Opinion Blog : Entries Tagged With 'leadership'
| April 28, 2008 10:41 AM |
Bully! The Scourge of Nonprofit Boards, and What to Do About ItLike every other human organization, a nonprofit board of directors is subject to being dominated by an internal bully. Nonprofit boards are actually more at risk of bully dominance than other groups, because the only compensation for serving is psychological. For most board members, the psychological reward is the consciousness of doing good in good company—but for some, satisfaction can only flow from being utterly and completely in charge. The bully turns a nonprofit board into a corporation of one, and deprives the executive director (ED) and the agency of everyone else’s expertise and skills. Here are three common forms of nonprofit board bully, and what to do about them: The Martinet Bully: Often a man, and often the board chair. He is determined to import the standards of the business world to the nonprofit sector whether they’re applicable or not. His methods involve an exaggerated concern for efficiency: meetings start early, whether or not people are there, and discussion is foreshortened with a remark such as, “We’ve got the report—let’s just vote.” In the short term, the ED should gently say, “I’m not sure everyone’s been heard from yet.” In the medium term, give the martinet a project he can handle by himself which will keep him out of others’ way. In the long term, find someone else willing to serve as board chair who will practice for that position by deliberately sticking a spoke in the current chair’s wheel when he starts running over the rest of the group. The Expert Bully: “I’m on 33 other boards, and it’s always done this way.” He or she shuts down others’ opinions with a look of condescending pity for those lacking experience. Interestingly, this brand of bully is rarely willing to serve as board chair (too busy with the other boards, perhaps). In the short term, the board chair and ED should make sure they know of at least one example of things being done differently, and mention it. In the medium term, give the expert a project that can be handled exactly as the expert bully pleases. In the long term, identify and work to empower other board members in specific areas of governance—personnel, say, or taxes—and thus gradually reduce the scope of the expert’s terrain. The Passive-Aggressive Bully: “You can do it that way if you want, but then I’m going to have to quit.” This one arises most frequently at the pivotal moment when an agency is finally adopting a minimum gift. The bully hopes to make everyone else feel guilty for having too much money and not enough sympathy for poor little Passive-Aggressive. In the short term, the board chair and ED can pretend not to hear what’s been said. In the medium and long term, ask other members of the board to pretend not to hear what’s been said. The only way to handle these bullies is to ignore them.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| May 5, 2008 01:30 PM |
The Davos of Philanthropy: First ImpressionsYesterday, I arrived at the Council on Foundation’s annual conference entitled, “Philanthropy’s Vision: A Leadership Summit.” For the next four days, I will post a round-up of my experiences at the conference for readers of the opinion blog at the Stanford Social Innovation Review. As a micro-philanthropy consultant and blogger, I have focused most of my attention on the tools that make small-scale grant-making possible, including DonorsChoose, Kiva, and Facebook Causes. But micro-philanthropy also encompasses new ways of thinking about donor engagement, the grant-making process, and program evaluation. I’m looking forward to using the Council on Foundation’s leadership summit as an opportunity to focus on these other issues. Here are a few questions I have going into the conference:
I expect to find some clues in the next few days that will help me piece together a few initial answers to these questions. For the duration of the conference, I will be wearing my blogging hat only. I’ve committed myself to asking questions, listening, and learning from the incredible gathering of people. Of course, I have my own experiences and ideas to bring to the debate. But I’ll be leaving my preconceptions at the door. I’m entering the conference with fresh eyes on an issue that’s very dear to me. Day 1 Round-up: May 5, 2008 I find myself on the edges of what could easily be called the “Davos of Philanthropy.” Roughly three thousand attendees have flown in from across the globe to discuss the current and future states of global philanthropy. A few phrases from the opening statements of Steve Gunderson, the Council on Foundations executive director, jumped out as worth noting:
Gunderson’s remarks were followed by a video essay from Roger Rosenblatt, contributor to the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Rosenblatt’s vision of the future of philanthropy jives 100 percent with the potential I see in micro-philanthropy to transform traditional philanthropy into a vibrant, inclusive and very public force for good. The big ideas of Rosenblatt’s video testimony:
That the Council on Foundations chose to feature this video statement from Rosenblatt in the opening session suggests that there’s interest in broadening participation in philanthropy. I’m excited to ask attendees what they thought of the message, and whether it resonated.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| May 7, 2008 12:00 PM |
Bloggers Cover the Council on Foundations Annual ConferenceThe Council on Foundations deserves two thumbs up for putting together a thought-provoking leadership summit that attracted philanthropists and foundation staff from across the globe. Unfortunately, their effort to communicate what was happening at the event to people who could not attend was less successful. The homepage of the Council on Foundations does not feature a single headline about the conference. Visitors can click on a text link that redirects them to Philanthropy Today, the Council on Foundations website devoted to covering the event. This website features pictures with captions that read “undefined.” The video section features a screenshot of a media player with the words, “Coming soon.” On the up side, visitors can treat themselves to PDF versions of the conference’s daily print newsletter. Contrast the coverage described above with an anecdote from Kassie Rohrbach, director of the Energy Action Coalition and a panelist on a session this morning called The Millennials and the Moment: Youth Engagement and Leadership Development. As the organizer of the PowerShift 2007 Conference, her organization provided video training and gave cameras to interested attendees so they could cover the event using social media. The result is this powerful set of videos and this collection of images, created entirely from attendee-generated footage of PowerShift 2007. If I could make one point, it would be that the Council on Foundations can learn from the communications strategies of its youngest members. So what are non-attendees interested in the summit to do? There are two solutions. (1) Sean Stannard Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy, a leading philanthropy blog, organized a blogging team to cover the conference. A group of us has posted more than 30 blog entries, with more on the way. Here are links to the most recent posts:
(2) The Chronicle of Philanthropy also sent a blogger delegation to cover the conference. They have published a Council on Foundations notebook for the last three days. Here are the most recent blog posts from The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
The Tactical Philanthropy and Chronicle of Philanthropy blogging teams have done most of the heavy lifting in getting news out about the conference. And yet, not all bottom-up coverage of an event like this one works out 100 percent. Those of us covering the summit have added the COF2008 tag to our blog entries. Technorati, a tag-based aggregator of blog entries, has confused the Council on Foundations 2008 conference with the Czech Open Fighting 2008 competition, which also used the COF2008 tag. As a result, all of the blog entries from the Tactical Philanthropy blog team now appear alongside videos of the Czech Open Fighting event. I guess crowd-sourcing has its limits.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| May 8, 2008 03:00 PM |
Vision, Leadership, and PartnershipOn Tuesday evening, the famed cartoonist Milt Gross made an appearance at the Council on Foundations annual conference. In a session called Strategic Philanthropy: Theory and Practice, the speaker Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, flashed on the monitor a cartoon of howling wolves gathered at the edge of a cliff. One of the wolves had taken a break from howling to ask his companions, “My question: Are we making a difference?” The attendees at this week’s philanthropy summit in Washington D.C. met up to ask themselves the same question. As a blogger, I wasn’t privy to many of the intimate conversations among colleagues and close friends in the foundation world. I didn’t hear the uncertainties that were no doubt expressed in whispered voices between conference sessions and at the gala events. Instead, I heard bold proclamations on what it takes to make a difference: namely, the right combination of vision, leadership, and partnership. In his presentation about strategic philanthropy, Brest presented an outline of his foundation’s approach to all three points. For vision, Brest said a foundation must first establish a viable theory of change. “If your theories of change are incorrect, your interventions will only be right by accident,” warned Brest. He had just finished explaining a case study in New York City in which police implemented a program to reduce crime by arresting people for petty offenses. Crime went down, which was the desired effect. During the same time, however, crime also dropped in cities that had not implemented a similar program. In this case, the desired impact may not have been linked to the city’s theory of change. Brest went on to discuss the importance of maintaining an “expected return attitude,” in which every effort is made to assess an intervention’s cost and likelihood of success. Doing so permits grantmakers to recognize and mitigate risks; justify large expenditures with the prospect of high returns; and be candid if and when failure sets in. He also emphasized the need for complete “logic models” to explain how change happens and evaluation criteria to measure success along the way. According to Brest, failure to demonstrate leadership in these respects can result in wasted money, or worse, “unanticipated bad consequences.” In seeking partners, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation looks for grantees and co-funders who share a similar theory of change and demonstrate willingness to candidly assess each program during and following an intervention. Brest’s professionalism commanded respect in the room full of his peers and colleagues. Quiet in his delivery and precise with his words, I was left thinking that calmness is king in vision, leadership, and partnership. On the following day, “Teacher of the Year” and bestselling author Ron Clark tore this hypothesis to pieces during his closing plenary of the leadership summit. Clark, who jumps rope “double-dutch” with his middle school students, delivered half of his speech while literally jumping from table to table in the closing plenary ballroom. I have never seen a more hyperactive successful adult. In an abandoned factory turned state-of-the-art school, Clark has setup a scholastic program that transforms Atlanta’s poorest school children into over achievers. How? By mixing together the same ingredients that Paul Brest documented with Pentagon restraint. Clark’s school has honed and implemented an accurate theory of change. That is children perform best when their instructors have high expectations, maintain rules, believe in their students’ futures, and serve as living role models of creativity, innovation, and free thinking. Clark has created a partnership with his students, their parents, and school staff by winning them over to this theory. Together, they are reaching unlikely heights of academic achievement and preparing “a new generation for leadership in a globalized world.” Clark’s description of his school in Atlanta reminded me of a quote I heard earlier in the day. Andrew Gillum, director of the Young Elected Officials Network commented on the electoral success of young people of color, including himself. “We did the impossible, because we didn’t know what was supposed to be impossible.” At the end of Ron Clark’s Broadway performance renamed a closing plenary, the audience of more than 1,000 grantmakers gave him a standing ovation that extended for minutes. It sounded like wolves howling. They stood up to applaud the fact that at least one among them was making a difference by harnessing the right combination of vision, leadership and partnership.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| June 30, 2008 06:00 AM |
Compromise Might Greatly Diversify Leadership of California Foundations and NonprofitsIn a compromise announced last Monday, California foundations and legislators agreed to scuttle AB 624, a controversial California bill aimed at disclosing the ethnicity and gender of foundation board members. The compromise preserves the possibility that funders and advocates may cooperate to find better ways philanthropy can serve communities of color, and may also spur similar accords in other states. Under the compromise, a coalition of 10 leading foundations pledged to:
The 10 foundation coalition members, seven of which are headquartered in Southern California, include: The Ahmanson Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, UniHealth Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The California Endowment, and the Weingart Foundation. All involved – the Greenlining Institute, whose series of studies led to the bill’s introduction, Senator Coto, the bill’s sponsor, and the foundation coalition – deserve praise for this result. With Governor Schwarzenegger likely to veto the bill, each of the parties could have held firm and claimed victory later for standing on principle. Rather than let the perfect be the enemy of the good, they chose to try something workable that, if implemented well, can go a long way toward broadening and deepening diverse leadership in foundations and nonprofits. If the ultimate goal of the bill was to increase benefits from philanthropy flowing to either communities of color or low- income communities, then there is still much work to be done. Even if the capacity building called for in the compromise flawlessly succeeds, there will continue to be a need for better data on the reach of philanthropy in communities of color. (A key weakness in the bill is that it did not require the collection of information that would establish who actually is served by grant dollars, as I argued here.) Such data would help funders assess and improve their grant making, as well as enable advocates and public officials to be better informed and targeted in their critiques. With a modest investment of time and resources, we can determine which census tracts are served by which organizations, and map the amount of grant dollars relative to the numbers of people living in an area or, more specifically, the particular characteristics of people actually served. This is not a technological pipedream; HealthCity.org, a partnership of nonprofits in Los Angeles sponsored by the Advancement Project, already has built tools and methods for making the flow of grant dollars visible, for several public agencies and private funders, to help them assess their grants in Los Angeles County and throughout California.* Ironically, grants promoting systems change to benefit low- income communities, an increasing trend among many of the foundations involved in the compromise, will be harder to map, but this difficulty can be solved. A good starting data universe is the grants of the compromise sponsors, perhaps with a few more of the state’s largest funders added. It makes sense to stick with grantees from this pilot set of funders for a couple years or more to evaluate both the usefulness and costs of this approach (the number of new grantee service areas that would need to be geo coded would drop, and the higher initial costs of the system could be smoothed over the period). To get beyond the initial set of grants from a small group of leading foundations, we’d need to make the grants data already disclosed by foundations more accessible to advocates, and supplement that with data about the geographic and demographic reach of those grant funds. This likely would mean bringing the grants databases out from behind the firewalls of services like the Foundation Center or Foundation Search, or paying the costs of providing free public access to that data (as I argued in this space previously). My thoughts are just informed speculation, and there may be better ways to get a handle on which communities actually are served by the grants made by, and leadership developed by, foundations like the compromise sponsors. However, it should be clear that a well-designed system couldn’t very well be mandated in advance through legislation. With this compromise under their belt, advocates for more responsive grant making, like Greenlining and others, and leaders of foundations in California (and elsewhere), have preserved the time and space to explore these possibilities.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| September 18, 2008 08:30 AM |
Letter to John D. Mcllguham, Publisher of The NonProfit Times and the 2008 Power & Influence Top 50Heather Carpenter’s list of next generation leaders inspired me last week. But when I saw the official NonProfit Times Power & Influence Top 50, I got so riled up that I wrote a letter to the publisher. There were barely any people of color on that list, and I feel that it is really time for us to start pointing that out when we see it, instead of just saying “well, that’s the way it is.” Below is the letter I emailed to John McIlquham, the publisher of The NonProfit Times. Hopefully he will write me back. In the meantime, please help me add to my list in the comments, so we can all learn from each other about the depth of multicultural leadership in our sector. How do we pay this forward so that we can begin to build a culture of honoring contributions from people of color in the nonprofit field? Dear John, Like my colleagues in the nonprofit field, I am an avid reader of The NonProfit Times, as the “premier business publication written for nonprofit executives.” As your Web site notes, The NonProfit Times reaches 38,000 executive decision makers, and we all appreciate the timely information that is presented in each issue. That is why it shocked me to see that http://fromthepipeline.blogspot.com/
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| October 2, 2008 11:00 AM |
Diversity Is Everyone’s BusinessI had the opportunity to speak at the National Human Services Assembly Summit last week on the topic, “Responding to the Diversity Gap” along with Carolyn Creager, director of the Multicultural Executive Development Program of the National YMCA. The theme underlying our discussion was that society is changing all around us, yet the nonprofit sector isn’t keeping pace with the cultural shift in America, nor making enough of an effort to recruit, retain, and promote people of color to top executive positions in our field. The reality is that the current racial makeup of this country is changing, and as nonprofits we have to think about who we will be serving, and who will be leading. I know you saw this in The New York Times: “Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago. The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, Black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050.” I also shared some up-to-date stats about the current racial makeup of nonprofit leadership, as well as my disappointment with the lack of people of color who are being recognized for their contributions. I think everyone agreed that we need to promote sweeping changes in nonprofit culture regarding diversity issues. My aim was to remind the audience that all of us in that room were agents of nonprofit culture, and there were many things we could each do individually and collectively to raise the issue of multicultural leadership at every opportunity we get. In that room were CEOs, VPs, directors of mostly national organizations, and I know they each sit on some committee, board of directors, or taskforce where their voice is influential to others in our sector. If in fact we are concerned about increasing the racial diversity of nonprofit leadership, we need to put our money where our mouths are and start taking some risks, personally and institutionally, to make that happen. What role can we each play as an agent of nonprofit culture to change the game? A few ideas we discussed:
We ARE nonprofit culture, and it is up to us to be the change we wish to see. AFP’s magazine, Advancing Philanthropy, has a great article in the current issue about the importance of having lunch with someone of another culture to get to know people outside your usual networks. I think that’s a great idea. But I also think we each can use our voices to motivate others in our organizations and across the field. You CAN take action today: Write a short email to the Nonprofit Times editor to express your support for an open nominations process in their selection of the annual Power and Influence Top 50 list of nonprofit leaders. Tell them you want to see their publication reflect the racial diversity of leadership within our sector! Send an email to Paul Clolery at: ednchief@nptimes.com or call him at: (973) 401-0202 Ext 211. Together we can change our culture, one step at a time. I share my presentation with you here so that it might spark some thoughts of your own. What are your ideas about individual and collective action we all can take to make diversity everyone’s business?
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| October 23, 2008 10:00 AM |
Why Gen Y Should Nominate One of Our OwnYesterday, I was honored as a New Leader in Philanthropy in the inaugural Class of Change 2008 by Greater DC Cares at a reception along with nine others committed to social change in the D.C. area. I was honored and excited to be recognized for the work that I’ve done in collaboration with others to improve the community & engage young professionals in the nonprofit sector. The best part of the story is how I got on the list with the cool kids. One of my fellow board members for the DC Young Nonprofit Professionals Network nominated me. Another Gen Y nonprofit leader took the time to fill out a form and tell the committee why I should be chosen. I was nominated by my own, and now I have the opportunity to represent the leadership of so many other young nonprofit professionals in our region. This is the power that we have to showcase the work of our colleagues that might otherwise go unnoticed. If you know of an emerging leader that’s doing something fantastic, please take the time to spread the word! The more Gen Y leaders are celebrated, the more respect we earn as young professionals. If we are perceived as leaders, it makes it easier for us to lead. Publicity tends to legitimize our contributions, and we can leverage it to impact even more change in our communities. I do believe that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. So let’s start supporting each other even more by nominating our own. Here are a couple opportunities, but please know that there are so many more in each particular community.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| October 28, 2008 10:00 AM |
Nonprofits Need Generation Y Leadership in an Uncertain EconomyPick up any newspaper on your way to work in the morning, and chances are, you’ll see another financial giant brought low in the current unstable economy. Everyone in nonprofits and philanthropy is wondering what the financial sector meltdown means for us. Not only are the for-profit folks worried about their profits and their jobs, us nonprofit workers are worried about our donations and our jobs, too. Of course, no one can know for sure what the outcome of all this will be. The landscape changes day by day and we could be in a very different place three months from now. But one thing is clear. Things in the game done changed. What the economic crisis is showing the nonprofit sector is that we can no longer rely on corporate social responsibility, ongoing government funding, or stable donations from even our most loyal donors. In two recent discussion groups of fundraisers in Washington, D.C. about 20 of us shared very timely information about declining revenues, hard to sell event tickets, and foundation rejection letters. Although the nonprofit community has gone through challenging times before—think post 9/11, the dot-com bust, various recessions, etc. most of us are saying that we’ve never seen this before. It’s as if all of our supports are crumbling before our eyes all at once. It’s a fundraiser’s nightmare, I can tell you from my own current experience. So what kind of leadership is needed for these challenging times? Everyone’s trying to find the fix that fits. And it’s clear that the old top-down hierarchy isn’t the best model for what needs to happen in organizations today. When we just don’t have time to come up with another 5-year strategic plan to survive in this economy, how do we generate new ideas to address issues head on? Yet, in all this uncertainty, the nonprofit sector does have a silver bullet: the energy and talents of the next generation of leaders in our organizations. Allison Jones recently wrote a great post about how nonprofits and Generation Y can benefit from a bad economy, and I do think it is this kind of optimism that will get us through the tough times nonprofits will undoubtedly face in our fundraising, program planning, and staffing. Samuel Richard, another awesome Generation Y blogger, writes a fantastic open letter to nonprofit leaders, urging us to flip the script and use this time to showcase the incredible impact we have in our communities. Because right now is an opportunity for young nonprofit professionals to bring fresh, innovative ideas for how we do the work of social change. As a sector faced with a myriad of uncertainty, our old solutions will absolutely not work. But don’t take my word for it; Albert Einstein tells it like it is (and always will be): “We cannot solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” In my mind, there’s a very clear match here: a nonprofit sector in need of solutions in an uncertain economy and a cadre of young professionals eager to contribute in a meaningful way. Nonprofit CEOs are thinking: How do we fundraise differently? How do we engage volunteers more effectively? How can we cut organizational costs? How do we maintain the quality of our programming? These questions fill the whiteboards of so many nonprofit conference rooms even as I write this. And Generation Y is asking, how can I use my talent to help, to make a real difference in this organization, in this community? Current leaders have the perfect resource sitting right next to them and this is the perfect time to tap into the minds of young employees. This is indeed the perfect time to mine the knowledge from the next generation that can be much more useful and effective than ideas generated in a closed board meeting involving only senior management. But let’s get a little more specific here. Generation Y brings the very skills we need in these uncertain times:
While I certainly concede that the nonprofit sector is going to see challenging times ahead, I can also see so many ways that we can get through the bad economy even stronger on the other side if we only recognize the enormous opportunity for current leaders to partner with the next generation to come up with innovative solutions. It will take all of us to shift our mindsets, but it can be done. After all, most of us are starting the see the writing on the wall: the nonprofit sector needs to change or die. For now, I’m raising my fist in hopeful solidarity with my fellow Generation Y leaders like Allison Jones and Samuel Richard that we can use the resources we have to make the best of a bad situation.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| November 4, 2008 02:00 PM |
Nonprofit Leaders Need to Look in the Mirror on Election Day
“If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.”
We have to remember, even as the polls start to close, that we as nonprofit leaders have an even greater responsibility once it’s all said and done. We have to commit ourselves to working with the new President and dedicate ourselves anew to fight the good fight for the causes that mean the most to us. Because both candidates are promising us “change,” that lovely word we all like to use. But please believe that neither a Democratic or Republican leaders of America can bring about change singlehandedly without people like us on the ground putting in our sweat equity, too. None of us need to be disillusioned that a new President means that all of our social problems will be solved in four to eight years. Not gonna happen. So that means we need to go ahead and pull out the full-length and look at ourselves in the mirror. And really think about how we will help to change this country once and for all. The time is here. The time is NOW. How will we contribute?
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| December 2, 2008 10:00 AM |
Volunteer as a LeaderDear Nonprofiteer, Your posts about volunteerism seem addressed to nonprofits—how they can better meet the desires of their volunteers. Do you think you could write a corresponding post about how volunteers can better meet the desires of nonprofits? I know you’ve said that we as volunteers need to think more about who we want to be, rather than what we want to do. I’d love an expansion on that. I’ve been trying to volunteer with an organization that works with children, or hunger, or the blind, for about two years and I keep having near-disastrous experiences on the way to becoming a volunteer. Maybe it’s me? I really want to volunteer with a local organization and have contacted several, but something always seems to go wrong—either the nonprofit doesn’t respond to me or the work they give me doesn’t match my expectations. It’s very frustrating! Do you have any thoughts or advice? Signed, Tripping on the Way up the Aisle Dear Tripping: There’s very little a volunteer can do to deal with a nonprofit that simply doesn’t respond, although using a Rule of Three might help: don’t give up ’til you’ve e-mailed, and then e-mailed again, and then called. If those three efforts at outreach don’t produce a face-to-face meeting, cut your losses and move on. By the same token, don’t give up after the face-to-face meeting ‘til you’ve e-mailed a thank-you note, and then e-mailed a follow-up, and then called; but if that’s not enough to produce a specific assignment, what you’ve encountered is a nonprofit not yet ready to take advantage of a volunteer. And there are plenty of those, which somehow is the elephant in the living room of the nonprofit world: that agencies with functioning volunteer programs are very much in the minority. No amount of calling us “the voluntary sector” will magically produce volunteer opportunities in agencies up to their asses in alligators. So the first thing a prospective volunteer can do to be useful (and magnify her chances of actually being able to contribute) is to recognize, and articulate her recognition of, the fact that managing volunteers takes time, and effort, and expertise, and that all of those things are in pretty short supply at most nonprofits because they all cost money. An initial cover letter that says, “If you don’t have a full-fledged volunteer program, I understand it’s a little difficult to figure out what to do with a single volunteer. But please let’s get together and talk through it” will flag you instantly as a person who understands the nonprofit world and is therefore likely to be useful in some capacity or other. But on the subject of volunteering as an expression of who you want to be: it’s hard to get to that question directly, as it’s such a huge one, but here are a few ways of backing into it. Try thinking a bit more rigorously about why you want to go to a particular agency. “I’d like to volunteer because I like children”—however accurate, and laudable—doesn’t give an Executive Director very much to go on. But “I’d like to volunteer because your program of teaching at-risk youth to do gymnastics reminds me of my own childhood experience of finding a home away from home in the Red Cross Junior Lifesaving Program” at least gives you and the ED a place from which to start the conversation: she can say, “Yeah, that gymnastics program is great but the new program we’re doing teaching boys to cook is turning out to be an even more powerful tool . . . ” and then you’re off to the races talking about what the program does, what it could do with more staff (or volunteers!), what they’re afraid it won’t do . . . and so on. If you share your own passion, you give agency staff the opportunity to get back in touch with theirs—and that’s a basis for beginning to work together. Notice that you’re not required to say, “I’d like to volunteer here because in five years I see myself running a social service agency of my own,” or whatever. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the successful match of person and volunteer assignment is the mistaken belief that it’s like a job interview—a belief reified and magnified by the number of experts shaking their fingers about the need for “volunteer job descriptions” and “accountability” and “checking references on volunteer resumes.” This is NOT a job; it’s an environment in which to be of service. And when we think of ourselves as servants—in the broadest sense, the way people call politicians they like “public servants”—we’re less concerned about our knowledge, skills and abilities and more with what we want to help get done in the world. “I can’t sleep at night unless I’m doing something to help children grow up without rickets” might be greeted with raised eyebrows (or indifferent agreement) in a job interview, but it’s the essential sentence in a conversation about volunteering with UNICEF. Another “Who do you want to be?” question has to do with the actual disposal of your time on a volunteer assignment. You need to know, so you can tell the agency staff member, whether or not you want to do direct client service. In some places, you won’t be able to (and most child welfare agency Web sites are quite clear about this); but often you’ll be offered the choice between serving food to homeless people and working back in the stockroom where the food is donated; between teaching displaced homemakers computer skills or helping the outreach staff find locations for those classes; between visiting terminally ill people and working with medical administrators to make sure the need for hospice care is identified promptly and responded to appropriately. The Nonprofiteer herself is shy about working directly with clients, so she volunteers at Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic: thus she’s able to do something useful while sitting safely in a soundproof booth. So she believes, or at least hopes, that we’re all able to be of most service doing things we’re most comfortable with. No one’s eager to describe herself as “unwilling to work with people who smell bad,” but it’s something you need to realize and own before you sign up for an overnight shift in the Night Ministry’s van. Likewise, it’s important to recognize that you’re scared of courts and yelling before you join a domestic violence hotline. Be sure to distinguish, though, between things you’re afraid of simply because you don’t know how to do them yet—agencies will train you about what to say to people who are threatening suicide—and things you’re afraid of, period. The first can be overcome; the second really requires a different form of volunteerism. Finally, every volunteer—and the Nonprofiteer can’t say this strongly enough—should consider whether s/he might be a suitable Board member for every agency that lights his/her fire. It’s remarkable how few people picture themselves in the Board room, compared to how few would actually fit there and be useful. (Women, especially, forget to think of themselves in the role of overseer, or person-being-answered-to.) Of course, at most functioning agencies you can’t just walk up and say, “I want to be on your Board;” but if you can imagine yourself taking serious governance responsibilities—because you’re an accountant, or a lawyer, or just bossy like the Nonprofiteer—then it’s sensible to talk about management issues in your very first contact with the organization. “I wonder if you have any Board committees—for public relations or fundraising—that non-Board members can serve on?” The answer will generally be “yes” (or the less elegant “Oh, my God, are you kidding? You’d really be willing to do that?”) and if you take a committee role and discharge it ably, you’ll find yourself on the Board in very short order. And there’s hardly anything you could do for an arts or social service agency that would be more valuable than that. More succinctly: one possible answer to “Who do I want to be?” is “A leader.”
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| December 19, 2008 01:14 PM |
Climate ChangeAs many as 100,000 nonprofits could go under in coming months due to the slowing economy, says nonprofit management expert Paul Light, a professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service. In an interview today, Light, a governance and nonprofit effectiveness expert, says he thinks the most vulnerable are small-to-midsized arts and social service organizations that consistently operate at the margins. Light’s prediction comes as the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University today released a new study showing that nonprofits think they’re facing the worst fundraising climate since 1998. The center’s Philanthropic Giving Index, similar to a Consumer Confidence Index for charitable giving, is now 64.8, a 21.7 percent drop from just six months ago and a 27 percent decrease since December 2007. “Winnowing is going to occur [in the ranks of nonprofits],” says Light, “but the question is this: is this a random shooting or deliberate? Is most money now going to stronger institutions, the ones that don’t really need it as much?” I caught up with Light today to discuss these trends as well as his new book, The Search for Social Entrepreneurship, about the traits that distinguish social entrepreneurs. Light says social entrepreneurs tend to be more optimistic than others but urges those in the sector to start focusing less on its charismatic personalities and more on which ideas work—and which don’t. “You don’t find and there hasn’t been a good investigation of failure,” he says. What follows is an edited version of that conversation: Q: Why did you write this book? A: I’ve been monitoring management reform in nonprofits and government for some years now and the concept of social entrepreneurship is pretty visible through organizations such as Ashoka and Echoing Green; more and more of our students at the Wagner School are interested in starting their own nonprofits and solving big problems rather than ameliorating them. So the more I looked at it and listened, the more interested I became in describing this movement towards problem-solving and audacious goals by nonprofits, private firms, blended organizations, and cross sector organizations. I started looking at it in 2004/05 and wrote an article about it for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, published in 2006, that said there appeared to be a cult of personality surrounding the concept and that we have become fascinated with these individual heroes and put the focus on finding these sparkly charismatic leaders and funding them to pursue pattern-breaking change. I wrote that it’s not the hero, it’s the heroism and that social entrepreneurship can come from existing organizations, big old organizations, fresh startups and you-name-it and that provoked a pretty instant response from the field. I continued to do research about it in 2007 and 2008 and then wrote a book to summarize what I was seeing. Q: What did you find? A: The more I read, the more was I able to unpack the underlying broad assumptions that define social entrepreneurship as an effort to solve a tough social problem through innovative or pattern-breaking ideas. It turns out that people who act as social entrepreneurs behave differently from other high achievers, so I have come to agree that there is something different about the social entrepreneur. But I also found plenty of examples suggesting that social entrepreneurship is not a singular—but a plural. By that I mean that many organizations pursue social entrepreneurship through partnerships and teams and through networks, and our tendency in conferences and fellowship programs is to reward the individual when, in fact, we might be better off rewarding the idea or the organization along with the individual. In fact, the lone wolf entrepreneur is fairly rare and they’re often less successful in bringing their ideas to fruition than groups and networks and even communities of individuals. At the same time, I no longer feel there’s this cult of personality. There really are individuals out there who pursue pattern-breaking change against the odds and we should look for both types of entrepreneurs. Q: You say that social entrepreneurs behave differently than other high achievers. A: There’s this prevailing notion that they’re more risk tolerant, which does not appear to be true. What they are is extremely optimistic about their chances of success. And that goes for the lone wolves as well as for the socially entrepreneurial teams and networks. They all have very high confidence that they will succeed and they often ignore evidence to the contrary because they believe so strongly that they’ll succeed. We don’t have many stories about failed social entrepreneurs. The field as a whole has focused almost exclusively on success stories and perhaps that’s the way it is at the beginning of an expansion of any field. The focus on the entrepreneurial individual dates back to the early 1980s with Bill Drayton and Ashoka but it turns out that optimism and confidence are what drive the perseverance that produces this kind of constant focus on driving forward with change. It’s not that these people have a gene that can be identified as social entrepreneurship. It’s that they really see the world in very optimistic terms. Additionally, they’re not more likely to take risks than others but they do tend through their optimism to stick with it, and when they are told they are going to fail, they actually invest even more energy; they rebel against messages that suggest they’re somehow on the wrong track. This optimism can shift into overconfidence and entrepreneurs of all types need to be careful about that. They need to fine-tune and listen to what the “market” is saying to them about their idea. They also need to be aware that they do see the world in very optimistic terms and therefore need to check themselves from time to time and challenge their own assumptions about their ideas. Q: What have been some of the key failures? A: Honestly? You don’t find them and there hasn’t been a good investigation of failure. We just don’t know. We’re so focused on success that I can’t point to any failures. The failures just disappear. We know that a very high proportion of business entrepreneurs do fail. If you look at business entrepreneurship or define it as plain old survival, then you’ve got a very high failure rate among small business owners and new business ideas. The most recent example is the failure of HD-DVD to take control of the market. It’s Blue Ray now. You can study why HD-DVD failed to claim market share and understand what the sources of failure and success might be, but we don’t have that kind of research base in the social entrepreneurship field. There’s so much enthusiasm for the idea of social entrepreneurship that we are not taking careful inventories of where success occurs and where failure might reside. We’re lacking an entire branch of research that would be very useful for instructing nascent social entrepreneurs on what they can do to avoid failure. That’s a problem in the field right now and one of the threats to developing the field so it’s useful to people who want to launch a change effort. Q: What kinds of research would be most useful in your view? A: There are sweeping studies about success and failure in the field of business entrepreneurship. Is the organization still alive? Is its market share increasing? Is it profitable? Yet when we go to blended organizations or nonprofits, we just don’t have those indicators. Ashoka uses some reasonable indicators to get the dialogue started, like; to what extent do their fellows affect policy change? To what extent are their ideas still alive? But we need better measures of outcomes if we’re going to start separating the wheat from the chaff in social entrepreneurship, and we just don’t have those yet. There’s also a lot of argument over what constitutes success. Do you have to change the world or can you change a piece of the world? Does it have to be changing an entire policy regime within a country or within a region or even a continent, or can it be changing a city block and diffusing the idea so that others can pick up the change effort for their city blocks and eventually you have a cascading affect? There’s a lot of confusion in the field right now. The general goal of social entrepreneurship is quite noble and I’ve become more and more impressed with what social entrepreneurs are trying to do but there are a lot of question marks still in the field. A lot of the investing in social entrepreneurship is really gut-level, intuitive investing—rather like a venture capitalist—versus a very careful rate of return investment based on the actual impact of a given idea on changing the status quo. To me the idea is the important component of social entrepreneurship. We have to be careful not to neglect the possibility that it’s not so much the individual leader but the power of the idea to create a market and to create change that is most significant.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| January 7, 2009 08:00 AM |
Why All Leaders Should Have Gone to Design SchoolHow do I get my kids to read, to do well at school? How do I get my staff to do better work? How do I get people to support me, vote for me, and even volunteer for me? How do I get myself to stay in shape or lose weight? Designing environments where people do things is the bedrock of our society. In a professional setting, it is essential in order to maximize efficiency, productivity, and/or innovation and often called human resource management. Go one step beyond management. “Getting the most out of people” or helping people reach and go beyond their potential is a common definition of great leadership. But great management and leadership are outputs; you know them when you see them. The inputs are more elusive. After going through the Stanford MBA program myself and $100K+ later, I can say with confidence that there’s still little clarity around what these inputs are! Although we’re still taught the core management “skills” like strategy, accounting, finance, etc., it’s now commonly argued that these have become commoditized; they can be obtained from an online course or manual. Good management and leadership are born elsewhere. After starting and managing an ostensibly successful nonprofit, I have some street-cred to confidently say I agree. What if great management is less about the skills of the trade, being a good “people person,” or having a killer network? What if it’s more about design, the design of the “doing” environment? What if there were best practice design principles and processes that could be brought into any casual or professional work environment to get more out of people? Let me be more specific: What if there were design principles that either extracted more value out of a finite number of people or that tapped into a larger pool of human resources at the same cost? Although deep belief, personal commitment, and a knack for clear and compelling communication are undeniable requisites to effective leadership, I would argue that the primary driver of great leadership is great design: great designers of social systems! What is your first reaction when you hear that people have given away without any compensation more than 100 million hours of their precious time to build Wikipedia? What is your reaction when you hear about software developers spending millions of hours coding massive new software programs for free? Let me guess: either complete shock or a glib dismissal of these contributors as losers without anything better to do with their free time. We can shake our fists and get mad at the world and at ourselves, but let’s instead try to understand this phenomenon. In my version, there’s actually a happy ending. So why has this happened? Why have most of our society’s most powerful and important institutions collectively forgotten or dismissed intrinsic motivations? It doesn’t seem like a utility-maximizing way to organize ourselves. It’s not as intangible as you might think. You don’t have to be born a charismatic leader in order to unleash the advantages of an intrinsically motivated work force. You need to design it into your work environment. There are design tricks (principles and templates) to make that happen. Just ask Obama (we funded and organized his campaign and might also run his administration—see change.gov) or Google (we create the links) or eBay (we vet for quality—reputation system) or the film studios (through word of mouth we market their movies) or any successful social entrepreneur like Gandhi or Wendy Kopp. I could go on, but you get the picture. We are inclined to overvalue the importance of managers’/leaders’ vision and charisma and drastically undervalue their ability to design systems that tap into people’s intrinsic motivations to do much more or better work than any extrinsic motivational tool could ever do. I am told that many studies have recently and conclusively shown that getting the most out of people, not surprisingly to any of us, involves making work interesting, rewarding, and fun. No longer will this be a luxury but rather a necessity for success in all professions, not just the citizen sector (NGOs, government, and education) where we also have done a terrible job overall. I’m excited and encouraged that the industrial period’s mode of human resource management is fading: that market forces are starting to evolve our society towards a more enlightened (higher level welfare or utility-maximizing) mode of management where our intrinsic motivations are no longer ignored. To succeed in this new paradigm, we need to put on our designer hats and sharpen our designer utensils! For more insights into these trends, get acquainted with the brilliant Clay Shirky starting with PopTech!, techPresident, and TED.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| January 8, 2009 01:00 PM |
10 Ways to Become a Better Nonprofit Leader in 2009It’s that time of year when we all are making our New Year’s resolutions. This is the best time to be thinking about how your nonprofit career will grow in the coming year as well. The economy dealt us nonprofit folks a difficult year (especially in fundraising), and undoubtedly there are more unknown challenges ahead for all of us. But we have to remember all the things that we ARE in control of: our actions, our intentions, our career choices. Here is my top ten list of things to add to your 2009 goals if you want to enhance your leadership in the nonprofit field. Please add your own in the comments!
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| January 31, 2006 12:41 AM |
Money Laundering & Moral LeadershipHave charities become money-launderers, knowingly accepting stolen goods? So far over 80 federal and state legislators who took funds from indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff have rushed to send “suspect money” to charities. While some of these funds fittingly went to Native American organizations—since tribal officials were the source of much of the corrupt thieves’ wealth—the Boy Scouts, Salvation Army, American Heart Association, Pentagon Memorial Fund, Christian missions, veterans organizations, hurricane relief agencies, animal shelters, social service groups and more have benefited from the hasty unloading of campaign contributions and other compromising lobbyist largesse. Does dedicating the fruits of crime to a charitable purpose cleanse them of their taint? Does it absolve those who profited from the original crime and might even have been complicit in its commission? Does it conveniently bring the matter to a speedier close in the public’s mind, taking some of the heat off possible unindicted coconspirators? Does it remove an obligation to make whole the victims of crime, no matter how needy and na?�ve they might be? So it would seem! While I have heard some argue that there is little “clean money,” it’s hard for me to believe that so many nonprofit organizations have failed to draw some lines here. Too few (beyond the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy) have called for inquiry into how Abramoff was able to go unchecked in his use of nonprofits and foundations as active components in his corruption machine. Now, too many abet politicians trying to scramble out of the mud in their desperate stretch to find higher ground. Aren’t charities supposed to be grounded in the best of values? Beyond services, shouldn’t we expect moral leadership from the nonprofit and philanthropic sector, particularly in times when other public and private institutions fail us? Shouldn’t we insist on it? Posted by Mark Rosenman
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| April 12, 2006 04:54 PM |
New Help Needed for Nonprofit EDsNonprofit executive directors tried telling us in the first Daring to Lead report five years ago. They said it loudly and clearly to the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 2004. They tell us again in Daring to Lead 2006, a national study conducted by the Meyer Foundation and CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. The sobering news from this last survey of 2,000 nonprofit executive directors is that three quarters don’t plan to be in their current jobs five years from now. According to the report, “Frustrations with boards of directors and institutional funders, lack of management and administrative support, and below-market compensation add stress to a role that can be challenging even in the best circumstances.” In case their message hasn’t been getting through to the funding community, here it is, put another way:
In a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy op ed., Meyer Foundation president Julie Rogers urged grantmakers to heed the cries of the nonprofit executive directors they support. According to Rogers, foundations too often behave like “well-meaning rich aunts,” full of advice for nonprofits but not always sensitive to their real needs. The Bridgespan Group predicts that constrained supply and increased demand will result in a pronounced leadership deficit for the nonprofit sector. Perhaps this yawning leadership gap will finally focus our attention on what nonprofit execs are telling us. We can’t stop nonprofit executive directors from growing old and retiring, but we can help keep them from going grey and leaving their jobs prematurely. _____ This entry is cross-posted at White Courtesy Telephone, a blog covering nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropy. Posted by Albert Ruesga
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| June 20, 2006 09:38 PM |
The elusive art of nonprofit managementFormer business execs who managed to cross over successfully into nonprofits - ex-Porter Novelli CEO, former White House deputy chief of staff, ex-LA Times publisher, former fashion executive - talk frankly about the difficulties of transitioning into leadership positions in nonprofits. Les Silverman and Lynn Taliento of McKinsey & Co, are able to get these successful cross-overs to share some candid advice on how not to underestimate the challenges of managing a nonprofit. According to Silverman and Taliento, nonprofit leaders generally have more stakeholders than their for-profit counterparts, they need to get used to the idea of less respect and control and hone their skills of leading by consensus and influence. The quotable Reynold Levy, president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, says in the article, “The nature of passive resistence within a nonprofit setting is at levels that could teach Gandhi lessons.” Your thoughts? (“What Business Execs Don’t Know - but should - About Nonprofits” by Silverman and Taliento appears in the Summer issue of SSIR. ) Posted by Perla Ni
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| July 10, 2007 11:56 AM |
The True Test of LeadershipIn the now classic film Apocalypse Now, the scene that has always struck me as perhaps the most frightening is the one in which Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen), on his quest upriver to find Colonel Kurtz, comes to a camp where American soldiers rebuild a bridge each day, and the Viet Cong blow it up each night. When Willard asks a soldier, “Who’s in charge here?” the soldier replies, “Ain’t you?” Discussions of leadership and accountability in the nonprofit sector are everywhere, and perennial—they repeat themselves. But sadly, they are usually overly narrow. For example, most discussions of accountability focus on transparency and governance mechanisms meant to ensure truth telling. As important as these aspects are, they approach only one level of accountability. Properly understood, accountability has at least three key levels (as I’ve written elsewhere): Leadership is too often taken up separately from accountability. In many views, accountability is on a separate track altogether—a matter of merely complying with regulations, and implementing administrative practices to support that compliance. And when leadership and accountability are discussed together, accountability is often viewed as simply a function of a leader’s character (honesty, candor, and the like). But the true test of leadership should be the same as the highest concept of accountability: Does the leader do everything in her power to accomplish the mission, to keep her promise to those served? Too often we only talk about all the reasons something cannot be done, or why it is not our job to do it. In bureaucracies (be they government, nonprofit, or private sector), the incentives are often only negative. Taking risks never results in rewards, only punishment. There is safety in the narrow view, and so it prevails. That narrower approach can keep us on the right side of the “Don’t rip us off” level of accountability, but it can also undercut the “Be effective” and “Promise keeping” levels. That narrow view won’t cure cancer, or stop global warming, or cut poverty by half, or inspire people to be their best selves; it won’t do any of the things nonprofits exist to do, or that we should demand that government accomplish. In a recent discussion with some friends, they observed that how we frame our questions makes a huge difference in what we can accomplish. Asking “How can we do it?” is worlds apart from “Can it be done?” Which question seems more likely to lead to social innovation? Which is better suited to meeting our highest duties? Devoting so much attention and energy to the “Don’t rip us off” level of accountability—particularly in the nonprofit sector—has been a huge missed opportunity. The scene from Apocalypse Now is frightening on multiple levels, but two among them are (1) no one seems to be responsible for the fate of the soldiers and their mission, and (2) the soldiers themselves feel constrained to play the role that so clearly isn’t working for them. (“Stay the course,” anyone?) If you don’t stretch to meet your promise-keeping duty—the greater vision—even the most honest and capable people can find themselves in a similar box. The job of leadership, or promise keeping, is to reveal the possibilities.
Posted by SSIR Editor
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| July 25, 2007 05:03 AM |
Foundation Boards Should Demand Failure, Expert Claims
I found what Dr. Orosz wrote on the subject of foundation risk-taking especially revealing. If foundations have the freedom to try pretty much anything to address society’s problems, he asserts, “if they are indeed boldly exercising [their freedom] to correct the failures of the market, the government, and the fundraisers, it would be virtually impossible to open a newspaper without reading of a groundbreaking social experiment fueled by their funding.” Unfortunately, the newspapers are more likely to be filled with stories of foundation scandals than of foundations successes. It’s true that a good scandal sells newspapers, and foundations as a class are not very good at communicating their good work. But according to Dr. Orosz, there’s a hidden, perhaps more important, reason for the inability of many foundations to move the needle on some of our most pressing social problems. That reason is embarrassment. According to Orosz:
It was Longfellow who said that “[m]ost people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.” Dr. Orosz appears to claim that our ambitions in philanthropy are almost criminally modest. If the responsibility for this faintness of heart ultimately rests with a foundation’s leadership, i.e., its board of directors, how should it modify its practices? Should boards, for example, demand failure? Yes, answers Dr. Orosz:
Compare Dr. Orosz’s call for “experimental failure” with the tried and true of supporting direct services. Where should foundations place their bets? _____
Image source: magnamags.com
Posted by Albert Ruesga
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| October 22, 2007 12:01 PM |
Philanthropy Doesn’t Care About Black People
Pablo Eisenberg says that leadership and challenge go hand in hand. So, if our current leaders never had to face the kind of challenges that go along with being a person of color in a community of great poverty, but are then tasked with paving the way for change in these same communities, who’s zooming who? If we are, in fact, buying into the idea that a White leadership pool is more desirable than one that is racially diverse, are we really getting anywhere with our goals of solving the kinds of problems that could benefit from leaders with first-hand knowledge of the issues? The nonprofit sector needs to recognize that people of color are often still seen as takers of handouts and charity instead of as empowered and valuable citizens, and having White leaders of philanthropic organizations only reinforces this notion and does more harm than good. There are many other reasons to promote diversity within nonprofit leadership that we could name here, but the point is that it’s clear we need to start openly talking about these reasons more so that we can begin to truly open up our boardrooms and executive positions to different kinds of leaders. Right now I definitely think there’s space and opportunity for some real inquiry within the nonprofit sector. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions: (Photo courtesy blackpeopleloveus.com.)
Posted by Katie Harrington
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Kelly Kleiman, who blogs as 
Peter Deitz is a micro-philanthropy consultant and the founder of 
Peter Manzo is the director of strategic initiatives for the 
Rosetta Thurman is an emerging nonprofit leader of color working and living in the Washington, DC area. She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofit leadership and management issues at 
Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for 
Lloyd Nimetz founded the online giving market 
Peter Manzo is the director of strategic initiatives for the 
Joel Orosz, founder of the 
Albert Ruesga blogs on civil society, nonprofits, and foundations at 
The October 18 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy confirmed what we in the nonprofit sector already knew: the nonprofit and philanthropic sector doesn’t do a very good job at this thing called diversity. Though the foundation world would have us believe that much progress is being made with the emergence of giving circles and donor communities of color, the reality is that it’s high time for the nonprofit sector to put race on the table. In fact, I titled this post as such because the expanded, cop-out definitions of diversity that include gender, religion, disability, and sexual orientation allow organizations to avoid the topic of race and pay lip service to the issue instead of making real cultural changes. Some food for thought: