This is the eighth post in a series applying Seth Godin’s rules of bootstrapping (see also here) to building a non-profit organisation.
Rule 8: Create Boundaries for Yourself
Create boundaries for yourself.
What do you do?
What don’t you do?
This is a variation on “It’s not for you.”
Any work we do is in tension with boundaries.
There are boundaries we don’t want. Limits to:
- The number of clients we an reach and serve
- The number of clients who want to engage deeply with us
- Funding
- The number of people we can manage well
- The number of the right sort of people to manage
- Our time, and the time of our team
- How hard we can work
- Our skills
- The speed at which we can learn
- Our ability to spot problems
- Our ability to fix the problems we do spot
- How much other people care
- How much we care
- Attention
- What we can get permission to do
- Add another ten of your own
And then there are boundaries that we choose for ourselves:
- Given that we can serve a limited number of people, who will we try to serve first?
- That is to say, who will we serve now, and who won’t we serve now?
- Given that there aren’t enough of the right people, will we hire any people? Who won’t we hire?
- How hard won’t we work ourselves and our team?
- What values won’t we compromise (integrity, quality of product, quality of relationship, health of our team, the environment)?
- The same logic applies to all of the above
It all comes down to decisions – I like the understanding of ‘decision’ as a ‘cutting off’ of possibilities. We need to acknowledge what we can’t do and identify what we won’t do so that we can focus on what we can do and will do – and do those things.
Identifying boundaries and limits is a really helpful flipside in the process of thinking through your what’s important to you (values), the change you wish to see in the world (vision), and what’s possible now.