Provocare Coaching

These days the health and credibility of many organisations is sadly judged on how good their social media coverage is and how sexy and or palatable they look in a political context or how big they are—often relying on ‘poverty porn’ countered by staged ‘heroic’ looking interventions, and glossy well-presented stats.

When you scratch beneath this superficial projected facaed, you can start to obtain a clearer picture.  Underpaid, undervalued Staff, funding lead rather than service user lead, high staff turnover, disingenuous connection to the communities they claim to serve, benevolence over empowerment, arm’s length disconnected governance and poor accountability, low meaningful productivity and endless cycle of meetings about the meeting, over planning, over thinking, risk aversion, inability to speak truth to power,  with no real resulting impactful actions.

So, what does a healthy organisation look like? Below are some core indicators from my perspective

 What does a healthy organisation look like to you? Please share your thoughts in the comment box.

• Clear mission

Being clear on your destination or the end game should be the fuel of any decent organisation.  It should drive the culture of the organisation, and the organisation’s leadership should ensure the organisation mission is its heart and soul of all decision making and execution of its plans. In turn, it provides clarity, builds resilience, gives the foundation to reflective practice, inspire your members, your benefices, your Staff and provided the platform for people to align themselves with your work.

• Community lead

It is so easy for organisations to fall into traps of being led by funding trends, ever-shifting political priorities,  the latest short-lived rebranded ‘best practice fads’, or allowing their ego to lead their decisions to the detriment of the very people they exist to work with.

Our work needs to be guided by the community we serve: their strengths, their aspirations, their vision, their insights, their challenges.  The minute we lose sight of this, our effectiveness, our connections, our relevance all goes out the window.

Just like any business, the minute you stop listening to their customers usually leads to their slow and painful death.  

Of course, unlike businesses, we are not fans of doing for but rather with.  Organisations whose fundamentals are driven by community development and person-centred, wh oare locally-focused rarely fail. The only time they do is because funders have been unable to recognise and understand their value and impact, preferring to divert resources to ineffective disconnected larger organisations under the guise of efficiency.

• Unified in their approach

Organisations built around the personalities of individuals, or who operate in silos rather than the team have impeded operations, clunky and slow execution of plans, often suffer from poor performance and low productivity and tend to bread toxic workplaces.   Strong team-based approached allow for sharing of skills, shared responsibility and ownership, tend to be more agile, more productive, lower staff turnover and have a more meaningful impact.  

When there are disagreements, they tend to be dealt with quickly instead of festering.

• Impacting

A healthy organisation is a reflective organisation. It is one who knows what they are doing, why they are doing it, and they know what works and what to do when the shit is hitting the fan.

It has presence, is known, is trusted, is flexible, it programs make a real difference, it works with others, its outcome-driven, it’s creative, and is not afraid to put its hands up and admit when things are not working the way it should.  It knows quality over quantity and it is the individual stories not the Inflated stats that tell the true story of its work.

• Passion

Take your passion and make it happen! Passionate organisations drive change; it doesn’t rest and never gives up, it doesn’t let risk aversion from trying something new, or allow analysis paralysis to hinder progress.

Too many times I sat in meetings where the no Sayers allow, they’re overthinking, their negative outlook, or their expertise stall progresses.  (Yes, sometimes the experience stops progress) Any meeting that demotivates drain your energy’s or when other people negatively clouds your judgment, that is when it is time to leave.  Yes, there are obstacles and problems, but shifting our focus onto solutions and being strengthen based is a more productive debate to be having.

 Other areas

• Leadership development – Invests in Staff (paid and unpaid) and in all ways possible.
• Builds Connections, ever-growing and reflect the diversity of the community it serves
• It is future driven and doesn’t get bogged down on yesterdays drama
• It has effective and transparent governance, (and I don’t mean box-ticking or lip service)
•  It’s recognises its fault lines, celebrates and upscale its success.