Interviews with Executive Directors of CSOs

Introduction

Form May 2022 until April 2023 I interviewed several Executive Directors of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). The primary objective was to expand my knowledge and insights for my work as senior management consultant at Good Purpose. I will also use the results for blogs, which will be published on thsi website. In this blog I am sharing a summary of the main results of the interviews.

I interviewed the following Executive Directors:

· Dirk Jan Verdonk, World Animal Protection Netherlands, 13 May 2022

· Garance Reus, Plan Netherlands, 27 May 2022

· Andy Palmen, Greenpeace Netherlands, 8 March 2023

· Wilco de Jonge, The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, 27 March 2023

· Anne Hilhorst, Wakker Dier (a Dutch animal welfare organization), 4 April 2023

· Julie Verhaar, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, 19 April 2023

· Annemiek Dresen, NewBees, 25 April 2023

In addition I have included my own experiences, in particular at PAX for Peace.

I want to thank all interviewed Executive Directors for their time and openness and the very interesting discussions that I had with them.

Key factors for success and failure

The key factors for success and failure that were most mentioned concern strategy and staff.

A crucial factor for success is having an articulated and agreed strategy with a clear focus and positioning. A factor for failure is wanting to do too much because of a high level of ambitions as well as internal and external pressure. Dare to make tough choices: what to do and what not to do; what is core for your organization. Don’t water it down. Ask yourself: in what can you excel and in what do you aim to be the number one. Focus on that. Be distinctive, agenda setting, visible, relevant and urgent.

Focus on impact rather than on output and develop an effective strategy in order to achieve change. Ensure to have endurance, so have a consistent strategy for the long term including funding. It is important to be strategically coherent, to translate your strategy into concrete plans and programmes and to consistently apply the strategy in the operations. See also my blog on strategic focus.

Another crucial factor for success is about staff: make sure that the right people with the right competences are in the right position. Don’t make compromises when selecting staff members and make sure they can operate effectively.

Staff members can also be a factor for failure. Working for an organization with a mission for society attracts a certain kind of people. This leads to a strong value driven culture and can lead to asking too much, disrespecting limits and not complying with hierarchy. But also to working too much and a disbalance between work and personal life. Working from home during and after the Covid-19 pandemic has made that even worse. Some directors have indicated that the amount of staff working from home, even after restrictions were lifted, has some advantages but has also led to challenges in cooperation, bonding, cohesion and mutual learning.

• Other factors for success that were mentioned are:

• Ensure that finances are sound and funding is available.

• Focus primarily on sustainably raising additional income instead of cutting costs.

• Prevent to become donor driven.

• Aim at a small number of KPIs (key performance indicators).

• Protect your independence and freedom of movement.

• Make sure to have a strong Supervisory Board with experience in CSOs and fundraising.

• Make sure to have good relationships with your stakeholders.

How successful are CSOs?

That varies of course, some CSOs are more successful than others. And it also depends on how you look at it. The glass is often half full. Results have certainly been achieved on the issues and in the areas the organization is active in or for the target groups it works for. But CSOs want to achieve more or reach more people. The ambition level of CSOs are high. Not everything works out, because often the issues are complex and circumstances are difficult. In many cases achieving results takes a long time.

Furthermore, for CSOs it can be difficult to measure their impact, even though a lot of effort is put into this. Many CSOs measure their success through a set of KPIs (key performance indicators), on which they report regularly. CSOs often use theories of change to determine how they can have impact. But determining attribution, i.e. the specific contribution of a CSO or a certain programme on an indicator, is difficult because other actors and factors have also influence. But it is already very useful to discuss in your organization what the most relevant indicators are. One of the CSOs with whom I spoke makes light impact review assessments in order to estimate the expected and achieved impact. This is partly subjective, but the discussions about it have a value in itself.

You need to be a learning organization in order to be able to be successful. So one should build in sufficient time and space for reflection, evaluation, analysis, learning and adjusting. Theories of change need to be reviewed and adjusted continuously.

How is staff involved in decision making on strategy?

In many CSOs staff members are engaged in discussions about strategy and do have actual influence. But this influence is often limited. Mostly they have a say based on their own expertise, but management or Board of Directors decide. It is difficult to let staff members take responsibility for organizational decisions and funding. And often employees look at management for vision and hard decisions.

According to some directors it is a pitfall to include everyone in decision making on everything; the biggest mouth will then have the biggest say. Large engagement of everyone can make decision making slow. It might be better to involve a small number of people from different teams, who have more feeling with strategic topics or a specific issue.

Staff members have more influence on the translation of strategy into plans of teams or departments and programmes, the how and in the operations.

Organization culture

The organization culture differs of course between organizations. But there are a number commonalities and frequently mentioned characteristics of the culture in CSOs, such as:

• engaged

• driven

• value driven

• solidarity

• working too hard

• taking things personally

Other things that have been mentioned:

• putting the bar high

• high level of professionality

• activistic

• focus on content

• attached to autonomy

• not complying with hierarchy

• complaining

• not respecting personal limits

• risk and conflict averse

• fear of failure

• decent

• human centred

• helping

• cooperative

• pragmatic, no-nonsense.

Employee satisfaction

Many CSOs regularly conduct a structured employee satisfaction survey. Important then is a proper and visible follow-up, showing what you do with the results. Otherwise it will only increase possible dissatisfaction. A pitfall of such surveys is only asking questions on issues that you are already aware of, not addressing blind spots you may have. So one should include space for other topics. Furthermore, an employee satisfaction survey should be an addition to proper management and good conversations with teams and individual staff members.

Naturally, the level of employee satisfaction varies between organizations. Sometimes there is dissatisfaction about management, decision making and workload. Employees of CSOs are often satisfied about the level of autonomy. And there is a lot of engagement with the content of their work and partners.

Bottlenecks and challenges

The bottlenecks and challenges of CSOs vary a lot. Some issues that have been mentioned are for example:

• workload

• absenteeism

• culture

• diversity

• social security

• learning

• managing growth

• finances and funding

• compliance and bureaucracy

• legitimacy and representation

• governance and supervision

• international cooperation

• communication with supporters

• digital world, artificial intelligence, big data

• sorting out basic processes and systems.

Gems

Finally some good quotes from the executive directors who were interviewed:

• Ask yourself: in what do you want to be the best of the world.

• Make sure you not only are right but also get it your way.

• Keeping focus can also mean not always responding directly to the outside world.

• One needs to balance between achieving long term systemic change and showing successes on short term.

• Government and NGOs keep each other hostage in compliance requirements, but the question is what we learn from it.

• Sometimes monitoring impact is more expensive than achieving the actual impact.

• Money is seen as the measure of things, which is spreadsheet wisdom.

• We are so lean that it is not efficient anymore.

• I am proud of the huge group of supporters we have.

• Don’t stay too long in one job, you learn most of changing.

• Don’t take yourself too serious, as a person and as an organization.

• The job is never finished.