NYNP blog post 3-1-10

Sermier's ten steps for managing and leading

During last week's Leadership and Strategy class, Professor Sermier shared his sequential ten-point framework for managing and leading an organization:
1) Know yourself
2) Know your boss or bosses
3) Know your key executives and staff
4) Terminate non-productive executives
5) Identify your key stakeholders and what each wants
6) Identify your five major problems
7) Identify your five major goals
8) Communicate your major goals
9) Actively pursue your goals
10) Celebrate your successes

The first step is to know yourself, because until you can manage yourself and get comfortable with yourself, you won't be able to manage anything else.

Additional dimensions: focusing on clients and motivating teams via respect
Sermier shared a perspective of leadership as essentially including everything involved in management, with an added dimension of doing the right thing. In nonprofits, doing the right thing means keeping your clients in focus at all times, and making sure that the focus on clients guides decision-making.

For many nonprofit staff, that focus on clients will be inspiring. However, that's not all that's needed to motivate and lead a team. To motivate people, you must show them respect, and because that's a vague concept, Sermier clarified what it looks like to do so:
* Learn and remember names
* Never complain
* Make your team members look good
* Publicly support your team when the stakes are high
* Publicly take the heat for the team's mistakes
* Use "we" when talking about problems, to signal that you see solving problems as a team effort
* Be hopeful within reason; give your team a sense that there's a better future
* Accomplish things together, then celebrate together
* Encourage dissent
* Hold yourself accountable, and admit mistakes
* Give credit and praise
* Be guided by a moral compass