Someone should make a Venn diagram. In one circle, put start ups. In another circle, put charities. Where they overlap, that can be the "we're super bad at training place."

"We wait too long to train our leaders," by Jack Zenger. December 2012.

I saw a HBR post recently, which says that the average age of someone in corporate leadership training programs is 42.

We teach math, writing, philosophy, history, science, and phys-ed to children, but wait until someone is 42 years old before we start teaching them how to be an effective leader. That's crazy. And foolish.

Arguably, the problems that charity leaders are tackling are some of the most important problems facing society. They are also some of the most difficult to solve, since common solutions like markets and time won't take care of them. This is exactly the sector in which we want more, better, trained, effective leaders.

There's no comparable study for the nonprofit sector specifically, but I'd be shocked if we did a better job than our for-profit friends. Worse, we tend to equate heart and good intentions with efficacy. We aren't as ruthless as we could be about identifying skills that really work and cultivating them.

We should change that.