Enhance your Strategic Leadership Skills and Run for a NAPO Board Position
By Ellen Delap, CPO & Immediate Past President

Strategic and operational are two adjectives that describe our work as agents of change for our clients and our own work within our businesses. Strategic is the big-picture, forward-thinking that drives our clients to strive for life-size success, and for us to envision more for our business by setting large but bold goals. Operational is getting into the details, the nitty-gritty, crossing I’s and dotting T’s, simply doing the work itself.

If you want to incorporate these values into your daily work while you learn expansively and implement the skills you have, then serving on the NAPO Board of Directors is the perfect opportunity to do so! Now is the time to shine, either by “nominating” yourself or a colleague for a Board position. You will not only build your own skills which in turn will enhance your business while you learn what Strategic and Operational mean to you.

By serving on the NAPO Board of Directors, I have been able to incorporate these pillars into my business. I am better equipped to understand my small business entrepreneurial clients’ work, as it centers on their strategic business building and day-to-day operations.

My residential clients with ADHD need to have a team effort in their homes. Our goals are to coordinate their “team” through effective household management, childcare, work, and self-care. Together we strategize how to build upon and support their daily lives while addressing their personal and family goals. One of their goals could be to have the family eat dinner together, which is monumental in today’s fast-changing world.  As a NAPO Board of Directors member, you also will bring these skills back to your business, allowing you to feel more empowered and confident in your work with clients.

Strategic planning has a role for me personally in building my business but also allows me to focus on my work-life integration. Each year I have what I call “big-picture planning time” where I formulate and execute a plan to build my business and myself in one large and crucial way, with the goal of providing a return for my values. Being strategic I am leveraging my strengths and resources to take me and my business to the next level. On the home front, I have strategically concentrated on enhancing relationships and connections, which is my work-life balance. When I am strategic, I am plotting a well-defined course of action to accomplish my personal and professional goals.

I highly encourage you to take the next steps in building your leadership skills as you learn your personal definition of “Strategic” and “Operational” by serving on the Board of Directors. For more information on the upcoming nomination schedule be on the lookout for an email from NAPO and be sure to read your NAPO To Do newsletter or go to POINT -> Volunteer.

We look forward to seeing you on the Board!

Ellen Delap, CPO & Immediate Past President
Professional-Organizer.com
Kingwood, Texas