Innovation and risk management

Innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. A distinction is typically made between Invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully. (from Wikipedia)

Risk management is activity directed towards the assessing, mitigating (to an acceptable level) and monitoring of risks to an enterprise. Risk management deals with risks to a specific project, asset or thing of value. In some cases the acceptable risk may be near zero. Risks are any and all events that could potentially occur, that would be detrimental to the interest or value of the object to which risk must be managed. (from Wikipedia)
 

Communities: WeAreMedia ‘Dealing with Resistance’.

Networks:Social Innovation Camp; The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Exchange (Ning); Open Innovation Exchange.

Consultants: David Wilcox’s Developing the New Media Open Innovation Exchange post.

Organisations:Innovation Exchange; Non-profit Risk Management Centre; PolicyLink’s Bridging the Innovation Divide: An Agenda for Disseminating Technology Innovations within the Non-profit Sector report; Charity Commission’s Charities and Risk Management guide; NCVO’s What is Risk Management; The Institute of Risk Management.

Blogs: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Innovation in the Non-Profit Sector by Bruce Nussbaum in Business Week; Innovation at Work: Helping Non-profits Raise the Bar on Ingenuity by GuideStar.

Publications: Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Non-profit Leaders by Holly Ross, Katrin Verclas, Alison Levine, and NTEN;Non-profit RiskManagement and Contingency Planning: Done in a Day Strategies by Peggy M. Jackson;Managing Risk in Non-profit Organizations: A Comprehensive Guide by Melanie L. Herman, George L. Head, Peggy M. Jackson, and Toni E. Fogarty; The Search for Social Entrepreneurship by Paul Charles Light; From the Ground Up: Grassroots Organizations Making Social Change by Carol Chetkovich; NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles and Innovations by Michael Edwards, Lisa Jordan, and Peter van Tuijl.

 

Dealing with bad press

by Amy

  1. Prepare your staff, board and especially your executive leadership for the possibilities of people saying misleading, wrong or bad things about your organisation, your services, your programs or you work. People are already talking about you, but social media allows you to find those conversations and participate.
  2. If you’ve set up Google Alerts and searches on other sites like Google Blog Search and Technorati, you will be able to quickly find conversations taking place online that are both positive and negative. Both are opportunities to join in and participate.
  3. Take a deep breath: dealing with bad press online is like dealing with bad press in front of a huge room full of people and reporters – except that online the audience can be enormous.
  4. Answer respectfully but honestly, and always publicly. If someone is talking about your organisation on their blog, leave a public comment that explains your real mission, your services, your programs or whatever is relevant to their gripes (but don’t feel obligated to go into detail about every aspect of your organisation, just focus on their issues).
  5. Be sure to include links for how the author and other readers can learn more about your organisation as well as to connect with you for more information and follow up, proving you are real and that your organisation really does care.
  6. Take the complaints back to your team: there is a reason someone or many people are complaining and if you can ‘fix’ a deeper problem, you won’t have to continue commenting on blogs or forums about the issue.
  7. Use the instance to start a conversation on your own organisation’s blog: include the original complaints (with links!), the comments you left, and then open up a conversation about your organisation’s services/programs/etc. that are pertinent to the conversation as well as the strategies and social media tools you are using for conversation about those topics, and ask for ideas, comments and feedback.