Are You Leading Your Development Operation? Part 1

You Are the CEO of Your Development Office.
How You Lead Is Critical.

FastCompany.com recently featured what GE’s CEO Jeff Immelet teaches to up-and-coming leaders at the company's famed Management Development Center. He calls it “Things Leaders Do” and it reveals his own leadership values. For the next two e-newsletters we will draw on Mr. Immelet’s teachings to cover the 10 “Things Leaders Do” and how they specifically relate to those leading the development function in organizations.

1. Personal Responsibility.
"Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility. You lead today by building teams and placing others first. . It's not about you."

There are several management adages that leaders live by. One of the best known is: “When you’re successful, there is plenty of credit to go around. But when there is failure, the buck stops with me”.

Today’s environment requires leaders to achieve success through the strength, development, and motivation of other people to a far greater extent than ever before. Leaders need to “love them and lead them,” and make sure team members have the skills and tools to get the job done. After all “you can’t blame them if you don’t train them.” By using techniques such as 360-degree feedback, coaching, personal valuing, and evaluating the process as well as the result, team members will develop a true sense that you understand and appreciate their role and contribution to successful development efforts.

In today’s development world, it is not enough to have technically sound fundraising skills or be able to tediously organize details. Development leaders must have the ability to facilitate group processes that harness the team’s intellectual, creative, and emotional energy creating a contagious and enthusiastic environment, that envelopes the organization in the beliefs and actions that say, “development is everyone’s responsibility.”

2. Simplify Constantly.
"I always use Jack [Welch] as my example here. Every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can't, then you're not leading well."

There are a tremendous number of projects underway at any one time in most non-profit organizations and development offices. How many of these projects relate to the “top three things the organization is working on?” How many are really tied into fulfilling the mission and goals of the organization and can be measured well enough to demonstrate a true impact?

When focus is clear at the top, teams are more likely to understand how their work relates to the greater achievement of the organization. Simplifying messages to staff and volunteer teams – as well as to donors -- is an under-appreciated and even lesser-used technique in getting the point across. Complex, competing, or mixed messages create barriers to getting the primary work of development done: the work of building relationships.

When we are so busy trying to “impress with our finesse” or “baffle with our baloney” or trying to answer donor concerns that could have been more simply addressed, we waste valuable time and energy that should have been used in building a deeper relationship based on honesty and trust. Simplicity and focus are the hallmark of the truly successful development officer.

3. Understand Breadth, Depth, and Context.
"The most important thing I've learned since becoming CEO is context. It's how your company fits in with the world and how you respond to it."

We live in a culture where many issues – including donations to charitable causes – become politicized. America is unique in its freedoms of expression and even though we think we are doing good work, non-profit organizations have their detractors. Individuals and other organizations, including some from the for-profit world, will criticize positions taken on issues and causes funded by non-profits that are in conflict with personal or organizational values.

Attacks today take on various forms from attempts to influence legislation that would adversely affect operations, or tax status, to full-blown public relations campaigns that include boycotts, picketing, and letter-writing campaigns. Today, it is not enough to be committed emotionally to a cause or organization. We must understand intellectually why what we do and how we do it sets us apart, makes us unique, and how our society would be adversely impacted if our organization ceased to exist.

4. The importance of alignment and time management.
"There is no real magic to being a good leader. But at the end of every week, you have to spend your time around the things that are really important: setting priorities, measuring outcomes, and rewarding them."

Non-profit leaders face all the challenges of the business world including regulation, human resource management, asset management, resource allocation, etc. But we rely on the dimension of volunteerism as the engine that drives the non-profit. It is this, more than any other dimension of non-profit leadership, that differentiates our sector from business.

The management and involvement of volunteers presents wide-ranging challenges throughout the non-profit organization. At every level, volunteers develop an emotional sense of ownership. Their view of what is really important, the organizational priorities and desired outcomes, may be in conflict with that of the paid leadership. Today, most leaders don’t underestimate the potential influence that volunteers and donors have and are willing to exert.

Non-profit leaders must concentrate on alignment when working with the various stakeholders of our organizations, most importantly the major donors and supporters. But nowhere in the for-profit world is there a model for leading the unique categories of stakeholders that are our volunteers and donors. To retain their confidence, they must feel like part of the team; understanding the expectations and their role in the organization’s success.

5. Leaders learn constantly and also have to learn how to teach.
"A leader's primary role is to teach. People who work with you don't have to agree with you, but they have to feel you're willing to share what you've learned."
While true in corporate America, the rewards and vested interests in non-profit sector staff differ so significantly that top-flight people simply won’t stay unless our leaders practice this value “par excellence”.

The pace of change in leading and managing non-profits continues to accelerate. Whether you are leading the organization, a division, a significant program or product area, continuing education and professional development is essential. Often the first to be cut in tight economic times, the hidden costs of “shorting” professional development range from staff replacement (recruiting, training, down time) to lost opportunity costs, to unintentional errors that can lead to liability for the organization.
Every leader who is responsible for supervising people should attend skill workshops in coaching and appraisal, basic and advanced training institutes, and regular content seminars from their employees’ area of work. As part of their annual review, each and every employee should have an annual training and development plan.

In the next issue of New$ You Can U$e, we will explore Jeff Immelet’s next 5 “Things Leaders Do” and how they relate to your development efforts. Past issues of our e-newsletter are available on the web at www.jeffreybyrneandassociates.com. To request that your staff and volunteers be added to our mailing list, contact Jeffrey Byrne & Associates, Inc., at 1-800-222-9233.