The fundraisers who scare me the most are the ones who are convinced they’re right.

Why?  Because these are the folks most unlikely to ever change. It is their blind adherence to conviction and convention that endangers the future of their organizations.

Unwilling to challenge the status quo of their own efforts they’re most likely to be found at or near the top of the fundraising food chain.  Often, they’re the bosses or managers.  Generally, they can be found in larger organizations embedded in bureaucracy, camouflaged by a proliferation of silos and protected by their seniority.

(I mention “large” organizations because that’s where I’ve found the largest deposits of blind adherence to convention and defense of the status quo.  Often their large brands and incomes are the result of work of generations of staff who’ve preceded them.  Or, as Grandpa Craver used to say, “Some people were born 6 feet from home plate and think they’ve hit a home run.” )

These are not malevolent folks.  They mean well, but like most individuals and most organizations they tend to remain stuck because they rely on the familiar and are overly confident on their own strengths and competencies.

The problem is that many of these organizations have stumbled, plateaued,  or fallen because they are stuck with their “strengths” and “competencies”.  They use and re-use the same approaches because they’re familiar.

But familiarity—using the same approach and skill sets year after year—while comfortable is a real problem when the market and environment they’re working in has changed and the “familiar’ no longer works and the times have passed them by. (Remember Polaroid? Kodak? Pan American Airlines? The Palm Pilot? Time? Newsweek? And dozens of once-massive nonprofits that have fallen from their former glory.)

The lesson in all this is that truly effective fundraisers have to possess a unique mixture of humility and curiosity to recognize weaknesses or blind spots and the willingness to turn to others who can help them fill those in.

In short, the solution lies in admitting you don’t have all the answers and developing an attitude of learning.

But how do you develop an attitude of learning?   The first step is to recognize the traps that stand in the way of honest inquiry and learning.  There’s confirmation bias (we tend to pay attention to that information that reinforces our current belief…. familiarity bias  ( we tend to favor the familiar over the new or noel) ….and the overconfidence effect ( we ignore objective data and facts and favor our subjective beliefs).

These learning traps lead us to stick with our existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts what we believe.  Over and over these strongly held beliefs lead us to blindly act while ignoring contradictory evidence.  The result is that many nonprofits are stuck in a flat or declining cycle because their fundraisers never change the business model because they are unable—or unwilling– to see information that does not confirm to their perspective.

A classic example of what I’m talking about is the issue of feedback.  For several years we’ve emphasized the need to seek and listen to feedback from donors.  Why? Because ultimately feedback opens the door to developing experiences and journeys that your donors really need rather than just what the fundraiser or some staff committee imagines the donors need.

“But, I’m an Expert!”

Many fundraisers– especially those in large organizations– and many fundraising consultants I know honestly believe they are Experts.  Equally, they believe that being an Expert is a good thing.

But research and experience suggest that experts can also be dangerous. A few classic and familiar examples:

• The Ukrainian Minister of Power indicated the odds of a meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant were 1 in 10,000 years. He made this two months before the tragic accident in 1986.
• The US military believed that Pearl Harbor was immune to attack.
• A famous study on confidence and accuracy by experts Lewis Goldberg asked experienced neurologists and their administrative assistants to diagnose brain damage as being organic or non-organic using a standard protocol in the field.

While the experienced neurologists were much more confident than their untrained administrative assistants, they were not more accurate.  Goldberg found that the administrative assistants has just as high a rate of accuracy diagnosing organic brain damage as experienced neurologists.

[ Reminds me of the old saying about consultants: “Often wrong, never in doubt!”]

Solution: Become an Expert Novice

In his circuit-preaching and webinars Tom Ahern recommends we start each day with this question, “What if everything I think I know is wrong?”

That’s the beating heart of a learning attitude.  And every one of us –particularly the most experienced and most senior among us—should follow that advice.

Because asking that question leads to becoming what Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom, authors of Nail It then Scale It call an “Expert Novice”.

An expert novice is someone who has knowledge and confidence but always maintains a seed of doubt that they may be wrong. Tom Kelley, founder of the revolutionary design firm IDEO describes it as “a healthy balance between confidence and what you know and distrusting what you know just enough to keep you thirsty for more knowledge.”

It’s way past time we all become Expert Novice’s – particularly those of us who are set in our ways, smugly confident that we’ve been there, done that.

I’ll be back later this week with some basic questions all of us should be asking –and answering.

Are you an Expert Novice?

Roger