BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Leadership And High Performance In The Social Sector: Why It Matters And What You Can Learn From It

Following
This article is more than 4 years old.

The United States nonprofit sector is the world’s largest, with more than $1.7 trillion in total revenue; it is also among the most dynamic, as anyone who participates in it can attest. 

Day in and day out, American nonprofits work to provide essential human services and fill vital needs that might otherwise go unmet in our increasingly fractured civil society. They feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick, work to fight climate change, and, in so doing, better the lives of countless people—not only here at home, but across the world. Fraught and polarized as our politics have become, we Americans still set aside differences and join together to support our social sector through donations of time and money. 

Yet, despite its tremendous social importance and economic heft—nonprofit revenue is equivalent to about 10 percent of the United States GDP—the sector is often ignored or overlooked. It remains chronically underfunded and reliant on unpredictable donations from disparate supporters. Especially concerning to me, as the CEO of a philanthropic foundation, our sector struggles with core issues of leadership and management.

Indeed, back in 2017 when Bill Meehan and I were writing the book Engine of Impact: Essentials of Strategic Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector, we worked with Stanford University, where we both teach at the Graduate School of Business (GSB), to conduct extensive research on leadership and management in the social sector. Working with Stanford Center for Social Innovation (CSI), Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS), Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), BoardSource and GuideStar, we surveyed more than 3,000 organizations and conducted deep statistical analysis. When asked to name the top challenges facing the nonprofit sector as a whole, our respondents repeatedly cited “weak or ineffective management” as one of the top three. In fact, our statistical analysis found that more than 80 percent of nonprofit organizations struggle with at least one of the fundamental elements of leadership and management, thus hampering their overall performance and ability to achieve their goals. The reason for this is simple: the social sector is full of outsized challenges and we are often trying to do the nigh impossible with incredibly limited resources. We are effectively trying to swim across an ocean in a storm without goggles, fins, or a map of the best route.

This analogy resonated with me over the summer when I happened upon the work of the street artist “Blub” in Italy. Blub has a series of works called L’arte sa nuotare (Art knows how to swim) in which he depicts icons from life and art—Dante and Leonardo, Michelangelo’s David and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring—underwater and wearing snorkel masks. (See Figure 2.) In interviews, Blub has said that the portraits are intended to serve as a metaphor for the challenges in human life and to illustrate that art always survives and swims on. When I looked at them with an Italian friend, Ilaria Maria Placco, who is a business lawyer and amateur free diver, she remarked that there is an expression in Italian of “being underwater” when things are overwhelming, and Blub’s guidance to “get your goggles” in such times was a source of inspiration. This resonated with me, especially since I view the social sector as a place where the water often feels deep and murky! So, in writing this column, I hope to provide “goggles” that will help us all see the social sector more clearly; navigate its choppy waters with greater aplomb; and learn from the management expertise, leadership experience, and wisdom of outstanding social sector leaders.

While my focus is the social sector, my column will benefit leaders in a multitude of arenas. Indeed, we can all learn from exceptional social sector leaders because it takes greater rigor, discipline, and creativity to build a truly phenomenal social sector organization than it does to build the average business corporation. A few years ago, I had the distinct privilege of discussing the social sector with the best-selling business writer Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Good to Great and the Social Sector. Jim was then preparing to write the foreword to Engine of Impact and, with my co-author Bill Meehan, we talked about the tremendous challenges that social sector leaders face. As Jim so eloquently summarized our discussion in the foreword to our book:

…it is substantially more difficult to build a great social sector organization than to build a great business corporation of similar scale. And that is why the best-run, most-impactful nonprofits stand as some of the most impressive enterprises in the world.

Jim Collins, 2017

The best social sector leaders have a deep and powerful understanding of leadership that is widely applicable to others within the sector, and beyond. Those of us who manage anything—be it a business, a nonprofit, a government program, or even a household—can learn from them. They can teach us, for example, how to summon courage when the forces are against you; how best to manage time, even when it is so scarce that you feel waves pulling you in many different directions and wonder if you might get knocked over; and how to focus when operating in a world full of ever more distractions.

In the coming weeks and months, I will share insights and inspiring lessons based on conversations with extraordinary leaders of extraordinary social sector organizations. Some are household names and others quiet, unsung heroes; all share a jaw-dropping commitment to their organization and its mission, coupled with deep management expertise, wisdom, and insight acquired over decades of working on the ground and fighting the good fight to generate massive impact at scale. They will include:

  • 2019 Nobel Laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, as well as Iqbal Dhaliwal, respectively the Founding Director, Director, and Executive Director of J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab) at MIT. J-PAL is a global network of researchers and evidence-to-policy centers dedicated to improving the quality of policies that affect people living in poverty worldwide by ensuring that decisions are based on scientific evidence. 
  •  Sir Fazle Hassan Abed, who back in 1972 founded BRAC—now one of the largest NGOs in the world, and considered by many to be among the most effective—and ran it for decades. Sir Fazle recently stepped down as chairperson of BRAC and will share his lifetime of experience running a large and complex organization in many of the world’s most difficult geographies.
  • Jonathan Levin, Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business, who emphasizes that leaders must not only keep up with rapid-fire changes in the world of business and technology, but get ahead of all the big changes happening in the world these days.
  • Dr. Rukmini Banerji, the CEO of Pratham Education Foundation, one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India, which has improved learning for over 60 million children since its inception and is now expanding its model to 10 African countries.

  • Dr. Raj Panjabi, founder of Last Mile Health and recipient of a breathtaking array of honors and awards, will discuss how high-performance nonprofits like Last Mile Health thrive by adhering to a clear, focused mission—and by resisting the temptation to be all things to all stakeholders.
  • Lucy Lake OBE, the CEO of CAMFED (Campaign for Female Education), who says that her greatest leadership lesson is understanding “that the role of CEO is not to stand on others’ shoulders, but to be the person on whose shoulders others can stand.”
  • Duncan Campbell, who in 1993 founded Friends of the Children to provide mentors for the most at-risk children across the United States. Duncan’s experiences overcoming his own challenges in childhood (he grew up on welfare in a tough neighborhood; both parents were alcoholics and his father went to prison twice) provided insight and valuable lessons of courage to inform his leadership journey helping others.
  • Andrew Youn of One Acre Fund, which boosts the productivity of smallholder farmers in Africa through access to improved inputs, finance, and training—and aims to reach 1.25 million farming families by 2020.
  • Jim and Debbie Taylor, co-founders of Proximity Designs, who apply human-centered design to create affordable, income-boosting products and services used by hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty in rural Myanmar.

  • Roy Prosterman and Chris Jochnick of Landesa, whose work with governments around the world has resulted in secure land rights for more than 180 million families since its founding, with significant results in poverty alleviation, women’s empowerment, and climate change.

I invite you to join me as I celebrate the leadership of our social sector heroes and hope that in reading my column you will learn, reflect, and be inspired. So grab your goggles and jump in…the water feels great!

Follow me on Twitter