I recently had the opportunity to lead a clinic at GSMI's Enterprise Risk Management summit in New York. It was a very interesting and interactive session where we really had the opportunity to "roll up our sleeves" and talk about how risk management works (or doesn't, for that matter) in the trenches.

Did you receive a postcard when you got home from the CLA conference? Our mailing company sent it a week after we wanted, so it would have been hard for you to bring the postcard to our exhibit booth. Don't worry, the offer from the postcard is still good through May 15, 2009.

Columbia Business School's "Ideas@Work" blog had an interesting post last week entitled "The Nonprofit MBA." The premise was that in a time of unprecedented challenge for non-profits, hiring a MBA may be a way for social sector organizations to tap into management expertise that can help them survive. (Since MBAs are a lot cheaper now than they used to be!)

We recently returned from Digital Now 2009, an executive leadership conference focused on association leadership in the digital age. At Digital Now, we presented with Project Management Institute and American Society of Mechanical Engineers on how the Balanced Scorecard can be used to drive change and innovation in associations.

The Winter 2009 issue of Sloan Management Review had an article entitled Does It Pay To Be Good? For those of us in the social and public sector, the answer is "usually not enough." While this article focuses on the corporate sector, and how for-profit organizations are using corporate responsibility as a marketing scheme, it has a few important lessons for us in the social sector as well.

I'm very happy to report that the first-ever Mission Driven Performance Management Summit in Washington, DC, was a smashing success! We had over 80 people in attendance and had incredible discussions about how the Balanced Scorecard can be used to drive lasting strategic change.

A recent article in the New York Times talked about the shift in focus of the Hudson-Webber Foundation in downtown Detroit. For years, Hudson-Webber has been funding organizations in the Detroit metro area. Given the changing philanthropic and economic landscape, however, Hudson-Webber has had to start playing a new role: "picking winners and losers."

Okay, so now we have a new President, and the stock market is down about 9% this year already. This is after about a 35-40% drop last year. The market is a good proxy for the economy. Not only did the economy crash last year, but it is still not looking good this year, even with Hope and Change in the highest office of the country. The President yesterday said that is it is time to rebuild what America stands for and time to recommit to our values (more or less). What I heard, was that is it time for a new strategy. This also applies to your organization.

Do you know your organization's strategy? Can you describe it (in 50 words or less)? And if you can, what are the chances that your description matches the description of the person who sits next to you?

We've all heard the adage "what gets measured, gets managed." But how do you know if you're measuring the right things? And therefore managing the right things? For many organizations, measurement exists simply for the sake of measurement. And that's a key reason why so few organizations are able to acheive strategic success.