Posts by Tim Greenleaf
The Big Reset
America has never needed more from civil society. Thatâs because our country is being rocked by a health pandemic, an age-old racism pandemic, economic upheaval, sweeping cuts in safety-net programs, and the increasing political vitriol thatâs killing efforts to address these daunting challenges. We feel like weâre in the midst of the 1918 flu pandemic, the Civil Rights/Vietnam era, and the Great Recession all at the same time! If the virus continues to surge and the restart of the economy sputters…
Read MoreItâs M*A*S*H Time
I grew up in an immigrant family of blue-collar workers in Ohio and coal miners in Pennsylvania. My family experienced plenty of anti-immigrant bigotryâand, of course, we saw Black families getting far worse treatment. Even so, I grew up in a household with deep faith in America. If you were from our part of town and of our ethnicity, the ladder of upward mobility wasnât quite as safe or sturdy as the ladder for âbetterâ families from the communities where my mom cleaned houses. But at least we had a chance to…
Read MoreâA Change Is Gonna Comeâ
Sam Cooke composed âA Change Is Gonna Comeâ in 1963, shortly after âI Have a Dream,â the Birmingham church bombings, and his own imprisonment for âdisturbing the peaceâ after he was refused a room at a Holiday Inn because of his race. The song is considered one of the greatest of all time because of the way it captured the hope and despair of the Civil Rights Movement.
Read MoreThe Hardest Leadership Decisions Youâve Ever Faced
This month, weâll get right to practical advice for social-sector leaders trying to captain ships through the dark, stormy seas of this pandemic. Weâre by no means leadership experts. But Mario is a longtime student of crisis leadership and has been forced to navigateâas a CEO, director, advisor, investor, and donorâthrough many different periods of turmoil. Sometimes he was successful. Sometimes he screwed up. Hereâs what he learned from both.
Read MoreBrutal Truth & Credible Hope
The wonderful Cheryl Collins told us, with the firm but loving tone she used in her schoolteacher days, that we must use this platform to share both brutal honesty and credible hope. So thatâs what weâre going to try to do.
Read MoreEmpathy is Infectuous
Letâs be clear: The Coronavirus pandemic is deadly serious, and we all need to observe the CDCâs latest guidelines for keeping ourselves and others safe. Thereâs good reason that Lowellâs home state (WA) and Marioâs (OH) are on virtual lockdown, and we have great respect for Governors Jay Inslee (D) and Mike DeWine (R) for making these calls. These two elected officials are demonstrating precisely what courageous, adaptive leadership looks like!
Read MoreâMen Are Coming to Kill Youâ
When we talk about organization building, we know some people think we sound like one of those podcasts designed to put you to sleep. But this past week Lowell got an epic lesson in how organization building can have life-and-death importance for millions of people.
Read MoreElegy Economics
Well before the tsunami election of 2016, we were reading, writing, and speaking about the seismic shifts rocking and rending American societyâfrom the technologies that are fundamentally altering the nature of work to the wealth and income inequality that is cleaving us into factions with completely different financial prospects. But neither of us are economists. And weâre sure as hell not Nobel Prize winners. Thatâs why we were eager to read Good Economics for Hard Times, the new book by…
Read MoreThe Link Between Humility and Effectiveness
In last month’s update, we mentioned that we were looking forward to reading Ford Foundation President Darren Walker’s new book, From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth. We both chose to listen to the audio version while we got some much-needed holiday exercise. The original “Gospel of Wealth,” penned by Andrew Carnegie in 1889, implored…
Read MoreNothing but Bionic Parts
Wouldnât you like a good way to take a deep look into your organizationâto discover how youâre doing, identify ways to get better, and create open introspection that helps people learn and improve? If so, please take a look at the Performance Practice, a resource from the Leap Ambassadors Community. According to Ingvild Bjornvold, who oversees the continuous-improvement process for the Performance Practice, âI doubt thereâs a nonprofit out there that…
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