The Best Book on Leadership

As I mentioned, last week, I have been reviewing a lot of leadership material. I have read quite a few books on the subject.

When asked which is my favorite book on leaders and leadership, I say it is a Peter Drucker book. The name of the book somewhat hides its true nature. My favorite leadership book is titled Managing the Non-Profit Organization.

Over the next two weeks I am going to share my notes from that illustrious book.

Here we go...

p8 – You need three things: opportunities, competence, and commitment.

p11 – Change is not a threat.

p16 – How to pick a leader. You need to first define the task which is why we start with the mission. You then identify the candidates' strengths and match the strengths to the needs of the task. Next, you look for character and integrity. Ask yourself, “Would I want one of my sons to work under that person?”

p21 – The truly effective leader doesn't feel threatened by strength.

p21 – Leaders are neither made nor born. They are self-made. Harry Truman is the best example.

p22 – Even though he was incredibly vain and had a tremendous contempt for humanity, General Douglas MacArthur built a magnificent team by putting the task first.

p22 – It's that willingness to make yourself competent in the task that's needed that creates leaders.

p24 – You need to find the balance between concentration and enough diversification. Also, the balance between being too cautious and too rash. You also need to balance opportunity and risk.

p24 – I've seen more institutions damaged by being too cautious than by rashness … Make sure you know your degenerative tendency.

p26 – Don't hog the credit. And, don't knock your subordinates.

p27 – Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself.

p31 – Don't worry about the non-believers. Move ahead with those who are ready.

p33 – Provide superior learning opportunities. The Girl Scouts consists mostly of volunteers, many of whom are leading for the first time. Yet they used Harvard Business School faculty to teach their people.

p33 – Make a determined, continued effort to find the right people. Never stop recruiting.

p37 – We're basically a volunteer nation … We have to deserve the people who work for us.

p38 – You develop people, not jobs … We're talking about building on what people are – not about changing them.

p39 – You also need achievement to grow.

p40 – A leader must have vision. It is natural for a leader to be a person who is primarily future-oriented.

p41 – I think it's better to err on the side of being more demanding of a person than of being less demanding.

p42 – I wouldn't waste my breath on people who don't try.

p42 – The best way to have a mentorship take place is to reward it visibly when it happens rather than to try to structure it.

p46 – The mission is always long-range.

p47 – The leader's job is to make sure the right results are being achieved, the right things are being done.

p48 – The leader represents not only what we are, but, above all, what we know we should be … A leader is not a private person; a leader represents.

p49 – Everybody is a leader.

p53 – You need four things: a plan, marketing, people, and money.

p53 – You need to market even the most beneficial service. Nobody trusts you if you offer something for free.

p55 – Non-profits who use high-pressure selling just don't do very well. You need to know your customers.

p57 – The person who runs the church or hospital or school should be enthusiastic. You don't want nay-sayers in those positions.

p58 – You appeal to the head but you also appeal to the head.

p59 – One prays for miracles but works for results … Action-focused.

p60 – You need a clear strategy for improving.

p61 – Set your objectives high because we always fall short. Shoot for the moon and you'll still end up in the stars.

p62 – You can set goals that are not measurable but can be appraised and can be judged.

p65 – Don't avoid defining your goals because it might be thought controversial.

p66 – With strategy, one always makes compromises on implementation. But one does not compromise on goals.

p66 – Refocus and change the organization when you are successful … If you don't improve it, you go downhill pretty fast. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” is crappy advice.

p67 – When you are successful is the very time to ask, “Can't we do better?” The best rule for improvement strategies is to put your efforts into your successes.

p67 – The change outside is an opportunity … Look at the unexpected successes.

p68 – Faced with a change, we should always ask, “How can this give us a chance to contribute?”

p69 – Don't go with what “everybody knows” instead of looking out the window. What everybody knows is usually twenty years out of date.

p69 – It's an old rule that everything that's new has a different market from the one the innovator actually expected … If it doesn’t work, don't blame the “stupid public.”

p71 – Let's not start out with what we know. Let's start out with what we need to learn.

p71 – If at first you don't succeed, try once more. Then do something else.

p74 – The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary … It is finding needs and filling them.

p76 – Reciprocity and exchange underlie marketing thinking.

p76 – Marketing is an STP process: segmenting, targeting, and positioning.

p77 – You cannot be all things to all people.

p78 – The mission may well be universal. And yet to be successful, the institution has to think through its strategy and focus.

p80 – Marketing really is spurred by the presence and the increase in competition.

p81 – Prayer is no substitute for right action.

p82 – The more specific the objectives, the more likely to be productive.

p83 – You have to start out with knowing what the customers really consider value.

p83 – Marketing in an organization is everybody's business.

p84 – Marketing is a way to harmonize the needs and wants of the outside world with the purposes and the resources and the objectives of the institution.

p86 – You want that donor to take ownership in your program.

p87 – Cultivating you as a donor means giving you a chance to make a difference … We might ask you to get involved.

p88 – Appeal to them in a very forceful, forthright manner.

p90 – You have to appeal to the rational in the individual as well as the emotional part of the individual.

p91 – They kind of say that you want to recruit new network marketers and not just steal them from other companies.

p94 – You have to go where the money is.

p96 – You need to give your people the right tools. p102 Which includes a description of who to call on and what to say. The script.

p100 – The most important person to research is the individual who should be the customer, the people who are believers but who have stopped going to church.

p101 – We have learned that attitude training is not very effective. The way to train people is behaviorally: This is what you do.

p102 – The tests of strategy are results.

p108 – It is not enough for non-profits to say: We serve a need. The really good ones create a want.

p108 – Performance means concentrating available resources where the results are.

p109 – Non-profits fail to perform unless they start out with their mission.

p109 – Businesses now have multiple constituencies just like non-profits do. It's the reason many business executives feel the world is coming to an end.

p111 – Non-profit institutions generally find it almost impossible to abandon anything.

p112 – Even if the cause itself is a moral cause, the specific way it is pursued better have results (i.e. fornication, results need to measurable and realistic)

p112 – Constantly be raising your sights/goals otherwise performance will start to go down.

p113 – Non-profits are prone to become inward-looking.

p114 – In every move, in every decision, in every policy, the non-profit institution needs to start out by asking, “Will this advance out capacity to carry out our mission? It should start with the end result, should focus outside-in rather than inside-out.

p115 – Don't tolerate discourtesy. Since the beginning of the world, young people have resented good manners as dishonesty.

p115 – The most important do is to build the organization around information and communication instead of around hierarchy … take information responsibility.

p116 – Trust is mutual understanding. Predictability.

p117 – Standards have to be set high; you cannot ease into a standard … If you start low, you can never go higher. Slow is different from low (He uses the example of how his teacher insisted on excellent handwriting. Though they never quite achieved it, they also never thought sloppiness was something to be proud of.)

p119 – Standards should be very high and goals should be ambitious.

p119 – One features performers … Nothing makes as much impact on a sales force as to have a successful salesman stand up before his peers and tell them, “This is what has worked for me.”

p120 – The ultimate test of any organization is to make human strengths effective in performance and to neutralize human weaknesses.

p120 – There are no results inside an institution. There are only costs.

p121 – Very rarely is a decision about what it seems to be about.

p122 – One doesn't make unnecessary decisions … Don't make decisions on trivia.

p123 – One starts out with the opportunity, not with the risk.

p124 – Use a very simple rule: If you have consensus on an important matter, don't make the decision … Important decisions are risky. They should be controversial.

p124 – You should never ask who is right. You should not even ask what is right … Assume that each faction has the right answer but is seeing a different part of reality.

p125 – Look upon dissent as a means of creating understanding and mutual respect.

p125 – Any organization needs a nonconformist.

p125 – When you bring conflicts out in the open, a good many disappear.