One of many great ideas I have been thinking about since reading Thomas Friedman’s new book: Hot, Flat and Crowded , is the notion that it is much harder for competitors to copy how we conduct our business than what we actually do.

If a nonprofit finds a great new way to reduce recidivism among juvenile offenders, for example, others will soon learn of it and begin to copy it. This is a good thing. As I argued in my own book on competitive strategy: Play to Win, our benchmarking, best-practice-driven culture insists on relentlessly raising the bar, which generally benefits society.

In our current era of increasing demand for transparency and decreasing service quality, Friedman cites the work of Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, a company that helps businesses build ethical cultures. “How you do your business. . .how you keep your promises, and how you relate to customers, colleagues, suppliers, and the communities in which you operate are much more difficult to copy if you are doing them well,” Friedman writes.

The good news for all of us, both nonprofits and consultants, is that the way we do things is largely within our control, is not dependent upon outside funding, and is not especially at risk in a recession. Friendliness, responsiveness, honesty, and common sense are, amazingly, free. They are also especially important in hard times. The added stress of an ailing economy makes a well-run organization that much more appealing to employees and clients alike.

Tags: nonprofit

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Consulting for Nonprofits, Nonprofit Sector, Recommended Reading, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.