I recently encountered an organization that’s on the cusp of a big change … a change about which its huge constituency is feeling a bit uncertain. The agency has never had a chief executive, and that’s part of the new picture that has some supporters skeptical. After all, things have gone okay without one, why …

Whenever we plan, there are unlimited opportunities for us to make assumptions (consciously or otherwise). Highly successful project managers (that rare breed?) recognise this acutely and most importantly, the potential impact that even the simplest looking assumption can have on a project. Recognising and capturing assumptions, thereby enabling us to test selected assumptions, can be …

A common theme that emerges with many of my coaching clients is that they would like more feedback. They would like to know if they are doing a good job and are on track with what is expected of them. Further, if they are not meeting the expectations, they would like to know what they …

Caterpillars spin cocoons. Spiders spin webs. Young kids sometimes spin to make themselves dizzy. Whirling dervishes definitely spin toward a higher power, and fitness clubs are fond of offering spin classes. But is PR spin? Most of the public relations professionals that I know consider “spin” to be a pejorative term in their profession. It …

People are always asking us for examples of business plans, which is a bit ironic, in that every credible plan I’ve ever seen has “Confidential” stamped all over it. That said, there are samples out there, which is fine as long as you don’t assume you should do it the way they did it. Here …

Typically no single source provides all of the information necessary for writing a good marketing plan for your business. This means gathering information from several sources. You may need to gather information on demographics, industry trends and competition, to name just a few.

Many Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) use the term “Major Gifts” to refer to those that are larger than the usual range of gifts that arrive in the mail. Typically, $1,000 is the magic number. But, unless an organization’s budget and/or the amount to be raised via the fundraising process is unusually small, gifts of $1,000 won’t …

This entry states that the bottom line objective of transformational leadership could be referred to as a leader’s efforts to align his or her goals, and the goals of team members, with the strategic goals of the organization. The questions that are addressed are whether this approach to leadership shows evidence of any positive outcomes, let alone the aforementioned grand objective.

We often generalize leadership and skills to be the same traits needed all the time and everywhere by all leaders. Is leadership really that simple? Let’s look at different domains of leadership and the different skills that are needed in each. Leading Yourself To effectively lead yourself, useful skills are, for example: physical fitness decision-making …

Understanding a Board’s System: Key of Improving Recent Breakthrough in Development: Systems Thinking One of the recent breakthroughs in organizational and management development is the ability to understand organizations and each of the various functions in them as a system. Each of the functions, such as Boards, planning, leadership, management, marketing, sales and finances is …