PBS had an interesting discussion on their website today. In the video, USAID presents a case for changes in the way it delivers food and aid globally. While there are obvious opportunities for extending their reach and operating more efficiently, the change undermines some very powerful special interest groups. Will the idea move forward, or will it die a quick death?

Watch Should U.S. Have Monopoly on Food Sent Abroad to Aid? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

For USAID’s Food for Peace program specifically, federal law requires that the majority of food aid must be purchased from US farms and transported on US ships. Each resulting box and pallet of food says in bold text “USAID, FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.”

USAID sees this “Buy American” mandate as a burden. By purchasing from US sources, the food must be packaged, sealed and then transported thousands of miles to places like Haiti, Sudan, and Afghanistan. Even with prepositioning aid in high-risk areas, there can be major delays in delivering aid due to the travel time. Additionally, due to the travel time and safety concerns, a significant portion of USAID’s budget goes to transportation and security. And as a third consideration, USAID is committed to rebuilding local economies that are not dependent on foreign aid, but rather rebuilt and domestically robust.

Given the realities above, USAID’s preference for “buy local” regulations seems to align with strategic objectives like improving response times, minimizing transportation costs, and rebuilding local economies. USAID’s website says “Studies show that local and regional procurement of food and other cash-based programs can get food to people in critical need 11 to 14 weeks faster and at savings of 25 – 50 percent.”

From the opposite perspective, US farms and US shipping companies have considerable interest in continuing the “Buy American” mandate. In addition to the pride of delivering “American” aid, there is big business in the commodity and transportation contracts. And because the farmers and shipping unions can vote for the US politicians that write the regulations and budgets that control USAID, these two interest groups hold considerable power. Their profits and their jobs are at stake and they vote accordingly.

Oxfam, a confederation of organizations supporting the changes at USAID, had this to say, “The US is the most generous donor of food assistance in the world and gets a lot of credit for this.  Cutting aid doesn’t make sense, but why might the Administration seek to fundamentally change this program? The reason is that current US food aid programs are excruciatingly inefficient and in some instances counter-productive to helping people build sustainable agricultural livelihoods.”

In light of the inefficiencies, what is the best path forward? How will politicians seek to shape USAID’s triple mandate of providing aid, rebuilding economies, and buying American? Comments are welcome below!

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/jan-june13/food2_04-24.html

http://www.usaid.gov/foodaidreform

http://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/tag/food-aid/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/feb/06/usaid-changes-procurement-policy

All great leaders have a vision.

• Martin Luther King saw a world of equality regardless of your race, color, or creed
• Steve jobs had a vision to put a computer in the hands of EVERYONE
• The Founding Fathers had a vision for a new nation
• Even Bob Dylan had visions of Johanna

Okay, I may have gotten a little carried away with that last one, but the fact of the matter remains - all great leaders have a vision, and that vision becomes the driving force behind all their work.

Eduardo Carrera also has a vision. He sees the Boys and Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico (BGCPR) positively affecting the lives of every boy and girl in Puerto Rico. This is a vision that is shared from the president of the organization all the way down to the front line employees and volunteers.

By relentlessly preaching that vision, they have cultivated the motivation and buy-in that has helped the organization grow to 11 clubs serving over 11,000 young people annually. However, this growth and forward progress wasn’t always the norm. In previous years, they struggled just to stay afloat and remain relevant in the lives of the Puerto Rican kids. He compared this stagnation to being in a room and having the windows open while it was raining. The water just kept pouring in while they did everything possible with the buckets they had to throw it back out. SEE THEIR VIDEO HERE.

For so long, they could only see in the short-term and by operating under this approach, they were only able to scoop enough water out of the room to keep from drowning. They needed a new direction. A purpose. A vision. A reason for being that was inspiring and so large that it could only be long-term.

Their leader made this new vision very clear to all employees, volunteers, and even the kids. They were going to reach ALL of the roughly 1 million kids on the island. It was this vision that has helped them continue to grow, continue to stretch themselves, and continue to save the lives of Puerto Rican boys and girls. Whew - now that is a vision.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a vision isn’t just what you are trying to accomplish in the next one, two, or even three years. It’s much greater than that. Take another look at the people at the top of this post (minus Bob Dylan of course). Do you think any of them thought their vision would be accomplished in the next few years? Or even in their lifetime? I doubt it.

I challenge each and every one of you in the mission-driven sector to reflect for a minute or two. What is your vision? Does it inspire you? Does it inspire others? Are you surrounding yourself with people as committed as you are?

As you reflect on those questions, I leave you with a parting quote from Eduardo’s Presentation at MDMS 2013.

“The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight and no vision.”

A special thank you to all the speakers, delegates, and staff that braved the winter storm to attend the Mission-Driven Management Summit in DC a few weeks ago.  It was an excellent chance for all of us to take a few days away from our daily responsibilities to focus on strategy execution.

Phew! Another first week of March has come and gone and so has Ascendant’s 2013 Mission-Driven Management Summit—our 5^th annual conference on strategy and performance management for mission-driven organizations.

While we like to think the summit is a success every year, I believe this year we had a fantastic conference at the National Press Club and even managed to put it on in the face of the Snowquester—the early March snowstorm than never really materialized in Washington, DC.

After reading a blogpost the other night stating that to become good at strategy requires practice, I just had to share it because I couldn’t agree more.

The author, Roger Martin—dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto—says that to be an “accomplished strategist” the first necessary element “is belief, the second is work, work, and work some more. This means making strategy choices, seeing how they work out and then learning from them.”  This is what we at Ascendant try to impart to our clients when implementing a strategy management framework like the Balanced Scorecard (BSC).

Way back before there was Wikipedia and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, or even Ask Jeeves there were these quiet buildings in towns, cities, and schools across the country called libraries.  You may even remember being in one at some point if you are over 30 years old.

Anyway, the point of these “libraries” was to provide information in the form of books (and magazines and newspapers) to the general public – or students and faculty in the case of school and university libraries – basically for free.  And, acquire your collections through funding you received either from property taxes, tuition, or donors who understood the importance of maintaining free and open access to information.

In my 15 years working with organizations on implementing the Balanced Scorecard, targets have always been a challenge.  While critical, targets (especially non-financial ones) are often a guessing game -- should we do last year plus 10%?  15%?  5?  No, wait -- what's our sector benchmark?  Should we go for best practice or average?  And how do we even make a target for that anyway?

I've seen (and even participated in developing) scorecards where fully half of the measures didn't have targets.  Or if they did, the targets were "baseline" -- code for we don't really know what the target is, so we'll punt this down the road a bit and see how we do.  And then make targets later.  Which, like many compromises, is sometimes the exact right thing to do.  And sometimes the exact wrong thing to do.

Fortunately, Dave Norton will be speaking at the Mission Possible:  The Mission-Driven Management Summit 2013 on targets.  In his presentation (which  I had the great fortune of previewing this week), he'll discuss the many different ways that organizations set targets, and present some tools which we can use to make the process of setting targets more transparent, and more importantly, more effective.

Not to spoil the presentation (which I assure you is great), but Dave focuses on two areas:  The BHAG target (big, hairy, audacious goal) which, ironically, is the lag indicator, and the driver measures that help you understand whether or not you are on your way to accomplishing your BHAG.  With examples from throughout the public and social sector, Dave makes a strong case for effective target setting.

Join us in Washington, DC next month for this presentation and other great speakers and cases to learn how you can execute your mission for breakthrough results.  

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the pleasure of supporting the Office of Management and Budget as one of our clients here at Ascendant. A lot has been accomplished in those 18 months, but one of the coolest achievements was finally launching Performance.gov. A website dedicated to showing the “performance side” of the federal government. In other words, it’s how the government is cutting waste, streamlining operations, and improving performance.

Admittedly, it was a long process bringing together the largest agencies in the federal government to report publically on top issues and priorities. But, it was worth it! If you follow our blog, check out Melanie’s post earlier this month to learn more about Performance.gov. Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post on essentially the same topic is because I was recently telling someone about the website and she asked me, “so what, why should I care?”  

It was an interesting question. Why should you care? My response – you should care because it tells the story of the impact that YOUR tax dollars are having on the American people. One of my favorite examples of this story is the Department of Interior’s goal of cutting violent crime in Indian communities across the country. High crime rates on some Indian reservations have been a concern for some time and DOI decided that they were going to change that. So, using performance metrics and review meetings to guide the effort, DOI developed a pilot program to reduce the violent crime of four specific communities with the highest crime rate.

The original goal was to reduce the crime rate by 5% and many considered that to be an ambitious goal at the time. To kick off the effort, Interior began collecting and analyzing crime data, identified trends, and began allocating resources to the areas of highest need. As the program progressed, regular reviews of the data became the norm, law enforcement strategies were continuously evaluated, and the communities were engaged on the front lines.

All of this effort began to pay off. By the end of 2011, the initiative had far exceeded its goal by reducing crime in these communities by a whopping 35%.  Now that is a performance story! Reducing violent crime on Indian communities by 35%! That means, through the Department of Interior, YOUR tax dollars have had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of people in Indian communities throughout the country.

So, back to the original question of - “why should I care?” I think this story is a perfect example of why you should. It shows real impact for real people. I’d like to encourage anyone reading this blog to check out Performance.gov and find similar stories of YOUR tax dollars at work.  

The Balanced Scorecard is everywhere; large corporations, small non-profits and government entities of all types.  And still, some organizations achieve significant results while others have yet to achieve much value beyond the initial alignment.  What is the difference between them?  How can yours be an organization that achieves significant results with the Balanced Scorecard?<more/>

The difference is simple.  Winning organizations USE their Balanced Scorecard and the rest simply HAVE a Balanced Scorecard.

The good news is that the process of developing a Balanced Scorecard has value in itself.  Having your leadership define the strategy so it can be communicated with a one page strategy map and monitored through a core set of measures has tremendous value.  Perhaps this is the first time your leadership team will not only be aligned but will be communicating consistently.

But there is more value to be had.  Teams that achieve major results embrace the Balanced Scorecard as an on-going a management tool.  They don’t just hang posters.  They monitor data, analyze implications, evaluate initiatives and integrate decisions across the business as a whole.  Leaders hold strategy review meetings and make data driven decisions within the context of the strategy.

The upcoming Mission Driven Summit  is an excellent opportunity to learn from organizations that have magnified their strategic results by using the Balanced Scorecard.  Dr. Dave Norton will discuss data that reveals the magnitude of impact possible from leading Balanced Scorecard users.  And great organizations will share their experiences and impact gained through the Balanced Scorecard. The FBI navigated the post-9/11 crisis and continues to drive the agency with the Balanced Scorecard.  Catholic Charities of Boston have increased the level of service, optimized fundraising and significantly reduced overhead costs in the five years they have been leading with the Balanced Scorecard.    Department of Commerce is the only US governmental entity using the Balanced Scorecard at the department level and they have even sustained the approach through a leadership change.  Perhaps you are more interested in learning about how a local non-profit such as the Boys and Girls Club of Puerto Rico has changed the path of many of the youth in the region.  Or how municipalities and geographic regions with varied stakeholders have used the Balanced Scorecard to align interests and focus efforts and results.

You will have the opportunity to hear from and talk with these organizations and more.  You will also have the opportunity to network with leaders like yourself who are about to embark on this journey as well with those well along the path with bumps and bruises to prove it.  Come join us and add your organization to the list of those who USE the Balanced Scorecard and reap the results!