Running a social impact organization can sometimes feel like standing in front of a firehose. The stream of information, needs, and challenges is coming at you so quickly that you can't possibly process it all.
Every seasoned executive director has a metaphor to describe this phenomenon. Firehose. Treadmill. Hamster wheel. Juggling. Sisyphean.
It's not because you're bad at what you do (or because you're being punished for cheating the gods). Quite the opposite. The more you touch people's lives and hearts, the more there is to do. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
There are six streams of social impact work
I've been thinking a lot about how you cope with that firehose. I don't believe that it's good to rigidly reject new information and ideas. I don't think you can turn away from the world and still lead with understanding and compassion. And I refuse to believe that social impact work is futile. So coping seems like the right choice.
Coping, I think, means seeing the deluge as a series of streams. Splitting one, overwhelming flood of needs, information, and tasks into smaller flows.
No matter how much information is coming at you, no matter how many tasks are on your to-do list, no matter what strategy you're following, there are really only six things that need to be done.
(Sidebar: Maybe it's stressful to realize one thing is actually six things. Maybe that seems like more work to you? But it definitely organizes things for me. It's like putting cutlery in the drawer with a nice cutlery holder. What's in place sits neatly in place. Whatever needs attention, is in the wrong place, or has gone missing, it easily catches your eye.)
What are those six streams of social impact work?
Every organization needs leadership, fundraising, management, communication, and impact to achieve its mission. And space for personal growth.
Whether this is all bundled into one founder, a group of volunteers, or a staff of 500, these are the "core capacities" of every public interest initiative. These are the currents that carry us forward.
1. Leadership
Leadership is what gives an organization's work meaning. It's the act of defining the problem that needs to be solved, creating an alternative vision, then forging a path to bring that vision to life. Leaders create a structure in which the talents and energies of the entire team combine to achieve a common goal. Leadership is social alchemy.
2. Fundraising
Fundraising is about making sure a group has enough money to pay for the people and materials it needs to do the work that needs to be done. It's one of the biggest sources of stress for most social impact organizations, because you never know what's going to work and you usually start from square one every year.
3. Management
Management is an art. It's the process of figuring out how to allocate resources to get the work done, and stewarding those resources effectively. It is the place where plans and reality crash headlong into each other, where you make constant adjustments and re-adjustments to bring a vision to life. Management is more about how to do something than what to do.
4. Communication
Communication is the act of engaging with other people, including people outside of your own organization and team. To create change, you need to listen to other people to understand their needs and priorities and perspectives. Then you need to deliver the right information to the right people. Communication is what ensures your work is relevant and just.
5. Impact
Impact is the change that appears in the world as a result of the work that we do. It's what leadership, money, management, and communications create when they come together. When we observe our impact - our actual impact, not just our intended impact - we can see what is good, what is working, what should be repeated. We can also see what may not be working, what might be doing harm, what might be "nice" but not creating change. Impact isn't just the end result of what we do, the thing you see as the curtain falls. Impact accumulates daily, providing us with data, clues, and stories that feed our vision, guide our teams, and strengthen our organizations.
6. Personal development
Organizations are made up of people. People (as if you forgot) are human beings. Lovely, wonderful, sentient animals with unique needs and desires and dreams. They are constantly growing and changing. As the people in your team grow as individuals, so will your work. Nothing stands still. Effective, ethical social impact organizations know this, and they encourage people to grow. They embrace continual learning and change, because that's where resilience and creativity come from.
Why does this matter?
An organization is rarely strong in every area simultaneously. You are unlikely to ever reach a point of perfect stasis, balance, or equilibrium, because no area of work is ever truly "done". Constant change is inevitable.
There's no "life hack" that makes responsibility go away. There's no "productivity tool" that creates social change in four hours a week. But figuring out what's on your to do list, figuring out where to focus, figuring out what to put on the agenda for your next meeting ... those shouldn't be so hard.
It's not the drops of water in a river that matter, it's the currents they create. By paying attention to these six currents, you don't have to spend so much time figuring out where to give your attention.
Leadership. Where are we going?
Fundraising. What resources do we need to get there?
Management. How do we allocate those resources to make the journey worthwhile?
Communication. How do we bring others along with us?
Impact. What is the effect of our work in the world around us? (For reals, not just what we wish to be true.)
Personal Development. How do we nurture our humans?