Nonprofit Performance 360 Magazine Vol 3 No 2

“There are 1.4 billion people in China who haven’t even heard of Wal-Mart yet. Without a doubt our biggest challenge is to develop leaders fast enough to meet all the opportunities we face….cultivate the people with the capacity to lead and advance those who multiply their leadership through others.” – Lee Scott, President and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Your Tax Status Doesn’t Stop Leadership Development The principles of this idea do not change as it pertains to the tax status of an organization. Organizations with real strategy focused on multiplying leaders will win. Those that do not will ultimately lose and likely die. While some for-profit organizations may have a bit of an advantage as it pertains to the velocity and volume of the alarm that sounds when a leader is not producing, the opportunity remains the same. When a business unit underperforms, the power of profit, or the lack thereof, will sound an alarm much sooner and louder. All too often, the nonprofit that has the same under-producing results typically applies an excessive amount of undeserved grace, thus prolonging, or at best minimizing, the

volume of the alarm. Changes are made much slower, allowing for more and more collateral damage to be experienced. Extra resources are poured in longer as the changing of the guard is constantly pushed out. Nonprofits must be mindful not to allow sacrifice and passion for the cause to be mistaken for leadership. There is often a temptation to promote the most passionate member with the most sacrificial story. No doubt, we want passion, enthusiasm and sacrifice, but they cannot trump leadership. How do You Shift? We believe there must be an unrelenting commitment by top leadership for true change to occur. There must be a new expectation that we will no longer outsource the development of leaders. Leaders must shift to answer that call, thus filling the gap that they have helped create. Leadership doesn’t merely occur at a summit. It happens daily, weekly, and monthly with real relationships. Leader development must be life on life. Leaders are never born in a vacuum. They are always developed by another leader. Every great military institute understands this principle. A leader must

be trained by another leader and then have a very clear expectation path as to how they will soon become the teacher and trainer of a group entrusted to them. What actually has to shift within an organization’s culture? At the core, it is not the content, but rather the strategy for delivery. Content is so readily available it almost becomes an overwhelming distraction for a developing leader. Yes, content still matters, but the experience surrounding how the content is engaged unlocks the power. Through our platform, our organization helps equip any type of organization with a content distribution model that sets the stage for leadership development in an ongoing format. We have found that consistent, ongoing conversation, empowerment and engagement is the biggest step in shifting an organization’s culture and creating an organization that multiplies leaders who are multiplying leaders. Cord Sachs is the CEO of FireSeeds, a company that exists to enhance a client’s culture through recruiting great leaders and implementing leader development strategy. The WildSparq leadership development platform can be found at www.wildsparq.com.

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