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Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations, 2nd Edition: a review

June 11, 2013 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Are you leading your organization through the process of creating a communications strategy? Good for you! There’s a lot of scatter-shot communications in the nonprofit world, but very few organizations take the time to think about how to bring all their communications–in print, in person, on the web, through social media–together for the greatest impact. Whether you’re a consultant, a staff person in house, or a Board member, this book is meant for you.

If you are a seasoned communications strategist, the book will serve as a refresher and a series of checklists. It also contains two dozen worksheets, all available online, and you can use the ones you find most helpful to structure the discussions you lead.

If you are new to strategic planning, don’t get overwhelmed. Look at the overall flow of the book to get a sense of what steps are involved. You may decide you want to hire a consultant to lead the planning process, and this book will give you the tools you need to interview that person and decide whether he or she will meet your needs.This book offers a lot of good advice. I particularly like some of the lists. For instance, here’s a list that could serve as the itinerary for the whole process:

*What are we trying to achieve?
*Whom are we trying to reach?
*What do we want them to do?
*How will we encourage them to do it?
*How will we know if we have succeeded?

There are also some real drawbacks to the book. It seems to assume that people in the organization will already understand the value of creating a communications strategy and commit themselves to a what could be a very long process (every week for six months).  My experience tells me that you begin instead with a certain amount of information sharing and consensus building.  You might not want to tackle a wholesale audit of the agency’s communications at the outset.  You might want to start with concrete questions like “Whom are we trying to reach?” and “What do we want them to do?”

I think that the process of creating a strategy and the process whereby you get the buy-in of the people who have to carry that strategy out are the same process. I wouldn’t hand this book to people who know a lot about programs but not much about communications. It would alienate them.  Instead, I would take what I could from the book and apply it to my organization in whatever order would get the most participation in and eventual buy-in.  That’s the way to make sure your plan doesn’t sit on a shelf but instead directs the actions of your agency every day.

Note: this post first appeared in April 2013, in my personal blog.

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“Three Ways You’re Making Sure I Won’t Read Your Tweet”

June 6, 2013 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

drinking out of a fire hose

This is not what you want to do when you tweet!

“It’s like drinking from a fire hose,” people say about social media. We all know the problem: there’s so much information out there, how do I pick what to read?  Or, from the writer’s side: there are so many writers competing for an audience out there, how do I make sure that readers pay attention to what I say–or that they even notice it?

I’ve been following on Twitter since May 2012, and I’ve noticed contributors using the same few strategies for getting attention over and over again.  They must work.  In fact, some of them hook me.  But I’m always sorry afterwards.  Even if the content I read was worthwhile and useful, I feel a little soiled because of the way the writer lured me in the first place.  Those sordid strategies include:

  1. Scare tactics.  If you called me up on the phone and asked, “Are termites eating your foundations?”, I’d say NO and hang up.  I don’t respond to a hard sell.  I know it’s not in my interest to do so.  Same thing online.  If the message is “Read this or your competitors will eat your lunch,” I’m beginning to skip right by that tweet without opening the link.  I’ll take my chances on missing a bit of information just to avoid being taken for a sucker.
  2. Negativity.  “How your blog is turning people off.”  “The mistakes you’re making on Facebook.”  Now, I’m not perfect.  I know I have a lot to learn.  But couldn’t you possibly present me with an opportunity to do better, instead of telling me that everything I’m doing is wrong?
  3. Arbitrary numbers.  Nothing wrong with presenting a list of  four questions, or top ten links, or twenty-two websites…except that everybody’s doing it.  After a while, all these numbers run into each other and blur.  They sound like a gimmick, and they are.  Can we possibly save numbers for when they matter?

You may have noticed that the title of this blog entry uses all three of the strategies I think are being worked to death.  How did you respond when you read the title?  What do you think now?  What are some different (and perhaps better) strategies for standing out and being read?

Note: this post first appeared in March 2013, in my personal blog.

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Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (review)

June 4, 2013 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Can you get families to eat healthier food, delinquent students to start showing up on time, businesses and governments to save millions of dollars by buying smarter, all by learning one set of concepts?  Chip & Dan Heath think so.  In Switch, they lay out a basic framework for all kinds of change, from the individual to the social level–and they tell stories to show how to make the changes.

The framework: Each of us is a Rider (rational mind) trying to direct an Elephant (emotional side) along a Path (the environment we’re operating in).  To make a change, all three have to pull together.  Why don’t they?

“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.” The Heaths show how you can help the Rider in yourself, your colleagues, or your fellow citizens by making it clearer exactly what they need to do.  If you can find a few bright, shining examples of what works, for instance, you can get other people to adopt that approach.  Not everyone will go along, but if enough people buy in, a little change in behavior can lead to a big change in the result.

“What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.” We have a limited amount of self-control. A small rational Rider can only tug on the reins of a big emotional Elephant for so long!  And the rational side of us may plan forever and not get around to acting–I’ve heard this called “analysis paralysis.”  The trick is to get motivated to do what we know would make a difference.  The authors show us how to take changes in small steps and aim for early victories.  They also show how we can cultivate the belief that we are capable of change…which is key to being able to make the change we seek.

“What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”  If we can make it easier for people to do something different, more of them will.  If we can encourage new habits, those habits will take a lot of the stress and strain out of change.  “Behavior is contagious,” so show that a lot of other people are doing the right thing and you will get even more people to join them.  (This is a concept I’ve heard people call “social marketing,” and it’s one of the big reasons that fewer people smoke tobacco today.)

The Heaths illustrate all these concepts with stories that are “made to stick” in your mind (to use the title of one of their previous books).  Here’s one that pulls all three together:

In 2004, 1 out of every 10 patients in the U.S. received defective medical care.  For instance, they “did not receive their antibiotics in the specified time.”  So, “thousands of patients were dying every year, unnecessarily.  Dr. Donald Berwick set out to change that.

  • He proposed that the medical industry save 100,000 lives in 18 months, and he gave them six specific ways to do it.  (Clarity, for the Rider.)
  • He brought in a mom whose little girl had been killed by a medical error.  She told the hospitals, “I know that if this campaign had been in place four or five years ago, that Josie would be fine.” (Motivation, for the Elephant.  What greater motivation is there for a healthcare professional than saving the life of a child?)
  • He made it easy for hospitals to join the campaign (by signing a one-page form) and brought them together in conferences where they could see how others just like them were succeeding.  (Smoothing the Path)

As a result. by the set date, the campaign had saved 122,300 lives, “the equivalent of throwing a life preserver to every man, woman, and child in Ann Arbor, Michigan.”

Now, I am not convinced that this formula for change will always work.  I agree with the Heaths that even a marginal improvement is better than none, and their techniques will work when there is no entrenched and powerful opposition to the change you have in mind.  You can probably lose weight this way.  You can very likely get more people where you work to respond to their email. If you are trying to raise the minimum wage, or end global warming, or stop a war, you are going to need more.

As Frederick Douglass famously said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”  For struggle, you need a movement.  You cannot throw a behavioral switch. Even a social movement would have something to learn by reading this book, however, and for most of us, most of the time, this framework will be a powerful set of tools.  I strongly recommend reading this book and then going to work on making change where you live.

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