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Putting the We in Winning: a review of Tell to Win, by Peter Guber

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Fifty pages into Peter Guber’s acclaimed book Tell to Win, I was getting more and more upset.  Where were the women?

Norma Kamali made lower-income women her heroes

Norma Kamali made lower-income women her heroes

Not in the blurbs on the back cover: from Roger Ailes to Mohammed Yunus, all men.  Not in the many stories that Guber told to “connect, persuade and triumph with the hidden power of story” (the subtitle of his book).

All of the stories he included were told by and about men.  The exception that proved the rule was Susan Feniger, co-owner of the Border Grill chain…and her story was told by a waiter in one of her restaurants.

I’m a man, so why did I care about the missing women?  I’ve worked all my life with nonprofit organizations, where women are the majority (and increasingly, the leaders).  By leaving women out, Guber was sending a signal that this book might not be for me or the organizations I care about.

Add to that the idea that success always involves “winning” and making a sale–as opposed to building community, nurturing relationships, or exerting power for social good–and Guber was talking right past me.  I was about ready to put the book aside.

And that would have been too bad, because Tell To Win offers a lot of sound advice for anyone trying to lead through persuasion.  For instance:

  1. People WANT to hear stories. Who would go to the movies to see a PowerPoint presentation?
  2. “Move your listeners’ hearts, and their feet and wallets will follow.”
  3. “Get your audience to step into your hero’s shoes.”
  4. Begin with a problem, build tension with your hero’s struggle, and end with a solution that inspires the listener to act.
  5. Know your listener well enough you can predict how they will react.  Prepare, prepare, prepare.
  6. It’s more important to be interested (in your audience) than to be “interesting.”  Make the story about them, and about what you share.
  7. Meet the listener where they are.  Find the context where they will be most receptive to the story you are going to tell.
  8. You’ll know you’ve really succeeded when your listener starts telling your story to others.

Everything here is relevant to nonprofit work, and if Peter Guber were talking to me face to face, he probably would have told his stories differently, to bring me in.  As it was, he really didn’t reach me…until I read about Norma Kamali.

Norma Kamali was a high-fashion designer with a “naturally quirky style.”  Walmart approached her about designing a line of clothing for lower-income women.  She was excited but afraid.  Walmart’s suppliers were used to producing clothing as quickly and cheaply as possible.  What could she say that would make the people who actually cut and sewed garments for Walmart give low-cost clothes their utmost care and attention?  She knew that’s what it would take to make her new customers proud to wear her designs.

What she remembered was the stories she had been told by low-income mothers at a public high school in Manhattan….These mothers were so ashamed of their clothes that they never came in for school conferences or even met their kids’ teachers.

“Norma told the story of those mothers to the vendors, sales force, and media, and everyone who supported this new brand felt like a hero,” Guber wrote.

Aha!  There are the women–and there is the hook for nonprofit organizations.  Let’s tell stories that make people who work for good feel like a team of heroes.  We may be playing in a different league than Guber and his Hollywood buddies–a league of our own--but we can win, together.  Read this book if you want to make the team strong.

Doing Less with Less

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Have you ever seen the motto below in a workplace?  

“We have done so much with so little for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”

It’s supposed to be wry, humorous, witty.  Instead, it’s become a style of management.  And it doesn’t work.

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When businesses ask workers to do more with less, the most dedicated workers do try.  Eventually, even they end up reducing quality to meet the demand for quantity.  And their companies fall behind.

When funders ask nonprofits to do more with less, the nonprofits skimp on the tools and training they need in order to do a good job, and exploit their workers’ commitment to the cause to pay them less than a living wage.  Result?  Low staff morale, high turnover, and reduced quality service to the clients.

Now, technology can sometimes make work more efficient.  Sometimes, though, it changes the way people are used to getting the job done without letting them actually do any more. 

Instead of more with less, the company gets less for less.   You get what you pay for.

Isn’t it time to try doing more with more?

Six Ways Nonprofits Succeed on Social Media

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It’s easy for a business to know whether or not they’re succeeding on social media.  After a reasonable amount of time on social media, the business makes more money.  For a business, that’s the meaning of success.  End of story.

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For nonprofits, it’s not so simple.  Nonprofits are mission-based organizations.  They need money to do their work, but the purpose of their work is not to make money.  When your “business” is arts, health, the environment, rights, or justice, what counts as success on social media?  Here are six signs of success.

  1. Mobilizing.  If your mission involves changing policy or institutions, you need people power to achieve it.  From calling Congress to getting out in the streets, getting people to take action is a measure of success for your social media efforts.
  2. Organizing. There’s power in numbers, and people taking direct action can succeed in changing things directly.  Boycotts can change the behavior of companies. Sit-down strikes can prevent foreclosures.  On the constructive side, people can get together to build houses, or to assist survivors of natural disasters.  Social media  have been indispensable in situations as varied as Occupy Wall Street and Superstorm Sandy.
  3. Changing the culture.  Some nonprofits work to change the way we think and behave.  In an earlier era, social marketing turned smoking from a widely accepted habit into a public health threat.  Today, social media are full of ongoing discussions aimed at changing our ideas about rape culture and body image.
  4. Sharing.  More people are seeing works of art online than in museums.  More get their news online than from newspapers.  Freecycle and similar email lists allow people to pick up goods they need for free, and every giveaway prevents a throwaway and reduces the waste stream. If your nonprofit is concerned with arts, public information, or the environment, social media may be part of how you do your work.
  5. Building assets.  A nonprofit’s greatest asset is often its reputation. As Nir Kossovsky has pointed out, your reputation may actually be worth money.  You may spend less on recruitment and purchase of services because the people with whom you do business know and trust your organization.  Employees may tolerate the low salaries typical of the nonprofit sector because they are proud to work for you, and you may acquire partners and funders because they want to be associated with you.  Social media are part of your brand, and they help build your reputation.
  6. And yes, making money!  Just because you’re a nonprofit doesn’t mean you can lose money.  As Robert Covitz writes, a nonprofit is “an organization that reinvests profits and donations into its programs, services, and personnel so as to better fulfill its mission and goals.” To reinvest, you must make a surplus to begin with.  Giving via social media is on the rise, and even the check in the mail is increasingly likely to arrive after the donor has learned about you on social media.

 

So, is your nonprofit succeeding on social media? Comment to tell us your success stories and the challenges you face.

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