Today is the last day to get the early bird registration discount for the upcoming summit in March of 2012. This summit is going to be great. We have keynote presentations from David Norton, co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard, and Daniel Pink, author of DRIVE. If you want to register today to receive the early bird rate, but you cannot get your act together to do it online, please email us, and we can invoice your organization.

This weekend someone emailed me a copy of an article from Time magazine about how local communities are not letting the dysfunction of Washington, DC politics stop them from making progress. I live in Washington, DC, so sometimes it is hard to see beyond CSPAN and the news in the Washington Post. It seems like politics have brought the USA to a standstill, where a supermajority is now required for any basic vote in congress. I've been lucky enough over the past year to have two clients in the same region represent this "Pragmatic Caucus" that was described by Bruce Katz and Judith Rodin.

In a Harvard Business Review blog yesterday, Raymond V. Gilmartin argued that CEOs need a new set of beliefs. What's surprising -- especially for those of us that work in the mission-driven sector -- is that this even bears saying. But what struck me the most in the post was that Professor Gilmartin (the past CEO of Merck) argues that "Purpose, meaning, and recognition are more powerful motivators than economic self-interest, and large external rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation."

So the cover story of the Fall 2011 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review is called "The Missing Link in School Reform." At Ascendant, we help a lot of schools to improve performance, so the article caught my eye. In the article, author Carrie Leana introduces the concept of Social Capital. She says that it may be more important than Human Capital in improving schools.

Have you ever thought of an employee as a raw material to making your business successful? If employees are one of the key ingredients to success, then having the highest quality of employee at all levels is critical to your business's success. This makes sense, right? So what do you do if your company requires many skilled laborers, but the community where you operate doesn't have enough qualified candidates? For companies in Southwest Alabama, you get involved in workforce development, and that is where SAWDC fits in.

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.

They continue to dominate the headlines and we would like to take a few minutes to talk about the current situation and how it applies to mission-driven organizations.

Right now, students and job seekers alike know it's a competitive market and are looking to demonstrate their abilities anywhere they can. Gone are the days of specialized repetitive tasks and today's job seekers know they have to be flexible.

They understand the importance of technology, business principles, as well as fluency in leading languages such as Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. They understand the value of maintaining solid relationships and have been steadily building their professional networks.

How will you use the available talent strategically?

We have been fortunate to work with many nonprofits that have dramatically changed their business. One nonprofit grew from five to twenty million in annual revenue. Another grew from twenty to one hundred and twenty million. Yet another rescued its nonprofits from going out of business to becoming a thriving association. I spoke to one of these nonprofit executives about how he made his board more effective as he grew his organization. I think there is a lot to learn from his changes over the last few years.

In my previous blog post, I shared some stories from Dan Pink's book Drive on the new science of motivation. This book has been highly influential in causing many organizational leaders to re-evaluate their ideas about the best ways to motivate people.

In companies and organizations that thrive on creative thinking and innovative solutions, financial rewards and external "carrots and sticks" are being replaced with a new management doctrine of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

But do these ideas really work? What are some real-life examples of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, and how can your organization adopt these ideas in your workplace?

The city of Charlottesville, VA is in the process of rolling out a performance management and measurement initiative. This initiative is managed by the Office of Budget and Performance Management and is called P3 within the city. It stands for "Plan, Perform, Perfect."

For many of us it is budget season and time to decide how and where we will spend our money next year. Sadly, too many places, especially resource strapped organizations simply take last year's budget and modify it by a percent or two. But there is no excuse for just letting it ride. If you want to achieve your mission you need to take the time to periodically review the effectiveness of your programs. Do you programs support your strategy? Does your Balanced Scorecard or strategy management system reveal the impact of the programs? Or are there corrective actions that are required?