Lifting the Curse of the Can-Do Agency

Remember the old FedEx commercial featuring the office worker who is being barraged with requests for help? “I can do that,” he assures caller after caller, until finally he turns to the camera and asks, “How’m I going to do that?”

I’m reminded of this beleaguered chap when I consult with an Alliance for Children and Families member who has responded to one need or opportunity after another, until its leaders survey the patchwork of programs and ask, “What should our name stand for and how can we tell this complicated story in a compelling way?”

For some agencies, the patchwork results from desperately seeking dollars. But for others, the cause is their own capability. Take a situation involving Alliance member Neighbor To Family, Daytona Beach, Fla.

While its innovative model for professional, siblings-together foster care had received national acclaim, this Alliance member’s identity was much less clear to those in its own service territory.

Three of Neighbor To Family’s strengths—exceptional responsiveness, reliable execution, and an entrepreneurial culture—had combined to create an “elephant to the blind men” scenario where the organization was starting to feel distinctly different depending on where you came into contact with it.

In one place, it was the star of step-down management. In another, it was the master of family team meetings. In another, it was the utility infielder that could play virtually any position. In only a minority of its markets was Neighbor To Family viewed as it wished to be seen—as an organization that keeps siblings together through professional foster care.

This was more than an image problem; it reflected reality. Because Neighbor To Family’s holistic approach to healing families required it to develop a wide range of skills, its primary funders—county-based agencies distributing state dollars—often pressed its local managers to take on assignments that fell just outside its focus.

And because the can-do culture allowed for increased local autonomy, the managers often said yes.

Now the fact is, as long as it maintains quality control, Neighbor To Family could probably have gone on in this way indefinitely. But this is not just any agency. This is an agency with the “big, hairy, audacious goal” of introducing its distinctive foster care model to the nation. Clearly, the all-things-to-all people path isn’t going to work anymore.

On the other hand, you can’t sell what people don’t want to buy. The corollary to “no money, no mission” is “no market, no mission.” Getting its government funders to buy into the professional foster care model, given its higher front-end cost, is not always easy; thus, flexibility is a necessary virtue at Neighbor To Family.

But where is that tipping point where flexibility morphs into incoherence? How do you stay responsive to a constantly evolving marketplace while staying centered on your highest and best purpose?

To better navigate this tricky terrain, Neighbor To Family launched a brand strategy project.

Step one was to define the target market of its brand. In this case, the broad market encompassed all of the decision makers who contract for foster care in the organization’s service areas. But, more specifically, Neighbor To Family’s target within that market were decision makers who fit 12 criteria—items such as “dissatisfied with the status quo and looking to make a change,” “focused on performance, solutions, and outcomes, versus getting hung up on process,” and “large, so we can achieve economies of scale.”

The project team identified a number of current contractors who fit the profile. They then formulated a 26-point hypothesis covering what they thought these decision makers valued about their relationship with Neighbor To Family. The following weeks included deep-dive interviews conducted with the selected contractors to discover which of these many attributes were most important to this type of decision maker.

Nothing beats taking a good, hard listen to the voice of the marketplace to get a clearer fix on the intersection of your mission and your target market’s needs and preferences. When the target of your branding efforts is the donor community, rather than service users or purchasers, life gets slightly more complicated. But the principle remains the same.

These market insights yielded a well-founded branding strategy and, more important, a renewed sense of organizational clarity. The leadership team walked away from the project with a plan that, in its form and logic train, could have come straight out of Procter & Gamble. Here’s a peek, courtesy of Neighbor To Family:

Product. The nation’s best model for keeping siblings together.

Distinctive Features.

1. Carefully selected, well-trained professional foster parents
2. NT Family Team Conferencing©
3. Strong engagement of biological families, including birth fathers
4. Emergency 24/7 intake
5. “No reject/no eject” placements
6. Ongoing empowerment of families to be healthy and self-sufficient

Key Benefits.

1. Significantly improved outcomes in terms of immediate quality placements
2. Faster permanency solutions
3. Reduced recidivism
4. Lower ultimate cost
5. Peace of mind gained from working with a fully committed, responsive, and agile partner
6. Positive “change agent” impact on overall system

Target Markets. State-financed, county-administered child welfare programs that are in large urban areas; headed by leaders with vision, ambition, and the capacity to effectively deploy our services; and are willing to make contractual commitments to Neighbor To Family.

Noncore Service Principles. To maintain strategic focus and discipline:

1. Sell non-sibling services only in markets that use our core product.
2. Market non-core services under separate “NTF Services” brand.
3. Develop only services and training that derive from our KST (Keeping Siblings Together) expertise and are, therefore, differentiated from what others offer.
4. Offer only non-core services that break even or make a profit that will subsidize KST work.

Of course, mapping out a plan for refocusing won’t get you to the goal overnight. It may take years. But it sure feels better to everyone involved when you’re clear on the route you plan to take.

Anne Curley is president of Curley Communication, which specializes in brand clarification and related strategic planning. Before establishing her consulting practice in 2000, she headed worldwide communication for SC Johnson. Earlier in her career, she served as the business editor of the Milwaukee Journal. Over the past 20 years, she has served on a dozen nonprofit and corporate boards of directors. She can be reached by e-mail.

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