Management In A Changing World

FOREWORD

This book is a successor to Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results, which I co‐wrote with Alison Green back in 2012. We received really positive feedback about that book over the years, and I reveled in…well, as much fame and fortune as you get from writing a popular nonprofit management book.

Why, then, am I so excited to welcome this new book—even as it pushes aside the original one (and all the glamor that came with being its author)?

Don't get me wrong: I think the previous book did many things well. As with all of our work at The Management Center (TMC), our book was focused on how leaders can deliver results that move the needle toward social change. It was deeply grounded in the reality that managers face (which Alison and I knew from experience), and it often challenged conventional wisdom. Readers told us they found it supportive, humble, real about how hard things can be—and even funny at times. Above all, people told us they appreciated that our book was deeply practical and filled with concrete ways to put our lessons into action. I still send excerpts of that book to my coaching clients to help them through tough spots. In many ways, I'm still very proud of it.

But it also badly needed an update. In one section on how to stay organized, for instance, we talked about using written lists and paper folders—a little outdated for the digital age! More substantively, TMC's coaching and training content evolved significantly ...