Media Release: 17 July 2007
Excelerator helps Charity CEOs to Lead in Complex and Challenging Times
Charity CEOs tackle the tough questions at Leadership Week Event
Twenty CEOs from some of New Zealand’s best known charities will be attending an intense leadership workshop run free of
charge by Excelerator: New Zealand Leadership Institute at The University of Auckland Business School during New Zealand
Leadership Week (on 30 July).
With over 75% of all New Zealanders contributing to charities through donations or volunteer support*, and many hundreds
of thousands benefiting from their services, the leadership of the sector is a significant issue for the nation.
Charity CEOs face challenging problems every day, as they seek to balance the needs of their many beneficiary and
stakeholder groups, lead courageously (often without formal authority), seek to minimise duplication and overlap in
service provision and achieve success with limited funding.
Excelerator’s workshop will help the CEOs to identify their ‘wicked problems’* (ill-defined, ill-structured, real life
decision problems that have incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements and ways forward) and work together to
find collective sustainable leadership strategies to drive the sector forward.
Steven Tindall, Founder of the Tindall Foundation – and one of Excelerator’s key partners, has first hand experience of
the challenges for Charities in New Zealand. He shares his perspective - "We see great leadership right across the
sector every day, but everything about the context brings new challenges - multiple stakeholders, diverse and competing
requests for support, the constant challenge to balance values with operational necessities and much more. I am sure the
attendees will learn a great deal - and use it well.”
Excelerator Chief Executive, and Adjunct Professor of Leadership at The University of Auckland Business School, Lester
Levy will participate as part of the practitioner panel alongside Keith Johnston, International Chair at Oxfam and Diane
Robertson, City Missioner at Auckland City Mission. He says: "There will be a very strong emphasis on practical
application throughout adding real world relevance to the theory. I believe that the result will be a day that has
Excelerator is meeting the costs of the workshop including providing an experienced five-person facilitation team free
of charge. Due to the outstanding response from the charitable sector all the available places at workshop have now been
taken.
ends