LEADERSHIP

We left the annual NAACP convention last week encouraged that its young president-elect can successfully bring the nation's oldest civil rights organization into a new century. Thirty-five year old Benjamin Todd Jealous* will become the youngest president in the history of the NAACP when he takes office in September.

As I sat with the great leaders of the organization and listened to Barack Obama, I was reminded of the Harry Truman line, “Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”

To put Ben Jealous’ hiring in context, one needs to appreciate why the choice of CEO matters. Executives are in a position to have a significant impact on an organization's financial and program performance. They largely drive the culture of an organization. The interests, priorities and personalities of those who lead such a group are important not only for the members of the organization, but for the community it serves and the world beyond that community.

CEOs should be visionary. Mr. Jealous indicated that the most pressing issues for him include the country's incarceration rate, particularly of African American men and boys, which far outpaces the rest of the world. Less than 5 percent of the world's people live in the United States, yet the nation has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. He also spoke about segregated schools, employment discrimination and inner-city violence.

“To be successful as a nonprofit CEO, you must be able to effectively navigate oftentimes challenging waters,” said Pier Rogers, director of The Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management, which hosted BootCamp 2008 for new nonprofit leaders last June 11-13 -- an intensive, three-day training program designed to arm new executives with the resources, tools, and contacts to make the first few years in an organization flow more smoothly. Mr. Jealous has to learn about and quickly adapt to the new culture of an organization celebrating its 100th anniversary next year.

Like all new CEOs, he should employ strategies that are culturally sensitive, taking into account organizational infrastructure, program preferences (in this case advocacy over direct services), personal histories and changing public policies. A mutually supportive and respectful partnership with the board of directors should be the ultimate goal of the board and the executive officer in order to move the organization toward fulfilling its mission.

During the first few months of a new leader’s tenure listening is the most important activity. Mr. Jealous is already getting to know the Board and regional and branch leaders and beginning to earn their trust. He will have to learn an awful lot in a relatively short time about this large organization’s challenges, aspirations and expectations. He’ll need to achieve an understanding of the diversity and intensity of the needs of today’s civil rights movement. Organizational stakeholders’ broader expectations of performance accountability now accompany those for fiscal accountability. He’ll need to develop appropriate priorities and program guidelines congruent with those expectations and what he learns.

As the new CEO, he will have to build strong and enduring leadership teams within the organization and lay out a road map for the Board and staff to grow the organization, including the role of development and its relationship to public relations, marketing, and other revenue-generating activities. Finally, he must challenge the board and staff to think outside of their comfort zones, but accept their pace and not get too far out in front of them.

Attracting and retaining talent is an important factor in an organization’s success. Mr. Jealous has received a very positive reception in all quarters. Lots of people are lining up to give him advice and he appears astute enough to listen.

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*At age 18, Ben Jealous began working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund as a community organizer in Harlem. His family boasts five generations of NAACP membership. He now is the president of the Rosenberg Foundation, a CA grant-making organization that provides economic support to working people. He was Director of Amnesty International’s US Domestic Human Rights Program and was the Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the country’s largest group of black community newspapers in 38 states. He has also served as program director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; as managing editor of a newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi; and as an AFL-CIO community organizer in Mississippi and New York. He graduated from Columbia and earned a Masters degree from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. His wife is a constitutional law professor. Photo by Jeffrey Macmillan.