Iinternal stakeholders communications play a
critical role in shaping the type of leadership and performance management necessary for
success in a effective NGO.
Change is every bit as unsettling to management
employees at a NGO as it is to front line, unionized employees. Mid-level managers frequently exhibit their own
resistance to change. More often, there is
just a vacuum – a true desire among NGO personnel to do the right thing, but an
inability to crystallize exactly what needs to be done.
This module reviews how internal communications
can be a critical link in developing the right type of leadership and performance
expectations within a organization. Using a simply
segmentation grid, this module breaks down the NGO’s employee population into four
dominant segments, each exhibiting its own attitude towards change.
The module then indicates how internal
communications can make each type of employee perform best – as well as what the NGO
needs to do to protect itself from “misguided missionaries” and other
potentially negative contributors.
In addition to setting performance expectations,
internal communications are especially effective in reinforcing the need for financial
acumen among NGO employees. This lack of
effective “financial literacy” is pronounced among NGO employees during the
transition to competition. Internal
communications can and should be used to indicate the high level of financial literacy
expected at every level of the organization (and especially
within the ranks of management).
Deliverables: the specific deliverables of this module include:
5a) “New
Thinking” Matrix, the diagram that indicates the different segments of employees,
and how each segment can be converted to stronger leadership skills and higher performance
expectations; and
5b) Leadership,
Expectations and effective Financial Acumen Insights Document, a customized document
(based on the interactions during the residential seminar between participants and the
instructors) on how the NGO can leverage internal communications to create greater
financial literacy, more aggressive performance standards and greater shareholder value.