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Mission Control: How Nonprofits and Governments Can Focus, Achieve More, and Change the World
In the last ten years the number of nonprofits and social sector organizations has grown by almost 25 percent, while charitable giving declined 30 percent over the same period. As a result, many organizations are chasing grants, tweaking and adding to their core activities to match what they think funders are looking for. Almost half of nonprofits surveyed nationally in 2014 said they added additional programs in the last year. The result is colloquially known as “mission creep”—organizations trying to be everything to everyone. Yet research suggests that the more goals individuals or organizations pursue, the less likely they are to achieve them, leaving these organizations often overwhelmed, underfunded, and unfulfilled.Mission How Nonprofits and Governments Can Focus, Achieve More, and Change the World is designed to restore focus and gain “mission control” to identify the things they should and should not do to drive impact. Drawing from the author’s experience of working with thousands of clients at nonprofits and government agencies around the world, both large and small, the book represents the stories of countless mission-driven organizations. Downey helps leaders, teams, executive directors, and boards with the critical task of clarifying an organization’s sweet spot at the intersection of what it is good at, what its clients need, and the activities that get measurable and sustainable results.
239 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 10, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 11, 2023
Well I thought I knew a fair bit about setting goals and mission statements. In fact, I recall one fascinating attempt by an interim CEO to run a group session to come up with a "mission statement".......It was a disaster and showed up the massive gaps in knowledge of the interim CEO. I think he greatly underestimated the knowledge and abilities of the people he was working with. But Liana has written a beautifully crafted book that should be a great help to people working in the non-profit areas to help the focus and get real outcomes......and maybe interim CEO's who wish to flex their management skills.
It's a bit like a journey: know your clients; gather facts; set your goal; identify your options; what works; what are your strengths; choose your approach; tell your story and plan for action.
There are some things there that I never even considered....such as tell your story but when it's pointed out it is so obvious.
And, as Liana explains it.....it is very easy for a charity group to be pulled in every direction because the needs are so great. But it doesn't actually make good sense for the charity to try and alleviate all these needs if the effort is going to be spread so thinly that nothing is really achieved. Hence the need for a concrete goal like "Deliver 100K homes".
One can see her background as a McKinsey consultant pretty much everywhere in the book. In fact some of the methodology is repeated in her ex-boss, Robert McClean's, book "Bulletproof problem solving"). And the brief section on presenting data is again pretty much what is reflected in Gene Zelazny's book "Say it with Charts". (Gene was Director visual communications for McKinsey and Co.)....Keep it simple...one message per chart. But her background in working with non-profit organisations also shines through. As she says, when you take away the profit motive (and profit as a measure of success) it becomes much harder to define what your goals are and sometimes how to measure success.
If mission control and success is a journey, then this is a great step by step guidebook to achieving that success.
Time for a confession. Liana is actually my daughter so I can't claim that this is an unbiased review...though I have tried to be objective. If there is a fault it's with the diagrams. I often find it with books where the data would be so much better presented in colour but you are not going to get colour in a relatively cheap publication. Ok nearly all of the diagrams work in the shades of grey and are legible....with the exception of the map on p27....figure 2.3. OK.... I get the gist of it that there is software out there that can do this sort of thing. But the sample (which I would kind of like to be able to read) is too small , too detailed and for my eyes, anyway, totally illegible. But the publisher/printer should have picked this up. Maybe they did and ignored it. I've actually had this sitting on the shelf alongside my desk. Yes I did skim it when it first came out but it's only now that I've gotten around to writing a review...which meant reading it carefully. And it was interesting to read about Nana Phyl who at 95 and in a nursing home was still so positive about everything. And the staff at the nursing home told us that she injected a whole new positive feeling into the nursing home when she arrived there. An example to us all.
It's easy reading and apparently backed up by a web site that I have not actually visited. She writes clearly and it's very well structured.....hard to lose your way....and each chapter has a short "nutshell" summary.
Easily worth five stars.
It's a bit like a journey: know your clients; gather facts; set your goal; identify your options; what works; what are your strengths; choose your approach; tell your story and plan for action.
There are some things there that I never even considered....such as tell your story but when it's pointed out it is so obvious.
And, as Liana explains it.....it is very easy for a charity group to be pulled in every direction because the needs are so great. But it doesn't actually make good sense for the charity to try and alleviate all these needs if the effort is going to be spread so thinly that nothing is really achieved. Hence the need for a concrete goal like "Deliver 100K homes".
One can see her background as a McKinsey consultant pretty much everywhere in the book. In fact some of the methodology is repeated in her ex-boss, Robert McClean's, book "Bulletproof problem solving"). And the brief section on presenting data is again pretty much what is reflected in Gene Zelazny's book "Say it with Charts". (Gene was Director visual communications for McKinsey and Co.)....Keep it simple...one message per chart. But her background in working with non-profit organisations also shines through. As she says, when you take away the profit motive (and profit as a measure of success) it becomes much harder to define what your goals are and sometimes how to measure success.
If mission control and success is a journey, then this is a great step by step guidebook to achieving that success.
Time for a confession. Liana is actually my daughter so I can't claim that this is an unbiased review...though I have tried to be objective. If there is a fault it's with the diagrams. I often find it with books where the data would be so much better presented in colour but you are not going to get colour in a relatively cheap publication. Ok nearly all of the diagrams work in the shades of grey and are legible....with the exception of the map on p27....figure 2.3. OK.... I get the gist of it that there is software out there that can do this sort of thing. But the sample (which I would kind of like to be able to read) is too small , too detailed and for my eyes, anyway, totally illegible. But the publisher/printer should have picked this up. Maybe they did and ignored it. I've actually had this sitting on the shelf alongside my desk. Yes I did skim it when it first came out but it's only now that I've gotten around to writing a review...which meant reading it carefully. And it was interesting to read about Nana Phyl who at 95 and in a nursing home was still so positive about everything. And the staff at the nursing home told us that she injected a whole new positive feeling into the nursing home when she arrived there. An example to us all.
It's easy reading and apparently backed up by a web site that I have not actually visited. She writes clearly and it's very well structured.....hard to lose your way....and each chapter has a short "nutshell" summary.
Easily worth five stars.
February 6, 2019
Books and reading are my go-to for everything. This was a perfect read as I begin to work diligently on our nonprofit in 2019. Her tips were detailed, yet presented simply, and extremely helpful. Along with that, the book was highly inspirational.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews