Harvard Business Publishing

The recession that has staggered the world economy has leveled the nonprofit world. Endowments have lost significant value, and donations from corporations and private citizens have dwindled. But dealing with hard times is nothing new to many in the nonprofit sector. Well-run nonprofits know how to be frugal as well as creative in how they work with limited resources. A core competency of the nonprofit world is people, men and women who are committed to a cause who know how to get effective results. A virtue of effective nonprofits is their culture; it extends beyond a gathering of like-minded people who want to do good; it is a generative culture that focuses on learning. Recently I asked Stephen Gill, a colleague and consultant who has worked a good part of his career with the nonprofit sector, three questions about the value of creating a learning culture. This is a topic... Keep Reading »

The other day a good friend of mine called to express the frustration he was feeling about working with his current IT vendor. My friend is in the pre-launch phase of an e-commerce start up and he was discouraged with the lack of progress the vendor is making. He was tempted to pull the plug on the project and award it to someone else. Entrepreneurs feeling frustrated with subcontractor work is nothing new. I know of another start-up executive who is expressing similar feelings about a manufacturing vendor. While the problems entrepreneurs experience with vendors are different, there is a commonality. Many start-ups, and mature businesses too, are working with vendors who do not consider themselves to be collaborators; they are mere contractors. Collaborators feel ownership for their work; contractors just want to get the job done. The latter is not a problem for small projects, but when the contracted... Keep Reading »

There was an excited buzz in the room. By virtue of their animated conversations, it was obvious that these men and women, mostly in their forties, knew each other well. They were gathered for a graduation event, more than twenty intrepid souls who had completed a career transition program sponsored by Spark, a non-profit business development entity located in Southeast Michigan. I had been invited to give the group a leadership pep talk. Some were intent on leaving jobs voluntarily; others had left involuntarily through downsizing; and all wanted to remain in Michigan to begin a new career. As ruthlessly as the recession has gutted the global economy, few places have been as hard hit as Michigan. My state has been in recession since 2000. In other words, the bust that broke the dotcom boom never left. And so making a decision to remain here is either madness or commitment.... Keep Reading »

In the months since Barack Obama has taken office, a curious thing has occurred in his communication style. He has toned down the rhetoric and geared up the details. As Don Baer who once worked for President Bill Clinton put it, Obama is now "the Great Explainer." In doing so, Obama is following in the tradition of a previous president, Franklin Roosevelt. At his best, Roosevelt, either on radio or to the press, took on the role of a trusted friend explaining things in simple terms so that anyone could understand them. For example, Roosevelt compared the U.S. program of Lend Lease to Britain in 1941 to a neighbor lending a garden hose to a neighbor trying to put out a house fire. Explanation is a key attribute of leadership communications. Leaders know to inject their communications with verve and enthusiasm as a means of persuasion, but they also need... Keep Reading »

Stephen Tyrone Johns died as he lived, helping other people. Johns opened the door for the man who shot him, a white supremacist who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum where Johns worked as a security guard. Friends and co-workers remember Johns, an imposing man who stood six-and-a-half feet tall, as a "gentle giant" who enjoyed his work and was well liked by others. To its credit, CNN.com played the Johns story on its home page on and off for a day or so. Typically the victims don't get much coverage; only the killers. In the coming days and weeks we will still get our fill of information about the man who shot Mr. Johns, but it was heartening to see CNN go counter to this trend. CNN's coverage also shows those of us who write and teach about leadership that while we cannot change the world overnight, we certainly... Keep Reading »

"I don't know anything about cars," revealed Edward Whitacre in an interview with Bloomberg News given after being named the new chairman of General Motors. "A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I'm not that old, and I think the business principles are the same." Long-time Michigan political observer, Jack Lessenberry, lauded GM's hiring of Whitacre as an example of the new leadership the company will require if it is to succeed. But Whitacre is joining a company with a history of rejecting executives from the outside. H. Ross Perot and Jerry York, as a surrogate for investor Kirk Kerkorian, tried without success to shake things up at the board level. Another senior executive who failed to change G.M. was Elmer Johnson. According to the New York Times, Johnson was so frustrated he wrote a memo saying "Teamwork has been replaced by Balkanization. Our... Keep Reading »

Recently on a visit to Toronto I stayed in charming boutique hotel, the Cosmopolitan. Guests who stay in this Zen-styled retreat receive a complimentary gift of polished blue quartz. A description that accompanied the stone read "blue quartz is a healing stone that helps develop intuition, enhances creativity, refines communications skills, eases tension, and strengthens the immune system. It signifies power, success, idealism, increased perceptions and healing, spirituality, wisdom, psychic awareness and strong protective energies." While I cannot attest to the transformative powers of blue quartz, I can say that its description, aside from strengthening one's immune system, pretty much describes what and how leaders need to be doing for themselves and their followers. And with the stone as "our guide" let's explore this idea further. Intuition and perception. Managers need to tune into what is going on with their people, especially in tough times. It is not enough to... Keep Reading »

Last week in Cairo President Barack Obama stated, "So long as our relationship is defined by differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end." While the speech went into some detail about how the President seeks rapprochement with the Muslim world, this single paragraph laid bare a root cause of the conflict. Neither side trusts the other; those who seek to exploit the distrust emerge as the beneficiaries rather than the populace at large. Not only does that statement provide good insight into U.S.-Islamic world relations, it gives any student of leadership an insight into conflict in the workplace. Too often opponents take more comfort in the disagreement than in solution because they derive power and influence from discord. Such... Keep Reading »

In March 2008, Tom Stewart, then editor of the Harvard Business Review, posted nine trends that he believed would influence the future of business in the coming years. Stewart focused chiefly on big ideas such as multiculturalism, financial regulation, and intellectual property. Inspired by Tom's fine example, I would like to offer my suggestions for human factors that will shape the workplace in the coming years. - Managers will talk strategy but act tactically. - Initiatives from on high will falter on the shoals of poor execution. - Companies will say that people are their most important resource, but profits will dictate decisions about headcount. - Bosses who make the numbers will be rewarded more than bosses who "make" people, e.g. develop them. - Connections to the top will trump competency when it comes to getting promoted. - People with no interpersonal skills will be promoted into management. - Your... Keep Reading »

Even the Vice President is joining in, or more accurately, piling on. The other day when Joe Biden was delivering the commencement address at the United States Air Force Academy, a gust of wind blew over one of the teleprompter screens. To which Biden — never at a loss for words — quipped in reference to the downed screen, "I'm gonna tell [the President] the teleprompter is broken. What will he do...?" The audience broke into laughter and cheers. A teleprompter is a computer-aided instrument that allows words to be projected onto a screen that can be read by the presenter as he looks to the audience. Since becoming President, Barack Obama has made frequent use of it, even for press conference openers and town hall-style gatherings. As a result, the President has drawn criticism and snickers from both sides of the aisle. The real issue is not that Obama... Keep Reading »