Last week I spent three days facilitating a Sierra Club summit on global climate change in which 100 of the Club’s top leaders and thinkers struggled with the impending catastrophe and what to do about it.

At that meeting I was stunned by the enormity of the challenge ahead. So, you can imagine my excitement when I read in the papers that the structure of the largest leveraged buy-out in history — valued at $45B — is being driven in part by environmental concerns. The buyers, and their bankers at Goldman Sachs, are insisting on a greener company before they buy TXU, the Texas-based utility that is the subject of this deal. Eight planned new coal plants will be scrapped, and hundreds of millions will be spent on research into alternative energy.

The key to the deal, of course, was the intervention of Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which negotiated the concessions in exchange for not opposing the sale.

At least two lessons can be learned from this event:
• First, if you can make enough trouble for a corporation, they will want you as a friend.
• Second, and more important, is the long-term value of getting corporate leaders to serve on nonprofit boards. Two of the leveraged buy-out leaders are past and current board members of World Wildlife Fund. I have to believe that the experience of serving on that board made them more sensitive to the environmental issues involved in this deal and also gave them a friendly back door through which they could approach ED and NRDC.

All in all it was a good day for the planet.

Bill Coy, a senior associate with our firm, is always full of wisdom. He helps our clients with mergers, partnerships, and strategic planning, but his specialty is human resources management. His work in this area is immeasurably strengthened by the fact that he spent many years as a family therapist before getting into HR.

In this regard Bill and I were recently discussing a particularly challenging management problem a client was having. It was on Valentine’s Day, in fact; Bill summed it up: “Before every temporary restraining order, there was a Valentine’s Day card.”

It is always good to remember, when managing staff in your nonprofit, that a current good relationship with an employee, even one you might characterize as a working friendship, can quickly turn south. In fact, according to this adage of Bill’s, it’s the relationships you currently feel best about that hold the most promise for going farthest south.

I think this makes sense. If a relationship with an employee about whom you have concerns or with whom you have just never “clicked,” starts to go bad, you will not be surprised, telling yourself, “I saw this coming.” Whereas in a good strong relationship you may be surprised and dismayed by inappropriate behavior, inconsistent work where it was previously uniformly good, or an angry parting. Your own reaction may just make things worse.

The bottom line — no matter how much you like, respect, and care for your staff members — they are still your employees first and foremost. You have to maintain the ability to manage them, even to terminate them, if necessary, and to do so in a calm professional way.

One of the great strengths of our sector is our culture of caring for our staff; we often refer to them, with all sincerity, as friends. But this strength can become an equally great flaw when things head south with an employee.

Like many challenges nonprofit managers face, this one requires a tricky balance.