Culture at the Core – Place

May 26, 2017 Leave a comment

This final installment in our three-part series looks to our surroundings as an important contributor to organization culture. The impact of environment is actually a little trickier to zero in on – a little less obvious perhaps – than things like getting information in a timely and usable way (communication), or having interpersonal harmony with colleagues or supervisors (conduct). It is no less relevant, though, and because it is subtle and simultaneously pervasive it is worthy of our attention. It…

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Culture at the Core – Conduct

May 11, 2017 Leave a comment

  This second installment in a three-part series explores the role of behavior, particularly that of leaders, in influencing an organization’s culture, Leaders’ conduct sends a powerful message about expectations, norms and acceptance. Conduct, along with communication and environment, is an observable and palpable component of employee (and other constituent) experience. The term “conduct” covers a lot of interpersonal ground – varied actions, circumstances and personalities. For this discussion, we narrow the scope of the conversation to focus on those…

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Culture at the Core – Communications

April 28, 2017 Leave a comment

In this three-part series, we explore the building blocks of culture and provoke thinking around leadership’s role in cultivating an engaging workplace. Culture is a critical yet difficult-to-define element of every organization. While leaders may strive to create or foster a particular culture, culture is something that develops and evolves organically as people interact and circumstances change. It can be promoted and modeled, but not controlled. It is also interpretive, and as such is most intimately reflected in how people…

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Can You Gig It?

April 9, 2017 Leave a comment

In a recent LinkedIn post, Detroit’s “Gig Economy” was showcased highlighting several freelancers and their experiences. Freelancing is a growing component of our national (and local) economy, fueled in great part by technology and globalization. This creates powerful opportunity, and nowhere is the value proposition for “gigging” more compelling for business than in the nonprofit arena. Several dynamics converge to yield a strong case for considering outsourced talent as a uniquely effective mission-booster. As with any proposition, there are pros…

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Is Your Data Delivering?

March 17, 2017 Leave a comment

On the surface, a simple “Yes” or “No” question – are you getting what you need from your data? It’s a question every organization’s leadership should be asking themselves. And asking the question brings to light the fact that there are several layers that make the question anything but simple… First qualifier – what data are we talking about? In the nonprofit arena, discussions around data are often limited to three general areas of operations – program, philanthropy and finance.…

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Mind Your Mindset

February 24, 2017 Leave a comment

The recently published second annual issue of Impact India – produced by The Bridgespan Group, Dasra, and Stanford Social Innovation Review – is devoted to the Nonprofit sector in India. One article in particular – Why Indian Nonprofits are Experts at Scaling Up – seeks to identify the qualities that inform capacity. The challenges of India’s nonprofit sector are not unlike those in the US, but their ability to confront them in the context of the magnitude of challenges –…

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Wishful Thinking

February 4, 2017 Leave a comment

Katherine Paterson, author of several beloved children’s books – most notably The Bridge to Terabithia – is credited with the quote, “A dream without a plan is just a wish,” which some attribute as a minor modification to French writer and journalist Antoine de Saint Exupery’s quote “A goal without a plan is just a wish,” preceding Paterson by several decades. Wherever it hales from, the idea is at the core of the challenge that many organizations face in moving…

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Photo. Synthesis!

January 17, 2017 Leave a comment

Do you remember when you first learned about the magical process of how plants convert sunlight to energy? How your teacher lovingly and patiently guided you through the various parts of a plant until you got to the glorious leaf and its hallowed chlorophyll? How you longed to immerse yourself in all of science’s wonders rather than spend time on frivolous play and socializing? Okay, maybe it wasn’t THAT captivating, but you have to admit it is pretty amazing when…

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Moving the Pile

January 3, 2017 Leave a comment

OF COURSE I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE EVERYTHING IS! The ringing in of the New Year in the US is accompanied by dramatic increases in testosterone resulting from the seasonal onset of Football Fever. College teams vie in Bowl games (44 Bowl games will take place in 2016), many with curious sponsorship-induced names (the Taxslayer Bowl?). Pro teams are in the thick of the playoff contention race, and the Super Bowl is roughly a month away. One of the situations you’re…

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Of Tribbles and Telephone

December 20, 2016 Leave a comment

Organizations are deceptively complicated. Just how complicated they are becomes clear whenever a change to an existing process or policy is considered, or when a new process or policy is formulated and implemented. At the center of this phenomena is the essential role of communication, and in a fascinating irony organizations that invest in technology and marketing – brochures, websites, business cards, branding – rarely devote the same resources (sometimes they don’t actually invest any!) to understanding and improving their…

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