I spent almost all of last week talking about
what it meant for
organizations to
be “relevant” in today’s changing
society. On one day alone I met with
five
different national organizations on this very
challenge. On the face of it,
the
relevancy challenge sounds like it should be
an easy one to meet. But it’s
not. And
yet, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Why does the relevancy question even come up?
Here’s some of what I
hear:
- • Some organizations
know they’re losing or have lost
their standing in
communities; they are in search of what it
means to be “essential”;
- •Others have burst onto
the civic scene, having gained
local or national
attention, and now wonder how to fulfill
rising expectations and still
maintain their
relevance;
- •Still other organizations
find themselves somewhat
outdated and even
calcified; they want to respond to changing
conditions around them, but
find it hard
to do so;
- •Then there are
organizations that are expanding rapidly,
and as they
move into the very expansion plans they covet,
they find their relevancy
slipping
away.
No matter the situation, more and more I hear
civic-minded
organizations respond
to these challenges by embracing a collection
of “rigorous” approaches
focused on
such things as evidence-based decision-making,
competitive positioning,
branding,
new-fangled organizational metrics, and the
like. These tools are
intended to help
organizations find their way, better target
their funds, and increase
accountability.
And in many ways, they do.
But these approaches also can lead the very
best organizations – not to
mention
those that aren’t at the top of the game –
to gaze inwardly to the point
that they
lose their very connection to the world they
seek to improve. There’s
some irony
in all this: in our attempts to be strategic
we can get lost in our own
power point
presentations; in our self-referential
analysis; in our pursuit of “being the
best”; in
the belief that a hyper-focus on our own
internal practices will somehow
make us
relevant.
Between the ordinary trials of running a daily
operation and the growing
emphasis
on head-spinning inward-based activities, it
is not unlikely to look up at
some point
and ask, “What the hell am I doing?” One
day a good friend of mine who
runs a
high-performing national organization wondered
aloud to me if his deep
sense of
purpose had become buried in the host of
inward looking processes and
practices
his organization had adopted. Where, he wanted
to know, had his sense
of mission
and belief gone?
Organizations must start their journey for
relevancy by first looking
outward – the
very place from which their relevancy comes.
They must understand –
and I mean
deeply understand – the context of
their communities. They must
know
the
underlying concerns and aspirations of people;
the very rhythms of the
areas in
which they do their job; the appetites and
capacities for change; the
appropriate
levers for catalyzing progress; the necessary
approaches to bring about
true
sustainability; and a genuine notion of time
that informs how good things
take root
and grow.
My own experience of the best examples of such
relevancy-striving
organizations
have come when groups such as newspapers,
public broadcasters,
foundations,
United Ways, and others began their journey by
looking outward to
determine the
context in which they work. Then they could
know how to direct their own
trajectory and workplace activities; indeed,
then they could identify the
sweet spot
between their own mission and the aspirations
and needs of the
community – and
thus figure out where and how they should be
operating.
There’s much, much more I want to say about
the relevancy challenge.
But, for
now, in this limited space let me simply add
that in order to make this
outward
orientation real, we must be prepared to
change ourselves. We must be
ready to
examine and shift our own mindset and
practices in order that we can
step forward
to see outwardly and then run with what we
learn.
Without this outward orientation, I’m afraid
that relevancy is not an
option.
Relevancy comes from thinking about community
and people first,
organization
second.
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