Maxine Harris - Lessons for Non-Profit and Start-Up Leaders: Tales from a Reluctant CEO

Lessons for Nonprofit and Start-Up Leaders

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-1-4422-7653-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN: 978-1-4422-7654-3 (electronic)

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For Helen

Every year thousands of nonprofit organizations, start-up companies, and small businesses open their doors. Some are motivated by a big vision, some by an altruistic mission; others have an innovative product or a novel process for making things work better. But what almost all of them have in common is that their founders know very little about business or what helps new ventures succeed or, as in most cases, fail. Despite coming from diverse worlds, they almost all confront the same issues of organizational culture, power and authority, hiring, problem solving, and dealing with the world outside their doors. They have to be aware of how they are seen, how their ideas grow into products or services, and how they will sustain themselves over time.

Consider this book the advice of someone whos been there (sometimes reluctantly). Its intended for all those driven, focused founders who have to confront the struggles of starting, running, and sustaining a business.

We begin with the story of one particular start-up behavioral health organization, Community Connections, which opened in 1984 in Washington, D.C. Within fifteen years, Community Connections grew to become the largest nonprofit behavioral health care organization in the nations capital. Within thirty years, it was serving three thousand men, women, and children and employing four hundred people. It currently has an annual budget of $35 million and owns a real estate portfolio in excess of $46 million.

Just how did that happen? How did the mission and vision to provide high-quality behavioral health care and safe community living for people whose mental illnesses had caused them to become disenfranchised from the rest of society turn into the organization called Community Connections?

In the early 1980s, while the founders of Community Connections were building their organization, faculty at places like Georgetown University were teaching, doing research, studying successful businesses, and writing papers. These two worlds existed in relatively parallel universes back then. Now, in this book, we try to bring together the experience and insights from the leader of an in-the-trenches behavioral health organization and a former nonprofit consultant turned business-school scholar/teacher.

Many books on management use a case study approach as a vehicle for illustrating how organizations grow and thrive. Often the cases involve large, well-known organizations, and it can be hard to apply the lessons learned to smaller companies in the early stages of their development. Sometimes books focus on one company exclusively. At other times, shorter vignettes are combined from several organizations. While this latter strategy may illustrate the universality of certain issues, it can be hard for readers new to the business world. After a while, a short vignette from one company seems to blend with other examples, and those unfamiliar with the business world may find themselves getting lost.

Other books, like Five Temptations of a CEO by best-selling author Patrick Lencioni, invent a fictional business, describe how it deals with a range of problems, and then provide commentary on the decisions made by the imaginary company. As engaging as this style can be, it runs the risk of confusing the reader who is disinclined to trust a hypothetical case where all of the variables are controlled by the author to make a point. For some, it may lack a certain authenticity.

Not everyone learns in the same way. Some of us like factual information. We want to know what we can learn from the business or academic world, a world in which research and data form the basis of knowledge. For others, information comes from actual case studies of how similar organizations coped with their challenges. Oh, tell me what happened. How did you deal with that problem? A book that uses case studies invites the reader to have a conversation with someone who has had similar experiences. How can I learn from what you did right and what you did wrong? Lessons for Nonprofit and Start-Up Leaders: Tales from a Reluctant CEO uses a real organization, Community Connections, to bring to life the actual conflicts that an organization (particularly a founder-run midsized business) must confront and solve if it is to survive and be successful. The book takes the reader through the challenges of building and sustaining an organization: whom to hire; how to solve problems; how and when to engage the community and other external stakeholders. We have written this book in an attempt to help readers understand that they can do it tooand perhaps avoid some mistakes along the way by seeing how it unfolded at Community Connections.

Some people learn best when their imaginations are engaged. It is no surprise that every culture, from the Maori in New Zealand to the Navajo in North America to the Danish in Western Europe, has a tradition of fairy talesstories of fanciful creatures and naive protagonists, set in an imaginary land, in a time long ago. As these stories engage our imaginations, they teach us a moral lesson, a way to solve a problem, or an explanation for how things work in the world. We read them, or more often listen to them, for amusement or pleasure. But when the story is over and we leave the world of fantasy, we look up and realize that we have learned something.

In Lessons for Nonprofit and Start-Up Leaders, we attempt to meld all three of these ways of knowing into a single coherent whole. The case studies come from Community Connections, an organization founded by Maxine Harris and Helen Bergman. Each case study illustrates a unique theme, with particulars drawn from several separate incidents. The names of the people involved are invented, and the story itself is a composite of similar events that occurred over a span of thirty years. Of course, it must be said that case stories are always a product of memory. No one example is recorded exactly as it happened. The fairy tales come from our collective imagination, or, as the storyteller might say, They were plucked from the air. The academic commentary is provided by Michael OLeary, a professor of leadership at Georgetown Universitys McDonough School of Business.