 Welcome to the nonprofit show we are so glad you're here. Usually I would say it's money, but it's not it's Tuesday. But yes yesterday we observed Juneteenth and so we did take the day off but today we have Carl Jay Cox joining us back he's been on before. Also at 40 strategy author of lost at CEO, the new book that he's put out. So he's going to share with us about why nonprofit strategies fail and flounder so stay with us because Carl has a lot to share with you but before we jump into this conversation we want to remind you who we are, if we haven't had the opportunity to meet you, Julia Patrick is here CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, and I'm Jared ransom your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group, and we are so honored to have the continued support from our presenting Thank you to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University nonprofit thought leader, your part time controller staffing boutique nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These companies and I would say the majority of them have been with us from the very beginning March of 2020 and have helped us produce over 800 episodes so you can check them out on many of our streaming platforms. Latest and greatest yes thank you curl that definitely, you know deserves a clap. Yes, the latest and greatest is you can download the app Thank you Julia for showing us. So grab your smartphone scan that QR and you will get a notification of today's conversation with Carl in just a couple of hours after today's live conversation. And also on all the streaming broadcast as well as podcasts so don't worry we haven't left those platforms we just keep getting bigger and better so without further ado, Carl back to you we are so glad you're here. Again, for those of you watching listening Carl Jay Cox president and CEO at 40 strategy welcome. Thank you so much it's a pleasure to be on. Carl, we talk about strategy so much. Jared is a master at working with organizations and boards to do strategy sessions we've been in them we participated on them. got frustrated by them as well. I'm really interested to see if some of those things drove you to write your book lost at CEO and, and if you could kind of talk to us a little bit about this before we dig in and ask you more specific questions about strategic planning and strategic theory. Yeah, so thank you and really excited about book we just launched it just recently in May of 2023 hit number one best seller in 12 different categories and so we were just ecstatic by that launch received incredible feedback I think the thing that's as exciting as the emails and the text and people posting and showing that they've read the book but there's an emotion behind this book so what what's different, your typical business book is here is the four ways of solving this here's the 12 waves of solving this here's the seven ways of doing this right that's your typical book and make sense we like we wanted easy solution to get things but the problem. is people were emotional human beings. And despite knowing the three ways to solve and lose weight and despite knowing the two ways to get taller whenever might be. We, what we really need is we need that emotion to feel like it's our story. So we're willing to make those important decisions to move where we want to go in the future. So we wrote the book one of the most impactful books I read was back in the 90s. It's actually a book that was written back in the 80s, called the goal by Elijah Goldrat, and it was basically a fiction story if you may, but it's a real life experience of what somebody who's been into business has gone through what this is how this has been written as well it's a fable it's a story of Jack, and Jack is. He's stuck in a situation and that's why it's called lost at CEO or lost at sea and we use metaphors all the time from a sea perspective of. You know we think you know the hardest thing of being a CEO is that you're alone at the top. And only they know that, like if you're number two or number three or number four whatever you don't know it until you're there at the very top that you're alone. So I learned this the first time when I used to say jokes and was 25 years old and then I became a CEO. And the same joke I would say when I was 25 nobody would laugh at but when I became a CEO, everyone laughed at. Right. Right. So this book captures that and also the emotion of when you are providing. You have to be successful because it is representative you not only you care about your employees and your mission of what you're trying to accomplish but if you don't successfully do there it's a representative of who you are. So that's what this book is it does it goes through the stories the trials and tribulations like the very beginning of the book it's it's 3am and I'm waking up and I'm getting ready to do this strategic retreat and what do I do. And so that's how it starts and so it's a really fun story and we go through intentionally the seven principles that we do talk oh yeah we have we have principles but they're not rules the principles of the better ways of how we can effectively get to where we want to go. Going from a to B right at the end of the day strategy should be simple. We start an origin point and we go to a new destination and that destination as our end result the how is the strategy. And once we understand that and by the way just listeners that took me to us 30 years old and a CFO and I had a really good strategic CEO who taught me that because my first 10 years my career was all about numbers and understanding data and how to help organizations be more successful from a data standpoint. But let me go a little bit further on the CFO said I would provide data after data after data after data and people would not move. They would not make a decision. We are emotional creatures and what I learned over time is we're going to get all the facts together and then make a make emotional decision to move forward. Well that's why the book was down this way and that's how we move forward. So anyways there we go. So let's go. Let's ask questions and questions. No I love it and I really I can't wait to dig into this. So one of the things that I read that you you talked about that stunned me and at first I thought this can't be true. But then I thought about situations I'd been in and you have the 20% investment only 40 hours a year is generally spent. On a strategic plan and yet it guides us or it's supposed to guide us. So talk to us about that because that was just horrifying. No it's really fascinating. I mean you think of a traditional and an offer for organization you do retreat that might be a day or day and a half that's pretty typical. Right. Then you move after maybe if you're lucky you'll you'll actually do a follow up if you don't actually get your notes from the whiteboard. And then you might put a strategic plan together. And then you might meet quarterly a couple hours a quarter to review that strategic plan. And then maybe you review it but when you count up those hours at a one leader perspective it's generally about 40 hours. You know that. Wow. It fascinates me recently I was on a call with one of my executive coaches. And it was other other women that are you know leading businesses Carl and she asked how how much time a week do you spend thinking about your business vision right and the average was less than 30 minutes less than 30 minutes. So that to me was like so shocking and then of course we see that in all industries right like across many sectors so fascinating. You just know right there that's 26 hours right if you're doing your math 52 half and half time that's 26 hours I mean that's the reality right we spend so little time focusing on where we want to go. We get so caught in our business we don't work on our business or organization are not right we forget about our mission. Yeah, we do often. We're trying to move to the right direction. Yeah and we just keep turning and you know doing doing the same thing kind of like stuck in the mud if you will. So let's talk about this you know to investment a little bit further how can we shift that like what does that look like. What's interesting about that is, I think for number one is we have to be do it the right way. And that sounds a little bit audacious but the traditional ways of doing things we're still doing the SWAT which was put together in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and we haven't changed. Right. And we believe this is the right ideation tool to do things and folks have you ever asked the question that are the data you're getting from the SWAT actually accurate. Like, like for example, strengths, who has not said that their strengths is not people. Every single time our strength is our people they all love working here. That's a meaningless data point that position. So we what part of my thing is hey, even if you only have 40 hours, let's do the modern based research and tools to use those 40 hours to maximize that effect. So we actually do it the right way. Most of our principles you three acts, each of the respective principles you could do from from the very beginning of the ideation, all the way down to the execution. There's so many ways to do this the right way. So, Jerry going more specifically, you know, an example, a typical organization will meet quarterly. Right. That that is a not uncommon thing you meet with the manager management team the board get together we're going to have a quarterly review what's taking place. And maybe you'll have half hour. Maybe, you know, to review review the strategy board. What really happens in between is what's important. People get excited. Yay, we got a plan. Then nothing happens. They go back into doing their work. And about a week before they have to report they go. Oh, no, I've got that board presentation and I haven't done any work on the strategy. So they rushed to get to check the box. They check the box, present something maybe they'll put a green, yellow indicator, everything's good. Right. Yeah, that's your typical experience. So we completely changed the game. That's not effective. It's just not an effective way of getting things done. So what we do is we work on doing what we call 10 week sprints in between. Every single week we work on small bits, small tactics along the way to help make sure your journey or strategy is actually getting done. And those small bits along the way we can iterate because the reality is when you actually spend time and think you'll recognize what you did in the whiteboard is not going to work often. So give you a chance to make small adjustments and changes. So when you get to that quarterly report, you actually have a real authentic progress, not just to check the box activity, but you actually feel success. And so that's a one example of how you can make that 2% of your time way more effective. You know, I'm intrigued because one of the things and Jarrett and I, we talk about this a lot with our guests between ourselves on camera, off camera. We become such a metrics focused data focused society, especially in the nonprofit sector. This is something that our funders and our donors are asking for. So it's very fact-based, less emotional, but you really have this interesting thing that I can't wait to talk about. And that is why facts don't necessarily change behaviors. And so you touched on this right when we got started. But if you could talk to Jarrett and I a little bit more about this, I think this is going to be a really interesting part of our discussion today. So let's just comment things here. We know smoking is bad for you, but a lot of people still smoke. We know that being on our phone all the time is probably not a good idea and we still do it. We know that watching TV and Netflix is not a good idea and we still do it. These are facts. It's the emotions. It's the habits which are driving us to do those things consistently. So buy-in, especially in an offer profit organization is so critically important. Jarrett, you were mentioned about the vision, how little people think about it on a weekly basis. When we're designing our strategic plan, number one, we have to have passion that's connected to the vision in mission. It has to be connected. Number two, it has to go beyond the boardroom. What I mean by that is often the people on the board are actually not going to work on the strategic plan. They're just guiding it. And so what's important is they figure out the where we're going, right? They aspire. They help us figure out where we're going to go in the future. And then we drive that back to the doers and help them us figure out the how, the strategies. When they feel like they're part of the solution, there's a data point. 51% of managers are the highest likely group to actually sabotage your strategy. Okay. Why? Because their habits are to do their job, their day-to-day job. That's what they're getting paid for, even enough for profit organization, right? They're getting paid, even the volunteers, they're getting, they're focused on a certain mission. It's about changing behavior is what we have to do. And that's why you have to have an emotional change in connection. And if they're a part of that solution, they're much more likely to buy into it, which is going to give you a much better result. And they're going to actually do it and not sabotage you. Because you know what they're going to say? They're too busy. 98% of organizations don't work in the strategy plan because they're too busy. But do you think we're too busy doing things that maybe not like they don't matter. They're not moving the needle, right? It's because that's our habit of what we've been used to. This is what we do. We're just going to keep turning. And also, so with that breath, right, Carl? How many times do you see strategy sessions where the team is not part of, like the staff is not part of the discussion? They're not majority of the time. Yeah, the majority of the time. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why once again, there's two parts that we should do is one in the pre-work. When we're getting surveys and information and gathering, we need to incorporate the data so that we can see it. And B, once again, it's after the board meeting. We have to have incorporated. So I think it's so important if you have the staff that is a part of it. Now, if you're a smaller, right, it depends on size. If you're a smaller not-for-profit organization, you only have 10 members, you know, probably a lot of people in the board are actually going to be a part of it and doing it, right? So that's one thing. And so you can help figure out the doing. But if you have a team and you're a much larger organization, you need to incorporate them on the next step. And that's where that emotion comes in, Julian, right? That's where they're going to be, oh, I'm a part of this. I care about this. Then all of a sudden they will then do the facts. Oh, I now know why I'm doing this, right? It's the justification. And then they're going to do it. And then they could be rewarded for it as well, right? They have skin in the game of this process. They're going to make sure it gets done well changing their habits, right? Because it does come to so much of strategy is about how do we change our habits? And you have to have a compelling reason. And then also where they feel like they're a part of the story getting it done. Yeah. Okay. I've not gotten my hands on your book. I know there's a e-book version and then a printed copy. But as you talk about habits, I can't help but think about atomic habits, right? Habits by James Clear. And it's like that, you know, that principle of itself, it's like, you know, if this is what you do every day, add something on top of that habit to start stacking different habits. Yeah. Well, it goes further than that. I mean, there's like productivity hacks, right? That we need to change, you know, this phone, right? That we all have now, right? This most powerful thing in the world that's sitting in front of us and all the distractions and notifications, email notifications, et cetera. We, the work, well, okay. Let me just ask you all a question and everyone is listening. What is the most common thing people do when we start out our day, when we're getting to work? What do you typically do? Check emails. That's right. Check emails. Okay. So what does that mean? You have allowed someone else to drive the direction and emotion of your day. So we recommend power hours. Okay. Before you, before you plan, you, you calendar block off a period of time. You do not allow for interruptions. Cause in a normal day, you get four to 15 interruptions within an hour and it takes theoretically 23 minutes to get back on task. Okay. So what's like, no. So that means when it comes to strategic change, you can't focus unless you completely block out. So we try to change. We love to get up to 90 minutes, but if you can get an hour, start training yourself. No other things in the outside world. You go in and you just absolutely focus. Very first thing I, I recommend, and this goes to those weekly habits I mentioned, you get through, you get, you get that hour done. And then the other important part is you have somebody to review it. So I'm going to give you insights. Hey, what, what do you think about this? This could be a 10 minute additional meeting. So all's we're talking about here is an hour and 10 minute focus week. Okay. You will have 12 more hours of focus or 10, depending on what you do per quarter compared to the typical stressing out of four hours of stress the night before of finalizing your presentation to the board prior. Yeah. Let me ask who is reviewing this? Is this a colleague, a supervisor, a board member? Who's the best kind of like, you know, power sprint partner to partner with? Good question. Yeah, I recommend two things. One is ideal if it's a superior, but if you don't have a superior as a colleague and somebody that you know it's going to spend the time and care about it. If you have a, I call these 10 week sprints. Once again, you could do a full 13 week, but usually there's, there's holidays, right? And stuff like that. So you can't actively do things the entire time. So, so you do this 10 week sprint, you actually move forward. You work on it each week. Now this is the important part of the supervisor because there's going to be some week you're going to be like, I was too busy. I was sick. It was snowing. I was fishing, whatever it was, right? You're going to have some, some excuse. And then you're going to come back and what you want that supervisor to ask, say, Hey, I understand it was busy. But you remember how important this initiative is to help fulfill our mission. So what are you going to do next week to catch us up, right? Not, not get like literally catch back up. So when you have that accountability partner, you're going to be even more focused during the power hour. And you're going to also make sure you get it done. And then you're going to make sure in the next week, you have your focus tax set up as well. So you're already running, you're not figuring out what to do. You already have planned out your 10 things you're going to do during those 10 week period of time. That stuff, it just changes the game of effectiveness. And that's how we get strategy done is focusing it on our very finite period of time. But you know, we can create time. If we just don't go back to email and go back to the things that we're really not getting paid to answer email honestly. Right. No, and that adds to your to-do list, right? Like check your email. Actually, as you said, it's someone else's agenda. Exactly. You know, Carl, you've taken us through this process. And I wish we had more time, but we don't. But one of the things that I think anybody who's involved in strategy can identify that there's a big leap between the folks that are working on the strategy and then down to our teams. And so how do we get our teams and those folks around us working more in harmony? I mean, you said right off the gate, people, you know, creating the strategy aren't necessarily implementing it. There is one of the problems to start with. Give us some help here, how we can get our teams together on this. Yeah, it caused that once again, after the board meeting is arguably the next most important meeting. It's when you get together with the team and you help them ask, hey, we want to increase our membership by 25% this year. What could we do to get there? Right. All of a sudden, instead of saying what you typically see in a board meeting, we're going to increase our membership by 25% by doing advertising. Or we're going to increase our membership by 25% by, like they've already told you. So you, it's sort of like your parent telling you something and we're adults. And I even as kids, you remember we didn't like that. So when we, once again, when we get them a part of the how and we get the solution and then let them come up with it, we still review it. It's not like this, you could do whatever you want. Right. It's a guided how to that part though alone is just huge. And you know what the other most important thing is there's not forgive me. There's brilliant people that are in the board room every single day I work with like brilliant, right? Doctors, lawyers, attorneys. I said the same term there, you know, but you act professors, incredible human beings, right? That are do extraordinary things. But probably none of them have a degree in strategic planning. Right. Right. Okay. Sure. And so what is important is not necessarily their own argument is the people who are doing the job every single day probably have greater insights. I was just literally in the meeting yesterday, working a facilitation and one of the key members like, we know that ad spend we're getting, we have an 8x return right now. And there wasn't a game plan to like increase it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. We just started right here. This is our game plan. This is one of our key strategies. Why don't we put in more money into this? We can get a extraordinary return by making this decision that won't have come up. If we didn't ask how we could do it. Yeah. So we're going to put those tangible steps in it. And, you know, and Julia mentioned, you know, I do a lot of strategic plans and. Carl, I've seen it right day in and day out where often I get the, the call or the email from the CEO that, you know, they need to check the box that they've had their annual meeting. They've done their annual plan. But yeah, what are they going to do with that afterwards? You know, we talk often about how it sits on the shelf and it sits in a digital file. So I love these sprints. I really appreciate, you know, all of your insight to this. I've got to get my hands on this lost at CEO book. I saw we can get it at Amazon. So tell us again, and I'm sure it's on your website, but tell us a little bit more about the book. I love the fable concept like that. That to me is just really innovative. No, yeah. Thank you so much. I think people are interested in it. I mean, I can find it at Amazon. It's actually available and Barnes and Noble as well and feel free. And we have an audible on audio book as well. So all those different options are there. One of my big ask, my ask for that is, we'll actually, I'll offer this and I don't offer this very often. If people want to signed copy. Yeah. Okay. Send me an email Carl, J Cox at four zero strategy.com. I will work on getting you a signed copy of that version. but if they just want to order and get it today, hey, I encourage you to do that. This is a, you're going to love it. If you are in leadership or you want to be a leader, these are providing really good strategic principles where you're going to be able to understand how to do things differently and not to be stuck like we typically get when we're doing strategic planning and more importantly, execution of that strategic plan. All right. You know, I can see this as a great gift to that new CEO. And I've served as interim CEO and I have to say the feelings are the same, right? Like it's very lonely at the top. It's very, there's a lot of pressure. So lost at CEO, can't wait to read this. And I'm glad you mentioned Audible or audio version. I'm a big, I'm a big, you know, audio fan. So thank you for that. Yeah, you're welcome. You know, Carl, it's been really fun to have you on. And I would say that, you know, one of the things that we always gravitate towards is how we can be successful. And then the disappointment, we try and overcome the disappointment of not being successful and what that looks like. And it just is such a heavy burden. And I think, frankly, one of the reasons why we, we burn through our leadership and we get people that are overwhelmed and burnt out because they're not finding success, even small successes. And so this is a really cool thing to help mitigate some of that and to understand how we can be successful and what it takes. Carl Jay Cox, president and CEO, 40 strategy, such a great thing to have you with us again today. And good luck with the book. It sounds like you've already achieved a lot of success with it and that is only going to grow. So we're really excited. Tell us for our viewers again, your email, so that if we want to get a signed copy. I want to get our main website is 40strategy.com. That's going to 40strategy.com. And then you can send me an email at Carlcarl Jay Cox at 40strategy.com. Send me an email. And actually I will say this regularly, but I'll send you a free copy signed. So I don't normally do that. So it's free copy signed. And the only thing I ask is, you do an Amazon review. And actually, if you're buying it directly and you want it tomorrow because you're getting ready to go on a trip, just go ahead and do that. And I can still send you a signed copy later. I just love it. We want to get this word out. We really think this is a, the reviews we're getting are very inspirational. They love it. And they're giving every single person who's read it has said, this is giving me insights that I'm going to use in my organization. Well, and you said even some had mentioned that it brought them to tears because it was so relatable, right? Like it was really telling their story. So I just so appreciate that, Carl. And thank you for saying yes to coming back on and sharing about your book. I felt very honored and privileged to be invited to your book launch. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it, but hopefully this is a good consolation prize. Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's been an honor to be on the show. There's been a lot of fun today. Great. Well, it's been great. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself. We, Carl, we love this topic. And we talk about this a lot, even when we're together off camera. I mean, this is just a huge topic for us. And so really cool to be getting some new ideas and perspectives. We really, really appreciate that. You know, in terms of perspective, one of the big ones that we have here is that partnership that we get from our presenting sponsors, Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. They're with us day in and day out. I'm going to let you sign us off. Yeah, thank you so much to these sponsors and thank you again to Carl. As we end every episode, we want to remind you to stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone and we'll see you back tomorrow.