Workday Podcast: Lessons in Nonprofit Leadership for the Future

Michelle Adams O'Regan: 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our session on the future of nonprofit leadership. I'm your host, O'Regan. I'm the Industry Solution Marketing Lead for Nonprofit here at Workday. And as we look forward into the coming year, we know that the only constant is continuous change. For nonprofits who are always doing more with less keeping pace can be challenging, but leaders dedicated to helping their organizations achieve their mission are determined. 

So today, we'll explore some of the challenges and opportunities facing nonprofit leaders in 2024 and beyond and how they can navigate them successfully. And so I am so pleased to be joined today by internationally recognized nonprofit leadership expert, best-selling author, and founder of the Nonprofit Leadership Lab, Garry, welcome, Joan.

Joan Garry:

Michelle, I'm actually really delighted to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

O'Regan: 

Oh, great. So our Workday nonprofit community is really looking forward to your insights. So before we get into those, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? On Google Books, you're about the author starts with Garry is a rock star in nonprofit leadership, [laughter] which I love, both because we at Workday are very fond of that phrase if you've seen our recent campaigns, but also because it's a clever callback to your early career at MTV. [crosstalk].

Garry: 

Well, it's very interesting. I don't know if you saw on social media a while back that there was a little bit of a kerfuffle from real rock stars that they felt that the word had been co-opted. [laughter]

O'Regan:

Yep. Yep. [crosstalk].

Garry: 

Which I think is pretty funny, actually. And yes, the rockstar does actually relate back to my first career out of college where I found myself, out of just sort of pure luck and good connections at my alma mater, on the management team that launched MTV. But I guess I would say that I feel like I am a woman with a mission who arrived on this planet with these sort of-- with advocacy DNA. And today, I use that advocacy DNA to help coach nonprofit leaders of organizations of all sizes and all steps along their journey to become the best leaders and managers they can possibly be because their clients or their causes or their communities deserve nothing less. So I have become something of what I would consider a champion for individual leaders. And also, I feel really strongly that the sector needs a champion, that it is undervalued, under-resourced.

I heard you say doing less with more, and maybe we could talk about that later. But this is not where I actually had expected to be. I did start out in the entertainment business at MTV and then at Showtime. And then I got the advocacy bug to apply for a job running one of the largest gay rights organizations in the country, GLAAD. And I did so because my wife and I had three kids and I decided that I should do whatever I could to advocate that the world ultimately treat them well. And then I thought maybe I'd do that nonprofit thing for a little while and then go back. And clearly, I never went back and have used that sort of four private sector, public sector, combo platter to, I think, really help coach clients to be high performers.

O'Regan:

I love that way of putting it, combo platter. So we know that through this work, you have an extremely wide breadth of insight into the nonprofit sector and into what its leaders are thinking about. So let's just go right ahead and start with the big questions, shall we? What are you hearing from nonprofit leaders about the major challenges and the opportunities that are facing them in 2024-- from the donorship and the giving landscape to keeping up with changing technology, to employee hiring trends and beyond? What are they excited about? What are they concerned about? What are the big themes you're hearing?

Garry: 

So I'll start with concerns for 400. [laughter] Going into 2024, the nonprofit sector is not unusual in that it is highly concerned here in the United States about the presidential election and politics in general and the kind of impact that will have. Related to that, highly concerned about a painfully divisive society, citizens, electorate. Nonprofits are always concerned about uncertainty, although, to be really honest, I don't know when the world isn't uncertain or when there isn't a crisis someplace, somewhere. I would say they are concerned about the lack of trust in leadership that bleeds into the sector and leads funders to offer restricted funding, right? Is, "I want to fund this X," as opposed to, "I trust this organization. I trust this leader to make the best decision about how to utilize those funds based on what I know about this organization, its leader, and its strategy going forward." And then the challenges of a perceived-- we'll come back when we get to opportunities. A perceived lack of resources, human and financial. So those are the kinds of things I think about, and I welcome you to ask or add-- maybe I'm missing something, but those are the kinds of things that come to mind.

On the flip side, I want to quote my friend Ken Cloke, who runs an organization called Mediators Without Borders. He trained me to be a mediator and he's a really remarkable fellow. And he said to me once, "Most conflicts happen because people see the world as an us versus them. And that mediators work to help people realize that there is no them. There's only us." And I really think about that a lot. And I believe that nonprofit leaders are about that. And that is an opportunity for nonprofit leaders to really make the us case and not the us versus them case. I see two huge opportunities that found their roots in the darkness of the pandemic. First, the ability of nonprofits to be innovative and nimble and to embrace risk. That was not business as usual in the before times. And in 2020, indeed, it was. And if we can hold on to that spirit, the sector can make new and exciting things possible. The other opportunity, I believe, and I don't know that nonprofit leaders really see this, Michelle, is the enormous number of people who did all of this serious soul-searching during lockdown about their need to seek meaning and purpose in their lives.

And I believe that the biggest opportunity the sector has is to go get those people, right? The nonprofit sector provides the single most obvious and tangible way that people can find their way to meaning and purpose because the sector's DNA is meaning and purpose. And so we get to this, but when I hear nonprofit leaders say, "I can't find staff," or, "I can't find board members," not that they've actually lost them, but that they're on the hunt for them, right? I generally push back and say, "The stands are now filled with people who have a very different perspective on meaning and purpose than they did before, and you've just got to invite them to get on the field with you." So those are the kinds of things I think about when I think about opportunities.

O'Regan: 

Yeah. No. Absolutely. So much great insight there to unpack, Joan. What you said about the restricted funds and trust in philanthropy, that is one that we at Workday think about a lot as well because of the sort of starvation mentality and the need for nonprofits to be sustainable financially and operationally so that they can deliver on their mission. So that they can enhance their mission, not so that they can spend money on things that are not relevant or not important, but so that they can do more. So that's one that we think about a lot.

But is there anything that they should be thinking about and planning for, in addition to what you've already shared with us, that they're not?

Garry:

A couple of things come to mind, Michelle. I believe that nonprofits should be more excited about possibility. But so often, I see people coming from a place of scarcity, right? This, "I have to do less with more." Says who? Says who, right? Or, "I'll keep that staff member even though they are mediocre because I'm afraid the spot will be open for too long." Or, "I really think our organization ought to be doing X, but my board won't go for it because they'll worry about the risk it presents to funding, to failure," whatever fill-in-the-blank that is, right? So I think that leaders should be thinking about what would have to be true for you to change your mindset from scarcity to abundance. I think that leaders should be thinking about three things that would allow them to do that. One is to take the lesson from the dark playbook of 2020 and start to think about innovation and piloting. Pilot an idea, illustrate proof of concept to your risk-averse board, and boom, you have a new program. You have buy-in from your board, innovation, piloting.

I believe that the nonprofit sector should be concerned with their own attitude about what marketing means. That it is not some icky thing. We have a universe full of nonprofit leaders who think that getting an A on your book report-- that the book report should stand all by itself, and I should get an A, whether I have a lousy cover or not. Covers matter. Because if you market, more people know about you. And when more people know about you, you build a bigger posse of engaged stakeholders, whether that's staff, board prospects, volunteers, right? Clients. So embracing marketing for what it actually brings to your organization, it's something that I've really been using my platform to advocate in the funding sector, that marketing is program work. Because if you don't have people, you have no power, and if you don't have any power, you can't have any impact.

And then the third thing is-- it's related to marketing, is storytelling. I don't think nonprofit leaders tell good stories. I think they ramble. By the way, I'm not being critical because I actually believe that nonprofit leaders have not been trained to be good storytellers, and it is not just something you're natural at unless you're Irish like me. [laughter] So those are the kinds of things that I think about, what they should be thinking about. And maybe one last thing I would add is they should absolutely be thinking about the people in their posse as partners, right? Move away from transaction and say, these people are in my posse because they have skin in the game. And that road has to run both ways in order to maximize that relationship. So these are the kinds of things that I think about when I think, "What separates a good nonprofit organization from one that is just totally badass?"

O'Regan: 

No, I mean, you're talking to a former chief marketing communications officer. So all of the [laughter] building an authentic brand and storytelling, so cogent. So let's shift gears slightly from opportunities and challenges to change management. So that's a big theme of your work. And as you mentioned, there's no time that is certain. Everything is always uncertain, and change is the only thing that's constant. And we know that we're looking at more change moving forward for all the reasons that you mentioned, in terms of politics, in terms of technology, politically, economically. And at Workday, obviously, our business is ERP, digital transformation. But as we know, any transformation, by definition, it's not about the technology. It's about culture change. It's about the people. It's about adoption and embracing a new way of doing things. It's just like any other big new thing for an organization. It's not really about the systems per se. So what do you recommend to the nonprofit leaders that you work with who are facing the need for change management in their organization in a variety of ways, in terms of their mindset, best practices? What do you say to them?

Garry: 

It's about making change, changing laws, attitudes, hearts and minds, legislation, introducing and changing how people think about art and music, right? And yet they are filled with remarkably change-resistant people.

O'Regan:

100%.

Garry: 

So the first thing is to name that. Then what do you do about it, right? And why is that true? And I often believe that it comes from the nonprofit model with a board that provides oversight and that they interpret that word oversight as risk management. And I think that that puts a lens on the organization that causes this kind of risk or change aversion. And of course, this also goes right back to the scarcity mindset too, right? Because you're change-averse or you're risk-averse often because you're coming from a place of scarcity. So there's two things I think about when I think about embarking on change in your work or internally. And I'm figuring that you have experience in this regard too, and I'm probably going to say something that sings out to you as a previous chief marketing and communications officer. You have got to overcommunicate during any kind of change. People fill silence with their own narrative, not the narrative that is important for them to have.

O'Regan: 

Yes.

Garry: 

The second thing is that you have to be aware, especially when you're making changes internally. And I see this a lot. I just had a client call this morning with a brand new CEO who's had to come in and clean up a very big hot mess that involved firing two of the senior leaders in the first hundred days. And one of the things that we talk about is you have to be aware about how you speak about these changes. I have had people come in as new CEOs and say, "Well, I'm professionalizing the joint." Now, what does that do? That implies that everybody who was there before you actually was unprofessional, and that thanks to you, everything will get fixed.

O'Regan:

So you're going to save everyone from themselves.

Garry: 

Right. I'm the big savior. I got my white horse. I'm coming in. And the things that you broke on your watch, I'm going to fix. So to be really careful about what the narrative is that you communicate about these changes. You think that coming in to say professionalizing is a good thing, but it really can land all the wrong ways. And then the last thing I would say is that you always have to return to your origin story. Grab the core from your origin story. What is that sort of very clear why? And make sure you never lose sight of it as you change, that that becomes the common thread, and that everyone can see it. Market it. Remind folks that you are always staying true to the roots of the organization. There's a cool thing. I don't know if you've ever seen anything about polarity mapping, but if you google it, it's a really interesting change management tool that allows for you to actually engage in a conversation about the folks who were there then, the folks who are here now, and what they are learning from each other in a really interesting way. But I think the origin story really helps create that thread that does not--

O'Regan:

It's your North Star.

Garry: 

Yeah, the North Star, but it's also the thread that doesn't diminish those who were here before, right, that honors those who were here before and brings the group more cohesively together.

O'Regan: 

No, that's so true. And we see it all the time with successful change management through a big project like a Workday implementation is keeping overcommunication and then keeping at the forefront the why you are doing this. You are doing this so that people's lives will be easier, so that their mission will be enhanced, so that there will be time for everything to be better. Because otherwise, it's a lot of hard work doing change, and it can be very scary for people, and if they're not constantly reminded of that, the fear can tend to take over, and then you get resistance. So--

Garry: 

I have seen leaders crash and burn because they understand why they're making the change, but nobody else does. Everybody else thinks things were just fine the way they were, right? And that leader has to actually create a vision of possibility and get people really, really excited to want to go on to that journey. That is the thing that will motivate them to say, "Okay, I'm into this change. I'm bought in." Because you can't assume that people fundamentally are.

O'Regan:

Yeah. It's the art of the possible.

Garry: 

Yep.

O'Regan: 

So yeah. So true. So let's keep talking about the people, though. Because this is all about people. We've talked about both the challenges that nonprofits have faced. And then you mentioned earlier the opportunity that they have with the soul searching that occurred in the pandemic and the opportunity that they present for-- to make a difference. So thinking about everything that's sort of facing nonprofits with recruitment and retention and employee experience, you had a phrase that you used in a blog post about thriving nonprofits that I love, which is, "The best nonprofit organizations are seen as workplaces of choice." So what are your thoughts on how nonprofit leaders can make sure that their orgs are workplaces of choice, and make sure that they're retaining the folks that they have, right, and then bringing on board the best people to move them forward?

Garry:

So it is a lot about creating a culture of belonging. Right? Can I show up as my full self? Does my voice matter? These kinds of things. Right? They say culture eats strategy for lunch. And that is totally true. And that all comes from the top, full stop. Right? This is an interesting question, Michelle, because I do end up hearing from people, "I can't fill the job. I'm not getting enough good applicants." I don't think you're-- I don't think you're marketing the opportunity well enough.

O'Regan: 

Or are you looking in the wrong places?

Garry: 

Right, right. As I said, if you market this job as this is your chance-- this is your chance to take meaning and purpose and embed it into your full-time job. We tend to put in-- my daughter's 28, lives in Philadelphia-- just moved to Philadelphia, is looking for a job and nonprofits. And so I see these job postings and they're all just very factual. Right? If you're a mission-driven organization, then how about some of that enthusiasm sort of oozing out of your job postings? I have seen people do that, and I have seen recruitment go skyrocket. So my team of 15, we have worked with a DEI consultant. He's now a coach of ours. We've completely converted our recruitment practices. So we scrub resumes. I don't know whether the last three or four hires we have made, where they went to college, or if they went to college. I have no idea. It is irrelevant to whether or not they have the skills, the competencies, the attributes to be a member of our team. And we hired a web developer named Miguel Espanol, and we still call him Lucky 97 because until we met him, he was number 97. And so I think there's a lot of things you can do, first of all, to begin a journey down DEI lane, and actually center that around, "How do I create a workplace of belonging?"

Garry: 

And this goes back to something else I was talking about, about relationships and treating the people in your posse like partners. I think this is a pretty distinguishing feature in nonprofits. I believe that we are at our best when we are not thinking hierarchically. And I spend a lot of time talking to CEOs who, quite frankly, talk about Gen Zs with a kind of dismissiveness that I find rather offensive. And they come with a different kind of voice. They come with a different attitude about leadership and institutions. And they are going to be leaders in 10 and 20 years, right-- or 5 years. Who knows? And I do believe that your ability in your own workplace to be able to honor a different way of being in the workplace that's provocative, that's outside the box, create working groups, task forces that bring people together. These are the kinds of things, I think, that build a kind of culture that can really make you a workplace of choice. The other thing, we can't talk about nonprofit organizations without talking about burnout and where the leader plays a role. And leaders who complain about how many emails they have in their inbox, leaders who roll their eyes at some other task they have to do on a Zoom call, they're not modeling the right behavior. They're actually setting the bar that that is what is expected. And then the whole car can actually overheat.

O'Regan: 

Well, and in terms of burnout as well, I mean, that's one of the leading causes of people leaving organizations where lots of times have limited resources, right, or staff, and people are really committed, and they want to wear all the many hats and do all the things, but it can reach a point where it's just unsustainable for them.

Garry: 

Well, there's two things there, actually, because first, nonprofit leaders are type A personalities and they have control issues. I have been a nonprofit leader. I have control issues. I can say that with authenticity. And so they want to do it all, which means often that they're not necessarily as good as they could be at delegating, whether that's to other staff or to volunteers, right? So that's one thing, is that leaders have a challenge giving things away. And then, because we have to do more with less because there's a scarcity mindset-- I do time studies with my clients, and when I see the overwhelming percentage of time that they spend doing tasks for which they are ridiculously overpaid, right? There's this really good book called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, and he talks about the fact that if you can take how much money you make, divide it by roughly 2,000 hours, you come up with some number per hour, right? If you can hire somebody at 25% of that hourly rate to do something that's on your list, you'd do it all day, every day, so that you are actually doing the higher level, higher value work. I wrote a blog post about that not too long ago, and I got several emails who said it was the perfect blog post. I put it in front of my board, and we got administrative support.

O'Regan: 

Nice. Yeah. Because you're absolutely right. That's a tendency. Completely. And again, this is one of the things that we think about a lot from the standpoint of all of the tasks that have to be done. The administrative tasks, all of the things that have to happen to make the wheels continue to turn. And so of course, from our perspective, providing automation and technology to remove some of those from everyone at the orgs-- for everyone, can only benefit. I'm not just talking about the finance people or the IT people or the HR people or just the leaders, but everybody. The more we can streamline and simplify and automate so that less time is going on spreadsheets and more time is going on mission-critical activities, on [crosstalk]--

Garry: 

Or relationship building. Right, this is the argument that folks like Beth Kanter and Allison Fine make with regard to AI, right? If you can automate tasks that are low-value tasks, that are transactional tasks, it actually allows you greater opportunity to engage in the relationship-- the more human tasks, right? The relationship tasks.

O'Regan:

So just taking it back to the really big picture, thinking globally, all the people, the financial, the political, all the factors that nonprofit leaders have to contend with to successfully achieve their missions, to sustain their orgs, what are the key pieces of advice that you would give them in 2024? Words of wisdom from Garry.

Garry:

I would like to see nonprofit organizations educate their boards more intentionally about how important their jobs are-- how important their jobs are and what the job actually is. That they are ambassadors. That they are thought partners at their best. That they are not just a plane on the tarmac checking your financials, but they are helping you think generatively about what's possible. I want a nonprofit staff leader to begin to imagine a board that is a partner and to begin to think about what are the skills, competencies, and attributes that would need to be on your board in order to have that. Because to me, if you can actually embrace that and build towards that, then you won't have to do it alone. The board will have its own work to do. And marketing this idea, I would love to see more nonprofits try new things. Establish success metrics at the front end, do a small version of it, prove concept, get the board's buy-in and ownership, and then that proof of concept also becomes part of a case statement for funding. That's how you can actually start to move into really interesting, innovative kinds of work. And the last sort of super global piece of advice is about this whole issue of meaning and purpose.

And there is this really powerful TED Talk given by no one anyone knows. He's an EMT on Long Island. And when he first started, if somebody asked him, "Am I going to make it to the hospital?" He would say, "Oh, you got this. You got this," right? But there were times when he knew he was actually lying. And so over time, he started to shift it. And if he really knew, he would say something like, "I'm not a doctor, but there's a likelihood you're not going to make it." And once he started to say that, there were two questions that almost everybody asked him. "Do you think people will remember me?" This is to a total stranger. And then the other question that he got asked repeatedly is, "Will you remember me?" And when I think about that, I think that's nonprofit sector secret sauce right there. Do you want to be remembered? Right? Do you want to be remembered? Do you want to feel like you've had a life well-led? Do you want to feel like you had some ability to repair the world in ways large and small? And I am telling you that that stadium is filled with people who want that, right? And the EMT story really tells me that, right, is that people want that in their lives and you can give that to them. And if nonprofit leaders saw that abundance, imagine how they would think differently. Imagine how they would really begin to think about what's possible. And that's the kind of advice-- I could tell you how to ask for money. I could tell you about how to build a strategic plan. But thinking about this kind of mindset, this is the big lever point for me.

O'Regan: 

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that for so many nonprofit leaders, that would be game-changing. Right?

Garry: 

Totally.

O'Regan: 

So that's wonderful. So before we kind of wrap up here, I just want to ask, is there anything else that we haven't talked about, any kind of final words or things that we didn't get into that you'd want to add?

Garry: 

Who doesn't love that question when they're being interviewed, right? [laughter] Any last thing?

O'Regan: 

Any last thing? Any final words?

Garry: 

I would like the nonprofit sector to have more visibility. I believe it is-- there are no hidden gems. To me, there are no hidden gems. If they're hidden, they're not gems. Right? And you ask anybody-- I live in Montclair, New Jersey, if you ask anybody how many nonprofits there are in this community, they would totally lowball that number. And it is the nonprofit sector that turns my town into a community. It's what turns residents into neighbors. And I think we do a lousy job as a sector marketing the vitality of the sector to society. Right? How many people know that it is the third largest driver of the United States economy? Very few. Right? The power of the nonprofit sector is real, and we actually don't-- we don't lean into that power in order to get a seat at the table, to make ourselves known, and to change that mindset from the people who-- the lovely people who do lovely things to the people who are pointing us towards a more civil society.

O'Regan: 

Yeah. [crosstalk].

Garry: 

Yeah. If I can use any portion of my platforms to be able to help make that case and raise the visibility-- and raise the visibility so people really understand that this sector is a vital part of what it means to be a neighbor in a community. That would be good for-- that would be a good day at the office for me.

O'Regan:

Power is real. I love that. All right. Well, thank you so much, Joan, for sharing your experiences and your thoughts with our Workday audience. Just so much great insight into how mission-driven leaders can be more effective and ensure the success of their organizations and their people. We're inspired by our nonprofit customers who are making a positive impact on the world today, every day. And so to all of you, have a great workday.