You know, since I work for a design-related association--and I've had these thoughts even before I started working here--that really, organizational design has tons in common with traditional design, i.e. "let's create something cool." Anyway, apparently this idea is becoming more mainstream, which I'm all for. Where do I sign up for the PhD program? j/k I need another degree like I need a hole in the head.
1. What is the bottom line when there is no bottom line? Businesses as a default can rely on profit as an effectiveness measure. Nonprofits cannot use this concrete measure meaningfully. There are many different ways of looking at measurements that can serve as bottom lines of sorts, but the trick is to pick the right measurement to look at. And that can change over time, so it needs to be incorporated into the strategic planning (or whatever you want to call it) process. Nonprofits have many different customers which all need to be pleased to differing degrees. Drucker talks about the difficulty nonprofits have abandoning lost causes. Nonprofits have to distinguish between moral causes and economic causes. A moral cause is an absolute good. Preachers have been thundering against fornication for five thousand years. Results, alas, have been nil, but that only proves how deeply entrenched evil is. The absence of results indicates only that efforts have to be increased. This is the essen...