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How often do you consider what stands between you, or your organization, and operating at the highest levels of performance? It is a constant struggle that most of us, including yours truly, regularly fail at. We misallocate resources, we allow our time to be usurped by meaningless meetings, we scatter our attention across tasks that have nothing to do with our mission… the list goes on and on.
I’m often surprised in what I like to call, “moments of inevitability.” Another way to think about this is those times when you actually have to “put up or shut up.” I’m talking about moments when, if you don’t deliver, or find a solution, or come up with a satisfactory answer, you lose the contest, someone gets hurt or you go out of business.
Amazingly, so often in these times, tasks that were impossible get done, creativity abounds and teams function with an efficiency that is a thing of beauty.
My guest for the 169th Terms of Reference Podcast, Nadim Matta, understands the power of these moments. In fact, his organization, the Rapid Results institute, purposefully uses what they call 100 day sprints to create something of a pressure cooker environment to help social sector teams achieve meaningful results.
You can connect with Nadim here:
IN TOR 169 YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
- How to make communities understand the importance of metrics for impact and performance.
- How to use the “100 days” frameworks to quickly mobilize communities.
- Nadim’s work in youth homelessness, health,
- How to train people in “results-first” mentality
- Why sometimes it makes sense on an institutional level to start over from scratch when defining goals, roles and culture
OUR CONVERSATION FEATURES THE FOLLOWING
Names:
- Rapid Results Initiative
- Democratic Republic of Congo Ministry of Education (Social Protection)
- World Bank
- City of Cleveland
- Y Combinator
- Eric Barker, author, Barking Up The Wrong Tree
- Frederick Laloux, author, Reinventing Organizations
- Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors, Switch
- Dennis Whittle & Feedback Labs (TOR 158)
- Blair Glencore & The Accountability Lab (TOR 38)
- General Electric
Topics:
- Results, Rapid Results, Measurement, Impact
- Homelessness, youth, veteran
- “100-days challenges”, Momentum, Productivity, Intensiveness
- Organizational culture, Risk, Collaboration, Competition
- Engagement, Empowerment, “Enablement”
- Soft-skills
- NO2 Emissions, Environmentalism, Sustainability
- Social Protection
- Coaching
- Coworking, Peer networking
Places:
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Cleveland
EPISODE CRIB NOTES
Download an automated transcript.
New Haven
03:09
Rapid Results Initiative
Helping communities with multiple representatives move the needle on an indicator that matters
Case in point: Homelessness, especially youth and veterans
Achieve results in rates and times thought impossible
100 day challenges
Create a space where representatives can innovate in new ways, collaborate more intensively
100 days: Good balance, “biting time” enough to go above “low hanging fruit”
5 cities have 100-D teams to move into homelessness
Looking into stable housing
06:13
A-has
Communities have tackled youth homelessness
After the 100 days, momentum is gained
Asset aggregation, streamlining the service, coordinating a response
Without adding new resources, delivery becomes better
People need less support in providing services
Trust, collaboration, among organizations
Sometimes among competitors
08:55
The process
(Next: Sub-Saharan Africa)
Communities reach out to RRI, who follows closely
RRI brings each player to the table by request
First, community applications
Then, screening
Sometimes government gets involved, not always
Social Protection in Africa led by government
DRC government were trained in Rapid Results
They reached out directly to RRI
Got support from the World Bank
12:43
100 Sigma
There are some principles
Built into the “journey”, tracks
The tracks are customized to some degree
What goes into is entirely driven by participants
First question: Who else is involved?
Who else is going through the same journey
Multiple groups going through the same path
Second: 100-day focus
Something new, support existing initiative
Particular focus, general or situational target characteristics
Series of conversations
Next: Who should be in charge of what?
Team building focused on delivery
Empowered by organizational leaders
Leaders must have institutional back, freedom
Striving for small teams, not always realistic
Teams assemble, integrate for 2 days
Achieve goal understanding, communication lines, commitment
“The right frame of mind”
Get everyone excited, grounded
Then: Experimentation
Governance structures, leadership if need be
“We create a new organizational mechanism for getting things done”
“A new social contract at the team”
An experience of seeing what’s possible when organizations do everything right
When everyone has a say
20:42
100 Multi Hurdles
Intense facilitation to make no one feels things were shoved down anyone’s throats
“We’re asking leaders to step back, cede some control”
Asking trust from leaders
It’s hard to give decision-making to others
Let leaders think about involving people in day-to-day decisions
RRI’s obsession to achieve things soon, but to “be transformative”
Repetitions are helpful
Subsequent 100-day rounds
Eventually, community leaders are in charge of the next 100 days
Put them in positions of achievement, upon what’s being done previously
Cleveland: Assembling a mechanism to help and prioritize youth homeless solutions
Are organizations adopting the ways set in previous 100 days?
What needs to happen so operations have higher effects? What deserves priority?
Recommendations turned into commitments
Often leaders feel empower and achieve higher impact
Reinforcing sustainability through community leadership
“Softer skills” evolve: communication, relationships
Team members increase trust during the challenges
Newcomers are more easily integrated into the dynamic
Innovations evolve
29:14
Evolving RRIapidly
Continuous discovery
“The better you get at it, the more you realize what you don’t know about it”
“and how much discovery is ahead of you”
Impact can always be better, longer lasting
Beyond 100 days
Supporting scale
RRI is about 12 people
Is a local solution for government exportable?
More deliberate focus on training and “enablement”
Leaders needing RRI less to achieve results
Sponsorships, coaching
Consolidate infrastructure
Coworking spaces with government and private teams
“Like Y Combinator”
Weekly coaching
High and quick impact in sustainability, environmentalism
PM’s office accelerated innovation
A team reduced NO2 emissions by 16% in 100 days
“Equivalent to taking 450k cars off the streets permanently”
“Just one example”
General Electric joined the coworking space at some point
Value proposition involve peer networking
RRI looking into coworking more deeply
33:53
Attention
Eric Barker’s Barking Up The Wrong Tree blog
Frederick Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations book
(Reinventing the Corporation is a different book by J. Naisbitt)
Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Switch “and a bunch of other books”
Dennis Whittle & Feedback Labs (TOR 158)
Blair Glencore & The Accountability Lab (TOR 38)
684 words
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