Sectorally Ambiguous

Over the last few months since all my Ross School BBA compadres graduated and dispersed across the country into different sectors and jobs, I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations about different work, employers, and lifestyles – not to mention I’ve done a little bit of experiencing the work world myself. I could draw on any number of topics I’ve discussed with any number of my fellow graduated Wolverines, but the differences and similarities between one’s work, job, and lifestyles between the non-profit and private sector I find especially striking.

And with every good blog post comes one good phrase that contains a word that isn’t actually a word. And on that note, let’s play “sectorally ambiguous.”

While we could just talk about where the two sectors are blurring, that is what characteristics are becoming more sectorally ambiguous, I think it’s more insightful to think about those that are sectorally ambiguous, those that aren’t but could be, and those that aren’t and likely never will be – all with an eye on whether its sectoral ambiguity or lack there of is a positive or negative thing.

Dave, two other Yale SOM folks, and myself are refining a social venture and preparing to enter it into, among other swiftly approaching competitions, the William James Foundation’s 2008-2009 Socially Responsible Business Plan Competition. So, I’ll have to keep this conversation to a few characteristics for now, and explain even fewer, with the promise that this conversation won’t stop with this post. I will update the list, hopefully frequently,  and I encourage you to add comments, regardless of when you might read it. So, let’s get this party started:

Sectorally Ambiguous

Work /life balance

When it’s bad, it’s bad in both sectors. When it’s good, it’s good in both sectors.  The convergence is coming out of two different trends, though: more flextime, easier arrangements in the private sector and more accountability and less money for mission in the nonprofit sector causing higher demands of workers.  Of course you still have outliers like investment bankers (are there any left?), consultants who travel 4 days a week, and nonprofit employees who get away with doing overwhelmingly little, but I’m convinced work/life balance is sectorally ambiguous or very close to getting there.

Not Sectorally Ambiguous – yet? More Ubiquitous in the Private Sector vis-à-vis the Nonprofit Sector

Benefits

Development and advancement opportunities

Growth capital

Accountability

Lack of clarity around measures, patronage, and heartstrings keep a good number of organizations, and individual employees, from being accountable.  Clearly, the shift is taking place though–thanks to a new generation and new tools, technologies, and funding philosophies–so I’m confident this one is on the way out.  More personal accountability within organizations should follow this, too, but that’s relies on critical changes inside organizations which will take more time.

Not Sectorally Ambiguous – yet? More Ubiquitous in the Nonprofit Sector vis-à-vis the Private Sector

Urgency

Maybe some small businesses are complacent with their profits and don’t feel a sense of urgency when things start to stagnate, but I would say a great deal more of organizations in the nonprofit sector lack urgency. When you have something easy to measure like $$$, and something that directly impacts you, it’s easy to see how urgency easily sprouts from negatively trending or stagnating numbers. With nonprofits though, they don’t have that quick and easily updated measure. You can’t say: “today as compared to today last year we’re down 3% in lives touched.” It’s even harder for those organizations working upstream, preventing negative social outcomes from taking place and measuring the lack of occurrences of something.

When numbers or measures are slow to react, it is easy to understand why people might be slow to respond. Now of course some highly innovative and entrepreneurial organizations like  Citizen Schools  might be relentlessly unsatisfied with the current state of affairs and subsequently have an entire organization steeped with urgency (culture driving urgency), but that just isn’t the case for most nonprofits right now.

Psychological income from work

Many organizations in the private sector are increasingly focusing on finding ways for their employees to feel good about what they’re doing or who they’re working for thanks to the ideals of my generation.  From externships in nonprofit organizations and paid strategic volunteering time to employee donation matching and opportunities to get involved in corporate grantmaking and community sponsorship.

While it won’t eliminate nonprofits competitive advantage in the talent war, could it be enough to poach some great talent that would have otherwise gone to the nonprofit sector? Will the private sector push further and find more innovative ways for their employees to get psychological income from their work?

Not Sectorally Ambiguous – EVER! Belonging to the Private Sector

Thoughts?

Not Sectorally Ambiguous – EVER! Belonging to the Nonprofit Sector

Thoughts?