I run a profitable small business (technically, a couple of them), but I’ve had to do it the hard way. I’m a high-school dropout with a GED. I’ve never been to college — I don’t have an associates degree, let alone an MBA. I had to do a lot of self-education, and it helped me learn the difference between risk and recklessness. It helped make the difference between failure and disaster.

I’m going to get into some thoughts from W. Edward Deming and Peter Drucker over the next few weeks, digging down into the PDCA cycle and how it affects concepts like kaizen. When we get into that you’ll see why I’ve been extolling the virtues of doing small things right now and insisting on exploration for STARFLEET leadership. Don’t worry, it won’t be a business class. I’m just going to discuss some different business philosophies and how they connect to how STARFLEET is (or could be) managed.

This is a new category for the site that I’m calling Strategy Essentials. It exists for one reason:

Nothing is free. Everything has a price. When it comes to non-profit operations, that price usually isn’t in dollars and cents. It’s in ability, initiative, effort and time.

We know this. We have an awards program to recognize people for their efforts. We know that no one’s getting paid, and the only reason anything works at all is because volunteers step up. Volunteers are our most precious resource, and that resource is not infinite.

We know this. But we’re bad at demonstrating that we understand this. If we understood it, we would focus a lot more effort on making sure that we’re driving that incredible volunteerism effectively. There’s way too much focus on how things are organized, and very little focus on whether or not the organization does what it is meant to do.

It is easy to set up an organization. It’s easy to change it, too. Answering questions about how you would change the organization is fun, but the answers don’t matter because the question is too easy. We need to dig deeper and solve more difficult problems.

How do we provide the maximum amount of value to a diverse audience of Star Trek fans with a minimum of volunteer effort?

That is a question worth answering, so we’re going to dig into a lot of potential answers. Let’s explore together!