Nonprofits
The Leadership Gap and Technology Gap Working Together for Good?
Using technology to retain organizational knowledge could help nonprofits weather the impending leadership gap.
Many bloggers have posted thoughts on the impending leadership gap in the nonprofit world—baby boomers retiring from leadership positions in nonprofit organizations, leaving the sector with a dearth of executives with experience. There has also been talk about the technology gap—younger staff having knowledge and experience using the social web, and older staff having less experience, which leads to a difficult organizational adoption of new media tools. One of these gaps is a bottom-up issue, the other, a top-down. I think they could play off of each other in such a way that organizations could be the better for it.
First, we need to address the issue of retaining and sharing organizational knowledge. A wiki for internal staff can be used for sharing protocols, collecting and annotating resources (like venues good for meetings or events), keeping track of grants and projects universally (across departments), planning events or big meetings, etc.
Because it’s internal, built-in provides the security of not failing—you might need extra help or “mess up” when first using the wiki, but it is only your team and not the whole world that will see it. Additionally, it is internal and thus requires all staff to participate; it brings everyone up to a comfortable usability with a dynamic social media tool. Once your staff is comfortable, you can begin introducing public wikis for event participant collaboration, information sharing, and through development on a topic in your field.
Next, there is the issue of marrying the communications strategies from on- and offline aspects of projects. Say you hold some community meetings to find out common perceptions or ideas about public-school funding in your county. Staff that attend the meeting could blog about it, sharing interesting ideas or conversations and allowing those who weren’t there to comment online. This helps to complete the circle for staff and the community.
Staffers can blog about various events, projects, organizational changes, or news. Providing opportunity online from all staff at the organization will mean the staff isn’t a faceless entity with an executive director—it is a working team with names, thoughts, and contributions. It makes visibility a bit more equal and involves everyone in a rounded conversation.
So, by bringing staff together to align on- and offline work and to share internal knowledge and learning, we really change the way the hierarchy of the team works. There is much less separation and hierarchy, as people work more directly with others and the responsibility for projects and campaign success is distributed across the team. This also means that leadership and experience open to more of the team. A team working in such an integrated way could more easily adapt to an executive director retiring; the knowledge and work of the organization would not be segregated and separate staff, but would be open and shared throughout the team.
That’s obviously just the tip of the iceberg. But what do you think? Could diminishing the technology gap really help avoid the leadership gap?
Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.
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COMMENTS
BY B Sample
ON March 17, 2008 01:55 PM
Wow- I thought your article was very good- It would really help here. We are very on-line throughout our dept but the rest of the university is not so much.
But I think the president likes the autonomy (power) from controlling the dissemination of information.
Keep the great ideas coming.
BY ladcoy
ON March 17, 2008 03:19 PM
This is really well done - I like the way you think about the movement from internal to external communications strategy and to begin with internal wikis. The first thing I usually encounter is the resistance among many digital immigrants to learn new technologies e.g., “we’re doing fine the way things are” or “I don’t need more work to do” or “I don’t have time to learn a new technology”. I also find that many administrators and managers are focused on different issues and simply unaware of the tools and the possibilities for the organization.
It strikes me that the very nature of our “work” is changing—different approach, skills, tools and competencies. Seems that by showing staff and management that merging online-offline project aspects with wikis and blogs can actually mean less work, and more accurate, accessible and up-to-date information may be a tipping point to wider adoption? Thank you for the thoughtful post.
BY Stephen Rockwell
ON March 18, 2008 05:39 PM
Great article. If you are looking for a good tool for a wiki, I would recommend the newly launched google sites (http://sites.google.com/). The learning curve isn’t as great as for other wiki programs and has a bit more built in functionality.
Strategically, I think what Amy says make sense with all kinds of transitions within organizations, whether we are talking about new program staff or executive level staff. The tools are only useful to the degree that people use them as a matter of course. Too often though, wiki and intranets go underutilized because they aren’t integrated into the organizational culture. There’s a natural inertia to use email because its a tool that’s right in front of you. Going out to a site to post or view a document takes an extra step. A culture that values documentation and knowledge sharing can overcome this inertia.
BY Realistic Reviews
ON March 25, 2008 01:32 AM
A very good strategy which all of us should implement for success.
BY Amy Sample Ward
ON March 31, 2008 04:52 PM
@B Sample - A power shift of those levels is usually incremental and difficult. Perhaps there can be a staff uprising of sorts - get lower-than-president leaders and teams using new tools to collaborate and peer pressure the president into coming on board with everyone!
@ladcoy - You are exactly right, in my opinion at least! Countering those complaints with “But, what if these tools gave you MORE time,” or “But, what if these tools made managing the annual campaign EASIER,” is much harder to push back on!
@Stephen Rockwell - Great suggestion about google sites; thanks!
Re: your inertia point (which I totally agree with!)...what if the organizations’/program’s/department’s/campaign’s wiki is the home page on staff browsers? That puts it as close as email: open the application and BAM - there you are. The folks at Google have that figured out and the starting navigation for everyone has the organization’s and team’s collaboration spaces right there so staff are always instantly on page with everything.