Principled Leadership for Social Enterprise

At the SoCap conference, one hears the consistent refrains that the challenges that the world faces are daunting and growing, and that impact investing and social enterprise can and must play a role in meeting those challenges.  But there are also words of caution that impact investing and social enterprise don't get caught up in its own hype.  The Monitor and Acumen Fund "Blueprint to Scale" report and Omidyar's "Priming the Pump" blog series reinforce that a serious reflection is now happening in the sector about what is needed to solve sector-wide problems and how investment capital and philanthropy need to co-exist.

To navigate the next stage of growth for the field, I think we need a generation of principled leaders who are committed to not only solving these problems, but ones who are trained to deal with their complexity.  And I as I thought about the challenge of leadership, I reflected on a talk I gave to students at MIT last year where the theme was on "principled leadership". 

So what are principled leaders?

To me, principled leadership is a recognition that not only the generic traits of leadership such as courage, humility, self-awareness, the ability to listen are needed, but that in a complex world, the specific skills required to succeed in the non-profit, for-profit and public sectors are needed for ventures that increasingly work across domains. 

That principled leaders have the moral imagination of a nonprofit entrepreneur, with the ability to define a compelling mission, to generate resources literally from nothing, and to ask people to join them on a journey to solve problems that no one thought were solvable.    

That principled leaders have the operational excellence, the disciple and focus to manage an efficient and effective “enterprise”, be it social or not-for profit, that they have a keen eye for not only the financial margin, but also the social and environmental metrics of their business. 

That principled leaders understand how to influence policy and deploy resources ethically in the world of power and politics to promote not just their personal financial interests, but to create broader public mandates in the long-term interests of their shareholders, their stakeholders their country and ultimately humanity at large.

And that principled leaders not only consider what they do, but HOW they do it. In a winner take all society, principled leaders not only play by the rules, and not only do they help others onto the playing field, but they continue to refine the rules so that everyone on the field has a chance… not necessarily an equal chance, but a chance… of winning.