Exploring the Future pt. 2 - Implications
What good does thinking about the future do if it doesn’t turn into action? In my first Exploring the future post, I shared a summary of many trends that I think will shape the future of the social sector, how we work, and how we live. I linked some of the best sources I found online and named the brilliant mentors and colleagues that allowed me to interview them for this series.
In this post, I’ll walk you through some of the implications of these trends. In my third post, I’ll highlight some organizations I’ve learned about that are either poised to take advantage of these trends or are making major shifts so they can be ready for the future. And in my fourth post, I’ll talk more about what I think these trends mean for Coeffect and for me personally.
Before I dive in, some additional credit is due. In addition to the people I listed in my first post, I have two others I want to explicitly thank:
Banks Benitez — We had a lengthy conversation about trends while hiking near Winter Park a few weeks ago… thanks for the insight and the adventure.
Lydia Hooper — We had the opportunity to connect just last week, and I really appreciate how you challenge my thinking.
A few people have questioned whether I fully grasp the privilege that I have which allows me to consider future trends. If you’ve worked with me, I hope you’ll remember me as a person that embodies gratitude. Many people don’t have time, energy, or opportunity to think critically about the future. I do, and the least I can do is to share some of what I’ve learned so you can benefit from this learning journey as much as I have.
Today, I’m structuring my thoughts by the groups I think they’re most relevant to. These include
Organization leaders in general
Folks who work in the social and philanthropic sector
Evaluators — individuals who help nonprofits collect data and measure their impact
As before, I don’t promise this list is comprehensive. It represents some of the most important and powerful ideas that came out of my research, but I hope you’ll send me a message pointing out the biases you observe and what I’ve missed.
Implications for organization leaders
My research alongside my own work with clients makes one thing clear: we need to think beyond the office and the 9–5. In terms of where work happens, COVID has forced many of us to realize that working in a shared workspace isn’t necessary for many “office jobs.” One mentor shared with me a telling insight — many of her friends have found that their work cultures dramatically improved once they began working from home, because their in-office cultures were so toxic. Beyond the impact to culture, reducing in-office time to “only when necessary” results in less commuting (contributing positively to climate change) and a lower need for commercial office space (reducing costs and freeing up real estate for housing).
In addition to where we work, we may need to consider how much we work. My research with Uncharted around their shift to a 4-day-workweek shows that an organization can not only work remotely, but can decrease working hours without a negative impact on culture, workplace support, work performance, or creativity. It’s possible, but not easy — Uncharted planned for success, learned to prioritize more effectively, structured better meetings, and debriefed on their progress weekly to adapt (more details here).
Photo Credit: 303 Magazine
Several sources, including Fast Company, also pointed out that culture and values will continue to become increasingly important in the workplace of the future. Several sources suggest that shifts in technology and working from home may lead to more small and mid-sized organizations being able to effectively operate in a given sector. For each of these organizations, being very clear about their values and demonstrating them day-in and day-out will help them find the right customers and the right staff.
If we as organizations leaders are willing to make changes in where, when, and how we work, we need to address the question of work as identity. Twenty-five years ago Robert Putnam wrote about our long-term trend towards reduced participation in Civil Society, and greater reliance on workplaces for connection in his book Bowling Alone. His commentary is as relevant today as it was in 1995. The truth is that the workplace is a default source for belonging, friendship, and social status for many of us, and it is more difficult to develop authentic relationships in a remote work environment. I think it’s important that organizations encourage their staff to find meaningful relationships and identity outside of the workplace, so the future of work doesn’t lead to a future of loneliness.
Finally, organization leaders need to take concrete actions to address diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in their workplaces. Equity in the Center’s Awake to Woke to Work outlines some of these opportunities very well, through their description of the race equity cycle:
Awake: Ensuring racially diverse people are represented in staff and leadership roles
Woke: Ensuring your organization creates a culture where everyone is comfortable sharing their perspectives and team members are equipped to talk about racial inequities.
Work: Using the organization’s products, services, brand, contracting and compensation practices to address the root causes of racial inequity.
Implications for the Social & Philanthropic Sectors
Getting more specific, there are several implications of my research for people at all levels in the social and philanthropic sectors.
The first clear implication for the social and philanthropic sectors is that we all must do better around engaging community members as we try to understand a problem and come up with solutions. While organizations often look to people like me to help them collect feedback from community members on an initiative already in place, there is a trend towards more engaging community members when determining what the strategy should be to begin with. Listening tours have been in vogue with local foundations here in Denver including the Colorado Health Foundation and the Caring for Denver Foundation. A similar trend is occurring in governments, which are exploring new forms of citizen participation. While I’m encouraged by this, I think it’s important to make sure these exercises in listening aren’t extractive. Participants should, in general, be compensated for their time and have a range of opportunities to engage. Organizations should take care that their community engagement approach is approachable and that it proactively solicits input from a range of individuals, not just the most vocal or available community members.
Another important implication for the social sector is that it is increasingly important to be aware of the systems that surround a change initiative. Working in systems, as one of my mentors put it, is a “different beast” than influencing change within single organizations and requires different techniques for strategy, execution, and learning. Collective impact has received a huge amount of attention in the social sector, and for good reason: It provides a playbook for cross-organization systems change. Some of the latest research on Collective Impact, from looking at 25 collective impact examples, shows that it can absolutely be effective at delivering improvements for an entire population. It’s crucial, however, that there is an effective backbone organization and the initiative has the funding to evolve over several years. This is challenging, as most of the foundations I know shift priorities every few years and government agencies shift funding every 2–4 years based on changing election cycles.
A third implication for the social sector is that we need to make financing more equitable. Trust-Based Philanthropy was one of the most helpful sources pointing out opportunities to build equity within grantmaking practice. It highlights several ways that philanthropy can redistribute power — and I think it’s important that folks working within nonprofits look for similar opportunities. For example, an important suggestion that nonprofits can implement is to streamline any kind of application, so organizations do not need to hire a grant writer to request funding, and individuals seeking support in a time of need do not need the help of a social worker or community navigator to access that resource. To make this happen, it's important that those with greater power in an application process also take a greater amount of time to gather the information they need.
Implications for Evaluators
Getting even more specific, I think there are several implications of these future trends for evaluators and individuals like me who are using data in the social sector.
One of the first is that we need to be aware of the biases we perpetuate when we advocate for “evidence-based” and “data-driven” solutions. Historically (and probably still) some problems and solutions have been researched more than others because they drew interest from philanthropists and supported a white-centric and western worldview. This means that we need to be careful about how we, as evaluators, advocate for how research is used. Research will help us solve problems that are similar to those that have been solved effectively before — and can help us determine the relative merits of similar approaches. Research can help us identify when something that has been studied doesn’t work as planned. But a lack of research about a solution doesn’t mean there’s no potential there — mental models, power dynamics, and politics also influence what research is conducted and what isn’t.
One of the big trends in evaluation has been an emphasis on learning. The argument goes that in highly uncertain environments, it’s impossible to create a plan with preconceived outcomes. Thus, instead of evaluating whether preconceived outcomes have been met, we should be more focused on learning and constantly improving. This case study on the Colorado Health Foundation is a great example of an organization that transitioned from a focus on reporting on “lowest common denominator” metrics across it’s grantees to facilitating learning loops, which proved to be more valuable. The Emergent Learning platform came up several times in my research as one of the best suites of tools for organized learning, and one I use elements of it often.
On the other hand, one of my mentors wisely states that we “need to know when to be a partner, and when to be a critic.” The risk with focusing too much on learning is that we ultimately aren’t evaluating whether the whole social change initiative we are a part of is working. A learning focus can also put the evaluator in a lower-power position of figuring out how to make a strategy work, instead of determining what the strategy should be. There’s a time for both of these ways of thinking, but it’s up to us as evaluators to name the differences and advocate for applying both at the proper time.
Two practices that evaluation thought-leaders repeatedly suggest (and I support) are creating a Theory of Change and identifying Learning Questions. A Theory of Change is a mental model of a problem, and how an intervention, organization, or system influences positive change. Learning questions are typically related to a Theory of Change (e.g., does “x” actually lead to “y”?). One mentor helpfully suggested that it’s important to explore how race has influenced a problem before identifying potential solutions. This person also suggested that we need to be thoughtful about who we engage to define a Theory of Change and name learning questions. People with lived experience wrestling with a challenge should help define the Theory of Change for a solution and the related Learning Questions that evaluators can then explore.
Finally, another one of my mentors predicted that there is going to be an ever-growing need for helping for-profit businesses understand their impact. As more companies are portraying themselves as socially conscious, the bar for what kind of proof they need will get higher and consumers will be influenced by this in their buying decisions. This same mentor mentioned an important caveat, though — evaluators will need to find ways of linking positive social returns to positive financial outcomes if they expect to be employed in the long-term. This will create pressure for creative and inaccurate reporting for businesses, much like the trend for large-scale nonprofit studies to overstate positive claims.
Wrapping Up
Which of these implications challenge you? I’ve outlined implications for organization leaders, social and philanthropic sector professionals, and other people like me who identify as evaluators. In my next installment, I’ll highlight several organizations that are considering these implications in the work they do. What did I miss? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you!