Talking ’bout my generation
The March 6 edition of The Chronicle of Philanthropy featured a series of articles about the upcoming generational shift in nonprofit leadership. I have been keenly interested in this topic for several years so I read it the articles closely.
One aspect of the shift was the issue of whether old timers (that would be my generation) are holding back younger leaders due to a concern that the less experienced 20- and 30-somethings are really too inexperienced to lead.
I read comments from both sides of the generation gap, then recalled my own experience.
I first became an executive director at the tender age of 26. I had very little experience, having passed through several jobs in the past year due to Prop 13-caused budget cuts, no mentoring, and few relevant skills (two years earlier I had been in grad school studying literature). Still, no one questioned whether I could lead.
It occurred to me that perhaps this was because I am a boomer, and virtually all of the nonprofits in my community were being led by relatively young people. It was just assumed I would figure it out.
Now that we boomers are starting to retire, could it be that we still assume that only our generation knows how to lead?
Tags: nonprofit
April 1st, 2008 at 7:09 am
I’m not sure its hubris on the part of boomers — in the 1970’s nonprofits were less complex and we were less reliant on nonprofits to provide the social safety net. As more was shifted to the nonprofit sector, organizations became more complex, requiring more sophisticated leadership. Despite that, I think much of the current handwringing over the next generation of leaders misses the mark. I think we’ll see the sector continue to evolve in new and interesting ways. In order to solve complex and inter-related social problems, I predict we’ll see fewer of the large hierarchical organizations that everyone is so worried about. Social innovators will not only figure out new ways to tackle problems, but new structures to carry out that work — networks of volunteers and staff, virtual organizations, organizaitons that combine social enterprise and “Traditional” nonprofit structures. I think we “old folks” should relax and just be ready to move out of the way.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:06 am
As a fellow boomer, I don’t think ours is the only generation that knows how to lead and I think the hand wringing about it is a bit over the top. Yes, there will be large numbers of executive directors who will be retiring, but that will be true for corporate executives and doctors and machinists — no one is predicting the total collapse of our economic system as those boomers retire.
When you and I and other boomers became Executive Directors in our 20s the sector was different. More of our counterparts were people trained in the work of the organization — they were social workers, artists, psychologists. The organizations we ran were less complex and there were fewer demands or expectations beyond helping people in our neighborhoods. As an MBA I was an oddity in the field — but not anymore. Think about all of the masters level programs that have cropped up in nonprofit management of one sign that the entire business of leading nonprofits has evolved over the past thirty years — as have the nonprofits being led.
The evolution will continue. The next generation of leaders will be different and the nonprofits they lead will also be different. Some organizations will have trouble finding new leadership, but not because there aren’t people out there to lead them — it will be because they couldn’t adapt and change — they’ll be the dinosaurs that just become extinct.
I think the next twenty years will see exciting new changes in the sector– more virtual organizations that work globally, more problems solved through networks and hands-on volunteers, more organizations that blend nonprofit values and for profit enterprise. Those young leaders are out there already cooking up interesting new things — we just need to be ready to get out of the way and let them go.