This spring Wipfli launched a new program for nonprofit and government clients designed around taking our future success into our own hands. The leaders and agencies involved in the year-long effort are off to an incredible start, innovating and finding ways to lead and execute in this time of uncertainty.
Why is leadership during uncertainty so important?
For a long time the nonprofit industry has enjoyed the stability and support of either a growing economy or relatively stable and sometimes growing government support (we’ve certainly had the threats but have mostly been able to overcome them), or both. For many of us, our work in the nonprofit world has been conducted in fair to sunny weather with only short term scattered storms. Good management in these conditions was more than enough to help us become successful.
Those times have come to an end. As you now see, hear, feel and experience, the new normal isn’t as cozy. The future forecast has a better than average chance of severe storms, some quite destructive.
That’s where we hope the meteorological comparison ends. As conditions outside our walls get darker, Wipfli believes waiting for the worst to blow over is not the right answer for leaders, organizations and missions that want to survive. Rather, those leaders who can look out into the eye of today’s challenges and seize every opportunity to reenergize their mission will thrive as a new dawn emerges.
We created Wipfli’s Transformation Partnership (or WTP) to inspire and support leaders and organizations in executing the changes needed to survive and thrive now. Finding a vision for tomorrow, and executing your mission in new and better ways, is the objective of the partnership.
How is transformational leadership different than what you’re doing now?
Right now, six prominent Community Action Agencies from different corners of the country are already innovating to transform their communities and organizations for the future. Their leaders are re-engaging their partners, boards and employees in work that is even more critical today. The Executive Directors are making dozens if not hundreds of decisions for the long term, and not allowing today’s budget to dictate the future of community action in their communities. They are saying yes to new ways of thinking; no to old sources of inefficiency and difficulty; and most importantly, charting their own maps for a vision of poverty fighting that works in tomorrow’s world.
Through a year of intense training, convening, coaching and execution, the first group of WTP leaders are preparing to control their own destiny in an environment of unknown fate.
Are you willing and able to lead a transformation of your community and your agency?
Can you muster the will of your people, community partners, board and funding sources to get behind a shared vision for the future, in a way that removes obstacles and makes federal and state budget impasses seem like speed bumps?
We are issuing a call to action, to transform ourselves, and to execute for future sustainability. We don’t know what could say it more forcefully or clearly.
Wipfli’s team encourages you to take heed of this kind of emergency preparedness now, before a “big one” comes and knocks you from your work. The form of leadership and action you take is up to you. So long as you don’t become paralyzed by fear or worse, hide in a cellar thinking, “this too shall pass.”
If you want to know more about WTP, e-mail me (sfinestack@wipfli.com). And, of course, feel free to stop me or one of my associates at the Annual Management Conference coming up in Vegas or any one of our trainings. Share your outlook for the weather (your future). We’re excited to share ours.