Development Agencies and the Bold Filter

Some weeks ago I read a piece of advice for tech startups that struck me as also being great advice for development organizations.

The suggestion was that any startup should have a goal that all other goals are subordinate to; a filter that all company actions must be able to pass through to be deemed worthwhile. It should be something simple to express. Something you can print in giant bold letters and stick on the wall of the office so that when people get lost in the world of spreadsheets and memos and way too many emails they can look up at the sign and ask themselves: "Is what I'm doing right now serving that goal? Can I draw an unbroken line from what I'm doing now to the ultimate objective of this organization?"

Even for profit making organizations, this final filter in bold print should never be "Make Money." Everybody wants that. Reminding yourself of it won't help you do better work.  For Facebook the sign might say "Connect People." For the New York Times it might be "Educate and Inform."

According to Kathy Sierra's guest post on Hugh MacLeod's blog, the final filter for many companies should be "MAKE USERS AWESOME." She argues that all marketing jujitsu is doomed to fail if the product (term used loosely) you're selling doesn't help its users be better in a way that they want to be better.

 J., of Tales From The Hood, touched this idea in a recent blog post, when he wrote of humanitarian aid products:

"...the main point is that if the people we say we want to help don’t want the thing, then it doesn’t work."

For humanitarian aid and development organizations, the ultimate filter should be "Help People." But everyone in the aid/development sector wants that. It isn't specific enough. NGOs should carefully examine Why They're In Business, and figure out what makes their organization helpful to people, exactly. Are you trying to empower people financially? Provide food security/sovereignty? Promote sanitation? Reunite families that have been separated by political/military conflict?

Whatever the organization's ultimate goal, they should know it well, and the workers should regularly double check whether what they're doing at the moment is aligned with that raison d'etre.

Having visible reminders of your crucial, simple goal can help keep people in touch with each other and with the real importance of what they're doing.
Everybody likes to be reminded that what they're doing is important.

Workers are happier, and do better work, when they know what they're working towards.

Customers, whether social network users, newspaper readers, or recipients of humanitarian aid, are happier when the organizations they work with help them be awesome.