 for joining us, another episode of the nonprofit show. We like to start every episode by extending our sincerest appreciation to all of these amazing presenting sponsors that you see in front of you, including Mission Met that has joined us today. So really excited to have Eric Ryan with us. And again, many of these companies have been with us for about a year. And so they really have been agile with all of us as we continue to navigate every day, right? And moving into the recovery phase. So thank you for being here for the nonprofit show and for each and every one of our episodes. I want to thank Julia Patrick for having this wonderful idea more than a year ago. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I also refer to her as my sensei because I have learned so much. So sensei Patrick, so much from her. I'm Jarrett Rantle, CEO of the Raven Group, also known as the nonprofit nerd. And one of my favorite guests that I love to nerd out with is Eric Ryan, founding partner with Mission Met. And if you joined us for the Chitty Chat Chat, you probably thought we went ahead and got started, but we really did it. We just, we can't stop the nerd like conversation. So welcome Eric, welcome back. And thanks again for being here. I love being a nerd with you two, it's fantastic. Thank you. Eric, this is really fun because we've been doing this series over a period of three months called Strategic Planning Killers. And unfortunately today is the last piece of that with our final killer points. But we were gonna put you on the spot to give us a quick highlight of what our two previous series have been. So killer number one, my friend. All right, well, let me back up a second and then I'll share killer number one. So one of the reasons why this is a nice format to talk about the killers is that it sounds kind of weird to say the nice format to talk about killers. Okay, so I was giving that. Is this also just sort of reflects an overall strategic planning logic like a real simple model. So strategic planning, you have a vision of strategic planning succeeding at your organization, right? What gets in the way of that vision happening? That's why we're talking about the killers. If you know what gets in the way of that vision of strategic planning actually working well and you can overcome those, then guess what? You're gonna be positioned for strategic planning to have succeeded your organization. And so that's why we're talking about these. These are simple practical, super simple practical things if you can address three or four of these you're gonna have so much better chance of hitting success. So the first one on the first show, we've had two killers per show. The first one is that people tend to view strategic planning as an event as opposed to a process. And of all the six we're talking about that's the most important. If you think of this, hey, we're gonna get our board together and we're gonna go for a retreat or virtually or in person and create a plan, you're dead in the water already because you're not thinking, this needs to be something we measure, track, we build on, we execute, et cetera. And so that's number one. Number two is that we only create oftentimes only we put results goals. It's all these numbers into our plan as opposed to processes. We've talked a lot about that on even prior shows. So that's a killer. And what happens with results goals, not that they're bad results goals are great, but if you're only doing results goals, then you and your team are getting bogged down in these numbers and measures and it becomes a real drag. And frankly, you're not building the capacity with a process goal. So anyway, that's number two. The third one is sometimes people make strategic plans way too complex. I told you the story of a 40 page strategic plan for a $25,000 organization. Drop dead gorgeous plan, but never got executed. It killed them, totally killed them. So two sections, ideally capture it on one page, a couple pages, whatever something simple focused, obviously have action plans behind that, but simple would be the solution to that. And then the fourth one is that busy leaders, especially executive director, super busy people struggle to follow through on their strategic plans sometimes because they care about doing their programs, they are fires they're putting out, et cetera. And so we talked about the benefit of having a co-champion for both internal of the plan and also leading it overall. So those are our four. And I love, you know, it's funny because every single one of your strategies, I could identify at some point in time where I was a part of that, but I didn't really understand. I just knew that things weren't working and I couldn't articulate and really define, oh my gosh, that's what's happened. And so this has been really cool, really, really cool. Thank you, Julia. Oh, yeah. These are meant to be practical and these are real. Like we've experienced, well, you're not in your heads, like we've experienced these things and each one of these, if you can address them, especially that first one about our mindset around a process, you know, as opposed to it being an event, you can do this stuff. You can do strategic planning really well at your organization. Okay, well then we're now on to then number five. And so this is really interesting because not measuring progress, we tend to measure like at the very last two weeks of the year, then we're like, oh crap, we didn't get it done. But you're saying- Like we do, right? Like looking for that tip of the iceberg, did we do this? So not measuring the progress. Talk to us about that, Eric. So I think there's a couple of things here. A lot of us in the nonprofit space come to the space because we care deeply about writing a wrong or something like that. We don't necessarily come to this because we wanna run an organization and lead a team and build an effective organization. And so as part of that mindset, we sometimes don't know the value of the organizational development and the team development and the planning and measurement being a component of that. And so we kind of blow it off. We don't really think about that. The other thing that sometimes happens is our board members that sometimes come from pretty sophisticated organizations that have a lot of capacity to measure and they have really incredibly cool software to measure and track. And they've got dozens and dozens of metrics across their organization. They bring, well in tension, they bring those models and metrics to us, to our nonprofit. And sometimes it's a mismatch. And so we get intimidated and we don't do that. So we just blow it off. And a friend of mine, kind of a mentor named Chris Barrow, 20 years ago shared this quote with me. And he may have stolen it from somewhere else. I'm not sure, but the quote was, there's no performance without accountability and there's no accountability without measurement. And I've shared that with people and that for two decades now, there's no performance without accountability, there's no accountability without measurement. And I don't know if that's always true, but I think there's a lot of truth to that. And so we want to try to help people put simple practical measurement practices into place. And that sort of gets to the solution, which is we have a solution for, well, actually I'll pause there before we go to that next part, but that's sort of the idea is that we don't measure progress. And as a result of measuring progress, you lose track. And there's another quote that you've probably, you may have heard that you manage what you measure. You know, you manage what you measure. We know that with diets and we know that with exercise and we know that with the different scores and games and sports. You know, you measure things and it tends to draw your attention to it and you manage it better. So the measurement is a real cornerstone. And if you're not doing it, the strategic planning stuff can slip through the cracks. Eric, you are the quote master. I swear every episode and every time we talk, I mean, most of you know, like I have pen and paper ready. And I'm always like, what's he going to say this time? Because you're so like, it's just, it's amazing. So those are, those are great, very complimentary quotes in regards to today's conversation. And they're so applicable to really the conversation of the strategic plan and the process and the whole kit and caboodle, right? So now I'm interested in the reporting out of this in terms of, so I've sat on boards where part of the consent agenda was like a, almost like a measurement report that said, this is where we are. And usually the board liaison would be tracking that and then, you know, report on that. And I kind of always felt like the board didn't, they just were like, okay, yeah, you know, along with everything else. Then I've been on other boards where it was actually, you know, in the beginning passed out like maybe a spreadsheet and then it was collected. I mean, but it was like, okay, everybody, remember this is what we said we were going to do. This is where we are. And that was interesting. Now with board portals and with software such as yours, I almost wondered like, where's that connectivity? Because you're going to have to have board members that are willing to go back into that technology and engage with it. And it varies from organization. Like if you have an organization and the board is engaged in that tool, great. And the tool is available for them, for them to check in on. Sometimes with those tools, you'd have to produce a PDF of those reports, you know, or whatever. It just kind of depends on the sophistication and the engagement of each board from place to place. But I will say that the solution and this is, and this is, you know, I think the second slide here is this concept of a traffic light process. Right. So let's talk about that. So because in the nonprofit space, we are, you know, you could measure a zillion different things. And a lot of people, you know, will guide us to try to do all of those different metrics. But we found a long time ago, I learned this about 16 years or so ago, this concept of a traffic light measurement process. It's really simple. Just like a traffic light, red, green and yellow, you can measure your progress on your plan using that basic framework. The beauty of that, so let's take a goal. You know, we want to raise, you know, X amount of money by certain amount of time or, you know, our programs, we want this sort of impact or whatever. Is red means we're off track, we're not going to hit it. Yellow is, we're kind of stinking it up a little bit, but we might make it green as we're on track. Real simple, you know, and what we've also done is with our traffic light, we've modified it. We also have, we have a gray, so our traffic light goes gray means not started. Okay, interesting. Then it actually does not start it, so it's not even rolling that. Then we've got green, we're rolling with it yellow, it's kind of slow, red, we're off track significantly and then blue is completed. Okay. So, you know, you can order that however you want. That's our modified traffic light. The beauty of using colors and the beauty of using those sorts of descriptions is that you're now measuring in a visual way that people understand it's easy. You can communicate it quickly, you can look at it. You can see if there's a variety of colors, you know, actions going on, it's not all gray or it's not all one thing. And it's also easy for people to understand, you aren't saying is it 65 or is it 66% done? I'm not really sure. Well, let's, no, no. What color is it? Yeah, it's just, you know, so it's a really nice way of being able to measure and track and it's easy for people to understand. So that's our way of doing it and helping to catalyze people's growth and measuring. It's a really nice starting place. I appreciate that so much as a visual person myself, like to be able to look at a document quick scan, right? I think we're all, I shouldn't say all of us, many of us are so guilty of not reading, right? Like we are inundated with an inundated information overload. Yeah. And so whether it's an email, a text, a report, right? All of those pieces, you know, I think it's really important to have that quick glance of, oh, this is blue, well done, right? So, you know. Well, I think it's fascinating too, because it seems to me like more strategic plans are you start it and then you finish it. And we're not talking about that in between sandwich, you know, the meat of sandwich. And then it becomes punitive, because then it's like, damn it, we didn't even get close or, oh, you know, it's fourth quarter, we're never gonna get to this or it's just such a fascinating thing. And then you lose engagement. And that's, and you know, when we first get started with our customers and clients that we work with, we try from the very beginning as part of our first step of what we call our Cape Cycle, that we referenced in our first show of championing. And we really wanna set its own to really, we, you know, to make it non punitive. Like we think about report cards, it's either this or that. And sometimes it becomes a real drag, you know, and it pushes strategic planning off, when, oh, you know, we didn't, we're stinking it up, we're not doing this. We really want people from the very beginning to focus on the process, you know, and for us as consultants to help them build the confidence, build the process. And over time, because now that the process is in place, they've got the muscle, they've got the stamina, then we can raise our expectations around the results, you know. Okay, so I love all of these pieces. Now, killer number six. This is really interesting because this talks about process. Right, it does. Imagine going into a, and we've all done this and you're a board member or a staff member and you're going into a retreat or you're going into the strategic planning session and you have been burned before because you've done this stuff, you've put your heart and soul into something and you've seen it not work before. Or maybe you're brand new to it and you're still not sure, like, you know, we're talking about all this stuff, but like, you know, where is it really going? Imagine one of your champion of your process, then at that meeting showing up and handing out a calendar. Even before you all talk about your plan and they say this to you. This is how we're going to meet and talk about our plan over the course of the next 12 months. They've got a meeting schedule that's every month or, you know, staff's gonna meet, the board's gonna meet, a couple of people that are the champions of it are gonna meet, you know, whatever it is, simple, easy, maybe a half hour, hour here and there, every quarter we're gonna get together. Imagine if you had that document at the beginning of one of those planning meetings, how would that make you feel as a board member or staff member? I'm asking you, too, like, if someone, if the leader of that process handed you that calendar, what would you think? I would love it. I would love it. And that's one of my big things. It's like, oh yeah, I think we'll have a meeting. It's like, no, I want a year in advance. Yeah. And I want my biggest pet page. That's coming more and more. So I would, you know, a calendar. So I would look at my calendar and I would go ahead and plug it all in, you know? Like, this is what I know is coming up in me because I'm nerdy like this. Also, like two weeks out or some kind of a prep time, you know, prepare for ex deadline. So I love the organization. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's, and it would give you probably confidence in the leader. So much. Right. This person showed up and they handed out the calendar of what we're going to end up doing. Fantastic. And so we really, it's all six of these different things we've talked about are simple, practical things. And this is the leverage that you get as a leader from showing up with the calendar, explaining to your team, this is when we're going to pause and review and take a look at this a year from now, we're going to have another deeper dive. You know, whatever the session, whatever the cycle is, having that clear clarified just gives a tremendous amount of confidence to the team that this is something we're actually going to use and we're going to measure and we're going to revise it. It's, it's, it's, it's goal. And it's, it's such a practical thing. And so our particular thing, and you can see on the slide here, our planning cycle, we let our, what we like to think of, and I'll just kind of lay this out at a high level. Our vision when we're doing strategic planning for the organization that's captured on the plan is generally around three years out. Some organizations like to go a little longer, some like to go two years, but you know, some sort of multi, we think our fundraising should look like this in three years. And we think our programs should look like this in three years and our staffing. And that's going to change as you all know, but that's sort of like the vision piece. And so that's three years out. Our calendar for implementing it and our goals are for this year and we're going to meet on it and we're going to have a quarter. What we found is most beneficial is a quarterly cadence. Okay. I was wondering about that. Interesting. A cadence of every quarter we, so you pause and you look at the goals for the last quarter and the goals coming up for this next quarter. And that is what we have found is most realistic in the world in which we live. You know, trying to create goals that are a year or two out is hard to do with so many things going on, especially with smaller organizations which are really dynamic or departments within larger organizations, it's hard to do. So we think it's reasonable to have a longer term vision for where we want to be, not vision statement, not the impact we're going to have on the world, but the vision for the organization. And then on an annual cycle, you review, you revise, you keep it updated, it's very dynamic and quarterly pauses with your team to review. Sometimes that quarterly pause, you sometimes want to build that into like a board meeting if it's the board stuff. Mixing the strategic plan with a regular board meeting sometimes is tough because it, because all the fires that the board is trying to put out, the strategic planning discussion gets put to the side. So we suggest having a separate meeting. If you can pull it off, we're kind of meeting overloaded. So you've got to think, the science is to meet and have them be good meetings. People don't like meetings, they mind meetings that suck. You know, there's another quote for you, Jared. You'll see, I love it. They don't, people don't mind meetings, they just mind meetings that suck. And so you've got to be good. And so, you know, making that meeting really effective on a quarterly basis. So the quote that I was cycling in my head as you were just speaking about the calendar here, Eric, was people support that in which they help create. That's right. So now they've helped you create it. They also want to help you achieve it, right? And so having the, Jared Ransom added that one. So adding to the, you know, really to the success of this is the calendaring process. So not only would I feel confident in the leadership, you know, if they provided me, here's the calendar and here's the dates, but having these quarterly check-ins to feel this sense of community and achievement of the process, right? As we continue to make progress. That is amazing. So that was the quote that kept coming up in my mind until you gave me my now new favorite quote, people don't hate meetings, they hate meetings that suck. There you go. I love it. I've got to ask you, do you have clients that you work with who are on board with you up to this point? And then they just are like, yeah, we can't roll this out as a separate thing. We're just going to keep it in the process. I mean, like what's been the buy-in for this? I'm not sure I understand the questions yet. Well, like, because it seems to me like, you know, people don't like meetings that suck. I mean, are you able to get organizations to say, yeah, on top of our regular 12 meetings or 11 meetings, we're going to add this. What is that looking like? People love this. Everybody. There's no one that says we shouldn't, there's nobody, no, I've never come across someone. I'm sure that people exist, but I've never come across someone that doesn't say, we need, we shouldn't do any planning and we shouldn't measure in track. It's like, the problem, Eric, he says, you know, we're busy doing this or, you know, all these barriers that we've talked about over the last three shows. People love this. And so getting it to be where they don't like it or where it gets to become an academic exercise. They want to be practical, useful, dynamic and they also want to feel good about it. Like you can really beat up on yourself because you're like, well, we're not doing this. You know, we're, you know, this is a cultural change for a lot of organizations to actually, you know, do this simply, practically measure track. And once they start to build it without exception, they say, this is so great. This is a cornerstone of our success. They build it into their operational DNA. This is just how we operate. And it takes, to be quite honest, to really change that often takes two or three years. I was going to ask you that, that was my next question was like, you can't just do this once. I mean, technically, are you having everybody, like right now, let's say, because of where most of our meetings are on Zoom, are you like pulling up the mission map site and going through, you know, the reporting piece? So it's more engaging. It's not like going to a regular board meeting because it has that portal interface, right? Right, right. The house looking. Yeah, it's a mix. What these, one of the things, and I guess we talked about this on the challenge number four about, you know, people not following through because they're so busy with everything. But for, you know, two or three of the leaders to have that regular check-in and kind of go through the detail. But then having that team come together on a quarterly basis, that sort of mix of meetings tends to work really well. I'm not sure I'm answering your question. No, it's perfect. Cause I'm trying to get, like, I'm really trying to see, like, how do you administrate this? And how do you actually, I mean, it's one thing to say, yeah, we need to meet and rah, rah, and we need to like be tracking. Okay, that's good. But how do you actually facilitate that? When, I mean, we talk, don't we Jared? All the time, we talk with nonprofits across this country and they're like, crap, we can't even get the quorum, you know? I'm happy to speak to this if that's okay, Eric. As a user of Mission Mac and implementing this with my clients through a strategic planning process, you know, the plan itself has co-champions of the plan. And then every goal or every kind of like key area also has co-champions, plus a team, right? So it's really for me, I'm using it in a way where every piece of the plan has a team associated with it and then it rolls into these co-champions. And so there's many meetings that are, many, many meetings that are happening throughout, you know, throughout the process, but then there's also larger conversations that engage, you know, everyone because, you know, when you help, oh gosh, now I'm forgetting the quote, but those people support that in which they help create, right? And so they really want to be a part of that achievement and part of that success. So that's how I've used it. And it's a phenomenal tool, love it. And there's so much more engagement actually with the platform and with the system than I've seen in any other of my previous, you know, engagement through a strategic planning process. You made my month. Oh, good. But seriously, we're in this because we want to serve and help. And so that's a testimonial to, you know, the benefit. So that's awesome. Oh, it's been phenomenal and it really is a tangible. And so again, it takes the meeting from, this isn't going to be a crappy meeting because we have, you know, we have substantial information to cover. It's right here on our platform, which I'm referencing the Mission Met System, the software, and it's all right there. They have access to it, right? Like you send your emails as a user, you send your emails to the champions or to the team members and they can go in and see it. And it's, it is a lively interactive tool, which is changing, yeah, changing the game. Awesome. And I appreciate you sharing that because it's, it's cool to actually hear like somebody who's using it, seeing it, and then you, Eric mentioned that it can take a couple of years. Jared, what's your timeframe? Like how fast did the groups that you've been working with on Mission Met pop in and say, yeah, okay, we got this. I mean, what's, what's that looked like, that landscape? Yeah, I kid you not. So I literally just integrated it with one of my newer clients that we, not in a newer client, but newer engaged in the strategic planning process. So the way I work with my clients, it's a four part process over the course of a year and we're looking at three to five years down the road. So we go through several different steps with my process. And then Mission Met is integrated during one of those four steps and then continuously thereafter, right? Cause it is really our touch point. And so I send the email and I said, here's your access. We'll schedule some time to talk. It's pretty self-explanatory. If you wanna go in and poke around, you can't break it. And if you do, we can fix it. And immediately she wrote back, this is so user-friendly. I got it. Thanks. Like that quickly, really. So if you are accustomed to, you know, some type of system, if you're, if you were tech savvy in the least, right? And I would say if you can check social media, you can do Mission Met. And a quick point of clarity, to Jared's point, capturing a plan, putting it into, you know, our particular platform, all that, yeah, 15, 30 minutes. Like, you know, that is easy. It's the cultural change for an organization that typically takes, you know, just real, I mean, I'm just telling you from experience, a couple of years in, you know, a year or two years, like that's when it really starts, then it's really part of the organization's DNA. But you're building this first year, but after one year, it can tend to be still a little fragile, not the use of the software. It's just us tracking, measuring, building that. That's my point. Mine's out. It takes a little time for some cultural change to happen. Amazing. This has been so much fun. I mean, we really, really enjoyed this. We have so much, we've done three specific series on this. You can go to Mission Met backslash, the nonprofit show. And Mission Met has done this amazing thing where they've taken all of these episodes, put them together, there's resources on that page. And so you can really join us for this whole conversation. It might be a great thing for your board to look at because there's so many points that you bring up throughout this journey that have been just like, yeah, I could see myself. I made that mistake. So we all have at some point, yeah. You really encourage people to go there. We have some, I think there's six other videos on there, little small videos, some worksheets. You know, there's some other information that reinforce all these different six killers that we've talked about. Yeah, it's been really a lot of fun. Well, Eric, Ryan, we have been thrilled to have you join us on this, you know, strategic planning, I think is at the heart of success and at the heart of navigating stress and change. And so, and if we haven't learned that lesson in this last year and a half, man. So thank you so much for being with us and sharing all that. Again, everybody, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit. I've been joined today as always with the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, the CEO of the Raven Group. Wow, we wanna thank our sponsors because again, this is the example of amazing dialogue that we've been able to share. We have so many new and exciting guests coming on this week. So check us out. Very interesting discussions that you won't want to miss. And if you do happen to miss us live, you can find us on Roku, on Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, TheNonprofitShow.com, AmericanNonprofitAcademy.com. Whew, we're just about everywhere, aren't we, Jared? I forgot YouTube, that's out there as well. Yeah, I mean, oh my gosh, absolutely. So please follow along with us as we help make the nonprofit sector stronger and more vibrant. As we like to end every show, and as we start this week, we want to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well.