 Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for all of you joining us live, as well as those that might be tuning in to the recording across the globe. We like to start every morning by saying, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our presenting sponsors. Each and every one of their logos are right in front of you on the screen, and you can find them online. So many of these sponsors have been with us for a year, and I really like to say that these sponsors like us in particular, they like Julia, they like me, and they really like the show, but they love you. Like, they love your work, they love your mission, they love the communities you're serving, and that is why they exist. So they are here to support the good that you're doing in the world. So make sure that you check them out and say, hey, we saw you on the nonprofit show. And do us another favor, share this episode, because hint, it's going to be fantastic with at least three of your friends, because I think we all have, you know, the onus on ourselves to share good, positive work. And these are episodes that are good and positive. Thanks to Julia, who created this good. She's the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, her nonprofit nerd, but also your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And if you've joined us this week, we have had such a robust lineup, and I'm so excited for next week as well, because we've got so many amazing guests coming in to share their experience. But today, as you can see, we have Diane Leonard back with us again. So thank you for joining us, Diane, and welcome. Thanks for having me thrilled to be with you again today. You know, Diane, we loved when we had you on. We thought you had such interesting things to say. We were specifically talking about grants, and we were talking about kind of just so many different things. But one of the things that you talked about very briefly was the scrum process and scrum framework. And we were just like, I remember it was like towards the end of the show. And we were like, yeah, we were like, wait, wait, because we have a really hard stop, you know, the half out after 30 minutes. And so we were just like, no, no, come back. We want to hear about this. So, okay, blow our minds here. Right? First of all, what is it? Yeah, that's the question. Like, what is scrum? Is it an acronym? Is it a software? Do I need a new, like a whole degree? Or as the picture that you picked, are we talking about the starting formation of rugby? Like, are we scrumming? Like, is that what we're talking about? Good news, I'm not dressed for it. Your jewelry is too perfect for it. We're not playing rugby today. Never have. I don't know if I ever could, right? Exactly, Julia, like, don't have to worry about it. Scrum, so it's a framework. And it's a framework under the Agile umbrella. So I know we'll talk about Agile as we go. But so I was like, say the umbrella is Agile. Don't worry, we're not doing yoga either. But so Agile is really, it's a mindset. And it's a way that teams think. And scrum is a specific framework under that helps teams operationalize an Agile mindset. And the reason that personally I'm like, you know me, heart first to grants. I love the grant space on all sides, grant maker, grant seeker. I do have a second love and it's scrum. And part of why, I mean, we use it for running our business. We use it with our clients on the grant writing side. We train and coach in it because there are so many amazing case studies of nonprofits using scrum. It looks different in all these groups. But it's a framework that is totally adaptable. Whether you're a small startup nonprofit or you're a huge healthcare system, it doesn't matter. The framework's the same. It's just a way that you operationalize this really great flexible mindset. Okay, so good news. I don't have to let game 100 pounds and shave my head and wear a mouth guard. Cause that's what all these men are doing and they're filthy dirty and I don't do that. So that's a good start. But so we know it's a process. I mean, is that fair to call it a process? Yeah, process framework. It's something that is the same. It is an iterative process. It's a way that teams think about improving their work, whether their work is grant application, special events, delivering hot meals, it doesn't matter. So it's an iterative process for improving work. And this is part of why I love it. And I think so many nonprofits gravitate to it for continuously improving your team, not just giving it lip service. There's a specific event within the framework that is about the team saying, for how we work together, how is it that things went well, what didn't go as expected, what could we do better this next time? So a lot of nonprofits have something like it. They might do a post-mortem about an event. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, post-mortem. But that's about the work. We want to inspect and adapt the team too. So it addresses both, what are we delivering against our nonprofit mission and how, given that we spend all sorts of time with these awesome people on our team, how can we be better together? So that's all within the scrum framework, but it does all point back to, again, I'll give you my arms, the umbrella. The Agile methodology is really, it's about an Agile mindset. And I'm gonna give you a little soapbox here. There's four Agile values. Okay. International, regardless of industry. So four Agile values. So you can talk Agile with anybody. Share it, our international travel, any country. Say, hey, you wanna talk about the four Agile values? It'll be the same. So kind of a cool thing. The fourth value. That's gonna be a fun party trick, right? Yeah, I think that's very interesting. Okay, so what are the four? Well, the four, you don't need to memorize the four. I wanna highlight what the fourth is because it is the most nonprofit value that I could think of, especially after the last 14 months. So the Agile value number four is that Agile mindset, Agile teams respond to change over following a plan. Respond to change over following the plan. Doesn't mean we don't need the plan. We're not like ripping up strategic plans. Oh my gosh, that'll get me in a lot of trouble, right? Like, nope, that's not what I'm saying. We'll start throwing things at you. Yeah, yeah, really. No, no, but what did you see in nonprofits of all shapes and sizes across the globe? Nonprofits, charities, didn't matter. How do we take our behavioral health services and take them from being always in person to all of a sudden fully virtual? Right. Kids aren't in school. How do we get them their meals? How do we get them their backpacks? Nonprofits of all shapes and sizes demonstrated that while they don't necessarily use the word Agile, oh boy, are they? So that value, it's always been there, but there was a spotlight put on that the last 14 months. So I'm like flashing lights. That is the Agile value that I think nonprofits have always done a great job on and really rose to the occasion in the last bit. I agree. And I love that so much. And who knew, like, you know, Julia said something yesterday in our conversation with Tony Bell Fundraising Academy and she's like, I've never done this. And I'm like, no, no, you have. You just didn't know that's what you were doing. And I feel like that's the same thing for this when it comes to Agile. You know, it's like, no, no, no, we've never done that. But look, you just did it. You just spent 12 months doing it. Exactly. Exactly. And actually, it's part of why I'm looking at your beautiful sponsor, Backdrop. Lumerang, huge shout out to Steven Shaddick and that team. We just did a whole big free webinar on fundraising teams and how it looks to be Agile and what they can do because for that same purpose to say, like fundraisers, same thing. How do we acknowledge our checks? How do we still get our donor acknowledgments out lickety split if we're all remote and no one's in the office, right? Fundraising teams have been another great example of how quickly they've pivoted, so. OK, so what are the other three values that we do? Well, now you're putting me on the spot. I know, I know, see. I have a lot more questions, I gotta say. I know you liked her list. She's like, OK, number one, number four, but what are the others? I know. So I mean, you'll have to check out the website, right? Let's put that there if you want. The cool thing, though, is that it's all open source. So the Agile manifesto, like the whole thing, is open source and free at AgileManifesto.org. So people that are like, I want to know the values, I want to know the 12 principles, you can go read and have a field day. The Scrum Guide, like the rules of Scrum, 13 page PDF was updated and released for its 25th anniversary this past November, free in many languages at ScrumGuidesplural.org. Like it's all, you don't have to pay to like, learn about what it is, because it's all there. But Julia, I will say one of the other values of the four that's really fun is that an Agile team or having that Agile mindset means that you value individuals and interactions over like process, protocol type stuff. We need the processes, right? But we value the individual interactions with our team, with our clients, with our community members, more than what this says. Sure. Those are my two favorites. They're the bookends of the four. Yeah, I'm gonna have to think about that because I think a lot of times, I mean, I know just even working with Jarrett, I can be very intransigent about things and I have like a super process, whether it's in my brain or it's in my computer. And then Jarrett tends to be much more, she doesn't get trapped by that. You know what I mean? She can look at a situation and come up with something that I would identify as creative, but more than that, it's that she hasn't been hogtied by the whatever the structure is. And it's very interesting to see that because we get tripped up by our own mindset, I guess. So that kind of leads me to roles. I mean, you talk about scrum roles and I'm really interested to know what that looks like and why have this. Sure. So in any scrum team, whether it's three people or up to nine, that's like the ideal size, a team of three to nine, doesn't matter what we're talking about for the goal, could be an HR team, could be a specific strategic planning team, fundraising, any team. Scrum team has three roles. So the first is product owner. It doesn't mean we're changing org charts, just to be clear, we don't need to redo business cards or email signatures, but product owner is a hat that a team member wears that this is the person who's giving the vision to the team and helping to prioritize what the team will do. You know, it's more important that we do this before this. So someone's got to give that vision, that's the product owner. The second role is the scrum master. So again, it's a hat that someone in the team is usually wearing and the scrum master is focused on efficiency for the team, protecting the team from interruptions when possible, facilitating the really important event, the retrospective, that's the one that inspects and adapts the team. So that's the scrum master. They are a leader who serves the team. You might say servant leader, but I like to say leader who serves the team. And then there's the third role, probably the most important, it's the team. The people that do the work, the grant applications, the special event, the delivery of the hot meals, the providing of the tutoring services, whatever it is, the people that do the work are the team. But the scrum master and the product owner in most nonprofits usually wear two hats. The scrum master role and the team hat or the product owner hat and the team hat. I appreciate the visualization because, and I love that you said, you know, it doesn't mean you change your title. It doesn't mean you're printing new business cards. Like it's another hat. Yeah. Not that we need any more hats, pretty full. I know. I feel like it's gonna be like ooh. Bad hat hairs is what I would think. I don't do hats, but I'll wear those hats. Yes, yeah. Okay, so I totally see this and I can see the value of the piece of it. Now I'm interested in how we're like communicating this and we're measuring things. Because I would imagine it might be a little rocky when you're first starting this and then as you navigate with, and I love that you chose that word mindset, then we all kind of know what the roles are and we can do the work, right? Versus trying to figure out, are we doing this right or are we, you know? And one of the huge things about the scrum framework is that you're focused on how to make empirically based decisions. Okay. And so when you're trying to say, like there's a lot of things as a nonprofit that we wanna do and we do them all, maybe. Can we do them all at the same time? Definitely not. So how do we decide what we do when? So what has the biggest mission value? We can use data to make that empirical decision. We know all of our nonprofit colleagues have plates that are literally overflowing, right? What is the stuff that we need to do on the plate that adds value, that helps us achieve those high priority items? And therefore what can we figure out that can sit on the plate? Actually, it's the plate that's gonna sit aside for like the next meal. We're gonna just set that aside for the next sprint. That's really what it helps us do. Like D content, we're all busy and I don't like that word because that says like we're gonna get through all of it. We're just gonna keep going through our list like hamsters on a wheel. But so the metrics that we're watching in scrum, what we're using is the sprint cadence. So a one week sprint or a two week sprint, but it's always the same so that you can see how much did the team do together and use that to plan our next sprint. So we're not over committing, rather we're setting a sprint goal that is achievable for a team. So that at the end of the sprint, we're celebrating that we met our sprint goal. It's not saying we met our mission, we're done, closed the shop, but we met our sprint goal that we committed to and you're creating this point of morale then for the team. We're like, we did it, yes! And celebrate. Oh, hold on. Maybe you were, did we talk about the yellow dinghy bell for grants? No, might have mentioned it, but... We did this when good things happen in the grant team. Okay. Submit something, talk to a fund or whatever. Celebrate anything, right? But celebrate the team meeting a sprint goal. I know teams that have virtual ice cream parties. I know teams that now have turned them into virtual Spotify dance parties. It's no longer just about going out to lunch because we don't all go out to lunch right now. So, but like when you meet a sprint goal, the team's excited, they pause and celebrate and then use their data to plan the next sprint. So it gives people a lot of control over what's otherwise, like the super overwhelming list in the very full plates. What we're trying to do is achieve our mission. How can we do it in a sustainable way that prevents burnout and maybe even turnover? Maybe, if we're really looking at it. So I'm listening to you and Julia, I know I keep picking on you today about this whole like, I've never done this before, but then I'm like, no, you have. So now I'm in your position, Julia, and I'm listening to Diane and I'm like, I don't know that I've really utilized the scrum method or the agile method. And then I'm like, oh, but I have. And so I just heard sprint and I warned you before Diane, like I take notes all the time. So I have done sprints in my world, like not so much the one to two week I have, I have like database cleaning. And I think that's something that, you know, Moves management would appreciate that we did that as well as Bloomerang. But even in my week, in my everyday week, every day, I have like 30, 45 minutes where I turn everything off and I do a sprint on some projects that I'm working on, right? No distraction, that's what I'm doing. So can you, long-winded to make this question, can you also do sprints in these short periods or in this method, is it truly the one to two week time clean? So it's really about, it's actually one to four weeks. So it can be one, two, three or four. It's the length of time because it's not about individuals, it's about what the team is setting for goals. And so what you're indicating though, like by shutting the distractions off by setting time and saying this is my goal for this short period of time, you are, you're totally taking it and making it your own for your own work, but you need to think about your broader team that's delivering something. And how are we doing different components that lead to the big goal? So that's why you wanna give yourself more time, but it absolutely is like on the same, like we're all on the same journey, we're on the same train tracks, like you're right there. And part of what you're doing though, I'm guessing in 45 minutes, is there anything you're creating that's perfect, polished, always the end product? No. So what you're developing in any of those, like what you're thinking of is your little sprint is what's called a minimum viable product, which sounds super tech, but it's saying, this is something that I've developed that has value that I can get feedback on that I will continue to improve and iterate. Again, any sort of work, program design, logic model, grant application doesn't, but say instead of like, I'm gonna polish and polish and polish and polish, and then give it to someone and have to do a bunch of rework, not efficient, but what many of us naturally try to do because we're like nervous about the feedback. Right. What you've explained is also a beautiful habit to say, here's my good enough for now because I wanna get feedback before I do it again. That's right. Well, it's a huge, huge agile value that you've just exclaimed here. You absolutely listen, just don't call it that. I don't, but now I do. And I'm going to challenge us, Julia and Kevin because the other exact, you know, part of the team. I believe Diane, we're about to go into a scrum challenge. So. Yeah, I think so. And Diane, I'm just fascinated by this because one of the things that I wanna really get you to amplify is this long-term versus short-term because that's one of the failures of in the nonprofit sector of strategic planning is it's so long-term, you know, focused and then we get just devastated like the pandemic. I mean, the number of people that have come on the show and said, well, yeah, that was a waste of time and money because then we couldn't work our plan. And they just totally discounted the whole thing because of an interruption. Now, it's a big inner, it's been a big interruption but the reality is that long-term versus short-term ability to think and navigate. Yeah, and like I said, I mean, that fourth value responding to change over following a plan was very clear, right? We're not getting rid of strategic plans. I would make a lot of enemies. We need them because they give us the big ideas where we think we're headed. And so now we've got like a vision and that product owner will have a vision that they're reacting to. But that's very hard for us to act on as a team. There's a lot of like room for interpretation and so what do a lot of nonprofits do? They create an implementation plan or a work plan. Maybe they do that by the year. That's still, all right, room for interpretation. How are we gonna break that across teams? Are people, I think of like, are they yelling like, that's mine or are they thinking in their silos when they do that? That might be, like that's actually a product backlog and Scrum speak. The strategic plan is the huge product backlog and then it's being refined into more actionable items like an implementation plan, slowly refining the backlog. We need to think in one week chunks. Yeah. And what happens where some nonprofits get stuck is that they create an individual work plan. I, Diane, as a member of the team now have a work plan for what I will do towards this. That is too detailed because what you just did was put it all in one silo and now no one's gonna wanna help. I'm like making it sound terrible. I mean, nonprofit folks, please don't take this personally but because it's mine over here, this colleague isn't gonna be like, I've gotta do mine, I can't help you or I don't have the right space. There's like a level up where we're thinking in team, cross functional, doesn't mean we're experts in what other people are doing, but team cross functional and what's the level of detail that we need to know? What's the minimum level of detail? Not huge Gantt charts, not all sorts of like pages and pages of documentation but what do we need to know as a team? What do we agree on? Let's pretend we're launching a special event. What does the team need to know? What date, what's the theme? Who are the co-chairs, sponsors, right? Like there's some things that they need so they can go, all right, let's see, we need to have the program book to the printer by this. Like there's some things they'll need to know but do we wanna tell the team who should be the vendor for the invitations and who they should get the chocolate fountain from and all these things? No, we're gonna let them figure it out because they're amazing and they can figure it out. So there's like a middle ground, strategic plans way too far out, individual work plans way too nitty gritty. We're spending too much time planning. So that's why like you need long range and you want short-term but not micromanaging short-term. Let the team creativity come out. How do we achieve this vision we've been given? How do we accomplish that using our skills to our best ability? And I bet you both are like, oh my gosh, we do that too, we just never. Okay, well, so now this is like, this is my manager hat. What do you recommend for technology in terms of tracking this? I mean, is there software tracking workspace, kind of digital workspace that works better for this than others? There's a lot of really cool stuff and it's gotten better honestly in the last 14 months. I still in my office, if I turned the camera around you're gonna see a whiteboard in one, we've got the idea lounge. There's a huge whiteboard on the wall. There's a rolling one. I love, if I can, if we're a co-located team, give me a white space and post-its. Mm-hmm. Amen, sister. Me too. But I'm like, okay, not possible right now. So maybe you've heard of Asana or Trello. Those are two of the most common that we see a lot of nonprofits using. Those are agile tools. Okay, interesting. I wondered about that. But there's some cool, really cool ones that offer free or discounted nonprofit space that is, it's mimicking the whiteboard space, but it's digital. One is called Miro, M-I-R-O. It's gorgeous. You can take a picture of real post-its and it'll show up in your digital board. It's amazing. It even reads my bad handwriting. That's not, and that's no small feat. The other one, it sounds very similar. Miro, M-U-R-A-L. Slightly different in terms of functionality, but both they're basically virtual, endless, infinite whiteboards. And I will tell you the best hack on Miro. You can have three boards for free. So don't even have to tell them you're a nonprofit, worry about pricing. Three boards, you can run, well, quite literally an entire business in three free boards. So it's a great way to brainstorm, visualize the backlog. They have all sorts of cool things. I'm going to go ahead and sign up. You're like, yes. There's some great, great, great free template stuff that can go into it. Yeah, but it makes it so that it is, it feels less tool-like, like I have to do what the tool says, more like how do we communicate and brainstorm and visualize together? There's just a whole lot more flexibility there. And I imagine that is so important, as you said, and I said too, like I love my post-its. In fact, I need a new stack because fairly, I'm now done with this one. But now that having this conversation of, we're going back, we're in this recovery phase and still not sure what back looks like. We're defining back, right? And so I do believe that there's going to be a hybrid approach and we've seen this on a lot of our human resources conversations about will our teams ever be back all in one space full-time? And we may not, right? And so to have these systems and to know that there are systems for free for all of us to access is so critical to the success of our nonprofit as we continue this recovery phase. Yeah, what it really does is it helps make work visible. That's probably one of the best taglines that come from Dr. Sutherland who co-created Scrum. Everything we're doing in the artifacts in the framework are making work visible. If it's visible, we can ask questions. If it's visible, we don't need to ask for status reports. If it's visible, we could offer to help. Yes. All the reasons. Get it out of the silos, make it visible. I don't care what tool you use. If it's visible, the team will be happier and more productive. Well, I want to talk to you again and again and again, there's a couple of people that, you know, Julie and I talk about all the time. We're like, could we just go on a retreat with them? So we're gonna have to do that list. And I want everyone, I want everyone to check out Diane Leonard's website. So this is the consulting website. Within that, Diane, you said there's a place for us to find the Scrum and Agile method. Underneath, like underneath the consulting firm is Agile and nonprofits. And you can get right to it from this site, but I just wanted to highlight that Agile and nonprofits is a subset of this. And that's where you can find all the free templates and tools and we do free office hours so that those interested and excited in Agile can learn and come to our book club. Like we offer a ton of free stuff for those that are Agile excited is what I'll say. Yes, Agile excited. I like that. And I would love to join you on that at some point. So I will take a look and check that out as well. You mentioned a book club. We too are launching just really a book of list if you will. So not necessarily, you know, we're gonna get together. Maybe we will, who knows? So if you have any books that you would recommend that we add to that, please let us know, Diane, because we would love to add something on there, you know, in regards to today's conversation. So thank you. You're sure? I have plenty of books to choose from. So yeah, I'll give you a few. Yeah. Well, you've been a great, great guest. We just love your energy and you got me with mindset right out the bat. I mean, off the bat, I just was like, yeah, this is where we need to be. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Been joined today by Jared Ransom, my nonprofit nerd, your nonprofit nerd, the nonprofit nerd, get out of those glasses. We'll watch you go around. There is, there is. I'm telling you, I gotta get white tape on all my glasses. Yeah, just a little like, just a little right here. Yeah. You know, yeah. And we wanna thank our sponsors. Again, without you, we would not be having this amazing conversation as we do every day. Remember, you can find us on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, the nonprofit.com website, excuse me, the nonprofitshow.com website, AmericanNonprofitAcademy.com website. And oh my goodness, so much more. So amazing, amazing conversations. I think what we need to do is get involved in this with the nonprofit show and then maybe like report back out, you know, how it's working and kind of take a look at this, Jared, because it's drinking the Kool-Aid, Diane. Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting thing for us and for our sector. And Lord knows we need things that allow us to be nimble and agile because those are the ones that succeed. I mean, we've witnessed that during these pandemics. So again, another great show. Thank you for joining us as we like to end every episode of the nonprofit show. We wanna remind you to stay well, so you can do well. Thank you, ladies.