Right Church, Wrong Pew
The stories I could tell. Maintaining confidentiality is essential to being a consultant, not just about the issues on which I've been asked to work, that's usually easy, but also about the internal dynamics that are impossible not to observe. When I reflect on my decades of nonprofit sector experience, the people doing the work are both one of the largest barriers and most powerful solutions. My friend Chris Lambert wrote a book a few years ago about how to manage organizations better, one of the main thrusts of which was the fundamental importance of hiring the right staff. The disconnect between the kind of complicated, multifaceted situations nonprofit work often demands and the experience and skillsets available to address them continues to perturb me as someone dedicated to developing better solutions. Two different clients really exemplified this recently, one of whom transformed their organization with only modest direction from us, and another that struggled with a much lesser task and required as much support as we could provide. This is perhaps just the way of the world. The older and more experienced I've become, however, it's more difficult to witness and navigate. Several years ago, I was summarily fired by a client for highlighting such a disconnect; a smart, talented person led an entity that needed a different mindset than what they possessed. Stasis and power tend to protect the status quo that serves them. A light is being shed frequently these days on new injustices. Sometimes they get addressed.
