by Holly Delany Cole - In the lives of nonprofit leaders, there probably isn’t a day that goes by when something ‘unexpected’ doesn’t happen – some welcome, some that present additional challenges. These may be matters such as a valuable Board member calling to say they are taking a new job in another city and will be resigning from the board, to a funder calling to say that they will move the consideration of your grant to an earlier (or later) Board meeting, to learning that a building in which you rent space for some programs has been sold and the new landlord wants you out as soon as possible. This is the world of nonprofit leaders, but there’s evidence that most are pretty good at managing it.
In fact, in a study about leadership development practice conducted by CRE and Performance Programs and published in the NonProfit Quarterly (winter 2007), nonprofit leaders outperformed for profit leaders in 14 of the 17 leadership dimensions from all groups providing feedback.
However, there come too the days when more a significant unexpected thing occurs. It happened this past week here at CRE. We had already been organizing as an institution to successfully manage an uptick in client work due to an unexpected but welcome short term major contract, when we learned that a senior colleague broke her leg skiing and will be largely recuperating at home for the next three months. Now, this is a colleague who handles substantial client work, who manages critical internal projects and who has some unique responsibilities. In reflecting about why we are handling this additional development in good stride, I observe that it comes back again to the importance of engaging in healthy organizational practice all along so you can absorb these unexpected challenges when they occur, and even make them opportunities.
Resilient factor #1: Ready Access to Information So We Can Make Decisions. As one example, we have systems in which we log all client requests, contract hours and our time on tasks. These systems generate reports that show how the demand for work meshes with the ‘supply’ of staff hours for any time period. We use this to make decisions when to hire and about calendaring new work – having access to this level of information allows us to make necessary readjustments and know their effect on contracts or our bottom line. See Barbara Blumenthal’s CRE blog of February 8, 2010, “Has Anyone Seen Our Program Data?” for more on this topic.
Resilient factor #2: Talented Staff Bench with Depth. Already on board are colleagues whose expertise and preparation allows appropriate and responsible reassignment of client work, developed over time. Nuff’ said.
Resilient factor #3: A Culture of Excellence and Energy. CRE is a mission-driven organization. One way that this shows is that we’ve attracted a set of staff members who identify closely with CRE’s mission. The clients are what matters. In times when extra effort is needed, people readily step up because of their deep connection to the work.
Resilient factor #4: A Supportive and Thinking Board. As soon as word was out that my colleague was ‘down’, the Executive Committee let us know that they too would step up in whatever way we might direct them. Already the Chair of Finance Committee has assured our Controller that he and his committee are available for any additional consultation may be needed in my colleague’s absence (she handles finance).
There are other resilient factors I could enumerate, like having clear organizational goals and a work plan, but let me point up just one other that is key:
Resilient factor #5: Humor. In its appropriate place, it can be an effective release valve for anxiety. Be generous with it. We’ve already developed a few jokes at our colleague’s expense which we can’t wait to share with her, when she is better.
Back to the study noted above. While nonprofit leaders outperformed corporate leaders in 14 of 17 leadership dimensions, one of the three dimensions in which they scored lower was coping with stress which is defined as maintaining command control, managing difficult situations calmly, and handling unforeseen trouble with confidence. Developing the organizational attributes above will better position nonprofit leaders to weather the big and small storms.
My colleague Barbara Turk thinks about these kinds of things a great deal. Some of her ideas are outlined in her CRE blog of February 3, 2010, “What NonProfit Leaders Do In These Difficult Times”. It’s worth a read.
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