Got Process Problems?? 🐟

Imagine a beautiful lake brimming with fish, attracting fisherpeople from all around the world. Imagine each person, thinking only of their own needs, taking as many fish as they wanted until the fish population collapsed.

In systems thinking, this is called “Tragedy of the Commons.”

Now imagine a nonprofit with a crowd of different programs, each approaching a common pool of donors. Each program thinking only of its own needs. Donor confusion and fatigue increases until the population collapses.

This situation is tragically common.

You’ll find some version of this problem wherever you have business processes that multiple teams rely on for their success (e.g. donor cultivation). Especially HR processes, IT, Comms, Operations, and other centralized internal service functions.

The fix for this is to create a Process Accountability to Circumvent Tragedies Sheet (PACTS). Ok I’m still working on the name.

Here are three steps you can take to create your own PACTS:

1. Identify the 5 - 9 essential processes that drive your impact and revenue (business critical ones almost always cut across multiple units)

2. Assign one person to be accountable for each process (someone who values the whole more than the parts)

3. List a single KPI for each process (these tend to be in the better/faster/cheaper category)

The accountable person is not the boss of the process. They simply ensure that it is A) clearly documented, B) centrally available, and C) well-maintained via regular updates.

Yay all fixed!

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PS: In case you’re interested, Slack has a simple guide to documenting processes. If you’re not interested in that, you’ll definitely be interested in this. Scroll down to the graphic and enjoy the deliberate neural restructuring.