Articles
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When leaders hear the word risk, the natural response is often hesitation. It conjures images of potential losses, liabilities, and long lists of “things that could go wrong.” But risk management doesn’t have to be a heavy binder that sits on a shelf. Done well, it becomes one of the most powerful strategic tools an organization can use.
I’ve seen this play out across sectors — affordable housing, healthcare, higher education, and non-profits. The organizations that thrive are not those who avoid risk, but those who anticipate, prepare, and act with clarity.
Why Risk Matters More Than Ever
Today’s environment is full of volatility—economic shifts, rising construction costs, changes in government policy, talent shortages, and even unexpected events like global health crises. Ignoring risk doesn’t make uncertainty disappear. Instead, it makes organizations reactive.
A proactive approach to risk builds resilience. It equips boards and leadership teams to make bold moves with confidence, knowing they’ve thought through the “what ifs.”
Beyond the Checkbox Exercise
Too often, risk management is reduced to compliance: a list of potential threats ranked red, yellow, or green. That’s not strategy, that’s paperwork.
Real leadership reframes the conversation:
Threats → What could derail our mission?
Opportunities → What could accelerate it if we act quickly?
This dual lens transforms risk from fear-driven avoidance to opportunity-driven stewardship.
A Simple, Effective Framework
In practice, risk management doesn’t need to be complicated. The most effective systems I’ve worked with follow four steps:
Identify – What risks could affect our mission, finances, operations, or reputation?
Assess – What’s the likelihood, and how significant is the impact?
Mitigate – What steps can reduce exposure or strengthen resilience?
Monitor – Who is accountable, and how do we track progress over time?
When linked directly to strategic goals, this process becomes a driver of better decisions—not a distraction from them.
Risk as a Leadership Advantage
Organizations that embrace risk management as a strategic discipline gain several advantages:
Agility: They can adapt quickly when the unexpected happens.
Credibility: Funders, partners, and stakeholders trust them more.
Confidence: Boards and executives can pursue opportunities knowing they’ve prepared for challenges.
This is especially true in complex environments like affordable housing or seniors’ care, where capital is significant, timelines are long, and stakeholders are many.
From Burden to Strength
Risk management is not about saying “no.” It’s about having the courage to say “yes” wisely. It gives leaders clarity, strengthens decision-making, and ultimately safeguards mission and impact.
In other words: risk isn’t just something to manage, it’s something to leverage.
🔹 Over to you: How does your organization approach risk? Is it seen as a burden or as a strategic advantage?
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The Power of Asking for Help: Why Leaders and Teams Should Embrace It
In Chapter 11 of The Earned Life, Marshall Goldsmith describes a curious case at IBM: managers offering coaching were often met with a polite but firm, “No, thank you, boss. I perform effectively with no need for coaching.” On the surface, it sounds like confidence. In reality, it was a cultural trap, a vicious cycle where the offer of help implied underperformance, and declining help signaled competence.
This is not unique to IBM. Many organizations, and many leaders, unintentionally discourage help-seeking behavior. Asking for help can be misinterpreted as weakness, incompetence, or a lack of initiative. But in truth, it’s one of the most underutilized strategies for growth, resilience, and innovation.
Why We Struggle to Ask for Help
Pride and Ego – We want to prove we can handle things ourselves, fearing our credibility will take a hit if we admit we need support.
Fear of Judgment – We worry others will think less of us or see us as a burden.
Cultural Conditioning – In many corporate environments, independence is celebrated while collaboration is quietly undervalued.
Reciprocity Anxiety – We fear that accepting help creates an obligation we may not be able to repay.
The Cost of Not Asking
I often quip, pay now or pay later. Make no mistake, you will aways pay—later is often more expensive and more painful. So, ask now, or ask later . . . in the end, most of us will ask for help. Avoiding help might protect our ego in the short term, but it often comes at a high cost:
Missed Opportunities for Learning – Every piece of guidance is a potential shortcut to insight.
Inefficiency and Burnout – Struggling alone can waste time, drain energy, and delay results.
Weaker Relationships – Asking for help builds trust; avoiding it can keep relationships shallow.
Organizational Stagnation – Cultures that punish vulnerability become slow to adapt.
How to Normalize Help-Seeking in Leadership
Model It from the Top – When leaders openly ask for input, coaching, or feedback, it signals safety for everyone else.
Reward Collaboration, Not Just Independence – Recognize and celebrate when teams solve problems together.
Frame Help as a Strength – Position it as a smart, proactive move, not a rescue mission.
Make Coaching Routine – If coaching is part of the normal workflow, it loses its stigma.
The Hidden Strength in Asking for Help
When we ask for help, we give others a chance to contribute their strengths and combine them with our strengths. You know, the sum of the parts . . . It invites diversity of thought, accelerates progress, and strengthens bonds. It also reminds us and our teams that leadership is not about having all the answers, but about creating the conditions for the best answers to emerge.
Make no mistake, there is merit in persevering and figuring things out on your own; there is more merit in leveraging the team and asking for help.
If we want high-performing, innovative organizations, we must dismantle the “no help needed” culture. The leaders who will thrive in the coming decade are those who can say without hesitation:
“I don’t have it all figured out. Can you help me?”
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Canada doesn’t just have a housing supply problem — we have a housing system problem. And while the affordability crisis touches nearly everyone, solving it requires more than simply building faster or subsidizing more. It requires rethinking how we value, finance, regulate, and deliver housing as a core piece of national infrastructure.
Housing affordability won’t be fixed with a silver bullet. But it can be tackled with a bold, multi-layered approach grounded in collaboration, clarity, and courage.
Here’s how we move from crisis to solution.
1. Treat Housing Like Infrastructure, Not a Commodity
We don’t rely on the private market to provide hospitals, highways, or public schools, yet we expect it to house the entire population. While the market has a role to play (a big part), it cannot (and should not) be expected to deliver deeply affordable or inclusive housing on its own.
Solution: Governments must invest in housing the way they invest in roads -- as a public good. That means funding non-profit housing providers, acquiring land for future development, and establishing long-term housing strategies with multi-decade commitments, not election-cycle pilot programs.
2. Unlock Public and Faith-Based Land for Mission-Driven Development
Across Canada, churches, hospitals, and school boards are sitting on underused land, often in walkable, central neighbourhoods. With the right partnerships, these assets can be redeveloped into mixed-income housing that meets real community needs.
Solution: Create land trusts, joint ventures, and pre-development support programs that empower landowners to retain long-term control while leveraging professional development expertise and capital.
3. Fix the Approval Bottleneck
Red tape is strangling supply. Development timelines stretch 5–10 years in some cities due to complex zoning, consultation fatigue, and political risk-aversion. Every month of delay means higher costs and fewer homes.
Solution: Introduce “by-right” zoning for affordable and mixed-income housing near transit. Streamline permitting with clear timelines. Create municipal accountability incentives tied to housing targets, not just units proposed, but units built.
4. Use the Full Toolbox: Tax, Finance, and Policy Levers
Solving affordability requires both supply-side and demand-side strategies. We need capital grants, low-interest loans, tax incentives, and inclusionary zoning all working in concert.
Solution: Expand CMHC’s Housing Accelerator Fund, but pair it with social outcomes — deep affordability, accessibility, and sustainability. At the local level, mandate affordability set-asides in large developments. Use vacant land tax revenues to fund non-profit builds.
5. Stop Building Housing That People Can’t Afford
Too often, “affordable” housing meets technical definitions but fails to serve those most in need. A $1,700/month unit may be below market, but it’s still unaffordable to a senior on GIS or a single parent earning $45,000 a year.
Solution: Set affordability targets tied to local income levels, not market averages. Build for a spectrum of need: from supportive housing to moderate-income rental and attainable homeownership.
6. Involve Communities, Don’t Just Consult Them
NIMBYism thrives in the absence of trust. Communities resist change when they feel ignored, surprised, or left behind. But when engaged early and authentically, most communities can shift from opposition to ownership.
Solution: Equip non-profits, developers, and municipalities with tools to tell better stories, showcase dignified design, and co-create with residents. Require community benefit agreements for large-scale rezonings.
7. Measure What Matters
We don’t have a consistent, national way to track affordability outcomes, unit durability, or who’s actually being served. If we can’t measure it, we can’t fix it.
Solution: Create a federal Housing Affordability Scorecard. Track rent-to-income ratios, eviction rates, unit turnover, and long-term affordability commitments. Make the data public and comparable across regions. Other nations are doing this.
The Bottom Line
We didn’t get into this crisis overnight. And we won’t get out with isolated programs or partisan slogans. But we can make progress faster than we think if we treat affordable housing as a national imperative, not a sector-specific problem. As Bill Gates famously said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten.”
This is a moment for bold leadership and aligned action.
We need all hands: developers, municipalities, faith communities, non-profits, and governments at every level.
Because housing isn’t just about shelter. It’s about dignity, stability, health, and opportunity.
And every citizen of Canada deserves that chance.
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If you ask five different people to define “affordable housing,” you’ll likely get ten different answers — a shelter for people who are homeless, subsidized apartments, units for seniors, co-op housing, or even market rentals with below-average rent. The confusion isn’t just semantic; it impacts funding decisions, public opinion, and policy execution.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) defines housing as “affordable” if it costs less than 30% of a household’s gross income. It’s a useful baseline, but one that fails to reflect the complexity of Canada’s housing realities. In many cities, even middle-income earners can’t find decent homes under that threshold. Meanwhile, a unit priced below market rent might still be unaffordable to someone living on disability assistance.
So, what is affordable housing?
It’s better understood as a spectrum of housing types and supports designed to meet the needs of people with low to moderate incomes. It includes:
Non-market rentals owned or operated by non-profits, faith groups, or municipalities;
Subsidized housing with government rent assistance;
Supportive housing that offers services to those with disabilities, seniors, or those transitioning from homelessness;
Attainable homeownership programs that help modest-income families enter the market;
Co-operative housing;
And deeply affordable units designed for the lowest income households.
Each serves a purpose. But they are not interchangeable — and using them as if they were leads to poor planning, public confusion, and wasted opportunities.
Why It Matters
When governments, developers, or the public use “affordable housing” as a catch-all, we create mismatched expectations. A new “affordable” development might meet CMHC guidelines but still be out of reach for those most in need. Or a program might target the right group but lack the wraparound supports that make housing sustainable long-term.
We also risk missing out on innovative approaches. Churches with underused land, co-ops with a long history of community success, and mixed-income developments that blend market and non-market units all play a role. But they need clear direction, not confusion about what qualifies as “affordable.”
The conversation must evolve. Housing affordability isn’t just a housing issue, it’s a health, workforce, education, and justice issue. It affects productivity, public spending, and social cohesion. And it demands a shared vocabulary grounded in reality.
Three Things You Can Do Right Now
1. Challenge Assumptions. Affordable housing isn’t a last resort. It’s a foundation for a thriving community. Teachers, seniors, newcomers, and essential workers rely on it, not just the marginalized. Visit a non-profit housing site. Ask who lives there. You might be surprised.
2. Speak Clearly, Build Better. Words like “affordable” mean different things to different people. Be precise. Say “non-market rental” or “supportive housing” when that’s what you mean. Clear definitions lead to smarter policies and stronger partnerships.
3. Always Ask: Affordable for Whom? If a unit costs $1,400 a month, who can afford it? Who can’t? Every time a new housing project is proposed, ask who’s being served, and who’s being left behind. This one question can change everything.
Affordable housing isn’t one-size-fits-all. And until we start talking about it with more clarity and compassion, we’ll struggle to deliver the solutions Canada urgently needs. Let’s stop debating if we need affordable housing and start deciding how to do it better.
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When people hear “non-profit,” they often assume it means “no profit.” But that’s one of the most damaging misconceptions holding mission-driven organizations back. Non-profit should not become the mantra of mediocrity.
The reality is this: non-profit is a legal structure, not a business model. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t generate a surplus, it simply means you reinvest that surplus into your mission rather than distributing it to shareholders.
And that surplus – your profit – is what makes your mission sustainable. This is profit for purpose.
Why Profit Still Matters
A non-profit that constantly operates on the edge of insolvency can’t focus on long-term impact. Without financial stability:
Programs shrink when donations slow down.
Staff burn out under the strain of doing “more with less.”
Big opportunities for impact are missed because there’s no capacity to invest.
Profit for purpose changes that. It allows you to:
Build financial reserves for stability.
Expand programs strategically rather than reactively.
Invest in people, systems, and innovation.
Simply put, profit fuels purpose.
Running a Non-Profit Like a Business
Non-profits exist to serve communities and causes, but they must embrace the same business fundamentals that make for-profit organizations sustainable. Here’s what that looks like:
1. Strategic Clarity and Value Proposition
Just like a successful business knows its market, a non-profit must know its mission field.
What unique value do you provide that no one else does?
Who is your target audience: beneficiaries, funders, partners?
How do you measure and communicate impact?
Having a clear value proposition helps you attract funding, engage stakeholders, and avoid “mission drift” that spreads resources too thin.
2. Disciplined Financial Management
A business thrives by managing revenue, costs, and cash flow. Non-profits must do the same.
Plan for surpluses - they’re not selfish, they’re strategic.
Diversify income sources beyond grants and donations (e.g., fee-for-service programs, social enterprises).
Build reserves and endowments to withstand funding fluctuations.
Use financial dashboards and KPIs to stay on top of performance, not just compliance.
Think beyond survival. Financial health = mission resilience.
3. Professional Leadership & Governance
Businesses invest in seasoned executives and accountable boards. Non-profits must too.
Boards should focus on strategic governance, not micromanaging operations.
Executive directors and leadership teams should have the same caliber of business acumen you’d expect in a for-profit enterprise.
Leaders must balance passion for the mission with operational discipline, risk management, and innovation.
Passion is vital, but without professional management, it can burn out before achieving lasting impact.
4. Performance Metrics and Accountability
Businesses measure profits, market share, and growth. Non-profits must measure outcomes.
How many lives are you impacting?
What’s the social return on investment (SROI)?
How efficient are your operations compared to similar organizations?
Funders and stakeholders want proof of impact—not just stories but clear, measurable results.
5. Branding and Marketing Discipline
Like any business, non-profits must compete for attention, funding, and partnerships.
Invest in a strong brand that communicates trust and results.
Use storytelling to connect donors and stakeholders emotionally while showing measurable impact.
Cultivate partnerships that enhance credibility and expand reach.
A well-run non-profit doesn’t “beg for money” – it attracts investment by demonstrating value.
6. Capacity Building and Innovation
Businesses grow by reinvesting profits into capacity: new tools, staff, and technology. Non-profits must do the same.
Stop underfunding infrastructure and calling it “lean.” Lean often leads to burnout and inefficiency.
Invest in your people, technology, and systems so you can scale impact.
Create an innovation mindset and be willing to pilot new approaches and refine based on what works.
Overhead isn’t the enemy; under-investment is.
A Practical Example
Imagine a community housing non-profit wanting to expand affordable housing options. If it only survives on year-to-year grants, it’s forced to operate in crisis mode, always waiting for the next donation.
But if it adopts a profit for purpose mindset, it can:
Build reserves to acquire land before it’s lost to speculators.
Partner with private developers on innovative projects.
Create steady revenue streams through social enterprises.
Suddenly, it’s not just surviving; it’s leading.
Impact Requires Investment
If you want to make a lasting difference, you need the financial strength to back it up. Mission-driven organizations can’t afford to think small or operate on fumes.
Because here’s the truth: a struggling non-profit can’t change the world. A strong, well-run one can.
That strength starts with thinking like a business, embracing profit for purpose as the engine that drives sustainable impact.