The problem with experts

September 4, 2009September 3, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I always feel a little uncomfortable when someone I don’t know well asks me for career advice. Without knowing a person, who they are, their strengths and weaknesses, and the path they want to walk, the most I can do is explain what I did and why I did it, and (intentionally or not) share all of my own biases along the way. But that’s not what they’re asking…they’re asking what they should do.

It’s the same problem when you bring in outside experts at work. Imagine you work at a nonprofit and want to know how you can take advantage of online tools to help raise your visibility, buzz, and raise more money. So you get a hold of an online media whiz – the founder of an innovative ad agency or someone who had a breakthrough online success at one of the big brands, or maybe even someone who worked on the Obama campaign – and are thrilled when they open their playbook to you.

It’s great, but what you’re learning about is what worked for them.

There’s no doubt that what worked for them matters. But remember that they probably know very little about you – your audience, your budget, your brand, your community, who your rabid fans are. So most of the conversation will be about “here’s what we did” with no one around the table knowing enough to understand how their and your situations are similar or different.

(The only remedy here is getting the guru to invest enough time that they truly know you well – then they’ll be in a position to combine their experience with a knowledge of what might and might not be applicable for you.)

Unless you get there, you’ll come up short. If you’re trying to do something new without your own playbook, once a guru has told you what they did, you’ll need a lot of fortitude and guts to look what they did squarely in the eye and say, “You know what? That’s not going to work for us.”

It’s terrifying to wake up one day and realize that the only person who has all the answers is you. May as well face that music now if you want to create something great.

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A leading voice takes the next step

September 3, 2009September 2, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Congratulations to Sean Stannard-Stockton on the launch of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors. Sean has been writing on the Tactical Philanthropy blog since 2006, and has become one of the leading voices “Chronicling the Second Great Wave of Philanthropy.” If you want to know what’s going on in U.S. philanthropy, with a nod to what is newer and is most cutting edge (and an acknowledgment of what’s mainstream), you go to Sean.

This week, Sean has launched Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, to provide philanthropic advisory services to clients with $1 -$50M or more of philanthropic assets. And yes, Sean will still be writing his blog.

Why does this all matter? Sean reminds us that “Individual donors give $250 billion a year to charity, making up 82% of all charitable giving.” It’s a lot of money, and where it goes makes a real difference.

Sean is also launching the Tactical Philanthropy Knowledge Network, “a network of professional grantmakers who are committed to the idea that knowledge sharing leads to greater social impact.” Jed Emerson will be the Chair of the Network, and IDEO will be involved in designing the Network and facilitating Network gatherings.

Congratulations, Sean. We’re all cheering you on.

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Be a Sawgot (SWGTD)

September 2, 2009September 1, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Are you a “sawgot,” Someone Who Gets Things Done?

If you’re not now, what would it take?

With an ever-shifting economy, and all of the challenges in the job market, I can think of few skills more universal than being a sawgot. Because when it’s crunch time and something absolutely needs to happen, the people in charge look at each other and say, “OK, we need our ace right now. The game’s on the line.” And you want to be that ace.

Being a sawgot is about a mindset and an outlook: having the humility not to ask “why am I doing something that’s not in my job description?” and the wisdom to know that moment you’ve become the kind of person who reliably makes problems go away, you’ve become indispensable.

This is particularly valuable early in your career, when you’re looking to stand out. If you work in the kind of organization that creates opportunities and moves quickly, the sawgot’s ability to move a project forward, on time and without (visibly) breaking a sweat is the kind of thing that gets you noticed (and if it doesn’t get you noticed, go work somewhere where it does).

Speed, accuracy, an ability to ask the right questions to get enough clarity to do what is being asked of you…these are the starting point. There is also a trove of really basic skills that you just need to have – and which there’s no excuse not to have mastered by now. You:

Create clean, attractive, simple slides in Powerpoint: few words, great images, tell a story (this implies some facility with Photoshop).
Generally “do stuff” with ease in Excel (this includes formulas and pivot tables and some data analysis and text-to-columns and Lookups).
Write clearly, concisely, quickly, and at the right level of detail
Manage projects against deadlines, and get things done early
Never let things fall through the cracks
Know how to create content for the web (including poking into the code here and there if you need to) – and are comfortable creating and sharing multimedia quickly and easily
Reliably create narratives from a set of inchoate inputs / sources
Know just a little bit more than your boss about what’s new and useful in the world, including but not limited to the online world

The skills allow you to dance at the party, but the sawgot’s ATTITUDE gets you in the door. You don’t want to jump into so many things that you cannot do your day job, but if, right now, you’re not working on one or two things that you’d describe as, “this is outside of the scope of what I do, but it really matters that our team/group/organization/company gets this right,” then it’s time to put up your hand and say, “how can I help?” or “why haven’t you asked me to help?”

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Wow! We did it.

August 28, 2009August 29, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Thanks to all of you and to friends around the world, today my birthday wish came true!

Goal: raise $720 for Acumen Fund online in 5 days

Result as of 2:49pm 11:59pm, Aug 28, 2009: $810.72 $968.72 raised ($380 $538 on Facebook Causes; $430.72 directly to Acumen Fund)

Unexpected result: learning by doing; seeing what does and doesn’t work with direct fundraising appeals; being touched and moved by old friends, readers, and family who chose to participate in ways large and small.

I’m off to celebrate. Have a great weekend, and thank you for all you did.

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Sales 101

August 26, 2009August 25, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Mea culpa. I fell into the oldest trap in the sales book. I did a good job of explaining a need, and then I asked my blog readers to give to Acumen Fund before this Friday.

But I let you all down, so I wanted to apologize. I didn’t explain the most important thing.

This is about YOU.

Really.

YOU.

The person reading this blog post.

Right now.

Not anyone else.

YOU.

And it’s about NOW, because if you click to the next blog post, you won’t come back to do this, and I know you want to.

You’re probably one of the hundreds of people who read this blog daily.

I know you care about making the world a better place. I know you care about fairness and justice and I know you want to be part of something bigger than yourself (we all do). So I let you down by not helping you do that – by making clear that this is about YOU doing something NOW.

Not anybody else, and not any other time.

Go here (Acumen Fund site) or here (Facebook causes). The $36 increment is optional but fun.

Make a statement. Give. Whatever amount you can. You will be happy you did, I promise. And it will mean a lot to me and to you.

Here’s our story, in 18 minutes.

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First to 100

August 25, 2009August 24, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to teach my 5 ½ year old son to play tennis. Our typical session has been short – usually less than 10 minutes – so progress has come in fits and starts. Last week, I could tell he was starting to lose interest in our standard drill: me standing 5 feet away from him, bouncing the ball to him for him to hit.

So we invented a new game: I moved across the net, stood at the service line, and hit balls to him at the other service line. Each time he connected with the ball he got a point. Each time he missed entirely, I got a point. Then we spiced things up: each time he hit the ball over the net and hit it in the court, he got two points.

This was a big deal. Suddenly, his waning attention transformed into pointed questions about the rules and the point system. He decided he wanted to get to 100 points and he began angling for a lot of things to count for 2 points – a ball that first bounced on his side or a ball that landed in the doubles alley, for example.

Interesting. I had created an arbitrary system with an arbitrary set of rules (which I made up as I went along). But in his eyes, it was my job to define the rules of the game, and he’d decided he wanted to win at this game. I had suddenly become judge and jury on allocating something that was free for me to give out and mattered a lot to him. Needless to say, he got a lot of free two-pointers (final score of game 1: he trounced me 137-37).

Seem like a far flung example? It strikes me that this tennis court parable is an awful lot like work environments, where managers create (inadvertently or not) point systems that are no less arbitrary than the one I created on the tennis court. These points aren’t just about money, they’re about attention and opportunities and consultation and respect. What’s valued and sought after will vary depending on the culture of your organization. But you can be sure that, to anyone who values the work they do, the currency your culture trades in matters to them.

It was unbelievably easy for me to be generous with my son in giving out points. What about at work? If you have the respect of your colleagues and peers, then they’re watching you just as closely, and once the rules of the game are defined, you have the option of being generous or stingy in giving “points,” not just to people who work for you, but for peers and even for supervisors. It’s something everybody values, and cultivating your own genuineness and generosity here is one of the easiest ways to motivate, energize and inspire those you hope to lead.

(P.S. Still reading? Please think about helping me fulfill my birthday wish by giving to Acumen Fund.)

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My birthday wish

August 24, 2009August 23, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

My 36th birthday is coming up this Friday. One of my clearest memories as a child is of my father as a 36 year-old. Through my six-year-old eyes, that age stuck in my mind as the age of a real grown-up. Now that I’m turning 36 this Friday, it doesn’t feel exactly the way I expected it would, so I’m hoping to start the year off with a bang. I am donating my birthday to Acumen Fund, where I work (when I’m not blogging). So I’d like your help.

I would love if you could make a gift to Acumen Fund. You can do it through Facebook Causes, or directly on Acumen Fund’s website. You can say it’s for my birthday or just give in some increment of 36. So even if you don’t have a lot to give, you could give $3.60. Or you could give $36 or $360, or….you get the idea.

Why give? There are a lot of reasons, many of which Seth summed up unbelievably well last week. For me, I know that two-thirds of the world’s population lives on less than $4 a day – which is about the price of a Starbuck’s coffee. And I know that these 4 billion people, 4 out of every 6 people on the planet, have as many hopes and dreams and as much potential and dignity as the 2 billion people who are fortunate enough to have been born outside of the clutches of poverty.

More than that, I think for the first time in history we have the tools at our disposal to break the back of poverty, by finding solutions that blend the best of philanthropy and the markets to find answers to the big problems in the world – like maternal mortality and malaria and safe drinking water and sanitation and having a safe place to live.

So help me make my birthday wish come through with a donation. If nothing else, it’s a nice way to let me know that you’re out there and that you enjoy reading, which means a lot.

I think it’s possible to make a better world, and think part of the reason you read this blog is because you believe that too. So thank you for reading, and thank you for making my birthday wish come true.

Before iPod Genius, there was Shuffle…and it was good enough

August 18, 2009August 17, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

One of the many clever iPod/iPhone features is “Genius,” which automatically creates a playlist of related songs based on a song that you pick. You pick a song by the Police and you’ll get a playlist with U2 and Sting and Bob Marley.

Apparently, Genius is pretty sophisticated, but I don’t think it has to be. The first 10% of accuracy would be enough, because our minds would tell the story that would do the rest of the work. Need proof? Back when we all had to settle for Shuffle – a completely random playlist created from songs from your music library – people would inevitably claim that their iPod was psychic, somehow “knowing” the right song to play at the exact right moment.

The point? Our minds (specifically, our right brains) are constantly trying to make sense of information by telling a story that’s consistent with whatever we’re seeing. You cannot walk through the woods and make sense of every individual tree…you’d go crazy. So you process a few trees until your mind tells you, “This is a forest.”

In the same way, it’s enchanting to think that a mindless iPod knows the perfect song to play at the party. It’s your mind picking out what it wants to see.

For you left-brain, analytical people out there, who are persuaded by (and want to persuade others using) mostly facts and logic, it’s easy to forget how much your audience needs a story. By imagining your own mind and how you process information – and the sequence of facts that would make sense to you – you completely abandon something powerful that is working in your favor: that the person sitting across from you, hearing these facts for the very first time, wants nothing more than to tell themselves a story. It’s the best way for them to make sense of what you are saying.

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Darn breakthroughs

August 14, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Turns out they only happen after you’ve been chipping away for so long and working so hard, you almost forget what it felt like when you started.

Next chisel, please…

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Too much nonprofit marketing?

August 12, 2009August 11, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

Zeenat Potia, who now works at and blogs for Oxfam America, started her career in book publishing. In her first year in the book business, Zeenat would often be asked at parties whether she was an editor, and she’d say no, that she was in marketing. But:

“I did not like casting myself as a marketer because their inevitable response would be a smug, quasi-judgmental “ah.”

The premise: the editors do the high-status, high-value work (finding manuscripts, editing them, working with the authors); the marketers are just peddlers. And look where the book business is today. What’s the right balance between editorial and sales & marketing? I don’t know, but I’d guess that it’s in the ballpark of 50/50, not the 90/10 or 80/20 that I’d guess it is in the book business (at least from a status perspective, maybe from a time and effort and honing of craft perspective too). The goal is to find great books and get them into the hands of readers, isn’t it?

Zeenat makes the right analogy to the nonprofit world: just swap out “editors / marketers” with “program staff / development staff” and you get the exact same equation. “Program” is where the people who do the “real” work go, the ones with the PhDs who really know what’s going on and what works. The development staff just run off and package the “real work.” Ancillary and low status.

This is what gives space for Zeenat’s question. Marketing is “just selling,” right? So you should do just enough to be able to do the real work. It’s possible to do too much marketing, right?

Probably, but I bet that there’s not a single iPhone owner (or craver) out of the 22 million owners in the United States who discusses whether Apple is wasting its money on “all that marketing.” Same goes for Amazon. And Virgin. And probably even Wal-Mart. Same even went for GE in the heyday years of Jack Welch (the story was just different).

When done right, marketing helps us discover solutions to our problems, influences how people see the world, and helps them make decisions. When done wrong, it’s peddling something someone doesn’t quite need and quickly regrets buying.

Let us not, as a sector, fall into the trap of listening to critics who say that we should minimize the dollars, effort, brain power, and ingenuity that goes into everything but the “real” work (programs). In so doing, we risk forgetting that our role is BOTH to find solutions to the persistent problems of inequality and injustice and malnutrition and infant mortality and safe drinking water and AIDS and malaria…AND to figure out how to explain to the world that these problems matter, that we have the tools to solve them, and that if was have the tools to solve them, then we must all act.

It’s not easy. But that’s marketing.

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Sasha Dichter's Blog

The problem with experts

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A leading voice takes the next step

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Be a Sawgot (SWGTD)

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Wow! We did it.

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Sales 101

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First to 100

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My birthday wish

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Before iPod Genius, there was Shuffle…and it was good enough

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Darn breakthroughs

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Too much nonprofit marketing?

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