Nonprofits
Bob Kelly
President and CEO, The San Diego Foundation
By Mark Scott
Smart Business San Diego | January 2008
Before employees can work toward a common vision, they have to be able to work with each other, says Bob Kelly. That’s a key
reason why employees at The San Diego Foundation are randomly dispersed through the office, says the president and CEO. A
finance person sits next to a marketing person, whose cubicle could be right next to an administrative assistant. That way,
employees get a better sense of the different roles required for the organization to be successful. The formula has helped the
philanthropic organization grow to $105 million in annual revenue, with 50 employees and 300 volunteers. Smart Business spoke
with Kelly about why you need to plan your trip before you actually go to the moon.
Focus on execution. You can have a great
vision and a great dream, but if you don’t put
together a team that can help develop the
strategy and you don’t spend time ensuring
execution, everything is going to fall apart.
Successful people are the ones who
have great vision and great execution
skills. The execution skills get into making sure you set performance goals, manage to those performance goals and
organize the organization around what
you are trying to accomplish.
It’s all about having clear and measurable
results. A lot of places fall apart because of
the lack of execution.
Listen to your people. I spend a lot of time
talking to the staff and to potential customers, just listening to what they care
about and what they think. Over a period of
time, it kind of evolves and comes together.
After listening to everybody, it’s the CEO’s
job to really articulate what that vision
should and could be. It takes time. Read
about what’s changing in the environment
and what is changing about customers.
And not just in my business, but what’s
happening in every other business. It opens
your mind to new ideas.
Give your vision some color. If the vision is
inspirational, people will be motivated to
rally around it and be motivated to work
on it. Come up with a vision or a story
that is simple and easy to understand
and easy to explain.
If people can understand it, they can feel
it, they can touch it and they can measure
the success without too much effort. They
have to be able to simply understand it and
be able to see the steps to success.
I’m sure John F. Kennedy, when he said
we’re going to the moon, he didn’t just
show up on Thursday and say, ‘Hey, we’re
going to the moon.’
I guarantee he was talking to scientists
and rocket engineers and all the information was put into his brain and he said, ‘You
know what, we need to get the United
States moving into the next century.’
Have a common goal that everybody can
rally around that is challenging but inspirational and one where if we work hard
enough, it is doable.
Define individual roles. Everybody needs to
have a piece of the action, and everybody
needs to feel that they are engaged in it. They
all need to take pride that their one little part
is going to make the iPhone incredible.
A good leader really makes sure everybody knows how they fit in to the big picture and how important it is for them to do
their job really well. Reward everybody not
on individual performance but on how the
total organization has gotten to the vision
you’re trying to accomplish.
We have all-staff meetings, and we have a
thing called ‘kudos.’ We recognize somebody for what they have done toward what
we’re trying to accomplish. What we try to
encourage is everybody recognizing the
contribution of everybody else.
Bring people together. We have departments
on a piece of paper. We have no departments in our organization. The finance people don’t sit with the finance people. They
are scattered through the whole organization. A finance person could be sitting right
next to the marketing person who is sitting
next to the administrative assistant.
Everybody is working together.
Everybody has to get up and walk around
and talk to each other. Their cubicle mate
is working on investments, and they are working on the newsletter. Everybody has
to work with everybody. It really encourages teamwork and cross communication.
They can’t be in their own world and do
their job. They have to work with everybody else and appreciate what they do
because they hear what they do and they
see what they do.
Integrate new employees. When they first
come on board for the first two weeks,
they don’t do anything with their job.
We have them go on a scavenger hunt.
They have like 15 pages in their book, and
they have to go talk to somebody in marketing and ask them about this, this and
this and see if they can figure out how a
newsletter is produced.
Then they may go to investments, and the
thing is to find the investment reports and
calculate the rate of return that we have
earned on our investments over the past 10
years. Here they are sitting down going
over investment reports trying to calculate
out the investment return.
We ask, ‘Who would you go to, to find out
how to order letterhead?’ We don’t give
them the answer. They have to go to different departments and find out who is responsible for letterhead. At the end, they have a
test, and if they don’t get all of the answers
right, they have to go find all the answers.
It’s fun, interesting, challenging and it
gives them an overall perspective of the
organization.
Be a moral leader. Employees will respect
the hell out of you. And customers will
respect the hell out of you.
Employees, they know if you’re going
to do something immoral or unethical or
illegal. They lose motivation, and they
lose the respect that you need as a CEO
for them to follow your vision. You cannot disappoint your staff.
You start messing around with morals
and values, you start losing the respect of
your staff. Over time, things are going to
fall apart. It undermines the leader’s ability
to lead. It’s just not worth it.
HOW TO REACH: The San Diego Foundation, (619) 235-2300
or www.sdfoundation.org
