MESSY MANAGER

Notes with stories and lessons from a (new) manager in field of sustainability (intersdiciplinarity), trying to remain creative!

STORY

Working on social and environmental sustainability means working on interdisciplinarity -> and interdisciplinarity brings the need of multi-tasking -> and for efficient multi-tasking, one needs to be good at managing people, process, and purpose! I was aware of this need but didn’t aim to formalize the process of being a better manager - to work better in the field of interdisciplinarity and sustainability.

But as the COVID-19 outbreak happened, and I had to flex my roles, so I started working with new teams in Spring of 2020 (1) as the crowdfunding manager at Capacity Zurich, and (2) as the co-founder of Humane Warriors (with the team of 35+ members, among 7 projects, formed in a span of just last 6 months). And in a matter of few months, I suddenly stumbled upon the fact that I was officially a manager: "a person responsible for administering an organization or group of staff". But being an absolute beginner at this and still struggling with the identity of the non-profit and its structure, this was (is) an absolute mess, and I was (am) afraid that I was (am) doing everything wrong.

So, I decided to take a step back and reflect on what the team and I would like to learn from this experience (together) and thus started making notes. Soon, with many discussions, these notes have taken the form of this dedicated blog page. This is a step in the direction to learn more and stay creative in the messy field of (non-profit) management. As I have absolutely zero knowledge but a lot of learning lined up, please feel free to add your comment on the respective blogs! Else, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.