Don’t Be a Unique Snowflake
I was just talking to a friend of mine about some of the challenges that nonprofits face in software selection… as well as some of the ones they cause. We bonded over a problem that we both have all too frequently experienced: organizations that are convinced, without much research or logic, that what they do is completely unique, and can’t possibly be supported by a standardized or mass market software package.
When I started my career at a technology consulting firm, we had a term for these folks: “unique snowflakes’. So, in common usage: “Why on earth did they decide to build their own content management system?” “Yeah, well, they’re a unique snowflake.” I’ve always liked this term, but it seems that few people have heard it.
Being a unique snowflake is a bad thing. There are certainly times when in fact an organization has truly different needs than other organizations, and they need to do their own thing. But, well, this isn’t nearly as frequent as many seem to think. If you find yourself thinking that nothing out there will work for you, ask yourself why they won’t work. And then ask yourself for what reason you’re doing whatever it is that makes it not work.
That’s not to say you should plan your processes around software. You certainly shouldn’t. But you should plan your processes around best practices, and that includes doing things in ways that other people do them, unless you have a strong reason to do it differently.
Because at the end of the day, being a unique snowflake is expensive. It means you need to go out on your own and pave new ground in software development, which is unlikely to make sense except for something mission critical… and truly unique.
When I started my career at a technology consulting firm, we had a term for these folks: “unique snowflakes’. So, in common usage: “Why on earth did they decide to build their own content management system?” “Yeah, well, they’re a unique snowflake.” I’ve always liked this term, but it seems that few people have heard it.
Being a unique snowflake is a bad thing. There are certainly times when in fact an organization has truly different needs than other organizations, and they need to do their own thing. But, well, this isn’t nearly as frequent as many seem to think. If you find yourself thinking that nothing out there will work for you, ask yourself why they won’t work. And then ask yourself for what reason you’re doing whatever it is that makes it not work.
That’s not to say you should plan your processes around software. You certainly shouldn’t. But you should plan your processes around best practices, and that includes doing things in ways that other people do them, unless you have a strong reason to do it differently.
Because at the end of the day, being a unique snowflake is expensive. It means you need to go out on your own and pave new ground in software development, which is unlikely to make sense except for something mission critical… and truly unique.
posted by laura at 8:58 PM Permalink
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4 Comments:
I like your snowflake analogy. When I worked with my first non-profit they were very good at what they did and they put this down to being unique. They therefore insisted on having customized solutions for everything. Thanks to them I learnt a lot about Raiser's Edge customizations. However the more time I spent speaking to other non-profits I saw that they had the same issues and many had worked around those issues. From this two things became obvious. The software vendors often didn't know their client's well enough so didn’t provide really useful software and on the flip side many non-profits had such superiority complexes that they thought what they did was so special that only a unique solution was necessary.
There is definitely a place for customizations and special solutions but I also insist of evaluating the current solution before embarking on a unique approach.
David
I don't think I agree that it's always a bad thing to be unique. But I also agree that you should at least have a very good grasp on common solutions to any problems they are trying to solve and have very specific and well-defended reasons for diverging. A good sign if you diverge is that other npos with similar needs want to follow (and you've expected this). You also need to ensure you have realistic resources to diverge.
This issue is one of the reasons I left doing full time NPO work. I like to innovate and most of the time the "right" call is just to do what everybody else does (even if it could theoretically be done better), because the cost of risk of innovation couldn't be born by the resources of the organization.
Great points, guys! I agree with you both. I'm certainly not saying that one should never diverge from the mainstream, just that you should fully know what's standard practice, what's available, and what processes make sense for you before you decide to do your own thing.
There's often kind of a mental premium on "innovating", but as Scott points out, innovation has notable costs, and likely doesn't make sense except in a few select area in which your organization is truely unique. So for instance, innovations in understanding client histories might be a fruitful area; innovations in tracking major donors is likely not.
I very much like the "unique snowflakes" analogy. But what should we call nonprofits who will buy a fundraising software package then refuse, uncritically, to stay on the upgrade path because "we know better than they do".
I've been there and it simply didn't hold true because the "they" was not the software company as much as it was the collective knowledge and experience of the installed base. Result: Big loss for our team...eight years later we had very limited system rendered totally dysfunctional by lack of user understanding.
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