It’s not hard thinking up venture ideas. Often they seem to come out of the woodwork. Get some folks together for an hour and you’ll come out with a couple dozen of them. Include some entrepreneurial people from outside your group and you’ll get some new ideas that you might have missed. But also step …

I’ve worked with nonprofit organizations for a very long time. I’ve noticed two distinctly different approaches to leading: reactive versus proactive. You’ll very likely notice each of the two distinctly different types in the following paragraphs. Fundraising The reactive nonprofit is continually fundraising and then spending whatever funds are obtained — so the organization is …

From guest writer David Kershaw, from eVisioner MetaTeam® A friend of mine who has been in business for many years advises new managers who are trying to run an organization for the first time. Several times he has told me stories of young execs who get down in the weeds helping to get the actual …

10. All Board Members, MUST be donors – to the best of their ability. Not all board members are wealthy, but everyone should give at the highest level possible for their circumstances. It is important to be able to say to the public that 100% of your board supports your mission with their dollars. If …

Do we still need a “social” enterprise sector? Many businesses have “social impact” at least with their customers. And these customers around the world are demanding greater accountability and environmental sensitivity. Here’s what a reader to this blog wrote last week. “The underlying distinction made between social and business enterprise is thin,” noted Ashim Kumar …

Talking with Mr. Blankfein About Placing Ethics First From the Wall Street Journal on May 5, 2010: “Frankly, at this point, we have to go with an open mind and determine what we may be doing wrong,” Mr. Blankfein told customers of its private-wealth-management business during a 30-minute conference call. “On a very microscopic level, …

The days of leaders who can raise productivity and consequently profitability just by ‘managing by walking about’, patting their staff on the back and asking after the dog, are gone.

Today in Boston the Board of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center today fined chief executive Paul Levy $50,000 for engaging in a personal relationship with an employee that over time “created an improper appearance and became a distraction within the hospital,” according to a statement by Board Chairman Stephen Kay. Mr. Levy has had a …

I taught an Ethical Leadership class at Virginia Tech and posed a question to my students the first day of class- “What is a well lived life for you?” It is worth considering. People have various answers for this, but most talk about having good relationships with family and friends, leaving a legacy of something …

I have spent a great deal of time writing about the paper trail. My previous two posts discuss steps in overcoming it and building a culture of performance. So often, Human Resource (HR) professionals must provide the legal voice concerning employee issues in the organization.