 Welcome thanks for being here another episode of the nonprofit show thrilled to have Julia Patrick back and of course our guest Andrew Olson CFRE and president of Altus marketing Andrew is here to talk to us about understanding nonprofit leadership. It's a big conversation short amount of time so stay with us and tune in. Quickly so Julia Patrick I mentioned welcome back thrilled to have you here co hosting today. Julie is the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy she enjoyed some much needed time away, and I'm glad to be here with you again. I'm Jared ransom your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group, and we are honored each and every day to have the ongoing support of our presenting sponsors. This week is our 600 episode week so we've been, you know, blowing this up by way of conversation bragging about it but this is the week it is here. In fact today is 599 so tomorrow is our 600 but thank you so very much to bloomering American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy with the National University nonprofit nerd, your part time controller staffing boutique and the nonprofit thought leader. Please check these companies out because they are here to lean into you and your mission in your community, and they've got so many wonderful things to offer you and your mission so please do give them a browse. If you've missed any of our episodes or you want to listen to what Andrew sharing with us today a little bit more. You can find us on Roku YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo and fear podcast listener like I am and I know our guest is because he actually host a podcast. Thank you up the nonprofit show wherever you stream your podcast. So mentioning Andrew and his podcast you can find that it's the Rainmaker fundraising podcast but I want to welcome you here. So welcome Andrew so glad to have you with us today. You thanks for having me. I feel like you know if it's episode 599 your approach and 600 I plenty to get a tattoo 599 after this after the show. Okay, I'm going to hold you to that would you do that. It's more likely you're going to see a goat next time that attached, you know, that I can get behind. Yes, we're sharing with us that you live how many acres is your farm just under 40. Yeah, 40 acres and you have sheep, ducks, you have a cow, chickens, cows, goats, guineas pigs. Oh, McDonald. Children. You are old McDonald I love it and and so you're coming to us from Tennessee today, but you've worked with so many organizations and again tell us a little bit about Altus marketing who you are what you offer our sector. Altus marketing is a direct response fundraising agency we serve all sorts of different nonprofits and ministry organizations were part of more, which is the largest service provider to, to nonprofit organizations in the country. And, you know, everything from data and analytics to direct response television, direct mail digital marketing, really anything where we need to marry a message with a marketing channel to deliver to an individual is the kind of stuff to be quite. I love it. Well, and then you have also produced a book which I have total injured. I know Jerry does too. We have total empathy and appreciation for anybody that cranks out a tome and so 101 biggest mistakes nonprofits make, and how you can avoid them. Talk to us a little bit about your book. Yeah, so I wrote this couple years back and I actually brought about 25 other experts from across the sector to contribute to this. And the genesis of it was I sat in about 80 meetings with nonprofit leaders, and started to see threads in those conversations. And I said to myself, wait a minute, we're all making the same mistakes like why are we not learning from one another. It's okay to make mistakes let's go make as many as possible and learn and get better. But why do we keep making the same mistakes. And I couldn't find anything in the market that address those so I grabbed a couple of friends and said let's create it. Nice, much needed. And so you had shared with us that we can find this on LinkedIn as well as Amazon but go ahead and give that shout out for your LinkedIn download because that is a generous offer. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know recently LinkedIn rolled out a new feature where you can put a web link at the top of your profile my link goes to a free download of the digital copy of this book so anybody that wants to connect with me on LinkedIn it's just Andrew Wilson CFRE and there's a link to download the book. Awesome. Well, we're going to we're going to do that I'm going to definitely take care of that when we're done here because I think that's that's just amazing. We've talked a lot about leadership over the course of all these episodes and Jared and I are always interested in what people have to say with all your research and your time working in our sector and even podcasting. What does leading a nonprofit successfully look like. Yeah, you know, it's whether it's a nonprofit or a for profit right because at the end of the day, that's all just about our taxes it's not, doesn't have anything to do with success of an organization. So, when I think about leadership you know really it comes down to what's the culture we're building. And, and how are we engaging and developing our people, right because you can't be a leader if no one follows. So it ultimately comes all down to the people. And the people, you know those who are, I would say the most effective leaders understand that the talent in your four walls whether they're actual or virtual is the most important resource you have. And everything emanates from making sure that they're well cared for and well developed and equipped to be successful, whether they're serving people in need on the front lines of your cause, or their administrative support or back end or fundraisers or whatever. Successful leadership all comes down to caring well for the people that that you serve as a leader, and understanding that you serve you don't, you don't oversee and you don't, you know, dictate to you actually are serving those people. Now given that question, or given that point of view, do you think that that definition has changed a lot, just given coming out of the pandemics. I think that definition is amplified like crazy coming out of the pandemic. And in fact, we see this in our employee retention data. We see this, you know, both internally for our organization but also with our clients, the organizations that are leaning into and leading well from a people perspective and a culture perspective. Those are the ones that are retaining their staff that even when someone comes calling and saying I'm going to pay you more I'm going to do this I'm going to do that. People are saying yeah, that's all great I want that. I work for an amazing boss, right, or I have an amazing team, and you can't, you know, no amount of money can fix a really bad culture. Right. No, no number of perks solves for you know toxicity, or a lack of clarity or so many roadblocks that you can can actually feel like you're being successful every day so we definitely need to to address compensation particularly in our sector. At the same time, it's those other things that really drive value for employees. Yeah, that was my same question Julia is how is it changed and you know we hear now of stay interviews but I'm curious you know that in the HR component side, but I'm curious because servant leadership has always been a really big, title for our sector and you mentioned the word serving. So is that still like you know the principle of principles is that servant leadership mentality. I think in many cases that is, but I'm going to call a bit of BS on this right I think in our sector we like to talk nicely. But if you look at the way we actually treat people oftentimes it doesn't align with the words that we use right. So we say that we're all about making sure that you know that we're building communities or healthy thriving communities. But we also say it's okay to pay a not a living living wage because they're doing good work like that's crap right if we can't deliver services and also take care of our people. Then we probably ought to stop what we're doing and roll up our organization and say we failed because we can't figure this out. You know there's a lot of people who have a great passion for what they're doing. But if they don't understand that taking care of the people in the organization is paramount. Now I ascribe to something that comes out of Harvard Business School called the service profit chain thinking. Right and what that says and it's proven out is if if your employees are well cared for and feel valued, they will care for your customers. In our case, the end recipients of our services, and in turn, your revenue and profit will grow. And if you look at the companies that follow this, whether they're commercial or nonprofit, the data tracks to that methodology. You know, even if we purely say this is about the money and we follow that metric just to be profitable. It works. But the outcome is our people feel well cared for and they feel safe and they feel engaged. And that means the people that they care for are going to feel better about the work you do too. So if we're not living that no amount of us talking about how great the sector is and how much we care for people and like, at the end of the day, unless we're living it it's crap. Well, I appreciate you calling that out you know we wave the flag for that equal pay as well are just you know kind of right sizing that compensation, but talk to us about how we can execute this effectively so how do we put our words in our actions you know to to to the test. Yeah, so whether it's about compensation or executing your annual strategy whatever it might be right so when I think about effective execution. It's, it's all about doing the things that actually deliver the results. Right, so I had a mentor once who was a fundraising consultant, and she used to say to me, don't mistake activity for progress. There's a lot of stuff we do in our day to day work. That makes us feel like we're getting things done but it's not actually moving the needle on the value we're saying we deliver in the community. So, so for me, this effective execution is all about us sitting alongside each other and really challenging one another to say, is what you're doing today, actually moving the needle. Whether that's a major project or even a really small like hey, I had to make this phone call today. I feel like particularly for fundraisers right and I've, I've lived that life myself so I feel like I can challenge us here. You know, I can't tell you how many major gift officers I talked to who say, Oh, I got to look at this event spreadsheet and I've got to go talk to this person about you know what the setup is going to be in this room or this or that and like no get on the phone and make a call. It's going to move the needle for your organization, not what color the doilies are at the next event, right. But it's, it's so difficult to actually focus on the things that deliver the most meaningful impact. And unless we hold ourselves accountable, and we as leaders hold our teams accountable. We're never going to get there we're going to do a lot of work, and we're going to have a lot of you know wheel spinning, and we're going to feel good at the end of the day go wow I did so much today. And whatever our cause is is going to be no further ahead tomorrow because of that. So I love that mentality and my mother always used to say it's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You spin your wheels you do things that don't really save you in the long run. So what are some tips that we can as leaders help get out of the way get ourselves out of the way. How do you, how do you effectively get that mandate out there. Yeah. So I have so much to say I know we only have like 20 minutes so I'll be brief. I think the first one is as leaders, we have to get really comfortable, having uncomfortable conversations. One of our biggest challenges as a sector is that because what we do in large part is caring for people caring for animals caring for the environment. We want to treat people well, and we want to be liked. And sometimes we have to have conversations that are hurtful, not not that hurt people, but that hurt in the moment right, we have to have conversations that create tension and friction, because that's how things get resolved. We want to be even shy away from them, so that we can keep things happy and peaceful. And that is probably the biggest mistake and impediment to progress that we as leaders have in our entire sector. Right. Beyond that, I think we need to be really intentional about who we hire, how we resource them and I don't just mean salary there but I mean things like, do you have an intentional onboarding plan, and do you follow it. Do you have training, whether it's in house training or outsourced training. Do you have a mentorship program, do you have a way for an employee to raise their hand and go, I don't understand how to do this and I've never done it before, and not feel like they're beaten up about it. Right. Those are the kind of things that are going to allow us to actually move forward and achieve progress in whatever our cause is way more than anything else that we do. Wow. I love it too. And I have seen this time and time again and I do think that I've seen the shift over the last three years Andrew, you know truly in the workforce. And so, you're right, we have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And I think that's a good for everyone in life right like there's been a lot of really uncomfortable moments in the last three years let's be honest about that. So looking at that. So how might we shift if we've noticed or even been told that you know our leadership stinks or the path that we're going sucks right like let's just throw it all out there. Like how do we start to move the Titanic because that's, you know, one degree at one degree will move a big ship so how do we start to move that if we're seeing, we're not going in the right direction. I think at the most basic it's you just have to start right so you don't have to fix everything tomorrow. I think oftentimes as leaders we think, well if something's broken I've got to solve it now. Right. And it might be something that that's a three year process. But you can't just not start because that feels daunting, right, you've got to take that first step. So I think, you know, just start, even if it's just chipping away at a little thing. I, you know, one of my favorite statements my staff knows this my 14 year old daughter parents it back to me. When someone gives me feedback, my first response is tell me more about that. To give them an opportunity to really get to what's the core issue. And then once I know what it is. I don't know why then pick it apart and say okay, if this is what has to get resolved. Where do I start what's the first thing to do. Right. And I think as as leaders, particularly when those things like training and development and coaching and and mentoring aren't even probably happening for most CEOs because most nonprofit boards aren't focused on it. They're by themselves going well crap. I'm a failure. How do I fix this, and they get paralyzed by the enormity of that question. Right. Whereas I think if we just take a step forward, what's one thing I could do tomorrow different than what I did today. And then tomorrow, what's one more thing, right. But I also think that, you know, as leaders, again, because we want to be liked because we many times we feel like hey we've achieved something because we're in this C level seat right now. We might not be willing to really take the feedback that some of our junior employees give us right and I, I got to tell you the most impactful piece of feedback I've had in a number of years came from one of the most junior employees on my staff I was leading a team of about 50 years. We're in a major change initiative. And she pulled me and a colleague aside, one day and said, I know you all think this is going great. But do you realize it sucks for the rest of us, and maybe a little less raw raw and a little more like showing that you actually understand how bad it is today would be helpful. And I mean that that woman I've moved companies twice. She's on my staff now. And when the opportunity came up I was like, she's the most honest person I've ever worked with bring her over. She's willing to have hard conversations. I'm grateful to her because she was the one willing to raise her hand in a room of way more, you know, long tenured seasoned and go, I know I'm the new kid but you need to know this right. So I think creating that space for people to really be honest with you. And then having the sort of an internal fortitude to say, I've got this feedback now. It's not likely that it's BS. And even if it's not comfortable for me I have to own it and figure out how to resolve it. Those are the kind of things that I think make, you know, turn good leaders into great leaders. So how did you take her feedback. Did you address that then with the entire group to say, you know, thank you one of you spoke up this is what I heard we want to like how did you move that needle forward. I mean, first we thank her. Right. You know we appreciated the fact that she was, you know, she was candid about it. We, my colleague and I went back for a couple of days digested it and thought through like, how do we move from here to what the team actually needs. And then yes we came back to the entire group and said, we missed the mark. You know, we, we are yes, there's a major change initiative we are excited about where we're going. We believe fully in what the future vision is. We also acknowledge that yeah it probably does suck right now and then we share with them like, we're not sleeping. We've been, you know, I was on the East Coast my colleague was on the West Coast we would literally trade emails in the middle of the night when she was about to start working after you know a long day of work and I was just finishing up after, you know, going to bed at two in the morning. So we started to explain like, even though we have a positive approach to this and you can see us looking excited. It's just as stressful. If there's just as much friction. It's just as uncomfortable for us. But it's also our job to make sure that we keep everybody engaged and pulling in the same direction. Given, given all of that, we understand that a recalibration is also important so let's just be honest with you with each other about the good and the bad. Great. What a great real life story so thank you for sharing that. And so how do we know when leadership is successful I mean hopefully that same colleague raises her hand and says, you're crushing it Andrew. How else do we know that. Well, so I kind of joked about this early on in our conversation but like, you're not a leader if nobody's following. Right. So I look at organizations that have serial turnover. And the first thing I think is okay there's a leadership problem there right. It's not just because some other company came into the market and is doing amazing things and everyone wants to go work in tech or you know become lifestyle bloggers or whatever it is. There's a bad leader there that no one and no one's addressing. So I think followership is important and it's a key indicator employee retention is a key indicator. Whether or not your staff is recruiting new talent for you is a key indicator. Right. So one of the things that I love about our team is our people are regularly raising their hand saying hey I know somebody who could fit that role. Hey, you know, this is a person I work with before we want them in our company. That tells me that that the team trusts where we are from a leadership perspective. That's a great point Andrew I would have never thought of that as a data point but that that's a big for me. Yeah, I think the other one is when your best people go silent, you know you have a problem. Yes. And I mean, we do this internally I encourage other organizations to do it we do an annual survey of our employees, and it's not just, you know, it's a it's a real survey right and it gets down to a net promoter score where and and it's you know, sometimes it's painful. But it gives us all the data we need to go and address things. And the most important part is once you've done the survey, just like with donors, you then have to say, we heard you. Here's what we think the plan is to solve it, do you agree. And then you work through a plan with them and a process to make sure that we're addressing the things that people brought up and they might be, you know, small mundane things, or there could be really big issues to get serious and I wish we had more time but we don't. I've got to ask you this question. Given all the changes that we've been going through because of and we always say multiple pandemics, you know everything from, you know, COVID to social injustice, the economy, political disruption, all the stuff. You're finding that you have employees or team members that want stronger leadership, or that want to be more independent. I mean, yes, any difference. Yes. Here's what here's what people. And this is a broad statement I know it's not 100% true. What people want is they want clarity of expectation. They want articulation of the guardrails and what I mean by that is, what's my decision authority, where, where, what's my path, right. They want to understand where they can be successful and what success looks like. And then they want to be left alone to do the good work. Right. But they also want to have a safety net so when they don't know something, or they make a mistake or they have an issue, they can fall back on on a leader or appear. But they also want to know that it's going to be in a way where they're not made to feel a fool. Right. So when we create that kind of structure. That's where people thrive. And, and it, I think it's always been that way. It is at a significantly amplified level today, because of all this. Interesting you say that like it might not have changed but it certainly is amplified. So this brings us a lot of amazing tips and I can imagine our viewers and listeners Andrew are thinking, we have so much to do so. So can you tell us like you know, where do we start is there I know we can download your book I know there you know that there's the podcast we can listen to. If we could take away one thing from today's conversation what would you recommend that for our leaders. The one thing for leaders, invest in getting to know your people and getting to understand what's important to them. What makes them feel successful, and then go do that. Great. And I loved also Julia I don't know if you took this away but you know it could be a three year journey but chip away now and get overwhelmed with this is going to take so long you know really start today. Yeah, I did hear that because I do Andrew. I think we think oh a solution is a, you know, yes or no, a or B, but we tend to get frustrated when, when it's not and the reality is, we have, you know, kind of a flow of things and so I appreciate it very much that you kind of helped us rediscover that Well, yeah, and you know, my good friend Kat Landa who if you go to my podcast she and I've done a couple shows together. She talks about the idea that like, there's no more change process right change just just happening constantly change. So we as leaders have to get really comfortable with the idea that tomorrow is going to be different than today and three days from now it's going to be different than tomorrow. And we just have to live in that discomfort and find a way to to get comfortable with the fact that I love I love that because that is so dang true and you know we we understand that in the nonprofit sector but we don't always articulate it that way I really appreciate that. Hey, here's your Andrew Olson CFR ease information president of Altus marketing Altus mk tg.com or check him out on the Rainmaker fundraising podcast. What a great mind what a great way for us to really delve into this next phase with so many of our nonprofits are doing as we kind of gear up for the the second half and the end half of the year for so many of us. So this has been really great. Also we want to remind everybody that you have a book at right after this episode I'm going to go to LinkedIn and definitely download it myself. 101 biggest mistakes nonprofits make and how you can avoid them. Check out Andrew Olson CFRE on LinkedIn and you can get access to this amazing I'm really energized Andrew super excited that you would join us again if we hadn't met before I'm Julia Patrick I've been joined by my interpret co host Jarrett Ransom who's held down the fort for a full week. Thank you. Thank you. You so absolutely. Thank you. I must report that Kevin Pace our executive producer was like wow Julia Jarrett was great and it was just fabulous we didn't miss you. That's not true. That's not true. That's saying so that's that's a good report. Hey also another good report for us are all of our sponsors who are here with us day in and day out. Blumerang American nonprofit Academy your part time controller nonprofit nerd fundraising Academy and National University staffing boutique and nonprofit thought leader. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out so that we can give you our messages and and open the world through the nonprofit show. It's been amazing Andrew so exciting. We have a lot more to talk about I think my friend. Thank you for having me I promise next time I come back I'll bring a goat. Please do absolutely do because that would be I would say Jarrett a first for us. We've never had. I mean other than you know your domestic animals a cat and a dog that show up. We've never had any other animals so we would love a goat. Let's do it. I would say I would say we need a goat. We need a goat. Yes. Oh my gosh it's been a lot of fun. Hey everybody. We'd like to end every episode and we want to remind you as well as ourselves to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.