A matter of being: for Frances Hesselbein, leadership starts with mission, values, and vision.

FRANCES HESSELBEIN ES ONE OF THOSE RARE INDIVIDUALS UNAFRAID TO stare society's greatest problems in the eye--and yet still able to exude an energized optimism. That is because for all the challenges she sees confronting society today, she also has seen countless examples of leaders meeting those challenges. Hesselbein, chairman and founding president of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, New York City, and former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, New York City, is a philosophical kindred spirit of Drucker himself. She likes to refer to Drucker's assertion that no matter what the problem, some nonprofit organization in this country has found a way to solve it. In volunteer leadership she sees potential and opportunity in their purest forms.

No question, Hesselbein is a thought leader in her own right. In her recent book, Hesselbein on Leadership (2002, Jossey-Bass), she speaks of leadership in terms of "how to be, not how to do it." By leading through being, she says, leaders can mobilize people.

Can Hesselbein herself mobilize people? She's one of the best, in her own unassuming, dignified manner. Just ask best-selling author Jim Collins. Whenever she telephones, Collins explains in the forward he wrote for her book, as soon as he hears her voice he knows he won't be able to say no to her. It's clear that Hesselbein knows about leadership, whether she's talking, doing, or being.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: How do you define leadership?

Hesselbein: We all have to define leadership for ourselves. I was with the Girl Scouts for 13 1/2 years--that's 5,000 days--and I never had a bad day. I did have some tough days. [In that time,] after much thought and introspection, I finally decided that for me leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it. We spend most of our lives learning how to do it and teaching others how to do it, but in the end we know that it is the quality and character of the leader that determines performance and results. I have tested this over and over.

This was quite a revelation to me in 1999 when the U.S. Army leadership manual was published. It had only three words on its cover: Be, Know, Do. I thought that was the most remarkable shorthand for leadership. First, it's the quality and character of the leader. And then there has to come the knowledge to do the job. And then, only then, do we do what we do. As I work with leaders in all three sectors, I keep watching for short, powerful, compelling mission statements that describe the organization's reason for being. I truly believe this is where leadership begins.

You just can't talk values. Your people watch you; and every action, everything you do, is the embodiment of what you say you believe and what you do believe. We hope [the actions and words] are consistent. People watch leaders of organizations, and it's very disillusioning when they hear leaders talking about how people are their greatest asset and then they treat them solely as costs. It does nothing to motivate people. But when the leader's language and behavior are consistent with the values that the leader preaches and espouses, it's amazing how liberating that is for people.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: Why is it important for a mission statement to be "short, powerful, and compelling," as the U.S. Army's is?

Hesselbein: We remember it. If you're a member of the international Red Cross staff or a volunteer, your mission is to serve the most vulnerable, and you remember it every day of your life. And for these people who are thrust into Rwanda or Bosnia that is a very inspiring way to mobilize them. Nobody gets excited about bigness. You can belong to a very large organization, but the bigness is not what inspires us. But when we can mobilize our people...around a powerful mission statement so that the newest secretary or the man on the loading dock--all of us matter--understands that mission and why we do what we do, it brings people together; it mobilizes them. This is when you see a highly motivated workforce--volunteer or staff-with great energy moving the organization forward.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: What suggestions would you make for a chief elected officer about his or her role in developing volunteer leaders?

Hesselbein: If I were a new chairman of a board, I would want our board to first begin with the mission--this is why we do what we do, our reason for being. And we would understand with great passion that this is how we can mobilize our volunteer workforce. Then I would be very sure that the board understood the primary customer of this organization, what that customer valued, what have been the [organization's] results, and what is the strategic plan for the future.

The board must also understand the clear and sharp differentiation between governance and management. I would say to them, "These are the major responsibilities of the board of directors--planning, policy review, and oversight." That means that we are responsible for the strategic planning of this organization, which includes the mission and the strategic goals. Then management picks up and completes the tactical planning, the objectives that flow from the goals we have set.

Every two or three years the board revisits the mission, determines goals for the next two or three years, and works with management so that the whole strategic planning system works to make a remarkable partnership of staff and volunteers.

Every three years the board studies the environment, and identifies what the trends are that most affect our work and our people. Within those trends are the implications for the organization. As for the basic policies of the organization, periodically we would examine those policies to see if they're still relevant. Are the policies we set 10 years ago still essential today? Should they be changed? Every time the Drucker Foundation has revisited the mission, which it does every three years, we have changed it--sometimes just slightly, perhaps just in emphasis--because in three years the needs of the customers and the environment change.

The board has a major responsibility for the oversight of the results, the performance, and the management. A board that says, "We didn't know what was happening" has not been carrying out that essential part of its duties. Again, the board carries responsibilities and the management has accountabilities. There is a big difference.

An incoming member to the board should have a position description as carefully drafted as a position for a vice president that we might be recruiting for.

I would take very seriously the continuing education of the board. There would be learning opportunities, there would be books. If there was a remarkable book that came out, I'd see that every member of the board had that book.

Finally, I'd make it clear that the CEO is the partner of the board, not the subordinate, and that the chairman and the president would be the very visible leadership team. I think these are the critical issues.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: You say that when we create a vision, we create a new house. How so?

Hesselbein: We all have to have a vision of what we would hope for the future. For example, I have a vision of the future that I often share with people, and that is healthy children, strong families, good schools, decent housing, and work that dignifies--all embraced in this cohesive, diverse, inclusive community that cares about all of its people. Now, we're a long way from that vision, but we all have a share of helping to move toward it. I hear people talking about achieving visions. You never do it. It's out there before you, inspiring and invigorating.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: What do you think are the key issues today in nonprofit leadership?

Hesselbein: Today for our sector one of the real challenges is that the needs of people in the community are rising and traditional sources of support are declining at the same time. And so I think nonprofit organizations are called to lead from the front and see themselves as the equal partners of business and government. And you know the list of needs in this country. For example, 3 million children go to bed hungry every night. If we ever compared the cost to feed those children against the cost 15 years from now--when we have a whole cohort of children who have grown up malnourished and have had insufficient schooling--now is the time to take care.

Peter Drucker has said that somewhere in this country, no matter what the problem, some nonprofit organization has found the way to solve it.

So it's [a matter of] how we find the resources and people and partners. That's why I write a lot about leading beyond the walls [of one's organization], where nonprofit organizations take the lead and identify a critical community need or issue. Leading from the front, they go out and they find a corporation, and they make sure they have congruent issues and values and they say, "Let's partner on this." The remarkable examples of corporations and nonprofits are just not the old "I write check, you do work." It's the people of the corporation and the people of the nonprofit organization working together to really build a healthy community.

I have talked to CEOs of corporations and [discovered that] we shared a common bottom line: changing lives. They've said, "Well that's what we do, too. We have more than a financial bottom line; we care about the community." And there are such corporations out there. For seven years now the Drucker Foundation, Texaco, and later Chevron have presented leadership and management seminars to the staff of the National Urban League. So there you have three partners.

One of the great skills of nonprofit leaders is that they're on the ground in the neighborhoods and in the communities. They understand the needs, they can find a corporate partner or government agency, and they work together. This is the way we are going to be able to fill that void of escalating needs and diminishing traditional sources of support.

So I think beyond the walls is a wonderful battle cry these days. The Drucker Foundation has its "Innovation of the Week," an e-mail that goes out every week to thousands of people; there's no charge. [To receive the e-mail, go to www.drucker.org/subscribe/index.html.] Every email [message] is a real, live example of nonprofit innovation. It's not theory; it's an actual example. People are very tired of theory. When you can share live examples of what works, it's a very powerful motivation.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: How do the recent corporate scandals affect the nonprofit community?

Hesselbein: They affect all of us, right across all three sectors. There's no barrier that prevents that kind of impact from hitting us. I think it's been a source of great embarrassment and great concern, but also we look at ourselves and say, "Do we have any business management practices that anyone can challenge?" I think for principled leaders--and 95 or 99 percent of them are--it's a time when we take stock and look at everything we do and make sure it's totally consistent with what we preach. I think it's been a tragedy for the country and at the same time, it provides a very sad example of what should not happen. It's a lesson for leaders.

ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT: What can volunteer leaders do to more effectively fulfill the role of environmental scanner and strategist?

Hesselbein: Peter Drucker has a wonderful expression: planned abandonment, a process by which the board examines its policies, practices, procedures, and assumptions and asks, "Are these relevant for the future, or do these need to be changed?" It's about always examining these basic documents and changing them. We recommend using the Drucker Foundation Self-Assessment Tool [free on the Web at www.drucker.org/leaderbooks], which is based on five powerful and profound questions: What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? What is our plan? When board and staff have answered these questions they are well on the way to being a sharply focused, highly effective organization.

Sometimes it's interesting to have volunteers choose what they will scan during the year. So they say, I'll take demographics, and every time they see an article or something on rapidly changing demographics, they clip it. Someone else can scan changes in, say, education. It's amazing what a team of volunteer scanners can do. What an organization is looking for is what are the two major trends that will have the greatest impact upon this organization? For example, one organization might say one would be the increasingly rich diversity of the country.

I have a checklist called "When the Roll is Galled in 2010" [go to www.drucker.org/leaderbooks/L2L and click on the spring 2001 issue of Leader to Leader]. Seven years from now when the roll is called, a lot of organizations will not be present because they did not practice planned abandonment today.

I think this is one of the challenges that board members, as well as managers, face. The practices and assumptions were fine a couple of years ago, and may still be all right, but they will have little meaning in the future. This [planned abandonment] takes real managerial courage. No one can describe what this country is going to look like in 2010 or even two years from now, but there is a leadership imperative: get the house in order for a tenuous future. Sometimes the older the organization is, the more notebooks it has filled with policies, standards, and practices--and sometimes we don't remember why they're there. With all the challenges right now, all the ambiguities, there are at the same time enormous opportunities to be more effective than ever before, with the bottom line: changing lives. When we [seize these opportunities], we build a healthy community.

There are many people who feel that the best-managed nonprofits really understand the use of the board of directors, the ultimate effectiveness of governance. [Effective boards] give us an example of what can happen when the board understands and carries out these major responsibilities of governance. Management then eagerly accepts the accountabilities and together, in partnership, they bring about remarkable results for the customers they serve.

Carl Levesque is senior editor of ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT. E-mail: [e-mail].