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John Heymann

jheymann@newlevelgroup.com
(707) 255-5555 x105

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John Heymann has more than 30 years experience as an entrepreneur, business owner, and leader. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Managing Director of the Land Trust of Napa County, and Chief Executive Officer of Motto Kryla & Fisher, John is well known for his ability to work with disparate groups to gain consensus and deliver results.

With a keen understanding of the needs of both businesses and the not-for-profit sector, John helps organizations build cultures and structures to improve performance and productivity. Working with clients in the areas of strategic planning, board and executive development, organizational effectiveness, sustainability, and strategic fund development, John has helped dozens of organizations achieve new levels of success.

John is a Past-Chair of the Napa County Farmworker Oversight Committee, serves on the Steering Committee of the Mayors’ Roundtable for Arts & Culture, is an Advisor to the Fundación Humanitaria, was a Past-President of the Architectural Woodwork Institute, and has served on the advisory boards of Theodore Roosevelt National Bank and Montgomery College.

Publications include Gestion Empresarial: Una Guia Didactica, a business administration textbook and teaching guide for high school students and teachers (Spanish), published by the Costa Rica Ministry of Education, and Association Recruiting and Retention, a practical how-to guide for non-profit association membership development. John has also had numerous articles printed in various trade publications on management, leadership, training, technology, and membership development issues.

Articles by John Heymann

Articles by John Heymann

Articles by John Heymann

New Articles

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Strategic Thinking
I’m not a big fan of strategic planning. What I am a big fan of is strategic thinking. Too often, strategic planning plays out as a painful process of canned exercises and platitudes that get translated into a 64 page document that then gets put on a shelf and never looked at again. No wonder powerful women shudder and strong men weep when they hear their executive director say “it’s time for strategic planning.”
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Managing Volunteer Talent
Nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers, but most organizations do a poor job of managing them. As a result, more than one-third of those who volunteer one year do not donate their time the next year—at any nonprofit. That adds up to an estimated $38 billion in lost labor. To remedy this situation, nonprofit leaders must develop a more strategic approach to managing this overlooked and undervalued talent pool. The good news is that new waves of retiring baby boomers and energetic young people are ready to fill the gap.
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Think

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If the IRS Comes Calling, Can You Bare It All?
Funding has always been a challenge for nonprofit organizations. Today, times are even tougher than usual. Private donations could well decline as slow growth in personal income, coupled with high prices for everything from food to gasoline, forces consumers to make difficult spending decisions. Declines and uncertainty in the stock market have reduced the value of donor and foundation investment portfolios. Slowing economic activity lowers tax revenues for all levels of government, at the same time the pressure to fund expanded services is increasing.
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Thinking Inside the Box: Keeping a Strategic Focus to Guide Decisions
The world is full of opportunities, but which are the right ones for your organization to pursue? Thinking inside the box can help maintain your focus.
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Vision and Mission Definitions
A vision is a guiding image of success formed in terms of a contribution to society. If a strategic plan is the
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The Next Generation of Nonprofit Leaders: Will There Be Enough?
A perfect storm is brewing in the nonprofit world — one that promises to rock the boat for nonprofits and the communities that they serve. At a time when the sector is rapidly expanding (between 1995 and 2004, the number of nonprofits grew at a compound growth rate of 69%), baby boom executives are retiring and the available labor pool will soon be insufficient to meet demand.
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Getting Your Nonprofit Board On-Board
One of the great things about nonprofit boards is the passion they bring to their volunteerism. But passion alone is not enough to develop, plan, and provide the leadership necessary to have an effective, high-functioning organization. Board members of successful organizations are constantly challenging themselves to improve their approach to fulfilling the legal, fiduciary, and management responsibilities of the position.
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A Culture of Learning
Today's knowledge workers are a lot different from workers of past generations. Well-educated, highly-experienced specialists often coming out of big corporate environments, these are not really employees in the traditional sense. Just as a company's capital may be held in buildings, equipment, inventories, brands, and proprietary processes, a knowledge worker's capital — their intellectual property — is held inside their heads.
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What Gets Measured...
It's been said that, "What gets measured, gets managed." But how does one determine what should be measured? Should all measurements be objective or is there a place for the subjective as well? Measurements — both subjective and objective — are critical for an organization to maintain alignment between its strategic goals and its day-to-day activities.
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Culture and the Bottom Line
What does a successful wine business looks like? Most of the measures wineries focus on to steer their success tend to be hard and quantifiable: gross margins, price points, sales volume, market share, distribution clout, or direct sales percentages. How can something more qualitative, like your organization's culture, determine success?
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Baby You Can Drive My Car
If we can’t get Americans to give up our cars, then one approach is to make cars that are more energy efficient and non-polluting.
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Act

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Changing Culture for Sustainability
The organizations that will be the most successful in implementing sustainable practices will be those capable of bringing about rapid and long-lasting change internally.
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Building An Effective, Sustainable, Impactful Organization
While there is no one formula for building a high-performance social sector organization, there are attributes and processes that all effective organizations have in common. The following is a checklist of some of those basic components.
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High Satisfaction Days TM: Leading Indicators of Results
Have you ever measured the doneness of cookies baking in your oven using the smoke detector instead of a timer? When the smoke alarm goes off, you certainly know the cookies are done, it's just that the information isn't very helpful at that point. That's an example of what economists call a "Lagging Indicator". While most successful organizations use performance measures to gauge results, the majority of the measures they employ — financial reports, sales results, 360° reviews — are lagging indicators. That is, they tell you with some accuracy how you did, but not until after the fact.
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Tough Times Call for Strong Leadership
Funding has always been a challenge for nonprofit organizations. With today’s economic challenges, times are even tougher than usual. Private donations are likely on a downward trend as slow growth in personal income forces consumers to make difficult spending decisions. Declines and uncertainty in the stock market have reduced the value of donor and foundation investment portfolios. Slowing economic activity lowers tax revenues for all levels of government, at the same time the pressure to fund expanded services is increasing.
Read more...