One of my favorite songs is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, you know the Ray Charles version with Betty Carter. Classic! But I was feeling the literal side of that tune on Monday as I made the train ride to New York from DC. Did I mention I had never been before? I’m probably the only person in America that hadn’t seen the Big Apple, and I see why. Let me tell you, NY is cold. as. hell. They try to freeze people to death up there! But that’s obviously not the point of this post. I want to tell you about Lori Roth and the amazing faculty who taught the first day of the Middle Management Program at Columbia Business School. There are 25 of us in the program class, and I am the only one that does not work at a nonprofit in New York. I had to take the 4am train to NY but it was all worth it! The faculty was very warm and facilitated team building from the start, so I got to know people right away even though I’m an “outsider” to their NY nonprofit community. The guy sitting next to me pointed out that nonprofit workers in NY fare much worse than in DC, though both cities struggle with the high cost of living. He’s 28 years old and has to share an apartment with two other guys in a sketchy part of NY because he simply can’t afford to live on his own! I told him we face the same issues in DC, and indeed it seems in every part of the country. The participants were all ages, some directors of finance, program managers, marketing directors, and even 2 executive directors were in the mix. About 1/2 are people of color. Even though I was still the youngest person there, I felt like they were all my peers, and no one made me feel otherwise because of my age.
The first day’s sessions were light on overview, and we jumped right into Tom Ference’s session on Leading & Managing Strategically. We had a very lively discussion on leading vs. managing, and Tom laid out a great framework that helped me understand the different “buckets” of nonprofit work:
- Professional - task-oriented, possessing great professional competence in a given area: finance, fundraising, IT, etc.
- Managing – systems-oriented, possessing skill at laying out the processes for others to follow in a given area, ensures the train can run even when you’re not there
- Leading – people-oriented, possessing ability to motivate and convince others to work hard for the mission and achieve results
Tom asked us in which of the three areas did we feel the most comfortable? Everyone said in the professional bucket, because we all feel confident in our individual abilities to get the job done ourselves. When it comes to working with others to achieve a larger goal, however, is where we all admitted we needed the most help. But Tom left us with this sentiment about leading, which stayed with me:
We need to recognize the other resources we have in nonprofits besides dollars (or lack of dollars). People make decisions every day about how much effort they’re going to put in. What we have to do is find out where the human aspiration is within your organization and turn it into hard work and results.
The next part of the program will be six days in residence with the other 24 nonprofit leaders living and learning together. It will be held January 6-11 at The Heldrich Hotel and I can’t wait! On the agenda will be:
- Leading & Managing: The Basics – Part I
- Performance Management & Myers-Briggs Assessment
- Negotiation Skills for Conflict Resolution
- Using Negotiation in the Workplace
- Fundraising & Resource Development
- Leading & Managing: The Basics – Part II
- Financial Management – Part I
- Finance Fundamentals
- Financial Management – Part II
- Building Public Awareness
- Bringing the Learning Back – Part I
Columbia also runs another class of the Middle Management program in the spring for mid-level managers working in youth service organizations. If you work at a nonprofit serving youth, I highly encourage you to check it out! Application deadline is Feb. 20, 2008.
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