting” in delivering microfinance services and not wasted money on all the “overhead” of external communications and building a community of friends, advocates, advisors, and supporters, which ultimately led to a global movement in support of microfinance?  (and yes, I know it wasn’t all Yunus, but without him, I don’t think we’d be where we are today).

My point is: it’s not just a little wrong to try to separate out “program” from “overhead,” it’s an outdated (or maybe it was never right) mode of thinking that is based on the premise that nonprofits are primarily delivery mechanisms for pre-determined services.  In reality, nonprofits play an active role in shaping our collective understanding of how to solve important social problems.

And getting back to Kiva and Acumen…: There’s a whole new segment of hybrid organization – encompassing the likes of  Kiva, Acumen Fund, Root Capital, E+Co, Agora Partnerships, sitawi, and others – that deploy mostly non-philanthropic capital for social ends.  Much as we’d like not to worry about the conversation, people do often ask about “overhead ratios” when making philanthropic decisions.

In closing, here are four (more or less related) thoughts:

  • Until “social investors” like Acumen et al. can develop a common vocabulary to  assess how efficient and effective we are (or are not), we will be at a disadvantage in the philanthropic marketplace
  • The nonprofit sector as a whole would be significantly stronger, and better positioned to weather economic downturns, if nonprofits didn’t rely on annual funding cycles.  But raising money over 18 months to pay for costs over 5 years requires an upfront investment – one that will look “inefficient” based on traditional ratios
  • If you care about fundraising efficiency, ask how much it costs an organization to raise a dollar, not how much they spend in total on raising money.
  • Even when asking this question, take the answer with a HUGE grain of salt – raising money, teaching, inspiring people, changing attitudes, motivating people to act….there’s huge overlap in these activities. If you don’t agree, please read my NonProfit CEO Manifesto and let me know how we can all do this better.

If you heard a Bell in the subway, would you stop to listen?

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

On a recent January day, commuters coming through the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station at 7:51am in Washington DC passed by a street musician playing the violin.  Most walked by, a few stopped to listen.  Young children stopped more than others.  After playing for 45 minutes, the violinist had collected $32.

Not a bad take except that the musician was world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell, who just a few days earlier had sold out Boston’s Symphony Hall at more than $100 a ticket.  And, to put the $32 in perspective a little more, Joshua was belting out Bach’s Partita in D Minor on a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin.

Joshua Bell was playing as part of a “social experiment about perception” run by the Washington Post.  So what do we learn from this?

There are two takes on this story, both valid.  The first take is that there is beauty all around us, every day, that we walk by, head down and disconnected.  The world and our lives would be better if we stopped not just for street musicians but also to look others in the eye and learn about what makes them special.  (If you read the Washington Post article you’ll see that almost every little kid stopped to listen.  So either children recognize transcendent beauty more than others, or they just care more about what’s in front of them than about their schedule.  Either way, we have something to learn here.)

The second take is that the experiment makes for a great story but lousy experimental design.  Put another way, I love the experiment, but I don’t think it answers the question it was set out to ask, which, roughly, was, “Will genius be spotted anytime, anywhere?”

What kind of genius?  Genius to whom?

Consider this:

  1. The audience of people who love and appreciate classical music is small.  (I come from a family of classical musicians and played piano seriously for 20 years, so I say this with regret).  If it had been a world-class rock band or rap artist or dancer, more people would have stopped.  I’m sure of it.
  2. People pay for the whole experience.  The theatre is theatre for a reason – you’re paying for the spectacle, the atmosphere, the whole wrapping around the performance.  You don’t get to extract the “genius performance” from the stage and compare apples to apples.
  3. If people aren’t ready to hear your message (wrong time of day, wrong frame of mind), your message is going to be lost
  4. Pitching a specialized product to everyone gets you nothing.  If Joshua had played at the 66th and Broadway subway outside of the Julliard School of Music, I’d wager he’d have gotten a bigger crowd

As the world gets bigger and more complex, it’s increasingly unlikely that your story is relevant/interesting to everyone.  Putting the right context around your story and telling it to the right people in the right way is more important than ever.

Still, this makes for a great story.

Start with the punchline, please

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

I had two half hour conversations today that were completely upside-down.

In both cases I was talking to people I didn’t know very well, and I had agreed to (not set up) the calls.  Both people were smart, capable, and successful, which is what made the conversations that much more perplexing.

In retrospect, if I were to draw up an agenda for the call it would look something like this:

Minutes 1-2        Introductions and pleasantries

Minutes 3-15     Background information by the caller

Minutes 15-20  Discussion of potential synergies / overlap

Minute 21           By the way, I also called to tell you….. (the punchline)

Please, please, please, reorder this agenda and put the punchline upfront (in minute 3)!  Tell me why we’re talking at the start of the conversation.

For example, let’s say you’re having an informational interview.  Respect the time and intelligence of the person you’re calling and start out by saying, “I’m really interested in the sector you work in, and I’m trying to learn more about how I might transition from my current role.”  That’s so much more helpful than pretending you’re not looking for a job.

Similarly, if you’re trying to create a business partnership, why not lead off with, “So-and-so suggested we talk because, even though we’re in different lines of business, there’s a real overlap between the types of people who are interested in what we both do.  I’d like to explore that overlap, but first why don’t I tell you more about our organization so you have a little background?”

This sounds obvious, but so often people “bury the lead” of their story and lose their audience in the process.  This happens in presentations, emails, conversations, you name it.

No one wins if you drone on about all your thinking, your deductive process, your analysis, and then say, “So what this all means is…”  You’ve lost me by then.

Here’s why I think this is harder to do than it looks:

  1. People are sometimes nervous to ask for things. The padding up front is a great way to stall.
  2. Being direct, but doing it with grace, is tricky. If you want to ask for something, be direct, but don’t be so direct/blunt that you put someone off.  (and if your ultimate ask is for someone’s investment or their business, you don’t necessarily lead with that ask.  You start with asking for their time, attention and consideration).
  3. It ain’t the same every time. Doing this in the right way also depends on who you’re talking to, your relationship with them, their personality type, culture, etc.
  4. People confuse building rapport with sharing information. Building a rapport is very important;  but this is not the same thing as sharing a bunch of random information, which is potentially distracting without the right context.

When someone puts the punchline at the end, you find yourself having a whole conversation that communicates something like: “Ignore the man behind the curtain and pay attention to this semi-interesting, semi-distracting stuff I have to say first.  This will show that I’m smart and credentialed and doing important stuff, and it will make you more likely to accept what I’m asking of you once I get around to it.”

Sure, I’m interested in what you have to say and all the great work you do.  But the man behind the curtain is often the whole point, so let’s both acknowledge he’s there and get on with it.

If I know nothing about why we’re talking, think about how hard I have to work to make sense of what you’re saying.  While you’re going on about who you are, what your organization does, what’s been going on in the last three months, I’m sitting there trying to figure out “What part of this story matters?”

Pretty soon, you’ll lose me.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

On the flip side, if you find yourself the victim of a buried punchline conversation, the time to perk up is when you hear ANY sentence that starts with:

“By the way…”

“Oh, and one other thing…”

“I’m not saying that…”

…or any other big disclaimer.

That’s the verbal billboard that screams: WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY IS THE WHOLE POINT OF OUR CONVERSATION!!

Frustration on the 2 train (wishing they had listened)

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Last week someone shared the phrase “the discipline of listening.”  I really like this.  It implies commitment, presence, humility, and hard work to become a good listener.  Sounds right to me.

Earlier today, I was packed into a sweaty 2/3 Express subway train in New York, creeping along, and wondering if I’d be late getting home.  The train conductor got on the PA system and crackled, “There is a track fire on Simpson Street in the Bronx.  There will be delays in express train service.”  That was it.

I imagine the conductor meant to be helpful, but I think he made things worse.  Why?  The problem is, he was describing the situation from his perspective (“let me explain to you why I’m driving this train so slowly”) without listening to what was on passengers’ minds (“will I get where I want to go on time?”)

(Now ask yourself: how many times has your communication, your story, your presentation, your message, been more about what’s going on with you – your organization, your product, your division – than about what matters to the person with whom you’re trying to communicate?)

Instead, the conductor could have said, “There is a track fire on Simpson Street in the Bronx.  This train is running slowly but we don’t plan to stop before 96th street.  We’re probably going to take twice as long to get from here to there than we normally do, but we’ll keep moving.  We apologize for the delay.  If I get more information, I’ll let you know.”

Bang.

NOW he’s talking to me.  Now he’s saying, “I know a bunch of you have a train to catch, a dinner reservation, or plan to get home at a certain time.  This train running in slow-motion is bumming you out, especially since you’re crammed in like sardines.  Let me tell you what’s going on, when you can expect to get where you’re going, and when you’ll get more information.”

I’m increasingly appreciating how important it is to LISTEN to people and to acknowledge them – even when they don’t verbalize what they really want.  People are desperate to be heard, and have been taught over time that you will care more about what you care about than what they care about.

The catch?  You really, truly have to give a damn about what someone else (your customer, your donor, your partner) thinks. Otherwise, no dice.

So here’s your big opportunity: shock them by listening and by acknowledging the validity of what they say.  Better yet, be forthright (yet polite) about where you might not be able to do what they’re asking.

More often than not, they’ll care more about the fact that you’ve heard them than they will about you doing what they’ve said.

On Gene Zelazny (or, Career Advice from the Front Car of the Train)

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I commute by train to and from work every day, and I can’t help but notice how the first car of the train is always much more crowded than the second car.  Crowded enough that people are willing to stand, to squish together, and generally to be uncomfortable.

Logically, you’d think people would be balancing how close they are to the front (and how quickly they can get to work or get home) with other criteria (like getting a seat and not being squished like sardines), but they don’t.  People think of themselves as “front car people,” and this shorthand makes them act in a certain way.

Professionally, there are increasing opportunities to be the best at something, and to get noticed for it.

What’s interesting is, you become the best at something, and then the front-of-the-car phenomenon can kick in: people want “the best,” so they squish into the front car to demand your services (your expert advice, your opinion for a magazine article, whatever).

Today I had the chance to attend a PowerPoint training by Gene Zelazny, who is the author of “Say it With Presentations,” “Say it With Charts: The Executive’s Guide to Successful Presentations,” and a host of other books.  I’m pretty sure Gene didn’t tell his second grade teacher that he wanted to be the world’s expert on PowerPoint charts.  But he’s built an amazing career out of this, published a series of successful books on the topic, and he works with CEOs and their teams on effective PowerPoint communications.  Gene has built a platform around something he’s incredibly passionate about, and he’s the first car on the train when it comes to PowerPoint training.

Your platform can (and probably should) be narrow.  You’re probably not the next George Soros, Bill Gates, Stephen King or Peyton Manning, but this doesn’t mean you don’t have a chance to be the best at something smaller, and in so doing you can make a career and life for yourself doing something you’re good at and passionate about.  And whatever your platform, once it’s established it can broaden and strengthen over time.

But first you have to know – or have some inkling about – what this “thing” is.  And if you can’t draw a line (even a tenuous one) from what you do today to this thing you might be best at, you might be in the wrong line of work.

10 Obvious Tips for Email (that most people don’t follow)

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

Like it or not, most professional communications nowadays is on email.  And if communications are about building personal connections and trust (which they are), then getting email right is important.  It’s a way to differentiate yourself in a crowded, noisy world.

So here are 10 tips for good emailing, especially if you’re in the relationship business (which you are):

  1. Never email someone who isn’t expecting to hear from you.  Or if you do, you’d better have a heck of a way to introduce yourself.  If they don’t know you or why you’re contacting them, you’re sending spam.
  2. Overwhelm people with your responsiveness.  This matters more than you think.  Get back to them quickly.  If it’s going to take you more than a day to respond, let them know.
  3. Be personal.  Have your personality come through. Really. Give them a glimpse of where you are, of what’s going in the world or in your world – something that places your email in a place and in time and shares a little bit about where your head is when writing the note.
  4. Use different tones of voice for different people.  Formal or informal can work for email, it just depends who you’re writing (but informal still means full sentences).  Just don’t be generic.  Ever.
  5. Be concise.
  6. Be specific.  Tell someone why you’re writing them.  If you’re asking them for something, ask.  Be clear, direct, and polite.
  7. Assume people are reading on a handheld device – even if they’re not, that will keep you short and to the point, and you’ll avoid graphics and tables and fancy stuff.
  8. EVERY email you write needs to strengthen and reinforce the relationship you have with someone.  Every one.  No exceptions.
  9. Think twice before you reply all.  Then think a third time.  And never, ever, reply all to say “Thanks” or “OK.”
  10. If you’re hesitating about sending an email, pick up the phone.  Don’t hide behind an impersonal medium, especially for tough conversations.

(Oh, and one more thing that most people will ignore: filing email in folders is for the birds.  It takes way too much time, and your email Inbox is not a to do list.  Use search instead.  MSN or Google Desktop really work, or if you’re lucky enough to have a Mac, use the built-in search feature.)

Blowup on Wall Street: the graphs

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

If you want a better sense of how big this blowup is on Wall St. (knowing that it’s probably not over yet), play around with this graphic from the NY Times website.  Just click on the boxes on the left-hand side of the page to compare then (market peak on Oct. 9, 2007) and now.

If nothing else, it looks like State Street is one of the big winners in all of this?

(I hope the NYTimes keeps on updating this one…I’d love to see it monthly for the next 6 months)