Veldon Law: Learning Organizations Always Changing

Chameleon Organizations: Always Learning, Always Changing

As a youngster, and much to my good mother’s horror, I used to love to catch chameleons. As a rural Idaho boy the chance to catch these fast, color changing lizards was an exciting annual challenge while we spent six weeks in southern Florida.

The annual jaunt to Florida was much anticipated for any number of reasons as my father prepared for the approaching baseball season with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Not the least of these reasons was outdoor boyish adventures involving a variety of reptiles, particularly the chameleons. Elusive because of their speed and hard to detect because of their ability to change their color I learned at a young age that change and speed generally equaled “survival.”

Years later I listened carefully to two members of my staff as they reported recent accomplishments. “We’ve added a new program, changed vendors, merged two departments, changed our internal reporting, and developed a new marketing approach.” Then the teaching and learning opportunity, “We’ll be glad when things get back to normal.” It was my privilege to help them realize their change efforts were not just short gusts of change. For survival and for them and the organization to thrive their conditions of change must be normal, everyday occurrences woven into the fabric of the organization’s culture. Sad and numbered are the days of those unable or unwilling to embrace continuous change; to change their colors so to speak.

Leadership “authorities” have dubbed quick response and adaptable organizations “learning organizations.” They are organizations which possess unique characteristics, characteristics which as a leader I have been able to instill in the organizations where I have held senior leadership responsibilities as a COO or CEO. I’ve personally learned, taught others, and led organizations to grasp the following concepts.

Learning Organizations Allow Debate
Employees are free to disagree and are expected to work out solutions among themselves. Leadership and management give fewer directives while they are viewed as supportive of the work being performed to achieve the organization’s mission and vision. Internal respectful disputes over the way to accomplish established performance objectives are fine. They do not interfere with – indeed, they can enhance – individual and organizational performance.

Learning Organizations Encourage Continuous Experimentation
We don’t have time to figure out the ideal way to respond to our customer demands,” a manager in a learning organization once explained. “We simply try something and, if it doesn’t work, we try something else.” In my personal experience I’ve learned that there is wisdom in making these determinations more calculated, more strategic. Regardless, the focus on continuous market driven improvement is a fixture within the organizations. Emphasis is on actions; try it, and fix it.

Temporary Not Permanent
Nothing is forever, in learning organizations; employees understand that seemingly long-term policies are temporary and subject to review. A new policy, program, or procedure – or even products and services – may be in place for only a short time.

Contradictions Are OK
In learning organizations, it is not necessary for all practices across all areas to be in synch and that just like situational leadership, there is value in practices fitting the circumstances. Accordingly, within the organizations where I have provided leadership I knowingly adopted short and long-term plans that conflicted. I held inherently contradictory expectations, such as high quality vs. low cost, quick response vs. no mistake, thorough discussion vs. quick decisions, seasoned judgment vs. inexperienced people.

Overarching Management Principle
One overarching management principle to which I have held tightly in developing learning organizations is that leadership is open to input from many sources, and we continuously adjust to better serve those I term, “stakeholders.” Further, the organizations’ cultures have been altered to embrace this basic truth that the organization welcomes continuous improvement, and that continuous improvement requires a commitment to individual and organizational learning. Additionally, there is organizational knowledge that in the absence of learning and adaptation to the environment, like the color changing of the chameleon, we simply repeat old practices which means we likely don’t thrive nor survive.

Definition of a Learning Organization
With numerous definitions proffered I have found personal identity in David Garvin’s explanation. Garvin says a learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

Five Main Activities
In successfully implementing this definition I have led the implementation of policies, processes, and programs that encourage the following five main activities. These activities are found in any organization that has adopted the theoretical underpinnings of becoming a learning organization:

1) Systematic problem solving;

2) Experimentation with new approaches;

3) Learning from individual and organizational experience and past history;

4) Learning from the experiences and best practices of others, and

5) Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization.

Veldon Law: Into The World Of Online Giving

Remember the fun of hide and seek…ready or not here I come? Well, like the game, online charitable giving is coming…"ready or not."


Ready for some astounding figures? Fidelity Charity Gift Fund and United Way raised $314 million and $257.4 million respectively in 2007 through their online efforts. While online giving rarely has climbed above five percent of all gifts received, it is something many non-profit organizations are pursuing with vigor. In 2007, eight charities raised $25 million or more online. Ted Hart (CEO of Hart Philanthropic Services) has tracked online giving since 2001. He reports that on-line giving reached $10.44 billion in 2007, a 52 percent increase over the previous year. Compared to all giving in that year, $10.44 billion is small potatoes, but the continued and expected giving growth, through this medium, is a trend that deserves watching.

As further evidence of the need to follow this trend:

The University of Indiana Foundation projected it would raise $900,000 via its online efforts. This was a whopping 150 percent increase over the $356,079 they raised online in 2007.

The Wise Giving Alliance found that their survey’s youngest respondents, those between 18 and 29, are the most open to the idea of giving online. This bodes well for having online giving as an option.

The ePhilanthropy Foundation found the average age of donors who currently give online is between 35 and 40. This bodes well as an existing target market as foundations woo and cultivate this particular generation’s support.

The future of online giving suggests the need to plan for the time when those between the ages of 18 and 29, that have grown up with computer and web access most of their lives, begin to dominate the giving landscape. While this eventuality is at least 20 to 25 years away, wise foundations should now be planning how to best court this market, and in the meantime, begin to garner resources from other tech savvy donors.

Through online fundraising leaders of non-profit organizations have a new venue for reaching out to potential support.

Tips for Online Fundraising

Joanne Fritz, nonprofit columnist on about.com offers these 10 tips for online fundraising:
1. Get legal with your online fundraising.
2. Market your online fundraising program.
3. Explore all of your options for online fundraising.
4. Make sure your website invites online donations.
5. Observe proper online etiquette in your online fundraising.
6. Provide lots of ways for people to donate—not just online.
7. Make sure that your website donation button is big and above the fold.
8. Provide the opportunity for non-monetary contributions, such as volunteer time.
9. Show real donors and specify how donations will help.
10. Try segmenting your online fundraising audience.

Read Joanne Fritz’s full article, “Online Fundraising: A Start-up Guide.” http://nonprofit.about.com/od/onlinefundraising/tp/onlinefundraisinghub.htm

Veldon Law: Trust as an Element of Leadership

Learning From Don Quixote

The use of the word “trust” in this treatise is the consideration of “trust” as “belief in the ability and perhaps the personal characteristics of a leader.” It is confidence in another that if given the responsibility and the authority, they will choose the best course of action.

It is commonly understood that we all hold positions of leadership. For some this leadership role is held within the home, at school, at work, at church, in a civic club, etc. Some leadership roles are filled by those we elect to represent us, and other roles are not necessarily chosen, but circumstances cast them upon us.

It is through leadership that the world around us is shaped. There are many ways to lead and just as many or more types and styles of leadership. It is widely recognized that leaders have the power to influence and alter the lives of those around them. For most of us, there is the sense that leadership ought to carry with it a moral responsibility to those being led. The goal ought to not be to lead, rather it should be to lead toward a better, more fulfilling way of life. Some leaders use that power and influence for that kind of good while, regrettably, other leaders have wrought sheer terror.

We can learn much from current and past leaders. Their successes and mistakes, especially the more visible and public leaders, are scrutinized academically as well as in self-help books.

After a great deal of reflection on the topic of leadership, I have concluded that leadership, other than leadership brought about through tyrannical means, involves an act of trust – a belief in the unseen. Accordingly, leadership is an act of “trust,” both on the part of the leader, and of those who have confidence in his or her vision. This level of “trust” is what separates leaders from managers. Managers have lots of ways to mandate their ends – rules, schedules, plans, and procedures. Leaders go beyond these potentially punitive “compliance tools” to inspire people to trust in a vision, and trust in their own abilities to carry out that vision.

Trust begins with confidence. You have to have confidence in people. Confidence, if you will, between the leader and those being led. This kind of trust is akin to the trust and empowerment that parents’ display with their children. A parent encourages them to try, to develop, yet doesn’t scold when they falter. Perhaps, a definition of a good leader that epitomizes the level of trust leadership needs is – a good leader is not someone to lean on, but someone who makes leaning unnecessary. It takes trust that the other person can, if given the opportunity, do the job as well, or even better than the leader. Encouraging trust, and action based on that trust is certainly a fundamental element of leadership.

There is a play that expresses the point of trust, confidence, and leadership so powerfully that every potential leader should experience it. The play is Man of La Mancha. In short, it is about an old man who goes mad who puts on a rusty old suit of armor, thinks he’s a knight, and calls himself, “Don Quixote de La Mancha.” Don Quixote saw the world not as it was, but as he wanted it to be. He saw a world of chivalry, of caring acts, of noble deeds, and impossible dreams. As the play unfolds, Don Quixote picks a pathetic wretch “Aldonza” as his “dolcenea,” his lady. Aldonza is a realist protesting that she is, in her words: “Born of a dung heap, to die in a dung heap, a strumpet men use and forget.”

Yet Don Quixote insists she is “Dolcenea.” He sees in her far more dignity, more nobility, than she could dare see in herself. Aldonza resists, but eventually gives in to the old man’s idealism and dream of a better world.

After the death of the old man, Aldonza addresses his squire Sancho Panza. She cries out to Sancho, “Don Quixote is not dead. Believe, Sancho, Believe.”

When Sancho calls her Aldonza, she ends the play with a single statement. “My name is Dulcenea.”

“My name is Dulcenea,” says it all. She accepted another’s trust and confidence in her until she was able to find what Don Quixote saw deep within her. Because of his act of trust in her and she in him, we somehow know that life will never again be as squalid, as hopeless, for Dulcenea.

Obviously, the application for leaders is the need to realize our power to influence and alter the lives of those that have given their faith or trust. The two questions we as leaders might wish to ask of ourselves are: 1) are we worthy of the trust given, and
2) do we inspire and lift as did Don Quixote?