Leaders from the top on down in Not-For-Profits hold an unfair advantage over their erstwhile counterparts in the For-Profit world.  Managers in Not-for-Profit are driven by a powerful sense of purpose that delivers meaning and context for even the most mundane of activities.  As one young Not-For-Profit manager in my recent Leadership Mastery workshop indicated, “I can’t imagine not having the mission to inspire and energize me everyday.” 

My question: Can For-Profit organizations replicate the motivational and contextual power of “The Mission” through other proxies like goals, strategies, bonuses and targets all focused around competitors, financials and metrics like market-share and compound annual growth rate?  

My short-answer: It’s hard to simulate a mission and develop a sense of purpose in an environment focused on issues that are significantly more mundane than human welfare.  Difficult, but not impossible.  I’ll explore some ideas for this below. 

First, a sidebar on my observations about leading in Not-For –Profit:

Having spent my entire career in the For-Profit world, I learn something every time I have the good fortune to work with the dedicated professionals that staff and lead the organizations that do so much good in our communities.  It’s refreshing to work with people laser-focused on serving their customers and motivated by the belief that they are making a tangible difference everyday. 

I have also been impressed by the level of leadership maturity and sophistication that I see in the younger leaders in these organizations.  Many Not-For-Profits run on volunteer workforces, and honing great leadership skills at a young age is a survival skill for a manager in this environment.  The sophistication and good practices that I have seen displayed by managers with less than five years experience are impressive.  Important habits and concepts including professional development, goal-setting, providing feedback and establishing genuine connections are well understood and readily applied by many of these young leaders. 

Last and not least, it’s hard to look at the good work being done in many Not-For-Profits and not acknowledge that these dedicated and capable leaders might earn considerably more money if they were plying their profession in a profit-driven organization.  The skills that they are developing and honing are the very skills critically needed by almost every organization attempting to grow and win in the market.  And yet in many cases, the lure of money is not a driving force for those serving in Not-For-Profit.

What For-Profit Leaders Can Learn from Their Mission-Driven Counterparts:

  • People thrive and commit when they feel a greater sense of purpose in their activities.  Leaders in For-Profits must strive to connect the firm’s activities and offerings to the benefits that they provide to customers.  Even seemingly mundane offerings contribute to improving someone’s life, making hard tasks easier or solving other problems.  Leaders must connect the dots between these benefits and an employee’s reason-for-being.
  • Mission statements should not be a gobbledygook of pie-in-the-sky motivations, but rather, brief, meaningful descriptions of the reason-for-being of an organization.  Additionally, instead of the poster on the wall proclaiming the lame mission, the content and context of this mission should be taught, reinforced and referenced liberally.  Just like corporate values, statements of mission are useless unless practiced and ultimately embedded in the organization’s DNA.
  • Leaders should ply their trade as if they are operating with a volunteer workforce. Imagine having to walk in the door everyday and reach out to your employees, support their professional development, provide them with timely feedback, encourage them to strive for new levels and help them find the lessons-learned from mistakes.  Armed with the context of “my workers are volunteers and it is my job to keep them happy, motivated, learning and here,” I suspect that many leaders will suddenly discover their true priorities.
  • Just as people require context and purpose to do their best work, they tend to thrive in environments where success breeds more success and big, new challenges are viewed as great new opportunities.  In my informal polling of several hundred managers over the past few months, I have only found a handful that feel as if they’ve been a part of a high-performance team at some point in their careers.  What a shame.  I suspect that most leaders don’t preoccupy on the notion that their goal is to create an environment that results in a high-performance team….one that is highly innovative or one that is operationally excellent (or both).  Not-For-Profit leaders understand that the mission will only be successful if the team gets it right, and they naturally focus on the tasks needed to support team development. 
  • Many (not all) Not-For-Profit leaders stay close to their mission by working with and serving their clients in the community.  Sometimes out of necessity and other times out of the sheer joy of serving, this is an outstanding way of staying Tuned- In to customers.  For-Profit leaders would be well served to push away from the desk and spend some time helping and learning from their customers. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Working in Not-For-Profit may not be for everyone, and in fact, while I’ve painted a picture with the positives that I have observed, there are many familiar challenges as well.  Large organizations struggle with politics and bureaucracy, “lifers” suffer from chronic “We’ve always done it this way,” and turnover and burnout are common maladies plaguing many organizations. 

However, in spite of overwhelming challenges and never-ending pursuit of funding, many of these organizations persevere, in large part due to the incredible dedication of the people working and leading at all levels.  Most For-Profit environments lack the sense of purpose and mission that I’ve observed in Not-For-Profits, yet managers everywhere have the same set of tools at their disposal.  For-Profit leaders are well served to take a few tips from their lower-paid and in many cases, more effective counterparts.