I spent the first decade of my career completely unprepared for the job I was doing. And I had no idea.
Hi everyone and welcome to the fourth issue of The Seven Pillars.
Last week, we talked about "Active Waiting" and how to stay relevant when the job market is cold. This week, I want to talk about one of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve had in my career—one that I think is critical for anyone trying to survive the "Aid Recession."
The Business Skills Gap
It occurred to me a few years ago that I had never had a traditional job. I had gone from the military to working for NGOs. I had never worked for a true “private sector” business. (Even in high school, I worked for the local public library.)
In 2019, I worked alongside a pro bono team of McKinsey consultants (yes, those kind of consultants) that had come to make the NGO I was working with at the time more efficient and effective. My mind was blown. They showed us that we could reduce procurement times by half just by analyzing our supply chain like a business.
I had no idea that there was so much room for us to improve—just by applying some basic business principles.
Across the humanitarian world, there’s a huge misunderstanding of private enterprise. Many are like me: having spent most or all of their careers in the non-profit world.
During COVID, I went back to school to get my MBA. In the back of my mind, I wanted to be as good as those McKinsey consultants. It was there that I had a second revelation: not only was I missing business skills, but I had never been properly prepared to work in an NGO to begin with. I had never had a proper class in management and leadership. I had never been taught how to do accounting and finance. These were huge gaps in my knowledge, even though I had been responsible for things like that for years. It was almost like retrospective imposter syndrome.
This might be a bit extreme, but the general sentiment holds.
Working through foundational MBA classes was like finally getting the basic training I never had. I not only got better at budgeting, but I started understanding how to plan for contingencies. I not only got better at team management, but I started understanding how to construct a team and grow it. And so on.
I definitely didn’t become a McKinsey consultant, but I learned that the tools of business are invaluable to the basics of NGO work.
Why This Matters Now
So what does this mean for your career? This is just speculation, but as funding shrinks, I imagine that the surviving organizations and programs will be the ones that can operate with the efficiency of a business. To do so, they’ll need leaders who understand both the mission (the "why") and the mechanics (the "how").
To use an educated estimate, 90% of our sector is great at the mission part. If you can be in the 10% that understands the mechanics—amortization, capital allocation, P&L management, marketing—you gain many advantages:
Hiring Gold: You stand out in a pile of 500 program manager resumes. Everyone lists project cycle management, but very few list financial modeling or customer discovery.
No More Imposter: We often feel overwhelmed in senior roles because we are managing dozens of people or millions of dollars without relevant training. I remember being in an interview and having no idea what “P/L” even was (it’s profit and loss, by the way). Think of business school as the “basic training” you never had.
Ready for the "New" Jobs: The fastest-growing roles probably aren’t in traditional NGOs; they are in social enterprises, impact investing funds, and corporate CSR. These roles require business fluency.
You don't need to go get an MBA. But you do need to stop treating "business" like a dirty word and start treating it like a toolkit.
How to get the "Private Sector" Edge
You don't need a full-on MBA to start thinking like a business leader. You just need to build a new set of muscles. Here are three approachable ways to start:
1. Try a Managerial Accounting Course.
Most of us know how to track expenses against a donor budget. That is compliance, not management. Managerial accounting courses teach you how to look at numbers to make future decisions—like calculating the "break even" point of a new program or understanding the "opportunity cost" of a decision.
2. Think "Product Management" over “Project Management.”
In the private sector, they don't just "manage projects"; they "manage products." This means they are constantly iterating based on user feedback. Ask yourself: "If my beneficiaries had to pay $1 for this service, would they buy it?" If the answer is no, your program might not be solving the right problem.
3. Pitch, Don’t Propose.
We are trained to write dense proposals. The private sector is trained to "pitch," and a pitch is about selling the value, not explaining the process. It’s about convincing someone to invest in a vision in 3 minutes, not 30 pages.
The Bottom Line
We in the impact world often create an artificial divide separating us from the "business" world. As a result we miss out on skills we really need.
Don't be intimidated by the MBA crowd. Instead, join the 10% who understand both mission and mechanics—and use those skills for good.
The Impact Stack
Things I read, used, or loved this week.
📚 Read: "The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle" from the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Bridgespan. This classic piece discusses how the obsession with overhead hurts our sector. Read it, then question everything about how your organization budgets for capacity.
🗞️ Follow: The Rundown AI from Rowan Cheung. This is a great resource and newsletter that keeps you connected to the fast-evolving world of AI. The Rundown covers the latest in AI news, but the best part is the “Community Workflows” section in which readers provide use cases for AI tools that you haven’t thought to try.
📺 Watch: “How I Would Invest $100k at 40 in 2026” from Call to Leap. This video, and all the others from this channel, give great practical advice for beginning investors without McKinsey incomes.
“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish… and feed yourself. He's a grown man. And fishing's not that hard.”
One Question For You
What business skills do you wish you'd learned earlier? Hit reply—I'd love to hear.
See you next week,
Anthony Pusatory
Founder, The Seven Pillars