LEAP UPDATES
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. 
--Peter Drucker
Welcome to the archive of monthly Leap Updates from Mario Morino and Lowell Weiss. The final Leap Update was published in March of 2022.
What’s Your Keystone Habit?
If the name Paul O’Neill rings a bell, it’s probably because of the “Apprentice”-like way President George W. Bush fired him as Treasury Secretary. But in the business world, O’Neill is better known for his visionary leadership of Alcoa prior to his brief tenure in the Bush Administration. It’s a story that offers insights for all CEOs who want to cultivate the habits of highly effective organizations.
What Fuels Passion for Mission?
“Got Empathy?,” last month’s Leap Update, struck a resonant chord with many of you. After hitting “send,” we got dozens of notes from readers who felt motivated to share their own stories of the living linkage between empathy and effectiveness. To build on this theme, we want to feature a nonprofit leader who speaks eloquently about why caring about clients leads so naturally to caring about performance and then offer some reflections on why empathy is just as powerfully helpful for funders as it is for their grantees.
Got Empathy?
In December’s newsletter, we had the chance to shine a bright spotlight on Hamzah Latif, a youth worker who won a prestigious national award for his deeply personal and highly effective work to steer young men away from the kind of bad choices that led Hamzah to 19 years behind bars. Hamzah’s story was so powerful that
‘The Ideal Funder and Partner’
EFCT [Einhorn Family Charitable Trust] has truly been wonderful and the ideal funder and partner. One small idea, however, might be to share their experience and strengths with others in philanthropy in order to inspire other investors to adopt similarly transformational relationships. We love the quotation above, which is just one of the glowing comments…
An Unprecedented Bet on High Performance
Today, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) CEO Nancy Roob sent a letter unveiling Blue Meridian Partners, a new funding collaborative that will provide the largest-ever infusions of private capital to high-performance nonprofits serving children and youth.
Quotes From Leaders Like You
“Managing to outcomes is not about simply counting things or gathering information. And it is not about satisfying funders. It is an internal effort aimed at figuring out what works and what doesn’t, so that the organization can provide the best possible services to its clients”
“You have to have undying passion for the population you’re serving. We can spend time patting ourselves on the back for the 85 percent of the kids who are doing really well in our program. But we need to be as concerned about the 15 percent who aren’t succeeding and learn how we can improve for them.”
“Through a process of self-reflection, our board members asked themselves fundamental questions: How can we improve? How can we make a greater impact?”
“Every day, you have to say, ’How can we do this more efficiently and more effectively?’ It’s in our DNA.”
“Any school in the country can do this. And it breaks my heart that we’re not [all] doing this!”
“Stories substituting for facts is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me!”
“You’re taking someone else’s money to get into somebody else’s life to try to make a difference. You better be showing you can make a difference!”