Audio: Innovation and Leadership

From the HBR:

“Creativity and innovative thinking are not genetic traits. What makes people great innovators is not their genetic makeup, but a set of skills and behaviors. The good news: anyone can learn, practice, and master the skills necessary to become a disruptive innovator.

Hear Clay Christensen and Hal Gregersen, authors of The Innovator’s DNA, talk about the ways in which leaders can improve their organization’s innovative skills.”

Click here to access webinar - approximately 1 hr

Five Smart Strategies to Build Your Nonprofit Network the Old-Fashioned Way

From Rosetta Thurman’s blog:

“Back in the day, before blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, nonprofit leaders actually made connections face to face most of the time. A phone call was more preferable to email, and it wasn’t uncommon for hires to be made without a formal interview. These days, technology has made communication much less time-consuming, but the old-fashioned ways of networking still hold true.”

Click here to read full post

Invitation: Dec 12th launch of “Peel Counts – Collective Impact through Results Based Accountability

Launch Monday December 12th – 11:30 to 2pm  Location: St. Paul’s United Church, 30 Main St., Brampton 905-451-1405 www.stpaulsbrampton.on.ca  Public parking also available off John Street, at City Hall or Rose Theatre

 Keynote Speaker Dr. Munir Sheikh Co-Commissioner, Ontario’s Social Assistance Review, Former Chief Statistician for Canada and Head of Statistics Canada; Distinguished Fellow and Adjunct Professor at Queen’s University and visiting scholar at Carleton University, Ottawa.

 Experience the boundless potential of Peel-specific indicators for 9 priority populations and issues. See how measurement gives us the knowledge to make evidence-based decisions to improve people’s quality of life, Witness the results of your contributions to the community Impact Cafés, Receive a copy of the Peel Counts report

 Please RSVP by December 9, 2011 pamela.tomio(at)peelregion.ca 905-791-7800, ext. 4348

*Registration is required due to space limitations.

Please download invitation and registration details here

Leadership Roles in a Leaderless Movement

From the NP Quarterly:

“Through the national media lens, the Occupy movement looks like a directionless, combustible assemblage of young idealists and jaded anarchists, with a smattering of criminals and homeless people seeking shelter and food—all taking place primarily in urban areas.

… one’s understanding of grass-roots organizing, even of “leaderless” movements, as Occupy organizers describe their work, can be informed by the field of leadership development and in particular by the dynamics of collective leadership roles aimed at system change. 

..This “collective leadership” frame clarifies how different types of people and communities can contribute, and it suggests a future course of action for sustaining leadership that truly engages with all its communities.”

Click here to read full article

Value Added: Profits have a place at this nonprofit

From the Washington Post:

“Like it or not, businesses do not exist to create jobs. They exist to make profits for their owners and shareholders.

Goodwill of Greater Washington, known for its chain of 13 local thrift stores, works differently. One half of the nonprofit group’s mission is to employ people. The other half is to make profits — known as “surplus” in the nonprofit world — so the money can be used to train disadvantaged and disabled people for the job market. 

Chief executive Catherine Meloy is unapologetic about the pursuit of profit. “If you’re not making money, you cannot serve the people or your community,” she said. “If you make money, you can reinvest it in the people you are serving. Our shareholders are our employees.”  Those employees include ex-offenders, single mothers, and people with physical and mental disabilities. Goodwill doesn’t have layoffs. It does fire people, however.”

Click here to read full article

Audio: Fire All the Managers

From the HBR:

As nonprofits are asked to be more ‘business-like’ and accountable, does this necessarily mean more layers of management and hierarchy?

A provocative interview with Gary Hamel, director of the Management Innovation eXchange and author of the HBR article First, Let’s Fire All the Managers explores a world without managers.

“Management is the least efficient activity in your organization.  Think of the countless hours that team leaders, department heads, and vice presidents devote to supervising the work of others. Most managers are hardworking; the problem doesn’t lie with them. The inefficiency stems from a top-heavy management model that is both cumbersome and costly.

A hierarchy of managers exacts a hefty tax on any organization. This levy comes in several forms. First, managers add overhead, and as an organization grows, the costs of management rise in both absolute and relative terms”

Click here to listen to audio approx 20 mins

Video: Nonprofit Strategic Alliances

From GrantSpace.org

“Forming a strategic alliance can be a challenging undertaking for an organization. Kate Dewey of Dewey & Kaye Nonprofit & Foundation Consultants likens the process of seeking compatibility to that of marriage, and discusses some strategies and “red flags” to watch out for when considering an alliance.”

Click here to view video – approx 11 minutes

Free Book for Download: Leap of Reason Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity

From McKinsey:

“Leap of Reason — the product of decades of insight from philanthropist Mario Morino, McKinsey & Company, and more than a dozen experts and practitioners — will spark reflection throughout the social sector about how to make large strides in the ability to create meaningful, measurable good.

 In the Introduction, McKinsey authors — drawing on their work for social-sector organizations — say that best practice for assessing social impact includes: involving constituents to ensure the organization is measuring what’s relevant; collecting as much information as possible about the target problem and potential solutions; integrating assessment goals and results into all program decisions; applying rigor, but within reason; being practical about what one organization can achieve—there’s no need to do everything; and creating a learning culture”

Click here to download entire book in pdf format - 179 pages (save a tree or two and only print the chapters you need!)

Watch short video clip of authors discussing book on YouTube approx 6 mins

Lessons in Nonprofit Leadership – Frances Hesselbein

From Fortune:

“Frances Hesselbein received a call to head Girl Scout Troop 17 in Johnstown, Pa., in her early twenties. Married, with an 8-year-old boy, she felt unequipped to manage a gaggle of 10-year-old girls. But she led the troop for eight years and eventually moved to the state level in York, Pa. There she implemented management guru Peter Drucker’s philosophies — which she had stumbled upon while browsing Johnstown’s Cambria Free Library. Her success caught the attention of the national Girl Scouts organization, and Hesselbein became its CEO. In her 13 years with the group, she led a turnaround and worked directly with Drucker, who recruited her to run his Leader to Leader Institute (then called the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management) in 1990. Hesselbein, 96, yes, 96 years old, has outlived her mentor but remains CEO of the institute, which will be renamed the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute in early 2012. The author of an autobiography published in February, My Life in Leadership, she shares her lessons with Colleen Leahey.”

Click here for full article:

Enable your employees – Frustration is the enemy of engagement

From Leader-Post:

“One-third of Canadian employees are frustrated with their jobs, not because they’re lazy or dissatisfied or burned out, but because they’re not supported or “enabled” by their employers, a Saskatoon-born management consultant told a group of managers in Regina recently.

The old motivational approach to employee engagement would last for a few weeks or months, but eventually would wear off and leave even more frustrated employees. The same is true with “charismatic leaders,” who lead by example or fiery pep talks, but don’t have effective organizational structures.

“They simply got people excited and motivated … But if they didn’t run an effective organization, if they didn’t have managers and leaders throughout the organization who were doing the right things and creating the right work environment, that (motivation) was going to go away.”

Read more here