Alumni meets: Bolette Christensen
What motivates leaders in the not-for-profit sector? And how do they motivate others?
Bolette Christensen is
CEO at the Danish-based
NGO BØRNEfonden. Before
that she spent 17 years as the
deputy director-general of
the Confederation of Danish
Industries.
Photo: Kennet Havgaard
D
uring my 17 years as deputy
director-general of the
Confederation of Danish
Industries I was fortunate enough to
travel to Africa many times, and saw with
my own eyes the huge potential to work
with people there to improve their lives.
So I feel very lucky to have been given
the opportunity to do that in this job,
which I took two and a half years ago.
But the challenge is huge. Many children
and young people in Africa never get
the chance to develop their potential
because they are so poor.
My role at the Confederation of
Danish Industries was to provide
leadership and organisation
development, productivity, innovation
and diversity competencies to
Confederation of Danish Industries
members and I'm trying to use that
experience to take BØRNEfonden,
which is 40 years old, to the next stage
of its development - both in terms of
developing our people and increasing
our impact on the communities we serve.
So I give direction to our 750
employees, set and help them
work towards goals, improve their
engagement, and so on, and the
techniques I use to do that are exactly
the same as they were in my previous
job. Likewise, we have sales, finance
and marketing functions just like a
traditional commercial business, and my
job is to optimise those to make us more
effective at what we do.
But while the job is about applying
leadership skills to get results, the
environment in which I'm doing that
is very different from the commercial
arena. Many of our employees are on the
ground in Africa, so there are language
differences and cultural differencesas
well as sector differences. I have to take
care of the money, respond to changes
in the market and so on, but our bottom
line is not how much profit we make but
how well we help and develop children,
families and communities in Africa.
In an organisation like this you have to
take into account, and be accountable to,
many more stakeholders than you do in a
typical business. For example, we receive
lots of our income from Danish families,
and we have to ensure that we thank
You do need
to be idealistic
them and tell them about the impact we
are making with the money they give us.
And not only is BØRNEfonden Denmark's
largest development organisation (in
terms of private funding), but we are
also part of the international ChildFund
Alliance, which gives us a whole range of
additional stakeholders in many other
countries too.
Communication is a very large
aspect of my role, at many different
levels - from discussing our strategy
with teams in Copenhagen and Africa,
to building relationships and networks
with other NGOs and partners, to
lobbying governments. I think the
biggest surprise when I got here was
just how complex the task is - and that's
something you can't grasp until you are
inside the organisation.
My leadership style is the same as
it has always been. I am very open,
interested in what's going on around
me, curious about new ideas. I am
accessible and responsive to people,
and I try to lead from the front and be
a strong role model. I'm authentic too that's essential if people are to trust you
and believe in you.
But though I'm trying to bring more
traditional 'business' disciplines into
a not-for-profit organisation, there
has been no sense of a culture clash.
Our core values are so firmly fixed in
people's heads and hearts that they
embrace every opportunity to get better
at what they do, because that allows
them to be more effective and have a
greater impact on the people we help.
In fact I've tried to use the diversity in
our organisation to greater effect: we've
broken down lots of silos and created
more cohesion between our head office
in Copenhagen and our teams in Africa.
We can't motivate people with
financial incentives, but the driving
force for BØRNEfonden employees
is doing as much as possible to help
people in Africa, and giving them the
tools and techniques to do that better is
motivation in itself.
Since I joined this organisation I
have focused very hard on developing
leadership and management skills in
our people. However energetic and
enthusiastic I am, I can't do everything
myself. We had a big leadership
summit last year to look at what
leadership is, how we do it, how we
can do it better. That sort of thing costs
very little, but it really demonstrates
your commitment. We talk about
leadership a lot here: it's important
that we learn together so that we
understand each other and share the
same expectations of what we need
to achieve and how we're going to
achieve it.
Setting people stretching goals also
motivates them - and they get a great
sense of satisfaction when they achieve
them. It's like running a marathon.
At the moment some of our people in
Copenhagen are working on a very big
assignment, with tough deadlines. In
three months' time hopefully we will
get approval for the funding, and then
there will be big celebrations.
In terms of my own motivation,
when I go to Africa and see our
employees so committed to helping
people, and the families so eager to
break out of povertyand have a better
life, it is impossible to be downhearted.
Africans are often portrayed as victims.
But they aren't victims. They certainly
face considerable challenges, but they
are eager for the same things that have
improved the lives of people in the
West - education, vaccinations, better
nutrition and so on - and I've changed
the way we communicate to reflect that.
Growing competition among notfor-profit organisations means that the
current model, which relies largely on
donations, is unsustainable. People are
no longer as loyal to 'their' charities
as they were even five or ten years
ago, and younger people in particular
tend to respond to emergencies and
crises around the world as they arise.
Such emergencies are likely to become
increasingly common because of
climate change.
Over the next five to ten years
we will see new ways of raising
money emerging, and I think social
enterprises, a hybrid between
commercial organisations and
charities, will become huge in Africa
and Latin America. For that to happen
NGOs like BØRNEfonden will have
to work closely with companies and
governments, and I'm already talking
to different organisations about
those new kinds of relationships and
structures.
The combination of new business
models and technology, which allows
us to report back to donors the
impact of their spending, will change
everything over the next five to ten
years, and that will cause disruption
in the sector. But BØRNEfonden
takes a long-term perspective to the
communities that we work within
Africa, and as part of that we are
developing new ways of engaging
sponsors. Indeed, the world is changing
so fast that in ten years' time we may
see things we can't even imagine now.
I spend much of my time thinking and
talking about new models, strategies
and directions for the future.
I think more cross-over of leadership
skills between different sectors should
be encouraged, and certainly my
former colleagues from the business
world are following my progress with
great interest. But my advice to anyone
contemplating a move into the notfor-profit sector would be to think very
carefully about why they want to move.
'Heart' is not enough: this is not an easy
job at all. But at the same time you do
need to be idealistic: you have to believe
you can change things, whatever the
obstacles in your way. At BØRNEfonden
we are very ambitious.
.....................................................
Taken from AQ The Journal of Alumni
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