When I played tennis back in high school and college, I learned something really meaningful – you tend to play to the level of your opponent. If I wanted to become better at tennis, then I needed to play against people who were much better than I was, not against those who were equal, or I could easily beat.

I read a great article that would be helpful for board members and should be a part of an executive’s evaluation.  6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers  by Paul J.H. Schoemaker

Here are some of my favorite quotes:
Every leader’s temptation is to deal with what’s directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete.

While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you’ll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you’re on is leading off a cliff. 

Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well: …….Anticipate, Think Critically, Interpret, Decide, Align and Learn. 

I encourage you to read the entire article and the comments. As you see, part of being a great leader is being strategic. So, does your mission deserve a great leader?

]]> http://sector3report.com/archives/509/feed 0 http://sector3report.com/archives/501 http://sector3report.com/archives/501#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:53:41 +0000 Beth Myers http://sector3report.com/?p=501 Last week a spotlight was focused on education in San Antonio.  An impressive delegation which included the United Way of Bexar County, City of San Antonio, United Way International, the Department of Education, and Promise Neighborhoods Initiatives toured the targeted schools, Tynan Early Childhood Center, Bowden Elementary, Pershing Elementary, Washington Elementary, Wheatley Middle and Sam Houston High.   I was honored to be a part of that delegation as well.  Are you aware of the tremendous promise that lies in the Eastside of San Antonio? Specifically,  there is a cluster of contiguous neighborhoods just east of downtown, covering approximately 3  square miles.  The promise in those neighborhoods thrives in spite of the incredible challenges inherent in low-income, urban areas.  With a $25 million grant from the Department of Education, we (residents, students, parents, nonprofits, government and schools) aim to turn that promise into success.

For the past 6 years, I have been involved as a volunteer with the United Way, specifically addressing the drop-out problem in some of the poorest schools in the San Antonio Independent School District.  We are not addressing it by implementing a new program – rather, we are mobilizing the parents within the school district.  We started with a few parents- some of whom do not speak English – most of whom were too intimidated by the bureaucratic school system to be involved in their children’s school.  With the expertise of Presa Community Center staff  and Family Service Assn staff,  we have engaged parents, and, they in turn have visited with many other parents about the importance of being involved in their children’s education and schools.  They started parent rooms at each campus where students and parents can go for support, assistance and fellowship.

We have progressed from having just a few parents involved, to having hundreds of parents involved. Several parents, who were understandly scared to speak in front of a group, went to the capitol last year to advocate for Texas public education. The success of our partnership – involving schools, parents, business volunteers, nonprofits – is what led to the promise neighborhood opportunity.

“I applaud each of the Promise Neighborhood applicants for their leadership,” President Barack Obama said. “They are galvanizing their communities to help offer our children a pathway out of poverty. The winners announced today will deliver a broad array of services to help all young people thrive academically, earn their high school diploma, go on to college, and reach for their dreams.”"Communities across the country recognize that education is the one true path out of poverty,” Secretary Duncan said. “These Promise Neighborhoods applicants are committed to putting schools at the center of their work to provide comprehensive services for young children and students.”

“Promise Neighborhoods recognizes that children need to be surrounded by systems of support inside and outside of the classroom to help them be successful in school and beyond,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It has been a real honor watching the partnership develop and grow and I want to applaud the United Way for being a true collaborative leader.  I think Svante Myrick - the 24 yr old recently elected mayor of Ithica NY – sums it up best when speaking of what led to his success, he says “This is not the story of a self-made man.  This is a story of a community that conspired together to raise, you know, a child.  I mean, that’s the truth.”

It has been 5 months since I last blogged.  A lot has happened during that time: Twitter has become more popular; facebook is going public ; Steve Jobs, Whitney Houston and North Korea’s evil dictator all died; we started a new year; the economy is showing signs of turning around; and I……..completed my graduate work, passing my written and oral comprehensives!

 My social media life took a back seat when other priorities demanded my attention.  I am finding this experience much like going to the gym – when you get away from it for a while, it is difficult to get back into it.   I find myself overwhelmed by all of the things that I could write about, and while trying to narrow it down, I get pulled into other work and end up losing another day.  So, I am just going to start this blog post with what piqued my interest today.

The Bridgespan Group recently released a report:  Needle-Moving Community Collaboratives: A Promising Approach to Addressing America’s Biggest Challenges that I encourage everyone to read who is interested in true transformation.

The White House Council for Community Solutions worked with The Bridgespan Group to identify effective needle-moving collaboratives (those that have achieved at least 10 percent progress in a community-wide metric), understand the keys to success, and recommend ways to drive more collective impact, particularly to address the challenges of disconnected youth.

They found four common operating principles in these collaborative efforts:

• Commitment to long-term involvement;
• Involvement of key stakeholders across sectors;
• Use of shared data to set agendas and improve results over time;
• Engagement of community members as substantive partners.

What I find particularly intriguing is one of the five core elements the Bridgespan group discovered as a contributing success factor:

Effective leadership and governance, with highly respected leaders at the helm who are viewed as neutral, honest brokers and who attract and retain a diverse group of large and small organizations to guide the collaborative forward.

Perhaps that is why it is not easily replicated – it is very difficult to find these leaders.  If we are truly straightforward in our identification of leaders, then transformational change will happen.

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I was reading an article by Paul Connolly, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. In the article, Connolly discusses how some people propose that the best thing you can fund in a nonprofit is the fundraising arm of the organization.  Connolly suggests that tactic is short-sighted:

This evidence is consistent with other research on nonprofit organizational performance that TCC Group has conducted over the past few years. When we analyzed the results of almost 700 nonprofits nationwide that had taken the Core Capacity Assessment Tool survey, and then, through regression analysis, identified the key drivers for those that scored highest on financial sustainability, we determined that fundraising capacity was indeed a substantial factor—but predominantly when combined with robust internal leadership and programmatic learning (see “The Sustainability Formula” report). Likewise, our study last year of 263 nonprofits in Los Angeles County for the Weingart Foundation (see “Fortifying L.A.’s Nonprofit Organizations”) found that fund-development capacity-building tended to lead more to individual knowledge and motivation, while organizational assessment, strategic planning, and board leadership development were more likely to result in institutional change. Fundraising capacity is essential—even a nonprofit with the highest impact programs will not last without it—yet it needs to happen in conjunction with solid leadership and organizational learning.

I think he is completely right.  I will continue to preach that, first and foremost, Boards and Funders need to hold their nonprofit leaders accountable.  You should demand greatness from your Chief Executive.  If you do not – and do not have measures in place to evaluate his or her greatness – then you are doing a disservice to your mission.

So, what should you expect and how should you measure it?  You should look for 5 things:

1. Program outcomes – how effective is your program?  Is your organization fulfilling your mission and are you achieving your service goals?
2. Budget results – Is your organization growing in its revenue capacity, do you have at least 6 months operating reserves?  Are you comfortable with the financial management of the organization? What are other investors saying about your service?
3. Organizational culture – What is the real culture inside the organization?  Are employees engaged and doing what they do best EVERY day?
4. Strategic Direction – is your leader a visionary?  Is he/she constantly evaluating the environment and responding without being distracted by the latest idea and losing focus? Is he/she ambitious, yet reasonable?
5. Leadership Development – is your leader investing in his/her own continued learning and professional development as well as that of the board and staff?  What is your chief executive doing to continue to learn and grow as a leader?  How specifically is your leader professionally developing the leadership team and staff.  What great board development is your chief executive bringing to the table?

I have worked with a lot of nonprofit executives over the years, and I am sorry to say that too few are great chief executives, some are very good and too many are not good.  There are many executives that I have really liked and truly believe their heart is in the right place but are not meant to be the Chief.  There are others I have met who could be really good and move to great if they were evaluated properly, told the truth, given the proper professional development they need and then held accountable.

So, are you holding your Chief Executive accountable?

My Top 5 Themes:

 I am Strategic – especially talented in creating alternative ways to proceed, quickly spotting relevant patterns and issue.

I am an Arranger – especially talented in figuring out how all of the pieces and resources can be arranged for maximum productivity; organized but flexible.

I am a Maximizer – especially talented in focusing on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence; transforming something strong into something superb.

I am Responsible – especially talented in taking ownership of doing what I say I will do.

I am Futuristic – especially talented in being inspired by future possibilities and inspiring others with that future vision.

What is great about this exercise is that it can give you the real data about your talents which you can then relate to others.  Once you really know your strengths you can be great at what you do, provided you are doing that which you are most talented.

So, are you building on your strengths or trying to fix your weaknesses?  At your organization, do your leaders/managers have the opportunity to do what they do best every day?

Along with serving as a full-time interim executive director for a Foundation, I am also enrolled in graduate school three nights a week, and am currently involved in two consulting projects.  I am loving what I am doing, but am challenged to get it all done.  I hope you will hang in there with me because when the schedule opens up, I will definitely blog more.

For now, I will make a quick suggestion:  read the book Creating Your Best Life, by Caroline Miller.   She is teaching one of my classes, and she is fantastic.  She recently made an appearance on the Fox morning news show.  If you want some tips and techniques about how to develop better performance in your work, or organization, you should contemplate positive psychology. That’s her message in a nutshell – but you will learn much more by reading the book.

Are you happy because you are successful; or do you become successful because you are happy?

From the Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist:  

Whatever you earn at age 40 is likely to be the top of your earning potential. This is one of a gazillion things I’ve learned from talking with Al Lee, the director of quantitative analysis at PayScale.

Al’s data, which is based on the careers of college graduates, is basically that the salary curve for most people in their 20s is very steep. Then it starts to flatten in the 30s, and then you get into the land of the 3% raise. In real dollars, those 3% raises are not actually raises, they are just keeping up with inflation.

The information is grim. But here are some things you can do with it:

1. Go where the men are. To be precise, pay tops out at age 38 for women ($61K) and age 45 for men ($95K). But the difference, according to PayScale data, is not due to unequal pay for equal work. Rather, the difference is that women choose lower paying careers, and women are more likely to take time out of the workforce for kids. So the first thing you can do to prevent your salary from flat-lining is choose a career that men dominate. But it’s not just about industry—it is also about influence. Stick to line-management positions rather than support roles. For example, skip human resources and go to supply chain management.

2. Rewrite your resume. If you’re at the beginning of your career, focus on accomplishments rather than responsibilities. This makes you look like you’re in a higher pay bracket so you will get larger salary increases. If you’ve been in the workforce for a while, cut anything that is more than 15 years old, including the date of your college graduation. Al says that there is no premium paid for two decades of experience because jobs change so quickly that long-gone experience is not particularly relevant.  And because age discrimination creates a sort of penalty for more than 15 years of experience. So just leave it off. (Good resume editing tips here, at Quint Careers.)

3. Be a lawyer. Have I ever given this advice before? I don’t think so. Even the American Bar Association reports that law school is a ripoff. But I’m open to counter-arguments—Al says that the only profession where your pay increases after 20 years is in law. Because laws change very slowly, especially procedural law, and so much of being a good lawyer is your on-the-job training.

4. Specialize. By your mid 30s, if you don’t have a specialty, it’s hard to get your salary into the next bracket. You earn more money if your talents are more scarce. (Here’s some information about how to specialize.) Also, don’t give up hope if you have no idea what you’re doing in your mid-20s. As long as you figure things out by the time you’re 30, you will get a premium for 15 years of experience before your salary stops rising.

5. Buy a house assuming you won’t get a raise. Ever. When it comes to houses in the U.S., the average age of a first-time buyer is 33. So people go through their 20s gaining super-high raises, and then people buy a house in their mid-30s with the assumption that the raises will continue. In fact, though, you should buy a house preparing for your real income to remain unchanged until age 55, when it is likely to go down.

6. Recognize your limitations. People eventually start to realize that they are not going to get to the very top. They see that only one out of 100 web designers is the director, and only one out of 50 directors is a VP. Al calls this the funnel effect, and he says many people recognize this and start to trade time for money; people see that chasing the increasingly smaller raises is not as fulfilling as doing a wide range of other things with their time.

7. Focus on maintenance. Most people in their 40s have a lot going on. Taking care of aging parents, young kids, community organizations—all these jobs are falling on people in their 40s, which means it’s not a good time to be trying also to leverage one’s highest earning power. So instead of killing yourself trying to earn more and more, be realistic and go into maintenance mode.

One of the most common but least-talked about career moves is to get to a relatively high spot and then see how much you can cut back in terms of effort and still maintain that level of salary and/or prestige. This seems like a reasonable strategy for a wide range of people. So do small experiments with cutting back early in your career because creating enormous efficiencies takes practice. And a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic is not the training you need for this type of change.