Jim Collins was right
by Kris Kindelsperger, Ed.D., Senior Executive Consultant
In his monograph titled Good to Great and the Social Sectors, bestselling author Jim Collins cites the multiplicity of leadership challenges that nonprofit leaders face. One premise is that great leadership looks a bit different in the nonprofit world. Nonprofit leaders cannot lead by executive fiat alone as can many of their business CEO counterparts. Most businesses don’t have the equivalent of faculty members, elected volunteer boards, religiously based operating covenants, alumni, or a myriad of other constituencies and structures that diffuse the central authority of a president or executive director. To be successful, nonprofit leaders must use a “legislative” style of leadership that relies more on “persuasion, political currency, and shared interests” to make things happen.
Never has the burden of leading a successful nonprofit been more challenging, more fluid, and, yes, more essential than today. Our nonprofits are facing extraordinary stress from the economic downturn. The multiplicity of challenges that nonprofits faced in good times have only grown, in some cases exponentially.
Fortunately, some of our most gifted and creative leaders reside in the nonprofit sector and we have seen remarkable evidence that they are rising to the challenge in all types of organizations. Despite the circumstances, strong leaders are making difficult decisions and many nonprofits are not only surviving, but maintaining strength through exceptional cost containment and disciplined refocusing of their missions.
Jim Collins was right. “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” In this economy, many of our nonprofits are actually “ahead of the curve” rather than behind it. Could the auto and financial industries learn something from the nonprofit sector?