Capacity building
can be defined as an investment in the effectiveness and future sustainability
of a non-profit organization. Non-profit organizations are founded on purposes
other than making a profit usually driven by their mission and vision statement.
Mission statements usually presents the purpose of an organization stating What
it does, Who it does it for, and How it will do so. Vision statements state
what an organization is focused on achieving in five, ten, or more years.
A non-profit’s
success is measured based upon the effectiveness of its mission statement over
time. All non-profit’s should have a positive impact on people and communities
over time. Some well-known non-profit organizations are the NFL, Red Cross,
Smithsonian Institute, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
Non-profit’s are known for things such as sheltering, feeding, healing, and
educating people through community outreach and development.
Capacity building
helps people, governments, and organizations fulfill their mission statement
while improving aspects that allow them to attain their desired results.
Non-profit organizations use various strategies and activities to achieve their
mission and become sustainable overtime. Advancement of communication
strategies, technology, and collaborative planning are a few of many ways to
build capacity within an organization.
Non-profits should
conduct an organizational self-assessment to learn which key capacity areas
require improvement. Capacity building is needed for the effectiveness,
advancement, and organizational maturity of a non-profit organization.
The only people who seem to benefit from foreign wars are those in the military industry private sector winning contracts. The elected and military leaders who created or willingly got behind any kind of false flag type of mission without resigning or bringing to light the corruption, graft and theft may feel that they are not accountable to anyone, but reality always has a way of coming out even if Americans don't see it at first.
This clip offers a good example of how effective leaders should behave to accomplish goals and get the best out of their people. Many lessons in basic leadership come from the military that translate well into civilian management roles.
This leader is someone who inspires others to work within their strengths and being an authentic leader living with purpose and following your passions to make your contribution to the world with 100% authenticity. One of the best CEOs of the last century. Well worth watching.
Today marks the 79th birthday of my father Radhey Shyam Dwivedi who taught me about a lot of things in life and set the example for me on how to be a good father and to have compassion for those in greater need. He shared Pavi Mehta's story with others and me when he learned of her work with Karma Kitchen and her uncle's work offering free eye care in clinics around the world because it immediately touched him as a message to share with others. That's the story of my dad. He is a humble man that lives simply, and well below his means to this day. He earned a comfortable and quiet life of financial security after a near 40 year career as a professor, retiring from Howard University after running the university's electron microscopy lab. He showed me and my brothers how to be helpful to others wherever and whenever we could.
Everyone has a biological father or someone that acts like a father figure to them in this world whether actual, adopted or figurative. They are not all equal however in their abilities or capacity to care, support and love their children, or in the gifts they can pass to their children. My father is an interesting character. He was incredibly strict with my brothers and me growing up. Some could arguably call his style of parenting a fault, much as "Tiger Mom," Amy Chua, was criticized for her style of raising her children. Our mother was every bit a Tiger Mom, and used my father as the enforcer to mete out justice for major indiscretions, insubordination, or general mischief we got into as kids and teens. My brothers and I, unfortunately, gave them a lot to worry about and as a result I spent a lot of my teen years restricted to going to school and coming back home. I fought a lot with other kids (they were bad guys though), and got suspended quite regularly in junior high school. My suspensions were occasions where I had to go to work with my dad at his lab. I would meet his graduate students doing research in his lab and hang out with them. It was very boring for a kid.
He had a typewriter there at his office, and would let me use it to write. I can say that his encouragement in those formative years is what made me love writing. I was not a bad kid, but I did need the discipline that he handed out. Otherwise, I don't know who I would be today based on the friendships I was making in those formative years as a teenager. It was not easy for our immigrant parents to raise three boys in America with different values from their Indian culture, and I am amazed at how we all turned out. His family has 8 grandkids and four households with more ups than downs over the last 50+ years of our lives in America. I realize though, that this was not by happenstance. It was due to the steadfast resolve of my father and mother before she passed away from cancer. Back when we were growing up, my dad was a role model for justice, dependability, integrity, knowledge, loyalty and endurance way before I knew what those words meant as a leader. When my mother got sick and died at the age of 48 and my father was around age 50, he was the rock in our lives and his example of how you grieve and deal with great loss made a lasting impression on me as an 18 year old.
I don't know if he understands to this day what his steadfast resolve to always care, expect the best from his kids and grandkids and others he meets means to them. His love and support often comes with deserved criticism that he delicately shares. It always comes from a place of love and well meaning to enlighten and share his thoughts and opinions. He continues to set an example for me as a father to my kids and as a role model to follow for being a good and compassionate person. I am amazed at the depths of his compassion and concern he has for his family and friends, and his willingness to bail everyone out of jams financially, emotionally or spiritually if ever needed. I don't know how I can ever pay forward, as in the Karma Kitchen example, all that I owe him in life. If I can amass half of the compassion for others that he has, I will be on my way to being a better person and will try.
Why the ABCs of Always Be Closing have changed to Attunement, Bouyancy and Clarity of message. In this great book by Daniel Pink, which should be required reading for anyone in business today or wanting to go into business today, Pink outlines the reality of professional selling.
The professional way of selling comes down to being in tune with the customer's needs or Attunement.
Remaining resilient in a sea of rejection, sales professionals remain above negativity by remaining Buoyant.
And finally the sales professionals that are exceptional are adept at Clarity of their message to the customer.
The ABCs are thus:
Attunement
Buoyancy
Clarity
The individuals who are a resource to internal and external customers consistently deliver on all three aspects of the ABCs, and are every bit and more effective sales professionals as the actual designated sales professionals who are often motivated by the old paradigm of carrot and stick performance measurement and results.
The above book and this classic book can be read and re-read by professionals in any walk of life to grow their leadership skills.
When leaders take one for the team it is usually to save the organization embarrassment. A friend, former classmate and former peer was recently reported about in the news as having been asked to resign from his command in the USMC for "apparent pattern of intemperate behavior and language."
Whatever that means.
I knew this guy. His values were just like my values and most other Marine officers I served with. If he did anything wrong, I'll bet everyone else ever in that same position had done the same or worse. The only difference is he was taking responsibility for whatever it was. This guy was always an unselfish, strong leader as a classmate that was naturally good at everything he did when I knew him. He was a leader on the high school football team, smart enough to get a scholarship to play football for Florida State University and was strong enough to lead Marines, yet he was humble about everything he was good at. He was the kind of leader Marines usually follow into hell and come back in one piece because of his leadership.
If the senior leadership of the Marine Corps decided to end his career over something that does not rise to the level deserving it or applied to everyone consistently, my words to all senior leaders everywhere is to learn from this example and understand what you get as leaders in the future. There is a difference in the quality of people an organization can attract and retain. It is not easy finding great leaders that can transform an organization. The ones that get things done for organizations often are not the ones who quietly go along with the program. The great leaders are not always politically correct. Sometimes we need them to take calculated risks and question authority. .
Without great leaders to call out the change needed in the world, we would have continued the policies of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and others who would have us believe we can't do any better.
I originally posted this TED talk from Simon Sinek last year because it struck me as he was absolutely right on the mark, but it is worth reposting and sharing it again on this blog site because it is only too appropriate as I see this concept of answering why we believe in things as the root cause of why people buy things or ideas and accept them. It is worth sharing again ;).
The 2012 Kelly Global Leadership Survey of 170,000 people around the world highlights the disconnect from what employees want from their managers and how they are led. Interesting reading if you are the leader or the employee.click here to check out the suvey. The ability to lead can be taught to any manager, but the ability to provide a vision, empathically listen, empower employees and democractically include employees without being perceived as the authoritative leader is a skill that must be practiced to be mastered if it doesn't come naturally to managers. Sign up for training on how to improve your management style and take your organization to the next level of harmony, high performance and achievement.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Michael and
Son owner Basim Mansour and get to know a little more about the company and the
leader who leads this great company. In an industry suffering from volatility
in consumer spending trends, construction subcontracting of electrical trade
work , material cost volatility in copper or other manufactured residential
products, shortage of credit, equity and capital among homeowners, many trade
contractors have not figured out how to stay in business, let alone grow.
Mansour's company has grown from $250k in annual sales in 1990 to close to $100
million and 400 trucks in multiple cities from Philadelphia to Raleigh, NC without
outside funding.In the last four years,
Mansour has grown the company by almost 100% during one of the worst economic
conditions ever faced.In less than 23
years Mansour has attributed the company’s success to staying customer focused
and team oriented.Mansour was forced to
drop out of college with 6 credits of formal college education under his belt
before he left college to support his family and run his father's business in
1990 after his father passed away suddenly leaving him to support his mother
and younger sister.
Mansour was taught a strong work ethic and technical skills by his father, but
the business growth has been all his determination, effort and force of
will. He uses the analogy of pushing a sled in football practice to being
an entrepreneur and forcing success. He
means to tell entrepreneurs that they have to put everything they have into
their business endeavor to make a business succeed. Really digging your
toes in and pushing with everything you've got to be successful. He
was 19 and his family had just lost their primary bread winner in a family
business. His family was left with little money. They had to borrow
money just to bury his father. He has lived through the hardships facing
utility cut offs and struggling to make ends meet. He however
was no stranger to hard work and survival. His breakthrough came when he
was so stressed and frustrated with a pounding head from the pressure of trying
to make ends meet that he said to himself, "So What! What can anyone
really do to me now?" He likens the self-realization to death row inmates
who have certainty of their fate and embrace acceptance. He bootstrapped
this business from that position with a contract from Pulte Homes to provide
services to a new home subdivision going up and leveraged that starting cash
flow to continue growing.He instilled
teamwork at the core of the business philosophy and remaining focused on
servicing and pleasing the customer with a passion. His story is not
typical of most trade contractors you might meet, but is often the formula of
the great entrepreneurs.
Where Mansour is unique from other small business owners is that he cites no
proprietary formula, genius or patents that are the secret to success.
No formal business school training. No government grants or
hand-outs. No outside consultants. No outside angel investors or
venture capital funding to get his business off the ground.He cites plain old hard work and teamwork.He formed an advisory team of subject matter
experts on everything from electrical, mechanical and plumbing to make up his
core advisory team to help him evaluate products and services. They
developed a team sales approach and brought in a sales training expert to
educate his technicians on creating a balance between sales, service, educating
the customer, and cross-selling add on services through traditional
marketing.The simplest form of
marketing: slapping a label on all the appliances they can service when in the
home was a tried and proven strategy that works for many trades contractors,
but the difference for Michael & Son was an in house state of the art call
center and enterprise system handling the call volume and dispatching service and access to the owner for every customer or employee. This approach, along with tight cost controls,
instilling disciplined values of teamwork to every employee has created
a unique service organization. Even master electricians with years
of experience hired into the company spend weeks in training to learn Michael
and Son systems to include HVAC or plumbing capabilities to explain other areas
of the company's offering and capabilities before they step foot in front of a
customer to install a generator or complete another electrical repair.The same goes for those who answer phones and talk to a customer with a problem.
The company remains more than relevant with state of the art technology like
tablets that technicians carry to educate customers with product videos. Customers sign and pay for orders with a mobile commerce solution tied to their enterprise system tracking key performance
metrics that tie behaviors to incentive pay for employees resulting in 20% to
30% higher pay for employees. In an industry which is highly fragmented
with over 80% made up by independents and just 20% concentrated in giant
international conglomerates who focus primarily on government and commercial services
in the electrical trade space (like large national giant MC Dean).
Michael and Son focuses on residential consumers, and have achieved a
leading geographic presence in the markets they serve and are on their way to becoming a national organization (again without any outside funding or Wall Street investors). The company now offers franchising opportunities and partnerships to experienced trade professionals
to offer them a great work environment and company to work for and offer support.The company has demonstrated the basics of building a business making the transition to becoming a great organization. A state of the art training program for all employees, a fundamental belief in customer service with basic tenets of competent technicians who arrive
on time, in clean logo'd uniforms, driving immaculately clean vans (seen as rolling
billboards), labels that are slapped on every appliance they can service from the hot water
heater, to the electrical load center and central air conditioner and furnace
are the foundational business techniques that have delivered their outstanding results.
The company also promotes their “Helping Hands” program
where the company’s and Mansour’s charitable work is highlighted on local broadcast
channel infomercials along with the Youtube video series (as featured in this post) that provides an audience with the opportunity to share and profile their charitable projects while also promoting the
company's capabilities. I was genuinely impressed with the company's owner and the employees I met including the young technician
who came to service my Sears Central Air Conditioner last summer and all the
good hearted people working for Michael and Son Services on the phones. I would highly recommend buying from Michael and Son over their competition like Sears Home Central, Lowes, Home Depot, United Air Temp, or an independent operator (unless I knew the local independent operator personally or he came highly recommended by someone else I knew personally). To learn more about Michael and Son Services, Inc.
capabilities, visit www.michaelandson.com
or call 703-658-3998.
Interesting article about why millenials need leadership in their lives more than ever. Article in The Week makes the following points about millenials (those born in the 80s and 90s):
They're spendthrifts
Broke
Socialists
Narcissists
Political
Less religious
Stressed
And what else? ENTREPRENEURS!
If you're under 25 and starting a business, don't forget basic leadership traits, or better yet, hire a Marine to teach you about leadership traits and values like exercising good and sound judgment in making your business decisions, so you're not broke before you reach age 30. Or better yet order a copy of How To Compete With The Industry Giants The Field Manual To An Entrepreneurial Society.
