Conversation

A friend's workplace received notice their staff is forming a #union and she wanted to talk about how to handle. (She's on the leadership team.)

After listening to her describe all the jankery going on (capacity issues, infrastructure gaps, morale, culture, norms issues, etc) I saw everything clearly.

Her staff is using unionization as a proxy for change management. Sadly, forming a union isn't going to expand their donor base, expand their capacity, change the terms of their federal grants, or turn folks into better managers.

But it will bring clarity and structure of sorts.

And that's what I told her.

Her staff is asking for clarity and the leadership team hasn't provided it. So now they're going to be a unionized shop -- this is an opportunity to make the implicit explicit. The leadership team has to be prepared for that but they aren't.

Neither is the staff. They want shared decision-making and they're about to get hit with a quagmire of nonprofit decisions. Hope they're ready.