Clients
The organizations I work with navigate more complexity than most, and often require distinct approaches to leadership.
Healthcare
Healthcare relies on and is often organized around the work of professionals whose values and role expectations are profoundly shaped by their education and training, often long before they come to work for a specific healthcare organization. While these organizations often benefit from high levels of employee engagement, and the long work hours and commitment to quality that goes with it, they can be particularly challenging to lead.
Higher Education
The mission of academic institutions often results in tension between seemingly disparate priorities.
They must be open to their communities and the community of ideas, while ensuring the safety of their people. They must operate shared services efficiently while supporting an extremely wide variety of intellectual pursuits and operational demands. They must sustain their commitment to both education and research, drawing on the same pool of resources to do so. There are other tensions as well.
The more successful the institution, often the more acute these tensions can become, and the greater the pressure on leaders to continuously navigate and manage these dilemmas.
Nonprofit Institutions
Nonprofits face some challenges that are distinct from their for-profit counterparts.
Where success vis a vis the mission is difficult to measure, they can struggle to assess their effectiveness, and when there is more than one mission area that is difficult to measure, tradeoffs between services can come down to which has more influential advocates. The board structure and composition can also introduce some complexities.
Leaders in these settings often have to navigate not only their business challenges, but complex stakeholder environments.