Managing for Systems Entrepreneurship
Management is the process of organizing, planning, leading, and controlling resources to achieve a goal. Coalitions and even movements need good management. We help our clients to establish the management structure required to succeed in maintaining the vitality of a collective and advancing the achieving systems change.
Management of coalitions or movements is understandably different from managing an individual organization. It requires two systems working in parallel, one to manage the group itself and another to manage the actions to achieve the established goals.
The way a collective establishes its management, its evaluation, and permanence will often determine the success of the effort and the commitment of the members. Collectives need some form of distributed leadership and responsibilities so that each member is engaged and has a sense of ownership of the work. Distributed leadership also ensures that no one member can take over the agenda. A model with too much distribution of leadership and management responsibilities, however, can hinder the efficiency of decision making and execution.
Effective managers of coalitions recognize that members have their own work; their time and resources are limited. Hence, securing the resources to communicate with the membership, engage members in decision-making, and keep track of commitments is a necessity. Much of the work can be done either by volunteers or can be assigned to the staff of member organizations, but as the coalition grows, it will demand to have staff paid or assigned on exclusivity to the effort. Online tools for networking and project management can be very helpful in making the task of running a collective easier.
Many individual organizations have members, branches, or offices in different cities, countries or even continents. This means human resources and infrastructure, hence a need for management. Coalitions and movements, depending on the issues they are focused on, might also need to execute actions on the ground across a country, a region, or the planet. Thus, many collectives have members distributed in vastly different places. Depending on their goals, they execute in parallel actions that are global, regional, and local. Hence, collectives also need appropriate and often sophisticated management systems that reflect the different contexts, priorities, and needs in which different members operate.
We help our clients establish an effective blueprint for the management of internal and external systems and procedures and the resources needed. Further, we advise our clients on how to set up the management systems of a coalition to work effectively and efficiently.
Management Functions:
Within a coalition or movement, there are key functions that require different levels of resource dedication: strategy, marketing/communications, finance, human resources, technology, operations, and infrastructure.
The efficient structuring and execution of these functions allow collectives to:
- Sustain the effort for the time required to achieve a goal.
- Design financial systems and budgets that cover the full range of needs required for systems change work.
- Source and retain excellent volunteers, staff, and advisors for long-term work.
- Create a growth path for the organization and its staff if a formal structure has been created.
- Set up the collective to bring in different kinds of revenue from grants to service provision to product sales.
- Run effective communications and systems to coordinate the work and engage the public.
All these functions must be tailored to allow for an operational style that can thrive in spite of resistance and uncertainty. Systems change happens with the support of many but also against the wishes of many. Rarely in society these days do we find issues that are supported by an overwhelming majority of the population. And there is uncertainty on many other fronts as well. Society can change fast. Opportunities may arise quickly. Policies and governments can flip. Public opinion in the market might shift. While institutions define a path for change and a strategy upfront, they may very well need to re-align along the way. Building flexibility and nimbleness into the structure is important.