One of the easiest ways for an organization to waste a year is to get much better at something that doesn’t matter very much.
It happens because efficiency is easier to see than effectiveness. We can measure how quickly we process applications, how many donor calls we make, how often the management team meets, whether reports arrive on time. Those things feel like progress because there’s motion.
But motion isn’t the same thing as progress.
The harder leadership question is whether we’re working on the right problem in the first place.
Imagine a nonprofit struggling with fundraising. The instinct may be to redesign the website, improve the annual appeal, buy better software, or schedule more donor visits. All reasonable ideas.
But suppose the real problem is that nobody can clearly explain what the organization is accomplishing. In that case, better fundraising tactics may simply expose the underlying weakness faster.
Or take employee turnover. You can improve recruiting, shorten the hiring process, and build a nicer onboarding program. But if people are leaving because one manager makes their lives miserable, you’ve essentially created a more efficient system for replacing people that manager will eventually drive away.
That’s why senior leadership has a responsibility nobody else can fully carry: deciding which problems actually deserve the organization’s attention.
Most organizations have dozens of legitimate problems. Only a few are decisive.
The temptation is to work on the problems that are easiest to discuss, easiest to measure, or least uncomfortable politically. We reorganize the meeting calendar instead of confronting an underperforming executive. We launch another fundraising campaign instead of asking why donors aren’t staying. We add programs because examining whether existing programs actually produce results would be awkward.
None of this work is necessarily bad. It’s simply secondary.
A useful question for a leadership team is: If we solved only one or two things this year, which ones would materially change the organization’s performance?
Then press harder.
What problem keeps producing other problems?
What constraint is limiting everything downstream?
What are we spending enormous energy compensating for rather than fixing?
And perhaps most importantly: what issue do we already suspect is important but keep finding reasons not to address?
That last question has an annoying habit of being useful.
Strong leaders certainly care about execution. Things should be done well. Money should be spent carefully. Processes should improve.
But efficiency comes second.
Before asking how to row harder, make sure the boat is pointed somewhere worth going.
Otherwise, you may become remarkably good at getting to the wrong place.