I found my boss’s write-up – a kind of a State of the Union – that he drafted for the organization before he handed over my predecessor’s responsibilities to me. Reading it over again, I can tell that I was in the right place at the right time because his dissatisfaction had been building over three years with my predecessor. I now know that, even more than her, he had had no success with finding a good leader after the best one who had gotten the organization the most funding and the highest profile, politically and socially, before she left to go back to school, which left huge shoes for him to fill.

Nonprofits aren’t so different from for-profits in that the successful organizations are good at raising money through success in their mission and/or creatively coming up with multiple streams of revenue. I can see that was one of my boss’s talents, whereas hiring was not the best. I can see that I fit the top priorities he listed for himself, which were not the same ones of the organization, and that was why he/the board was satisfied with my performance despite the fact that I hadn’t achieved or surpassed the successes of our past.