The telephone analogy (Redux) - Deborah Elizabeth Finn, Strategist ...

This is another article salvaged from my now-defunct first blog.? (Many thanks are due to the Wayback Machine, which enabled me to retrieve a copy.) It was first published in 2005, well before smart phones were prevalent among non-geeks.?

An inherent flaw in the analogy at the time was that telephones, once installed, caused much less trouble to nonprofit executives than the typical IT infrastructure.?

As we flash forward to 2013, with a culture in which smart phones are not only prevalent but offer functions previously associated with information systems, it?s interesting to reflect on how well the telephone analogy has stood the test of time.?

So many of us, inside and outside of the nonprofit sector, devote an inordinate amount of time looking forward to upgrading our phones, and that?s a shocking change.?

One thing that hasn?t changed enough is the failure of many nonprofit organizations to think through the budgetary and operational implications of acquiring new technologies.

Fri 11 Feb 2005 10:52 AM EST

Are you a nonprofit/philanthropic professional who is having trouble making the case that your organization needs to bring its technology infrastructure into the 21st century ? or at least into the 1990s?

Please allow me to acquaint you with the telephone analogy.*

First of all, can you think of a functioning nonprofit/philanthropic organization whose board, chief executive officer, or chief financial officer would ever say?

• ?? we don?t need to find or raise the money to install telephones or pay our monthly phone bill.?
• ??we don?t need to dedicate staff time to answering the phone or returning phone calls.?
• ??we don?t need to orient staff and volunteers about personal use of the phones, about what statements they can make on our behalf to members of the media and the public who call our organization, or about how queries that come into the main switchboard are routed to various departments, or about how swiftly high-priority phone calls are returned.?
• ??we don?t need to make sure that when donors, stakeholders, constituents, and clients call our main number they can navigate the automated menu of choices.?
• ??we don?t need to show staff members how to put callers on hold, transfer calls, or check voice-mail now that we have an entirely new phone system.?

Apparently, most mission-based organizations have resigned themselves to the fact that telephone systems are an operational necessity.? Somehow, the leadership finds the money, time, and motivation to meet the organization?s telephony needs.

If only we could get the same kind of tacit assumption in place for every mission-based organization?s technology infrastructure!

I propose two possible strategies, either of which would of course need to be tailored your organization?s culture:

• Encourage your board, CEO, and CFO to see your technology infrastructure as analogous to your telephone system.
• Persuade them that your telephone system is an information and communication technology system ? and then encourage them to regard other components of the system (such as computers, networks, and web sites) with the same kind of tacit support and acceptance.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who has tried this strategy ? or developed one that is even more persuasive.

---

* N.B.:? I need to warn you in advance that all analogies eventually break down, but this is a pretty useful one, especially since a telephone these days really is the front end of an information and communications technology system.

Like this:

Be the first to like this.

Tagged: 1990s, 2005, 2013, 21st century, analogy, automation, board, budgetary, budgeting, capacity building, ceo, cfo, charity, chief executive officer, chief financial officer, clients, communication technology, constituents, donors, flashback, front end, functionality, geeks, hardware, ict, information systems, information technology, inherent flaw, it infrastructure, mission-based, money, motivation, new technology, ngo, non-geeks, nongovernmental organization, nonprofit, nonprofit executives, nonprofit management, nptech, operational necessity, operations, orientation, philanthropic, philanthropy, phone, priorities, smart phone, staff, stakeholders, strategic, strategy, tacit acceptance, tacit support, technology, telephone, telephone analogy, telephone systems, telephony, time, training, upgrades, voicemail, wayback machine

Source: http://deborahelizabethfinn.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/the-telephone-analogy-redux/

Nadia Comaneci Rebecca Soni Snoop Lion London 2012 Table Tennis badminton Dominique Dawes Gabby Olympic Gymnast