Leading Through Rapid Growth

Leading organizations through rapid growth requires a very particular set of leadership tactics. Thirty-five Greater NY partners from the nonprofit and private sectors gathered to hear Tony Kim, partner at Centerview Partners, and his Greater NY partner Rich Berlin, executive director at DREAM (formerly Harlem RBI), talk about what they’d learned from each other about managing growth in their monthly Greater NY meetings. Here’s the three key pieces of advice they offered:

Get Out of the Middle

RICH: “Growth is like living in the middle of a hurricane you have caused and can’t control. When managing an organization in growth mode, the crucial shift for the leader is to move from being the most important person, to being influential, but not critical.”

TONY: “This is not easy. Leaders are inherently doers. But as you grow past a certain headcount, you realize you can’t fix everything all the time. Maybe you find a trusted lieutenant, but the real change will happen when you as the leader are empowering a wholly separate group of people and letting them do things their way…even if they do it differently.”

Empower the Team

RICH: “Stepping back is hard, but once you step back, you see that your job is to empower everyone. You need to create pathways so every person in the organization can see a future and know they will be part of that future.” 

TONY: “In the hurricane of growth it’s about motivating people. But as you get a handle on growth, it’s about alignment. You need to make sure everyone is orienting themselves around a larger purpose.”

Align Principles with People

RICH: “Without principles or values, we have nothing to ground the work we do. Everyone must know what we stand for. It anchors everything. It helps make sense of change.”

TONY: “This is as true in the private sector as the nonprofit sector. I’m struck every time Rich and I meet by the similarity in the issues we face. It’s the people who power growth. Whether it’s a nonprofit or a for-profit, the similarities of organization, alignment and people trump the differences in business and mission.”

“Real change happens when, as the leader, you empower people to do things their own way.”

Greater NY holds meetings on key management issues
with its nonprofit and corporate partners