I’m grateful to see that our new online course is proving popular both with readers of the Applied Wisdom booklet and with the newcomers to our website.
I think that it’s essential to educate and support the development of your managers as an ongoing activity. As your organization grows, the demands on your nonprofit and the dynamics of the larger world change and you have to stay on top of that.
You’re never “done” putting management structures in place because the challenges change, people come and go, new tools emerge. You have to constantly battle complacency and the idea that your success validates what you are doing today, creating a bit of a fog around your potential vulnerabilities.
But I recognize that there is a paradox in providing training: employees must perceive the value of the training to compensate for the interruption of their work processes, or it is counterproductive. This is a tension that demands management. The heads of each organization and the units underneath must take responsibility for management development and not just delegate the job to human resources.
- Are you providing ongoing training throughout your organization?
- How can you do a better job at communicating the value of training?