In an attempt to improve the efficiency and productivity of their organizations, South Florida Muslim leadership today concluded the second non-profit essentials training workshop. Focused on Operational Excellence the session was conducted by Center on Muslim Philanthropy’s President Tayyab Yunus and Monica Niro, Operations Manager with Intuitive Solutions. It was attended by almost 40 leaders from various mosques and Islamic centers in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
Tayyab Yunus, President Center on Muslim Philanthropy
Monica Niro, Operations Manager Intuitive Solutions
The session emphasized that operational excellence was essential in achieving goals, minimizing operational risks and lowering operating costs. While sharing his experience of working Muslim non-profit organizations, Tayyab Yunus was of the view that they lacked organizational excellence and therefore haven’t been able to move past the entrepreneurial phase. He further explained that to be operationally excellent they needed to follow three simple steps – exploration, experimentation and finally institutionalization. What that means is finding and experimenting with systems, techniques, tools and pathways that suit your organization best and then implementing them for others to follow. The collective term he used for the process was having an SOP- Standard Operating Procedure. Bulbs picture
Monica’s presentation focused of elaborating on SOPs, structuring them and showing tools that may be employed in the process. SOPs or what Monica to referred to as a Living Document, simply put, are a set of rules, guidelines and collection of information developed over a period of time with collaboration of an organization’s stakeholders and/or an outside professional depending on the resources of your organization. This document may then be used by current and incoming members of the team as a reference point. SOP pictures
According to Monica, it was imperative that such a document is kept simple and accessible to ensure a smooth workflow, efficiency of outcome and strong team collaboration.
Some effective and user-friendly tools that may be employed for this purpose are google documents, asana and trello. All these project management tools are not only available online but are user friendly as well. If properly utilized they have been proven to improve the project management of organizations across the globe making them operationally efficient, effective in communications and highly result oriented.
Author: Sana Saif
Program Manager
