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What I learned was complacency and “false urgency” are the biggest barriers to getting things done.  Complacency is comfort with the status quo, generated by past success or perceived success.  False urgency by contrast comes from failure.  It’s essentially unproductive panic and activity.

True urgency, on the other hand, is a very good thing.  It is the visceral, highly motivated urge to do something important, day in and day out.

So how do you create that?

The single most important thing you can do is to appeal to the heart not just the head of your colleagues.  (This reminds me of the elephant in Switch.)  As Kotter says, “Excellent information, by itself, with the best data and logic, can win over minds and thoughts but rarely increases needed urgency… A logical case that is part of a heart-engaging experience can win over hearts and minds and increase needed urgency.”

He then told the story of a corporation spending months on strategy and consultants and committees to make his point in terms both vivid and scary.

He offers four key tactics.  Here they are with my commentary:

1. Bring the outside in: Don’t just navel gaze!  Reconnect internal reality with external opportunities and risks.  Bring in emotionally compelling data, people, videos, sites and sounds.  Put front and center stories of your customers, competitors, donors and beneficiaries.  Send out scouts to experience front-line, real world circumstances.

2. Behave with urgency every day: Don’t be content - or anxious.  Show the real sense of urgency - fire in the belly for a worthy and clear aim.  Free up time in your day to think straight - because clutter and fatigue undermine urgency.

3. Find opportunity in crisis: Handled right and with caution, a crisis can destroy complacency and inspire sound action.  But remember: Crises alone don’t create urgency - in fact, they can create paralysis.  And manufactured crises create resentment.  If you have a crisis, use it as a rallying point.  If you don’t have one, don’t stand around waiting for one!  Create urgency through other means.

4. Deal with the Nonos: Remove or neutralize those who are complacent or creating destructive, false urgency.  The NoNo is ready with ten reasons why the current situation is fine, why your problems don’t exist or why you need more data before you do anything.  A skeptic is fine - even good.  But NoNos aren’t about healthy questioning.  They’re about automatically shooting down change.  Kotter says not to bother co-opting a NoNo - it won’t work.  Nor will ignoring them, because they are good at creating mischief, not to mention organizational civil war.  So what do you do?  He offers three options:

NoNo Option A: Distraction.  Send the NoNo on a special assignment suited to her skills or give them lots of other work.  Or get them riled up about something else.
NoNo Option B: Removal.  Fire the NoNo.
NoNo Option C: Immobilization.  Kotter says “lightweight” NoNos can be exposed in public and social pressures can be used to neutralize their behavior.  But calling out someone only works if they aren’t powerful or hard core.

Of course, if you do all of this, you will be successful - and generate a new round of complacency, Kotter points out.  So you have to keep working the tactics, again and again.  Urgency is needed all along the way.  Sigh.  The work of a change agent is never done, my friends!

*Hat tip to birthday girl Jocelyn Harmon for giving me a copy of this excellent book!

It’s not easy to turn the focus from your own perspective to that of your audiences, but turn it, you must.

When you hit a brick wall before you even leave your own building, don’t give up.  Don’t stop pressing for taking the perspective of those you must reach.  Don’t abandon the quest to do things differently and better.  Because it’s the only way forward.

No one ever built a great organization by navel-gazing and never changing.  Ever. 

Advocate for meeting the needs of your donors and your beneficiaries and your customers above all else.  It will lead to success, I swear.  As a wise CSO recently put it to me: “Meeting the needs of the customer is always the winning hand.  Always.”  The best companies in the world get that.  And their stock prices show there is positive payback.

If you do right by your donors, the money will come.

If you do right by those you serve, the mission will come.

If you do right by the status quo, nothing will come.  And that has to be more scary than trying to make things happen.

Don’t turn back at the brick wall.  Find a way around it, over it or under it.  There’s usually a secret passageway - in the form of a different messenger, a different message, or different positioning.  And if you can’t find that, there’s always the fallback: Do it right and then seek forgiveness, not permission.  More likely, you’ll get more than forgiveness.  Perhaps even applause - because the results will be something to celebrate. 

This example seems obvious, yet in our communication we often focus more on hives than on wells. We talk about saving the earth, ending poverty, or creating a great society. Every day, we have to remind ourselves that the hive is what we’re building; the well is what our audience needs to see.

At this week’s Social Media for Nonprofits conference, Paull Young of charity:water shared what he’s learned about digital engagement in his work over the past two years, and it reminded me of my story of the hive and the well.  Charity:water has done 6,165 water projects over the years - which is a lot of wells - and the exceptional job they do in talking about their work holds lessons for us all.

Paul shared five keys to success:

1. Be positive: Inspire and create sense of collective impact.  Don’t lead with guilt and sadness—it is not the stuff of a long-term relationship, nor the kind of content people will want to share with others.

2. Focus on stories not money: You do better as a fundraiser telling great stories about your work rather than spotlighting the dollars.  (Charity:water never asks for money on social media or in their emails.  I wouldn’t go that far but agree with the overall principle that you should focus on the good you do rather than what you get.

3. Do it wrong quickly: Try a lot of things - with the Internet economy, it’s quick and affordable to test.

4. Be personal - and that doesn’t just mean using a donor’s name.  Charity:water made videos singling out and thanking 250 supporters - each staff member participated.

5. Focus on impact - wells, not hives!  This is where charity:water shines.  They have great photos from the field, GPS coordinates for donor projects and an overall amazing donor experience.

No doubt about it - charity:water is well worth emulating.  Think about them when you’re gravitating toward the hive.

1. Join the conversation around the cause: She listens first - always a good rule for social media - and chimes in on conversations others are having about her cause.

2. Share content and collateral that’s unique to the organization.  One of the strengths of DonorsChoose is its stewardship.  When you donate more than $50, you get wonderful thank you notes from students helped by your contribution.  She posts some of the best (and cutest) notes on the DonorsChoose Facebook page.

3. Celebrating big news.  Don’t be meek about posting good news - like crossing fundraising milestones.  Give your community cause to celebrate.

4. Share staff culture.  DonorsChoose staff tweet each other messages about birthdays and other events to reflect their fun, tight-knit culture.

5. Remember the medium.  Think big picture – people on Facebook respond to different things than Twitter.  Anna tried trivia questions on both, and they were popular on Facebook but flopped on Twitter. 

6. Balance quality and frequency.  Don’t just post for the sake of posting.  Anna learned the hard way that if she posted because she felt she must and the content wasn’t meaningful, it lowered engagement levels.

Good advice.

And although this wasn’t on Anna’s list, she was doing it, so I’m adding it:

Set a goal and test and measure against it.  DonorsChoose counts conversion to donations - with followers or likes secondary aims.  That helps them know where to focus, what to do and how to measure. 

1. Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor, thus all those annoying address labels charities send out as a fundraising ploy.

2. Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. That’s why you want your champions spreading the word about your cause among their friends and family.

3. Scarcity - Perceived scarcity fuels demand. “Only four memberships are left” prompts action!

4. Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures.  Just check out the well-dressed man in a suit jay-walking in the below video.  Everyone on the street corner follows.  When he wears a sweatshirt, no one follows. That’s the principle of authority at work.

5. Social Proof - People will do what other people are doing. That’s why it’s great to show who is taking action for your cause - others are likely to conform.

6. Commitment and Consistency - If people commit to an idea or goal, they are more likely to follow through.  I’ve covered that several times on the blog lately.  It’s why pledging is a great option for people who aren’t ready to take action.

If you don’t have time to read the book, watch this wonderful 30 minute interview with Cialdini from Swedish television (don’t worry, it’s in English).  He walks through each principle, with vivid examples of these ideas being used for social good, for manipulation and for propaganda.  It’s well worth your time.

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So do you treat your donors well?  To figure it out, take this quiz.  (It’s free.)

And remember the rock bottom, bare minimums when it comes to donor stewardship!

1. ALWAYS THANK YOUR DONORS: Always.  No exceptions.
2. THANK THEM EARLY: You should thank your donors within a few days of their gift. 
3. THANK THEM OFTEN:  Thank your donors several times, over time, and keep reporting back on the difference they have made.
4. THANK THEM ACCURATELY: Make sure you have correctly spelled the donor’s name, stated the amount and date of the donation, included appropriate language for taxes and carefully noted if the gift was made in honor of someone else.

If I had a dollar for every charity that didn’t do these four things when I gave…

The key finding? Millennials react to marketing differently.

Here were the takeaways:

1. Millennials don’t respond to TV ads as much as their elders. Younger people have always measured as less responsive to TV ads than older people, but the gap has grown with Millennials.

2. With digital, you don’t see that difference.  Millennials are about as responsive to digital ads as other generations.

3. Millennials respond to the same advertising approaches as prior generations. They care most about what makes a brand unique or better - and they react best to the product and brand shown clearly.  In other stories, they’ve also been shown to put a premium on trust.

4. Millennials are more engaged in all kinds of media than older folks. For example, millennials had engagement scores that were 22.2% higher than boomers with digital media.

5. Millennials may respond less to TV ads, but at least they remember them longer. This finding was amusing to me - as someone with a fading memory, I think that’s just the gift of the young—total recall!

So what does this mean to you?  If you’re seeking to engage younger supporters, the digital avenue is the best.  Make clear what makes your cause special.  Be authentic.  And don’t be so creative you forget the basics: clear, simple communication and a memorable messaging wins the day, whatever the generation.

In speaking about this finding, David Armano of Edelman notes, it is important that we “share the stage with ‘regular’ people who have a voice via a variety of social channels,” as well as to be “in tune with the topics and issues they care about and discuss. Last year I speculated that the decline in attention given toward people like ourselves—our friends and peers may have been related to social media fatigue. This year, it’s possible that many of us who make social networking part of our digital routines have gotten a bit better at filtering the signal from noise, thereby being both more generous but focused with our finite attention spans.”

From my perspective, this is just one more piece of data illustrating the importance of third-party endorsement in all of your outreach and engagement.  (More evidence is here.) You can’t be your own, only messenger.  You need respected authority figures, experts and definitely, everyday champions - who are more powerful than ever.

Take two minutes and look at your latest outreach piece or your website or your organization’s Facebook page.  Who is speaking for you?  Where are they on the trust barometer?  If it’s your CEO or ED, you may need additional voices.

(Hat tip to Caryn Stein here at Network for Good for the data!)

The Guide walks you through how to create effective videos on a shoestring - and how to use YouTube for Good to engage your community.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here is one shoestring video I really like.  It connects, tells a great story and shows where the money goes.  That’s how it’s done - and done well.