Excellent interview with Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the non-profit Harlem Children's Zone, in yesterday's New York Times. A couple of his management tips:
- "Convincing people to give your way a try will work if you neutralize – and sometimes you have to cauterize – the ones who are really against change. They're the kind of person who, if you tell them it's raining outside, will fight you tooth and nail. You'll take them outside in the rain, and they'll say, “But it wasn't raining five seconds ago.” I spent a year trying to convince those people to change and give me a chance [at a school, early in his career]. Then I realized that was a wasted year.
- "Innovation sticks for about 18 months.So let's say you put a great innovative program in place. You put the right people on it, you get everything organized, and if you don't come back and do anything with it for 18 months, that program's half as good as when you started. They just start decaying."
Comments