Building a good organization starts at “Home”

Make your organization strong by starting with your team.

The foundation and structure of a house is your financial management and administration (board and staff). It is important to have a very strong foundation and structure to weather the storms and provide a clean, safe home. Each room in the house is a program. You have the kitchen (the program that feeds) You have the bedroom (the program where you sleep) The bathroom (the program that is sanitary) The living room (The program of community).

So the rooms names for your organization are your program titles and they have different purposes to accomplish your mission.

Now in order for the house to function the structure of the house, financial management and administration, need to be in smooth working order.  

Finances always get a large amount of attention for a few reasons: 

1. It's obvious if there aren't enough funds.

2. It is tangible and easy to talk about

3. People want to get paid.  

What is often harder and less desirable to talk about is the team functioning.  

Here are the reasons why: 

1. People often assume if we talk about how a team functions it means there will be conflict and most people avoid conflict like stinging nettle  

2. It is much harder to understand how to have a well-oiled, smooth functioning team because people are complex 

3. We all have different comfort levels with relationships and talking about them in a work environment seems to be crossing a boundary.

Here is the thing.

Organizations that thrive and are successful have been found to have a deep sense of trust, clear understanding of roles and the ability to have open communication without the fear of personal attack.

Therefore, I find it to be essential to work on the infrastructure if you want your strategic plan and mission to be successful.