Many people come to work at nonprofits because it offers the opportunity to do something personally meaningful for them. The nonprofit workplace environments they come into have often nurtured this, benefited from it, and in many cases have built their workplace culture around it. Every strength has its weakness, though, and in this case sometimes this takes the form of “making do” instead of building the capacity to do things well and in a manner that is sustainable long-term.
Image by Jonny Goldstein
But increasing emphasis and transparency around results reporting is putting more pressure on organizations to be data-driven (among other things) which also requires a level of organizational and process maturity that isn’t realized by “making do.” The organizations that best blend the benefits of their employees’ sense of purpose and engagement with more mature processes stand to excel. That is built upon functioning and reliable systems, and providing the IT portion of those systems is our focus here at Community IT.
One specific area in which we see nonprofits seeking to build capacity is with employee hiring and evaluation. We help nonprofits to define IT positions that will best fit their strategy and business needs. We also help them select HR and Talent Management information systems that best support their approach to recruiting, performance management, and related functions.
On that note, I would like to introduce guest blogger Barry Smith to share more about this topic. Barry is a long-time IT executive with deep experience in hiring and managing IT teams. In his article he shares information about a “Topgrading” approach for building your organization’s capacity in this area. I was introduced to Topgrading some years ago when I heard about it from Geoff Smart, and utilized it in our approach to hiring. Barry focuses on how to use it for building a team of top performers.