An interview with Max De Pree, Chairman of Herman Miller and Hope College Leaders are given the gift of leadership by those who choose or agree to follow People choose a leader on the basis of what they believe the leader can contribute to the person's ability to achieve his or her goals in life. The first leadership task is to make sure everybody sees the mission, hears it, and lives it. The mission needs to be thought through regularly, to determine whether it needs to be refocused, or whether objectives may need to be changed. The organization that starts out from inside, and then tries to find places to put its resources is going to fritter itself away because it is focusing on the past, not the future. One looks to the outside for opportunities and needs.
Mission is always long range.
This is particularly important for NPOs because they do not have a bottom line, and also because they are here to serve. Action is always short term. Abandoning things that look attractive requires thinking through the priorities. Leaders are visible, and have to live up to high expectations. Everybody is a leader, everybody is responsible, everybody acts.