“First, if you begin with 'who', rather than 'what',
Who is on Your Bus?
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, has grown her organization through many transition points, while always paying attention to getting the wrong people off, and the right people on the bus. In Good to Great for the Social Sectors, Collins references Wendy Kopps’ ability to load the bus with the right people – and why we must leverage this ability to move our organizations from “good to great”. In one example, Collins details the story of a Head of Department who is pressured to give tenure to a good teacher. The Department Head launched a strong campaign against granting tenure, as he really believed it was important for the school to seek a great teacher. The next year, that great teacher came along. Fortunately the “seat” on the bus was still available. That school’s Department Head clearly resisted the temptation to “settle” for good. It is often easier to settle for good. Of the many dimensions of change we face as leaders in the voluntary sector, the transition of people is the one most charged with emotion. The way Jim Collins writes in Good to Great, about getting the wrong people off the bus and the right people on, sounds logical - until it is time to make it happen. While it is hard, it is absolutely okay, and necessary, to examine who are the right and wrong people for your organization. It is always about the right fit. How often do we know the person isn’t the right person for the role and keep trying to make him fit? How many times are we certain the volunteer is doing the organization more harm than good? And yet it seems to be the right thing to actually keep them in the organization. They are nice. We are nice. So we really are not paying attention to getting the wrong-fit people moving on and ensuring we are diligently and ferociously searching for the right-fit people who will best deliver our mission. It is also time to recognize that, in the voluntary sector, it is time to change our thinking around engaging unpaid human resources and to ensure the right fit in both a paid and unpaid capacity. Jim Collins writes, “It’s who you pay, not how you pay them.” He was referencing a compensation system in the corporate sector. We would take it one step further and suggest that, in the social sector, it is about really looking at who are the right people to engage as both paid and unpaid people in your community organization. It is well documented that in the next decade there is going to be a huge transition of people; the people in leadership roles in the voluntary sector are going to move on. By the time many of the leaders leave, they have become wrong-fit people in their own organizations. They have not made the difficult decisions. They have not confronted the brutal facts. They do not have the right people on the bus. So the challenge for the next generation of leaders will be, “Who is on your bus? Do you have the right-fit people? Are you willing to tackle that emotionally challenging transition of people?”
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