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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share how to turn your team into an opportunity generating machine.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Kath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are.
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To have them seeking you out as an equal partner.
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And to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath.
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Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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Opportunity is everywhere.
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But too often, we miss those opportunities because we didn't know about them at all, or we didn't find out about them in time to capitalize on them.
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Now the truth is most nonprofit CEOs are pretty good at constantly scanning for opportunities.
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And your opportunity radar is always switched on even when you're not at work.
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But if there are just one or two people in your organization who are doing this.
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By definition, you're going to miss a lot.
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What if you could expand your radar by five or 10 times or more?
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How many more opportunities would come to your attention?
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And how many more could you take advantage of if you could just do that?
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There's a simple and obvious way to make that happen, which is to develop more skilled opportunity scanners within your team.
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If you're a leader who scans for opportunities all the time, and who's always evaluating them in your mind.
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You've probably advanced to the point where most of that is just intuitive.
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But the reality is, it's a significant skillset.
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And it can be taught.
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If you want to teach your team how to become skilled opportunity scanners and eventually opportunity scanners and evaluators.
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And we'll get to why that's important.
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If you want more members of your team to be able to do that well, you're going to have to teach them.
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But I'm going to walk you through how you can do that.
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And I've done this with lots of different leadership teams.
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With folks beyond leadership teams.
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And it always works well, as long as everybody follows through on all the pieces.
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When you've got your entire leadership team, and all the other pieces of your team beyond the leadership subset.
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When everybody has the basic skills for how to scan for opportunities for the organization, and how to do a basic assessment on them, to know whether they should bring them to the attention of the leadership team.
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It just explodes the organization's ability to bring in opportunity and to do something about it.
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There's great potential for any member of your team who has contact with the outside world in some form or another, whether it's colleagues in related organizations, whether it's interacting, perhaps with government agencies and the reporting process or outreach.
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Any kind of work that puts your team members out into the world where they're interacting with others in their role in the organization.
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They're already being ambassadors for your organization.
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What we want to do is give them the skills to allow them to identify opportunities that are popping up all the time.
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In conversations, in meetings, in information sessions.
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All kinds of interactions.
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There's an opportunity a minute.
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You might be in a room with some policymakers.
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It could be government agency people, it could be elected officials at the city or county level.
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All kinds of settings in which decision-makers would be in a conversation, talking about a problem they're struggling to solve.
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And if any aspect of that problem touches on the work that your organization does, it's very possible that your organization can be part of the solution to their problem.
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And that if you could pursue that and engage them, you could probably turn that into a significant opportunity for expanding your services, expanding your impact.
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Potentially increasing your resources.
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And also.
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Increasing your influence with that set of decision makers, because when you show up as a highly effective problem solving partner, that gets their attention, like almost nothing else.
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Everybody on your team who is out there in the world on behalf of the organization in one capacity or another, is in settings where opportunities are appearing all the time.
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But for most folks, and I have observed this over and over again.
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For folks who haven't been trained to scan for that, to identify it first of all.
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First you have to even know that it happened.
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And then you have to say, oh, there's something we can do with that.
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That's something that our organization should be involved in.
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Either the organization would benefit or the people we serve would benefit or both.
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But if we were connected to that thing that I'm just hearing about now, that would be a really good thing.
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Most people who have not been trained and who have not been told specifically that it is their job to do that, miss about 95% of those opportunities.
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It doesn't even register as an opportunity for the organization.
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And that's not their fault.
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They haven't developed the skills yet.
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But what's awesome is that this is a highly teachable skill set.
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Like any skill it takes practice to get good at it.
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But the best time to start teaching folks is right now.
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Because the sooner you do that, the sooner they're going to be able to begin to produce those returns for you.
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There are some definite caveats about how to do this in a way that's going to really help your organization and your team members.
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And there are ways to do it that will not work so well.
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So I want to call out both because there are some pretty common mistakes that get made and there are reasons for them.
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So I want to call your attention to them so that you can avoid them.
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most common way that folks get this wrong is they say, okay, that's awesome.
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I definitely want that.
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I want my team scanning for opportunity.
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That I'm going to make that part of their assignment.
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And they tell people, okay, now it's your job to be scanning for opportunities for the organization.
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And to come and tell us about them.
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And then that's it.
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Forgetting that is a skillset and you have to develop it.
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If you already have it, no problem.
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That instruction is enough.
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But if you don't already have it, then one of two things happen.
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Either the person says I have no idea what that means, whatever.
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I'm just going to ignore it.
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Or.
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They hear it as every possible thing that they hear about that the organization could be involved in.
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Whether it would be helpful to the organization or not.
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Whether it would represent an enormous amount of work or a really good exchange of effort for reward.
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None of that enters into it.
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And so they're bringing everything they hear.
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And you get bombarded with a mix of potential opportunities, many of which are very low value and probably not worth taking action on.
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And then that gets really frustrating for the leadership.
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Who feels like now I'm just getting more ideas that aren't that helpful taking up my time.
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And you know, just like go away.
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And so then the person who got told to do it gets demoralized and frustrated because they feel like well you said, bring you stuff.
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I brought it to you.
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And now you're telling me you don't want to hear about it.
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So we have to teach people not only how to scan for opportunity, but what to scan for.
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And then some basic aspects of how you evaluate an opportunity.
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And decide whether to bring it to the leadership team.
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And when you give folks those tools, and give them an opportunity to learn them and practice them.
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Because it'll take time.
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Then you start to get real traction with this.
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I think it's really helpful when you're teaching people about this.
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To create some concrete ness and some structure around it.
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Because like opportunities, well, that could mean anything.
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I will say it is definitely not just about money.
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Although, you know, we're always excited about opportunities for more resources.
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Yay.
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But this is about much more than that.
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So I put this into four categories that I have been labeling for some time now as MP3.
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Money.
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Policy.
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Partnerships.
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And practice.
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So the first couple of those are pretty obvious.
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Anything that's a resource opportunity, a money opportunity, might be you hear about a new grant.
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Or a pilot and demonstration thing or something like that.
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Policy, also pretty obvious.
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And you want to teach people to be alert to both policy that could help, and policy that could hurt.
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In that case, it's not so much opportunity scanning as it is threat scanning.
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And once you're teaching people the basics, you can also help them understand that they also want to be on the lookout for things that would cause a problem.
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So you have money and policy.
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They're pretty obvious.
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Partnerships is one that are great for folks who are not on the leadership team, but are in a program role in particular and they're out in the world.
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If they do outreach, if they do programming, any of those pieces.
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They're very likely to run into a lot of potential partnership opportunities.
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And it might be with another Nonprofit.
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It might be with a for-profit entity.
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It might be with a consortium or a coalition.
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All kinds of partnership potential that could yield benefit for the organization.
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There's also plenty of partnerships that are not helpful.
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And so again, it's very important that we teach folks how to tell the difference.
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And then the last one takes a little more explanation, which is practice.
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And what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to affect the way the work is done.
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To shape what is considered to be best practice.
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Right.
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Hopefully a lot of what you're doing in your organization is already best practice in your niche.
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But a lot of times policy, and the way resources are allocated, lag behind the best practices.
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And often can even be structured in a way that rewards substandard practice.
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And so any time there's an opportunity to have input into aligning the high quality, high impact work that you do as best practice in the niche.
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That is a great opportunity and those come along from time to time.
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So we want people to be alert to those as well.
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So that's an easy way to remember that and to teach your people about it.
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Is to, just talk about it as four categories, money, policy, partnerships and practice.
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And if you want to start out with just one or two of those, that's totally fine too.
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You could decide that this is level one and level two.
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And with level one, you just talk about money and policy, or maybe you just talk about money.
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You can do this however you want and you gauge the bandwidth of your team and what they seem ready for.
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Ultimately, you'd like to have them scanning for all four things.
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But if you want to start with just one or two, that's obviously your call, and there are situations where that is the right answer.
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So you decide.
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But it's very helpful to present it as there are categories we're looking at, and this is what those categories are and what they mean.
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So once they've got that basic concept.
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And it's helpful to have some examples.
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Like in the money category, there's obviously grants, right?
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Everybody understands about that.
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They hear about new grant money or a foundation that they didn't know was funding the kind of work that you all do.
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And then they hear about it in some forum or wherever they are.
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Or maybe it's a new corporate funder or a local business in the community.
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All the possible ways that there could be money opportunities.
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You want to kind of lay those out for folks so they know what kinds of things they're looking for in each of these categories.
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And I know that you, if you're a CEO listening to this, you already know this.
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Because it's your job to know this.
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And if you're a development director, you already know this.
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But most other folks in the organization may not know that.
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One of the hardest things about teaching people skills that you're really good at.
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Is backing up and getting the wide view and saying, okay, the stuff that I think is so obvious and so basic that it doesn't need to be said.
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Is the very stuff that you need to start with and be super specific about.
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So walk through what you mean when you say money opportunities or resource opportunities and give examples.
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And what's ideal is if you give a couple of examples of how you came upon an opportunity when you were out in the world.
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For instance, you could say, well, when I was in conversation with this group of people, or when I was at this meeting, or when I was at this hearing on a policy issue or whatever it is.
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I learned this new thing and it struck me that, aha, there is an opportunity there for us to do.
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And then you tell them what the opportunity is so that people can start to understand what you mean by this.
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So once they're clear on what you mean by opportunity and what categories of opportunity you want them to be paying attention to.
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Then it's time to get specific with some basics that they're going to need.
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They're going to need to know where to scan.
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They're going to need to know the basics of how to evaluate a potential opportunity so that they're not bringing you a bunch of stuff that you really don't want to hear about.
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And you're going to want to teach them how to raise that potential opportunity.
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So we're going to go through each of these.
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So when you're helping them understand where to scan, again, your own personal examples and experiences will help them understand this pretty well.
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But what I suggest is that particularly for folks who are just learning this.
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Ideally, what you're going to want to do is have them focus on things they encounter while they're doing their work, while they're in their role.
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Ultimately you want them to be scanning 24 7.
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Because a lot of the coolest opportunities are ones you discover while you're not on the job.
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That's not to say you expect them to be only thinking about work all the time.
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But here's the thing.
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Once they've kind of set their filters and trained their subconscious brain to pick up on this, they're going to be noticing opportunities all the time.
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They'll have to do it with their conscious brain first for quite some time, to say when I go to this meeting, I am listening for opportunities around money and policy.
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In addition to whatever else they're there for cause presumably they're there for some other reason for the organization.
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But they now got an additional thing that they're supposed to have their eyes and ears tuned to.
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And that will take conscious thought for quite a while before eventually, their good old reticular activating system will start to do its job.
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Because what we know is that when we repeat an idea or a thought or an instruction, over and over again in our conscious thinking brain.
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Eventually our reticular activating system will pick up on that and automate that for us.
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And it will say, oh, You're looking for blue VW bugs?
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Okay.
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Cool.
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I will show you every blue VW bug in the universe.
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You're going to notice them all now.
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And it will do that, but we've got to train it.
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So the more clarity you can give folks about what kinds of things they should be listening for, what kinds of things they should be looking for.
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Cues, how to recognize, et cetera.
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Don't overwhelm them.
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You might even say, all right, we're just going to focus on money opportunities.
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And I want you to have your ears and eyes open for any potential grant opportunities.
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Any potential research and development projects or pilot and demonstration kinds of things that are going on.
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That would be a good fit for us that would come with resources attached.
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And any potential government funding sources that we're not already accessing.
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Something like that.
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And just start them there and have them scanning for that.
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It's better to learn the skill on something relatively small and well-defined.
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And then when they get the hang of it and they start teaching their brain to look and listen for those things.
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Then you can start adding to the layers of complexity and the nuance of what you're really looking for longterm.
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But for somebody who's not used to doing this, this is baby steps.
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So there's going to be patience required.
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Especially on the part of the leaders in your organization who already are really good at this and who do it instinctively intuitively, you don't even think about it.
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You don't go from, I'll borrow my martial arts background for a minute here.
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You don't go from white belt to black belt overnight.
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There's a bunch of stuff in between.
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There's a bunch of graduated learning that goes to getting to where you are at the level of practicing an art.
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And right now, you're just trying to get them to do the basic skills.
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So you can give them that as a framework and say, here's what you're scanning for.
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Here's where to scan.
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Anything you go to in your role, anything you're reading or listening to in your role.
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Tune your eyes and ears for these three types of money opportunity.
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Something like that, something fairly small and well-defined.
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You might want to just give that as the initial assignment.
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And say, okay, for the next couple of weeks, just do that.
00:18:39.664 --> 00:18:44.708
Every time you pick up on a potential opportunity, I want you to jot it down.
00:18:45.260 --> 00:18:45.711
Make a note.
00:18:46.407 --> 00:18:52.607
And then in a week or two we'll come back together and we'll talk about what you noticed.
00:18:53.184 --> 00:18:54.775
So now they've got a little pressure.
00:18:55.055 --> 00:18:57.815
They know they got to do this because they're going to have to report back.
00:18:57.994 --> 00:18:58.325
Right.
00:18:58.325 --> 00:19:01.505
So it's gonna force them to focus and start thinking this way.
00:19:01.505 --> 00:19:02.974
Start scanning and screening.
00:19:03.488 --> 00:19:07.617
But just for the beginning, all you're going to teach them is to begin to be attuned.
00:19:08.300 --> 00:19:09.830
Come back for the report back.
00:19:09.861 --> 00:19:11.121
They share what they share.
00:19:11.151 --> 00:19:13.280
Hopefully they've picked up on a few things.
00:19:13.851 --> 00:19:17.931
Be advised, you probably already know this, but I'm gonna say it out loud.
00:19:18.590 --> 00:19:22.221
Some of what they bring back is going to be kind of useless.
00:19:22.730 --> 00:19:23.540
That's okay.
00:19:23.974 --> 00:19:26.105
That's a skill you're going to teach in a minute.
00:19:26.704 --> 00:19:35.795
But first, just get them beginning to train themselves to scan for anything at all that smells like an opportunity, that sounds like an opportunity.
00:19:36.371 --> 00:19:38.884
And then have them come back and then you can talk about that.
00:19:39.421 --> 00:19:42.181
And you could do this one-on-one or you could do this with a little group.
00:19:42.941 --> 00:19:45.851
But bring them back together in some form or another, and have a conversation.
00:19:45.851 --> 00:19:47.471
And say, okay, where were you out in the world?
00:19:47.471 --> 00:19:48.340
What did you find?
00:19:48.611 --> 00:19:50.740
What did you surface as potential opportunities?
00:19:51.238 --> 00:19:52.317
How did you pick up on it?
00:19:52.347 --> 00:19:53.397
Where did it pop up?
00:19:53.803 --> 00:19:56.262
So that they're reflecting on that and they're embedding in their mind.
00:19:56.292 --> 00:19:56.742
Oh yeah.
00:19:56.772 --> 00:19:59.202
Actually every time I go to a meeting, I hear about an opportunity.
00:19:59.502 --> 00:20:02.042
Or every time I'm on my phone or wherever they find this.
00:20:02.910 --> 00:20:04.856
And then at some point.
00:20:05.083 --> 00:20:11.202
If this has been fairly productive and they have all come back with at least a couple of things that they've picked up on, great.
00:20:11.833 --> 00:20:15.762
If there's anybody who didn't pick up on anything, you want to find out why.
00:20:16.317 --> 00:20:18.207
And there could be a bunch of different reasons.
00:20:18.207 --> 00:20:19.737
It could be that they didn't go anywhere.
00:20:20.156 --> 00:20:29.396
It could be they were totally immersed on a deadline and they had their head down the whole time just working on that one thing and this was not the time for them to be doing that.
00:20:30.086 --> 00:20:30.477
Fine.
00:20:30.876 --> 00:20:33.096
They can do that the next two weeks or whatever.
00:20:33.096 --> 00:20:38.049
But you want to get a sense of, if somebody didn't pick up on an opportunity, we want to know why.
00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:46.477
Or if people seem confused or puzzled, get to the root of what's puzzling them and then work through that with them and correct for that.
00:20:47.432 --> 00:20:48.153
So, okay.
00:20:48.163 --> 00:20:50.626
They get to that point and you might send them out again.
00:20:50.807 --> 00:20:53.027
Say, okay, that was great.
00:20:53.497 --> 00:20:57.156
And then you might put some additional instructions on it based on what they brought to you.
00:20:58.386 --> 00:21:06.353
When you get to the point where everybody is capable of bringing back some potential opportunities, Now it's time to start talking about, okay.
00:21:06.682 --> 00:21:13.073
So the next level of this that puts you in the category of being able to use this skill in a way that helps the organization.
00:21:13.472 --> 00:21:17.292
Now we want to teach you how to evaluate an opportunity.
00:21:17.833 --> 00:21:25.480
Cause once you start to look for them, you soon discover that there are opportunities everywhere.
00:21:26.289 --> 00:21:32.980
It's a rare day that you're not going to see at least one, and a lot of days you're going to see multiple opportunities.
00:21:33.339 --> 00:21:52.166
So the goal is not to collect 5,000 opportunities and say, woo hoo! The goal is to sift through those 5,000 opportunities and say, in this big pile of opportunities, there are three or four gold nuggets that we want to really zero in on.
00:21:52.676 --> 00:22:03.833
So now let's talk about how you determine which are the ones that really should be raised with the leadership team as something we might want to really look at going after.
00:22:04.747 --> 00:22:11.797
So I'm going to give you a generic set of questions that you might have them ask as a screen for, does this get elevated or not.
00:22:12.277 --> 00:22:15.467
You will probably either tweak these and/ or add your own.
00:22:15.886 --> 00:22:21.346
And to some extent, this will also be informed by whatever your strategic plan says that you're focusing on.
00:22:21.589 --> 00:22:23.900
And what are your major goals within your strategic plan?
00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:30.859
And if you're really focused on a particular thing, then obviously you want people to be looking in that arena for most of their scanning.
00:22:31.406 --> 00:22:32.376
So you'll add to this.
00:22:32.376 --> 00:22:42.383
But as a basic set of questions, You want folks to get in the habit of asking themselves, how big is this potential opportunity?
00:22:42.432 --> 00:22:52.210
What is the scale and scope of the benefit that could come to the organization and, or the people we serve, if we were to pursue this opportunity?
00:22:52.630 --> 00:22:53.500
That's the first thing.
00:22:54.309 --> 00:22:58.987
Because it could be a really cool, shiny object, but it wouldn't really do that much.
00:22:59.017 --> 00:23:00.517
It wouldn't have that much of an impact.
00:23:01.232 --> 00:23:02.883
So, scale and scope of impact.
00:23:03.573 --> 00:23:05.818
How big of a benefit would it bring, potentially.
00:23:06.539 --> 00:23:11.883
The next one is, how heavy a lift would it be, how much work is it to do this?
00:23:12.393 --> 00:23:18.440
Now different folks on your team will have a clearer sense of how much work something actually is.
00:23:19.109 --> 00:23:22.980
Some folks will have a pretty clear idea of how much work might be involved.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:24.240
Others will not.
00:23:24.329 --> 00:23:26.759
And so that's a learning curve too, for them.
00:23:27.329 --> 00:23:34.532
And one of the things that we have to do as leaders is be patient with folks who may not have clarity about that.
00:23:35.196 --> 00:23:38.307
Now there is a cautionary note there.
00:23:38.307 --> 00:23:50.792
Which is that, I have observed that there are some folks who will routinely generate ideas of stuff that other people should go do that is a lot of work.
00:23:51.333 --> 00:23:54.873
And somehow it doesn't involve them doing any work.
00:23:55.292 --> 00:24:01.762
If somebody starts exhibiting that pattern, then that's something to call out separately as a broader issue.
00:24:02.192 --> 00:24:08.609
But it may be that for some of your team, there will be a learning curve about understanding how much work might be involved.
00:24:08.609 --> 00:24:10.859
If that's not something they're close to normally.
00:24:11.309 --> 00:24:20.497
But you don't want to have them not identify opportunities with things that they're not totally involved in, because they might hit on something really awesome.
00:24:20.586 --> 00:24:22.896
So, you know, you'll learn as you go.
00:24:22.896 --> 00:24:23.916
And so will they.
00:24:24.987 --> 00:24:31.173
So those are at least two primary questions of what is the scope and scale of the potential opportunity?
00:24:31.656 --> 00:24:33.186
How much work might it involve?
00:24:33.673 --> 00:24:35.502
And what might that work look like?
00:24:35.833 --> 00:24:42.626
Is this going to be, we write a grant and it's aligned with grant writing copy that we already have sitting around?
00:24:42.807 --> 00:24:46.196
Or is this we would be going off on an entirely new venture?
00:24:46.737 --> 00:24:52.690
And then the third thing is where and how does it align with the goals in the existing strategic plan?
00:24:53.386 --> 00:24:59.789
If someone is surfacing an opportunity that is completely unrelated to any of your existing goals in your plan.
00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:02.369
Then that's a question that they should look at.
00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:08.160
That should be part of the analysis they do before they bring a potential opportunity to the leadership team.
00:25:08.789 --> 00:25:16.319
And if it is completely outside the scope of the current goals, there would need to be a compelling reason why it should even be considered.
00:25:17.190 --> 00:25:18.789
And those could exist.
00:25:19.240 --> 00:25:19.960
Absolutely.
00:25:20.019 --> 00:25:29.282
I have plenty of stories of clients who had extraordinary opportunities surface for them that they couldn't even have imagined.
00:25:29.807 --> 00:25:34.126
But that arrived and it was a no brainer to say yes to it.
00:25:34.946 --> 00:25:40.547
You could tuck it under the broad rubric of increase our impact or broaden our reach with our clients or something like that.
00:25:40.547 --> 00:25:50.196
But, in terms of what they thought they were going to be doing, an opportunity came along that was so timely and substantial that they were like, yep.
00:25:50.277 --> 00:25:51.717
We need to figure out how to do this.
00:25:51.717 --> 00:25:59.346
And then they shuffled some of the other pieces in their plan to accommodate that because it was that valuable to them, on multiple levels.
00:25:59.732 --> 00:26:10.113
It was an opportunity to not only dramatically increase their resources coming in, but it also was an opportunity to serve far more people at a higher level than they had been funded to do before.
00:26:10.113 --> 00:26:12.863
And it was just like, that's our mission right there.
00:26:12.942 --> 00:26:15.163
Those do come along sometimes.
00:26:16.093 --> 00:26:21.890
So none of these screens are the be all and end all, but they're valuable guideposts.
00:26:22.309 --> 00:26:27.619
And as I say, you will have others, but those are three basic ones that I suggest you start with.
00:26:28.220 --> 00:26:35.190
And for somebody who's just learning this, don't give them a 27 point checklist for what they have to evaluate before they bring an opportunity.
00:26:35.920 --> 00:26:41.767
The last thing you want to teach them in this process is, how they should raise a potential opportunity with the leadership team.
00:26:42.446 --> 00:26:45.567
And you will want to create a process around this.
00:26:45.777 --> 00:26:49.156
It doesn't have to be elaborate, but there should be something.
00:26:49.926 --> 00:26:54.400
If you have a subset of people in the organization who are learning at the same time.
00:26:55.089 --> 00:26:58.353
I would say, go ahead and do all of this as group work.
00:26:58.923 --> 00:27:04.779
And so the first couple of weeks, maybe they're just letting you know what they noticed in their preliminary opportunity scanning.
00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:07.180
And then you're teaching them the next layer of how to screen.
00:27:07.660 --> 00:27:12.579
And then the next layer is, there's going to be a process to bring this to the attention of the leadership team.
00:27:13.099 --> 00:27:24.970
So create some kind of a process where on a regular basis, there is an opportunity to bring these preliminarily screened opportunities that the person has identified.
00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.859
They asked the three questions or whatever they are, and they have their answers to the three questions.
00:27:30.549 --> 00:27:44.311
And when they come to you, the expectation is that they will summarize briefly, what the opportunity is, how they learned about it, what their assessment of the scope and scale of the opportunity is, what their assessment of the work involved is.
00:27:44.759 --> 00:27:49.959
And how it connects to one or more of the strategic plan goals, or whatever your criteria are.
00:27:49.989 --> 00:27:53.169
But if they were going to do it using the three ones that I offered, that's how they would do it.
00:27:53.648 --> 00:27:57.459
And they would just give like a little three minute walkthrough.
00:27:58.088 --> 00:28:02.648
This should not be long and involved, please do not have them bring in slides and stuff.
00:28:03.048 --> 00:28:12.818
Part of what we're teaching people to do is train themselves to be able to scan for the opportunity, assess it almost in the moment.
00:28:13.496 --> 00:28:16.675
Because we want to create habit around all of this process.
00:28:16.736 --> 00:28:21.385
Around the scanning, around the analysis, and around bringing it forward.
00:28:21.931 --> 00:28:24.746
So that this becomes something that people just routinely do.
00:28:24.925 --> 00:28:27.086
But you have to teach all the pieces.
00:28:27.895 --> 00:28:33.236
And they have to have time to practice it in order for the skills to develop and for the habits to develop.
00:28:33.596 --> 00:28:48.806
And for their conscious thinking brain to train their subconscious, to call in that information, to set their filters in such a way that opportunity information comes in, and doesn't get filtered out or ignored.
00:28:49.496 --> 00:28:52.316
So you're doing a lot here when you're teaching people this.
00:28:52.878 --> 00:28:56.509
So we try to make it reasonably simple and doable for everybody involved.
00:28:57.509 --> 00:28:57.929
Okay.
00:28:58.125 --> 00:29:01.756
So now here's the other huge piece that's going to be super important.
00:29:02.175 --> 00:29:10.753
And that's for those of you on the team who are already quite skilled at this and are going to be kind of guiding this process and doing the teaching and mentoring and coaching.
00:29:11.306 --> 00:29:12.145
Patience.
00:29:12.496 --> 00:29:14.935
Lots and lots of patience.
00:29:15.689 --> 00:29:19.348
People may be really bad at this when they first start.
00:29:19.935 --> 00:29:20.925
Don't despair.
00:29:21.378 --> 00:29:22.818
They will get better.
00:29:23.538 --> 00:29:26.251
But here's what I see happen a lot.
00:29:27.092 --> 00:29:33.451
And this is a mistake you really don't want to make, because it will just make it harder to ever redo this later.
00:29:34.165 --> 00:29:46.221
What I see happen a lot is that leadership will say to some subset of the team, I want you to be more diligent about scanning for opportunity and bringing those opportunities to us.
00:29:46.251 --> 00:29:47.781
And I want to see that.
00:29:47.781 --> 00:29:49.451
That's part of the expectations for your role.
00:29:50.155 --> 00:29:52.788
And then they don't set up a teaching and coaching process.
00:29:53.479 --> 00:29:58.496
And then if people don't already know how to do it, they're kind of stuck.
00:29:58.526 --> 00:30:05.336
Trying to please you by bringing you stuff that they think are opportunities, but they're not well analyzed.
00:30:05.336 --> 00:30:09.895
They may be lots of work and not a lot of value.
00:30:09.895 --> 00:30:12.086
They don't have any ability to discern.
00:30:12.655 --> 00:30:16.086
And when that happens, and it's understandable.
00:30:16.551 --> 00:30:22.476
People are bringing you pretty subpar opportunities in quotes, over and over again.
00:30:22.476 --> 00:30:25.175
And they're saying, well, you said you wanted me to bring you this stuff.
00:30:25.236 --> 00:30:27.395
And you're thinking to yourself, this is garbage.
00:30:27.455 --> 00:30:28.955
I can't use this.
00:30:29.432 --> 00:30:31.571
I'm just, I'm not even listening.
00:30:31.682 --> 00:30:32.551
And you shut them down.
00:30:33.185 --> 00:30:35.645
But without giving them any guidance.
00:30:36.695 --> 00:30:38.346
So now they're frustrated.
00:30:38.776 --> 00:30:43.125
They were asked to do something that did their best without knowing exactly how to do it or what to do.
00:30:44.445 --> 00:30:45.316
It wasn't right.
00:30:46.336 --> 00:30:49.215
You told them it wasn't right, but you didn't help them fix it.
00:30:50.026 --> 00:30:53.266
And so very quickly they learn, okay, I'm not doing that anymore.
00:30:53.746 --> 00:30:55.006
Because that was unhelpful.
00:30:55.215 --> 00:30:59.625
And unfortunately, then what the leadership learns is people suck at this.
00:30:59.625 --> 00:31:00.766
Let's not ask them to do it.
00:31:01.576 --> 00:31:03.405
And those are all the wrong lessons.
00:31:03.405 --> 00:31:09.346
You don't want that permeating the organization, cause it's hard to fix once that takes hold.
00:31:09.895 --> 00:31:14.695
Better to do this in a way that is structured for success from the very beginning.
00:31:15.457 --> 00:31:18.955
So that is going to take a lot of patience.
00:31:19.536 --> 00:31:23.375
And a lot of coaching and mentoring behavior from those who are already skilled.
00:31:23.976 --> 00:31:28.766
And so you have three main tasks other than lots of patience.
00:31:29.551 --> 00:31:33.301
And your job in part is to catch them doing something right.
00:31:33.852 --> 00:31:37.162
You're going to notice the 529 things they're doing wrong.
00:31:37.162 --> 00:31:37.882
You can't help it.
00:31:38.451 --> 00:31:43.281
But your job is to catch them doing at least one thing right, and call that out.
00:31:44.211 --> 00:32:00.011
But beyond that, if what they're sharing with you isn't clear, or it hasn't been thought through very well, guide them with better questions and teach them what kinds of questions they should be asking themselves based on the kinds of questions you ask.
00:32:00.612 --> 00:32:10.138
And as you do that, what you're basically doing is taking them through the analysis process that you had wanted them to go through, but they don't yet know how to do.
00:32:10.749 --> 00:32:22.885
And then if you see holes in their strategic analysis, you work with them through conversation to draw out the additional strategic analysis that has yet to be done on their idea.
00:32:23.786 --> 00:32:33.019
And you should preface all this with everybody to say, from your own experience, when you become skilled at this, you're going to see a gazillion opportunities every day.
00:32:33.721 --> 00:32:35.511
And tell them that's what you experience.
00:32:35.531 --> 00:32:37.842
You see opportunities everywhere you turn.
00:32:37.932 --> 00:32:40.902
There's nothing but opportunity out there, once you train yourself to find it.
00:32:41.622 --> 00:32:43.332
Lots of them aren't that useful.
00:32:43.862 --> 00:32:46.801
There's opportunities that it doesn't make sense to pursue.
00:32:47.102 --> 00:32:50.402
And then there are opportunities that are amazing.
00:32:50.821 --> 00:32:52.741
And those are the ones we want to find.
00:32:53.442 --> 00:32:54.642
But you got to sift through.
00:32:55.419 --> 00:33:01.321
Let them know that you reject lots of the opportunities that you identify all the time.
00:33:01.892 --> 00:33:04.892
That only a handful, because we can't do everything.
00:33:05.491 --> 00:33:08.582
We gotta be smart about how we use our time and energy and resources.
00:33:08.582 --> 00:33:12.662
So we're only going to go after the ones that are really high value, high impact.
00:33:13.192 --> 00:33:20.501
So they shouldn't get disheartened if they bring you opportunities that aren't super awesome and that don't make the cut.
00:33:21.082 --> 00:33:26.642
And so when you go through the analysis together, helping them ask better questions.
00:33:26.672 --> 00:33:34.231
And then you get to the end, and hopefully they come to the conclusion of, and that should be part of the final questions you ask them is.
00:33:34.231 --> 00:33:37.711
So now that we've done this deeper analysis, what do you think?
00:33:37.761 --> 00:33:42.119
Where is this on the value scale, relative to impact and the amount of work?
00:33:42.702 --> 00:33:46.996
And help them come to the conclusion that they need to get to.
00:33:47.869 --> 00:33:51.625
When you do all that, you're doing multiple things at once.
00:33:52.276 --> 00:33:55.215
You're validating their effort, which is hugely important.
00:33:55.665 --> 00:33:57.256
You're rewarding that effort.
00:33:58.006 --> 00:34:00.675
You're saying to them, your idea has some merit.
00:34:00.736 --> 00:34:02.955
Let's analyze it further together.
00:34:03.756 --> 00:34:09.036
And then in that process, you're teaching them the next level of strategic analysis skills.
00:34:09.606 --> 00:34:18.036
Which will not only serve them in their career, but it'll serve you and your organization tremendously, as long as they are working with you.
00:34:19.016 --> 00:34:24.056
So that's basically how you begin to make this happen in your organization.
00:34:24.956 --> 00:34:26.456
It will be a learning process.
00:34:26.695 --> 00:34:28.166
You got to set aside time for it.
00:34:28.195 --> 00:34:29.396
It has to be intentional.
00:34:29.695 --> 00:34:42.346
But when you do it, you're going to have a huge multiplier effect of all these team members who are now able and willing and are going out there and scanning for opportunities all the time.
00:34:42.985 --> 00:34:48.085
Bottom line, more high quality opportunities are going to be coming into your organization.
00:34:48.806 --> 00:34:58.525
The more skilled opportunity scanners you have, the more skilled opportunity analysts you have, the more opportunities will come to your organization.
00:34:59.096 --> 00:34:59.876
No question.
00:35:00.715 --> 00:35:04.436
But it takes time to build that opportunity generating machine.
00:35:04.916 --> 00:35:09.056
So don't start on this project if you don't intend to commit to that effort.
00:35:09.833 --> 00:35:13.322
But if you do make that commitment, And you do follow through on it.
00:35:13.800 --> 00:35:24.570
You can and will build an opportunity generating machine of highly skilled opportunity scanners and analysts that will exponentially increase your impact.
00:35:25.349 --> 00:35:27.989
Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.
00:35:28.199 --> 00:35:30.480
Right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
