I just finished reading Carol Dweck’s book entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, in which she describes the difference between having a “fixed” and a “growth” mindset. A fixed mindset tends to view the world as having a limited or fixed amount of just about everything. For example, when we ask if the glass is half full or half empty, we are really limiting our thinking to the capacity of the glass. Take that attitude into the personal domain, and we end up thinking about things like love, money, friendship, work, personality and even intelligence as if they are fixed quantities. In reality they are not. Science has shown that intelligence, for example, when viewed as a constant that can’t be changed, actually leads people to either perform to prove their higher intelligence or fail to perform to confirm their lower intelligence. In contrast, those who have a growth mindset look at challenges as opportunities to grow and learn. They view the world as full of love, and welcome the possibility of positive change in personality, status, and even intelligence.
As simple as this dichotomy may be sound, the ramifications for people in their personal and professional lives are deep and complex. The inescapable fact is that we all have fixed mindsets about some things in our lives. We’d like to say we are open minded and growth oriented, but that certainly isn’t true of us at all times, and certainly not in all aspects of our lives. Cultivating a growth mindset is important if we are to overcome prejudices and limitations that hold us back from achieving our full potential, whether personally, or organizationally.
After re-reading my most recent blog post on sustainability and increasing revenue, I had to acknowledge that I’ve been “hoist on my own petard!” While claiming to have a growth mindset in most things, I wrote the post with a very closed or fixed mindset. So, I believe the honest thing to do for my readers is to call myself out. The second thing I need to do is to talk about it so we can all learn a thing or two about developing and maintaining a growth mindset. Why? Frankly, because in my opinion, having a growth mindset is critically important if we are to successfully lead our organizations through increasingly challenging times!
The other reason I had to yell “Ouch!” when I reread my post was because this is the very essence of the research I did in the 1980’s for my doctoral dissertation. At the time, I was the academic dean of a small, struggling Lutheran liberal arts college. It was a time of stress for private higher education and numerous small colleges had closed or merged. I certainly didn’t want my institution to become another casualty of bad decision-making. So, I set out to determine if the way in which college leaders thought about their institutions strategically was in any way related to their financial resilience – what we now call, “sustainability.”
The model I chose to use was developed by Ellen Earle Chaffee when she was at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and consisted of two very different views of the organization. The first view looked at the organization as an organism. Think of an amoeba, for example. It contains a nucleus, cell membrane, and various other common elements of cellular life. Its well-being is influenced by its environment, to which it reacts in order to survive. The types of strategic thinking that emerge from this view of the organization are very akin to Dweck’s “fixed” mindset. If things like the number of available students, the reputation, the amount of tuition that can be charged, the physical constraints of the campus are all quantitatively limited, then the strategies which need to be employed are things like adding high demand majors, lowering admissions standards, appealing to adult learners, cutting overhead costs, etc. The adaptive strategies that come out of such a fixed mindset are all aimed at sustainability within a quantitatively limited environment.
In contrast, the interpretive model of strategic decision-making comes out of post-modern linguistic work and looks at the organization in terms of its meaning to various stakeholder groups. It focuses on interpreting the mission, focusing efforts on telling the compelling story of the institution, interpreting its worth, creating and living by core values, and creating physical spaces that reflect its mission and values. In other words, it interprets meaning.
My research actually demonstrated a strong statistical correlation between the use of interpretive strategies and financial resilience (i.e., sustainability), especially in the areas of fund raising and student recruitment. It also pointed out that those institutions which relied almost entirely on adaptive strategies were among the least financially resilient. In actuality, almost all organizations utilize both types of strategy, but it was those colleges and universities which placed the emphasis on the use of interpretive strategies that had the highest level of financial resilience.
What does all this have to do with mindset and sustainability in nonprofit organizations? Well, as I often say, “It’s always about leadership!” How leaders think about their organization is going to have the biggest impact on the sustainability of their organization. In fact, I believe it is the defining difference between leadership and management. Leaders look for ways to grow their organizations. Managers try to keep them running. Leaders seek to expand the impact of their organization’s mission. Managers try to perform operational tasks more effectively and efficiently. Leaders strive to gain support for the mission and its impact from more stakeholders. Managers rely on established sources of revenue to support operations. Leaders focus on revenue. Managers focus on expenses. Is the organization a machine or organism that has to be kept running? Or is the organization a construction of meaning in a universe without limit?
Ultimately, your mindset affects the way you view your organization’s mission and how you define “mission fulfillment.” If you believe your organization exists to provide a fixed number of services at a set level of quality to a fixed number of clients within a fixed geographic area within a fixed budget, well….. I think you get the drift. On the other hand, if you are passionate about your mission and truly believe in the value you provide to people’s lives, wouldn’t you want to serve more people in more places with more services with higher quality supported by more resources? Of course you would. So, what’s holding you back? Maybe your mindset?
So, back to my previous post about sustainability and increasing revenue. I believe everything I wrote is true. Grant writing in an increasingly competitive foundation market is tough. Improving congregation relations as a means to increase member support is difficult in an era of membership decline. Major gift fund raising takes years and has to be part of a comprehensive, multi-faceted resource development strategy. Special events have their place and can bring valuable stakeholder connections, but require a great investment of staff and volunteer time. At the same time, I confess that the way I wrote about those things gives evidence of my having a fixed mindset – as if there was only so much money to go around in the world. And as a result, I fear that my post came across sounding negative, critical, and even <gasp> pedantic. Sorry.
The important lesson I hope to impart with respect to increasing revenue is this: If we view the world as having only so much money, then we are going to limit ourselves to strategies that help us compete for our fair share of a fixed asset. On the other hand, if we view the world has having opportunities to create capital, to grow or convert assets, or to generate new sources of revenue, then our strategies for sustainability will creatively take us to new places.
Exploring some of those new places will be the subject of my next post, so stay tuned! In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how mindset affects you and your organization’s ability to create sustainable growth.
Works cited:
Bauer, John E. (1987). An analysis of the relationship between the use of adaptive and interpretive survival strategies and financial resilience in Lutheran colleges. Unpublished dissertation. Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Chaffee, Ellen Earle (1984). Successful strategic management in small private colleges. Journal of Higher Education, 55, 212-241.
Dweck, Carol S. (2006). Mindset: the new psychology of success. Random House, New York.
