As a technologist it’s really easy to get excited about new hardware and functionality. AT&T has offered to let me upgrade early and I have many friends that either registered in advance on the internet or are braving the store to get their hands on Steve Job’s latest wonder. I have no doubt that the fore mentioned friends and colleagues will be happy to demonstrate all of the miracles that I’m missing out on that will make me long for the satisfaction that is the rush of “new gear”. I’m positive that some of them will try to video call me just to tease me. **sigh**
Surprisingly, I think I’m going to sit this upgrade out until later this fall. My experiences with Apple’s upgrades, both software and hardware, have really been hit or miss. I have experienced “phone bricking” where you do an upgrade and without taking the phone to an apple store to be reset, your phone is as useful as a brick. I have had a myriad of issues around connectivity and problems with using my phone for weeks after some upgrades.
“But Grant”, you say, “aren’t you a technologist? Aren’t you supposed to relish new gear, gadgets, and software to blaze the trail through the thorns for the rest of us? Why weren’t you camping out for 4 days at the Apple store to be one of the very first, for all of our sakes? Come on, take one for the team!”
Well, you are right. That is usually me. The reason I’m not doing it this time is simple. My iPhone has become a very important business and personal tool. I cannot afford for it to be non-functional and when I actually do upgrade, I’m going to have to do it over a weekend to allow me time to recover from possible failures or setbacks during upgrades.
I’m sharing this, because I think there is a greater lesson here. There is no compelling need driving me to upgrade my phone. The iPhone I have does everything I need it to right now and none of the new features is a must have. On the other hand, I have a risk of issues with functionality that is core to my business life. If this were just a toy to me, I’d have upgraded on the first day it was available. But since it’s a critical business tool to me, I’m going to wait, do my research on what issues others find, and upgrade when it will be least impactful to me.
If, like my business software, I was able to try it on a test bed or restore from backup, I would be more willing to give the upgrade a try because I could minimize my risk of downtime. I really can’t do that with the iPhone hardware or software (but I can backup my data, which I do religiously).
New, complicated, and flashy replacement technology comes our way all the time. Seek to understand the benefits it can bring as well as the risk. If the benefits aren’t clear, you are taking a risk for no reward.
And to my friends, who have already preceded me on the upgrade path, let me know when Apple has the iPhone 4 antenna issues fixed….. That kind of seems like a problem for me, I think I’ll wait.
Grant Howe
VP Research & Development, Sage Nonprofit Solutions
Welcome to the new Sage Nonprofit Community. I want to personally thank you for visiting and hope you find a great deal of value from Sage team members, industry experts, Sage customers and other nonprofit leaders. We will have many guest bloggers posting articles over the months to come. As the leader of the Sage Nonprofit Solutions I thought it would be appropriate to start off with my thoughts on leadership.
Leadership is such a big word with so many meanings and implications. For me, being a leader isn’t about emulating a person, a style or a book, but it is about being authentic and finding what truly allows me to inspire and enable others to achieve their goals.
As some background you should know there are a few things that have helped to shape me as a leader. First, I have two daughters that inspire me to be the best role model I can be, when I push a door open they get to walk through it. Secondly, I have experienced tragedy that put the world in perspective allowing me to apply a very different lens to my life and priorities; this makes it easier to handle the tough stuff. Lastly, I have personally experienced great leaders, along with very bad ones; I have learned important lessons from both. I would like to share a little more about these three points; hopefully there is something here that you can take away that will contribute to your leadership style.
Over the years leadership has become very clear to me and, not to over simplify a very complex topic, but the foundation of leadership can be summed up in three fundamentals: have a genuine interest in the success of others, create a clear and consistent path to their success, and define yourself by who you are not by what you do.
First, the cornerstone of my leadership and, the most important quality I look for when I hire leaders, is to have a genuine interest in the success of both the business we lead and the people that have put their faith in our ability to lead. Leaders are passionate and want to be successful, and realize their own success is the product those around them. When asked what I do, I commonly respond “Hire the best people I can and then let them do their jobs.” By doing this, people are empowered; motivated and a trusting relationship is created. I recently had multiple employees approached by a competitor and offered jobs. Even though the pay was better, they decided to stay and thanked me for providing them opportunities. There is not a bigger compliment for me as a leader than to have people follow me, stay with me, put trust in me and for me to know that their careers at Sage offer them value beyond a paycheck.
Secondly, almost by definition a leader’s job is to create a clear, accountable and transparent environment, which creates a clear path to success. I am told regularly by team members that I make it easy to succeed because they know what the organization’s goals and priorities are, boundaries are clear and they are in full control to accomplish them. Everyone in an organization should be able to tell you what the three key priorities are, allowing them to make quick decisions, prioritize and focus. This only works if the entire business is aware of these top priorities; they know where the organization stands on achieving the goals and are given the opportunity to course correct before it is too late. In our organization, we have a “scorecard” bulletin board for all to see; it tracks the most import lead measures for EVERY department and then reviews and updates their success every 30 days. If we missed revenue, a deliver date or didn’t bring enough sales leads everyone is aware of it and then can help to right the ship. Creating a clear path and milestones for an organization is as critical as knowing where you are going when you set out on a trip. You might not always know where the pit stops will be, what detours you will take or when you will have a flat tire; but you will always have your final destination in mind and be driving in the right direction. You may still have some success without a clear plan, but how will you know what turns you need to take along the way and how will you know when you get there?
Lastly, leadership to me means never defining myself by what I do, but by who I am. This includes how I treat others, what I contribute to the world and the friends and family that I have. We all face extraordinary things, make our choices to prioritize our lives differently and need people to care about and to care about us. Leadership is not about a title but about the person. My everyday interactions whether it is passing someone in the hall or standing up to address the entire campus are authentic, sincere and reflect who I am. We can never forget that all of our actions as a leader impact the people we lead and the environment that we all spend so much time in.
Leadership is very basic to me; it is about doing the right things for people and the organization, setting a clear path and being authentic.
Until next time, I hope you enjoy the other guest bloggers and new community.
Krista Endsley
GM and SVP, Sage Nonprofit Solutions
I’ve been receiving these reports for a number of years. While the data in and of itself is incredibility interesting, I find people’s reaction more fascinating.
For example, the sound bites for the 2008 year went something like “charitable giving fell last year by the largest percentage in five decades!” However, a few very large bequests turn the 2008 number around – coming in at $315.08B, not the 307.65B estimated and reported.
The reaction to the 2009 decline goes more like “are the reports painting a more optimistic picture for 2009 giving?”
Huh?
Giving USA does a remarkable job bringing the science to a sector that is fueled by emotion. They continually remind their audience that the data cannot be taken at face value, but must be put in context of all the previous year’s results.
And in context, we are a country that continues to give, and gives generously, to the sectors that we believe need our time, talent, and treasures the most. Even in a year where unemployment reached double-digit levels, giving remained strong.
My message to all nonprofits out there: we are not out of the woods for 2010 yet, but keep up the great work! And if you are having to make a choice on fundraising strategies for 2010 and 2011, make loving and growing your individual donors to priority!
If you are interested in seeing how your sector faired, the Giving USA Foundation is offering a free executive summary of the report. Click here to download it. To order a copy of the full 2010 Giving USA report, click here.
Keeping things in perspective,
Heather M Burton
Director, Product Marketing, Nonprofit Solutions
I pride myself on being somewhat of a tech geek, but how can any self-respecting geek call himself a geek without knowing all about RSS feeds? The truth is that I’ve only known about them in concept until just recently. I know… it’s embarrassing, isn’t it? Really, I’ve been meaning to learn more but just never got around to it until recently. Now that I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, RSS feeds are way cool.
So what triggered me to learn more about RSS? Well, it was actually the new Sage Nonprofit Community. As part of the team to roll it out, one of my responsibilities is to manage the transition of our current listserve forums into the new forums built into the online community. One the things I know our members love about the listserve forums is that they don’t need to go to a website to see if there are new messages. By default, all new messages are sent to them via email. If they want to reply, they just reply like any other email.
Early on in the process of developing our online community, it became clear that this functionality was a must have. If we rolled out without it, not only would members lose some ease-of-use, but they would only see messages if they visited the website. So people may be missing out on information that could help them, and those who enjoying posting solutions to help others (thank you!) would miss opportunities to do so.
Since the new community forums are not listserve-based, it was time to learn more about how RSS could fill the need. To make a long story short (too late?), RSS has been implemented in the new forums, and I think our members will like it much better than the listserve-based email. A couple of the nicest advantages show up when you post a new message:
1) the member’s email address is not made visible to other forum members and
2) your inbox does not get cluttered up with out-of-office replies. Sweet!
Want to learn more about RSS or how you can subscribe to one or more of our new forums? Check out our FAQ. Embrace your inner geek.
Scott Springer
VP, Customer Support, Nonprofit Solutions
Sage Business Solutions
Hello to all those community members and soon to be members. I can tell you that NPS is very excited to be here today! This community has been a labor of love for me, and I hope you will all find relevant, thought provoking content to help you better serve the people and communities you work for everyday. Our community was built with exactly that in mind.
To my knowledge this blog is the first of its kind. We are not paying people to write it or using our assistants. This blog is a joint effort of the executive team from NPS and designed to allow all of our customers and prospective customers to interact and comment on what we are doing in this space. Each week a different executive from our leadership team will blog about what they are working on, share thoughts and/or tips about the industry, and even provide product tips and ideas.
We want to get to know you and better understand your needs, and in that process let you know a little more about us and where we are coming from.
The official kick-off is June 21st, so be sure to forward the link and invite your co-workers to join.
That's all for now!
Bridget L. Brandt
Senior Customer Marketing Manager, Nonprofit Solutions
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