Patricia Olsen tells the story of Jim McCann, founder of 800-FLOWERS, in the New York Times. Maybe I'm seeing things, but the core lesson Olsen pulls from McCann's story sounds eerily familiar: "If you look at highly successful people, they make the same number of mistakes as others, but they recover quickly."

Many nonprofits assume that when they are evaluated, whether by foundations or anyone else, they should emphasize a great track record, a history of strong wins and few missteps that will set them apart. But the GII's evaluation tool, Continuous Progress, preaches a different route to success: you should expect mistakes and missteps along the way -- the trick is detecting them, adapting and making continual improvements along the way.