Managing and Leading Nonprofit Organizations

7Synergy and Management Systems

Understanding your leadership practice and building a mission‐focused organizational culture that can engender effective leadership practice, where employees and team members are fully engaged, sets you on the road to success as a nonprofit leader and manager. As you work to refine these elements of your leadership capability it is important to consider the various systems that will help you succeed. Over the years I have come to appreciate the importance of developing and maintaining effective systems within the agency that support the work of leadership within the organization.

There are the obvious systems, such as, for example, human resource information systems (HRISs), financial reporting systems and electronic health record systems (EHRs), continuous quality improvement (CQI), and employee training and development, and then there are less obvious systems, such as how various departments within the organization communicate with each other, supervisory practices, and ways in which conflict and challenges are addressed. In each case it is important to think carefully about how the systems either contribute to the agency's mission and vision or, alternatively, may detract from the organization's efforts.

There is also a dynamic relationship that exists between the individual personality that each employee brings to the organization and the systems that exist within the agency. When effective systems are present, individual employee personalities ...