Nonprofits
Leading with a purpose
How to focus your company by bringing people together
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Dallas | October 2009
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Scott Orr, president and CEO, Christian Community Action
Good leaders need a lot of skills and traits. They need to promote growth both within their businesses and within their people. They need to have a handle on the bottom line. They need to possess vision.
Scott Orr adds another. At Christian Community Action, great leaders need to be great collaborators.
Orr, the president and CEO of the community outreach organization, which generated $11.5 million in fiscal 2008 revenue, says a strong business is focused on comprehensive mission and vision. And in order to have a comprehensive mission and vision, you need to have the input of as many people as possible.
“I’m someone who wants to put together a strong team, work with them and let them do their jobs,” Orr says. “I’m someone who tries to build the vision, the framework and the structure for others to be successful. I want to set goals and let people achieve them.”
Smart Business spoke with Orr about how you can focus your employees on your company’s mission and vision through collaboration.
Strategize through collaboration. You have to go through the process of bringing people together and coming up with a strategic plan that everyone buys in to. Then, once that plan is in place, use it as a living, breathing document. It’s a matter of taking that strategy and taking strong, solid steps toward that strategy, using it as a touchstone for how we move forward in the organization. It’s having the document, understanding the importance of it, making sure that the team understands this is the direction we want to go. I think having a document like that in place is important in bringing people to the vision through a process of that collaboration.
You want people who are going to be self-starters and very successful in that way. But once you do that, you want to have good communication and set up a structure. I have an executive team of five people that meets on a weekly basis, and in that [meeting], we are very transparent. We discuss bigger issues within our organization and talk about things collaboratively. You have to be the one to set the tone and ultimately make decisions, but with very strong input from your people. I think our people realize their input is valuable.
