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.
The Reads That Rocked Our World
In an effort to close out this hellish year on a high note, we put our heads together (virtually, of course) to create a list of the six books that sparked the most insights for us. Not all of these wonderful works came out in 2020; in some cases, we were embarrassingly late to the…
Half Empty is OK, But Full Disdain is Not
If we were to assemble America’s red and blue bubbles into a national Venn diagram, we wouldn’t see a lot of intersection on issues like pandemic response, but we would see big overlap in the realm of emotions. Disbelief. Suspicion. Anger. Fear. Exhaustion. Following this bitter election season, we all have some or all of…
What We Can Do for Our Country
Given how close we are to November 3, we must start with this pitch: Please vote, and please get others in your life to do the same. And now we must acknowledge that it’s easy for the two of us to get caught up in legitimate fears about post-election chaos and violence. But we have…
A Tribute to a Giant
Last week, the world lost two intellectual and moral giants, one who was 6’ 7” (Bill Gates Sr.) and one who was only 5’ 1” (Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Both deaths hit us hard. While we never had the honor of meeting RBG, Bill Sr. was a mentor to Lowell. In the essay below, Lowell shares a few personal reflections on Bill Sr. and his towering legacy.
The Big Reset
America has never needed more from civil society. That’s 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 that’s killing efforts to address these daunting challenges. We feel like we’re 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…
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!”