Newly Published!

SEVEN TURNING POINTS by SUSAN GROSS

Recognize when your organization is at a pivotal point, understand the underlying dynamics, and be prepared with concrete actions to move the organization to the next level. 

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To learn more, read the book synopsis  or see what these seven turning points are.

Interested in having Susan Gross speak or give a workshop on Seven Turning Points at your organization? Visit Workshops and Speaking Engagements.

BOOK SYNOPSIS

Pivotal Transitions for Changing Times 

Hating to say "no" and reluctant to pass up any opportunity, your  organization has grown swiftly and steadily - until the recession hit.  Much of that growth has been reactive, opportunistic, and simply taking on more and more, without proactive planning and without any clear, coherent strategic framework.  As a result, the organization is now moving in so many different directions that it's hard to see what its core work is or how its projects connect or add up.  Already overworked and overwhelmed, the staff dreads impending budget cuts that will stretch them even thinner.  They know they have to set priorities and cut back but have divergent ideas about what the organization's focus should be.  Everyone agrees that some programs must be cut, as long as the programs aren't theirs.  Everyone knows the organization needs focus but they struggle with how to get there.

Sound familiar?  This is one of the pivotal moments that are described in Susan Gross' new book, Seven Turning Points: Leading through Pivotal Transitions in Organizational Life.  Gross defines turning points as critical junctures at which organizations must adjust their leadership, management, structure, governance, and operating style to fit their changed circumstances. Based on Gross' thirty years of real-life experience strengthening social justice advocacy organizations, the book says that organizations will know they've reached a turning point when the structure, management approach, leadership style, and organizational culture that once worked just fine begin to sow a host of new tensions and problems. 

The book reassures executive directors, staffs, and boards that these problems are not their fault but are the inevitable consequences of internal or external change or growth.  It also emphasizes that these are not separate, unrelated problems that can be addressed one by one.  Rather, they are interconnected (often compounding or reinforcing one another to form an interlocking system) and signal that an organization requires broad, systemic adjustment if it's to move to a greater level of effectiveness, impact, and sustainability.

Written in vivid portraits of organizational life, readers will easily find themselves in this book and gain new insights into how to address organizational issues.  The book allows readers to recognize the characteristic pattern of problems that emerge at each turning point and flag the need for change, and it offers readers practical, usable advice on what to expect, what to do, and how to adapt.  It enables and prepares leaders to start taking action before tensions intensify and escalate into full-blown crises.  The book spells out the main adjustments that need to be made at each turning point and emphasizes that organizations can find themselves at more than one turning point at once.  The book also warns about the counter-tensions that changes are likely to produce and suggests how to manage them.

Seven Turning Points offers a new analytical framework that goes beyond the life cycle model and recognizes that organizations do not always evolve in an orderly fashion, graduating from one life cycle to the next.  The book provides a more fluid, dynamic, nuanced, and non-linear way of analyzing how organizations develop that resonates with the realities and vagaries of nonprofit life. 

Executives, boards, and nonprofit consultants and coaches will find a new way of looking at organizational development and gain new tools to manage change.  Funders will better understand the challenges their grantees face and will gain ideas about the types of grants that will help grantees successfully navigate these turning points.  It is an accessible, readable teaching text for nonprofit management programs, leadership development programs, and executive management programs that move students from the abstract to the down-to-earth stories of what really happens in organizations dealing with change.

Visit the Seven Turning Points book website to learn more about how to take your organization to a new level of effectiveness, impact, and staying power.

THE SEVEN TURNING POINTS

Turning Point 1: Do we need to get organized?
A loose, family style of operating leads to disorganization and a lack of professionalism or accountability. The organization needs to develop tighter, more formal structures and systems.

Turning Point 2: Do we need infrastructure?
The management needs of an organization outstrip its executive director's management skills. The organization needs to build infrastructure and strengthen management.

Turning Point 3: Do we need to let go?
A founding volunteer board hires its first executive director but finds it hard to delegate and adjust to a less involved role. The organization's board needs to detach itself from day-to-day management and hand over authority to the chief executive.

Turning Point 4: Do we need to focus?
Opportunistic, unplanned growth results in an absence of focus and priorities and spreads an organization too thin. The organization needs to acquire discipline and focus on a few key areas.

Turning Point 5: Do we need to decentralize power?
Strong central direction becomes micromanagement, top-down control, and over-dependency on the leader. The organization needs to decentralize management and distribute power widely among staff.

Turning Point 6: Do we need to recapture our core?
Decentralization goes too far, splitting the organization into autonomous units that have little or no connection, coherence, or coordination. The organization needs to rediscover its center, its core purpose, and consolidate its activities and structure accordingly.

Turning Point 7: How do we move on?
A longtime, cherished executive director must prepare to step down. Meanwhile, the organization must figure out how to move on without losing momentum.