Do you see your role as an ED as your purpose or as your profession?

I think that’s true of a lot of E.D.s. They start with passion driven by purpose and end burnt out and anxious to exit. Not true of all but true of enough.

Having been driven by purpose as an early career founder
leading an organization through its sixteen-year lifecycle, I often felt a tug
between a mission that I loved and its institutional support structures (like
office operations) that sometimes seemed disconnected.

This “tug” played out for me in internal conversations
almost daily. My work was filled with purpose during entrepreneurial start-up
and growth stages. As the organization became more and more successful, and
more professional, I started asking a profound question.

Was I the person to
continue the journey with the organization? As its founder, I had to accept
that the skills and competencies that got us here weren’t necessarily needed to
move forward. Although an entrepreneur, leader, and manager can exist in one
person, I wondered if all three qualities could exist in me. I had demonstrated
some capacity as a professional manager, essential to move the organization
forward, but would it be enough and would I be able to allow my entrepreneurial
compulsions to play a lesser role?

After a good deal of introspection, coaching, and
professional development, my board and I concluded that I had what was needed,
which included the capacity to grow with the organization. As a result, we grew
the organization from about $5,000 of startup revenues in 1994 to nearly $1m in
2008, which is when the match no longer seemed to work. The organization began
merger talks and ultimately required a program manager, which I was able to do
but it was less of an interest than executive leadership at that time in my
life and career. Ironically, while I had grown up as a leader and manager with
the organization I had outgrown its current needs.

While purpose was inherent in all that I did throughout
those years, I was also “professionalized” by it. I learned how to develop,
sustain, grow, and adapt management systems in human resources, finance, board
development, fundraising – dimensions of nonprofit management that continue to
fill me with purpose to this day.

I don’t always have the fervor of the entrepreneur these
days, but I do remember him. And every so often we say hello.