How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

Thinking Question
Am I continually considering others and their journey in order to think
with maximum collaboration?

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“There ain’t no rules around here. We’re trying to accomplish something.”
—T
HOMAS
E
DISON
, I
NVENTOR
How do you figure out the bottom line for your organization, business,
department, team, or group? In many businesses, the bottom line is literally the
bottom line. Profit determines whether you are succeeding. But dollars should
not always be the primary measure of success. Would you measure the ultimate
success of your family by how much money you had at the end of the month or
year? And if you run a non-profit or volunteer organization, how would you
know whether you were performing at your highest potential? How do you think
bottom line in that situation?

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A NONPROFIT’S BOTTOM LINE
Frances Hesselbein had to ask herself exactly that question in 1976, when she
became the national executive director of the Girl Scouts of America. When she
first got involved with the Girl Scouts, running the organization was the last
thing she expected. She and her husband, John, were partners in Hesselbein
Studios, a small family business that filmed television commercials and
promotional films. She wrote the scripts and he made the films. In the early
1950s, she was recruited as a volunteer troop leader at the Second Presbyterian
Church in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Even that was unusual, since she had a son
and no daughters. But she agreed to do it on a temporary basis. She must have
loved it, because she led the troop for nine years!
In time, she became council president and a member of the national board.
Then she served as executive director of the Talus Rock Girl Scout Council, a
full-time paid position. By the time she took the job as CEO of the national
organization, the Girl Scouts was in trouble. The organization lacked direction,
teenage girls were losing interest in scouting, and it was becoming increasingly
difficult to recruit adult volunteers, especially with greater numbers of women
entering the workforce. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts was considering opening
itself to girls. Hesselbein desperately needed to bring the organization back to
the bottom line.
“We kept asking ourselves very simple questions,” she says. “What is our
business? Who is our customer? And what does the customer consider value? If
you’re the Girl Scouts, IBM, or AT&T, you have to manage for a mission.” 
Hesselbein’s focus on mission enabled her to identify the Girl Scouts’ bottom
line. “We really are here for one reason: to help a girl reach her highest potential.
More than any one thing, that made the difference. Because when you are clear
about your mission, corporate goals and operating objectives flow from it.”Once she figured out her bottom line, she was able to create a strategy to try to
achieve it. She started by reorganizing the national staff. Then she created a
planning system to be used by each of the 350 regional councils. And she
introduced management training to the organization. Hesselbein didn’t restrict
herself to changes in leadership and organization. In the 1960s and ’70s, the
country had changed and so had its girls—but the Girl Scouts hadn’t. Hesselbein
tackled that issue, too. The organization made its activities more relevant to the
current culture, giving greater opportunities for use of computers, for example,
rather than hosting a party. She also sought out minority participation, created

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bilingual materials, and reached out to low-income households. If helping girls
reach their highest potential was the group’s bottom line, then why not be more
aggressive helping girls who traditionally have fewer opportunities? The strategy
worked beautifully. Minority participation in the Girl Scouts tripled.
In 1990, Hesselbein left the Girl Scouts after making it a first-class
organization. She went on to become the founding president and CEO of the
Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and now serves as
chairman of its board of governors. And in 1998, she was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Clinton said of Hesselbein during the
ceremony at the White House, “She has shared her remarkable recipe for
inclusion and excellence with countless organizations whose bottom line is
measured not in dollars, but in changed lives.” 

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