Law 2: Proof, Transparency and all the baggage that comes with
SalesForce is an incredible management tool. It can inform a manager with more information about their staff’s time/effort than they ever dreamed possible. It can bring a veritable renaissance of programmatic improvements and outcomes as well as the most transparency that your nonprofit has ever known. Wherein we find our double edge.
Repeat after me: Push Up.
What? This isn’t a fitness post, don’t worry (donuts are encouraged here).
The problem is that such an availability of granular information inherently begs the question of how you use it. At my former nonprofit, a specific program had an accepted expectation that staff spend 60-70% of their time doing Job Development. SalesForce changed that
Push Up.
How did it change that expectation? Well, it turns out that people weren’t coming anywhere NEAR that amount of time on Job Development. Not even close. What do you do?
Do you reprimand the staff that doesn’t make their 60-70% quota? Do you dock their pay for every minute they fall short in the hope that they up their game? I think that the far more effective conversation comes in HOW staff can get there; what change can staff make to get closer to that expectation?
Push Up. (makes more sense now, don’t it?)
SalesForce can provide you with an awesome amount of information on what other members of your nonprofit are doing and when they do it. The question is; are you going to use that information to punish their poor behavior or reinforce their positive actions.
(The answer is Push Up.)