Our leadership system, designed exclusively for marketing communications leaders in the nonprofit sector, unlocks next-level strategic influence,
team capacity, and mission-fueling results
Every step of the Lead for Influence system is designed to earn, retain, and strengthen your team's strategic influence, and the role of marcom in fueling financial resilience, exceptional audience value, and meaningful impact at scale.
Here's how it works:
1. Set Radical Focus
You’ll set shared agreement on a radical focus for your team, intentionally drawing a line in the sand to invest 80% of your team's time on the “right work, right results” that directly fuel your org’s top goals AND in a manner that earns the allyship of colleagues.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Earning strategic influence starts by showing the results/value possible when you can operate as a true strategic partner and functional expert.
WHAT YOU EARN:
Earn colleague and executive allyship for a critical team focus YOU set, drive, and hold your team accountable to.
WHY IT WORKS:
Focus is set in partnership with key internal stakeholder “clients” and as a value proposition in service to the org’s top goals; this step empowers capacity gains and workload ownership while giving the you a “results trade off” negotiating lever.
WHAT YOU GET:
Leaders in the Rising Director Program gain advisement and tools to craft their Radical Focus brief, articulating marcom’s “primary job” right now; your 80/20 focus on 1-3 priority areas reserved for 80% of your time; your “right results” KPIs; PLUS advisement on change communications and steps to operationalize their Radical Focus.
2. Shape your bench
Next, you’ll shape your holistic marcom team bench “beyond FTEs” (including AI, contractors, and non-marcom team contributors) to get the right team, in the right roles, doing the right work, and with the vital mindsets and disciplines that keeps your team resilient, your capacity optimized, and your talents/strengths fully leveraged.
WHY IT MATTERS:
You can’t earn or keep strategic influence on your own — it demands the right bench of talent, and a staffing and team leadership approach that leverages every talent asset.
WHAT YOU EARN:
Optimize ROI of marcom personnel and contractor resources, team strengths, and capacity resilience without necessarily adding more $.
WHY IT WORKS:
By shaping your bench “beyond the FTE” you capitalize on capacity gains that include AI and non-marcom contributors — that will keep your most critical work moving no matter what happens next.
WHAT YOU GET:
Leaders in the Rising Director Program gain advisement and tools to craft a custom marcom staffing plan and budget articulating: FTE seats/roles, role of AI, outsource firm and contractor roles, and “team extension” roles for non-marcom team contributors; PLUS advisement on change communications and/or steps to implement their plan.
3. Minimize friction
You’ll address the top marcom operations, systems, tech, and mindset capacity crushers that are adding friction to your workflow and colleague relationships, so you can retain the agency and capacity you’ve worked so hard to earn.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Strategic influence is compromised in moments of operational friction, when you unintentionally give your power away, invite DIYers, or reduce marcom’s perceived value.
WHAT YOU EARN:
Eliminate solvable capacity crushers that strain capacity and optimize ROI of martech and operational investments.
WHY IT WORKS:
By changing how they work, and the mindsets they bring to the work, the full marcom team learns to proactively avoid these friction points long into the future.
WHAT YOU GET:
Leaders in the Rising Director Program gain advisement and tools to craft a marcom ops improvement strategy for optimum: workload intake and management; new or enhanced martech recs to address bottlenecks or to gain capacity; PLUS “right level of effort,” “work smarter, not harder,” and “scale mindset” resources.
4. Sharpen results
Next, you'll sharpen your team's performance-first mindset, operationalize your "right work, right results" focus, and learn how to stay nimble as audience needs shift and/or outside pressures arise.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Strategic influence is compromised in moments of disruption that can take our eye off the “right results” ball; agency is enhanced as we broaden our strategic influence.
WHAT YOU EARN:
The ability to persistently meet or exceed mission-critical results while informing smart growth decisions and/or social impact decisions.
WHY IT WORKS:
Marcom’s role as a vital partner and co-architect of strategic growth, and social impact at scale, begins to take shape here or accelerate here.
WHAT YOU GET:
Leaders in the Rising Director Program gain advisement and tools to create a custom digital performance dashboard and team socialization; PLUS guidance to interpret market- and audience insights to inform smarter org wide decisions.
