I am doing a three-part video series on challenges and pitfalls that face nonprofits and other mission-driven organizations.

The first pitfall is “inwardness,” as I discuss here:

This is not a new idea. Indeed, one of the drivers of the whole strategic planning movement of the late 1960’s was the notion that businesses needed to begin looking outward rather than planning based only on their internal goals.

More recently, my friend and colleague Rich Harwood has had a lot to say about the problem of inwardness among civic institutions, and much of his work involves getting organizations to turn outward. I highly recommend Rich’s report, The Organization-First Approach, written with John Creighton, that goes in-depth into this problem.

(This issue was also at the root of an interesting project we worked on together last year.)

Next up, the problem that faces all too many nonprofits: when organizations confuse their mission with their existence, and begin to believe that whatever is good for the organization must by definition be good for the mission.