Big
people respond to big challenges. Small bait only attracts small fish.
Vision
statements are strategic. They look past
the daily routine and identify something to grow into.
Once a
vision statement is adopted, it becomes the standard against which actions are
measured.
The
challenging reality of our world is that about the time we get comfortable with
what we are doing, it is moving toward extinction.
Mission
is what an organization commits itself to do.
It identifies a clear, compelling, and achievable goal. Whereas vision is a dream, a stretch, mission
is a commitment.
Values
inform how the goal is achieved.
Planning
is the link between what is and what is to be.
It is the gateway to the future.
Planning
is not an event. It is an ongoing
process that identifies what is working well and builds on that, while weeding
out what is no longer contributing to the identified mission.
Planning
can be thought of as walking a dream into existence.
Whereas a
long-range plan is vision, the annual work plan is a commitment.... The annual
work plan establishes specific goals and activities by which the vision will be
realized. It states what will be done (outcomes), who will do it, where, how,
by when, and with what. Its progress can
be monitored and measured.
Committees...do
not act for the board. They prepare issues for the board to then act on.
If
someone brings issues that are not ready for board action, consider it raw meat
and send it back to the kitchen!
There is
a place for dissent, but dissent can also be a little more than stubborn
negativism.
Think of
policy as an instruction to the future, based on experience.
Collaborators
willingly risk divergent points of view in their search for the best solution.
Some
directors resist fundraising because they view it as begging. Fundraising is
secondarily about raising money. It is
first about raising friends for the cause.
The first
responsibility of a leader...is to define reality. Leaders accept the present
as their starting point.
The best
leaders are service driven, not power driven.
Leadership
requires people who are able to see and believe in things before they exist.
A leader
must be bold and ready to trade the present, with which it is comfortable, for
something that has the potential to be better.
Leadership
involves managing where there is no map and sometimes even no road.
To get
improved results, you need some new thinking, and that is most likely to come
from new people.
