Organizational Change for Decision-Making
For this week’s Three Things, we’re shifting gears a bit to the process of transitioning a communications team, government relationship team, or even an entire organization to a data-driven approach to decision-making.
In our client work over the years we’ve seen many of the brilliant, motivated, dedicated people we get to work with struggle with how to transition their team, department, or organization to making strategic, data-driven decisions. Sometimes, it’s a problem of measurement: what should you measure and how? We’ve talked about measurement before, and we’ll certainly be visiting the topic again (see our past musings on measurement here: http://www.englin.net/tag/measurement/).
But as often as it’s a problem of measurement, it’s a problem of shifting mindsets, procedures, and approaches. So, this week we offer Three Things to try when you’re responsible for ensuring a shift to data-driven decision making.
1) Start small and simple. Pick something minor and relatively innocuous as a demonstration case. Perhaps start with your e-newsletter, or some subset of advocacy ask, or focus on a small element of your website or direct mail. Develop a simple set of metrics that relate to your goals (if you’ve not already done so), and identify a decision that should be influenced by those metrics, but isn’t yet. It might be something as simple as what day of the week to send emails or who “signs” the advocacy emails. Specify a timeframe, a test, and an ideal outcome, for example “We’re going to segment the next three monthly email newsletters into random groups of five, and send one segment per weekday. Then we’ll compare open rates and response rates by day to decide which day or days are best for sending future email newsletters.”
2) Be clear about the difference between results and “optics.” The Executive Committee of the Board likes to see thousands of email advocacy actions; you know that hundreds from key districts would be just as effective and cost less to deliver. The disconnect trickles down to grassroots staff – jobs are dependent on making sure the Board sees the advocacy actions, not whether the key members of congress heard most, and most often, or ultimately whether those members of congress voted the way you needed them to. Be clear on both; you’ll make decisions that drive results, and you might make others that drive the optics that are important in the context of organizational culture and politics. Strategic decision-making requires clear-eyed and honest assessment of which imperative you’re working towards.
3) Be brave. We know it can feel impossibly difficult to make this transition. We’ve helped clients struggle through it, seen staff rebel and leaders buckle. But at the end of the day you go to work to make a difference, and you know that the best way to deliver is by using resources in the most cost-effective ways to meet your goals — to do that, you need to be able to make decisions based on data, not just gut. Start small, demonstrate the value, tough it out, be brave, and we’re here to help if you need us.
And that’s our somewhat one-off Three Things for the week. We’d love to know what you think! Share in the comments below.
And, as always, if you’ve got Three Things you’ve been dying to tell the world, shoot us an email – we’d love to share your ideas in this space!