Noble Pursuit Syndrome

Earlier this week, I told my friend, Jeff Mohr, about a strange result from a survey that we took last year about nonprofits’ experiences working with consultants. As Rebecca Petzel noted in her writeup of the results, the nonprofits we surveyed generally expressed a high degree of satisfaction in the quality of their consultants’ work, but the majority also said that the work had not stuck. (Here’s some additional analysis performed by a larger group of participants at a followup workshop.)

How could organizations be satisfied with the work if it didn’t stick?

Jeff’s response was to cite a term that his dad, Mike Mohr, likes to use: “Noble Pursuit Syndrome.” It seems that folks in the social change space often rationalize work by suggesting that the intentions were good, therefore the work could not have been bad.

Not only is this something I observe others do all the time, it’s something I personally do all the time! My higher self is aware of this and tries to counterbalance it, which is a big reason why I ultimately left consulting. But it’s also a big reason why I stayed in consulting so long. I and my team would work our butts off on an inspiring project, and at the end of the project, we would review our often softly-framed success metrics, discuss all of the things that we thought went well, then collect our checks and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

I always felt (and still do feel) completely validated from a market standpoint. But it was hard to truly assess the quality of our work from a social impact standpoint. While I tried (and am still trying) to be thoughtful and rigorous about impact, I often found (and am still finding) myself falling back on Noble Pursuit Syndrome. It’s a challenge, and I believe it’s a serious problem in this space.

Jeff said that Mike has threatened to write more about the syndrome. I, for one, would love to hear what he has to say, and I hope that others share their thoughts and experiences with this as well.

Accountability in the Social Sector

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop wrote an internal memo recently that’s been making the rounds. In a nutshell, he writes that Nokia — the long-time market leader in mobile — is in danger of losing its position, and that it needs to change or die.

His memo is remarkable for its urgency and candor. It reminded me of a pivot I got to witness first-hand in 1995, when Microsoft admitted that it had missed the boat on the Internet. In the ensuing six months, it ended up dominating a market that it had been completely ignoring.

Reading the Nokia memo got me wondering about nonprofits and foundations. Has there ever been a similar pivot by a philanthropic foundation or a large, well-established nonprofit? Will we ever see one?

My guess is that the answer is no, although I’m anxious to hear stories to the contrary. There are no widely agreed upon ways of measuring accountability in the social sector, and thus, there is no accountability. The platform is burning, but everyone is on the same platform.

In contrast, in the for-profit world, winning and losing is defined by market share. Revenue may be problematic as a proxy for value, but it keep the whole system moving. Companies are accountable for what they’re doing now, and those that get complacent eventually lose.

In the absence of structural incentives for change, leadership becomes even more critical. Institutional philanthropy is in a wonderful position to be these leaders, and, by and large, they’re taking a pass. Foundations are wonderful at thinking deeply about very hard problems, but they are very poor at modeling change. (Last year, Monitor Institute published a great report suggesting how foundations can start doing this.) This is a sector that badly needs it.

I had an interesting Twitter exchange on this topic with Jeff Lindsay and Philip Neustrom, which motivated me to flesh out my thoughts here. Philip pointed me to Van Jones’s 2007 keynote speech at the Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp, where he talked about the importance of brutal honesty in the nonprofit sector. Read the whole speech; it’s wonderful.

Also, Sean Stannard-Stockton and Lucy Bernholz recently had a fascinating exchange on ways to introduce more accountability into the nonprofit sector.