Keeping Your Reports Happy

The NPQ article I referenced a few days ago--the one about the relative strengths of for-profit and nonprofit managers--would seem to suggest that nonprofit leaders are more empathetic managers than their counterparts, but this piece from Marshall Goldsmith from the Harvard Business Journal website is still worth reading.

Of course, this morning I was also reading Jim Collins' Good to Great -- part of my unsentimental education in the world of business literature -- where I came across his argument that motiviating employees is of much less importance than hiring the right "pre-motiviated" employees and getting them in the right jobs. Collins' second step to becoming a "Good To Great" organization is all about getting the wrong people "off the bus," getting the right people on the bus, and then getting those people in the right places before you decide where you want an organization to go. This is one of the steps that seems especially hard to translate into the nonprofit realm.

Most non-profits I know have issues with, well, not being able to fire people--to put it plainly. There's a kind of tacit agreement for many underperforming employees that as long as you show up and accept low pay and (sometimes) bad working conditions, you will never be fired. Perhaps the shortage of working capital or cash reserves (to cover the threat of a legal battle), the reliance on volunteer legal representation, the lack of training in HR issues contributes, maybe event the emphasis on mission as the top priority of the organization, contributes to this. I don't know if it's a non-profit thing, an arts thing, or just the nature of any organization... but I'd be interested to know if anyone's done research on the subject.