Islam in America

Instead of sitting in a closed room with a few people to come up with “the strategy”, community leaders should find ways to open up the process and get input from all over. In fact great input may come, not only from the Muslim community, but even from interfaith partners.

I have seen this process successfully happen in an Islamic context, and it produced wonderful results. Gather input from community members as an integral part of the strategy setting process.

This was also done often by our prophet, in many famous incidents where he would ask the companions : “ashiroo 3alaya ayouha al nas” (Oh people, tell me what to do). Companions spoke their minds, and in fact sometimes offered suggestions that initially countered that of the prophet.

An important success of the leaders is to open up the planning and strategy setting process to more and more people.

This is a good article about the subject. http://hbr.org/2010/10/can-you-open-source-your-strategy/ar/1

Compared to other minorities in America, Muslims are the new kids on the block. This means that our institutions have less history, and therefore less maturity than those in other communities. We have more to learn with respect to coming together as a community, managing (and leveraging) our differences, uniting, institution building, relying on endowments rather than brute-force-fundraising, and more.

This is why it is very exciting to be a Muslim activist these days: every day, you are laying the foundation for many things to come.

Below are some a few useful resources on leadership, and running organizations.

I hope that community leaders involved in nonprofit work will find these useful.

weekly nonprofit webinars

Video, Audio and articles on leadership :

The Biggest Mistake a Leader Can Make –

The Role of Tomorrow’s Leaders –

Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis –

Build a Better Business Model –

3 Tips for Handling Surprise Criticism:

The Leadership Lessons of Ants –

Why We Secretly Love Meetings –

Involve members in creating strategy

Forgive and Remember: How a Good Boss Responds to Mistakes –

Howard Schultz on Starbucks’ Turnaround –

The Art of Leading Well –

The Three Roles of Great Entrepreneurs –

Grooming Leaders to Handle Ambiguity –

Obama-McChrystal Moments: Handling Insubordination –

If Your Company Went Out of Business, Would Anybody Notice? –

Get Your Team to Stop Fighting and Start Working –

Breaking Free from the Acceleration Trap –