October 21, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
Leaders Who Make a Difference: Essential Strategies for Meeting the Nonprofit Challenge
By Burt Nanus and Stephen M. Dobbs
The authors of this book tailor their advice specifically to chief executives and board members at non-profit organizations, offering 11 vignettes about people they consider to be effective leaders.
Mr. Nanus, professor emeritus of management at the University of Southern California, and Mr. Dobbs, executive vice-president of the Bernard Osher Foundation, in San Francisco, identify a common thread shared by those 11 individuals. “All of them have seen themselves as leaders, not managers and certainly not mere stewards or caretakers of their organizations.”
Such leaders must play six key roles, the authors write: visionary, strategist, innovator, coach, politician, and fund raiser. After a section that explores bedrock leadership qualities — such as instilling hope and inspiration — the authors examine those six roles in depth and provide various real-life examples.
Among the people chosen: John Mroz, a diplomat who founded the EastWest Institute, which the authors credit as being the first Western organization to promote capitalism in the former Soviet Union; and Norine Smith, director of the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis, who helped her organization cut the size of its board and improve its accounting procedures.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco 94104-1310; (415) 433-1767; fax (800) 605-2665; http://www.josseybass.com; 279 pages; $26; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-4665-6.
