Love and Rigor: a road map for new leaders

Published: April 6, 2022
Estimated reading time: 4.5 min

By Jakada Imani, The Management Center, CEO

“没有爱的权力是鲁莽和滥用的，而没有权力的爱是多愁善感和贫血的。”— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

在我担任首席执行官一周年之际，我在反思，这与我第一次接手领导一家规模庞大且不断增长的公司时的感觉有多么不同。2007年，我被提升为埃拉·贝克人权中心(EBC)的负责人。那时，我已经在EBC工作了8年，几乎担任过公司的所有职位。当董事会选择我接替富有魅力和远见卓识的EBC创始人范•琼斯(Van Jones)时，我们即将取得重大胜利。在多年来组织被监禁青少年的家庭之后，我们的“不禁止读书”运动在关闭加州虐待青少年的监狱系统的斗争中取得了势头。塞内加尔vs埃及比分预测在呼吁绿色就业的短短三年内，我们推动了地方、州和国家立法，为有色人种社区创造绿色经济的途径。我们正在努力大幅提高全州有色人种社区的投票率。该组织有一个清晰、引人注目的愿景和一套核心价值观，激励我们集体行动，所有这些都植根于爱。对我们所服务的社区的爱，对我们所建立的目标社区的爱。EBC是我们大多数人感到被支持、被鼓励和被重视的地方。

Still, as a new ED, I was overwhelmed and under-resourced. I’d been blessed to learn strategy, communication, organizing, and alliance-building from some of the best teachers and practitioners in the country. My mentors and teachers—folks like Nell Myhand, Elisha Miranda, and Boots Riley—gave me the skills and tools I needed to grow from a new organizer to a seasoned campaigner. But this combination of skills wasn’t enough to ensure that I could do my part as ED to help EBC deliver on its mission. I realized we needed a way to unleash the talent, creativity, and wisdom of every team member. I quickly came to understand that this wasn’t just a leadership challenge; it was a management challenge.

I recognized this early on (and consider it my saving grace), but that awareness didn’t come with a road map. At EBC, we had love in spades. Yet, we lacked the rigor to turn that passion into impact we could sustain and scale. I couldn’t find a management coach, consultant, or training program that could help us build a Black-led, multiracial institution like EBC. I had to learn by doing.

I dove into everything I could find on management. There were a number of helpful books offering frameworks for systems and structures. None of them were anchored in EBC’s values. They were race, gender, and justice silent, so I excavated what was helpful and left the rest. I stumbled onto management podcasts. I learned about giving feedback, leading check-ins, setting clear goals, and hiring the right people. Still, none were quite aligned with our values. So, I worked to root these tools in progressive values and the lessons I had picked up as a young activist. To be effective, we have toget clear on the win, be transparent about the process, and create clearlines of accountabilityanddecision-makingso your folks know what to expect of you andwhat you expectof them.

The management tools I learned, rooted in EBC’s values, helped us develop a more rigorous set of collective practices and deliver results for our base of families of incarcerated children and people of color with barriers to employment. At EBC, I got to see what a group of talented, committed people, aligned on a shared vision and organized around a clear set of goals, could achieve together. We closed youth prisons up and down the state of California, we defeated a right-wing ballot measure to create a host of new felonies, and we helped pass the Federal Green Jobs Act of 2007. We did all of these things and more because we forged a set of management practices rooted in love and rigor.

Five years ago, I came to The Management Center because TMC’s tools and frameworks echo the best of what I learned at EBC. At TMC, we work to create, curate, and refine best practices and resources so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or reinterpret traditional management concepts for a social justice context. You and your team can spend more time winning and less time struggling to work together effectively. Fromgiving and receiving feedback, tohiring well, to cultivatingbelonging and inclusion, we are here to help you and your team figure out how to manage in a way that’s equitable, sustainable, and results-driven. And, where there are no clear or easy answers, we’re learning, growing, and figuring it out with you.

For me, management is sacred work. As leaders, we have a huge impact on how our people spend their precious time and energy. Those of us charged with management should have the tools and support to be great managers, so we can be a force for good in the lives of our people and teams. Thepractice of effective managementis like meditation, prayer, or exercise. It can be a transformational practice. It can change us as leaders, change the organizations we work in, and give us a way to change the world. Thank you for all you do to build organizations that are changing the world.