Nonprofit Leadership, Innovation, and Change

What will matter in 2010?

2009-12-15T06:50:52-08:00

As many of us begin to think about 2010 it's not easy to paint a picture of what it will will look like.

In December of 2008, who would have imagined the type of year we had in 2009? My guess: very few.

Most leaders barely know what's going to happen in their lives day to day. To think we'll know what 2010 looks like is a challenge.

Author Seth Godin has put together a great piece of work that features more than seventy great minds sharing what they believe 2010 will look like. It's a free ebook entitled, What Matters Now.

Leaders are always thinking about and seeing the future, and this ebook will help.

A Slightly Different Meeting

2009-12-14T10:58:00-08:00

As someone who leads several meetings a month, I used to always view my meetings as a place where people would come to support my program, my ideas and my vision.

After four years of this process I’ve realized something slightly different.

When people come to my meetings I need to see how I can support their ideas and their vision. My role as the leader is to serve and support their fresh ideas and perspectives about helping.

I used to think people came to my meetings to help me, but now they come to my meetings so I can help them.

Who can you thank today?

2009-12-11T12:03:00-08:00

On the desk in my home office I have a note card that says, “Who can I thank today?”

It’s a simply question/statement that reminds me to always think about who I can say thank you to. Naturally as a leader there are many people close to me who dedicate their time and effort to my vision of helping people. They volunteer for car washes, fundraising teams and attend many events.

Here’s a list of the many people I try to regularly say thank you to:

My two mentors
Volunteers
My friends
Donors
Family

As you work throughout your day, simply ask, “Who can I thank today?” It’s a simple question that will help you remind others that you’re thankful and appreciative about the work they do.

Let the Strongest Leader Go First

2009-12-04T23:44:31-08:00

On my Thanksgiving trip to visit family in Alaska I spent some time with my dad snow mobiling on the miles and miles of trails near their home.

As my dad and I rode from trail to trail, we embarked an a trail which hadn't been ran on since a fresh six inches of snow had fallen the night before. If you're a snow mobile rider, you know it's tough to ride a snow machine in fresh powdery snow. It's super easy to get stuck, to get buried, and to have to dig your way out can take quite a while.

As we embarked on the new trial, it was obvious this would be a tough one to get through successfully. The fresh snow was deep, and the trail started with a steep beginning that felt like we were traveling straight up.

My dad was on the fastest and strongest snow machine of the two. Mine was a little older, slower, not as strong and a little more sluggish when it came to pressing on the gas.

As we embarked on the new trail, it was obvious that dad had his snow machine floored and was giving it almost full gas. As he blazed a groove up the trail, I followed right behind driving in the grooves of his path.

It was obvious to me that I was only able to make it up the hill and up the new trial because he had blazed a path for me which I could follow. His snow machine was stronger, faster and better equipped for the tough terrain ahead, and if I would have attempted in on my own, I would have gotten stuck.

This is also true for leaders, I know that I'm not always the strongest and most effective leader. So sometimes I need to see other people blaze a trail for me that they can easily follow. I need to have someone who is out in front of me who is stronger, faster and better equipped to deal with what is ahead in our work world.

Often we need a big strong leader to be out in front blazing the trail.

Greatness

2009-11-30T09:45:00-08:00

Greatness comes in many forms. It comes in people, products and performance. Anywhere something exists there is greatness. It's standing out from the rest of the crowd due to superior performance and accomplishment.

Greatness starts as a tough road. If it wasn’t so tough, then everyone would make the journey. The reason that so few people make it to being great is that there are very few people willing to make the journey, and an even small percentage of people who are willing to finish the journey once they start.

In the 21st century it seems that everyone wants a shortcut to success. Its said that the longest distance between two points is a shortcut. Today everyone wants instant gratification, ultimate happiness and pleasure now. We all want the one magical fundraising idea that will make up for the recent shortfall, we all want the one-day seminar that will magically heal our business mistakes, and we all want the relationship book that will fix our spouse and make them the person we want him or her to be.

Greatness doesn’t happen overnight, which is what makes it so rare. It emerges from within us when we need it the most. Very rarely are we the ones who initiate the path to greatness. Often times it’s a mentor, a kick in the butt from our boss, or some other outside factor that demands that we be great. Once that outside factor takes place, then it’s upon the leader to to do the daily practices day after day to become great.

But it’s up to the leader to identify those outside factors, seize the opportunity and do the daily activities to become great.

Fresh Content Coming Soon

2009-11-28T10:12:00-08:00

The past six weeks have yielded a pretty heavy burden for me.

With United Way's fundraising season taking place in the fall and A Day of Hope's mission to feed families for Thanksgiving, I've found myself doing a lot of working, very little sleeping and even less writing.

As a result I've got some great fresh leadership content ready for you that I'll be sharing with soon. Two that I'm most excited about are entitled, Leadership Learnings from Car Washes. It lays out the leadership principles I learned from leading 15 fundraiser car washes for A Day of Hope over the past 18 months.

Another is the Leadership Take Away's from 2009's A Day of Hope effort where we fed hundreds of families for Thanksgiving. There were several great new distinctions I had this year where we exceeded both our fundraising goal and family goal.

Writing some fresh content here for you on a regular basis is both beneficial for you, the reader, and me, the writer. Hopefully it teaches you some fresh leadership content and helps you see certain things in a different way. It also helps me to clarify leadership content and techniques I use on a daily basis.

So hang in there with me and I'll share some fresh content with you soon. . . . .

Is leadership measured by legacy?

2009-10-03T11:45:00-07:00

Recently I attended the funeral of Bob Schmal, a volunteer of our local United Way, a longtime advocate and community activist in our community of Modesto. Bob was the chair of a volunteer committee at United Way where I served as the United Way representative.

Bob was an amazing man who left a legacy of community advocacy and activism that hasn’t been seen for many years in our community.

Even though I only watched two of his 13 years of work in our community, I was able to develop a great relationship with Bob. We shared a passion for sports, a love of golf, and a desire to make a difference in our community.

While attending his funeral, there were many community leaders present. Not only where they present, but most of them spoke words about Bob.

By my estimate, here’s a list of local dignitaries I spotted at his funeral:

Former Chief of Police
Current Chief of Police
Fire Chief
County Chief Sheriff
City Mayor
Councilwoman
County Supervisor
District Attorney

In addition to these dignitaries who attended and spoke at his funeral, there were 300 other people who all took three hours out of their day on a Friday to honor and remember him.

This stirred my thinking. Is our leadership defined by our legacy? Is the legacy we leave behind the true measure of our leadership?

Only a man with true leadership making a difference would have been able to attract that level of people to attend his funeral.

I’ve learned that great leaders attract good leaders, and exceptional leaders attract great leaders. And there were many great leaders at Bob’s funeral on Friday.

Give Your Best and Let Others Do the Rest

2009-09-24T05:03:21-07:00

I’ve often heard Christians say, “Give it your best, and let God do the rest.” That might be in scripture somewhere, but I’m not positive.

I’ve also heard Abe Lincoln say, “Pray like it all depends on God, and work like it all depends on you.”

Both of these are powerful statements implying that we can’t do everything. All we can do is give our best effort, then allow others (or God) to do what they can.

As leaders the only thing we can do is:

Perform our best
Serve our people the best we can
Prepare them the best we can
Equip them the best we can
Develop them the best we can

Then allow them to do the rest from there.

Once we’ve done the best we can, then it’s out of our hands and it’s up to them to keep going and to do there best from that point forward.

Believe in others more than they believe in themselves

2009-09-19T13:41:00-07:00

On this blog I talk a lot about the role and job of a leader.

Well,
Here’s another one!

I believe that the role and job of a leader is to help people to see what they are capable of.

If you asked a room full of people, “Who here has achieved something that you never thought would be possible because someone else believed that you could? I guarantee that a majority of the hands in the room would go up.

One of the things that have had a significant impact on my life are the several people who believed much more in me than I have believed in myself at certain times.

They believed in me when I didn’t, and as a result I often did more to serve and help people than I ever thought I could.

Often a word of encouragement or acknowledgment of a job well done is all that it takes.

In your role as a leader, remember that sometimes you're called on to believe in others. See their potential and help to draw it out of them.

Interview with author, Rick Smith about The Leap

2009-09-15T06:49:40-07:00

As a writer (or should I say, blogger) I often am sent copies of pre-released books asking if I would like to give the book a read and review it on this blog. Every once in a while I come across a really great book through this process.

Recently I was sent a copy of a new book entitled, The Leap by Rick Smith and it was one of those few very great books.

Below is a recent interview that I did with Rick Smith about his newest book, The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great.

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To begin the interview, if you only had one sentence to use to describe The Leap, what would you say?

The Leap is a “Good to Great” for people, affirmatively answering the question, “Can people on a lifetime trajectory of ordinary break out and accomplish extraordinary things with their lives?”

What motivated you to write The Leap?

I was example number 1. For nearly my entire life, I had been ordinary. B-student, middle manager, luckier than some, unluckier than others. But mostly just average. Then, my life turned on a dime. In 18 months I wrote a bestselling book, launched a company that brought me into close contact with the top leaders/icons of our time, and eventually sold the company for more than I thought I would make in my lifetime. As all of this unfolded, I couldn’t help but ask myself the question, How could this have happened to of all people, me? And are there others out there who have similarly transformed ordinary lives into something remarkable.

Quite simply, I want others to know what I have learned, and to share in the experience.

How many times have you successfully made “the leap” during your professional life?

Really, only once. After the point when my trajectory changed, it was as if gravity itself had been suspended. People, opportunities, fulfillment seem to continue to come at you. I did however recently apply the principals in The Leap to a new area – my band – “Men Without Youth”. In one year, we took our “dads-band” from playing neighborhood pool parties to opening for Lynyrd Skynerd and Zack Brown in front of more than 1,000 people. This really works!

What do you feel is the benefit for someone to read the book even if they are not going through a possible change in their career?

No matter what your circumstance, everyone longs to do more, to do something special with their lives, even if it is within the context of their current roles or companies. The Leap helps bust three common myths that hold so many people back: In order to make a leap in my life I must 1) change who I am (fix myself), 2) go it alone, and 3) take a big risk. These myths are false, and understanding what is real about success can allow anyone to dramatically change their impact and fulfillment.

While reading the book and reading the many stories about people who have successfully made the leap, it appears they all had slightly different ways of “leaping.” Is it fair to say that there is no clear cut way of making the leap?

You are correct, the stories of those making the leap are as unique as the individuals. But what is interesting is that if you look closely, the same three patterns seem to appear over and over, as they did with me. For nearly all of us, we were left to stumble onto a leap in our lives. My hope is that detailing these patterns for others will make them understandable, and ultimately replicatable.

One of the underlying tones that you communicated in the book is that average ordinary people can do great things even if they don’t have grand ability, huge dreams, amazing talent, lofty goals, or amazing change. This seems to go against conventional thinking, so what caused you to take this position?

We all rationalize where we are in our lives. I certainly did, and that is OK. But rationalizing is different than giving up hope, letting go of our grand dreams. Despite the title, the leap is not a guide to living on the edge. In fact, this is a book about predictability, about using the hardwiring of the brain to assure that, whatever change you set to make in your career, the odds will be stacked in your favor. While the outcome of a leap may be quite dramatic, the steps that set it in motion are actually just simple, risk free explorations.

What do you believe is the main reason that people pursue career leaps into new and different work areas?

If you find yourself in a position that leverages your strengths and passions every day, you cannot help but grow and succeed. The statistics prove it out. But this is an elusive goal – my research suggest that less than 5% strongly agree that they are in such a role. A successful career is really about continuous change, continuous learning about yourself, your strengths and your passions. This learning occurs through experience, and If you can understand yourself at this level, you are much more likely to find the role that is meant for you and you alone.

In my experience of interviewing authors I’ve found that many authors write a book, only to realize a couple months later they forgot to add a couple of key ideas or points. If you had the opportunity to write the book again, what would you change or add to the book?

For me, each book leads to new questions. My first book, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers profiled the super successful within organizations. But it sparked the question in my, what about the rest of us? What about the state school educated normal girl and guy? What about people who seemed stuck by the time they were 30? What allows the average person to break out and achieve similar levels of success? These questions led to The Leap.

The questions that I am currently wrestling with are related to what specific factors impact success and happiness the most. My research is pointing me toward how we as individuals initiate, cope with and lead others through change.

If someone is looking to make the leap to another career or profession, are there any other resources that you would recommend they obtain or use (besides your book of course)?

Well, not to be self serving, but as part of this book project, I developed the Primary Color Assessment (www.primarycolorassessment.com), available for FREE online (100,000 pageviews in just the last 2 months!). This 15 minute test will identify the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions, and this is powerful information. Knowing this is the first step in taking control over the direction of your career, and aligning this unique “Primary Color” is the first step in taking the leap? I am a Purple Heart. My wife is Electric Lime.

What is your primary color?

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For more information on Rick Smith, you can read his blog or visit LeapBuilder.com.

Leaders Embrace Overwhelm

2009-09-12T16:17:08-07:00

I believe there is a group of people who would like to be leaders, but they aren’t leaders because they don’t want to do the work.

As a leader I can admit that one of the many challenges I’ve had to face can be summed up in one simple word: overwhelm.

As the leader, (almost) everything rises and falls on you. You’re the dude who casts vision and sets the pace for your organization, but you’re also the dude who has to take care of many small details that must be done on a regular basis.

It’s a tough battle, because you’re the figurehead of the organization being pulled in so many different directions by everyone.

The key for leaders is to embrace overwhelm. Because I believe most leaders love what they do (I know that I do), they see work as something they look forward to doing. They look forward to work because they know it’s something that’ll bring them closer to their goals and visions they have for their organization and themselves.

They learn to associate good feelings to the massive amount of work they must do on daily and weekly basis to maintain and keep their organization growing.

So go and embrace the overwhelm!

The True Sign of Your Leadership

2009-09-06T13:21:27-07:00

The true sign of your leadership is when:

You give your best effort for yourself and for others,
You love others and yourself unconditionally without reason or motive,
You love others even when they have wronged you or done a poor job,
You have a vision of the future and you take action on that vision,

Leadership Compounds

2009-08-29T07:09:30-07:00

Leadership compounds.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and decade after decade.

Why does it compound? For the simple reason that when you focus your effort in one area day after day for a long time, you’re going to get better. You’re going to improve, you’re going to make change, and that change will naturally lead to more change.

Like most things, leadership only compounds if you’re focused on growth. Focused on growth means you attend conferences, read good books, and take time to think and reflect. If you’re not consciously focusing on growth, what you’re doing is not going to compound over time. It will be like the Pastor who said he had been in the ministry for 20 years, but only had one year of experience because he had experienced the first year twenty times.

To keep your leadership compounding through growth you must be:

Doing
Learning
Growing
Implementing

Then the process starts all over again with you building on what you’ve already done and learned from.

Leadership compounds.

Why should I have different people in the room?

2009-08-25T21:54:30-07:00

This is a vital question, one that I will pose to you.

Who is in the room when you are casting vision, making decisions, or planning for change?

The people you have in the room when these topics come out is going to define your organization’s ability make a difference. When you have people in the room, they need to be different.

You need to have different people in the room for three reasons:

Different thinking
Different skill sets
Different experiences

I once read about a story of Henry Ford who was in a meeting with his board when he said, “Ok guys, so I guess we are all in agreement on this?” as they all stated, “Yes, we are.” Mr. Ford proceeded to say, “Ok, then I’m going home, you guys stay here and until we have some disagreement on this, we’re not going to make a decision.”

Let me explain more for these three areas:

Different Thinking – I love good thinkers. They aren’t always the best implementers, but I can always find someone to implement someone else’s ideas. I also love to get good thinkers to disagree and engage in conversation with other good thinkers. You need to keep them thinking in the areas of their strength. Some people are good thinkers in the area of fundraising, planning, administration, or accounting practices.

Different Skill Sets – These are the people who help the good thinkers discover if their ideas are able to actually be implemented. Good thinkers are often just that, good thinkers. They don’t always have the best grasp of reality. So it takes a person with good skill sets to help determine which idea can be implemented, and out of the ideas that can be implemented to decide which idea is the best one to implement. People with different skill sets are the delegates. They are the ones who actually make it happen. They often come alongside the thinkers and make their ideas and vision become a reality. People with different skill sets are usually like the craftsman and mechanics. They are great at looking at something, using their hands and parts to build it and make it work.

Different Experiences – These are the people who can draw on past experiences, successes, and failures to help things move forward. These experiences provide insight and resources for everyone to draw on. Here’s the thing you have to watch out for with experiences, their past experience can greatly hinder your organization’s success. Just because they have failed or seen someone else fail in a certain area, might cause them to think everyone else will fail in that area.

However,

When you get different people in the room, you're going to have disagreements. One of the great qualities of leaders who can run effective meetings is being able to successfully and smoothly facilitate disagreements between members of their staff and team.

This has been a huge element of my role with A Day of Hope. We often sit in meetings for our leadership team and fundraising team with so many ideas going around it’s crazy. Most of the volunteers are young energetic people such as myself, so they are always bouncing ideas around and asking great questions.

I hope you now see why you should have different people in the room.

How does leadership make a difference?

2009-08-17T18:23:21-07:00

One of my commitments as a member of the A Day of Hope Internet Fundraising Team entails my requirement to make a new Squidoo Lens every month ("lens" is a fancy word for web page). Usually this means I think and create some written content that is posted on the lens.

Here's one of my recent lenses that talks about Ways Leadership Makes a Difference. It outlines 17 ways that I believe leadership makes a difference.

Great Leadership Makes a Difference
Great Leadership Makes People Better at What They Do
Great Leadership Enhances & Keeps People's Confidence
Great Leadership Makes Better Kids
Great Leadership Makes Better Families
Great Leadership Helps People to Find Their Passions & Strengths
Great Leadership Makes the Economy Stronger
Great Leadership Makes the Economy Stronger
Great Leadership Guides Us Through Crisis
Great Leadership is What Catalyzes Change
Great Leadership Motivates Other People to do Their Best
Great Leadership is What Makes Change Stick
Great Leadership Keeps People Going During Tough Times
Great Leadership Attracts Better People to the Organization
Great Leadership Inspires People to Do Their Best
Great Leadership Gives People the Discipline to do the Right Things
Great Leadership Allows Room for People to Grow & Develop

For more details on the 17 ways, you can check out the official lens. If you purchase a book on the lens the proceeds earned from that book are donated to A Day of Hope. So feel free to be generous. :-)

Jobs for Change

2009-08-11T08:08:18-07:00

With the recent changes in our economy and world, it seems that people aren't just looking for work, but they're looking to transition careers. They're looking to change into something new, fresh and that has more meaning to them. Something where they're able to use their skills and gifts in a greater capacity.

Currently I'm working on a print interview with Rick Smith, author of the soon to be released book, The Leap which talks at length about career changes people make.

With this change in careers some people are looking to possibly begin working in the nonprofit sector.

A reader recently sent me a link to a new website launched for the special purpose of helping people who are looking for jobs in the nonprofit sector.

Whether you're a nonprofit veteran looking for a new position, or if you've worked in the corporate arena for years and now you want to test the waters of nonprofits, Jobs for Change can give you a head start in looking for jobs in the nonprofit area.

People Serve Two Things

2009-08-04T23:28:30-07:00

People serve two things: they serve the cause of your organization and they serve you.

People will work for the cause temporarily, even if they don’t like or respect the leader.

However, if someone works for the cause and for the organization, they are going to work a lot harder and create much better quality of work.

Leadership has been defined as winning people to your cause, and I think leadership is also winning people to you.

When they follow you based on who you are and what you stand for, combined with the cause of an organization that they believe in, it creates a powerful combination that cannot be matched.

What a Resume Doesn't Measure

2009-07-31T07:45:00-07:00

If you hire people on a regular basis, you know the main thing that determines whether you interview someone for a job or not is based on his resume. A resume sets the tone for an interview and it places presuppositions and assumptions in an interviewers mind.

Often times the interviewer is looking to learn certain things and affirm what they think they already know about the person.

But here’s a reality check: a resume is not always a reflection of someone’s talents, skills, and strengths.

But you already knew this, right?

So, what does a resume show and measure?

It measures experience and successes that a person probably has. These are all great to know and use when hiring someone, but what you really need to know when you’re hiring someone is the stuff that’s not on a resume.

A resume naturally resembles the success and good qualities a person has. However, it does not measure someone’s integrity, their ability to work well with others, if they make the people around them better, how much they have learned, or their future potential.

Next time you stare blankly at a resume, think about what's not shown and how that can affect your decision.

Risk

2009-07-27T22:30:00-07:00

A leaders' success heavily depends on his ability to face and deal with risk.

One thing that establishes someone as a leader is his courage to take risk. For the simple reason that when you take risk, you’re seen as a leader because there aren’t many people doing what you’re doing.

Most people like to play it safe. That’s why they stay at boring jobs making a modest wage to enjoy a mildly enjoyable retirement.

When someone takes a risk he is suddenly seen as a leader because not many people are doing what he is doing. Several years ago remember reading a quote stating, “Sometimes you have to go out on a limb because that’s where the fruit is.”

When you take risk it means you’re stepping into the unknown and it tests your leadership influence with people. It’s easy to lead when everything is smooth and easy. But when you have to take risk and step into the unknown, it shows your true level of leadership.

When you take risk it will determine if you actually have the leadership influence to lead people.

Learning in a new position

2009-07-17T18:05:28-07:00

Last year began working in a new position at United Way. It is a new position, in a new department, with a new person to report to, and new peers to work with on our team.

As I have had to learn so many new things in this position, it occurred to me it’s not just skills that I have to learn, I have to learn how to work with my peers as a team.

There are two things a person must learn in a new position:

The skills needed to get the job done
How to work as a team with new coworkers.

The skills can be learned in a training room, training manual, or software program. However, the people skills are much more difficult to learn. It takes experience, failure, intuitiveness, and some team building activities before you can really work effectively with other people as a team.

Working effectively as a team starts with finding out the needs and desires of the person you are working with. What do they value? Do they need to be affirmed and recognized for their work? What is their style for communicating and interacting? Do they prefer email over telephone?

This is the basic stuff that takes a long time to learn about the people you work with.

There is and always will be a lack of resources

2009-06-29T05:38:38-07:00

It doesn’t matter if you are leading in the nonprofit sector, business community, or government, you’re always going to face the problem of not quite having enough money. The fact that money is scarce is what makes it valuable.

As many of you know, A Day of Hope is a volunteer based program (I earn my income working full-time for United Way). I often catching myself saying, “If I only had the financial ability to hire that person to do "this" and to do "that" for A Day of Hope.”

But, I believe once I had that financial ability to hire someone to do the job, I probably would find myself wanting more money to hire someone with more skill.

It’s natural for a leader to always want more. Leaders are always pushing the envelope hard in an attempt to grow their organization. They always want more of what they’re doing and they want things to be better.

Lack of resources is always going to be a problem for a leader in any context. So, it’s not the increase in resources a leader needs to always seek, he needs to seek an increase in innovation and ingenuity.

He’s got to be creative to come up with ways to not just raise money, but to get the best and most capable work from the people he leads.

Leaders Are Productive

2009-06-27T08:31:00-07:00

Is it me, or does it seem that people who are productive are usually leaders? Not always, but most of the time this seems to be true.

Here’s the true question, “Is someone a leader because he is productive, or is he productive because he is a leader?”

I believe it’s a little bit of both. Leaders are naturally productive because they have to be. They are being pulled in a lot of different directions, by many different people.

It’s also a leaders productivity that helps establish him as a leader. If you are someone who can get the job done day-in-day-out and manage many projects and tasks while keeping them all moving forward, you're more likely to be seen as a leader.

Why do you want to be a leader?

2009-06-22T17:48:48-07:00

That might just be the most important question that you ever ask yourself as a leader.

So,
Why do you want to be a leader?

To make great change in the world? To have the front parking place? To help others who are less fortunate than yourself? To be the highest paid person at your nonprofit? To be able to take more vacation time than anyone else?

I lead because I know that as a leader I’m able to help others help others. I know that the work we do improves the lives of those in the world who are often forgotten. We’re able to give hope and encouragement to those who don’t have any, but who also need it the most.

I know that as a leader I also enrich the lives of those who I lead. I encourage them and lift them to a level that they probably would not be able to reach on their own. With me I’m doing my best to teach them what I know so they may grow and develop as someone who can also make a great difference in our community.

So,
Grab a piece of paper, a pen and write this sentence in the middle of the page, “Why do I want to be a leader?” Then just let the pen ink flow and see what happens.

One person can make a difference but a team can create a movement

2009-06-15T19:34:10-07:00

One person can make a difference but a team of people working together can create a movement.

About a year ago I made a post about this guy. If you drive in downtown Modesto, you will still find him faithfully outside protesting, every single day. In many ways I admire his commitment and persistent for a cause that he believes in.

However,
He is only one man. Yes, he is making a difference (enough of a difference for me to talk about him), but he is limited.

What if he as able to recruit 300 people who were just as passionate as him to stand with signs protesting? I’m sure there a lot of other people who have suffered from the same circumstances that he is protesting about. If there were 300 people out there with him he would be creating a movement.

What’s the difference between making a difference and creating a movement?

Most of it is leadership. It's the ability to gather people together around a shared purpose and mission.

People Are Always Leaving and Coming

2009-06-10T05:28:22-07:00

If you lead for any length of time you will realize that there will always be people leaving and there will always be people coming.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the greatest member of your staff or the worst, if you lead long enough you will find that there will always be someone leaving your organization and there will always be someone coming to your organization.

However, through this process you will realize there are no indispensable people that you work with. No matter how good someone is, if he leaves, you can always find a replacement.

Why people leave and what you can do to keep them with you is a total different topic, but as a leader always remember that no matter how long you lead or how great of a leader you are, there will always be people leaving and always be people coming.