What do you think makes an effective organization? A strong leader? An influential campaign? What does effectiveness mean in today’s context, amid backsliding on conservation and the environment? How is effectiveness still relevant today?
I don’t need to tell you, we are not winning much these days. In the US, we are losing ground on much that we fought hard to protect. We are giving it our all to just stall the worst from happening. In Canada, the rhetoric is better, but consistent meaningful action is lacking. So, it is a slog.
I know it may not always feel like we are being effective, but we are. We are effective by staying in there, by accomplishing strategic stalls and small saves, by building support for our agendas, and by making positive gains when we can.
These difficult times call on us to do our best work, to continue to work to improve ourselves as individual leaders, and as organizations. It is times like these that we can make some of our biggest strides towards improvement.
To increase our effectiveness in these challenging times, we need to build our skills, build our capacity, and build our ranks. We need creative and adaptive leaders, strong and capable staff, and strategic organizations. We are effective because we are not just reacting. We are evolving.
At TREC, we see a highly relevant and holistic view of effectiveness, one that holds true in any context, even the current one. We define effective leadership as leaders who are emotionally intelligent, present, resilient, culturally aware and responsive, committed to supporting others, purposeful and dedicated to continually learning. We define effective organizations as nimble, strategic, sustainable, diverse, equitable and inclusive.
So let’s stay at it. Let’s keep going for those wins and stops that may seem small, but are still very important and demonstrate our effectiveness. But also, in the meantime, let’s not forget the holistic and long view of effectiveness, where we focus on our skills and our bench strength so that we emerge from these tough times with greater capacity for even bigger wins in the future.
Keep on innovating. We can’t be stopped.
-Megan
Megan Seibel
TREC Executive Director