Episode 154 - Operating for Impact with Doug Paul

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Leadership window podcast with Dr. Patrick Jenks. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Each week through a social sector lens, Patrick interviews leaders and experts and puts [00:00:14] Speaker A: us in touch with trends and tips for leading effectively. Patrick is a board certified executive coach, [00:00:19] Speaker B: a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, [00:00:21] Speaker A: a best selling author, award winning photographer and a professional speaker. [00:00:26] Speaker B: And now here's Dr. Patrick Jenks and [00:00:31] Speaker A: it's episode 1154 of the Leadership Window. We're back a little early this week because we just had just, you know, I don't know, lightning in a bottle or the planets aligned or something. Doug Paul is our guest today and I'm really excited about this one because I nerd out on this stuff and obviously he does too and has for quite some time. This, this episode today I think is just really at the heart of the matter for so many really if not all organizations. We are talking today more specifically about non profit organizations and just this is a good chance to kind of bring everyone up to speed on what this podcast is. Obviously it's called the Leadership Window. So it's about leadership and it's about leadership really in any sector. Leadership is leadership. We've defined it ad nauseam and we'll do more down the road, but we say that it's leadership through a social sector lens. And a big part of that is because of my background in the nonprofit sector and my mission bent. But so many of these concepts and, and maybe most of our episodes really cross sectors. Today's a little bit different and I'll sort of tip that off. I don't want to steal any of Doug's thunder, but some of you may have heard EOS popularized in the book Traction Entrepreneurial Operating System. And if you've heard of that or you've. I've had some nonprofit clients who have talked about it and even implemented it. I don't know how they're doing on it. What Doug found is that there are some nuances to being a nonprofit organization that don't quite align with that same eos. So he and his team have created the Impact operating system which is similar in concept, but more customized and appropriate and relevant to the unique culture and accountabilities that nonprofit organizations have. So Doug is the CEO of Impact Company and he's the author of the best selling book Built for Impact. I'm going to pause right there because I just read it. You know, I'll recommend books, you know, especially people that come on the show. You know, I try to read the books, if not scan them. This is one I really want to hold up and highlight as one of my favorites that we've ever had highlighted by our guests on this program in the five years we've been on. It's called Built for Impact, and it is. It is all about the impact operating system. This is not just a theoretical, hey, here's our take on impact kind of book. It's not all. It's. It's not hard to read. It shouldn't take you long to read. But it is full of practical, actual toolkits, applicable things, not just theory and philosophy. I really did like this, and we're going to talk about a good bit of it today, but I just want to right now, before we forget, before we get to the end of the show, go get that book. Built for Impact. If you're a nonprofit leader, if you're. If you're anywhere in the nonprofit management, whether you're the CEO or not, this is really. You need this. Trust me. Trust me on that. Over the last two decades, he has worked with more than 1300 nonprofits. He loves it when vision makes its way to reality. He lives in Richmond, Virginia. Ghost spiders, along with his wife Elizabeth, and their three teenagers. We are just talking offline a few minutes ago about what life is like with three teenagers. I remember life with two. I don't remember life with three. But Doug's in it. Doug's in a great place right now with his wife Elizabeth, with those three teens. So, Doug, I'm really excited. I'm glad we connected, and I am really looking forward to this conversation. Welcome. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Well, thanks for having me. I. I don't think I. I just need you to, like, follow me around and be my hype man for this book or something. I'm glad you liked it. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Well, it's useful, actually. [00:04:56] Speaker B: It makes me really happy. But, like, the usefulness is 100% why we wrote it. If, if you can't use it, like next Tuesday, what's the point? [00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not vanity publishing. You know, it's not just. This is really clear that this isn't. Oh, Doug, I should have a book. I need to get a book out there. This is really about serving the sector and the leaders in the sector. And I really, I can't plug it enough. It's really, really good. And, you know, someone said you've. You've probably heard this before. I've heard a couple people say it, actually, but something along the lines of all for all frameworks are flawed and some are useful. So that's the thing. You can look at these frameworks and go, well, I would, I would replace term number eight with really my. This term. I would. I think of it more like that fine. The point is have a, have a framework. These templates are awesome starting points, if nothing else. And I think they're rich as, as, as leadership models. So we'll get into some of that. But yeah, thanks. What, what did I miss in my introduction? What, what is it you really want people to know about you? [00:06:02] Speaker B: I mean, that's, that's a pretty good job. I mean like the. I, I think people tend to veer in one or two directions operationally or they veer vision, high concept. And I think we have given a microphone and platform to the high concept people to the detriment, particularly in the social sector of like, if it's inspiring, you get the stage or you get the book or you get the podcast. And the thing that I think I'm like my soapbox is very rarely is that found in two people. I mean, one person. It's two people and we need those people to be in lockstep together. And we've got to get the operators, the integrators, as much time as the others or we're going to have a lot of vision that sounds good but never works its way into reality. So that's where that phrase in the bio came from. But like, that is not, that's not a cute, clever turn of phrase. That's like a, that's sort of a life passion. Point of mine is if we're. Vision's great, but if it doesn't work its way to one foot off the ground, it doesn't matter. [00:07:12] Speaker A: You know, people are familiar with, with the term chief operating officer. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:22] Speaker A: And now that you mention the fact that, you know, very, very seldom do you find in one person both those, both sides of the continuum the vision transformation, charisma, inspiration and the operational excellence and the diligence and the. Is that what COOs are for? Would you say that this book and this concept is. Is geared more toward the CEO than it is the CEO? [00:07:50] Speaker B: I think it's geared. We specifically wrote it to both and that. Because the idea that they need to be talking to each other, but not just talking, but understanding each other's worlds. And so vision isn't like anathema. Like we need vision. We really. I mean that's. [00:08:07] Speaker A: And it's not like coos. They don't have vision. [00:08:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it's not like they, they don't, but it is in some ways. We need a common Language with which we can have these really important conversations about leading at the highest levels. And so I think what we were hoping is that we could. It was, it was written for both. The frameworks work for both, but it's a language in some ways that allow them to have really important conversations that have to eventually get to a tactical level. But it, I think ultimately, right, it, it goes to trust. Do these two leaders trust each other? And I think having a framework that, and frameworks that allow them to have those conversations only aids in building that kind of trust. If, if they don't trust each other, this, this mission's going nowhere. [00:08:58] Speaker A: So many principles in the book you just hit on in one in 30 seconds. Because one, it's about the people. So the idea that you have the right people in the right places is a big concept of an impact operating system. So you're talking about a CEO and a coo, and granted, not everybody has those, but some level of it, right? Some call it a chief of staff or a CAO or a vice president, whatever it is. Some people have someone who's not in one of those positions at all, but they function pretty much as that person in the organization. But it's. To me, it's, it, it is understanding each other. It's also appreciating what the other is bringing to the table that they, that the organization needs. So you covered the people thing, and then you use the word language, of course, which is part of your construct and the culture element of the impact operating system. I love that culture is called out in your framework as a part of the operating system. And one of the, one of the four components of culture you brought out was language. So I agree. I think it's how we talk about our work matters and how we agree on what we mean by certain things matters. So. Yeah, I appreciate that too. Tell me what it is. How would you put it in a, in a sentence of what it is you're actually helping nonprofits do? [00:10:34] Speaker B: At its core, bottom line, we are helping them design a playbook and operationalize it. [00:10:41] Speaker A: Love it. [00:10:42] Speaker B: Lots of people, some non profits, have a playbook, but they're too high in the clouds and it doesn't actually work. That's a problem. And then some have a, have a playbook that was written from the 1970s. That's very common. It certainly wasn't built for an Internet world, much less an AI agentic world. And then some just. There is nothing. There's. There's no. It's. We were bootstrapping it. We Hit the grounds running. We're good at loving people or this problem. And we're just going, going, going. And we're confusing programming with having, like, a macro strategy in a playbook. [00:11:19] Speaker A: I don't know the numbers. You might, you might have done some research on this. I don't know which of those is the most prevalent. But what resonates with me the most is, is the last thing you said [00:11:31] Speaker B: there, that they have nothing I would say, too. [00:11:33] Speaker A: And it's not because they, you know, we don't. We don't need it. Most of them that I talk to go, oh, well, we'd love to have that. We'd love to have an CEOs or an iOS or whatever the heck Doug calls it. That would be awesome, Patrick. But you don't understand. We only have such and such money. We only have three people on our staff. We don't have time. Gosh, building a system like that, we don't have the technology. We don't have the money for the technology. We don't have the time to invest in something that complicated. And I, I hurt for them, not because they don't have what they need, but that they don't know they have what they need to build an operating system. Do you agree? [00:12:16] Speaker B: A little bit. Here's my. Maybe the way that I would phrase it a little bit differently is every. Every nonprofit, if we're talking about nonprofit, but this is true of every organization. Every single one of them has an organizational operating system already. Because a system is just like, here's how we normally do things. [00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's running. It's there. [00:12:35] Speaker B: And so you've got, you've got this quote from. He's. He's in the health care sector. His name's Dr. Paul Battledon. He says every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it's getting. So you have to ask, do we like the results we're getting? Because you have a system, there's a normal for how you work and the way that your staff works and interacts. So there is a normal. The question is, do you like your normal? And if not, what do you want to do about it? [00:13:00] Speaker A: That's good. [00:13:00] Speaker B: And so the operating system idea is a metaphor. It can have software to help. Like in the EOS world, like, you can use 90io, you could use EOS1, whatever it is, but you could build it into your project management platform, or you could run it off Google Drive. It's not about the tech. It's about how do we normally get things done. And do it in a way that is. That really works for us. Our mission, our DNA. And I think that that's the conversation I really want to have at that executive team level or whatever level size you have, because even if you have three people, there's an operating system that will work for you. You just got to find it or build it or import something that's customizable. [00:13:49] Speaker A: Well, so, first of all, 100% right. Everybody has a system. They don't all realize, though, that they have a system and that the results they're getting are the result of the system they have either created or are fostering. What I'm saying is that even with three people, you can have a good system. [00:14:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:14:08] Speaker A: It doesn't require, you know, a ton of money and technology to have a good system for how your organization goes about what it does. All those are great tools, are awesome, and the more you can get, the better if you know how to use them. But that's what I'm saying. I. I really love what you said about how the software is not the system. The software is a tool. We say that about CRM all the time. You can have a donor database. Oh, we're going to get, you know, Blackbaud's donor database or whatever it is, and that's gonna raise us a ton of money. No, it's not. It's not gonna raise you a penny. It's gonna be a tool to help you raise more money if you know how to use it, if you use it properly, if you're disciplined on it, if you. So it's not that it doesn't create relationships for you, but it's a CRM. Yeah. But it doesn't create the relationships. [00:15:00] Speaker B: I think you're hitting on two things, and it's entirely possible that our entire conversation is just going to be one soapbox after another. [00:15:09] Speaker A: For me, too, because this might be [00:15:12] Speaker B: my third one, I think. On the first thing that you said, I think the thing around the system piece is that you only need as much system as you have complexity. And so if you have three people and you have a simple thing, you should have, like, scale to the level of complexity you have. Not like. It's. It's what drives me crazy going, when people get Salesforce. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:39] Speaker B: Which is. Salesforce is incredible. [00:15:41] Speaker A: It is. [00:15:42] Speaker B: But the. The only. The only thing that I know to compare it to is that it is like you're buying a Maserati, which is really good. Unless you don't know how to drive a stick shift, because you will Run that thing off the road and you'll burn out the engine because you don't know how to drive the car. [00:16:01] Speaker A: And Salesforce and it costs a lot more to maintain. [00:16:04] Speaker B: A lot of money. A lot of money. And what most people need is like a Volkswagen Jetta. And so get, get the system that matches what you need, not the ones that like everyone's talking about because it's the second soapbox which is I think we're, we're just hunting for silver bullets. Yeah, we're looking for oh that, that system there, whether that's Salesforce or the new donor platform that you have, that's not going to solve your, all your problems. It can be a tool to helping you solve some problems. It's a means to an end. But you really got to do the work of figuring out on a bigger backed out level what's the system for how we're going to like if you're raising money, it's not as simple as just having a donor CRM like what's right. You got to have a really locked in playbook for how you're going to do that, how you're going to have KPIs for that and all these other [00:16:59] Speaker A: things and people who know what that system is designed for and how it's supposed to. It's like having a finance system but your accountants are incompetent, don't know how to use it. [00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:09] Speaker A: So I do want to get into, I do want to get into the construct here. And let's, let's start with this question. Impact operating system. What is that and what isn't that? [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yep. So it is a customizable playbook specific for mission driven organizations. And so we, we really have created it over a 20 plus year period of time. So like sometimes people say I couldn't have written this book 20 years ago but it's kind of BS when they say that we, we like this is, it's a, it's a, it's a cobbling together over 20 years tools that we've actually used and built with non profits that we've worked with. And so the thing that we quickly learned is that we couldn't import solutions from other places. We had to bring in frameworks that were customizable that allowed nonprofits to imbue them with like their own DNA, their mission, their philosophies for social change or leadership or whatever it was that if it was a, you gotta swallow all of this or none of this, it wasn't gonna work. So that, that Playbook piece was. And it being very practical is what it is. And we can talk about some of the different components of it in a few minutes if that's helpful. What is not? Oh yeah, go for it. [00:18:40] Speaker A: Well, to hold the thought on what it's not. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:42] Speaker A: I wanna, I wanna, I wanna hit on your word playbook because I really love it. I use a similar term with a lot of my coaches. I use a term called the five point plan. It could be three, it could be 20. The point is people say, oh, I need to become a better communicator. Great. What's your five point plan for that? It's just a forced pause to sit down and build some construct for what becoming a better communicator looks like, what you even mean by it, how you'll know it when you're getting there and what actions you're going to take instead of just walking around going, you know, I really do need to become a better communicator. I'm going to do that. So what we call the five point plan as just a, as just a little, a little tool or a little hack. It's just a playbook. And I love that term. It's simple. It's not a big, you know, comprehensive strategic plan. It's a playbook and it's playbooks within playbooks, simple tools. I just want to pause on that because it's one of the things I love about what you've done here. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean like drilling one down further. We'll see how, we'll see how old your, your listeners are if you get this and if you like sports. Because we're using playbook is by and large a sports metaphor. [00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:00] Speaker B: Like I think most nonprofit organizations are mission driven ones. They don't have a defined playbook. And so what they're saying is I run offense. And that's, that's not a playbook. That's like that. That's when you're trying to score. We get it. You're trying to move the mission forward. Like that's I run offense. But what we're saying is you need like the Bulls ran the triangle offense. It was a very sophisticated but actually simple way of like, here's how we run offense. It's the how that like I'm obsessed with. It's like so much of like leadership and, and this isn't pointed at you, just to be clear. So much of leadership like that the cottage industry of leadership is around the why and the what. [00:20:52] Speaker A: Yep. [00:20:53] Speaker B: But we have, we have for whatever Reason we have jettisoned like so how do you do that? How do you do the why and the what? And that's what I'm kind of obsessed with is I want to help organizations with the how because I assume and sometimes I over assume because I think you might push me on this a little bit in the book, I assume a little bit that like the why and the what is more defined and what we really need to drill down on is the how. And that's what the playbook is about. It's like, how are you going to do this? [00:21:27] Speaker A: How. Yeah, that's good. I, I did know. We'll get into the the. I do want to hear the eight elements of the, of the system and before I, before I come back to the the why and the purpose and the what. You were about to tell me what it isn't. [00:21:48] Speaker B: Oh, I mean it's what we already hit on. It's not, it's not a piece of tech, it's not a platform, it is not a microwave solution that will solve your problems tomorrow. And it's not a silver bullet that's going to answer all the questions and all the frictions and pain points that you have. It will be something that you have to work at and continue to work at. But that is, I mean that's what it is to be, to have a job in some ways. I mean we're not going to be like watching the movies and eating bon bons while the system runs itself. [00:22:21] Speaker A: Well, that being said, is there a technological tool that accompanies this framework? [00:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, I'm going to give you a cagey answer. The answer is yes and no. We've, we are on these. We just finished the second prototype that goes with it and we met with the development team that we are going to be using for the building of the platform actually last Friday. And so at any point today I should be getting the scope and the sequence of that and we're hoping in the next six to 12 months that the fully orbed version of this will come out. What we wanted to do is to build a 1.0 and then a 2.0, but do it with the people we were working with so that we were actively getting building in feedback loop. So we were building something that would they would want and need, not something that was in concept was our opinions of what they would want. [00:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Or just a product to sell. I appreciate that. It excites me that you have that on the horizon, but that does not diminish the usefulness of the framework itself today. And I. That's a point. I don't think we can overemphasize. I mean you do. You just said it. There's a lot of tools go up, upload, talk to Claude. Right. Tell it what you just bit. But you are the master of the system and how you want to create that in your organization. And so yeah, that's good. I talked early about the difference between Eos and. Are you calling it iOS? Can you do that from brand stat? Are you. [00:23:51] Speaker B: So I. Everyone shortens it to iOS. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's a, that's an Apple thing, right? [00:23:58] Speaker B: That is. As you know, I never use that. And you will never find it written. [00:24:04] Speaker A: I didn't think so. [00:24:05] Speaker B: We have trademarked Impact operating system and Impact os. But we have. We. I don't think we would get in trouble with it using it as shorthand. Yeah, probably not work with use it all the time. But I just never. Our organization and team never uses it. [00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so. But what are the differences between the two? Because part of the, part of the framework. Part of your case for the framework is that Eos is. I don't remember the exact word you used is kind of broken for use in the non profit arena. Talk more about that. [00:24:41] Speaker B: So I, I want to be. I think it's helpful. Like I don't have bad things to say about EOs. I used EO. I've had some like side businesses over the years and I've used EOS in those. And then because I use was using in Those, I for 11 years was using them with different non profits that I either led or was consulting with. And what I found was that I was constantly having to adapt, translate or make up for things that we're missing. So I'll give you an example. Nowhere in Eos will you find anything about strategy. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Really. [00:25:19] Speaker B: It's not in there. And the thing for nonprofits is your entire existence is based on your theory of change, which is a fancy way of saying strategy in the social sector. [00:25:30] Speaker A: That's right. [00:25:32] Speaker B: So it's missing the core component that makes a nonprofit, other than the mission side of it, a nonprofit. [00:25:39] Speaker A: Well, I haven't looked into Eos, but that surprises me. I mean, an entrepreneur, you know, starting a bit, I mean, you got to have a strategy. [00:25:46] Speaker B: It assumes. And I'm not saying this is bad again, I'm just saying it assumes that like you have one. [00:25:52] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:53] Speaker B: And that your goals are coming from that place. [00:25:55] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:56] Speaker B: But I do think there's a big misunderstanding oftentimes between goals and strategy. Definitely goals are not strategy. [00:26:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:02] Speaker B: If I could recommend actually one book, it's called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and it really breaks down. This guy is the best living strategist in the world and his name is Richard Rummelt. And it is the best thing I've ever read on strategy and why it matters, how to develop it and what it does for you as an organizational leader. It's so good. It's done more to influence how I think on goal setting and all those things and anything else that's. That's a bit of a rabbit trail, but that's okay. It's so it's miss. It's missing strategy. It doesn't have anything about culture. And nonprofits are so people forward and have such a unique kind of like constituency of people who are involved that I don't know how you have any kind of operating system isn't regularly thinking about culture. The people side of it is very black and white for a business. I pay you money. You deliver results. Like at the end of the day, that's what it is. And if you don't, I'll fire you if I'm really kind of put you on a performance improvement plan. [00:27:10] Speaker A: It's transactional. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's okay. Like it's a business. We're not trying to pretend like a business shouldn't be a business. That's just not what it is for nonprofits or mission driven businesses that want more. And I think the thing we consistently kept seeing was you have these very decentralized power centers for nonprofits. You might have an executive director or CEO, but that person is actually responsible to the board. And at any point, if the board disagrees, they can overrule. But it also is like, well, what about the executive team? That's a power center. What about the donors, the three donors who make up 45% of the revenue? Don't tell me that's not power. And what about your key volunteers who are the ambassadors? And if they have a bad experience, they're going to tell everyone like, the way that power is distributed in nonprofits is really unique. And then you start getting into the metric side of it. The metrics for nonprofits, really important. And the way that you build them is incredibly important. There's a. There's a. In every survey we've taken, metrics is the number one pain point that comes up over and over and over again. And then like, PS there's this thing called development. You got to raise money. And that's that's just not an eos because it's not for nonprofits, it's for business. So those are some of the key differences. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I have to think more to, about the intersection I guess of the concept of the term business. You know, there's a age old argument, are nonprofits businesses? And we hear this from board members and others, you know, non profits aren't businesses. They're, you know, whatever. And oh yes, they absolutely are a business. And I, I'm of the school that they are a business under a different tax structure. And so what I, what I like is that while, while you're, while you're cautioning and don't let me misrepresent you just. But while you're cautioning against, hey, we can't just treat this like a corporation or a business sort of thing. You've not eliminated all the needed business element. I mean, development is a business function. It's revenue. We don't have revenue. We don't, you know, what did they say? No money, no mission. You know, the, if you, if you get more sophisticated in the nonprofit world, you move from just development and accounting to strategic finance. I mean, are you, does the organization, what are the business units of a nonprofit? There are business units, ask Goodwill Industries or ask, you know, anybody who, who has revenue generating service and these kinds of things. So there are business units, there's hr, there's finance, there's revenue development, there's, you know, all of these things. So there are, it is a business, there are business aspects. But to your point, it is around more of a, I tell people it's a trade off. The, the, the IRS gives you a tax break. Why? Because you're promising something of social value. They literally, they literally ask that on the 990form. What is your, what are you doing that's worthy of a tax break? Whereas a company, their, their, their core mission, whatever they say their mission is, is to make a profit. That's their real, that's their core of, is why they're in business and not just doing some, you know, so there are some subtle differences. I just kind of wanted to, I don't know, get your take on maybe a little bit more, say more about that, how you see the differences and the intersections. [00:31:08] Speaker B: I, I can make an argument for both and there's a degree to which like I could talk out of both sides of my mouth as well on this one. Like a, a chief revenue officer, Chief growth officer. My wife is a chief growth officer, is a Chief development officer by Any other name. They just are doing, I mean they're very different things, but they are still doing the same macro level thing. Do we have enough revenue for the goals that we have reached? Yes or no. And I think that at some level there's that. What I wanted to really hit on with the idea of the impact OS was like there are some very particular nuances that if not attended to, will undermine an organizational system for a nonprofit. And one of them is that in the nonprofit space we call it the compensation formula. The compensation formula for a staff member is different than it is for someone who's out of business most of the time. And so we would say the compensation formula equals money plus meaning that we are making a trade off. I'm willing to make less money if you will actually make sure that my job has meaning. And so we are, we're in a sector that by and large will have somewhere. It varies on which part of the sector you are, but somewhere between 30 and 50% less money in terms of salary. The trade off is I'm going to feel a lot more meaning in my everyday work. But the issue then is. Go ahead. Were you gonna say something? [00:32:51] Speaker A: I was gonna, I'm gonna, I wanna push on that just a little bit. Yeah, please do. And just think out loud on that. I, I some, I get your point and I somewhat agree with it. But I think it's more degrees than it is. Nonprofits have meaning and businesses don't have meaning in the workplace. [00:33:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:08] Speaker A: You know, one of the things that employees, one of the main reasons that one of the main things that motivates people in any job is this idea of meaning and self determination. Do I have autonomy? Do I have mastery and competence? And can I. Am I related in some way to the mission and the culture? So I, I would say there's maybe the ratio is different in that compensation formula. And, and I can make the case on, on what you're saying. Mo. Almost all, not all of them, but almost all of the nonprofit leaders that I coach when we do motivators ass. They're higher on the altruistic dimension and lower on the economic dimension. So the formula is the ratio is a little different. But I wouldn't say the, that business employees don't want meaning in their work. They often leave it because they don't feel that even when they're paid a lot. [00:34:06] Speaker B: I think, I think you're right. I mean like we'll talk sometimes about thresholds. Like there's a threshold of money. [00:34:11] Speaker A: Right. That you got to have that you [00:34:12] Speaker B: have to be paid. [00:34:13] Speaker A: That's right. [00:34:13] Speaker B: I would say, like in the business world, there's still a threshold of like, cultural elements that need to be true. And so there's a reason that particularly like millennials and down under are very allergic to things that start to feel like they're toxic culture or late stage [00:34:31] Speaker A: capitalism or institutional at all. [00:34:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And so what is that? Like, they could be really, really, really well paid and they're like, I'm out. So I do, I do take your point. I think that is right. But I think it, I think the ratio or the percentages, like if let's say we have 100%, I think that's right. It's like, how much. What are the percentages of that get that are weighted on the money side versus the percentages on the meaning side? And I think it's about distribution maybe. And I wanted in our, the way that we worked with nonprofits in this system to really make sure that we were thinking at a leadership level, how are we stewarding, shepherding, attending to the meaning element and making sure because, oh, this is what it was. I read this stat and it just blew my hair back. 93% of staff at non profits do not understand how their everyday work connect to their change theory, their strategy. [00:35:27] Speaker A: That's right. [00:35:29] Speaker B: And if you have a. That just screams we have a meaning problem. And then you look at another. I'm a stat head. So there's another stat that is of all sectors. The social sector has almost twice the attrition rate in terms of retention. We have twice as many people leave as the next one. So the circus will have a better retention rate of employees than the social sector by at least half. [00:36:00] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:36:01] Speaker B: And so I'm. For us, we were just, we were having these anecdotal conversations. We were making these, like, broad observations. And then we started to see these stats that were like, I think this is causal. I don't think this is corollary. I think these things are connected to each other. And so again, we were having these conversations over decades. And so we're attaching these dots not quickly, but over time, and then testing them. And so that the meaning piece just kept coming up and up and up. And so we wanted a system that in even how we. How do we develop staff members? How do we. How do we think about changes and change management? The meaning piece is getting filtered into all of that. Well, for how we're. How we're thinking about it. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And you're. This is resonating because just the, just the language alone in the Impact operating system, it acknowledges for non profits, we understand the things you are mostly wanting to pay attention like and needing to pay attention to. So I, I, yeah, I appreciate that. Do you want to, do you want to go through? I, I think it might be helpful. I don't think we can get, obviously we can't dive deep into it, but the, the Impact operating system, if I'm reading this right, has eight components to it. Correct. Those eight components, I mean the book breaks down each one into its, I mean really some great tools for each one. But I think it might be helpful just to even say what the eight components are because I think there's probably still some listeners right now going and this all sounds really neat, but I still don't know what it is. [00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I'll, Is it helpful to just like give you the drive by on all of them real quickly and then we can break it down? [00:37:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean you'll know best how to do that. But I think it'd be, I'd like to hear from the author how you lay this out. [00:38:03] Speaker B: So the first component is vision, which is, I think you want to talk about an overwritten topic and over talked about topic of the last 30 years, it's that one. And yet despite all of that, I think we have a vision problem. And so one of the things that we talk about is in the system of vision as a moonshot, it is a time bound slice of your bigger, longer term vision. And so if you've got a 20 year vision, fantastic. I want a GPS location on where you're going to be in five years. And I want specifics. It's the difference between saying I'm going on vacation and I'm going to Orlando, Florida where I'm going to go to Disney World and I will be there on June 25th. Like I want it specifics because then I can't build a strategy which is the second one, which is like how am I going to get from a where I am now to be the moonshot, that five year vision? Well, how am I going to do that and what's the plan for doing that? So a strategy should not just be the filter for how I make decisions and what I say yes or no to, but also we're going to be chunking it out into goals. Like what am I doing the next 90 days? What should I be doing the next year? What's the goal three years from now? Like it should be actionable if it's not actionable. It's, it's a pretty, pretty worthless strategy. Not going to get to that moonshot. [00:39:22] Speaker A: Can I quickly interject right there because the vision and the mission lie and I know you're not. I don't think you're going to disagree with this at all. I think it's in your book, but it's not framed this way up front. In your vision section you've got a sort of vision continuum. You've got 20 year big vision, 20 year vision statement, which is the more formalized, codified. This is our vision for the, the big, the big thing. And then what you've called what you call the five year moonshot. [00:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Imagine Russian nesting dolls of arrows pointing somewhere. [00:39:57] Speaker A: Yes. And I just, I just, it made me think of leaders that I have coached. I remember one in particular and I'll never forget this. This was a number of years ago. She scored low on vision casting as a leader and it troubled her as it might. You know, if you're a leader not good on vision. This was a 360 degree assessment tool. So others were telling her there's not a lot of vision casting. And what we realized as we looked at the practices of leaders in vision statement is vision can only. Vision is not just that big, transformational, ideological, innovative, you know, big thing. Even the five year moonshot, I mean the word moonshot, right? [00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Vision. Vision I have found can be in a moment. It can be if we, if we make our board financial reports more graphic, streamlined and easy to read, our board conversations will be more strategically focused. You're literally creating for the finance director a vision for how a board meeting will look different if we do this. And so I would even say there's more nests nesting arrows than even. I don't think it stops at the five year moonshot. I don't think you do either. [00:41:26] Speaker B: It doesn't. [00:41:27] Speaker A: But when you talk about then strategy as being 90 days and six months and three, those, those have to be tied to micro visions. [00:41:40] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:41:40] Speaker A: I mean goals are visions in a way more than they are strategies. So I don't know, you don't have to, you don't have to respond to that. Just that was, that was ringing in my head as you were going through from vision to strategy. [00:41:53] Speaker B: Yep, totally. I mean I don't have any pushback on that. I would, I mean I would say like while the visual stops at five years, the next click us and our framework is three year in one year, in 90 days that are constantly getting refreshed every quarter. Right. To me, like the important part of the framework for strategy is that it's flexible. And so I think I, I think there are, there are tools that were good, that lasted for a while and were built for another world primarily because they were built in the 50s that were like very intricate and very detail oriented. And if the world changed, the plan broke. And we need framework, we need a framework for, for planning, for operational planning that like, if the world changes, like Covid or like, I don't know, the Iran war or whatever it might be, the federal funding. I, I work with a ton of different clients. One of our clients lost 86% of their funding in one day. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:52] Speaker B: Because the funding went away. Now fortunately they had been planning on it, but like you need a plan that you don't just throw away because that happened. It's. No, the plan's still good. We just are going to have to adjust and refresh the next 90 days. [00:43:05] Speaker A: Totally. Right. [00:43:06] Speaker B: All right. Metrics is another big one. Obviously what you measure, what you measure, you manage. [00:43:12] Speaker A: Did you skip development? [00:43:15] Speaker B: It's my, my notes are your orders. [00:43:17] Speaker A: Your order is different. Okay, I'm sorry, let's go to, let's do development. [00:43:20] Speaker B: We'll do development. Obviously this is where the revenue comes from. One of the, one of, one of the things that is unique to non profit world, whether we're talking, we can nuance the difference between non profit and business is most non profits, if you don't raise the money or get the grants or whatever it is, you and your family and your staff will not be eating. And so that is a thing. So we talked about how what you need for development is a modern playbook that is scaled to the bandwidth of your team. Meaning like the people hours that they have to give to the playbook and the expertise that they have or don't have. And then you need rhythmic triggers to refresh it. Just because it worked last year does not mean it's going to work this year. And so we need to regularly be bringing it into the shop to make adjustments to the playbook and the team changes. Maybe we need to hire someone or maybe we need to fire someone or we need to train on. If everyone's not on your development team training on AI, we might have a problem on our hands because the world is changing around us. [00:44:24] Speaker A: Man, this is one. I bet a lot of our listeners wish we could just do this whole episode just on development because everyone wants help with that area. Yeah, a couple of questions for you. Just this is a kind of a dumb One, but fundraising or development, what's the difference? [00:44:45] Speaker B: So I use development because it incorporates the idea of like a diversity of revenue streams. So fundraising is just a classic. Like there are different ways to raise money, but it is going out, making ask and raising money. But I can have a mission driven business that is part of my development. It's part of my diversified revenue stream. Grants is not fundraising. That is a different thing. It falls under the broader umbrella of development. So that's why we chose that word. [00:45:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Or investment income, for example. So no, I, I choose the word too. I just, a lot of people still, still kind of struggle with the differentiation between those. I want to. Sorry, I hate to derail you, but this is one of the questions on, on development before you move to metrics, is you mentioned that development. How did you say it? That is, it's a playbook that is scalable for your bandwidth. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:41] Speaker A: This is a chicken and egg question for many organizations. Do you, I mean, development, it costs money to raise money. We know this. It takes talented people. It takes, you know, the people with all the tools and know how to use them have a, have an advantage. And so many nonprofits will say, well, we would raise more money, but man, we just, we only have a part time. You cover this in your book. But we only have a part time, you know, fundraising coordinator. And they're responsible for putting all our posts on Facebook. And plus they, you know, do our direct mail campaign and they, you know, they ran, they run our events and [00:46:19] Speaker B: we, we just generalist to the extreme. Yeah. [00:46:21] Speaker A: And we're strapped. We just don't have the money. And I've worked with other organizations who look at long term strategy and say, look, we've got, we've got a healthy, healthy reserve or we have some money in our endowment. We've got to make an investment. We might be at a loss on our budget for the next two years, but we've got to hire a chief development officer who really knows how to go fine, because there's untapped potential here and we've got to go do this. So when you say build the playbook to the scale, my question would be, or just, just again, just a challenging conversation. Is it, is it always build the playbook to the scale or is it build a playbook and then scale to the playbook? Which comes first? [00:47:06] Speaker B: I think you're building the way that we're doing it. When we're working with an organization, it's. There's the playbook that we can run in the next 12 months. And there's the playbook that we want to have in three years. [00:47:18] Speaker A: Good. Well said. Yeah, I like that. [00:47:21] Speaker B: But those, to your point, the chicken and the egg, those things have to be in conversation with each other. I'm not making an assumption about the sequence. So it might be we got to make that investment. And there are non profits that exist that I think are. They have boards that are protecting that money and they need, like, you're a non profit, you need to invest some and you don't have an endowment. You're sitting on five years of reserves. Like that's, that's fiscally irresponsible. You need to invest that money because there are people you are meant to impact who are not being impacted because you're sitting on five years of reserves if you don't have an endowment. We need to have a conversation around how that money is getting spent. On the other hand, I think a lot of board members, this kind of connects to the vision one that you were talking about earlier. I think a lot of board members are like, I don't believe you with your vision because we keep having the same problem every year, year over year over year. But the moment you start showing them a plan, this building momentum of you setting a goal, hitting the goal, next goal, hitting the goal, that starts to build trust, it starts to build momentum. And then when you go to them and you're saying, we need a chief development officer, we can't afford it, here's the plan, here's how we, where we want to be in three years. Will you fund it like board members, if they trust that you're going to do what you say you're going to do, they will fund things a lot of, not all the time, but a lot of the time they will. But they, I think we have to fight their, their growing cynicism in this space that, like why we're just here and we, it feels like we're here to rubber stamp this. That's not a great board scenario. But also, you're not doing the thing that you said you're going to do. There's a reason 71% of nonprofits are actively right now failing at their mission. Yeah, 71. [00:49:19] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. And you've, you've put. [00:49:23] Speaker B: Given me another soapbox to stand on. [00:49:26] Speaker A: I'm staying quiet on that one because we wouldn't finish the episode if I dove into that one too. As I agree wholeheartedly with you. I want to pause on one more thing on development before you move to, to metrics. And that is, by the way, Doug's not on here to plug his book. He's made that clear when we talked. But I'm going to plug it because holy moly. I want to say this about this development section in the book. This is a teaser in the book. There's one page worth the price of the book and then some. [00:49:59] Speaker B: And which one is it? [00:50:01] Speaker A: It's the fuel. It's the fuel matrix. [00:50:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Because you know, we have our organization, people I work with are familiar with board matrix and you know, even mission matrix and things like that. The fuel matrix is in the development section of the book. And, and it is a what, a 4x9. So there's, there's sort of elementary things you can do all the way up to, you know, the more sophisticated things you can do. And so this matrix meets you where you are and within your bandwidth, but across nine aspects of doing development. Well, and hint, it's not just have a good CRM software. So, so it, you know, technology is one of the categories, but it's not it. That's not what this is. And so for those listeners out there who don't have a resource development plan, and I don't mean it's just a strategic plan, I mean a resource development plan, just this page alone can create one for you, in my opinion. If you don't have one, start here. This is really good practical stuff. Much of it that you probably haven't thought about are related to development. So it was one of my favorite parts of the book. I had to stop and plug it. [00:51:28] Speaker B: It's one of our highest value things that we do in working with an organization. And it's. It actually it's fast. It is, it takes 90. It's a 90 minute work session. It does not take long to do this work session and to then be like, all right, I think I know what we're doing for the next 12 months, where we need to go and what we need to build. Can we talk about metrics? [00:51:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:49] Speaker B: Number one, pain point by most nonprofit leaders. You usually see a like two ditches, no numbers. And it's just all anecdote, all qualitative stuff and it's all the feels and squishy and then what we call waterboarding by data, which is like we've got a thousand data points. But I think the thing that we want to say is if you measure what or if you manage what you measure, not all things that are data points that you measure are created equal. And so what we are looking for in Creating a dashboard are the 9 to 15 key numbers that are most important to giving you a snapshot of how your organization is doing. And it's a ratio of. For every two lead measures that you have things that I can control that are practices or inputs, and I can control them, I get to control my effort. And for every two of those, there's one lag measure, the thing that I can't control, that I want to see happen. And this dashboard is very like, this is the hardest thing probably that we do when working with an organization because it has a lot going on and there are a lot of things you could count and deciding what you will count and look at every single week as a dashboard is. It's, it's challenging. It's, it's. This is one where I think the nonprofit side of it is harder and more complex than the business side of it. Come back at me, tell me I'm wrong on that one. [00:53:24] Speaker A: You're. I can't tell you how right you are. And, you know, it's. Yeah. And it, it is one of the, we do a lot of outcome measurement training, for example. That's the, that's the nonprofit nomenclature for it, right? Outcome measurement. And we talk about, you know, inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes. So you're talking about inputs and outcomes or inputs and outputs. What we are, where we often differentiate is non profits are really good at measuring, oh, fairly good at measuring inputs. Really good at measuring outputs. Outputs being we delivered X number of meals last year. We served X number of clients last year. We, you know, it's volume and scale and numbers of, of output, what we did. And they're really good at describing their activities because that's their program. So we have an after school tutorial program where, you know, volunteers match up with third graders who are struggling and, and whatever. It's the outcomes. Okay. So with all those inputs and all those activities at the level of output that you've measured, what's the result? What's changing for these kids? What's changing for these? And that is, that's the, that's the. I mean, I, again, we could have another hour on this easily. I did my doctoral work on mission measurement. How are nonprofits measuring their performance against their stated missions? Inputs and outputs aren't sufficient to measure whether or not you're at least advancing the mission if not accomplishing it. [00:54:58] Speaker B: So can we. [00:54:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Can I tell one story on this? I think, because I want to, like, I want to unpack this one a little bit more because I think it Is. It's. It's harder to sometimes to understand, but I want to. I want to pull some things apart. So we. We worked with an organization. It was a Midwestman major city, and they were. We'll call them Rise. That's what we call them in the book. That's not their actual name. When we have used names in the past, they get inundated by requests, and then they ask us not to use their name anymore. [00:55:30] Speaker A: So it's a good name, though. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. The. The thing that they were working on is they were working with federal inmates in the prison system who were leaving the prison system within a certain amount of time. And obviously, like, the thing that they wanted to see is recidivism rates dropping and those inmates having a second chance at a different kind of life. And when their leader came in to take over, he had a very, very strong first five years in terms of, like, fundraising was going up, volunteerism was going. All the things that you would want to see in terms of the organization kind of up and to the right. But recidivism rates among the people who were in their programs was barely marginally better. And so if that's true, this is what he. This is what he said. What's the point? [00:56:24] Speaker A: Yep. [00:56:26] Speaker B: Like, we're. We're expending, we're asking millions of dollars. I mean, they were. They were a fairly large organization for the. For the kind of work that they were doing. Millions of dollars. And we're barely making a mark, even though we're like, the programs were fantastic. Attendance, participation, all that stuff. And it was only when they locked in their dashboard were they able to be like, this is the missing thing right here. Like, this is like. What they realized is that for them, for their theory of change to work, they had to connect people relationally in the prison who were going to be living near where it is that they were going to be moving into and would operate almost not like this, because this sounds a little paternalistic, but it's not in the way that they were doing it. Almost like a sponsor. And so what they started to track was like, what's the ratio of people in our program to sponsors who are going to be where they live geographically within 18 months of them being released? And they started tracking that that number was never tracked. And. And within one year of starting to track that, it spiked and it kept going up because it got better at it over time. And so I think that's what we want to see is, like, we don't. It doesn't matter. I mean, like, the number of meals that you serve, that's great. That's important. But do you, like, the societal impact of the meals is something different? And so for the. It's like recidivism rates families being put back together, stable, making different civic choices. That's what. That's the impact we want to see happen. And so, like, that's why we measure things. Not because. [00:58:08] Speaker A: That's right. Not because a funder requires you to have some. [00:58:12] Speaker B: I'm not doing this because we have the annual report or a funder is demanding ROI and is holding, like, decisions. I mean, excuse me. Metrics help us make good decisions. That's the most important thing they do. [00:58:24] Speaker A: On the other hand, on the other end, rather, they also help us make the case for additional support. So when we have the metrics, you know, in my studies, I found a number of nonprofits who didn't measure against their mission. For example, the ones that did, some of the ones that did, didn't. Didn't communicate. Wasn't in their annual report. It wasn't. They weren't touting, hey, we're actually. We actually are accomplishing this mission. So. So you do it not to beat your chest. You do it to improve your programs or eliminate the ones that don't work, create new, but also to make the case for additional ones. So, all right, we got three more to cover. A couple more. You go in your. [00:59:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so culture is the next one. And the big thing around this is that cult. In our opinion, culture is one of the most important skill sets of the future. It is particularly in this sector that culture making is a skill that you can learn. Does it have soft edges? Yes. But there are hard skills. There is actually sociological phenomena at work in culture making that you can repeat and you can learn them 100%. And I'm married to a sociologist, so this is one that I know probably more about than I probably even should. This is like our dinner table conversation, but it is. Everyone has a culture. The question is, do you like it or not? So her definition of culture, and it's the one that we use in the book, is that culture is whatever is normal for a group of people. It's whatever is normal for a group of people. And so you have a normal at your workplace. Do you like the normal? And if not, usually that has happened by accident. Not always, but most of the time. What if it could happen by intention? And it can. If you are willing to learn culture making as a skill set. [01:00:17] Speaker A: 100%. We do culture mapping in our work. And that is where the team literally designs the culture they intend to live out. And what we. You, again, you know this, but for our listeners who hear the word particularly organizational, when you say organizational culture, people's eyes glaze over. It's like, what is that nebulous buzzword? And in our. In our. This is. I tell people this. And you actually use this definition in your book. The definition we settled on in my. In my PhD program was the way we do things around here. [01:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:52] Speaker A: And so you've heard a lot of people have now heard that definition. I really like yours. What's norm for a group of people? And so I tell people, you know, well, you'll hear conversation. Think about what you go and tell your. Your spouse or your friends or your family about your job. What do you talk about? It's like, well, I don't. I don't know much about organizational culture, but I. We have fun where I work. Okay? That's culture. Well, I don't know much about our organizational culture, but our people don't get paid squat, and we're overworked. That's culture. I don't know about culture, but all the decisions get made in a room by a couple of people, and we don't know anything until, you know, after the fact. That's all culture. And when you say those things, like, oh, so it's like our behaviors and our, you know. Yeah, it's this. That's exactly it. And you get to design that. You, you especially. The leadership has to shape. It's one of the primary jobs of a leader is you have to shape that culture and an environment where the people can shape a healthy culture for you. So I'm all in on that one, too, man. No disagreements here. [01:01:56] Speaker B: We, yeah, we. [01:01:57] Speaker A: We. For our listeners, we had this conversation offline. We said, hey, it's okay if we push back on each other. Like, if there's a concept. We know, man. This is all. This is why I love this book and this framework. It's all spot on. I just love that you've integrated it all into what you're calling the system, because it is. It's parts of it. [01:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:15] Speaker A: What's next? [01:02:16] Speaker B: All right, we got people. And in the book, there are actually two chapters on this. So the first one is, like, the actual people themselves, which is about, like, getting the right people in the right seats with the right fit. And so when we talk about fit, we're talking about culture. Are they a culture fit? Are they a competency fit? And are they a compensation fit? And again, when we're thinking about compensation in the way that we're thinking about, we're thinking money and meaning and that we, we cannot have two out of three yeses. We need all greens or all checks for all three. And if they're not, then we have to think through like, well, what would it look like to put them in a place, get them to a place where they're a good fit. But when we're talking about fit, it's not just staff in a non profit, we've got to be talking about donors, board, executive team, staff, and then key volunteers. Like that's not, that's a broad constituency. But we have to be thinking about fit for all of them. People are not widgets. And so it's really important that we think about it. The second aspect of it. So the first part is about people. The second one is the structures that those people inhabit. And so like an org chart is a structure. It's here's how, here's how power is distributed in some level or decisions get made, here's who your direct report is, or whatever. But also we got to think about roles and responsibilities, because roles and responsibilities aren't always clear, particularly nonprofit. On a, on an org chart, we'd love them to be because that would be so simple. But it never actually works like that. And so what we want to make sure happens is that the structures exist to serve the people and not the other way around. We do not want the tail to wag the dog. We need just as much structure and the right structure. So it's setting people up to win. Like people want to win at their job. They're not showing up just to collect a paycheck. They actually want to contribute it. And if they feel like the structure's blocking that, they get really irritated real fast. [01:04:24] Speaker A: One of the things that we hear a lot is, gosh, how much we could get done if it weren't for the darn people. So, and you want to move from a culture of that to a culture of we're getting done what we're getting done because of our people, because we have the right people and because they're fulfilled and they're, they're motivated intrinsically to do this work. I also, I noticed the two chapters on people, and I will just say this, org charts and things like, you know, Darcy or RC or Racy or whatever project management acronym you want to use on that. Again, great, great tools. But they're more than just frameworks. Their structure and if they're. If there's anything I hear at the ground level, when we do employee surveys or culture mapping is clarity. We want clarity. And that's what these structures do. They provide clarity. So, yeah, love that. [01:05:31] Speaker B: I mean, I think we use that Brene Brown quote, clarity is kindness. Like the way that we can be kind to people is by letting them know, here's how this is going to work. And we're pretty consistent with how it works. [01:05:41] Speaker A: I heard that the other day. I didn't know it was Brene Brown. I heard clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. So they put the negative edge on the back end of it, which is really. [01:05:55] Speaker B: It's got some bite. I like that. [01:05:56] Speaker A: That's pretty powerful. Unclear is unkind. [01:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really good. [01:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:03] Speaker B: The next one, I mean, the next one, we're on the second to last one systems. This is the one that has the most overlap with eos for those of you who are familiar with it. And it's like it's identifying, documenting, codifying and following through on some very simple, repeatable operational systems that touch most of your staff on an every, we'll say every week basis. So, like expense reports. If I gave you the choice of doing three hours for expense reports once a month, or 25 minutes, everyone's picking 25 minutes. But most of us have systems that are built for the medium or longer version of that. And so what we're trying to do with that one is help people identify the right systems. And we call it the seven VIPs, the seven very important processes that are, again, if you have a job, you're going to have to do stuff like this. That's just part and parcel of what it is to be an adult in a job where you're getting paid. And so you can choose to be the longer version with lots of friction, or a shorter one. Let's make it the shorter one. That's consistent. Sort of the moniker we use around this one in the book is you can't ask everyone to do everything perfectly, but you can ask everyone to do a few things with great consistency. And that's really what we drive home with that system component. [01:07:28] Speaker A: There's all the. There's a lot we could. Again, there's another three hours just on systems I want to plug. Another part of the book I really liked was in that VIP tool, the very important processes we hear. The term, we hear a lot in the sector is sops, right? Standard Operating Procedures. And when you're given the project to write the SOPs. It's like, are those SOPs written yet? And that's really all this is. What are the processes you gave? Something I wanted to highlight. And that is a sort of criteria for what constitutes of a VIP process. And there's just four things. So. So this is a good place to start if you're looking at writing SOPs for your whole operation. Start with the ones that a. Most staff need to know it. Right. Most staff will use this at some point or consistently. Second, they'll use it frequently. These. This is a process that gets used frequently in your organization. Third, it's something that you would think needs to be covered when you're going through your orienting and onboarding, right. Your first week of training. Think of those things. What are the things that all the employees need to know coming in? And the fourth thing is that it's not some strategic, nebulous concept. It is operational. It's functional. Nuts and bolts. Four criteria. Come up with those. What are those things? And start to build an F, An SOP framework for that or whatever you want to call it. But I really liked that tool. Just wanted to say that that was a. That was. Thank you very. Again, such practical stuff. If you don't, if you don't have. If you don't have what you would call sophisticated frameworks and they intimidate you. This whole idea of, of systems and operations and protocol and all. Just get this book and just use three of the tools in it. You will find this stuff is not rocket science. It's not it, but it's extremely powerful. It's just not applied. And this, this, this makes it where you can apply it. Seriously, I can't sell this enough. This is really good stuff. Really good stuff. Stuff. All right. [01:09:49] Speaker B: And the last one, last one is rhythms. [01:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:54] Speaker B: So this is really speaking to, like, what are the recurring patterns? So that can. Meetings and ways that we set goals, things where we pull away and evaluate, like what are the rhythms and cadences that we call it the impact calendar, that are the most important things that we schedule and that actually dictate the impact we're going to have. Because one of the things that you see is that by and large, if you've got a strategy that works, you're good at setting goals and delivering on goals, following through and you're counting, like you've got metrics. Impact's somewhat predictable. Not exclusively, but there's a predictable nature to it. And if that's true, that means you can calendar certain pieces of things. And so this is one where I'm. I'm personally pretty ruthless about. So when, when I think you can. We should always. And this is when we're working with an organization, this is what they walk away with. Like they will have their most important events or meetings. And I don't mean master schedule, I don't mean program schedule, I mean your impact events. So that, that could be like a weekly impact check in with our executive team that we're going to schedule those, those things or the board retreat or the 90 day goal refresh that we do every quarter. Well, we know when those things happen. We're going to schedule those three years in advance. And then next year we're going to add the year that just went by. We're going to tack it on at the end. So we will always be two to three years scheduled in advance. And everything flows around those things. We do not move those. If we move them, the whole thing starts to get real rickety real fast. [01:11:47] Speaker A: We don't have time to go into it. We talked a lot about meeting cadence and some organizations have seasons. I remember in my early United Way days, it's not like this anymore. But in my early United way days, like 90s, there were seasons. We were raising money in the fall in the workplace, we were recruiting different volunteers in the spring to do the allocations process. Summer was kind of light and we got to kind of, you know, have flex schedules and things like that. It's not like that anymore. But rhythms and cadences and I thought of two analogies. Just, just when I read the word rhythms, just when I saw that rhythms was one of the eight components. I remembered the first time I learned to ride a horse. My sister had a horse, loved horses. And you know, there's, there's four basic. I'm not a. I'm not an equestrian person, but I do know there's four very basic gates. So there's walking. You can walk with a horse and that's great. It's not a ton of fun. It's kind of relaxing. You don't get very far very fast, but you're walking. Then there's trotting. And trotting is jarring. Trotting. You're bouncing up and down pretty, pretty hard. I remember the first time I got the horse. [01:13:01] Speaker B: It hurts. [01:13:02] Speaker A: It hurts. The first time I tried it, I'm like, oh, I don't like this. This isn't comfortable. How can people do this between trotting and galloping, which can be cantering. [01:13:12] Speaker B: Is it cantering? [01:13:13] Speaker A: Well, maybe loping No, I don't think it's cantering. [01:13:16] Speaker B: No, no, it's loping. [01:13:17] Speaker A: It's loping. [01:13:18] Speaker B: And loping might be a kind of trotting. [01:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. It's more that, like the showy kind of stuff. [01:13:24] Speaker B: Clearly I'm not an equestrian either. [01:13:26] Speaker A: Loping, though, is the smooth. Like you're kind of. You're more than trotting, but you're not at a gallop, which some people scare some people to death. It's just this smooth, man. The first time I hit a loping gate, I felt like, oh my, you're in the pocket. There's this rhythm. And I think about that in organizations. There's organizations that are walking, they're just, they're risk averse. They don't want to go too fast and it's taking them a long time to get where they're going. But you know, there's. They're not falling off and then there's the trotters. Everything's chaotic and it's herky jerky and it's. They feel like they're moving somewhere. But good lord, it's painful. It's the loping organizations, right, that are, that have that smoothness going. The other analogy I thought of was the recent, the, the recent thing I read and I don't remember word for word what it was, but something about speed and turbulence are not the same thing. You know, when, when, when we feel like, oh, we're going too fast sometimes it's not that you're going too fast, it's that you don't have, you don't have a system or you don't have a good system. You have a system. You don't have a system for. For managing the smoothness of the fast. You're trotting and not loping. But we think of turbulence as well, we're going to. Too fast. Not necessarily. Anyway, that's what I thought of when I thought about rhythms. [01:14:56] Speaker B: So a couple of years ago, my wife and I, for our anniversary, this was her idea, we went to a dude ranch out in Colorado for like four or five days. So we're. I haven't ridden horses since some random vacation as a kid in Oklahoma. And so I remember you're kind of like activating the memory now. But there's. The thing about loping is that there's a long period of time when that's happening, when no feet are on the ground and the thing that's moving the horse is its momentum. [01:15:26] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. Okay. [01:15:27] Speaker B: And so the galloping is like you're pushing off the ground and it's maximum work. And I feel like those are the two extremes, right? You've got the walking and you've got the galloping. But the loping is the sweet spot that we've probably all been in where it's like the momentum is carrying us and it feels effortless and it's amazing. It's like the Shangri La of organizational leadership. [01:15:51] Speaker A: That's it. That's it. [01:15:52] Speaker B: But cadences do that. It's like when people are surprised. Can you imagine if people were surprised? It's like, December 25th, it's Christmas again. We know that we can plan for that. Or the trimesters in the public education system where it's like, wait, the kids are home all summer. Like, these aren't surprising things in actually an organizational life, at least in the nonprofit sector. But I would argue beyond that, these things are more predictable and we can plan around that. And the more we plan, some very basic rocks in the river of our calendar. Not the goals, the calendar. The calendar becomes the engine that drives the momentum. And that's the big. I think that's the thing that I feel really most passionate about around that, is that the. The calendar become the engine. Because we already made the decision. We've made this decision by putting time on the calendar, and we're keeping it. [01:16:50] Speaker A: Wow, Doug, just in the little time that we have left, we've actually gone. Gone over what we normally do. Because I. This, I mean, really, I nerd out on this is great, great content. I'd like to know for. For myself as I'm talking to some of our clients and for our listeners, what, what are you doing for organizations beyond offering this book in this framework? So I think I noticed, I didn't dig deep into it, but I noticed, by the way, you've got a free assessment tool online. You've got a quick sort of get started kit online. I mean, for people that really wanted to be just, you know, quick down and dirty and cheap, you've really already given everything away. But for organizations that look at this and go, oh, yes, we can build this and we want to do it, a guide and a facilitator that understands those frameworks can really make the difference. We know this, and the organizations that work with us know this, what is it? I think there were two or three or four levels at which people could engage with you. So where you kind of meet them, where they are, but what is it you can offer beyond the actual frameworks to organizations that might be interested. [01:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think when we built this out as an, as a quote offering, it was really important to us that every size organization at any size price point would have access to what it is that we think this could be. And so for those who are wanting a guide and a facilitator, there's what we call the Impact Light. And that is we're going to work with you for six weeks and then we're going to give you a construct and a simple plan for you to keep building out the operating system so you can customize it and then integrate it. It's going to have an integration plan into your organization, but you're on your own after six weeks. The second one is called the Impact Pro. That's the one. Virtually, not all, but virtually every organization, this is the one they pick, which is like it's a full year. We're going to customize. The whole thing with you takes about three months. And then we're going to spend eight months actually using the system in your organization with you and apprenticing you and training you, giving you coaching, feedback, consultation, because you will hit brick walls. That's inevitable. And then the last one is the premium version, which is two years, lots and lots of bells and whistles that only make sense if you're very large, you're very complex and you've got some very, usually like some thorny, I don't say issues, but like some people, complexity with your board and your executive team that you're going to want to unpack a little bit. So those are the three ways that we, we tend to work with an organization. [01:19:30] Speaker A: Well, I didn't want to leave that unsaid because this again, having having a, a third party guide you through the construct, help you ask the right questions, it can really, really make this high leverage for you. So, and then the website, if people want to know more about this, is impact nonprofit.com so we'll have it on the the podcast episode page. Impact nonprofit.com Doug, thank you so much for being here. There's two questions that I like to ask all my guests at the end of the show because I love the stories and the frameworks and I love to learn. And so here's the first one who is a leader in that comes to mind in your life, who's had tremendous impact on your leadership and your view of leadership and why. This can be someone you know, it can be family, it can be someone you've watched from afar off. It could be someone from history but who comes to mind? Is that that big influencer for you and why? [01:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah, there is a, there is a man that I met when I was 25, I am no longer 25, names named Steve Cockrum. And he's English. And he was the first, maybe not the first, but like the first very significant relationship that I had. Where he really at. He was like, if you, if you were looking for someone to mentor you, I will do that. He saw something and was willing to, like, get through all the coal. And maybe we've gotten the edge of a diamond in the last 25 years, I don't know. But we're still very close and I, I, I, I think about the things that he shared and actually I've, I, I was literally texting him two days ago. We're very like, families are close. His daughter has, like, lived with us for a little bit of time, internship, that kind of stuff. But I think there was, there was nothing in it for him. I think was a piece of it. It was like, I, I couldn't, I wasn't going to make him more money. It was, there was, he's just like, I want to invest in someone. I remember what it was like to be 25 and just getting started, man, changed my life. [01:21:46] Speaker A: You had me at. He saw something, right? He saw something in me. The leaders that do that, they see that we often even can't see. But then he did more than just see it and acknowledge it. He invested in it. Invested in you. That's super cool. That's awesome. Great story. Great tribute. Last question. You're on the top of a mountain with a megahorn, and all the leaders of the world are at the base of the mountain to hear what you have to say. But you've got 15 seconds to say it. And this is the, this is the thing you would tell all leaders to keep in mind as they lead. What is that 15 second Doug Paul sound bite on leadership? [01:22:25] Speaker B: It might be five seconds. You can't take people to places you haven't been yourself. [01:22:29] Speaker A: Ooh, interesting. [01:22:33] Speaker B: It's around authenticity and the way in which we oftentimes ask people to do very hard things. We can't be talking about things that we were just doing in the past. It has to be active. It doesn't have to be the specific things. If we're going to talk about doing hard things, they need to see us doing hard things. There's, there's a widening gap between, like, the visioneer leader who isn't doing the things that they're telling all the underlings to do. And that gap seems in oftentimes to be wider. My guess is this is why you have, I don't know, this podcast and all of the work that you do. [01:23:10] Speaker A: That's part of it. [01:23:11] Speaker B: We got to be leading lives and leadership, lives of authenticity, modeling. Yeah. [01:23:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got a model. Doug, this is great stuff. I do want to point people to the website again. Impact nonprofit.com Please get this might be again one of my top recommended books moving forward. It's called Built for Impact. How not How Successful nonprofits Lead, Execute and scale what matters most. This is a episode to go back and listen to again with either a notepad or a computer, or go on the site, get one of the assessment sheets, start, score and say, hey, where? Where might I start? Until then, lead on.