Pretty girl promoting lap top on the beach

Do you know who in your group or associated with your group is a honest to goodness promoter of your charity along with your group? How about your detractors? Are passives easy to identify?

This concept is very well presented in the business book by authors Fred Reichheld and Bob Markey, titled “The Ultimate Question 2.0, How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World”. In the second of the book series on Net Promoter companies the authors continue and refine their ideas on how customers fall into one of three very distinct categories, promoter, passives, and detractors. They go into very good detail on how to use analysis and statistics to find each group and why it pays off to make this determination for various ROI  identifies or just in loyalty sales and future growth.

When you think of people who promote things, often what comes to mind is megaphones and loud speakers. But promoters are just people who manage to talk up your cause or your group in a positive way. They may wear hats or shirts with the name of the group as well. They are inspired and promotional of the groups message and image. They show passion for the cause.

These members identified as promoters and associated friends and family live the message of the cause and they are very strong advocates of the other members who are also promoters!

Promoters are the most likely to be in tune with the “voice of the customer”. This concept stems from the many management plans which promote quality and is the single biggest concept behind the empowered volunteer. For many of you in business or having taken business courses quality plans from the past included Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and of course combinations of those labeled Lean/Six Sigma.

For a while during the 90′s even the U. S. Navy had Total Quality Leadership (TQL), with mainly the name as the only difference between TQM and TQL. Today the U. S. Navy has Six Sigma quality systems and reportedly embraces the concept of the empowered worker where it most certainly did not support lower rank empowerment before. This is because the sea going service was not mature enough to allow empowerment of it’s non-managerial members (read enlisted volunteer members) when TQL was instituted. From what I have read Six Sigma has made healthy contributions for today’s Navy!

In my past I have been trained in all of these and hold certifications in several continuous improvement training methods. They all have a concept that includes empowering the lowest worker with the most responsibility and accountability as well as listening to the customer, both internal and external customers. The empowered volunteer is simply another application of the empowered worker from Lean Manufacturing teaching.

All volunteer groups have the potential of supporting three types of customers, those from the cause they serve,  their group members and associated family, and the general public or businesses from which they develop relationships and derive much if not all of their resources.

So how do you identify promoter types for your group?

The authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0 suggest something so simple that it even applies outside industry and I am suggesting it would apply nicely to volunteer groups who want to add to their SWOT analysis. Survey your three customer groups and ask them one question, “Would you recommend this volunteer group to your friends?” On the survey have a range of responses from zero to ten, with ten being the best and zero the least. The authors say that a promoter is someone who responds with an eight or better.

Nothing brings in willing volunteers like proper passion for a worthy cause!

Knowing who your promoters are and being able to motivate them on the behalf of the group is worth more to the future success of your volunteer group than just about anything else you can do! If surveys are not in order another way to identify the promoters is through their passion observed over time!

I have written about passion in volunteer groups before, use the search feature on this blog to find some of those posts for further reading. 

Proper passion directed for worthy causes is one of the biggest draws for new members. When people enjoy themselves the volunteering becomes less work and more fun. People flock to fun things! Birds of a feather flock together and promoters like to be among other promoters and also to enrich or uplift passives into promoters! This is one feature of successful leadership which can’t be over emphasized. One really likable passionate promoter in a group can transform that group into a bunch of promoters over time. That is one huge way to ensure the future of the group will be a long and healthy one.

I will write in future posts about how to motivate and focus promoters as well as identifying and converting passives and detractors. The authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0 targeted their book towards business and the collection of data.  The subsequent data collection and analysis over time is much more trouble than the average volunteer group can justify. I will provide some ideas and suggestions for finding each group without all of the data search needed.

The empowered volunteer by the way would almost certainly be a labeled a promoter!

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Lean Team Cap

The caption above was the reward for the author’s membership as a Lean Team leader for a Lean Event. Lean training was held at Old Dominion University and then those of us trained were expected to take an issue and solve it using the training in Lean Manufacturing that we had practiced.

Individual employee empowerment was a concept sweeping the manufacturing and service industries with quality programs such as Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. As global competition forces many business to find ways to become more efficient, many companies have decided to adopt business models which more successful businesses have already created.

Quality History review with regards to empowered workers, short version.

Quality history is credited with starting in America with Dr. W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). He was influential in assisting American War Manufacturing during WWII with his statistical concepts as applied to production. After WWII, he tried unsuccessfully to bring the benefits of his statistical quality applications to American manufacturers.

When this effort failed in America, he was asked to bring the concepts to the aid of the war-defeated country of Japan by Douglas MacArthur in 1950. The Japanese had already employed many of the production inspirations from Henry Ford, who unknowingly had innovative elements in his production line, which later became the first stirrings of Lean Manufacturing.

Dr. Deming was asked by his friend General MacArthur to teach the Japanese his statistical quality methods. Deming was inspired during his lecturing to the heads of Japanese businesses in 1950, and he made this now-famous prediction: If the Japanese learned and adopted his quality systems, they would become an exporting nation within five years, and be well on the way to producing the world’s highest quality and most in-demand products.

America did not “rediscover” Dr. Deming’s methods until the 1980’s, when Dr. Deming was also in his eighties. This gap in management decision making to address quality gave the Japanese manufacturers about 30 years of quality culture and learning over the less efficient American manufacturing methods. For the automotive competitors outside of America this was a tremendous advantage.

As a testament to how influential Dr. Deming was a US News & World Report cover story named Deming’s contribution to the world as one of only nine “Hidden Turning Points in World History,” along with events like Columbus’ discovery of America, and Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.

Dr. Deming eventually created his famous 14 principles of management. Principle number 14 is to “involve everybody” in the process of manufacturing. This point was eventually modified with some others and became the empowered employee principle. The idea was to push down the level of responsibility for decisions to the very lowest rank of workers possible.

In the military while I was in during the 1990′s, Total Quality Leadership (TQL), a version of the famous quality program Total Quality Management making the rounds in the civilian world was introduced onto ships and other commands in the US Navy. The program was very popular with enlisted personnel, including yours truly who was trained in the new methods and procedures. However, the program were a complete failure. Unfortunately, senior Naval Officers saw the empowerment of enlisted as a threat to their authority, which was simply not true.

On my ship the whole program never got serious consideration and we were never allowed to make our recommendations to the chain of command. It is my understanding from talking to other enlisted personnel that other commanders felt the same way. I never heard of a successful TQL project, but their may have been an isolated case that actually produced results.

Updated news, today’s US Navy has embraced Six Sigma and has been training Black Belts for a few years now. This is due to forced budget cuts and other economic factors. This progressive attitude was only possible by the complete change of attitude by the senior management that previously failed to sell the concept properly.

Empowered employees in Lean Manufacturing environment for instance like at the old Saturn Plant, a division of General Motors was given the rare (for GM) authority to stop the production line if they found a defect, authority that was preceded in Japan by many years for empowered employees. American manufacturing had some catching up to do if they wanted to be competitive. GM has not been able to keep the company and Saturn was dismantled as a company when GM entered into corporate restructuring when it accepted a US Government financial investment. Other GM divisions were also dismantled.

Toyota Motor Company has been the leader in Lean Manufacturing for many years now. The techniques, which have employee empowerment at the forefront and evolved into Lean Manufacturing were in the past called The Toyota Way and have been part of the car company culture for over 50 years now.

According to many business publications Toyota is poised to take over as the world sales leader from GM. This is an incredible achievement for a car company physically located outside its main markets of North America and Europe. The Toyota Method in quality, which evolved into Lean Manufacturing was truly ahead of its time.

From a quality perspective Toyota is one of the leaders in the field and continues to use Lean Manufacturing continuous process improvement techniques. US car companies have demonstrated a dedication to quality in the last two decades or so but they seem to be reluctant to fully engage the total package of quality techniques like Toyota has.

Toyota has empowered employees, source suppliers, and many other stakeholders within the support structure needed to produce their products. This one act of empowerment is so powerful that it is still considered a vital portion of the continuous process improvement program, even after so many years.

Just-in-time is a concept which has resulted from partnerships with suppliers and is supported by empowered employees of both groups, suppliers and production workers. The idea is that very little inventory is held on the plant site, rather the supplier takes on the burden of keeping the supply bins or areas properly stocked with just the right amount of product and at just the right time for production needs. Obviously this concept needs a supplier who is highly involved in the production and forecasting of the plants needs and supplies. Suppliers become partners in this procedure, with supplier employees taking on even more responsibility for the product distribution, in essence they become empowered employees for the production plant even though they work for the supplier.

The bottom line is that Lean Manufacturing works very efficiently. Employee empowerment is one core concept of this quality method, which was first articulated by a small town boy from Sioux City, Iowa named W. Edwards Deming and then recognized by his friend who had a serious need for experts to help rebuild Japan, General Douglas MacArthur. Just in time and other associated business concepts will not be needed by the empowered volunteer. It is only mentioned to show how revolutionary this concept of Lean Manufacturing really is. So is the empowered volunteer within volunteer groups.

As a side note, General MacArthur was a Freemason, as was Henry Ford. Dr. Deming belonged to the American Society of Quality (ASQ). However, all of these people understood the value of the empowered employee, and a volunteer is an unpaid employee who can also become empowered.

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Freemasons, who started out building Christian churches

The purpose of this site is to arm individuals with the knowledge and strategy for success in volunteering and rebuilding various groups who support charities, thus in the process as more  and more people do this we will collectively rebuild America! Just as the Freemasons are the inheritors of a past in building the great Christian churches we now take for granted, so too are America’s great volunteer groups showing signs of being taken for granted. The Empowered Volunteers can be the builders for these great American assets before we lose something too big for words when you consider all the contributions they have made over our history.

Lofty purpose, tons of work by a huge number of people needed to pull it off. Every person counts, even if you don’t want to become an empowered volunteer. Join for selfish reasons and then as time goes on you’re likely to become much more open to the real values of the group and the charity you are supporting. When you combine passion with networking with face to face interactions with other humans you can’t help but see health improvements, according to many studies over many years.

Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam, in his book “Bowling Alone” published in 2000 showed on page 303 a Social Capital Index which provided data reflecting that kids watch less TV in high social capital states. As adults and parents, all of us should want to set a better example for our kids. Data analysis like this shows convincingly that there is a link between the way children are raised in different parts of the country and how they act as adults.

This book by Putnam is one of the big factors that encouraged me to start figuring out the empowered volunteer criteria and methodology. If we lose these groups which Putnam says are part of what made America great over our history, we really lose something of our American soul. We don’t have to let these groups die off.

Putnam provided concrete data to show the need for what I had been using as a life strategy most of my life. America’s many civic and fraternal groups are dying in what he claimed left American’s bowling alone, thus the name for his book.

Group with the Optimist Creed

To illustrate the huge issue, I will use numbers from one civic group, but rest assured that the book I wrote in 2006 had population data from many groups which also have seen a decline in memberships just like this one.

Optimists International in 2006 had 123,865 members according to the website at the time. Today the site shows 87,000 members in 2013. That is a huge drop off in members over 7 years, but the cause and need for help has not declined I assure you. Another data point is that in 2006 the number of Optimist Clubs was 3,918, today their site shows 2,900 clubs. This is nearly a drop of a thousand clubs! This group has the famous Optimist Creed, which is well worth a visit to their web site to copy and print out. I recite this creed out loud on a frequent basis as a motivational tool.

Another well known group, Moose International, a fraternal and service group had in 2006 1.5 million members, today their site reflects 800,000 members. In 2006 they had 2,000 lodges and today their site reflects 1,800 lodges. They are still doing a mountain of good work, but with the steady decline of members the amount of help they can provide is a bit harder than when they had 700,000 more people!

These two examples of groups with a history in the last 7 years of declining memberships is the normal rather than the exception when it comes to membership decline. Very few groups have shown an increase. Most show a sharp decline as outlined in Putnam’s book.

As I post more and more about groups and their needs I will reflect each groups past numbers and needs when known as well as current numbers when they are available. I will post about how to become engaged and involved, all while helping your own future and your individual health in the process! So you can be civic and yet benefit in several ways too.

New motivated volunteers are needed desperately in all areas of the volunteer network. That is what prompted me to write my book in 2006, with the help of a hugely successful and very professional writing coach near Philadelphia, PA. Unfortunately, my old coach has now published many of his own books while I could not get any publisher interested in my idea to rebuild America. Thus I am taking my cause to the people and I will cut out the middle man, or publisher if you will who did not see the potential of rebuilding America. It was not the fault of the writing coach or the publishers that my book did not see the light of day, it was my fault for not finding a way. Now I have found that way, this site. I may or may not compile new data on population declines and new information for a follow up book with current information, that is yet to be decided.

To construct my book back in 2006 I simply took some of my business graduate studies from Troy State University, combined that with my experience in several volunteer groups along with my training in Lean Manufacturing techniques, particularly the empowered worker concepts so that the result was the “Empowered Volunteer Rebuilds America, One Fraternal, Civic, and Veterans Group at a Time”. I will in future posts detail exactly how, step by step, a motivated individual should start to take back America, one fraternal, civic, and veterans group at at time. I hope to self-publish this book in both print as well as e-book format in the future.

To illustrate the incredible power of the data collected in Putnam’s book, particularly a concept called the Social Capital Index, I will quote a bit from “Bowling Alone”.

“States that score high on the Social Capital Index – that is, states whose residents trust other people, join organizations, volunteer, vote, and socialize with friends – are the same states where children flourish: where babies are born healthy and where teenagers tend not to become parents, drop out of school, get involved in violent crime, or die prematurely due to suicide or homicide. 

Statistically, the correlation between high social capital and positive child development is as close to perfect as social scientists ever find in data analysis of this sort. States like North Dakota, Vermont, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa have healthy civic adults and healthy well adjusted kids; other states, primarily those in the South, face immense challenges in both the adult and youth populations.”

Social capital by itself is not a cause for healthy kids or any other issue. It is a very big contributor but by itself it is only one factor. When combined with other factors the data suggests that when you do things to increase your social capital, you will incur increased health benefits.

How much for each individual and how soon all are individual characteristics that are very hard to determine without mounds of data from before you started and then followup data after you are fully engaged in the program. For our purposes we will rely on the various studies that show the benefits to those who have done similar programs. Basically, if it works for others over the years, we will strive to get the same results all while helping people in need and collectively helping our country.

By the way, there is no reason this pattern I will submit for the American citizens could not be used all over the world. The World Bank has encouraged many countries to engage in increasing the social capital of the citizens in the area involved. The concept is powerful and it has had success in many areas beyond helping American volunteer groups. In time if there is a demand I will study other countries and their issues and tailor this program for their needs. This program certainly can help others, but the massive data analysis from “Bowling Alone” helped justify the various techniques I have tailored for my Rebuilding of America program. Other countries might have different needs due to different conditions and populations.

To summarize, Empowered Volunteers are individuals who have a purpose, to increase the membership of their worthy cause or charity. In the process of helping their cause, they will contribute to the overall rebuilding of American volunteer groups, including civic groups, fraternal groups, and veteran groups. There are also many other worthy groups for empowered volunteers to help, youth groups, trade groups, garden clubs, church groups, and many others. No mater what worthy group you choose, you can be sure that when you hook up someone with a group that they feel passionate about you will be one step closer to rebuilding America’s volunteer infrastructure. You will be the next Empowered Volunteer who helps rebuild America, one volunteer at at time.

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