At the heart of the mission of the Bridgespan Group is the belief that nonprofit organizations represent our best hope for addressing many of society’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. Bridgestar’s colleagues in our consulting organization are charged with helping to apply leading-edge management strategies and tools to those challenges, in order to help high-performing nonprofits achieve greater social impact.

As you know, Bridgestar’s role is to support this mission through the lens of talent. Because leadership is critical to organizational performance and success, we are dedicated to attracting, developing and connecting talented people – from within the sector and from other sectors – with organizations where they can contribute their skills and expertise.

From time to time, a management concept specific to career building or development comes to our attention and, like our counterparts throughout the Bridgespan organization, we think about how to apply those concepts to our own sector. This issue of Leadership Matters is devoted to one such concept: career imprinting, a process of cultivating and acquiring skills and experiences specific to a time and place. Many of us will find in Monica Higgins’ description of imprinting a sense or recollection of something familiar from our own careers. Professor Higgins’ insights on how to identify those imprints and use them to guide our career choices are certain to be of value.

As always, we invite your thoughts and feedback about this topic, Leadership Matters, and Bridgestar in general. On that note, we are noticing greater use of our discussion boards for debating the questions included in our articles, and we thank you for taking an active part in our community.

Sincerely,

The Bridgestar Team

Most senior leaders are the sum of several, if not many, career experiences. These experiences, whether positive and exciting or challenging in the most difficult ways, shape the manner in which we frame our thoughts, make decisions, and even choose our teams.

Ask almost any leader what has influenced his or her career most, and the answer will almost inevitably have to do with a person – a mentor, a role model, or even an adversary. Yet, the organizations in which we work also shape our development.

Some are widely known for cultivating a certain kind of experience in their employees. Many employees who have been through a rigorous “boot camp”-type orientation to an organization or new role can recall the experience, and those who shared it, for years afterward. A period of intense growth or other change can also create alliances and ways of working that influence individuals’ career choices and trajectories well into the future. And, some organizations are simply paradigms for the skill sets and standards they set; for example, Procter & Gamble product managers are widely regarded as some of the best trained in consumer package goods marketing, and are sought after by other firms.

For her newly published book, Career Imprints: Creating Leaders Across an Industry (April 2005, Jossey Bass), Harvard Business School professor Monica Higgins has studied the career histories of top managers in biotechnology companies widely known for “imprinting” employees with particular values, work styles and skill sets. Intrigued with this idea, Leadership Matters sat down with Professor Higgins to explore the idea of career imprinting as a tool for nonprofit senior leaders and organizations.

LOGIN TO BRIDGESTAR AND:

Read the Full Article

Access Sector Research and Ideas