To follow up on last year’s navel gazing, here’s the roundup for 2008:

Places I’ve Slept:

California: Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, Poway;

Northwest: Seattle, CA; Portland and Silver Falls, Oregon;

Midwest: Denver, CO; Madison, WI;

South: New Orleans, LA;

East: Jersey City, NJ; Narragansett, RI;

Best Purchase: Jose Pierpont

Best Gift: Buttons

Best Book: PopCo by Scarlett Thomas

Best Album: Cloud Cult’s The Meaning of 8

Best Object: Butcher block kitchen table that has become my desk

Best Shoe: Dansko clogs

Best Project Brompt.com

I found my union card today and with it was a little Weingarten Rights card—explaining my right to have union representation during an interview by my employer. I didn’t particularly like the text of it, so this is from Wikipedia:

RULE 1: The employee must make a clear request for union representation before or during the interview. The employee cannot be punished for making this request.

RULE 2: After the employee makes the request, the employer must choose from among three options. The Employer must either: grant the request and delay questioning until the union representative arrives and has a chance to consult privately with the employee; deny the request and end the interview immediately; or give the employee a choice of having the interview without representation or ending the interview.

RULE 3: If the employer denies the request for union representation, and continues to ask questions, it commits an unfair labor practice and the employee has a right to refuse to answer. The employer may not discipline the employee for such a refusal.

In 2000, Weingarten Rights were extended to non-union employees (in the form of the right to have a coworker present during investigatory meetings). This was later rescinded in 2004.

Some protected activities still do exist for non-union employees:, including:

1. Free To Discuss Discipline, Wages and Benefits

Non-union employers cannot prohibit employees from discussing work conditions, wages or discipline. In Double Eagle Hotel & Casino, an employer violated the NLRA by promulgating a work rule that prohibited employees from sharing such information with each other or persons outside the company. Such a rule, according to the Board, “plainly infringes on upon Section 7 rights.”

1. Email Complaints About Company Policies

Non-union employers cannot terminate employees for sending mass emails complaining about new company policies. An employee’s “effort to incite other employees to help him preserve a vacation policy which he believed best served his interests, and perhaps the interests of other employees, unquestionably qualified his communication as being in pursuit of mutual aid or protection.” Even if the email does not request other employee participation and is sarcastic in nature, such communications remain protected under the NLRA.

1. Non-Union Employees Are Free to Walk Off The Job To Complain About Supervisors or Other Job Conditions

Another common trap is when non-union employees walk off a job to protest certain job conditions. Most employers naturally (but incorrectly) presume that they may terminate non-union employees for abandoning the job. But that is not always the case. If, for example, employees engage in a work stoppage due to a legitimate job complaint, the NLRA may protect such conduct. In Trompler, Inc., an employer was held liable for back pay and reinstatement for terminating six employees who walked off the job in response to unanswered complaints about their supervisor.Such a work stoppage may qualify as “protected concerted activity” under Section 7 of the NLRA.

Great comment from slashdot on English Units:

A league is about the distance a healthy man can walk on a good road in one hour. A fathom is about the height of a tall man; it is about eighteen hand widths (fingers closed). A US gallon is the volume of eight pounds of water. An imperial gallon (i.e. the UK gallon) is the volume of ten pounds of water.

One interesting thing about weights. The system of dram/ounce/pound is base 16, which makes division by two a practical measuring operation. Take a pound of something readily dividable, divide it into two equal portions (using a balance scale). Then repeat the process four times. The result is one ounce.

This shows the offsetting virtues of traditional units. While they are difficult to calculate with, they are convenient for measuring things – especially when it come to quantifying things for sale.

For example, consider length: 1 inch = approximately the width of a thumb 1 hand = 4 inches = width of a hand with fingers closed 1 ft = 3 hands 1 yard = 3 ft 1 fathom = 2 yards 1 rod = 5.5 yards = length of ox goad 1 chain = 22 yards = 100 links in standard survey chain

1 furlong = 10 chains = distance ox team can plow without rest 1 mile = 880 fathoms

Notice that if you lay out a square field such that an ox team can plow one furrow across then rest, you get a square with sides of exactly one furlong or 660 ft. The area of that field 43,600 square feet, which is nearly exactly one acre (43,560 ft).

For purposes of round measurement (no fractions), such as you would use in commerce, traditional measurement is far more convenient. If I’m buying liquor, the following units exhaust all the practical measures to which I might wish to round a purchase:

1 mouthful 1 jigger (aka 1 fluid ounce) = 2 mouthfuls 1 jack = 2 jiggers 1 gill = 2 jacks = 4 jiggers 1 cup = 2 gills = 8 jiggers = 16 mouthfuls 1 pint = 2 cups 1 quart = 2 pints = 4 cups 1 gallon = 4 quarts = 8 pints = 16 cups 1 cask = 16 gallons 1 barrel = 2 casks 1 hogshead = 2 barrels 1 butt = 2 hogsheads = 4 barrels 1 tun = 2 butts = 4 hogsheads = 8 barrels

In such a system of measurement, you never, ever have to deal with fractions. Breaking down into smaller units is simply a matter of dividing a whole into two equal parts. So if you want to buy things without having to specify fractions, traditional units are the bee’s knees (equal to 1 / 128 of an inch … no just kidding). That’s not so important in a world with calculators – you just calculate a unit price.

Still, if you want to buy eight feet, three inches of rope, you can measure out twenty-four hands and three thumbs and come rather close.

Fact: I now feel uncomfortable when people talk about Web 2.0 as a philosophy.

Last night, I had a free-ranging conversation with my longtime friend and occassional coworker/coproducer Danielle Martin centered around her developing thesis on “ Participatory Media Catalyzed by Ouside Facilitators” at MIT.

In developing her thesis, she had been referring to Web 2.0 as a philosophy—something I have done and had many, many other people have do as well—in a conversation with Henry Jenkins. Who (and this is hearsay, I admit), said, “Don’t. Web 2.0 is a business model.” And he’s right.

Tim O’Reilly, says this: “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.” This is business model.

Instead, Danielle pointed me to the work of Axel Bruns and his conception of Produsers and Produsage: produsers engage not in a traditional form of content production [producer -> distributor -> consumer], but are instead involved in produsage – the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement.

Bruns, in an interview with Henry Jenkins, lays out 4 principles of produsage:

• Open Participation, Communal Evaluation: the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified;
• Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy: produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges, and their level of involvement changes as the produsage project proceeds;
• Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process: content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished - their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths;
• Common Property, Individual Rewards: contributors permit (non-commercial) community use and adaptation of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital gained through this process.

These ideas, much more so than Web 2.0, seem to encapsulate what my peers and colleagues are trying to get across when we talk about social media and networked production of knowledge.

In my Boston University Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership program, we always get up to the edge of talking about the interplay between resource development and need, but then it always seems to drift away. So this is my contribution: if you swing too far towards either (ignoring the other), you’re toast.

And for the record, available resources and community need are external to your organization. Also, my art is lousy. And if you find this interesting, you should read my previous post on Community Engagement.

Download this as a PDF

I have now had a couple friends ask me to help them prepare job applications, so I pulled together some personal advice on what I feel is the most important part of applying for a job: the cover letter.

As someone who has applied for many jobs, and also reviews about 200-300 job applications every year, I believe that crafting a strong and compelling cover letter—having researched positions you have a fair chance (or a strong argument) of filling, of course—gives the best return on investment; more so than agonizing over your resume itself!

Here’s why:

When I review applications, my primary job is to weed applicants out of the process as quickly as possible. I’m quickly scanning. At this level, the resume matters, but that’s only because I’m checking to see if you are severely under (or over, which will draw scrutiny) qualified, have any gaps (no job experience) and if there is any glaring deficiencies like misspelled words (they jump out at you) or just poor aesthetics (this is supposed to be a synthesis of your professional experience boiled down to just 2 pages; it had better be vertically balanced—not as an aesthetic judgement, but as evidence of your attention to detail and level of perfectionism).

This cursory scan is also seeking out things I recognize: names of schools or businesses, places, specific brand names or techniques, turns of phrase. These will raise my interest, but not necessarily make me weight your resume any better. These mostly are due to chance, so unless you know something that wasn’t mentioned in the ad (maybe you know from a friend who is also an employee that the company loves a specific management technique), don’t worry about this.

You should not worry about being weeded out if you’ve done your homework: at this point, I’m not looking for the best applicant, I’m getting rid of the applicants who clearly are not even in the top 50% (or better, depending on what I’m filling). I’m looking for an applicant that “looks” like the best applicant

So now that I’ve judged appearances, I judge personality and character, and that’s where the cover letter comes in.

The cover letter does more than demonstrate you can competently communicate; it shows you know what you are applying for (I don’t want to receive your scattergun blast); that you have critical thinking skills and can synthesize important details from the posted ad and relate them to your own self; and that you are a human being who is confident in their abilities and wants me to benefit from them (I receive a surprising amount of whining).

The cover letter is your chance to make a compelling argument as to why I should hire you (or at least give you an interview). The fact is, you will probably have worked hardest—throughout your entire potential employment—on getting the job in the first place. So if this is your best, it had better be good.

So that’s my spiel on why you should agonize over your cover letter, not your resume. Your cover letter is your thesis, the resume is just the primary source.

A few weeks ago, I listened to Bill Ayers interviewed NPR’s Fresh Air. As an interview, it wasn’t very good, but Ayers himself said some really interesting things, which I went through and transcribed:

You cannot live a political life—you can’t live a moral life—if you’re not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly; see some of the injustice that is going on. Try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world.

And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act. And when you act, you have a responsibility to doubt. And when you doubt you can’t get paralyzed; you have to use that doubt to act again. And that then becomes the cycle. You open your eyes, you act, you doubt; you act, you doubt.

Without doubt, you become dogmatic and shrill and stupid.

But without action, you become cynical and passive and a victim of history—and that should never happen.

While the question was specifically about whether Ayers had doubts about what he did, I think what he says about doubt and action being symbiotic to be very powerful. And its nice to hear about this as his view from age, preceding that longer statement with “I live with doubt today, everyday, all the time. And it is different than being young and certain and jacking yourself up to do certain things…”.

Ayers also talked about American democracy in a way that resonates very strongly with me—and where I draw my patriotism from:

To me, in a wild and diverse democracy like this, each of us should be trying to talk to lots and lots and lots of people outside of our comfort zone and community. And that injunction goes even further for political leaders. They should talk to everyone. They should listen to everyone. And at the end of the day, they should have a mind of their own.

And I don’t want to get into the ethics or morality of what he (or the collective for which he identified with) did. Stick to the didactic.

In the news is Obama’s top-level administration application questions, e.g.

Please furnish copies of all resumes and biographical statements issued by you or any other entity at your discretion or with your consent within the past 10 years.

and while some others seemed to have histrionics about it, I happen to agree with the asking of the questions. At least, based on the assumption that the emphasis is on transparency and a complete as possible picture of the applicant, i.e, these are weeding questions to determine an applicant’s veracity and seriousness in applying, not that any particular item would automatically disqualify someone (at least, I assume this based upon my experience as a hirer and constructor of applications)

This led to some discussion with peers, and I was happy to hear that the first question people ask of interviewees is

How did you prepare for this interview?

The following is from a handout I created for the CTCnet Conference in which I presented on capacity building models for community engagement. You can download the handout with worksheet (PDF), or read the overview below.

Introduction to Community Engagement

The core competency for any organization—private or nonprofit, funder or grantee—is learning to manage change while maintaining high performance on standard functions and simultaneously building capacity to learn and evolve.

—Evaluations of Capacity Building: Lesson from the Field,Alliance for Nonprofit Management

Communities form the context in which nonprofit organizations operate. Driven by community needs and powered by community resources, successful organizations must continually assess how their organization’s mission and programs fit into the evolving landscape of their communities.

Every organization has the ability to adapt and succeed, but may lack the tools and guiding ideas to make sense of the situations they face. Organizations that are continually expanding their capacity to create their future require the information and tools needed to successfully engage their community.

Building an organization that can adapt and thrive requires two main competencies:

1. The organization regularly assesses community needs and resources

2. The organization regularly responds to new/emerging needs and resources

Building these two competencies into an organization with limited abilities and resources requires that the organization seeks innovative methods to create community participation and collaboration.

Community Engagement

“…community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people. It is a powerful vehicle for bringing about environmental and behavioral changes that will improve the health of the community and its members. It often involves partnerships and coalitions that help mobilize resources and influence systems, change relationships among partners, and serve as catalysts for changing policies, programs, and practices.”

—Stephen B. Fawcett, Work Group for Community Health and Development

Community engagement supports your organization’s mission, programs and capacity by ensuring they remain relevant to community needs and environmental forces. Developing your organizations Community Engagement competency is Capacity Building. This may include the creation of:

• Assessment of Community Opportunities and Dangers

• Interpretation of your mission/programs and create messages for specific audiences

• Development of programs that meet new/emerging needs

• Creation of partnerships that generate or share resources and information

• Mobilization of people and resources (internal, external and potential) to make achievements

• Processes to invite and accept community feedback

• Opportunities to invite community members into your organization and leadership

In the context of community engagement, the creation and sharing of resources goes beyond just financial resources. It may include: human resources (staff and volunteer time), physical resources (office space, materials and in-kind donations), and social-resources (word-of-mouth, recognition, legitimacy, “buzz”). Additionally, community engagement strategies may have benefits beyond the scope of their initial purposes.

5 Core Questions of Community Engagement

** - Do we know what the community needs? **

1. Are we asking the community what it needs?

2. Does everyone in the community know what it is we do for them?

3. Are we inviting the community to help us help them?

4. Are we using our organization to its fullest potential?

Community Engagement as an Ongoing Process

In order to be successful, Community Engagement should be approached as a practical, time- and resource-bound process; the goal is not to produce a complex or exhaustive plan that is impossible to implement. Instead, community engagement should be viewed as a series of ongoing and/or incremental strategies and achievable initiatives that seek to identify and engage specific groups within the communities your organization operates within. This process involves:

1. Developing Community Engagement Strategies

2. Determine the Goals of the Plan

3. Plan Out Who to Engage

4. Develop Engagement Strategies for Those Individuals You Already Know

5. Develop Engagement Strategies of Those Individuals You Do NOT Already Know

6. Prioritize those Activities

7. Create an Implementation Plan (strategy)

8. Monitor Your Progress (measurement)

9. Maintain those Relationships (sustainability)

A Basic Logic Model

Problem Statements and Goals

When seeking to design a Community Engagement initiative, assessing needs and converting them into a Problem Statement and Goals to address it can be difficult. Two questions to ask are:

What are the core-competencies/abilities/resources/skills of our organization that are not being fully-utilized within the community?

…and…

What strategies or initiatives would significantly impact our ability to effectively offer/expand programs or maintain the capacity of our organization? (size, scope, resources, volunteers, etc.)

These sections should seek to define the Who, What, and Where of your proposal.

Capacity Building Logic Models vs. Program Logic Models

Both Capacity Building Projects and Programs share the same Logic Model structure. The primary difference between the two is that the goals of Programs relate to specific changes that will take place within clients or individuals served by the program. In comparison, Capacity Building projects have goals that alter the programs, structure or systems of the organization itself.

Rationales, Assumptions and External Factors

Rationales are the Why of your proposal. What questions might someone raise as to the efficacy of the endeavor and how would you respond to them? What knowledge or experience do you have that would aid in explaining why such a project would succeed?

Assumptions are existing resources, skills or competencies that are already in place and your project will rely upon (but may not directly affect). Thinking critically about Assumptions will help you interpret your project for people who may not be knowledgeable about your organization or community.

External Factors describe issues or events that are outside the scope of your project but may help or hinder it. These may take place within the organization (e.g. staff or leadership changes) or outside of the organization (e.g. economic or social crises).

Resources and Activities

Below are some activities that could be incorporated into existing programs or communication strategies. It’s important to note which of these are 1-way and which are 2-way, which might be more or less effective in your community (or for certain groups within your community) and how the feedback generated will be incorporated into your organizations services and strategies.

• Community interviews/Face-to-face meetings

• Informal meetings

• Briefings

• Workshops

• Public meetings and hearings

• Panel discussion, brain-storming

• Shared Initiatives and Partnerships

• Public notice

• Fact sheets

• Telephone contacts

• Telephone Hotline

• Door-to-door canvassing

• Bulletin Boards

• Posters Facility tours

• Field Trips

• Special events

• Radio

• Television

• Films/Screenings

• Exhibits

• Internet Sites or Online Communities

• Newsletter, Newspaper insert

• News conference

• Press-kits

• Advisory Boards

• Volunteer Development

• Program Development

Measuring Outputs and Outcomes

Outputs are tangible products that are produced as a part of your project. They may include documentation, lists of contact information, curriculum or communications pieces. Outputs are the easiest to measure (they have been produced or have not) and also may produce the longest-lasting benefits because they will continue to exist beyond the completion of activities and may contribute to or influence further projects or strategies.

Outcomes are the results or impact of the activities your project performs. These outcomes should directly relate to producing the goals you have outlined for the project. Outcomes should be phrased in terms of change and be measureable. Outcomes can be split into short, medium and long-term parts.

1. Short Term Outcomes are the results you expect see immediately:_ numbers of volunteers, hours of programming, dollars raised, etc. (often numbers of things) _

2. Intermediate Outcomes are the results you want to see over more time: _increased name-recognition, program satisfaction, communications through a particular medium, etc. (often measured as percentages, e.g. percentage of people strongly satisfied, or percentage of clients referred through a website) _

3. Long-term Outcomes are the results you hope to see eventually: _greater access to resources, greater stability, feelings of support or recognition, etc. (often general feelings or perceptions one might acquire from personal stories or interviews) _

More Resources

Evaluations of Capacity Building: Lessons from the Field (Book), Alliance for Nonprofit Management

http://www.allianceonline.org/publications/evaluation_of_capacity.page

Online Engagement Strategies and Skills, NTEN “We Are Media Project”,

http://www.wearemedia.org/Strategy+Module+5

Introduction to Community Engagement, Help 4 Nonprofits,

http://www.help4nonprofits.com/NP_Mktg_Marketing-vs-CommunityEngagement_Art.htm

Seven Areas of Nonprofit Excellence, New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Awards,

http://nytawards.fcny.org/npea/excellence/

Measuring Innovation, Skoll Foundation & Foundation Strategy Group,

http://www.skollfoundation.org/media/skoll_publications.asp

Spitfire Strategies Communications Tools: Smart Chart, Activation Point

http://www.spitfirestrategies.com/tools

Logic Model Development Guide, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

www.wkkf.org/Pubs/Tools/Evaluation/Pub3669.pdf

Yesterday I posted an article that sought to give a broader frame to the idea of cross-sector nonprofit collaboration: placing collaboration within a process of negotiation to create new value. Today I will break down negotiation a little bit further to show why I think it’s important to take a broader frame of things and maybe even get semantic. Updated to add: :-)

When I’m talking about negotiation, I’m really talking about one particular piece of community engagement. Community engagement is all about self-evaluation (what can we offer the community?), communications/outreach (sending and receiving), and creating opportunities for participation—leadership, governance, programming and volunteerism all included. Negotiation is the piece where you are actively communicating with specific members of the community: individuals, groups, organizations, businesses and government.

So if collaboration is just one option within negotiation, what are the others? To that I really like the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Management Model:

Assertiveness (Y-Axis) is the extent to which you attempt to satisfy your own concerns, values, or interests.

Cooperativeness (X-Axis) is the extent to which you attempt to satisfy their conncerns, values or interests.

It’s designed specifically for individual conflict management situations, but I think it really helps to illuminate the different ways you can interact with another party that intentionally produces an outcome.

What I like about the instrument is that it’s non-judgemental; none of the strategies are intrinsically the best; instead the best is the one that is most effective or appropriate in the situation at hand. Not every situation can be collaborative because of limited time, resources, or competing values and interests.

Understanding the different approaches you can take to—as I said yesterday—create value, is important and provides a broader framework with which you can understand your organization’s place in the community, and act to positively and iteratively transform its actions.