By: Janine Vanderburg, CEO, Joining Vision and Action

What are the must have executive director resources?

I’m very excited about our upcoming Executive Director Academy. I personally love spending the week with extraordinary individuals who have both the opportunity and the challenge of leading organizations dedicated to community and social change. One of the biggest questions that I hear from most nonprofit executive directors is this: How do I manage it all? And the answer is that you can’t. What you CAN do is set up systems that allow you to prioritize your time and delegate to others in your organization things that don’t require YOU. Here are seven executive director resources that we recommend.

Tool/Process What It Is Why You Need It
Strategy Screen A list of predetermined criteria your organization will use to vet new ideas and potential projects. It helps prevent random incoming ideas from derailing your strategy; decreases your time responding to: “Why don’t we do this?”
Dashboard  A simple snapshot that shows you where your organization is on all its key indicators. It helps align all board and staff activity around what’s important; identify areas that need intervention; and minimizes micromanaging.
A 12-Week Plan (for everyone) A week-by-week plan for 12 weeks to get a specific goal accomplished. It provides a focused way to ensure that the most important work is getting done.
A Commander’s Intent Statement A statement of your intentions of what the ultimate outcome/end game is; what your intentions are. It helps staff make decisions within parameters you set, without going back to you all the time, saving you valuable time.
An Assistant  Need I say more? It saves you time that you can spend on higher impact, higher leverage work.
An Idea/Goals Collector A single place, in paper or online, that ALL ideas and goals get entered as they occur to you. You don’t lose those brilliant ideas, or get off track of your strategy because of a new idea.
Thinking Days (at least monthly) A day out of the office, without interruptions, for you to…think! You increase your strategic moves and decrease reactions to events.

 

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