Management In A Changing World E-Book

Jakada Imani

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 432

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Magnify your real-world impact as you lead others in a social change organization In Management In a Changing World: How to Manage for Equity, Sustainability, and Results renowned social changemakers Jakada Imani, Monna Wong, and Bex Ahuja deliver an effective and practical how-to guide for the equitable management of nonprofit and social change organizations. In the book, you'll learn how to multiply your impact by using the authors' insightful strategies for delegation, goal setting, and team culture-building. You'll also discover how to fairly exercise power in an environment that spans racial, generational, gender, and other identity divides. Management In a Changing World shows you how to: * Create work-life balance for your team members in an age when we have virtually unlimited access to our colleagues' attention and time * Support team members through life's challenges while still meeting the demands your social change organization faces * Bridge the gap between your intentions and your real-world impact with actionable advice, tools, and resources An essential resource for rookie and veteran managers, executive directors, and CEOs, Management In a Changing World will also earn a place on the bookshelves of organizers managing teams of volunteers.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

WHO WE ARE

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

CHAPTER 1: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT

OUR

CONSPIRE‐AND‐ALIGN

APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT

MINDSETS OF EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT

THE EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT TOOLKIT

KEY POINTS OF EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT FUNDAMENTALS

NOTES

CHAPTER 2: BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH CHECK‐INS

THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF RELATIONSHIP‐BUILDING

MANAGING SKIP‐LEVEL RELATIONSHIPS

RESOLVING CONFLICT AND REPAIRING RELATIONSHIPS

PERSPECTIVE‐TAKING

KEY POINTS OF RELATIONSHIP‐BUILDING AND CHECK‐INS

APPENDIX TOOLS

NOTES

CHAPTER 3: DELEGATING EFFECTIVELY

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE DELEGATION

THE DELEGATION CYCLE

KEY POINTS OF DELEGATING

APPENDIX TOOLS

CHAPTER 4: DEFINING ROLES AND GOALS

HOW TO CREATE CLEAR AND MEANINGFUL ROLES

WHY GOALS MATTER

KEY POINTS OF DEFINING ROLES AND GOALS

APPENDIX TOOLS

NOTES

CHAPTER 5: MAKING DECISIONS AND PRIORITIZING

HOW TO MAKE DECISIONS EFFECTIVELY

USING FAIR PROCESS FOR INCLUSIVE DECISION‐MAKING

MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT YOUR TIME AND ENERGY

MAKING DECISIONS IN TIMES OF CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY

KEY POINTS OF DECISION‐MAKING AND PRIORITIZING

NOTE

CHAPTER 6: HIRING AND BUILDING YOUR TEAM

CREATING THE ROLE

BUILDING A STRONG, DIVERSE POOL OF CANDIDATES

DESIGNING THE HIRING PROCESS

MAKING THE DECISION

ONBOARDING

KEY POINTS OF BUILDING YOUR TEAM

APPENDIX TOOLS

NOTES

CHAPTER 7: GIVING FEEDBACK AND EVALUATING PERFORMANCE

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK

TYPES OF FEEDBACK

TOOLS FOR GIVING FEEDBACK

CSAW

THE 2X2 SYSTEM

STRATEGIES FOR RECEIVING FEEDBACK WELL

PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS

KEY POINTS OF GIVING FEEDBACK

APPENDIX TOOLS

NOTES

CHAPTER 8: INVESTING IN PEOPLE

WHY INVEST?

PRINCIPLES FOR INVESTING IN PEOPLE

HOW TO DEVELOP PEOPLE

TOOLS AND PRACTICES

HOW TO RETAIN STAFF

KEY POINTS OF INVESTING IN PEOPLE

NOTES

CHAPTER 9: ADDRESSING PERFORMANCEPROBLEMS

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND

FOUR STEPS TO ADDRESS PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS

STEP 2: CHECK IN WITH THE STAFF PERSON

STEP 3: ASSESS THE PROBLEM

STEP 4: DECIDE

KEY POINTS OF ADDRESSING PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS

APPENDIX TOOLS

NOTES

CHAPTER 10: MANAGING UP AND SIDEWAYS

TOOLS FOR MANAGING UP AND SIDEWAYS

KEY POINTS OF MANAGING UP AND SIDEWAYS

NOTES

CHAPTER 11: BUILDING A HEALTHY CULTURE

ELEMENTS OF A HEALTHY CULTURE

PRACTICES FOR CULTIVATING A HEALTHY CULTURE

TRANSFORMING AN UNHEALTHY CULTURE

HEALTHY CULTURES CAN EVOLVE, TOO!

KEY POINTS OF BUILDING A HEALTHY CULTURE

NOTES

CHAPTER 12: CONCLUSION

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JAKADA IMANI

MONNA WONG

BEX AHUJA

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 3

Table 3.1 Sample Conference MOCHA.

Table 3.2 Sample Cascading MOCHA.

Chapter 4

Table 4.1 Sample SMARTIE goals.

Table 4.2 Methods of Setting Goals.

Chapter 5

Table 5.1 Pros/Cons/Mitigations Chart.

Table 5.2 Urgent‐Important Matrix.

Chapter 6

Table 6.1 Sample Hiring Rubric.

Chapter 10

Table 10.1 Complaints versus Proposals.

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

FIGURE 1.1

Examples of PTR.

Chapter 3

FIGURE 3.1

Context Chart:

How involved should you be in this project?

Chapter 5

FIGURE 5.1

Decision‐Making Spectrum. Choose one of these decision‐making mod

...

Chapter 9

FIGURE 9.1

A flowchart for the steps you might take to address performance p

...

Guide

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

About the Authors

Index

Wiley End User License Agreement

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JAKADA IMANIMONNA WONGBEX AHUJA

Management in a Changing World

HOW TO MANAGE FOR Equity, Sustainability, and Results

Copyright © 2023 by The Management Center. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781394165797 (Paperback)ISBN 9781394165827 (ePub)ISBN 9781394165841 (ePDF)

Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Kiely Houston

FOREWORD

This book is a successor to Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results, which I co‐wrote with Alison Green back in 2012. We received really positive feedback about that book over the years, and I reveled in…well, as much fame and fortune as you get from writing a popular nonprofit management book.

Why, then, am I so excited to welcome this new book—even as it pushes aside the original one (and all the glamor that came with being its author)?

Don't get me wrong: I think the previous book did many things well. As with all of our work at The Management Center (TMC), our book was focused on how leaders can deliver results that move the needle toward social change. It was deeply grounded in the reality that managers face (which Alison and I knew from experience), and it often challenged conventional wisdom. Readers told us they found it supportive, humble, real about how hard things can be—and even funny at times. Above all, people told us they appreciated that our book was deeply practical and filled with concrete ways to put our lessons into action. I still send excerpts of that book to my coaching clients to help them through tough spots. In many ways, I'm still very proud of it.

But it also badly needed an update. In one section on how to stay organized, for instance, we talked about using written lists and paper folders—a little outdated for the digital age! More substantively, TMC's coaching and training content evolved significantly over the years as we developed new insights from our work with clients. I kept a running list of things to add to a revision—like the pros/cons/mitigations chart, the “urgent vs. important” matrix, and the idea of “gold star” vs. “good enough,” all of which you'll find in this book.

Most importantly, the last book had serious limitations that would have been harder to fix with a simple revision and impossible for me to do as well as this book does. Our original book was almost completely silent about race, equity, inclusion, and managing across lines of power and difference. It talked a lot about results (as this book also does), but not nearly enough about how to get them equitably and sustainably. I've always believed that management is about excellence and heart—that managers can and should be able to get great results while also being decent human beings and living their values at work. But the previous book was too easy to interpret as being all about excellence, not so much heart.

Looking back, I didn't take enough time and space to make the implicit explicit (a phrase you'll hear often in this book) about many things. I'm excited, for instance, that this book has an entire chapter on relationships and another on culture (which we talked about in the previous book, but too briefly). I love that we've turned SMART goals into SMARTIE (adding “inclusive” and “equitable”), and that every chapter has tools to help you check your biases.

The changes I've mentioned are like adding new wings to a house. In many ways, though, this book is more like building a new house from a different blueprint, and so it was important that Jakada, Monna, and Bex began fresh in writing this one. When we wrote the original book, I didn't understand nearly as much about equity and inclusion as I do now (though I still have a long way to go!)—and I learned a lot of what I know now from the coauthors of this book.

I can't believe how lucky I am to have worked as closely as I have with Jakada, Monna, and Bex. All three of them are not only brilliant and deeply knowledgeable practitioners of management and movement‐building, but they're also some of the warmest and most genuine people I know. All three of them eventually took on bigger roles at TMC than they started with, and they all played pivotal roles in making TMC a better, more inclusive organization.

I'm forever grateful to Bex for working so closely with me during the steepest part of my learning curve around issues of equity and inclusion. We had many (often difficult) conversations about equity‐related topics. Bex always had the strength and courage to keep pushing when I disagreed or didn't get it, and they did so with tremendous grace and patience. I loved every chance we got to roll up our sleeves and work directly together; we played off of each other's ideas and instincts in a way that led us to much better outcomes. As I told Bex multiple times, I don't know that I've ever worked with anyone more talented than they are. Maybe even more impressively and most tellingly, after meeting Bex, my (then‐little) kids constantly asked when Bex would come over again to play marching band in the living room.

Then there's Monna, one of the funniest people I've had the privilege of working with, and one of the best at getting to the essence of an idea. Whenever I had an idea Monna had reservations about, she'd ask probing questions that helped me think about it differently and sparked awesome conversations. She thinks deeply and critically, kicking the tires and pulling all the threads until she comes up with the best possible synthesis of all your ideas, and the best way to phrase it (often incorporating a hilarious metaphor about food). By making ideas about management funny and palatable, Monna gets readers to do the management equivalent of eating their vegetables. Monna also helped me keep in shape during the isolating days of the COVID pandemic by taunting me through her latest planking challenge.

Finally, I couldn't be more honored that Jakada is my successor as CEO of The Management Center. From the time that Jakada first started at TMC, I was struck by his wisdom, brilliance, and commitment to doing what it takes to bring about justice in the world. Jakada embodies excellence and heart—or love and rigor, as he much more eloquently puts it. He's the perfect messenger for the things I wish I'd done a better job communicating in the first book, and the perfect person to take everything The Management Center does to a higher level than I ever could have. He was an incredible partner during my transition out of my role at TMC after 15 wonderful years, and he has done an awesome job navigating the complexities of his new role and leading the organization forward. It can be hard for founders to step away from an organization they created, but with Jakada, I was thrilled to get out of the way and watch him shine.

And now, I can't wait to get out of the way and let you read what these three have written.

—Jerry Hauser, founding CEO of The Management Center

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book couldn't have happened without the labor, time, energy, love, stories, insights, and support of many people.

Thank you to Emily Crockett for wading through this with us. You asked great questions, pushed us to get clearer, found all the footnotes, and stuck it out until the words sang on the page—all with so much heart and humor and sheer determination to get the damn thing done. Thank you for wrangling our ideas until they made sense (and being honest when they didn't!). Most importantly, thank you for being a true partner in the work and caring about this book as much as we do.

Thank you to Jerry Hauser and Alison Green for your incredible work on Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results, which made it possible for this book to exist.

Jerry, thank you for everything from warmly inviting each of us into the TMC fold to kicking off this book with a beautiful foreword. Your consistency, integrity, and sense of responsibility for being extremely helpful and practical have been an indelible part of TMC's “secret sauce.” We hope we did right by you in preserving it.

To the TMC team, thank you for sharing stories, reviewing chapters, giving pep talks, and many pomodoros (among countless other things). Thank you for the incredible care that you bring to this work and our TMC community. Thank you Addae Kwakye, Adriana Barboza, Alex McNeill, Alyssa Schuren, Amy Faulring, Amy Sonnie, Andie Corso, Andrea Stouder, Aquiles Damirón‐Alcántara, Ashley Pinedo‐Carlson, Avione Pichon, Breanna Wright, Carmen McClaskey, Chantá Parker, Charlie Riebeling, Cicely Horsham‐Brathwaite, Cindy Kang, Cosmo Fujiyama Ghaznavi, Court Ruark, Deb Sherman, Diana Cerda, Ebony Ross, Emily Hicks‐Rotella, Emma Shaver, Hanna Campbell, Jackson Darling‐Palacios, Jamilyn Bailey, Janet Namkung, Jasmeet Saini, Jessica Anderson, JK Nelson, Johari Farrar, José Luis Marantes, Justine Xu, Katie Steele, Kevin Carty‐Tolentino, Marissa Graciosa, Mattie Weiss, Megan Hanson, Nancy Hanks, Niamoja Morgan, Qasim Davis, Reilly Furellis, Sandra Oliver, Sarah Hodgdon, Sarah Storm, Serena Savarirayan, Stacy McAuliffe, Stephen McClain, Sumaiya Sarawat, Tamara Osivwemu, Valerie Evans, Valerie Jiggetts, Viridiana Safty, Wendy Guyton, and Yamani Yansa.

Thank you to our former colleagues who shaped our thinking about effective management through modeling, rigorous discussion, and experimentation. Special thanks to Ben Goldfarb, Delan Ellington, Elizabeth Brown Riordan, Emily Berens, Jen Chau Fontán, Jenny Griggs, Jordan Pina, Kendra Featherstone, Maria Peña, Marilyn Figueroa, Melanie Rivera, Michelle Ngwafon, Naomi Long, Peggy Flanagan, and Shawna Wells.

Thank you to TMC's original POC caucus—Iimay Ho, Isabelle Moses, Joyce Yin, Melinda Spooner, and Tasia Ahuja Smith—and Amy Faulring and Jackson Darling‐Palacios, for planting, nurturing, and sowing the seeds to make equity a must‐have for effective management.

Thank you to the TMC board for your vision, support, and guidance.

Thank you to Tanya O. Williams and Terry Keleher for your teachings, consultation, and influence during a crucial point in TMC's racial equity journey. Terry, thank you for choice points. Tanya, thank you for strategies for authenticity.

Thank you to our partners at Wiley—Brian Neill, Deborah Schindlar, and Kim Wimpsett—for your flexibility, support, and patience throughout this process, as well as for the opportunity to share this book with the world.

Thank you to Kiely Houston for capturing the spirit of this book with beautiful illustrations that match the nuance, vibrance, and heart of our advice.

Thank you to Chelsea Judith Wilson, Court Ruark, Jenny Griggs, Melanie Anne Conway, Melanie Rivera, and Rodrigo Heng‐Lehtinen, for test‐driving our manuscript and sharing honest and thoughtful feedback.

Thank you to Becca McKelvy, Benn Marine, Gabe Gonzalez, Jami Westerhold, Kelly Bates, Lily Pham, Linda Seng, Megan Mullay, Molly Griffard, and Rodrigo Heng‐Lehtinen for your recollections and insight.

Thank you to everyone we each had the honor and privilege to work with, especially our teammates at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Lavender Phoenix, the National LGBTQ Task Force, Rockwood Leadership Institute, and the Mainers United for Marriage campaign. Thank you for the feedback, support, advice, and grace that helped us grow as managers and leaders.

Thank you to the mentors, elders, and ancestors, who asked questions with no easy answers, gave advice (even when we didn't ask for it!), and pushed us to do better. Thank you for laying the groundwork, for being the shoulders on which we stand, and for passing the baton so we could carry the work forward.

Thank you to everyone who's conspiring and aligning, making good trouble, striving to be a more effective manager, and showing up every day to fight for freedom and justice.

And finally, a few personal acknowledgments from each of us:

Bex:

To my beautiful and brilliant wife, Tasia Ahuja Smith, whom I met working at TMC back in 2014, who was my teacher on equity back then, and who still is to this day. Thank you for always patiently and lovingly pointing to a deeper level of understanding and nuance in equity work. This book belongs to you. Thank you to my mother, Janet Wu, for your steadfast modeling of humility, responsibility, faith, prayer, and hard work. To my team at Rockwood, thank you for showing me what it means to set a loving table for tired and weary movement leaders, and to Darlene Nipper for scooping me up and allowing me to witness your courageous, visionary leadership every day. To my family, Anita, Randy, Zach, Max, Jim Lia, Maya, and Jayla; and the Bloat and niblings, Juno, Mika, and Jerome, thank you for giving me home and hope whenever we gather.

Monna:

Thank you to all my people, my family. For the dreams and schemes, lifelong friendships, deep hangs, masterminds, snacks, childcare, commune, chats, dancing, and shenanigans. Thank you for letting me be, even as I am becoming. The Portland Potates and my APIENC crew: thank you for the joy, abundance, and badass work, for trusting me, for being my teachers and comrades. Thank you to the TMC content crew, for holding it down and caring for each other. Thank you, Juno, for your freedom and fearlessness. Thank you, Mandy, my ultimate co‐conspirator, the one who sees how the sausage gets made. Thanks for enabling me to put my full body, brain, and heart into this project. I could not have done this without your love, labor, and most of all, our two‐person psychology. Thank you for the life we've co‐created, full of delighting in ridiculousness, possibility, and adventure.

Jakada:

Thank you to my family for supporting me to be a leader: Laura, Jael, Tehya, Nyame, Kioni, Phoenix, and Eli, you all give me hope and ground me in what is important. My crew from EBC: Ying‐sun, Malakia, Sumayyah, Ian, Nicole, Diana, Zach, Van, Kristin, Glenn, the members of Families for Books Not Bars, and so many more. To all of my mentors and elders who invested in me when I was hard‐headed and undisciplined: Shiree, Rev. Liza, Nell, Boots Riley, Raquel, brother Greg, and Elisha. You led by example, offered me wisdom, and reminded me to always root in values. Last, I thank all the young, uncompromising activists and organizers who refuse to settle for conventional wisdom, broken models, or stale traditions. You give me hope that the future can be better than the present. I see you, I recognize you, and I thank Spirit for you. Ashe, ashe, ashe.

INTRODUCTION

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

—Proverb

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you're reading this book, you're here to make a difference. You're working for immigrant rights, workers’ rights, healthcare reform, and reproductive justice. You're fighting to end poverty, voter disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, and climate crisis. You're striving to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people; disabled people; and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). You're pushing to make government work better for people of all identities. You're shaping the next generation's minds and lives. You have a vision of change and possibility for the communities you care about—and you feel a sacred responsibility to do all you can to make it a reality.

If you're reading this book, you also have the great responsibility—and the great power—of being a manager. Maybe you've just been promoted to a leadership role at a nonprofit or school. Maybe you were just elected or appointed into office. Maybe you've been at this for 30 years. Wherever you are in your career, you're looking for guidance on using your power and responsibility more effectively.

In today's rapidly changing world, managers need this kind of guidance more than ever. We've seen dramatically shifting expectations of what power and responsibility should look like in the workplace—especially those focused on social justice. A series of reckonings on race, inequality, and abuses of power have forced more people to grapple with questions like:

How can we exercise power responsibly across racial, generational, gender, and other differences in identities?

How can we balance supporting our team members through life challenges with ensuring we meet our deliverables?

How can we achieve “work‐life balance” when video calls in our living rooms and 24/7 email access on our phones have collapsed the boundaries between “work” and “life”?

In a time of rapidly escalating climate crisis and relentless displays of injustice, how can we avoid succumbing to feelings of overwhelm, numbness, or defeat?

As managers, sometimes it feels like the weight of these questions is on our shoulders all at once. We might feel responsible not only for getting the work done, but also for our team members’ well‐being. We might feel unmoored and disoriented by constantly shifting circumstances and continually rising expectations.

We're not wrong to feel that way. It's a lot to deal with. Management is hard enough work in stable and familiar contexts. It's harder in times of upheaval when we realize that some of our familiar professional, cultural, and social norms no longer serve us—and maybe never did.

And if you've never experienced good management firsthand (as too many of us haven't), it's exponentially harder. After all, if your past managers were ineffective, how are you supposed to know what effective management looks and feels like, much less how to practice it?

That's where we come in. We wrote this book to offer a model of effective management. Whether you're a new or seasoned manager, an executive director, or an organizer working with volunteers, and whether you manage one person or a hundred people, this book offers insights and actionable advice for you. We'll give you the tools, strategies, and examples you need to learn the fundamentals of effective management. This book can help you lead your team with less stress, more ease, and better results.

Effective management is hard work, but it's also a privilege, an honor, and a sacred responsibility. Effective management can transform people and organizations. It can make (or break) our work and results. As managers, we are entrusted to be stewards of people's time and energy, to facilitate learning and growth, and to achieve the goals we need to create change. Effective management is hard work—but it's worth doing, and you are absolutely capable of doing it.

WHO WE ARE

We are the current CEO (Jakada Imani, he/him), the current chief content officer (Monna Wong, she/her), and the former managing partner of the training team (Bex Ahuja, they/them) of The Management Center (TMC).

TMC has been supporting managers and leaders in nonprofits, government, and schools since 2006. We have worked with thousands of teams and organizations. We've coached hundreds of senior leaders and trained tens of thousands of people. We've worked to create, curate, and refine best practices and resources about management—so you don't have to reinvent the wheel or reinterpret traditional management concepts for a social justice context.

Here's a bit more about each of us:

Jakada

grew up poor in Oakland, California, in the home of the Black Panther Party, mentored by former Panthers and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leaders. When Jakada became executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC), he realized two things: first, his knowledge of strategy, organizing, and alliance‐building didn't equip him with the management skills to help EBC deliver on its mission; and second, none of the traditional management resources he turned to could help him build and lead a Black‐led, multiracial organization like EBC. So he learned by doing—forging a set of management practices rooted in love and rigor. He joined TMC as a coach and trainer in 2017 and became CEO in 2021.

Monna

is the daughter of refugees from Cambodia who settled in Queens, New York. She got her career start as a field organizer on LGBTQ campaigns (with Bex as her first manager!). In 2012, as a regional field director of the Mainers United for Marriage campaign, she learned to lead a team to victory without reinforcing the churn‐and‐burn culture of traditional campaigns. She and her team became excellent at getting people to do hard things together—usually with a healthy dose of joy and laughter. Monna joined TMC in 2018 as the vice president of special projects and has been the chief content officer since 2020.

Bex

was raised in a strong matriarchal Chinese immigrant family, bouncing between Long Island, New York, and Manhattan's Chinatown. Bex spent nine years at the National LGBTQ Task Force, where they had a manager who always took the time to teach, and who genuinely understood what was hard about their work. Bex came to understand management through organizing and building people power—which grounded them in the mindset of “I can't do this without you.” Bex joined TMC in 2013 as a trainer and became the managing partner of our training team in 2019. Bex left TMC to join Rockwood Leadership Institute as their managing director in 2021. They returned to work on this book because of their instrumental role in evolving TMC's thinking and curriculum about racial equity in management.

The three of us don't share the same backgrounds, but we have some key experiences in common. We all have deep experience working with and for our communities to advance social justice. All three of us have a talent for getting work done with others. And earlier in our careers, we might have been overlooked by recruiters looking for “traditional candidates.” None of us come with straight, white, middle‐class experiences or sensibilities. Our parents never crafted résumés, wrote cover letters, or attended networking events. We come from hustlers who paid the bills through seasonal work and cleaning hotel rooms. We didn't excel academically. We learned how to operate in the working world through the grace and investment of mentors, participating in youth development programs, and organizing with queer and trans folks, poor people, and people of color.

All three of us have experienced the downsides of management in the social change sphere: having too much to do and too few resources, experiencing vicarious trauma and firsthand burnout, and putting up with too‐low pay and too‐long hours. We've worked with inspirational leaders whose management struggles either got in the way of realizing their grand visions or wreaked havoc for their teams in the process (or both). We know that managing can go from feeling amazing one day to feeling so horrible that you're tempted to quit. We have struggled with insecurity, loneliness, and imposter syndrome. We have been tired, overwhelmed, and unsure of how to make it through. (Bex once seriously considered quitting social justice work to become a firefighter!)

But we stuck it out—out of love for our people and commitment to our movements, and because we've also experienced the best of what social change work offers. We've witnessed people doing hard work to get great results while caring for each other. We know it's possible to work your butt off and preserve a sense of respect and camaraderie. We've seen what a diverse group of talented and committed people can achieve together. And we've seen the critical role that managers play in making this possible.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book aims to demystify effective management by offering concrete advice to help you manage in an equitable, sustainable, and results‐driven way. From hiring well to giving feedback to cultivating belonging, we want to help you and your team achieve what you set out to do.

We get it if you don't have time to read the whole book from cover to cover. So here's where to turn if you're looking for help on particular topics:

Chapter 1

: The Fundamentals of Effective Management—

Explanations of key concepts, including what

effective management

means (hint: it's in the book title!).

Chapter 2

: Building Relationships—

How to lay the foundations for a strong working relationship, including conducting an effective check‐in meeting—and why check‐ins are essential.

Chapter 3

: Delegating Effectively—

How to assign work to others and set them up for success.

Chapter 4

: Defining Roles and Goals—

How to define people's job responsibilities and set goals like a SMARTIE.

Chapter 5

: Making Decisions and Prioritizing—

Advice for making the big and little choices you'll face as a manager—from major strategic decisions to using your calendar to prioritize.

Chapter 6

: Hiring and Building Your Team—

How to get great talent by running an equitable hiring process, from the job posting to the interviews to the offer.

Chapter 7

: Giving Feedback and Evaluating Performance—

How to improve your relationship and results by giving regular, actionable feedback, and how to conduct performance reviews.

Chapter 8

: Investing in People—

How to develop your staff to grow their competencies. Plus, a bit about retention.

Chapter 9

: Addressing Performance Problems—

How to identify performance problems and decide what to do about them.

Chapter 10

: Managing Up and Sideways—

How to get what you need to succeed when you don't have formal authority.

Chapter 11

: Building a Healthy Culture—

How to create an environment that instills inclusion and belonging and gets you the results you need. Plus, how to transform an unhealthy culture.

Many of these chapters include appendix sections with sample tools and worksheets. You can find even more resources like this on our website, www.managementcenter.org.

We don't promise to have all the answers to your management challenges, but we do offer some fundamental tools that can help you craft solutions and meet your team's needs. As you read this book, remember that even management “experts” like us have been where you are. And even now, we are growing and figuring it out with you.

We appreciate you for every time you pushed through a tough day and did your best. Most of us have had that one manager, teacher, coach, or mentor whose impact transformed our lives. You could be that person to someone. Thank you for caring, thank you for picking up this book, and thank you for being on this journey with us.

CHAPTER 1THE FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT

Management is the art of getting things done with and through other people. The bigger our aspirations, the more we need to work with others to achieve them.

But under many traditional management approaches, people are treated more like machine parts than, well, people. And this is no accident—many modern‐day management practices have roots in U.S. slavery and worker exploitation.1 They place profit and a narrow definition of productivity above all else—including the well‐being and dignity of employees, the greater good of society, and the health of our planet.

Following the COVID‐19 pandemic and the rise of Black Lives Matter and other movements for justice, we've seen some long‐overdue pushback against this model. More people are reevaluating their priorities. Many are deciding that too much of their time and energy is spent at work.

People are also expecting better from their employers—as they should! Now, more than ever, especially in social justice spaces, people want employers to practice what they preach about equity, sustainability, and justice. Staff and managers alike want to be valued as human beings, not treated like cogs in a machine. We want to do purpose‐driven work—without sacrificing living wages, good benefits, and reasonable hours for the sake of “doing what we love.” We want to build authentic connections with our colleagues. We want managers who believe in us and help us realize our potential.

At The Management Center (TMC), we believe that truly effective management means living up to these expectations—and getting important things done. This chapter covers our overall approach to management, the dimensions and mindsets of effective management, and some of the fundamental tools we use to practice it.

OUR CONSPIRE‐AND‐ALIGN APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT

If managing is about getting things done with and through other people, most traditional approaches are almost all “through” and no “with.” Staff are treated like highly skilled automatons and are rarely consulted for their input.2 This is often referred to as a command‐and‐control style of management.

The command‐and‐control approach is too inflexible and impersonal for those of us doing complex, human‐centered work on systemic and social change. This kind of work thrives on collaboration, trial and error, and relationship‐building—all of which a command‐and‐control approach stifles.

We take a different approach. We call it conspire and align. It means coming together with our team members for a collective purpose and getting on the same page about realizing that purpose. As managers, we view staff as partners—people we exercise power with, not over. We're not drill sergeants barking orders; we're in a team huddle, whispering plans and working out plays.

We chose the word conspire deliberately. For one thing, we believe folks working for justice, equity, and social change should be getting into “good trouble,” as the late U.S. House Representative John Lewis put it. We're up to something—and that something usually involves trying to topple a status quo that doesn't serve us.

Conspire is also meaningful for another reason. Back in 2007, Jakada participated in a Rockwood Leadership Institute year‐long program. In one of its final sessions, then‐president Akaya Windwood led the group in a breathing exercise. She said, “This is the meaning of conspire—to breathe together. To be so deep in it with each other that we share the same air. This is the level of closeness—of alignment—that we aspire to as leaders and as movements.”

It's true; the word conspire also comes from the Latin conspirare, which means “to breathe together,” and shares a root with the words inspire and aspire. When we conspire, we co‐inspire ourselves and our team with a shared, co‐created vision of success. When we align, we get in formation—not like battle formations, but the way birds flock, dancers get in their place, and people assemble at marches and actions.3 When we conspire and align, everyone understands where we're going and our role in getting there.

When we reframe management in this way—and create structures and practices to support it—a new world opens up. We're no longer limited to the brilliance of one person. When a team works well together, its members’ combined powers are greater than the sum of their parts. It's still up to us to own our power and responsibility—but it's not up to us to have all the answers.

The conspire‐and‐align approach can be used in both nonhierarchical settings4 and in places with positional power—the kind of power most people think of in the workplace, where an executive director has more power within the organization than a middle manager, who has more power than their direct report. Conspire and align is about recognizing power, being honest about it, and exercising it thoughtfully.

Many of you might already take this approach. If you've ever brainstormed a vision of success with your team, sought input before making a decision, or tapped your team's knowledge and expertise to solve a tricky problem, you've conspired and aligned.

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT AND WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE5

Author and activist Tema Okun names 15 “White Supremacy Culture Characteristics” that white dominant culture holds up as virtues.6 Those characteristics are perfectionism, a sense of urgency, defensiveness and/or denial, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, the belief in one “right” way, paternalism, either/or binary thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, progress defined as more, the right to profit, objectivity, and the right to comfort.

Packaged together and left unchecked, these are some of the worst habits of ineffective management and toxic workplaces. They promote a narrow definition of success, keep power in the hands of a few, demand productivity at all costs, and stifle diversity and difference. The antidotes to white supremacy culture are a social justice–oriented management approach, centering equity, inclusion, and belonging.

We want to be clear: effective management isn't just about saying “no” to everything on Okun's list and doing the opposite. After all, we do feel a sense of urgency about social injustices, and sometimes progress is more—white supremacy culture didn't invent goals, y'all! Effective management isn't just about being against racism and other systems of oppression. It's about being staunchly for racial equity and social justice, which leads us to question the status quo and seek different approaches. Instead of believing in only one “right” way, we work to apply multiple ways of knowing,7 and draw on the wisdom of marginalized communities—whether they be BIPOC, queer, trans, disabled, immigrant, or many others.

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT

A command‐and‐control view of management treats people like robots and the natural world like something to be tamed and conquered. It takes a stance of domination, extraction, and exploitation—classic examples of white supremacy culture in action.

Conspire and align, on the other hand, approaches management the way we'd ideally tend a garden: by engaging in reciprocal acts of care. By gardens, we're not talking about manicured green lawns in desert climates and prize‐winning roses behind fences. Instead, we're talking about healthy, sprawling ecosystems that sustain life for generations through thoughtful, active stewardship.

This is why, under the conspire‐and‐align approach, we believe management can only be “effective” if it has three dimensions: equitable, sustainable, and results‐driven.

Equity, sustainability, and results are like three strands of a braided rope. The braid weakens if you try to separate the strands. They reinforce each other and depend on each other. And effective managers don't play favorites—they don't routinely focus on one dimension at the expense of the others.

Equitable

Ever tried to grow a tomato in a desert? In the same way that specific environments favor some plants while creating barriers for others, some workplaces are easier for some people to succeed in than others. Most people aren't consciously trying to oppress others, but we can't help being steeped in white supremacy and other systems of oppression. Equity is about disrupting these systems and creating new practices so that more people—especially those with marginalized identities—can thrive.

Note that equity and equality are different. Equality means treating everyone the same—but equal treatment doesn't always lead to equal outcomes. Equity calls for managers to account for unconscious bias and systemic barriers in supporting people to succeed. For example, let's say you work at a majority‐white organization. You have a Black staff person who just joined the team and a white staff person who's been on your team for four years. Who might benefit from more of your time, energy, and support in the coming months?8

A manager's job is to spot where these different experiences and identities might disproportionately impact people and work to remove barriers and support their staff to succeed.

Sustainable

Social change work, while often purpose‐driven and joyful, can be grueling. In the worst‐case scenarios, people start out feeling hopeful and energized, only to burn out and leave their organizations, schools, or even movements. In the introduction to this book, we named some of the downsides that lead to people leaving—lack of resources, long hours, and low salaries.

WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY MARGINALIZED

When we say marginalized, we're not using it as a euphemism for “people of color.” We believe in making the implicit explicit, especially when it comes to race and other social identities. If we don't see color, we can't address racism. If we don't discuss gender, we can't address sexism and cissexism. And so on and so forth. As writer James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

So, let's face it: because these oppressive systems are the water we swim in, margins and mainstreams show up at every level in society and in organizations. “Mainstreams” are the groups that set the underlying norms and culture (often unconsciously). “Margins” are the groups whose behaviors and practices are pushed to the edges. While people often think of margins and mainstreams along racial lines, we know from experience that it's not that simple—especially in organizations that are led by and for BIPOC.9

For example, when Jakada was at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, cisgender Black folks were the mainstream. They were hired, retained, and promoted at a higher rate than anyone else. At EBC, marginalized staff included Latin,10 trans, and gender nonconforming folks. When Monna was at Lavender Phoenix, an organization for Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs), differences in class, education, and ethnicity created margins and mainstreams.

In this book, when we intend to refer to a specific identity or cluster of identities, we name them explicitly. When we want to be inclusive of a wider variety of identities, we use broader language—such as marginalized. (In those cases, feel free to fill in the blank with the margins and mainstreams in your context.)

In the best cases, though, people stick around long enough to recruit, train, and mentor a new generation of leaders. Sustainability is about the longevity and durability of results, organizations, people, and movements. It means getting the results we need and doing the hard work—but not at the expense of our individual or collective well‐being.

YAMANI'S STORY

For managers, part of sustainability is doing what you can to keep people around in a sector or movement. Here's a story about a make‐it‐or‐break‐it moment early in a TMC coach's career:

Yamani was a 22‐year‐old Black parent of a one‐year‐old who worked at a small feminist foundation, running a grantmaking program for young women. Yamani was often late to work or had to leave unexpectedly because of unforeseen childcare challenges. She didn't have alternative childcare, so if an incident happened at the daycare, she or her partner would have to leave work to resolve it. She was good at her job, but unreliable childcare made Yamani an unreliable staff person. One day, Yamani showed up to pick up her baby to find that he wasn't there. When she eventually found him (safe!), she learned that the caregiver had taken him and the other children on an errand without informing the parents. She took him out of the daycare and called out of work for the rest of that week.

When she returned to work the following week, Yamani's manager Alicia, the head of the foundation, pulled her aside and asked, “Hey, what's going on? I don't want to lose you, but I need you to be here to do your job.” Yamani told her what was happening—that she didn't have childcare and wasn't sure when she'd get off the waitlist for a center. She couldn't afford a nanny. After discussing Yamani's situation and options, her manager said, “Bring your baby to work.”

To Alicia, this decision was part of living up to her—and the organization's—feminist values. She was committed to supporting Yamani. She saw Yamani's inconsistent performance not as a failure on Yamani's part, but as a result of challenges exacerbated by multiple systemic barriers—challenges they could get through together. So, until a spot opened up at another childcare center, Yamani set up a playpen in her office and brought her baby to work. Her colleagues and the young women in her grantmaking program happily spent breaks playing with the baby.

This was a game‐changing moment for Yamani, not just because she kept a job she was good at (and needed to support her family), but also because it showed her what was possible. When she moved on to other jobs—including serving as executive director at two reproductive justice organizations—she brought the same compassion, grace, and support she'd experienced to her management.

Results‐Driven

The “results‐driven” part of management means grounding our work in what our team is trying to accomplish, whether it's registering enough voters to build local power or increasing math scores for fourth graders. Being results‐driven helps us understand the impact we can make if we succeed—and what's at stake if we fail. This drive for results motivates us to strive for excellence, innovate, take calculated risks, and stretch beyond our comfort zones. And, when bolstered by our commitments to equity and sustainability, we set guardrails to avoid the dangers of prioritizing results over people.

Being results‐driven has led us to do things like:

Share difficult feedback with a staff member whose lack of awareness about race and gender negatively impacted our team of mostly women, trans people, and people of color.

Let someone go (with a generous severance package) because they consistently couldn't deliver on expectations, even though they had been at the organization for a long time.

Intervene when a critical project was off‐track, including by rolling up our sleeves to work alongside the team member to help reprioritize and develop a new timeline.

Try an entirely different—and rather unorthodox—approach because the traditional methods weren't getting the results we needed.

An often‐overlooked part of management is supporting others to get results, which makes it possible to go beyond the results you would have gotten on your own. After all, if you could do it yourself, you wouldn't need to work with and through others! We bet you've been pretty successful at getting results on your own. Many managers we know ended up in their roles not because they were great managers, but because they'd gained issue area expertise or were highly skilled at an area of work (like communications or legal advocacy). As they progressed in their career, they took on increasing responsibility, including managing others. Unfortunately, being an excellent writer doesn't mean you're excellent at supporting others to write well.

EXCELLENCE VERSUS PERFECTION

In our quest for excellence, we sometimes fall into the trap of perfectionism (a tenet of white supremacy culture!). Where excellence is about doing our best to get great results, “perfection” is a narrow target that defines “one right way.” In perfectionistic cultures, people are afraid to fail, go off‐script, or be wrong. The relentless demands of perfectionism can cause burnout. It leads us to spend months wordsmithing goals before sharing them, even when the work has already started. It causes us to hold back useful feedback or ideas until we've figured out the “best” way to share them. On the other hand, when we commit to excellence, we exercise discernment. We differentiate between “gold star” and “good enough,” knowing that our efforts should be proportionate to our intended impact (more on this in Chapter 3).

One colleague told us about attending a yoga retreat where the facilitator welcomed participants by saying, “Some of you have as much experience practicing yoga as I do. Here, we've agreed that I'll hold the space so you can practice.” As managers, we take up the power and responsibility of holding space