Nonprofits
Sandra Cornelius
President, Elwyn
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Philadelphia | March 2007
" I could probably give you 840 examples of how unmitigated arrogance has brought a company down." -- Sandra Cornelius, President, Elwyn
When Sandra Cornelius became president of Elwyn in 1991, one of her first tasks was to restore the nonprofit’s financial stability.
To do so, she worked to end deficit spending by redesigning, scaling down or eliminating programs that were not cost-effective.
As a result, the 155-year-old, 3,500 employee organization has continued to provide services to those with special needs and
has risen to the challenge of providing top-notch care with diminishing resources. Smart Business spoke with Cornelius about
how challenges are opportunities to improve, and why a company is like raisin bread.
Plan for the future, but stay in touch with today’s issues. A leader needs
to do two things. He or she needs to have their eyes way out
there, as to not only what’s going to happen tomorrow but
what’s going to happen in the next three to 10 years.
Read widely, and gather information broadly. You must envision how the agency will have to change, because change is the
only thing that’s constant.
The second component of leadership is awareness of what is
happening. It requires some diligence, and you need a fairly deft
set of fingers on the pulse of business.
You need to not only know service deliveries but human
resources, financial issues and the like. You need to do that for
two reasons — No. 1 is keeping the customers happy. No. 2 is
passion. You cannot talk with passion and conviction unless
you have a pretty accurate read on what is happening.
One of the dilemmas is some workers might tell the boss
what they want them to hear instead of what’s really going on.
You need to go find out whether the corridors smell; find out
whether the trash is getting picked up.
Not only do you gather information, but you celebrate
accomplishments and recognize staff for their hard work.
You’ve got to get out there. You make people feel valued if you
celebrate even small accomplishments. You also are fed information that will give you an accurate picture.
[For example,] the person who took California Blue Cross
public inherited a business that was pretty boggy, took a different course, and called for changes. But things weren’t going
as planned, as he discovered walking through the corridors of
the computing center one day. Although he had set expectations, the computers had never been changed.
One needs to set a course toward the future, but at same time
have familiarity with what’s really going on.
Encourage employees to learn across department lines. I need people
who have initiative, are self-motivated and care about what
they are doing. I also need curious people.
One of the things I’m most proud about over (my) 15 years
here is that the money people have learned about programs,
and the program people have learned about money.
We encourage that a lot. The void that used to exist, and led
to all kinds of disgruntlement — ‘He’s doing something, and he
doesn’t even have the money for it’ — has largely disappeared.
It has allowed us to be able to respond quickly to new program initiatives that our customers want.
Keep your ego in check. I could probably give you 840 examples of
how unmitigated arrogance has brought a company down. ‘I’m
too important, I’m beyond that, I can’t, I won’t, I should, I’m the
best,’ all of that. If you’re thinking those things, you’re headed
down the road, and fast.
One of the most wonderful things about my job is I can walk
out of the office and shake hands with one of the people we
serve, all of whom have disabilities. It is a humbling experience and it is an inspiring experience.
I’m sure there are CEOs of manufacturing companies who
can get just as excited about a computer or a valve. But I get
excited looking at the client and seeing what they need and
how I can help them.
That is the lifeblood of my experience at Elwyn. If I got separated from that, I would not be as good.
Look at challenges as opportunities to improve. We face the challenge
of ever-increasing regulation, with diminishing resources.
We had a financial hiccup here, a fraud, a number of years
ago. It allowed us to take stock, own up to the mistake and
look at what deficiencies we had in our systems.
And we didn’t stop there. We decided we needed to develop
an administrative system that was still ready five years from
that point. It has served us well, and we now continue to look
on a continuous basis for how to do things better.
We have a very thorough and multilayered incident management system. People have seizures, people fall, there are accidents that happen. We’re constantly trying to find the root
cause of those as they occur and change our practices so the
accidents are diminished.
Work to get better, and watch the attitudes improve. We had a tremendous number of accidents in the company-owned vehicles,
[which were] driven by many employees. So we got the insurance company we have to provide elaborate driver training,
and we tried to make it fun by having competitions annually, a
driver rodeo. The administration always placed last, which
really gave everybody a good laugh.
With a situation like that, you just declare you’re going to be
the best and try to figure out what it’s going to take. Just keep
doing it, and then people develop a different kind of attitude.
‘OK, we made a mistake, let’s own up to it. How do we avoid
doing it again; how do we make it better?’
Any agency or company is like raisin bread. There’s dough,
there are lumps and there are raisins. Find a way to find the
raisins quickly. That’s where the value is.
HOW TO REACH: Elwyn, (610) 891-2000 or www.elwyn.org
