Book Beat

Impact & Excellence: Data-Driven Strategies for Aligning Mission, Culture, and Performance in Nonprofit and Government Organizations

It has never been more challenging or important for nonprofit and government organizations to compete, prosper, and excel. Author and consultant Sheri Chaney Jones notes that the implementation of data-driven strategies are the hidden success factors to organizational outcomes—increased revenues, efficiency, and improved stakeholder relationships among them. Her book, Impact & Excellence: Data-Driven Strategies for Aligning Mission, Culture, and Performance in Nonprofit and Government Organizations (©2016, Jossey-Bass) is the culmination of a four-year study of more than 200 government and nonprofit organizations in which she found a strong positive relationship between organizational outcomes and cultures that value data and measurement. Despite this, less than a quarter of these organizations have developed these cultures. Impact & Excellence highlights these findings and presents five strategic elements to success, what the author calls “the five Cs of easy and effective impact and excellence.” Based on proven principles, with solutions that are easy to implement, these five Cs often lead to sweeping change. In addition to utilizing a series of experiences and templates to help leaders overcome common barriers such as lack of money and time to develop a unique action plan tailored to their own organization's particular circumstances, Impact & Excellence also:


  • Shows readers how to implement a measurement culture that emphasizes strong performance and measurable outcomes;
  • Counsels readers on how to avoid common barriers to developing this measurement culture while learning how to overcome limitations;
  • Demonstrates how to utilize and leverage data to take decisive actions; and
  • Offers vivid and detailed case studies from successful nonprofit and government organizations.
 
Doing the Right Things Right

Productivity pro and author Laura Stack, Doing the Right Things Right: How The Effective Executive Spends Time (©2016, Berrett-Koehler Publishers), says that effectiveness is identifying and achieving the best objectives for your organization—doing the right things. Doing the Right Things Right details how today’s leaders and managers can obtain profitable, productive results by managing the intersection of two critical values: effectiveness and efficiency. Efficiency is accomplishing them with the least amount of time, effort, and cost-doing things right. If you’re not clear on both, you’re wasting your time. Stack identifies 12 practices that will enable executives to be effective and efficient, grouped into three areas where leaders spend their time, called 3T Leadership—Strategic Thinking (Business); Teamwork (Employees); and Tactics (Self).

 
 The Ideal Team Player: A Leadership Fable About How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues

In his first new book in nearly four years, Patrick Lencioni returns with a compelling new title that furthers his innovative work with teams. Published in 2002, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team offered a groundbreaking approach for managing group dynamics. In his latest work, The Ideal Team Player: A Leadership Fable About How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues (©2016, Jossey-Bass), he takes readers inside a fictional California company to reveal the three indispensable virtues that make some people better team players than others. The book advises leaders to:


  • Be Explicit and Bold: Once committed to making teamwork the guiding tenant of your business, be sure to communicate it with confidence and integrity. Make sure that everyone you work with, from vendors to employees to customers, are aware of what your company values and what it strives for. Don’t try to accomplish this with marketing or slick messaging but rather build a culture that relies on it.
  • Catch and Revere: Watch closely for evidence that your team is acting in ways that are humble, hungry and smart. Make it a point to publicly recognize and reward these behaviors. Rewards don’t always need to be linked specifically to compensation nor need they involve ceremony or silly keepsakes. By calling good behavior to everyone’s attention, you are encouraging it.
  • Detect and Address: The last step widely familiar to those who teach, parent or coach. Keep a watchful eye out for violations of the key virtues and let the transgressor know that the behavior is not acceptable. It’s easy to let small evidence slip by, but it is much easier to stop minor transgressions that to undergo a complete overhaul of the system you’ve worked hard to embed.