Founder's Syndrome: what it actually looks like, and how organizations move through it
Founder's Syndrome is one of the most frequently discussed and least honestly named dynamics in the nonprofit sector.
Five things every new executive director should know about their board
The ED-board relationship is the most consequential dynamic in any nonprofit. It shapes the organization's culture, its financial health, its ability to make decisions under pressure, and ultimately whether the executive director stays or goes. And most new EDs inherit it without a map.
Building a high-performing board isn't luck — it's a system
Most nonprofit boards don't fail because they recruited bad people. They fail because they recruited without a system.
What makes a strategic planning process fail - and it's not the plan
After a decade of facilitation, I can usually tell in the first hour whether a strategic planning process is going to produce something real. It's not the quality of the materials. It's not the size of the room or the catering budget.
The Wisdom Economy: why knowing things isn't enough anymore
When everyone can access nearly unlimited information, the scarcity doesn't disappear — it shifts. What becomes scarce isn't information. It's the capacity to make sense of it.
Your organization might be traumatized. Here's what to do about it.
Hormann and Vivian's framework offers something rare in organizational consulting: it treats people in organizations as whole human beings who carry history, not as interchangeable parts in a system that just needs better management. That framing matters. It's the difference between an organization that survives its hard chapters and one that gets defined by them.
