Down the right path

When Ken Weber joined
Goodwill Industries of
Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio Inc. six years
ago, he had to find a way to
grow the organization.

“I came into an organization
whose growth had become
stagnant, and they were stuck
at the same point for three or
four years,” says the president
and CEO, who arrived at the
Cleveland Goodwill from one
in Wisconsin.

Weber had to create and
implement a successful vision
for the organization to change
and start growing, but it was not
a simple process.

“Creating a vision is not a
paint-by-the-numbers process
that automatically gives you the
vision,” he says.

Weber began by doing an honest assessment of where the
organization was to determine
what it could become in the
future. The first step in an
assessment is research, and he
spent time learning about the
local organization and looking
at other Goodwill organizations
across the country to scout best
practices and get a baseline to
begin the visioning process.

After assessing your organization, you need to determine
whether others agree with your
assessment and what the consequences of acting on the vision
will be versus doing nothing.
Then you need to review all of
the information you’ve received
and the ideas you’ve come up
with, and test the ideas with
others to reach an agreement
on your assessment.

After reaching an agreement,
you need to take that information and begin putting together
a vision. Weber worked extensively with his leadership team and board of directors to get
input on the new vision, and
while ideally you should try to
get feedback from everyone,
often it’s not possible.

“You have to look at your key
audiences and staff because trying to get everyone’s opinion
would take forever,” Weber says.

He solicited Goodwill’s key
audiences — its board and leadership of various departments
— for feedback, then communicated extensively with other
employees regarding the vision.

“We keep it simple and deliver
the message often and passionately,” Weber says. “Sometimes,
you get so tired of saying the same thing over and over, but it
needs to be constant.”

The next step is to take a
vision that to some may seem
unattainable and break it down
into smaller, measurable goals.
One of Goodwill’s goals was to
become a financially independent, self-supporting nonprofit
organization, and Weber set up
steps to reach this goal, including having a state-of-the-art facility with good technology, educating the public on what exactly Goodwill does, and growing
its number of retail stores.

Once those goals are established and work on them has
begun, it’s important to evaluate
whether you are achieving them.

“Each year, when we put our
budget together, we look at
where we said we would be in
the next year, the next two
years, the next five years, and
are we continually taking
chunks of those strategic initiatives and integrating them into
this year’s budget, next year’s
budget, and before you know it,
you’ve accomplished your
strategic goals,” Weber says.

Since Weber took over, creating a new vision has helped
Goodwill nearly triple in size,
from 650 individuals served per
year in 2002 to 9,000 served
today. Achieving its goals has
also helped the organization
establish its next vision of establishing community campuses in
Cleveland and Canton.

“Our vision has kept us
focused, and the organization’s
energy is directed in a particular
direction, which allows us to
accomplish so much more in a
lot less time,” Weber says.
“People know where we are
going, and it continues to get
more exciting as we get further
along the journey.”

Be an involved leader

A vision cannot come to life
unless the leader passionately
lives it, says Ken Weber of
Goodwill Industries of Greater
Cleveland and East Central Ohio
Inc.

Weber recalls his being the
first car in the parking lot in the
morning and the last one out at
night, and even working on
Saturdays during his first year to
show how committed he was to
the vision.

“It’s those kinds of practical,
down-to-earth, nongrandiose things
that make a difference,” he says.

Weber says that while doing
those things, you need to be
consistent and humble and put
in the time and effort to make
things happen. And if you make
a mistake, say so.

“If you make an oops, make
sure to say, ‘I think I went down
a wrong path here,’” Weber says.

Living the vision also means
celebrating successes, something Weber did not do until an
employee pointed out how much
the organization had accomplished.

“We try to constantly point out
all of our successes, and we
now do quarterly reports, where
we do a ‘how we’re doing, this is
what we did, congratulations to
this group,’” he says. “In many
ways, it’s getting easier and easier, and it’s because we’re taking
the time to celebrate these little
wins, and those add up into big
wins.”

Weber says that living the
vision and celebrating successes spreads enthusiasm across
the company.

“It’s contagious,” Weber says.

HOW TO REACH: Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio Inc., (800) 942-3577 or www.goodwillclevecanton.org