Resourcefulness in Action
Resourcefulness in High Demand
Have you heard any of these expressions?
“We need to do more with less”
“Work smarter, not harder”
“We didn’t have enough resources” when a project takes more time and money (resources) than expected
Resourcefulness resides at the heart of each expression - encouraging superior outcomes with the same or fewer resources. With less time, talent, or money, we work smarter. When a project falls short of expectations, a lack of resources provides a convenient excuse. Once viewed as a nice-to-have advantage, resourcefulness evolved into a business-savvy competency.
The Salesforce Business Analyst Summit had an inspirational session featuring resourcefulness. David Limiero of Stadia Church Planting had a conversation with Toni Martin, the Summit host, on “Multiplying Your Impact: Business Analysis as a Value, not Just a Job.” Like most non-profits, Stadia wants to grow their mission, spending as much money as possible on the mission, and as little as possible on everything else.
Stadia’s mission is for every child to have a church, according to David. The organization facilitates starting new churches around the world.
Growing Talent to Meet Lofty Goals
In 2013, Stadia’s leader set a goal to start over 100 churches a year. David already realized this would require money and leadership talent. Stadia did not want to increase funding and staff proportionally with the number of new churches each year. Rather, they wanted to grow a lot with a little more resources. Fortunately, Stadia’s leader recognized they would need a software platform to handle the growing volume of new churches. David’s manager assigned him the project to develop the platform on Salesforce.
David started developing Salesforce talent within the Stadia organization. He offered a $100 gift card incentive for administrative staff to get on Trailhead and earn the reporting and dashboard superbadge. He encouraged staff to take the Elements.cloud business analysis training online. Once someone took the training, s/he could pick a process to create or update. When the project successfully completed, they got a $100 gift card incentive. David intends for a staff person trained in business analysis to perform 75-80% of the analysis. He takes the analysis the rest of the way and hands the project off to development.
Keep Projects as Simple as Possible, and No Simpler
Stadia makes software development projects as small as possible. They have a straightforward project request form, eliciting meaningful information such as, “Who outside of Stadia will benefit from the project” and “List the specific outputs you would like.” The first question focuses the project request on the “customer.” It resists the temptation to build something that could be cool, but not very valuable. The second question focuses on results, rather than only inputs, such as someone asking to gather some church data for some unknown reason. Every project has an external beneficiary and a purpose.
A staff member with project manager skills takes the project request form and draws a process map in Elements.cloud to visually show how it would work. David works with the staff member to complete a project checklist, including the creation of test criteria, a pre-deployment review, and documentation. The test criteria define the standards for a working process. The pre-deployment review enables the project requester to confirm that the process works as expected.
Preparation to Relieve Bottlenecks
Stadia anticipates starting 400 new churches this year, with an ultimate goal to start 1,000 churches a year. David asks if Stadia needed to start that many churches annually, what processes would break? He favors preparation to keep processes from breaking as opposed to planning excess capacity for growth.
David anticipates the growing number of churches will generate more demands for new and improved processes. He recognizes that he would become a bottleneck for increased project requests. He encourages administrative staffers to train themselves in Salesforce and business analysis to multiply his talent.
In 2019, David and his team created a “Hub” for administrators using Salesforce, where they have monthly meetings and Salesforce office hours. They show staff how to leverage Trailhead to develop their skills. They have also created a knowledge base, which combined with the Hub has reduced their cases by 70%.
A Model of Resourcefulness
Resourcefulness demands creating as much value as possible with minimum resources. Instead of hiring a full-time business analyst or project manager, David Limiero has distributed those skills to administrative staff. If one of those trained staff members needs a new process or an improvement, s/he can analyze and map out the process for David, saving a meeting with a separate stakeholder.
Keeping projects small and manageable makes it easier for trained staffers to analyze processes and prepare them for development. It simplifies development and testing. For each project, David asks how they could deliver some value that week, even if it’s not a minimum viable product.
David recommends reaching out to Salesforce communities for issues too difficult to resolve internally. The communities have a well-earned reputation for helping those struggling with Salesforce challenges. They provide another source of talent on demand. David has a working model of resourcefulness by engaging talent as needed to develop Stadia’s software platform. This resourcefulness trickles up to facilitate Stadia’s growth without demanding a lot of staff and money.
Getting help as needed from motivated staff with the best tools and communities enables an organization to do more with less.