I help organizations run effectively through operations coaching, workflow optimization, and talent development. I gain a lot of personal satisfaction from making other people’s work lives more productive, satisfying, and under control. On a personal note, I’m a mom with 3 kids juggling life, work, family, and community involvement.
Deena Englander
Karma: 665
I couldn’t have said this better myself! Coaching provides huge value towards career and impact growth, and I would love to see more EAs investing in themselves.
You’re correct about all of this. I developed a fellowship program to help orgs specifically with upskilling and having the support they need to do well. I believe that the 3 critical ingredients to running an org successfully are: a) having the right knowledge b) having peer support and c) having a mentor and accountability. My personal mission is to help orgs succeed. You can find out more information on my website, or shoot me a PM / email.
I’m also working on developing an organization to consolidate all the org support resources—I’ve done this in the small business sector, and am applying the principles to EA. Would love to connect with anyone who wants to be a part of it.
Introducing WorkStream EA: Providing support, training, and consulting for EA organizational development
Anti Entropy focuses on providing short-term operational resources to supplement an organization and get them past specific obstacles. They provide “things” to support orgs, which is extremely valuable. WorkStream provides talent and personnel development and ongoing coaching. We focus on upskilling people and guiding them through growing their organizations.
Do we know success rates for organizations/initiatives?
Thanks! Will do so.
I have an organization, WorkStream, focused on helping orgs be more effective. See my post about it here. We are currently running both management and operations fellowship programs (see more details here), designed to build community and provide access to relevant education to our org leaders. We start the programs on a quarterly basis, so it’s an open application for anyone who wants to apply. It’s not a free resource, but we do try to give scholarships when possible.
Introducing EASE, a managed directory of EA Organization Service Providers
I would like it to involve active matchmaking, but we’re not there yet. Right now it’s just a directory.
3 Basic Steps to Reduce Personal Liability as an Org Leader
How WorkStream EA strengthens EA orgs, leaders and impact: our observations, programs and plans
I think another bottleneck is the unwillingness to hire outside of EA. It’s not so hard to find good ops people who have experience outside of EA, and as long as it’s a good personality fit, I’ve seen that working out well. Also, your typical EA is not a great ops person because they’re happier working on the big picture. To find people who are good at implementing, you have to look outside the group since they’re not naturally drawn to EA.
There were a number of people who were interested in one particular set of skills and knowledge. We’d have to develop those courses, which is our bottleneck right now. Delivering the courses isn’t the issue—it’s creating the new programming and then packaging, marketing and organizing the courses. Along those lines, I think webinars will be helpful as well, but they do take the initial time investment. We are currently seeking funding to help alleviate the resource bottleneck so we can create these.
The supply gap of EA org service providers
It’s based on our collective experiences working with EA orgs. We all interact with a large volume of EA orgs, and we keep getting similar questions for providers in certain areas.
And to your point, I personally refer in non-EA specialists as needed, but I would prefer to use EA folks (if they exist) to strengthen the business support services in the community. And some services are better provided when the provider is at least familiar with EA. All the people I bring in get a short introduction of what to expect before they start with EAs. Believe it or not, EA orgs have a VERY different mentality than most other organizations out there and it can be challenging for providers to understand and navigate if they don’t have prior exposure.
Another reason why we are focusing on EAs now is that we’re building a directory of EA service providers, so we’re just noting the gaps that exist within EA. Part of the goal is that anyone who needs help with something has an easily accessible resource to find access to trusted advisors and partners. So it’s not that someone outside of EA provides “worse” software implementation than someone within EA—it’s just noticing that our community doesn’t have that resource available now. And potentially, it might be that none of us are aware of a provider that does that, in which case, we’d like to know about it.
It’s your second point that we’re addressing-
EA orgs are making a mistake by not wanting to pay for these things even though they would be worth paying for.
Although your first point is also true. I don’t think that’s a problem, though. Most businesses have diverse audiences and I don’t think EA is large enough to support most business models independently.
There are lots of software needs and types of service providers that are needed. Anti Entropy also provides great support in addition to Altruistic Agency. But right now, if I need Salesforce or Smartsheets or Dynamics setup, those usually have specific consultants. Or sometimes we need larger-system research and implementation plans, and that’s not something we currently have a resource for in EA. I do have good resources out of EA.
Please submit an application to be added here.
I totally agree with you.
The other problem with outside experts is the same that anyone faces—who do I use? Which company is good? Pre-covid, I had been working on a problem in the small business community that created something very similar because of the hesitancy of humans to trust, especially when a lot of providers aren’t as good as they claim to be. So I do think there’s a trust factor that’s important regardless, and if we don’t have the talent in EA, I would consider bringing people out of EA into the community to fill those gaps.
Hi all! I’m new to the EA forum. My husband’s been involved in EA for years, and I am finally in a place to want to join in as well. Specifically, I’m an efficiency consultant, specializing in operations and productivity improvement. I would love to take my talents to the EA world to make charities and the people involved more impactful.