Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1533364
"Best Ideas & Key Philosophies" from 2024 Business Leaders of the Year Business Leader of the Year (Large Nonprofit) David Connell, President & CEO, YMCA of Central Massachusetts 1. People-Centric Culture: Prioritize employees' needs and motivations to significantly enhance productivity, engagement, and retention. Create an environment that fosters growth, learning, and purpose for businesses and maximizes the potential of your workforce. 2. Core Values: Make your core values your guidepost! At the YMCA, caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility form the foundation of ethical behavior and positive interactions. Caring involves compassion and altruism; honesty emphasizes transparency and truthfulness; respect entails valuing others and oneself equally; responsibility requires accountability and integrity. 3. Leadership: Lead with conviction – guiding, motivating, and inspiring others to pursue a common goal. This incorporates vision, empathy, and decisiveness to lead and empower teams effectively. Embrace multicultural leadership by identifying, engaging, developing, promoting, and retaining multicultural staff and volunteers. Create a pipeline of diverse leaders at all levels, ensuring that leadership reflects the diverse communities served. 4. Growth Mindset: Espouse a growth mindset and work to ensure that abilities and intelligence are developed through dedication and hard work. It encourages resilience, learning from failures, and viewing challenges as opportunities for growth. 5. Willingness to Form Partnerships and Collaborations: Bring all the voices to the table and include them. Be open to forming partnerships and collaborations essential for growth and innovation. This will model valuing teamwork, sharing resources, and leveraging the collective strengths to achieve common goals. 6. Inspire: Inspire people to deliver impact alongside you. Tell a story that can never be forgotten – where your passion and words compel people to invest in your cause. Inspire people to see the impact of their efforts and contributions. 7. Persistence and Resilience: Bounce back from failure, stay focused on objectives, and keep your eye on the prize. Two essential traits - persistence and resilience – are critical to the determination never to give up and the relentless pursuit of goals despite obstacles or setbacks. 8. Need to Know: When possible, resist the temptation to problem-solve immediately! Seek knowledge and understanding before making decisions or taking action. Emphasize the value of curiosity, critical thinking, and continuous learning to make informed choices and navigate complex situations effectively. 9. Enthusiasm: Use your enthusiasm to foster passion, energy, and a positive outlook that can inspire others and fuel personal growth. Approach tasks with excitement, optimism, and purpose to maximize engagement and productivity. 10. Strive for Success: Remember these ten words: If better is possible, good is no longer an option. Business Leader of the Year (Small Nonprofit) Connie Askin, CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters Central Mass and MetroWest MY BELIEFS, MY QUOTES: 1. We are in the relationship business. Organizations are communities of individuals, serving individuals. The golden rule is to treat others as you want to be treated. To create lasting relationships, use the platinum rule: treat others the way they want to be treated. 2. Non-profits exist in an ecosystem, and we all do better with a "bounty" not scarcity mindset. The problems we address are so massive and so important, no one person, no non-profit, no corporation, and no government can solve them alone. Collaborating with partners in a spirit of generosity moves our mission further than competing for dollars. 3. We are all made of stardust. We are collections of hopes and dreams, aspiring to a higher purpose. 4. Ambiguity is your friend. Whenever there is change or ambiguity, there is opportunity to find a new path to success. 5. Happiness is a positive cash flow. Need I say more? FAVORITE OTHER QUOTES 6. "Vision without execution equals hallucination." Attributed to Ben Franklin. As our staff and Board of Directors are currently engaged in developing our next strategic plan, this guides us in both leading with an ambitious vision, and to mindfully planning step-by-step execution. 7. "Strategic change doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calendar." Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive. Related to the above, one-to-one weekly meetings with staff start with 'what will make you feel successful this week?' At the end of the week, if you feel like you have accomplished something, you'll not only feel job satisfaction, you will have incrementally moved closer to a larger goal. 8. "When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say, "Wow, that was an adventure," not "Wow, I sure felt safe." Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of Github. This tracks to my curiosity: when I travel to a foreign country, I try to speak the language even if I know I am butchering it. I paint even though I am no good at all— this is not false modesty and of course I find satisfaction in doing things well. However, it's freeing to have a wonderful time just chasing an interest even if (especially if) it's a little uncomfortable. 9. "I don't care what you know until I know that you care." Gerald Chertavian. Passion is essential in our work, so this is the key question I look to have answered when recruiting professional staff or board members. 10. "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." Mario Andretti, champion race car driver. I used to say, "if you don't fall down occasionally, you aren't skiing hard enough," but after some bruised ribs, I've revised.