I am thinking out loud this Monday after reading the recent New York Times article “Impossible Job. Here’s What You Need for It”, highlighting the fact that over 10% of museum director positions are open within the membership of the Association of Art Museum Directors, the biggest vacancy in musuem leadership in 20 years. I shook my head as I thought about how common the leadership deficit issue is becoming all over the country. The nonprofit I work for is also a membership association and at least 10% of the executive directors transition each year. Why aren’t potential leaders just clamoring for these positions? Better yet, why aren’t current employees at these organizations applying or being recruited for the top jobs? Maybe the nonprofit sector has indeed branded ourselves as the impossible profession. But how? Here are some of my random Monday thoughts:
Darren at Random Thoughts on Life and Work talks about the importance of accurate job titles. Does your organization’s job titles match the work actually being done day to day? Probably not.
Geez, if a position is mostly administrative, let’s be up front about that instead of calling people directors or officers, creating misleading expectations of more substantive work for the incoming employee.
Nonprofits have a very vulnerable structure of systems and operations unlike in business, and instead of getting captured, our knowledge leaves our organization with our departing employees. New workers have to start from scratch. Who wants to do that?
Let’s stop putting our our blinders on and repeating history – designing jobs that only a superhero could do in 40 hours a week, promoting burnout and more burnout.
Here’s a thought. Instead of using the time in between vacant positions rushing to hire a new person, let’s focus some time on designing ways for the new person to do the work better. What were the problems that drove the last person out? Nonprofits need to do more exit interviews when employees leave to figure out how where teh issues are and how we can better recruit replacements. The Nonprofiteer advised on this very topic in a recent post Dear Nonprofiteer, Easy come, easy go?
We need to get our act together on making the nonprofit sector a more bearable place to hang our hats 8-12 hours a day. Are you doing your best to make sure this work is not impossible?
I don’t really believe that we are actually an impossible profession, but unless we start using different structures, we sure do make it seem that way. And even though current nonprofit leaders might like running the race well enough right now, no one wants to grab that kind of baton.
