Strategy News
What do we value?
On the day we have officially come out of recession, and new research on our social attitudes has been published, I would recommend taking a look at the McKinsey interview with the extremely lucid Jim Wallis (you can watch, listen to or read it here on the McKinsey Quarterly website, though you will have to create a free account to do so). In the light of the current discussions taking place at Davos, he suggests that the question we should be asking about the economic crisis is not ‘when...
On trying to map membership
We had a great dinner for CEOs of the organisations involved in the Future of Membership project last night, which followed a productive – if exhausting – day of scenario planning for the full project think tank last week.
Over supper, we got into a long discussion as to why we have membership. It’s a question that’s come up again and again throughout the project – what do we mean by membership? Often, it really it depends on what each organisation says it is.
We’ve tried throughout the...
Walled gardens and climbing over fences
Last week I spoke at the NCVO Membership schemes conference on what the future of membership might look like. I raised one of the key things that has struck me in our research to date: the difference between recruitment and retention for membership organisations. As Colin Rochester puts it in his Making Sense of Volunteering,
“the cocktail of motives that lead people to engage [in the first place] may be very different from the factors that maintain their involvement”
In general – and I’d...
More on whether we get what we pay for
A while ago, I wrote a piece on the ‘freemium’ model that seems to be growing in relevance as people’s patterns of consumption of information and products, and their willingness to pay for them.
If you are interested in this topic and have a spare few minutes over the weekend, you might like to take a look at this slideshow (warning - there are 263 slides). Since we're all time poor, I thought I'd highlight that of particular interest to membership organisations are slides 200, 216 and 217...
Social media and membership organisations
The apparent threat (or opportunity) that social technology presents to membership organisations is summed up in the subtitle to Clay Shirky’s zeitgeisty book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of organizing without organizations. If ‘everybody’ can organise action by themselves (or rather, together), what possible reason is there for organisations to exist?
The first answer is, of course, that ‘everybody’ is not coming quite yet. Older people in particular – precisely those who,...
Is this the new direction of [party] membership?
GP Sarah Wollaston was yesterday elected as the Conservative candidate for the Totnes seat currently held by Anthony Steen.
But it was not so much her election as the manner in which it took place that is interesting: Wollaston was elected through a postal ballot open to everyone on the electoral register for the constituency.
A back of the envelope (groan) calculation suggests that around 16,500 people voted, in other words just under a quarter of those eligible to do so. Whilst therefore...
How do leaders view the future?
Like a ship in troubled waters
The 5th Charity Forecast survey results have been released by NCVO. The survey is a ‘confidence/trends’ survey. This survey looks at the opinions of charity leaders - chief executives and trustees - on a variety of topics, particularly looking at finances, staffing, campaigning and other issues in their own organisations and their opinions on wider issues such as the state of the sector and its relationship with government. This particular survey was conducted...
Scenarios for policy making process and the public policy agenda in five years time (2014)
What impact would a re-elected Labour Government or a new Conservative one have on your organisation? What would the effects of this be combined with a short, sharp recession or a long, deep one? How would these possible changes affect the way your organisation develops and influences policy as well as the environment in which you operate?
The potential implications of a change of government and a recession are explored in these four scenarios which were developed with members of the NCVO...
Does good decision making in a recession require a culture change?
We would probably all agree that leading an organisation through the current recession presents significant challenges. But do these challenges require a similar method and culture of decision-making, or is a change required?
This interesting article from the US Nonprofit Quarterly argues that boards do indeed need to rethink their skills and culture in order to steer organisations effectively through financial crisis.
The article begins with a case study of an organisation that, although...
The latest Foresight seminar: X and Y
In this time of economic uncertainty, it is more vital than ever that you have a committed, effective workforce. Recruiting is a costly business, which no-one wants to have to do too often!
Do you understand what may impact on workforce in the future? What external trends and forces can change the shape of your workforce? This awareness and planning is key to attracting and retaining a workforce that will enable your organisation to realise its full potential.
This NCVO Third Sector Foresight...
