Tag: leadership

What’s in it for me?

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

There are a lot of ‘what’s in it for me’ strategies out there, and they are usually run by ‘what’s in it for me’ people.  Right now AIG feels a lot like this, as do seven- and eight-figure bonuses at firms that received government bailout money.

Unfortunately, ‘what’s in it for me’ strategies do work to a point.  You get the big paycheck after posting record losses, you make a pile of money spamming or interrupting people or just generally being slightly misleading as your core customer acquisition strategy.

So what’s wrong with a ‘what’s in it for me’ strategy?  It’s that it absolutely, positively guarantees that you won’t create something great.  Which forces you to ask yourself, “why am I doing this in the first place?”

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How busy should you be (the 125% rule)?

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Whatever amount of time you set aside for work, you don’t want to be 100% busy.  You don’t want just enough work so you can get it done in the time you’ve set aside.  You want more.

How much more?  Lately I think the right amount is around 125% – that is, having 25% more work to do than you could really get done.

If you handle this in the right way, it forces you to work both smarter and faster: smarter comes from being forced to triage and put the most important things at the top.  Faster comes from learning to spend the right amount of time on things, which means less time for things that are less important (without throwing quality out the window).  Faster also comes from learning to say ‘no’ politely to things that you should say ‘no’ to (e.g. meetings you don’t need to attend); and smarter comes from making time for new things that could be great, knowing that something will be sacrificed in the meantime.

There’s a limit, of course.  200% busy is a disaster…it means the end of your personal time and your sanity, and it’s completely unsustainable.  I started my career as a management consultant with a 200% job.  I learned a ton, but I was always exhausted, I essentially sacrificed my personal life, and I never could have kept that up for the decades it takes to build a career.  And 25% is mind-numbingly boring (it’s possible – I actually had a job that devolved into this), not to mention you’ll never produce enough to get anywhere professionally.

So if you’re at 100% and have been asked to do more, take advantage. Don’t be afraid to work hard. And if you haven’t been asked to do more, find somewhere to jump in and do more.

What does 125% feel like?  It feels like (usually) controlled chaos…”usually” because there are always ebbs and flows, so if you’re normally at 125% you’ll have some 150% peaks that are very hard to manage.  125% is a little overwhelming, but it’s also exciting.  You’re stretched, you’re pushed, you’re learning.   And you’ll discover that you can get a lot more done than you thought possible.

(Oh, and if you hadn’t noticed, this is part of the reason that having a job you hate makes it very hard to be very successful.  Success comes from a lot of things, but hard work is part of the answer.  Think about how painful it is to work really hard for 10, 20, or 30 years at something you basically dislike or don’t care much about.)

Buddy, can you spare a Banker?

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

A friend in finance pointed out to me today that there are probably “more than 100,000” newly-unemployed bankers (including investment banks, hedge funds, private equity) in New York City right now, trying to figure out what comes next.

This is bad news for NY-based nonprofits, who are feeling the double-whammy of Wall St. donations drying up and the Bernie Madoff madness (plus huge cuts in local and state spending).  And I suspect that 2009 will be the year where we learn how bad things really are, not the year when we’re pleasantly surprised that things aren’t as bad as we thought they were.

Nevertheless, I for one pray it is the end of an era, and not just a pause between acts.  Not because of the greed (which has always been there and always will be); and not just because of the excess-piled-on-excess that had become the norm for pay on Wall Street (though it stinks).

The gravitational pull of Wall Street has gotten so strong that it pulled in many of our best mathematicians, lawyers, engineers, you name it.  It’s an imbalance that has pulled talent away from other sectors, and one that I hope gets restored.

So what’s the upside look like?  I wonder what those 100,000+ bankers – some of the smartest, most ambitious, out-of-work Type A personalities around – are going to end up doing.

Is it possible that there will be (slowly, quietly) a huge influx of talent into the government and our healthcare system and the education system and the social sector?

Wouldn’t that be great?

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

And if you haven’t seen it, you must read Michael Lewis’ essay “The End” from Portfolio.com.  Michael gives the inside story that explains what all this subprime / CDO / securitization really means — how it happened, how truly ugly it was, and how everyone looked the other way because so many people were getting so rich.

What happened on Wall Street at the end of 2008 was the music stopping after 25 years of buildup.  If you want to understand how and why, take the 20 minutes to read Lewis’ article.  It’s fabulous.

Carving up your nonprofit

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I wanted to share an excerpt from great post from Adam Thurmon’s Mission Paradox blog (it’s a long excerpt, so it’s pasted in below).

The question Adam was asked was whether it makes sense to have both an Executive Director and an Artistic Director as equal co-leads of an arts organization.

I’ll leave you to read the excerpt and encourage you to read the post as well.  What strikes me is that Adam is pointing out an important (mis)management theme that can pervade the nonprofit sector: the notion that there’s the “real work” (the art, the programs, the care you provide) and the “business stuff” (raising money, working with the Board, keeping the lights on, marketing :), and that somehow these things can and should be separated out.

It’s not about business taking over nonprofits, it’s about recognizing that any organization that has a purpose in the world needs to be integrated both in how it delivers its services and in how it runs its operations. You can’t chop it up and separate it out any more than that.

In today’s world, your brand is every person who talks to anyone outside your organization; your culture is defined by how you treat each person who works for and with you; your message is owned and nurtured mostly by people who are not on your payroll.

And it’s all the important in mission-driven organizations (artistic, humanitarian, religious, you name it) that every person feels like they are part of advancing that mission.

This is why people are showing up to work every day.

Why would you squander that?

Here’s what Adam has to say about this:

“We still have arts orgs running with the simplistic notion that having artistic decisions over here (run by one person) and business decisions over here (run by another) is the most viable way to structure an organization.

Again, this creates an environment where one side can easily place blame for any challenges the org may be having on the other side . . .

“If we were doing better art we could raise more money.”

“We do great art, too bad the business folks don’t know how to sell it.”

Instead of recognizing what most of us who have been in this game for a while clearly see . . .

Artistic decisions ARE business decis ions.

Business decisions ARE artistic decisions.

You know this.

Everyone knows this.

So why are we taking ultimately singular decisions and placing them in the hands of seperate people?

Dr. Sono and Anant Kumar: leaders who are changing the world

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

You’ve probably never heard of Dr. Sono Khangharani or Anant Kumar, but they are two truly incredible leaders who have devoted their lives to making the world a better place for the poor in Pakistan and India.

Pakistan’s Dawn paper just wrote a profile of Dr. Sono.  This is the kind of news we don’t get out of Pakistan, and it’s important to hear and remember that everywhere at any time, there are outstanding individuals doing amazing things to make the world a better place.

And just yesterday at the Acumen Fund Investor Gathering we were lucky enough to have Anant Kumar speak to us about his plans to grown LifeSpring Hospitals from 6 to 30 high-quality, low-cost maternal hospitals in India in the next two years.  I wrote about LifeSpring hospitals here on the Acumen Fund blog.

What strikes me most about Dr. Sono and Anant Kumar is their quiet grace, passion, and humility — and their undying respect for each and every person.