The 2018–2019 Fellows were grateful to the many American Public Gardens Association members who submitted ideas for the Longwood Fellows’ cohort project while at the Association’s annual conference in June 2018. More than 50 topics were submitted and the Fellows chose to research, write, and publish an Organizational Asessment Resource for Senior-Level Leaders.
This resource provides a framework that senior-level leaders can use to assess their organizations. It offers specific reasoning, definitions, and strategies—the why, what, and how—for topics that are both challenging and important: organizational culture, individual staff, and the board. Each topic is nuanced, yet related, because each, at its core, relates to people. These assessment strategies are based on experiences of garden leaders from around the world, whose quotes are intended to guide and inspire the reader.