Human Resources: Bridgestar Community Event Features Best-Selling Author Jim Collins

Boston, April 17, 2007 - Jim Collins, best-selling author of Built to Last
and Good to Great, recently spoke to a packed auditorium of New York
nonprofit leaders about the insights that inspired his monograph "Good to
Great and the Social Sectors." The event was hosted by Bridgestar, a
nonprofit initiative of the Bridgespan Group dedicated to attracting,
connecting, and supporting senior leaders for the sector, in partnership
with the New York Community Trust. Co-hosts included the Alliance for
Children and Families and United Neighborhood Centers of America; Columbia
Business School Social Enterprise Program; The Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation; NYU Wagner; Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York; Robin
Hood Foundation; Support Center for Nonprofit Management; Volunteer
Consulting Group/boardnetUSA.org; and Wilson Center for Social
Entrepreneurship, Pace University.

Highlights from the presentation appear in "Good to Great and the Social
Sectors: Jim Collins on Leadership," the featured article in the current
issue of "Leadership Matters," Bridgestar's monthly newsletter which selects
a different theme each month about how to build and sustain effective
nonprofit organizations.

Collins stressed the importance of having a strong nonprofit sector, saying,
"If we only have great business corporations, and I do believe it's
important that we do, we will merely have a prosperous nation, a prosperous
society. We will not have a great one. To truly have a great nation and a
great society, we have to have great schools, great police departments,
great healthcare."

He noted that it took him longer to write this 36-page monograph than it did
to write Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't,
the best-selling book on which the monograph is based, because it took him a
while to fully grasp how the social sectors differ from the for-profit
sector and how concepts of greatness from business can and cannot be applied
to nonprofits.

Collins' remarks touched upon all five issues that formed the framework of
his monograph:
* Defining "Great" - Calibrating success without business metrics.
* Level 5 Leadership - Getting things done within a diffuse power structure.
* First "Who" - Getting the right people on the bus within social sector
constraints.
* "The Hedgehog Concept" - Rethinking the economic engine without a profit.
* "Trying the Flywheel" - Building momentum by building the brand.

His speech focused on the importance of leadership in great organizations.
Collins also addressed a major problem facing the sector: a huge infusion of
charitable dollars combined with an estimated deficit of 640,000 new
nonprofit leaders over the next decade, which was outlined in "The
Leadership Deficit"
(https://www.bridgestar.org/Resources/Library/Recruit/LeadershipDeficit.aspx
), a Bridgespan Group white paper published last year. Collins compared the
problem to "funding a climbing expedition but without enough climbers and
losing some of your most experienced guides along the way."

The solution is to attract and develop the right leaders - Level 5 leaders
who can turn a good organization into a great one. He noted that this type
of leadership requires a combination of humility and professional will.
Collins suggested that Level 5 leadership may be more important in the
social sector where power is more widely distributed than in the business
sector. Often social sector leaders need to influence people they don't
supervise in order to achieve results. To be effective, these leaders
require both executive skills - the exercise of direct power - and
legislative skills, the ability to influence people through motivation and
persuasion.

"Jim Collins's roadmap for nonprofit organizations to become great focuses
on the significance of leadership, which mirrors Bridgestar's philosophy:
that achieving social impact is dependent on having strong people in key
roles," said David Simms, Managing Partner, Bridgestar. "The challenge for
nonprofit organizations is to identify and develop what Collins defines as
Level 5 leaders from within the sector as well as recruiting leaders with
these skills from outside. That isn't easy when there's significant
pressure to reduce overhead costs, but it's critical for the people and
causes we serve that we have the right leaders in the right seats. As
Collins says, the right leadership will be the difference between a good and
great society."

The current issue of "Leadership Matters" is available to Bridgestar members
at: www.bridgestar.org/Resources/Newsletters/2007/April2007.aspx. For a
complimentary subscription to "Leadership Matters," please email
subscribe[at]bridgestar.org.

About Bridgestar
Bridgestar (www.bridgestar.org), an initiative of the Bridgespan Group, is a
nonprofit organization providing talent-matching services, content, and
tools designed to help organizations build strong leadership teams and
individuals pursue career paths as nonprofit leaders. Bridgestar's goal is
to attract, connect, and support senior talent, leading to greater
organizational effectiveness and social impact.