Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood

My clients are mainly nonprofit organizations and many of them have an international mission statement but are based in the United States. Everyday I work with the founders and presidents of these organizations contributing strategic planning and helping with development, grants, donor relations, and publicity. When I picked up this book, I recognized the passion and promise with which John Wood began his organization, Room to Read. Because he had an executive business background with Microsoft in Asia, Wood knew how to incorporate a results-driven business model in his nonprofit organization and it worked. He wasn't immune to the panic, pressure, and penury that my clients routinely experience. However, he applied strategies that looked ahead, took big risks, and based the risk on measurable outcomes that the donors would easily understand. This is his story but it is one that tells how to do a nonprofit organzation right and should be required reading for every start-up nonprofit.

John Wood, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, c. 2006. Harper Collins

How to Change the World by David Bornstein

This is a compelling book filled with the stories of individuals whose big ideas have impacted nations thanks to the boost of recognition and a financial award by the organization, Ashoka, which was founded by Bill Drayton. It is arranged in anecdotal stories that chronicle Drayton's search for true social entrepreneurs who were ready to take their ideas to scale. His paradigm confronts a disconnect between how business sees change as being driven by individuals and how social theorists tend to see change as being driven by ideas. Drayton says: "If ideas are to take root and spread, ... they need champions - obsessive people who have the skill, motivation, energy and bullheadedness to do whatever is necessary to move them forward: to persuade, inspire, seduce, cajole, enlighten, touch hearts, alleviate fears, shift perceptions, articulate meanings and artfully maneuver them through systems" (91). He goes on to describe four practices of innovative organizations and six qualities of successful social entrepreneurs. Innovative organizations listen, "pay attention to the exceptional", come up with realistic solutions that work with real people, display and value "empathy", "flexible thinking", and a "strong inner core". Successful social entrepreneurs are willing to "self-correct", "share credit", "break free of established structures", "cross disciplinary boundaries", work in "relative obscurity", and they are highly ethical individuals. Not only does this book show who and what is changing the world, it tells how they are doing it in a way that could become a blueprint for world changers to imitate.
Bornstein, David. How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. New York: Oxford Press. 2004

The Messiah by Marek Halter

What a fascinating portrayal of European Jewish life during the Inquisition through the eyes of a Middle Eastern Jewish military leader who attempted to convince the pope to allow him to recruit a Jewish navy to recapture Jerusalem and cut off the Muslim advances towards the West. The same religious excesses that plague authentic practicioners of every faith are demonstrated by the various characters. The Messiah, David Reubeni, is serious and dedicated albeit lacking in empathy, probably diagnosably narcissistic, and possibly living with Asperger's Syndrome. His persona is compelling, pursuasive, magnetic and his arrogance and disinterest in the acclaim of the crowds makes for interesting reading- you get his reasons and you dislike him for them all the while excusing him as he does himself because of the greater good he aims for. His fans and his enemies all clothe themselves in religious fervor and he disdains them both equally. Every so often an altruistic act happens but usually it ends up being self-serving at best anyway. This is worth the time it takes to read. It's uncomfortable reading for people who are motivated from spiritual centers because it shows the incredible loneliness that accompanies a sense of vocation when the "call" is to the top of the pyramid- the kind of "call" which the masses
venerate and the Lord may eshew...
Halter, Marek. The Messiah. c. 2008. New Milford, CT: The Toby Press.

Momentum: Igniting Social Change by Allison H. Fine

Directed at nonprofit organizations which Allison Fine terms Activist Organizations this book explores a shift in the way information is managed, owned, and shared in the age of social media online. It is well thought out, although already dated due to the rapidity with which this communication vehicle is developing. Everyone making recommendations to nonprofit leaders these days talks about how the new generation of donors wants to participate in a conversation with the organizations they decide to fund. Rarely do you find advice about the paradigm shift that must happen within organizations to make this work. Fine juxtaposes the paradigm that views information and networks as proprietary with one that views connectivity as an open network. She explains such things as blogs and wikkis, telling the uninitiated among us how they can benefit companies and organizations. The she poses five self-diagnostic questions for nonprofit boards to ask themselves, their staff and their volunteers:

1. "How are people inside and outside the organization participating in decision making?
2. Who are our network members and how are we interacting with them to achieve our mutual goals?
3. Are we making as much information as we can openly and freely available to our network members?
4. What conversations are we having, with whom, and for what purpose?
5. What are we learning and how can we apply these lessons to our work?" (p. 136)

She also introduces "95 Theses" posted at http://www.cluetrain.com/. Read through the petition at the bottom of the home page to expose yourself and your organization to the ideas that characterize the Connected Age thinkers.

Fine, Allison H., Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. c. 2006. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass