People can be good leaders but lack good management skills, or vice versa. People can also be good managers but lousy supervisors, or vice versa. Fortunately, weak skill sets (or even good skill sets) can be improved with knowledge and practise…if you know your weaknesses and  where to get the knowledge you need. Becoming a great supervisor, manager or leader instead of just a good one is a matter of filling those skill gaps.

What makes a great supervisor

Being a supervisor is fundamentally about using people skills. A good supervisor is fair, flexible, sensible, organized and cares what happens. The core of the work is supervising people from hiring to retiring. Supervisors hire and train their staff. But more than that, they are responsible for developing their staff by coaching and mentoring them. They need to understand what motivates each individual and be flexible to ensure that rewards are truly rewarding. Fair evaluation and sensible disciplinary actions should correct problems rather than de-motivate.

People skills are also involved in team building, another key supervisor task. This requires an understanding of group dynamics, diversity and conflict resolution. Supervisors are typically involved in different types of teams—of reportees, peers, projects or committees—and may play different roles in each type.

Finally, supervisors must manage processes that affect and are affected by people. They lead group meetings, administer team budgets, manage work flow and write reports for management and others. Although managing work flow sounds like just a matter of good organization, it involves assigning tasks to the right person or persons, providing the right type and amount of support, and ensuring that follow-up happens when needed to meet priorities. Assigning the right person does not always mean the one who knows the task best. It can also mean assigning a task to a new person who wishes to learn the role or who is seen as having the potential to excel at the task. In this instance, the supervisor will also consider whether hands-on supervision should be carried out by him or herself or by the person who would normally be assigned the task and what support that individual needs to excel at supervision. The final “support” process is ensuring that staff have all the resources they need to carry out their work efficiently and effectively. Resources include technology, space, time and access to the right people.

 What makes a great manager

A good manager is analytical, well-informed and trustworthy. Because managers typically also supervise others, they need to have good people skills; however, the manager role is focused more on organizational systems and planning.

Management supports the work of staff by ensuring that the structure and rules provide the right resources and directions. While they may or may not be involved in visioning, they are certainly tasked with turning the vision into reality by setting priorities, and developing and monitoring business and strategic plans. Good managers also engage in succession planning and crisis management.

Of course, the best way to manage a crisis is to prevent it, if at all possible. Good managers set up the organizational structure and control systems through the development of effective policies and procedures, performance management systems and organizational management processes. Policies and procedures must be clearly articulated and communicated to be effective. While good supervisors may rely on Tom Peters’ “management by wandering around,” good managers are more likely to trust Peter Drucker’s “management by objectives.”

While supervisors may administer budgets and will certainly provide managers with input regarding what their teams need to be effective, managers set and monitor budgets and are responsible for contracting processes and, in the case of non-profits, fundraising. This means that managers must build and maintain good public relations with all stakeholders. Otherwise they may find themselves constantly putting out metaphorical fires with staff, clients, funders or regulators.

What makes a great leader

Leadership can be situational or a permanent part of one’s organizational management role. A good leader is forward-looking, inspiring, prepared and justly confident. A leader does not have to be charismatic, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. In order to build credibility, however, a leader must have integrity.

While a great leader is often described as a visionary, the vision is not achieved by navel gazing. Rather, the vision is often achieved through listening to others inside and outside the organization, analyzing and reflecting on what is learned. A leader is as likely to get behind someone else’s great idea as an “early adopter” as to come up with the great idea personally.

Unless a leader can inspire others, the “big picture” vision may just as well be a hallucination. The leader’s vision must become a shared vision throughout the organization. Communication in the language—or languages—of stakeholders creates that vision. This involves engaging others through the sharing of stories that resonate with them and inspire them to action. Today, social media may be an important part of that process, at least for larger and more complex organizations, because it can overcome distance and leadership time constraints. It also sets the stage for the leader’s community to engage in a conversation that builds commitment. Social media lets people raise concerns and get answers from the top that are not distorted as the message moves down through the layers of management and supervision. However, social media cannot build credibility for a leader who isn’t trustworthy; it just becomes another case of the flavour-of-the-month style of management.

Leadership is fundamentally about managing change. It is about innovation, taking risks and learning from mistakes. These days, with more participatory models of leadership,  supporting and managing change involves collaboration and recognizing others in the celebration of successes. Yet, despite the sharing of power in a participatory approach to leadership, the role of the leader remains fundamentally the same as always.

Good outcome measurement need not be complicated. It’s easiest if it’s part of the plan from the start.

What’s the goal?

Every initiative and activity has a goal. Marketing communications aim to increase sales. Training aims to improve skill and performance. Other communication initiatives may aim to increase awareness, understanding or trust and commitment. The goal of most projects or initiatives is change. (The exception is crisis communication, where the goal is to prevent attitude change in the face of a negative situation.)

Changes fall into three categories:

• Knowledge – awareness or understanding of information, skill level
• Feeling – level of trust, commitment and engagement, organizational culture
• Action – quality of performance (accuracy, speed, sales, service, safety, productivity), turnover and stress leave costs

Often there is more than one goal and they may be interrelated. For instance, action requires that you know how to improve performance and feel motivated to do so. While the gold standard of goals is a change in action or performance, it can be useful to measure knowledge and feelings as well. If you fail to get the performance boost management typically seeks, you need to know if the problem was in awareness, skill or motivation.

Where are we?

Making a difference assumes that you know where people were to begin with. That requires benchmark measures that establish a need for change. Sometimes it is simply a matter of identifying a relevant factor that the organization already tracks, such as absenteeism, turnover, number and length of stress leaves, safety incidents involving lost time, sales, service calls and complaints. Other measures are trackable but perhaps not currently tracked, such as errors on timesheets and other forms, time to correct errors, or number of contacts required to meet sales objectives. Even goals as fuzzy as employee or community engagement can be measured by, for example, counting comments posted in response to items on the organization’s website. Or, of course, you could do a survey. Of all these benchmark measurements, surveys (and interviews and focus groups) are the most expensive. Response rates can be low and are getting lower as people become “surveyed to death.” The cost is especially high with employee surveys, because management is effectively paying staff to be unproductive for as long as it takes to complete the survey, interview or focus group.

Intrusive vs. invisible measures

Measuring outcomes of initiatives can be invisible to the affected individual or group, or may be obvious to them when it requires effort on their part. Each approach has its advantages.

Intrusive measurement has the potential to be an agent of change in its own right. Surveys, interviews, focus groups and knowledge tests raise people’s awareness of the subject being discussed and get people thinking about it. The impact can even spread beyond those surveyed if they talk to others about the subject or if their changed behaviour influences others. Tom Peters said, “What gets measured gets managed.” I would add that what gets measured in this fashion gets seen as important. In some instances, the extra costs of intrusive measures can be worth it in terms of better outcomes for the organization.

Measurement that is invisible to those not engaged in the data collection process costs less and is generally not subject to such response biases as trying to look good to others by giving a socially acceptable answer.

Web analytics include details of webpage visits and length of stay, or poll responses (e.g., % of visitors who click “Yes” to “Was this article useful?”, or number of visitors who “Like” a post). Check inbound links to identify key stakeholders or audiences for your services. Comments posted can be analyzed for number and content. Information about registrations or subscribing to online sources can indicate deeper interest in a topic or trust in a particular source. In relying on web analytics, consider whether everyone you are interested in has equal access to the internet or organization’s intranet.

Human resources, accounting staff and supervisors may have information relevant to the outcomes you want to measure. For example, employee commitment to the organization can be measured looking at absenteeism and voluntary turnover rates. Quality of performance can be measured by looking at time to goal completion (e.g., sales, work placements, profitability measures) and error rates (e.g., time lost due to accidents, customer service costs).

Invisible outcome measures can be very creative, depending on the goal, the initiative or the situation. A critical, sometimes limiting factor, in their use is whether collection involves an invasion of privacy and breach of trust. “Big brother” perceptions will reduce engagement, which is particularly problematic if your initiative’s goal was to increase engagement. Keep collection and reporting as generic and anonymous as possible.

Final thoughts

Although not all efforts require financial measures of ROI to be calculated, increasingly stakeholders are demanding that organizations be able to demonstrate that their activities are effective and efficient in meeting desired outcomes. In tight times, those who can produce solid evidence of effectiveness on demand are more likely to survive and thrive than those who can’t.

In these days of checked bag fees and smaller car trunks, traveling light makes sense for so many reasons.  As Doug Dymant of onebag.com says, “In the real world there are two kinds of luggage: carry-on and lost.” Anyone who knows me well is aware that I am obsessed with packing light. Here are my secrets for packing for any trip with carry-on only.

The Right Bag

For longer trips of 1 week or more, my main bag is a backpack on wheels. It’s sized to fit in the overhead compartment of a plane, once my noise-canceling earphones are removed. Most times I wheel it through airports and down streets with ease. On rough surfaces, like cobblestone streets, I fold the built-in flap over the wheels to protect my clothes and wear it on my back. When buying this type of bag, make sure the compartments open wide enough for packing and their organization feels intuitive to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to tear the bag apart any time you want to find something. For smaller trips I use a smaller backpack with fewer compartments.

On photo safari in Banff with Tilley hat, jacket with zip-off sleeves and Lowepro sling-shot camera bag

My “personal item” is usually a Lowepro “sling-shot” camera bag or, for conferences and business trips, a soft-sided briefcase for papers and electronics. While the sling bag is usually on my back in airports and hotel lobbies, it easily slides around to rest on my lap on tour buses and hotel shuttles. It has lots of flexibly-sized compartments (what did we do before Velcro?) for filters, lenses, binoculars, birding guide and spare underwear or small souvenirs.

What to Pack

What you pack is determined in part by how long you will be gone, the predicted weather and planned activities. Beyond that, a few basic principles always apply:

• Clothes must mix-and-match to form multiple outfits. Each major clothing item you pack should work with at least two others. The exception to this rule is a tuxedo on cruises with multiple formal nights, in which case (if you own one) you will get more than one night’s wear out of it on its own.
• Favour shirts or tops with patterns. As a member of the sloppy eater’s club, the combination of a patterned shirt and a Tide pen has kept me presentable on more than one trip.
• Wear your heavier items rather than pack them. A sweater or jacket takes up a lot of space in luggage. If it gets too warm, you can take it off in the car or plane. I always wear my walking shoes and pack the sandals and/or dress shoes, if a second pair of shoes is required. The exception to this rule involves hiking boots when flying, because getting them off and back on at security is a pain.
• Reduce liquids and gels to a minimum. With rare exceptions, shampoo and soap will be provided. I pack mini-sized toothpaste and deodorant. Look for packs of individual wipes impregnated with sunscreen or insect repellent. Magellan’s has useful items like laundry soap leaves, shaving cream leaves, and socks with built-in insect repellent.

Various companies have clothing designed for travelers. Tilley hats are impervious to rain, good for mopping sweat from brows and stiff enough to make good fans. Jackets that convert to vests and slacks that convert to shorts are good for leisure travel, although the latter look too casual on business trips. Tilley socks and underwear hand-wash and wring dry so well, they could be worn immediately if necessary. Four pairs of underwear is my maximum regardless of the length of the trip.

For short trips (2-3 days), I pack one top and, depending on the need to add a dressier or more casual option, a jacket or sweater and dress slacks or jeans. Sometimes I add a pair of shoes.

For longer trips, I pack 3 – 5 tops, including a shirt that can be worn as either a blouse or a jacket. Long trips also involve packing two “bottoms” (e.g., slacks, skirts, shorts) and an additional pair of shoes. Tops are either long- or short-sleeved, depending on the season/climate. If rain is expected, I pack a compact umbrella or plastic hooded poncho. Unless traveling to the tropics in summer, I take gloves.

Cruises with formal nights require adding a suit for men and, for women, two glitzy tops, a long skirt or black dress pants and dress shoes. A light robe or beach cover-up and swimwear are also needed. I carry my own snorkel gear because I have prescription goggles and an extra-small mouthpiece. However, most snorkel trips include all the equipment you’ll need.

How to Pack

Make a list of what you plan to take. If a major clothing item is not part of at least two “outfits,” cross it off the list. The final itemized list ensures nothing is forgotten when packing time is short.

My packing secret is nesting. I nest underwear and other small items inside shoes and nest dress shoes inside sandals. (I also nest my shoes inside my husband’s shoes.) Shirts and jackets are laid out flat and wrinkle-free on the bed, one on top of the other. Then slacks and knit tops are laid in a line down the middle of the shirts. Sleeves and edges are folded around these items to avoid hard creases. The pant bottoms are folded up to the level of the shirt bottoms and then folded up twice more.

For longer trips where more clothes are involved, I make several clothing bundles with each one including a complete outfit. On trips with multiple hotels, I can pull out a single bundle at each stop, which reduces re-packing time.

If flying, toiletries are packed in two bags; one with just liquids and gels, the other with everything else. The bag with liquids goes at the outer edge of the suitcase where the zippers meet, so it can be removed and re-stowed easily at security. Additional resealable bags pack flat and keep wet clothing and breakable souvenirs from turning your belongings into a disaster.

Finally, speaking of souvenirs, a hand-held digital scale helps ensure that luggage meets any weight restrictions on the way home.

Photo by Sheila Carruthers

In the two years since I first wrote about social media, the question has gone from “How do I use social media in my business?” to “How do I get the best bang for my buck with social media?” To some extent, the answer must depend on your goal; some social media tools are better suited to certain uses than others. There are also some general principles—such as not ticking off others. But how?

I recently hosted a series of discussions on social media for local communications consultants. What follows is what each of us has learned so far from our venture into this new world.

Business goals of social media

I like to think that there are three main uses for social media in business: community building, collaboration and reputation building.

Community building creates a social network of people who all share a common interest or experience. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the obvious tools. In addition to Facebook personal profiles viewable by your friends, organizations can have a Page and invite others to “Like” them, or form a Group around a social cause. Both can advertise events and invite those who “Like” them to RSVP. The Facebook platform supports photos and videos. Don’t underestimate the power of the “Like.” It shows up in the Liker’s personal profile and their Wall, which is linked to their friends’ Walls. People who see that their friends like something will often follow the link and “Like” it, too. Before you know it, you have a community. You can poll them about possible changes to your product or services that you are considering, or social actions you would want support on. The advantage of using your Facebook community as a focus group is that they are already interested in what you do. And it’s free. Facebook is not as easy to use for business-to-business operations because it’s geared to individuals, but there are some success stories even there.

LinkedIn is the professional’s version of Facebook. Instead of Friends, you have Connections and get weekly reports on their new connections and Groups they have joined. The groups you join are your communities. Group members ask each other questions, discuss topics, provide business leads and share notices of upcoming training or other events of mutual interest. A group may be the social media wing of a professional organization that you already belong to, or be based on a special interest or field of endeavour. You can also create your own Group—for instance, people who have taken a course you offer.

Twitter builds communities of followers based on tags you associate with your Twitter feed. Within the space of 140 characters, you can promote events, ask for action, share insights, ask questions and link to interesting information found elsewhere (e.g., your own or others’ websites/blogs/videos.) It’s important to balance self-promotion with promotion of others’ content in order to be seen as a trustworthy resource. People will re-tweet announcements they see as helpful to their network.

What is most critical is to provide useful information from your followers’ point of view. The only person who cares to know that you are on the way to your dentist is your dentist. If you must tweet about your trip to the dentist, establish a separate Twitter name for personal tweets.

A recent Twitter poll found that about 41% of non-profits tweet once or twice a day, and 40% tweet three to five times a day. While it is annoying to re-tweet the exact same content, it is OK to tweet about a different aspect of the same event or blog post than before. Sometimes what didn’t sound interesting to a follower before may capture their attention using a different angle.

Up and coming on the community-building scene is YouTube. Besides being able to comment on other people’s videos (similar to photo comments in Facebook, Flickr and Picasa), I’ve seen video responses, as well

as video conversations within the deaf community using sign language. As the technology for making and editing video becomes less costly, video will become an expected means of communicating within social networks, putting a human face on your organization.

Collaboration is made much easier by social media. Wikis can be used to train new staff by creating a reference library, or build documentation for a project. In addition to

emailing documents to each other, you can now store them in the cloud for colleagues (and yourself) to access whenever and wherever they are needed. This storage is free for the most part and as secure as anything else to do with computers. Both Dropbox and Google Docs can track various versions of your document and time-stamp them. Other services, such as Google Shared Spaces and Central Desktop add project management features, such as project timelines, tasks, due da

tes and who is responsible. Some even allow online meetings with automatic recording of content for later reference. Skype can also be used for free long-distance meetings via computer, as well as conference calls (but without the video feature).

Reputation building is the function that most attracts organizations to social media, but is one of the trickiest to achieve, largely because of the baggage they bring with them. Corporate-speak goes down like a rock

. And anything that comes across like marketing or the hard sell is immediately suspect. To build a reputation as a trustworthy source of information, you have to be genuinely helpful. Blogs, Twitter, podcasts, YouTube, Slideshare (for PowerPoint presentations) and social bookmarking sites (e.g., Delicious) are common tools. The web is a big place and it’s sometimes challenging to find useful resources among the tens of thousands of hits from a Google search. With Delicious, you can enter your keywords and see what web pages other Delicious users found helpful on that topic. And by posting your own favourite resources on a topic, others benefit from your work. So always add meaningful keywords to your posts in any social medium.

LinkedIn also provides useful ways to build a reputation as an expert. LinkedIn members ask questions on various topics. You can search questions in your subject area and answer them. If the person thinks you gave the best answer, you are flagged as having expertise in that area and a note is added on your profile and when you answer other questions. Another LinkedIn strategy that makes marketing sense is to join groups composed of those who could be your clients (or donors), rather than just groups of peers. Then participate in discussions and share information that helps group members achieve their goals.

Social media communicators talk a lot about influence. Becoming an influencer takes time. The first step is to find out who the top influencers are in your area of interest or expertise. Search blog hosts, such as WordPress, using keywords related to your interest. Who is posting a lot in that area? Are others engaging in conversation with them through comments? Are they commenting a lot on others’ posts on the same topics? These are the people with social media influence. Join their conversations and add thoughtful insights or missing information. You will get noticed (and Googled). As you add your own content via blogs, tweets, YouTube videos or other means, the influencers will start engaging on your sites and their followers may come, too. As this continues, you and your organization become a go-to source for facts and informed opinions on the issues of your field. And it’s not just regular folks who pay attention to influencers; the media do, as well.

Who has the time?

Do you have to give up your day job to make the most of social media? No, although you get out of it what you put into it. One social media company suggests that you need to spend 32 hours each month building and maintaining your profile on each tool you use. But there are some strategies to manage your media more efficiently. First, start with just one social media tool, choosing one that fits your organization’s business goals and is used by your desired audience or community. Let people know about it so that they can join the conversation. Ask what they want to hear about. Respond to comments candidly. As your needs or au

diences change or grow, you may want to expand into other social media.

Set aside time at the start or end of the day to monitor the conversation, update your organization’s “status” or engage in social media discussions. Hootsuite is one tool that allows you to track conversations, schedule and integrate your updates, measure your click-throughs and more. Like many social media tools, a basic membership is free and may meet your needs without upgrading.

Get in the game

If your organization has been hesitating about establishing a social media presence, or wants to revamp (or set up) its website, now is the time to incorporate social media effectively into your strategic plan.

Ensuring that the organization has a sound business model is usually triggered by specific events. The business model is generally set at start-up time or when a new program is introduced. Review and analysis of the business model are needed during restructuring, when there is a challenge to sustainability, or when the organization is drifting off course. Review may also be a planned component of the organization’s business cycle.

The Four Business Models Revisited

An organization’s business model says what it does and how it makes money doing it. The four basic business models are creator, distributor, landlord and broker. Creators design or manufacture things. Distributors sell or distribute things. Landlords sell the right to use things. Brokers connect buyers to those who can supply things they need. The “things” can be financial assets, physical goods, human services or intangible (e.g., expert knowledge). (For more detail, read the previous Bright Ideas post.)

In conjunction with the organization’s mission and industry sector, the particular business model chosen affects the answers to key questions that drive decisions about its future.

Creating Satisfaction and Value

The first step for any organization or program is to identify what service or product it specializes in and who its customers are. The organization may create, distribute, lease or make connections with respect to that product or service. The customers may be individuals or other organizations (i.e., business-to-business operations).

The bigger question to address is “Who must be satisfied in order for the organization to be sustainable?” Sustainability is used broadly here to include making an acceptable profit (business), having enough income to fulfill one’s mission (non-profits), or receiving a budget allocation that allows one to meet business plan objectives (government programs). While “the customer” is one party who must be satisfied for success, other key parties may include regulators, professional organizations and funders, such as foundations, individual and corporate donors, government (including elected officials) and taxpayers.

Once your organization has identified those who need to be satisfied, the next step is to identify what is important to them. A key concept here is value proposition. It is usually described as how your organization differs from competitors in a way that customers value. This is not a difficult concept for business owners to grasp, although sometimes businesses fail because they guess at the answer rather than surveying or talking to customers. Customer satisfaction surveys are common across sectors and industries, and good ones identify why customers are or are not satisfied, not just how satisfied they are.

Organizations may not pay enough attention to what other key parties besides customers value, which puts them at risk in the long term. For example, less-than-optimal charity appeals focus on the needs of the organization (or its clients) or the good work that it does or wants to do. Optimal appeals send messages about how the contribution will help the funder/donor meet its own goals or solve its problems rather than the charity’s goals or problems. This approach treats the funder as a partner who is investing resources to meet a shared goal. The same principle applies to government programs competing for dollars at budget time. What will taxpayers see as a good use of public dollars and what do elected officials value?

Delivering the Goods

Being able to articulate the organization’s value proposition for each customer segment and other key parties should be the core of the organization’s marketing and public relations strategy. Delivering on the value proposition is what builds relationships with customers and other partners. To do this, the organization must address the question of “Who must be satisfied for operations to go smoothly?” The answer identifies the costs of doing business in terms of time and money. Customer satisfaction with communication and the product or service has cost implications. Having the proper licenses, certificates or accreditations to carry out key activities also require preparation time and money.

The key resources for smooth operations—and the organization’s main costs—are its employees and suppliers. Suppliers ensure that the space, equipment and services the organization gets support it to carry out its work effectively and efficiently. An effective business model articulates the organization’s resource requirements. Good communication and relationships with suppliers support negotiation, so that both parties are clear on what the organization needs and the supplier’s constraints and capabilities.

It is a well-known fact that an organization’s staff are critical to its success. From a business model perspective, an organization must identify the number of staff required and the skill sets or knowledge base that must be hired for or developed in order to satisfy customer needs. Cost calculations must include the wages and benefits required to obtain and retain the right staff, because turnover, frankly, screws up everything. But satisfying staff is not simply a matter of money; systems and structures must support staff to feel they contribute and are valued. A well-resourced workplace gives staff the ability to contribute effectively and have some control over their work life. While there are some generational differences in what makes staff feel valued, the business you’re in also makes a difference. Valuing can take the form of labeling a product with the name of its designer or the people who manufactured it, or bulletin boards and news releases identifying the top salesperson that month. Bonuses or similar “incentives” are appropriate when staff’s efficiency results in cost savings for the organization. Regardless of the form, the fleshed out business model must address the need to be valued in its cost structure if the organization is to preserve its most important resource.

The Bottom Line

Although the bottom line usually refers to the relation between revenues and costs, building a business model that achieves the proper financial balance depends largely on attention to human factors. The real key to success is understanding what’s important to everyone the organization deals with and making sure they get it.

Business models are not just for businesses. They apply equally well to non-profit organizations and government programs. At its simplest, a business model says what the organization does and how it makes money doing it. Of course, nothing is ever quite that simple. We’ll look at four business models and the types of operations that are included under each.

Four Business Models

Peter Weill and his colleagues at MIT’s Sloan School of Management have described four types of business: creators, distributors, landlords and brokers. The products of their labour may be physical, financial, human or intellectual.

Creators are in the business of design or manufacturing. This category includes manufacturers of goods, inventors, scientists/researchers, artists, writers and entrepreneurs. Many creators have little or no contact with the end-user of their product. They mostly sell their work to someone in a different category who has contact with the end-user. Researchers and program designers often make their money via grants from government, foundations or businesses who hope the research will tell them something that advances their own mission.

Distributors are in the business of selling ownership of a product they bought to someone else, and provide some level of customer service to add value. The most familiar are wholesale and retail distributors of goods. But this category also includes intellectual property and financial traders. Distributors make their money by marking up the price relative to what they paid the item’s creator and the value they’ve added.

Both creators and distributors typically transfer ownership of the asset in their business models, although this is a bit more complicated for creators who retain the moral right to claim authorship of their work while selling the economic rights to it. For example, authors’ and painters’ signatures remain attached to the work, even through the new owner may resell it at a profit.

Landlords are in the business of giving others the right to use what they own. This category includes organizations that rent or lease houses, cars, hotel rooms, furniture and money (AKA banks and other financial lenders), and publishers who make their money through subscriptions. Any business that deals in user licenses (e.g., Microsoft) or franchises (e.g., Subway) is a landlord. Consultants as landlords give their clients the use of their knowledge and problem solving skills (although consultants can also create documents and other products that may, by contract, become the property of the client). In the same way, contractors and human services provide customers or clients with the right to access the knowledge, time and efforts of their workers.

Brokers are in the business of matching buyers and sellers for a fee. This category includes financial and insurance brokers, realtors and “head hunters.” The Internet includes a number of brokers, such as eBay, craigslist and workopolis.

Not every organization operates using a single business model. A manufacturer may have a retail division. Sometimes a company may make a decision to “get out of the business of [fill in the blank]” and staff may suddenly find themselves working for a new company that their previous employer is buying that service or product from. Sometimes that decision is about business models, as described above, and sometimes it is about the industry (e.g., an oil company calving off its IT division).

Why Business Models Matter

The sustainability or success of an organization is affected somewhat by the industry it’s in, but slightly more by its business model, according to the MIT research. In general, landlords and brokers are better off than creators and distributors. When creators and distributors sell something, it’s gone. A landlord has continuing access. For example, Microsoft can license use of its software to many users simultaneously. And Hertz can rent the same vehicle over and over again. A broker does not own the asset it brokers, so the broker has no “upkeep” costs.

Competition also plays a role. It is better to be a landlord when there is little competition for your product or service. However, the advantage goes to creators and distributors when there is a competitive marketplace.

Having said all this, the research on business model advantages has focused on (surprise, surprise!) businesses—and usually big businesses, at that. How well it applies to non-profits and government programs is anyone’s guess at this point. Certainly the main way these entities make their money is different. Yet, some of the same principles apply to all three sectors. There must be a market for what you offer and you must give good value for the money. Non-profits that fail to meet these criteria find themselves without funding, and government programs find themselves under attack from the public. While the business model chosen is important, a sound business plan that fits that model is even more critical to success, a topic I’ll tackle next.

But just as things can go wrong, outcomes can also be better than expected. Life is full of surprises, and some of those surprises are very good indeed. Risk management is not just about preventing the bad surprises, but also about maximizing the good surprises. It’s not just about putting out fires, but also about capitalizing on opportunities.

Risk management strategies use your resources and activities to prevent or reduce losses and to make gains for your organization. We’re going to look at three basic elements that put you in control of what happens as much as possible in an uncertain world. First, take the emotion out of the discussion. Second, identify the key risks and benefits. And third, manage both the risks and the benefits.

Take out the emotion

People are not rational when it comes to decisions with uncertain outcomes. First, an action’s risks stand out in people’s minds more than its benefits, so people tend to be loss averse.

How the situation is framed also affects us. In a series of studies, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky demonstrated that when the choice was framed in terms of loss, people chose to risk a larger loss over a sure loss for the chance at a smaller loss. But when the choice was framed in terms of gain, people were risk averse, preferring a smaller, sure gain over a bigger, potential win. This was true even when the option chosen gave worse outcomes on average.

People also tend to see change as riskier than the status quo, because its risks and benefits are less well-known to them.

By taking the emotion associated with loss and gain out of your thinking, you can approach risk and benefit management in a more balanced way.

Identify key risks and benefits

When it comes to organizations, the important risks and benefits relate to the organization’s mission, money, reputation and the safety or well-being of people. When deciding whether to pursue a particular opportunity or engage in a particular activity, or operate a particular program, there are four corresponding questions to ask:

• How may the action help or keep us from fulfilling our mission?
• How may the action affect the money we have?
• How may the action affect our reputation?
• What impact may the action have on the safety or well-being of our staff, volunteers, members or clients?

In answering these four questions, don’t focus just on the risks—that’s your emotions talking—consider the benefits. Also, consider the possible impacts if you don’t pursue the opportunity or engage in the activity.

Once you’ve identified risks and benefits of both action and inaction, it’s time to pick out the ones that are most important to plan for. Two factors determine importance: degree of impact and likelihood. Curing a deadly or debilitating disease is a high-impact, positive outcome. Death of clients or volunteers is a high-impact, negative outcome. Most outcomes have much less impact.

Most people have a handle on impact, but either glaze over or freak out when asked to estimate likelihood or probability. Do you feel the panic starting to rise? Relax. Breathe. In most cases, there won’t be numbers to quantify the likelihood of a risk or benefit. Even when there are, such as the track record of a particular investment, past performance is a predictor but not a guarantee of future performance. So your discussion of outcome likelihood will usually involve terms like “pretty sure,” “rare” and “50-50.”

The key risks and benefits to manage are those that are identified as having a big impact or being highly likely or both. (For example, death can be highly unlikely, but if it has greater than zero probability, you’ll want to manage the risk nonetheless.)

Manage the risks and the benefits

Managing risks involves planning to make a negative outcome less likely, less costly or both. There are four basic strategies for dealing with potential risks; you can try to avoid, transfer, mitigate or accept the risk.

Avoiding the risk usually means not pursuing the opportunity or course of action. This also means missing out on whatever benefits might have followed.

Transferring liability or legal responsibility results from procedures like having participants sign waivers or release forms. A weaker version of the same strategy is communicating to make people aware of the risks without requiring a signature, such as when lotteries identify the number of prizes and the number of tickets to be sold. Organizational policies and procedures also work on this principle.

Mitigating risks means taking actions to reduce the likelihood of the risk or the size of its impact should it occur. For instance, a SWOT analysis identifies the internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats to an organization. An organization can draw on its strengths to mitigate a risk, just as it will want to make plans to ensure that its weaknesses do not increase the risk. In general, monitoring implementation and having a “Plan B” are the most common mitigation strategies. More specifically, having safety equipment and training staff in their use mitigate safety risks. Having an adequate financial reserve or money in the bank mitigates financial risks.

Finally, you can accept the risk. It’s unlikely that all risks can be avoided, transferred or mitigated. At some point the benefits will be valuable enough to an organization to accept a certain level and type of risk.

There are also four ways to increase the likelihood or impact of potential benefits; you can try to exploit, share, enhance or simply accept the benefits. Most of these strategies mirror those involved in managing risk. However, sharing the benefit is not as obvious. It involves partnering with another organization. This strategy generally reduces the resource load on your organization. Sometimes sharing the load increases the overall benefit, so that your organization gains more income, reputation, stakeholder well-being and mission fulfillment than if it acted on its own, because of the synergy produced by the organizations working together.

Finally, keep in mind that risk management keeps organizations alive, while benefit management helps organizations thrive.

Old School Rules

When I started out, learning options were pretty much limited to books, articles, classroom instruction and conference presentations. When they are good, these still work very well.

Books and articles appeal to visual learners and those who like to control when and where they learn; you don’t have to wait until everyone else is in the same place and ready to read.

Classroom instruction allows learners to interact with the instructor and peers. In adult learning situations, such as professional development workshops, that peer interaction results in multiple teachers sharing what they know. Classroom instruction has benefited from the introduction of various audio-visual aids from the blackboard to the whiteboard, and from the overhead projector to PowerPoints with audio and video clips. Even taking notes may be supplemented with podcasts of the lecture. Role-plays and other activities allow people to learn by doing. While losing the ability to control the pace of one’s exposure to knowledge, the classroom supports learners regardless of whether they prefer to learn by seeing, hearing or doing.

A variation on classroom instruction involves going to a conference. Presentations by experts in their subject matter generally set aside time for Q&A. Or you might be able to catch the expert later for some deeper discussion. Like books, the conference presentation gives the learner access to the original developer of the knowledge; unlike books, this knowledge can be given personal meaning through interaction. The downside is the cost, particularly if travel is involved.

New School 101

New technology or new applications of existing technology have expanded the options for professional development. Where once I consulted my Encyclopedia Britannica, now I visit Wikipedia. Information is so readily available electronically that party hosts have had to ban the use of cell phones during trivia games. Just as one has to be careful of the validity of information in print sources (e.g., UFO reports in the Weekly World News), the fact that anyone can publish anything online means that Internet sources (http://weeklyworldnews.com) also need to be vetted.

The equivalent of the conference presentation is the webinar. All you need to attend a webinar is a computer with Internet access, a phone and a blank time in your calendar when it is scheduled to take place. When you register, you receive the codes for the conference call line and the website URL for the visuals. Some webinars use a PowerPoint presentation structure, while others let the presenter change visual information on the fly. During the presentation part of the webinar, learners can type questions to be answered along the way or at the end. Some webinars also use the phone connection to support final Q&As. There is usually technical support available for connection problems, because not everyone has the same computer set-up.

Although a webinar can be attended in the privacy of one’s office, many professional organizations have set up locations where a larger group of people can attend and share the cost of a single hook-up. While some webinars are free, others can cost hundreds of dollars. To host a group, the only additional equipment an organization needs is a standard multimedia projector and a speaker phone with good range. My personal preference is for a room with tables (not just chairs), because I still like to take notes.

Online learning has brought distance education closer to the classroom learning experience. Thanks to software advances, we can do just about everything in an online class that we do in a face-to-face class. And with a few exceptions, we can do them at our own pace and at a time that is convenient to us. Staff who work evenings or at night used to have to attend training on their own time; now they can access the training modules whenever there is downtime on the job. Course materials can take the form of text (with or without audio), video and downloadable podcasts. Learners can interact with the materials by clicking on images or text to view more detailed or advanced information or to answer a question. Class discussions can be held asynchronously using an electronic bulletin board; members add comments that draw on their own experience and allow them to learn from the experiences of their peers. Learners in distant cities can set up mutually convenient times to work on group projects or carry out role plays via Skype-like applications or chat rooms. Sometimes these synchronous learning activities involve the entire class setting aside a single block of time to “meet,” while others only require a few learners online at once. Online learning can support, to some extent, those with more basic computer set-ups and those with all the “bells and whistles.” Some online set-ups also support learners with limited reading skills by allowing them to “click to hear” the text material and to respond in discussions with audio or video reports. While such technology-laden modes of knowledge transfer are second-nature to those just entering the world of work, they can be an equally effective way for more established workers to learn new information and skills.

So, the next time you are looking for professional development opportunities, remember that there is a world of options available.

A good survey is one in which questions are inviting, clear and related to what we want to find out. You would be amazed at the number of pitfalls related to each of these criteria. An inviting survey encourages people to take time out of their busy lives to answer your questions in a thoughtful manner. A clear survey encourages people to interpret the question the same way as others and, in particular, as we did when we created the survey. Surveys whose questions tell us what we need to know to make good decisions are worth the money it costs to produce them. Let’s look at some of the principles to follow in order to achieve these gold standards of surveying.

Getting to Yes

The first step is to get people to agree to answer our questions, regardless of whether we are conducting the survey face-to-face, over the phone, by mail or online. People are more likely to give us their time if they

• Trust in the integrity of the request (i.e., there is no hidden sales pitch)

• Care about the subject and feel that related decisions have an impact on them

• Believe that their input will make a difference in our decisions

Before the first question is asked, the introduction to the survey must satisfy the potential respondent that the survey is not simply a marketing gimmick. Generation X and Y are particularly cynical about such possibilities. Lately I have noticed a number of phone surveyors starting the conversation by saying that they are not trying to sell anything. As long as marketers do not start to claim that they are not marketing anything, this will remain a helpful second statement (just after the survey topic).

I have noticed a trend in phone surveys of describing the purpose of the survey in fairly general terms and then introducing the “hot topic” that the survey really wants to know about 10 minutes into the conversation. In many cases, I had been hoping someone would ask my opinion about that topic and they were lucky I am a survey junkie and said yes to the more generic topic. However, I recognize that the purpose of describing the survey topic more generically is to ensure that those who respond are representative of the full range of the population, not just those rabidly interested in the key issue. The survey designer must walk the fine line between describing the survey so generically that potential respondents do not care enough to complete the survey and describing the key issue so specifically as to lose representativeness.

Cynicism also comes into play in terms of potential respondents feeling as if their input will make a difference. Surveys whose results will ultimately be read by governments or high-profile industries will achieve good or poor rates of return based on whether people trust them to listen and act accordingly. In short, past history makes a difference even if the surveyor is a third party.

The other main factors affecting whether people respond are time and timing. A short survey (single sheet of paper, regardless of size, or 10 minutes completion time) is more likely to be answered than one that looks time-consuming. Time of year is also important. It is hard to collect information from people in December or the summer months. People already feel overcommitted in the lead-up to the holidays and are simply not available during vacation time.

The Truth is Clear

There is an art to writing clear and unbiased questions. And the penalty for failure to do so is public mistrust and unwillingness to respond in the future. Although it is impossible to cover all the principles of good design, here are a few key points:

• Avoid wording that suggests that one answer is better or more socially acceptable than another.

• Rating scale descriptions should be balanced between positive and negative options, regardless of whether a “neutral” point is included or not. (For example, do not use 1=Very Dissatisfied 2=Somewhat Satisfied 3=Satisfied 4=Very Satisfied.)

• Use the simplest wording possible, in particular in phone surveys where memory constraints are greater.

• Put demographic questions at the end unless using them to ensure a proper balance of gender, age, etc.

With respect to this last point, we want information from as many people as possible even if we do not have responses to sensitive questions such as income; it just means we will have more limited data for analysis of whether responses differ by income categories. However, if such sensitive questions appear first, some people may simply stop responding or fail to submit their survey because of privacy concerns, so all of their opinions are lost to us.

The best strategy for ensuring that survey questions are clear and unbiased is to run them by others. Ask people to reword the questions; this will flag misinterpretations. Have them identify biased questions and suggest alternatives.

While We Have Your Attention…

There is something about getting people to answer questions that unleashes surveyors’ desire to get as much information as possible, regardless of whether it is relevant to the research question or not. And often in the flurry of devising questions whose answers would be interesting to know, they lose track of the decisions the survey was supposed to inform. As a result, the survey gets longer and less useful. Because it is less useful, the results make suggestions that are irrelevant and unlikely to get the buy-in needed for implementation. People feel less “heard” and less likely to respond to future surveys.

Make every question count. Review each proposed survey question and identify what information the answer will provide and how it will answer the research question or inform decisions that the organization plans to make. Make sure that every research question has survey questions that address it adequately. Finally, although survey techniques are useful, they cannot answer all our questions and we may need to draw on other sources of information (e.g., cost analysis, outcome measures) to inform our decisions.

The goal of a survey is to give an accurate picture of how people feel about a topic and predict what they would do (e.g., buy, vote). In public opinion surveys, we often want to get an answer that is within a few percentage points of “truth.” A statistic called the standard error of the mean measures this wiggle room and is inversely related to the number of respondents. So from this perspective, the answer to “How many is enough” depends on how far off we’re willing to be.

Why response rate matters

In general, there are four sources of error in survey research and three of them relate to the people surveyed. (The fourth has to do with problems in the way the questions are designed.) Mistakes can be made in defining the population (e.g., people in special needs schools and institutions were not included in the original IQ test standardization). The sampling process may result in different demographics from the population (e.g., picking numbers at random from the White Pages eliminates the ~30% with an unlisted number). Or the responders may differ from the non-responders in some important way.

To get an accurate picture, we need to survey a representative sample of the population we are interested in. If the population of interest is small, we may send surveys to everyone. When we want to know what the general population thinks, we use random sampling or stratified random sampling, which sets quotas for the number of people sampled from categories of age, income, gender and/or other demographics. If the sampling process is sound and response rate is acceptably high, we can trust that the people who opt out do not differ in critical ways from the people who complete the survey. When the response rate is low, we may question the representativeness of the responders and validity of the results.

Measuring response rate

Although response rate is defined as the number of people we surveyed compared to the number of people we tried to survey, there is more than one way to measure it. The number of people surveyed may include surveys with some answers left blank or only those where every question was answered. The number we tried to survey may include only those known to fit our criterion for eligibility or also those on the mailing or phone list who are not eligible.

In actual fact, what some people report as response rate is actually their cooperation rate (i.e., the number of completed surveys compared to the number of people reached). The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), an authority on all things survey-related, accepts several different formulas for response rate and asks that researchers disclose how they measured it in reports.

Survey mode makes a difference

The survey method has an impact on response rate. Generally, e-mail surveys have a lower response rate than mail surveys, even when access to the Internet is not an issue. For example, in a 2004 survey of university undergrads with e-mail access, about 21% responded to an e-mail survey while 31% responded to a mail survey (Kaplowitz et al., 2004 in Public Opinion Quarterly pp. 94-101). Face-to-face surveys achieve the highest response rates, with the best I’ve seen being a whopping 92%. Some studies report that telephone surveys have a higher response rate than mail surveys, while others report the reverse. Sending reminders boosts response rates. Oddly enough, studies have shown that sending a $2 incentive boosts both response rate and representativeness.

When I said that there is no simple answer to the question of how many is enough, this does not mean that people have been unwilling to go on record with a numerical answer. Here are some expert opinions as to what is considered good or adequate as a mail survey response rate:

• 25% – Dr. Norman Hertz when asked by the Supreme Court of Arizona
• 30% – R. Allen Reese, manager of the Graduate Research Institute of Hull U. in the United Kingdom
• 36% – H. W. Vanderleest (1996) response rate achieved after a reminder
• 38% – in Slovenia where surveys are uncommon
• 50% – Babbie (1990, 1998)
• 60% – Kiess & Bloomquist (1985) to avoid bias by the most happy/unhappy respondents only
• 60% – AAPOR study looking at minimum standards for publishability in key journals
• 70% – Don A. Dillman (1974, 2000)
• 75% – Bailey (1987) cited in Hager et al. (2003 in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, pp. 252-267)

In addition, various studies described their response rate as “acceptable” at 10%, 54%, and 65%, while others on the American Psychological Association website reported caveats regarding non-responder differences for studies with 38.9%, 40% and 42% response rates.

It’s enough to make one’s head spin. And population surveys of employees or group members have different standards for acceptable response rates than the general population. In smaller populations such as these, it becomes difficult to compare subsets of the overall group, even with a high response rate, because the statistics lack the necessary power.

To make matters worse, there is good evidence that response rates for telephone surveys are declining. Reasons for this include increasing concerns about invasion of privacy and misuse of personal information; increased use of call display to filter calls; cynicism (especially among Gen Xers); reduced civic participation in general; and increased requests for survey participation—particularly in satisfaction surveys and program evaluations. (For example, my last car purchase resulted in three surveys from the dealership and Honda Canada.)

It’s about representativeness

Response rate is not the best way to judge the accuracy of survey results, but representativeness of respondents is. Not all demographic characteristics make a difference. Gary Langer of the ABC News Polling Unit described an instance in which repeated surveys gave the same pattern of answers, even though the respondents differed significantly in demographic characteristics. The main advantage of a high rate of response is in reducing the possibility of a non-representative sample.