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Tips and Answers
to Your Questions
Deciding to Restructure
Is your board ready for Strategic Restructuring?
You just attended a presentation on strategic restructuring, and learned
lots of good information and are excited about the new concepts. So,
you want to present it to your board or to a nonprofit group with whom
you work. Will they be interested in the topic? Will they find the
thought of consolidation a scary one? What should you do?
Strategic restructuring can be an anxiety-provoking topic; after all,
nonprofit boards involved in partnership/merger negotiations typically
react to conflict in the areas of autonomy, self-interest, and culture
clash. It's only natural: we like our autonomy to make decisions; we
want to protect our interests as board members; and we are hesitant
about whether "our" culture and "theirs" will complement
or clash with each other in a partnership effort.
In our experience working with a range of nonprofit boards, we have
found that some groups are less ready to consider strategic restructuring
than are others. This may be related to board development issues, as
some groups struggle with different concerns based on where they are
in their organizational evolution. Those boards that are more "ready" will
likely display a definite mission-focus, a strong relation with their
executive team, a deliberate growth orientation, and flexibility in
the way they pursue their mission. All four of these factors don't
have to be fully present for successful strategic restructuring, but
a good dose of a majority of them will certainly increase your board's
readiness and chances for success.
If you wish to initiate a strategic restructuring discussion at the
board level, your first step might be to assess how well the organization
is doing with regard to each of the success factors mentioned above.
Talk about this assessment with individual board members and executives.
If you find that the group is significantly strong in any number of
them, you might ask if the group would like to have you present some
strategic restructuring ideas for 20-30 minutes at a board meeting.
When you introduce your topic, make sure you reference where and when
you learned about it, and highlight why you think it is important for
boards to know about partnership options.
As we often tell those with whom we consult, the current environment
of scarcity and privatization surrounding nonprofit organizations in
the U.S. is forcing organizations to consider partnering with each
other at increasing rates in order to keep up with steep competition,
to reduce duplication, to head off unnecessary competition, and to
create economies of scale. Hearing this might just peak your board's
interest enough to begin the learning process, which is valuable in
and of itself.
Hints and sources of information for your board:
- Frame your presentation as being about additional "planning
tools" your board colleagues can use in their governance of
the organization
- Print out and distribute any information from this website (www.lapiana.org)
- Read and/or distribute any of the publications cited in the website
- Have strategic restructuring documents translated to other languages
if needed
- Organize several local nonprofit boards for a morning or afternoon
presentation on strategic restructuring
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