SOME ASSEMBLY NEEDED

Every morning,  before I go downstairs, I need to put in my hearing aids and put on my glasses. Sometimes I forget one or the other.  Less frequently, I forget both.  The glasses I tend to realize as soon as I get downstairs.  Everything is hazy, and if I try to read, well, I can’t.  The hearing aids I often don’t notice until we take the dogs for their morning walk.  My husband will be talking, but I can’t hear him.  We run into a neighbor who says something, but I have no clue what.  Some things are nice—I can’t really hear the traffic, but because it is dark that early in the morning, that can turn out to be a hazard.  The fact that I need these accessories makes me feel a bit like a piece of furniture from Ikea:  Some assembly needed.

Many nonprofits also require some assembly before they are fully functional.  I am constantly surprised to find so many organizations that don’t have a donor database;  policies needed to run the organization, procedures to make running it smooth and efficient.

Sometimes the needs are even simpler.  I work with so many organizations where important issues are talked about and talked about, but nothing happens.  A lot of that is the lack of capture.  By that I mean that nothing is written down, written up, disseminated, and turned into a policy or procedure.  Great ideas often slip right through the proverbial organizational fingers never becoming standards that could change—for the better—the way the organization works.

As we head into the end of the year, it is such a great time to assess where you are and where you want to be next year.  Think about the things that are working and those that, really, aren’t.  This could be organizational or individual.  And if the latter, both professional and personal.

I am notorious for always questioning—do I want to be doing this, or that?  Focus here or there?  Friends tease me, but honestly I think this kind of constant questioning—looking at what you are doing, alternatives to what you are doing, things you maybe could do differently is arguably my greatest strength.  Constantly evaluating what you  (again, individually or organizationally) doesn’t allow you to get comfortable, and in that comfort miss those roads less taken.  What it does allow is for you to look at things from different angles.

When I weed (the only gardening I’m halfway decent at), I keep coming back to the area I’ve just weeded, but from a different direction.  Doing that in your life and in your work will always show you the weeds you missed and also the volunteer plants that with a bit of nurturing will make your garden even wonderful.

Requiring daily assembly has reminded me never to consider anything done, but to always think what else will make this (whatever “this” is) better, stronger, more resilient, more impactful.  Think how your organization might improve if, instead of thinking “this what we do,” you thought, “what, in addition to what we do, could we do? How can we change our calculus so that we see different ways of doing things?  And then consider your choices and chose what works best now.