For various reasons — as a board member, a staff member, an advisor, and such — I find myself in the middle of four separate strategic thinking efforts among four separate organizations and initiatives. Although these are non-similar organizations, with very different purposes and governance structures, the conversations have been strikingly similar.
The most vexing question they’ve all come around to is this: what would success look like if we achieved it? In other words, if our organization or initiative was working exceptionally well, what evidence of a difference would we see in the world around us?
It seems a simple question, but I’ve seen it stump several rooms full of really intelligent and passionate people. It seems most of us — as board members, staff members, volunteers — are unprepared for the question, and lack the words to answer it directly.
Perhaps that’s because an answer to that question requires more than the vague, aspirational phrases you usually find in mission statements or grant language — ”we strive to connect our community to the magic and power of [insert art form here] at the highest level of excellence.” Instead, you have to be focused and specific. If you did connect your community to some kind of magic or power, what evidence would you expect to see? What does excellence in your particular discipline look like — critical acclaim, national recognition, customer satisfaction, artist satisfaction, percentage of house sold?
There are books and seminars galore on ”outcome measures” and ”managing for results,” jam-packed with tools, methods, processes, and matrices to help you form that conversation. But it seems even the most simple version of the outcomes question can be rich ground for meaningful discussion and debate:
What would success look like if your organization achieved it? And what might that vision tell you about how to focus, how to work, and how to judge your progress along the way?
Perhaps one issue is that, at least sometimes, the language created for these missions and as part of these proposals is created simply because it has to be created. While the mission of many organizations certainly may be “to connect communities with the magic and power of an art form” (or something similarly high minded and unmeasurable), there are definitely many others whose mission, if they were able to honestly state it, would be “to make (insert art form) because I/we want to make it”. Nothing more, nothing less.
This makes it difficult for those organization’s leaders to articulate success, because their publicly stated mission isn’t really their mission at all. To articulate their true missions, however, would cut them off from potential funds (at least that’s the fear), so they create a subterfuge (a high-minded mission, an education program, etc…) to keep that access. Were they able to simply state why they do what they do, their “real mission” so to speak, answering what success would look like might be a much simpler thing.
The question of the mission statement goes to the heart of an organization. Unless it is heartfelt, embraced and the driving idea behind the organization’s work, of course success will be elusive at best. The ‘plan’ may at first be hard to define in specific numbers–because truly new ideas are sometimes hard to quantify and their impact can be hard to predict. But any leader–artistic or otherwise–should be able to say–we will be here, we will find out if this is a viable idea. We will access the experience in terms of the audience–or partners’ thoughts. What worked. What did not. What is valuable and should be discarded. I have been extremely interested in the measures scientists use over the years because I think the quest for an artistic ideal is very similar to defining a scientific one. I was particularly struck by the words of a pioneer in biogenetics–I paraphrase him here–It was like being in an all white room, where there were no questions and no answers. Any good artist leader defines the question–and begins to flesh it out–whether it is a program or an art work. It is through the work–the effect on its artists and audiences–the community or whoever the intended group–that success is defined. That can take time. It takes support from empathetic funders. It takes courage.
This reminds me of the slogan on a coffee cup recently bought, which challenges me not to aim too low: “What would you attempt to do If you knew you could not fail?” Go for it!/EFT
I have gone through similar situations on different boards. It’s sad to say, but it probably comes back to the fact that success is so tied to profits. So when you’re in the nonprofit world, you have to switch gears and think about the “feel good” areas of success. Sometimes it’s hard to create a concrete definition. But if you look at the number of people you reach or lives you change, that’s the best success you can ask for.
I don’t think the concept of “achieving success” is the correct one. It assumes a point a to point b relationship as if a vision and the actions to achieve it are fixed in time. The goal should be to always keep in mind what you are trying to achieve and to take corrective and flexible actions along the way. I think of it as tossing a stone in the right direction and then walking toward it and when you get there tossing it again, etc. So success is in the focused and relentless pursuit not in the achievement.