Experiencing the Myths
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His name was Andrew. He had a friendly smile, clean-cut looks, and the seat next to me on the plane back from Los Angeles.
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"What do you do?" he asked. It's the question everyone seems to ask once they know your name.
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"I work for World Vision."
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"Great. I sponsor a child. In Chad. We began sponsoring as something to influence the kids. My church also sponsors kids." How unusual, I thought, to meet an Aussie on a plane who actually goes to church.
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After this, the questions came in a predictable pattern.
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"I've always wondered what happens about kids who are not sponsored. I mean, it seems a bit unfair to single kids out for special treatment."
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I gave him a mini-lesson in community development and participation.
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"That's great to hear. What about that big building you have?"
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I explained it was the cheapest building possible for an organisation of our size. Cheaper than any alternative.
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"I never realised World Vision was that size." No. People never do.
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And then, the question I was waiting for.
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"What about overheads? How much of the money really gets to the children?"
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I answered him with the 70:30 goal, around 6% general admin, balance on fundraising, education, advocacy, no money actually "to children", no standard reporting, therefore difficult to compare agencies.
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I was getting tired. Seemed to me I had discussed these matters once or twice before. Although not with him.
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There was a moment of mutual silence. I spoke.
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"What do you do?"
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He was a doctor with the bone marrow unit of the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
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"Cool," I said, genuinely impressed. "That would be very satisfying work."
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"Yes. Yours too." I agreed with a nod.
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"That's got to do with leukemia and stuff hasn't it?" I asked.
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He explained it to me rather better.
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"How do you decide which patients to treat?" I asked.
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It was clear the question confused him. He just treated the ones who came for treatment.
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"Uh-huh. I suppose you have all the latest equipment?"
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"Pretty much."
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"Isn't that wasteful? I mean I've always wondered about that."
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He defended well. After all, we are talking about human lives. I agreed there was no debate on that value.
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"What about administration? How much of the bone marrow unit is overhead?"
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He paused for a minute.
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"I have no idea. I don't think I've ever been asked that question before. Why do you ask?"
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"I don't know. Why did you ask me?"
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Management Lesson
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The Emperor was lost on a journey and a member of his entourage stopped a boy herding horses to ask for directions.
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So impressed was the Emperor by the clarity of the boy's reply that he said to him, "You seem a smart lad. Tell me, if you were the Emperor, how would you rule the Empire?"
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"I have no idea, sir," replied the boy, "I only know about tending horses."
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"Well, tell me about that then."
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"When we are tending the horses, we make sure no harm comes to them. We put aside anything within ourselves that would injure them . . . Can ruling the nation be very different from that?"
Structure for the Year 2000
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Alignment means that the right things are more likely to happen by themselves. The new ways of doing things will appear to emerge spontaneously in organisations.
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A key part of the alignment process is communicating purpose so that it provides a touchstone for groups or teams to judge what kind of attention, time and energy to give to their initiatives.
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Our mission statement, Fighting Poverty by Empowering People to Transform their Worlds, and the ideas it contains, is this touchstone for us.
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"The image often given to this kind of coherence is 'resonance'. It is not 'singing from the same song sheet', but a celebration of diversity and different gifts feeding back to each other.
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"The apparently spontaneous movement together of a shoal of fish or a flight of birds is a good example.
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"One colleague suggests that organisations need to change from being whales to shoals of fish." (From "The Enhancement of Ministry in Uncertainty" by Gillian Stamp)