I’m going to do something I normally don’t do, which is deflect a question. What I want people to do is be rigorous—both the builders of nonprofits and the donors to nonprofits—around these questions: What do we mean by results? Are we improving? What is our trajectory? How do we know if we’re doing better? And how are we building a great organization that can sustain that? I don’t want to give them the answers. But that links me to one really key thing: There are dysfunctions in funding, and restricted giving that is basically for your particular program may not be the best for society.

Shouldn’t donors be able to give where they wish?
 
I don’t think we ever want to constrain that, but here’s the key distinction. The critical question is: How can we invest in building great social sector organizations that in turn will find the best way to produce great results? So what’s your donation about? Is it about you? If it’s about you, then that’s a different question than if it’s about making an impact on society. And if the question is really making an impact on society, we need great organizations to produce great impact.

Which business leadership skills translate to the nonprofit world and which don’t?

Many high-net-worth people or entrepreneurs come from an executive model, where they truly have concentrated decision power. Sometimes they find it challenging in the social sectors; they struggle with, “Why does this decision take so long? Why is there so much of this collaboration and discussion?”  The reason is because the power realities are different. As a legislative leader, your task is to use all sources of power and legitimacy to be able to create the conditions to have the right decisions happen, the decisions that you would have made if you had executive power.

What if you encounter the status quo? What if a nonprofit doesn’t want to be great?

I would ask a different question: Do they want to be and to do much better? Because greatness is an outcome of a constant striving to do better. In a way, those who become great never think they are. They just are obsessed with how we can do better, and eventually other people deem you as great.

What does your work focus on now?

I am continuing my interest in trying to understand more about the social sectors. If I do my own big study, I’m probably going to put the lens on the community. I’ll look at how entire communities make a leap from good to great, in contrast to others that don’t.

Now I’m finishing up other research. I’m very interested in the question of how great to good happens. If good to great is about the principles of health, how does the cancer of mediocrity take hold on something that was great? How does it lose it?

A criticism you received while teaching at Stanford in 1988 was that you spent too much time trying to be interesting and should have invested more in being interested. You say that changed your life. Did it bring you personally from good to great?

I want to be really clear. I do not think that I have gone from good to great. I see myself as somebody who has improved over time, but I think I’ve gone from good to better and then gotten lucky. I think constantly in terms of how much more there is to do, and I feel like I’ve just started.