Unintended Consequences For Nonprofit Leaders

Happy Friday! And welcome to this week’s one-minute email. I’ll be writing each week to help nonprofit executives manage turnarounds and organizational change from a systems perspective.

My home state of Louisiana is losing its coastline. A football field of land sinks into the Gulf every 100 minutes. It all started with the channeling of the mighty Mississippi River after the great flood of 1927, a stark example of environmental system change.

Meandering rivers are destructive to humans who are trying to build cities, grow crops, and stay alive. But they are constructive to coastland that relies on sediment replenishment.

Today’s problems are often the consequences of yesterday’s solutions. That doesn’t mean levees are bad. But it does mean that seemingly obvious improvements to complex systems (like your nonprofit organization) can have vicious, unpredictable effects.

As you are probably aware, the complexity of environmental systems like the Louisiana coastline is similar tot he complexity of most nonprofit organizations.

Seeing patterns across various types of systems can help nonprofit leaders think differently about organizational change. Here are three quick tips for nonprofit leaders to better anticipate the long-term consequences of actions that seem perfectly reasonable in the moment:

Tip #1

Before making big changes to a complex system like a nonprofit organization, take a moment to map it out. For each element, ask yourself, “What affects this? And what does this affect?” This will help you predict how the system will push back. And it always pushes back.

Tip #2

Stay humble and be ready to admit when a solution produces both intended and unintended consequences. As John Sterman says, “There are no side-effects, only effects.” This is particularly relevant when managing change in nonprofit organizations.

Tip #3

Don’t settle for either/or solutions (e.g. either levees or coastline). With enough thought and ingenuity, both/and is often possible. This principle applies to nonprofit turnaround situations as well.

See you next week!

Drew

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