HOW TO CREATE THE CONTEXT FOR STRATEGY EXECUTION

Creating context — on a regular basis — is a critical part of every manager's job and could be considered a core competency of leadership. Without it, you might find yourself ahead of schedule, but not sure where you are heading.

There's an old story about an airplane pilot who announces to his passengers that he has good news and bad news: the good news is that they are ahead of schedule; the bad news is that he doesn't know where they are heading. Sounds ridiculous for an airline — but it's common for organizations. All too often people are asked to work extremely hard without fully understanding how their tasks steer their organization in a strategic direction. Often invisible, this pattern is what I call "lack of context," and it's one of the most pernicious causes of unnecessary complexity and frustration in organizations.

BEST PRACTICES OF HIGH-IMPACT NONPROFITS (PART I)

Greatness has more to do with how nonprofits work outside the boundaries of their organizations than with how they manage their own internal operations.

To paraphrase Archimedes, “Give me a lever long enough and I alone can move the world.” Best organizations use the power of leverage to create change. In physics, leverage is defined as the mechanical advantage gained from using a lever. In business, it means using a proportionately small initial investment to gain a high return. The concept of leverage captures exactly what high-impact nonprofits do. Like a man lifting a boulder three times his weight with a lever and fulcrum, these nonprofits are able to achieve greater social change than their mere size or structure would suggest.