Once Again: It’s Not About You

@CelineSchill wrote a post about volunteer power and asked ‘how can organizations benefit from the power of volunteers?’

This is one of the classic questions of the #socialera. My sense is that few organisations have figured out the answer.

Which isn't much of a prediction.

On this particular topic I am, unfortunately, a pessimist. I think few extant organisations will figure it out before they’re Netflixed.

Celine gets straight to the point in the first paragraph:

“Volunteers decide by themselves. They offer themselves for a service or undertaking on a voluntary basis. They can’t be forced. They can say no. That’s why “volunteer” is a rarity in the corporate world, that loves nothing more than orderly management of resources.”

Volunteers decide by themselves. They decide for themselves.

It’s free will, man.

All we really have in life are our choices.

People choose what causes to enroll in and which not to.

It can be unsettling for managers with leadership pretensions to discover people don’t flock to their program.

It can take some people back to the discomfort of social dysfunction.

When people choose not to enroll in your cause its partly because they’re not choosing you. Possibly because it’s not a genuine cause.

This reminds us we are social animals before we are corporate animals.

“Why is my program unpopular… am I not popular?”

In the context of leadership it is a useful question to ask. Because the answer might be one you need to hear.

Followers make leaders because leaders follow causes.

Popularity is important, but not in the high school or social media sense.

@deniseleeyohn once wrote that business isn't a popularity contest. She notes “broad popularity is tenuous and not the best aspiration for companies’.

It also can’t be bought and definitely doesn’t come with the corner office.

Denise points out the Latin root — popularis, ‘belonging to the people’.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Mashing Celine and Denise’s messages together we get the idea that people will volunteer for causes that in some way belongs to them.

Or which in some way leads back to them.

Or more to the point gives them a pathway to discovering themselves and what they want to believe in.

There are few volunteers within organizations because there’s not enough that belongs to them. That is to say, there isn't enough to identify with.

It’s just a job.

Organisations are full of people who have retired on the job because there’s not enough to believe in.

People will volunteer for what they believe in. There’s ample evidence for this throughout history.

Many countries are commemorating the Great War, including my tiny little part of the world.

In New Zealand 42% of men of military age chose to serve. Out of a total population of about 1 million.

That’s a measure of belief, however tragic it ended up, that few organizations today could hope to match. No matter how much they pad out their engagement rates.

People are still motivated by belief and causes. To believe in what can be made better is an integral part of being human.

The issue is that too few genuine causes exist within organizations.

Volunteering occurs a lot. It just doesn’t occur much into the home organisation.

Organisations exist within society to provide society and community with something that society and community values.

It should be fairly easy therefore to get a clear sense of worthy causes that can refocus belief and encourage volunteering within organisations.

Yet somehow there doesn’t seem to be enough to get really excited about.

This needn't be such a terrible thing if organizations view themselves as the means by which people volunteer back into society.

The semi-mythical Google 20% project time could for instance be converted into time spent at soup kitchens, dog shelters, reading to kids or cleaning up parks.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility. It’s just that it’s not likely.

Letting go isn't easy, especially if you’re having to let go of success.

Many organizations will have inherited a blueprint for success that doesn’t leave much room for volunteering within the organization.

Deliver, deliver, deliver.

Yet if you don’t let go of success you build the basis for failure.

If you follow the Shift Index, you’ll have the sense that organizations are slowly failing. Some say that digital is killing them.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps too many organisations have missed the point.

That the task of the modern organisation is to provide a cause worth believing in.

Such that people choose to put their hands up for your cause. For you.

For people.

People are volunteering.

They’re just doing it outside your organisation. They’re finding better things to believe in.

So, change that.