Keeping your balance

Balance.  A great word brings has a smoothness that can inspire an exhalation of breath, a sense of calm.  It’s often applied to “work-life balance,” although that’s never really made sense to be because work is part of life.

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It isn’t life balance that has me thinking; it is balance in our work and how we work.  Two very unrelated events have me thinking about how balance can play out in very different ways.

I frequently talk to executive directors about the need to balance working in the organization and working on the organization.  I’m not sure everyone always understands what I’m talking about, despite the fact that they shake their heads up and down in agreement.

But I worry about this because I see too few EDs with good balance.  And don’t ask me what a good balance is, as it may shift from week to week, month to month. I do know, however, that this balancing act should not be a constant 50-50.  Working in the organization is easy to grasp:  it is helping deliver the organization’s mission.  It is the part of the equation that is often too strong a pull for many EDs, such that they forget, in part or altogether, the working on part.  I hear time and time again the classic ED lament:  I didn’t go into the nonprofit sector to work in an office, worry about infrastructure, money and a board that won’t perform and write reports.   Thus, it is very important that we get our mission fix on a regular basis, and that we stay connected to our work, our clients, our environment, etc., not just for our own personal well-being, but also to do well at the rest of our job.

And speaking of the rest of the job.  After all, we did agree to take the title of ED, and that comes with responsibilities that are the bulk of the job.  A lot of the working on stuff, taken piecemeal, is not fun, but without that work the organization wobbles and will, eventually, fall apart.  And when we see the whole that is truly greater than the sum of working on the individual parts, it is very, very cool! The working on stuff is things like continual organizational assessment, working with and on the board, donor cultivation, understanding the financial health of the organization, pushing toward the big picture, building partnerships, etc.   (Notice that I didn’t include business development as working on the organization, as, more often than not, it is, in the hands of an ED, working in the organization.)  And this working on stuff, if an ED is to be successful at it (and few are), requires a skill that isn’t often asked of us when working in the organization and with clients:  the ability to say no.

If an ED is doing a good job of working on the organization, then s/he is always aware of the pushes and pulls in the organism cum organization, the demands on its resources—money, human, space, technology, and all the others.  In other words, s/he always knows the reading on the organization’s capacity tank and knows when there is room to take on more and where there isn’t.  Organizational balance is as essential as individual balance.

As is balance in how we do our work.  I didn’t need Memorial Day to tell me it was summer; I had the college students home for the summer canvassing door-to-door.  I’ve had two in 72 hours, both for great causes.  What a thankless job!  (I did it in high school and college, but for a political candidate not a cause).

With the first one, we were sitting on our porch when a young man started ascending our steps.  Thinking I’d save him some walking, I said, “I like your cause, I’ll sign a petition, but you are not where I spend my charitable dollars.”  He had a petition so he had to come up the steps anyway. I signed, he left, nothing more was said.

The second was the result of a doorbell ring.  Again, good cause, but she didn’t have a petition, but did want to sell memberships and get donations.  I gave her the same “don’t spend my charitable dollars there” speech.  She immediately dropped the smile and chatty demeanor and said, “Well, thank you for your ideological support,” and left.  I think she was being nice, but that’s not how I received it; I received it as a rebuke.  And I saw it as an absence of balance.  As any fundraiser will tell you, there aren’t two points on the fundraising spectrum:  yes or no.  There is the third—and frequently large—category of “maybe.”   But neither had been taught to have that conversation and so each left with very unbalanced—unnuanced—information.  (Ironically, the group for which I signed the petition could come back to me with one of those “we will close our doors tomorrow without your gift” pleas and I would not re-allocate my charitable dollars, which I would absolutely do for the other organization, which got nothing from me.)  That either/or—and not balanced—approach cost them.