Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 493. Strategic Planning + Innovation in Uncertain Times - Joan Garry

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493. Strategic Planning + Innovation in Uncertain Times - Joan Garry · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Non-profits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're non-profit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Becky, it's happening, the day is here.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Like after 500 episodes, we literally have the OG of non-profit podcast in our house today.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: It's pretty much like having the Beyonce into your house.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Today.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Joan Gary is on the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We know that so many of you know Joan Gary and I don't know why I always say both of her first and last names together, but it feels like it goes together.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: It's a Charlie.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Brown.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Thing.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Actually it happens a lot Totally.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: We would not understand what you meant if you said Charlie, correct.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I just think you have an amazing brand.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: You have an amazing movement.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: You probably know Joan from any of her bestselling books.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: She's just an internationally recognized nonprofit leadership expert.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: She's the founder of the nonprofit leadership lab.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: She's got Joan Gary consulting and, of course, you probably know her podcast, which we want to talk a little bit about today, which are nonprofits, are messy, and so we have a hard time, joan, going through someone like your bio because there are so many incredible nuggets.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: I'm going to try to hit the highlights, but we want you to go a little bit deeper because we think your journey is just so interesting.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: But Joan literally began her career in 1981 as a part of the management team For a little known something you might know called NTV.
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: Music television.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I know, john, can we talk about?
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: you were not even allowed to watch this as a child I know it was like unplugged from my cable somehow.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: When they actually showed music videos, may I add.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: But that was such an incredible start.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: After that, she made a move to the nonprofit sector.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: She was named the executive director of GLAAD.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: We love GLAAD, one of the largest LGBTQ rights organizations in the US, and after eight years there sorry, I got to back something up because I saw something and I want to lift it.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: When you got there, there was $360 in the bank.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: How many executive directors out there know that feeling of going into an organization and see?
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: The hands are so up in the air, aren't they?
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, they virtually are, I feel them so.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: But after that run she took this expertise and she became this incredible, successful political fundraiser, co-chairing the LGBTQ Finance Committee for the Obama 2008 presidential campaign and all of this converge she's pouring into Joan.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Gary, consulting her blog for board and staff leaders, reaches 150,000 unique leaders monthly from over 150 countries, which for anyone who's trying to get reach and exposure, that is just a crazy number.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: And then we've also talked about this incredible podcast, nonprofits are messy, which has had over two million listeners from 207 countries.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: So that is incredible.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: And the last thing I want to say because you know we're always going to end with the personal is that Joan lives in New Jersey with her wife of nearly 40 years, Hi Eileen, and Joan and Eileen were plaintiffs in a 1993 landmark New Jersey court case granting a lesbian couple a second parent adoption.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine the generations that you have helped build families from this.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And so their three grown children are legally have two mothers, whether they like it or not, which?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: is the end of your bio and I think it's perfect.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Joan, welcome to the we Are Frigid podcast.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: We're so excited you're here.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: You know it's funny listening to your.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Listening to your bio actually takes you on on a little bit of a sort of a stroll down memory lane and how, how, in how, what seemed to be and I think this is true for lots of people in their professional paths that they don't actually know where they're going.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: But when you look back, gosh yes there are these things that weave together and I always think about.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Your professional trajectory is like this roller board of stuff you drag with you, and when I listen to you describe it I like, oh, those things actually go together in some really interesting ways.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: So I was.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing the bio and for allowing me to reflect on the on the path.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Well, that's wonderful, and we were just.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: You know we're stewards sitting in the wake of what you've been building all of these decades and I think you know it would be so helpful for our community to like just get to know Joan, the Joan behind the bio like talk to us about you growing up.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: What was little Joan like, how did you get into this work?
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Talk about that fiery Irish woman.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Well, let me tell you about that Fiery Irish woman, shall I?
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: So Jonah is a little kid.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: I grew up.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: There's another thing you didn't say in your bio, becky I grew up in Amityville, like of the Amityville Harrow on the island.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: I've seen it, yes, so that's always a good conversation starter.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I was the youngest and only girl of four.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: I have three older brothers, as I like to say, I am not exactly the girl my mother ordered.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: She wanted one so badly, but in some ways I think I was actually my father's favorite son Complex.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: But there it is.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: I am Catholic school educated, never in a classroom without a crucifix on the wall.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: I am a proud alum of Fordham University in the Bronx.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Jesuits are not quite like priests.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: They're kind of a bridge between priests and rabbis, which probably explains why, at the age of 60, I converted to Judaism, because I figured I was out about everything else in my life.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: So here I am.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I have both Catholic and Jewish guilt, and they are often in conflict with one another.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: I feel like I am the luckiest human on the planet.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: I never thought I would be live happily ever after.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I never thought I would have kids, so I had no intention of building what my team calls Joan Landia.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: I did that and I know we're going to talk about innovation and some of my own that path you described of just like being an accidental consultant and now all of those things you described is a lot about innovation and a lot about creativity and seeing gaps and giving things a shot, and I could talk a little bit about even the derivation of the nonprofit leadership lab and how we came to start that and that it was actually one of those things that Michael Hyatt says what challenging times make possible, right, but I was always a big mouth.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: I always had a lot to say.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: I'm a singer I am is another thing, not the bio you all.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I was the first female singing member of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus, 250 gay men and me on the stage at Carnegie Hall.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: I want to decide it.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: After I left glad, I decided I wanted to learn how to blend and stick out all at the same time.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: And it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: So everything I do is fills me with great joy, and I think I've always been that kind of person, and I'm a serious Yankee baseball fan.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I have a very Julie will love that Framed on my wall here in my office, a number of my best 1960s baseball cards.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's another thing I really like.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I am 66 years old and so of course, I play pickleball.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: And Is that enough for now?
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's what a breath.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: I know and just like the human that you are.
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: Thank you for taking us a little bit into your journey, because we're obsessed with the journey around here and I think seeing a like-minded friend there's.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: All of us are connected to you in some way in this, and that's what we want this conversation to be about is that you do this through your work.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: You make us feel seen at all parts of the nonprofit journey.
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: We have friends listening.
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: Today they're in a shop of one person trying to hustle it out and trying to make it work, and we have people that are fighting the politics of bureaucracy, of being in the massive team, listening to this podcast Totally, and I think they're both want the same things in the world in a lot of ways, and you get to be in this perch of getting to have all these conversations, having these life experiences.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: You think about innovation.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: You see the gaps that are there set some tone for us.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, what do you think about when you think about innovation in the nonprofit space?
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: You know how can we inject more of it to it and what are you paying attention to?
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So the one thing I do want to say is thinking about your listeners.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: So on the consulting side of things, my primary jam is executive coaching of CEOs of larger nonprofits, so I play in that sandbox.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: The nonprofit leadership lab is a space for board and staff leaders of small to mid-sized nonprofits.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: So I have sort of I have touch points with staff and board leaders of every size and shape nonprofit at every leg of their journey and I think it's really important to say this before we jump into innovation, that there is no direct correlation between the size of your budget and the impact you are able to have in the world.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: I have, I know really screwed up organizations with big fat budgets and I know badass organizations with little tiny budgets.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: So for those of you who have little tiny budgets, just know the object of the game is not to whoever has the most toys win.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: That's not what it's about.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: So I don't think the nonprofit sector is very good at innovation.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Actually, I think it's one of its big pieces of kryptonite.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: I think of nonprofit leaders as superheroes and I think they have a lot of superpowers and I think innovation is a big piece of.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: And I also think that the sooner we acknowledge that and sort of start to really dig into why that is and shift the mindset of nonprofit leaders, board and staff.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: I think we can 10X or 100X the kind of impact that nonprofits have Again to say what challenging times make possible.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: I saw the greatest, the finest illustration of innovation and creativity during the pandemic.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: I saw staff leaders coaching clients of mine who were more fired up during the pandemic, even though it was hard as hell because they were stretching new muscles.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: They were being creative.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Things that they never thought they could do in a short period of time they did.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: So we know it can be done and for me the pandemic illustrated that business as usual was nothing to write home about.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, wow.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean that's one of the trends we are going to highlight is that business as usual is just over.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: You know like there is no usual anymore, yeah, so powerful.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: I agree with you Hardly and it feels like without innovation, without again leaning into this moment instead of leaning away from it.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Those who are going to lean in are going to find sustainability, they're going to find new channels of revenue, they're going to find new ways of connection and building community, and I would just love to get your thoughts on what you believe are some of the hallmarks of an innovative modern day nonprofit, and what can people do to start to lean into that?
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Joan?
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: So one other quick thing I believe that the if we look at this sort of secret sauce behind all the innovation during the pandemic and I gave a keynote speech to the folks at the YMCA in Atlanta this summer and I got them talking about why they weren't like that before, why they weren't taking risks and why was it different and what I heard over and over again is that their need to deliver for their communities or their causes was greater than their fear.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: I heard a lot about fear, right.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: I heard a lot about fear, fear of not having sufficient, you know, fear that stems from the scarcity mindset that the nonprofit sector is riddled with.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: And so you asked me what are the hallmarks of?
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: What are we shooting for, right?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: What does success look like?
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: If I see these things, I know that this organization has some real opportunity to innovate in really interesting ways, and I would say it kind of starts at the sort of this very top, and you all have some of you have read some of my stuff and know that I don't think of nonprofits as hierarchical.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: I think of them more like twin engine jets with a board engine and a staff engine and the board chair and the executive director in the cockpit right.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: It's a very different model.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: It's not hierarchical.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I also think about partnerships as being a central, philosophical, unique secret sauce in nonprofits and if you think about it that way, I need in an innovative organization.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: I want to see a board that has moved from a mindset of risk management to one of thought.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Partnership Boards stay on the tarmac, to use my jet metaphor, and we keep them in the weeds and they stay there.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: It is not the best use of them and it, in fact, is actually counterproductive to innovation.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: I am looking for a staff leader who has and I got this from an interview I did with the Chief People Officer, charity Water they look for humble confidence in their leaders.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: I love that Humble confidence.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Who understands the importance of a culture of learning and growth, who is not afraid to say the culture I want in this organization is one in which we provide you with the tools and the skills to have difficult conversations so that we can agree, disagree and take diverse points of view and lived experience and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: And a staff leader that recognizes that investing in professional development is not a luxury item.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: And then I guess I would also say an organization that invests in building a culture of storytelling.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Amazingly enough, staff and boards of nonprofit organizations are not very good storytellers.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: I sat next to somebody at a dinner one night some fundraiser and said you know, so what do you do?
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: And this woman ran a nonprofit and I said oh, tell me about it.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: 20 minutes later the woman was still talking to me.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Finally, I stopped her and I said you may regret the day they placed us next to each other at this dinner, but would you be able to do that again?
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Pretend I'm 15 years old and you only have 10 minutes.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Very smart, right, and it was so much better.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: It was so much better.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Now you'd think that that woman would walk away and I never heard from her again.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: But no, of course she hired me as a client, and but it was.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: You know it is.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: We want to say everything, and everything is not the correct answer.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: And so really building and exercising the storytelling muscle throughout your organization so that you have a grand posse of storytellers who are ambassadors, who can, who can get out there and invite more people to know and do something with, who want to come closer and closer and closer that's what you all should be in the business of doing.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: John, are you smirking?
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: I am so happy right now because you're preaching our values back to us.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: I'm smiling like a little kid over here because we're a growth mindset community.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: That's what we want to start in this space and cultivate, not start just gather people like that because we all don't know these things intrinsically.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: But together with the posture of this humble confidence, we can come together and be better storytellers and be better partners with our board and figure this stuff out together in real time, like you're just talking about the things that I love in this world so much.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: And I wonder.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: I want to go back to your cool case study.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, glad has been this chapter of your career.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: We look at this.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: I just think we all went through the pandemic and that's right when Becky and I were making the jump to we Are For Good.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: It was that summer, so we had that moment of sitting in the nonprofit to be like what do we actually do right now?
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: I know that sinking feeling of confidence to confusion.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: So I just think you were having a similar experience walking in to this place that is literally out of money, that has a such important mission, such an inflection point in history to step into.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: What did you do.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, how did you cultivate that growth mindset and pull people together to lead it to the impacts and prominence that it has today?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: So I had no idea there was only $360 in the bank.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: I didn't ask for financials because I know myself, and if I knew it was really in bad shape, I would want the job more.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Really Fascinating.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, come on, my podcast is called Nonprofits Are Messy.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: I deal with like.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: A client will come forth and my team will say oh, this one is really messy.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: I'm like really.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Let's hear about it, hooray.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Hooray.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: Um, I actually began by making it clear to the board that I had no intention of laying anyone off and that I this mess happened on their watch and that they were going to be partners with me in digging out.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Now, remember that I had been hired with no fundraising experience.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: My development director at the time was horrified because the other candidate had a lot of fundraising experience.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: But I had media background.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: I was a very good public speaker.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: I was very clear and articulate about why focusing on the media mattered so much, and so I got in front of people at every opportunity and I was bold in asking for money.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: No, did I ask for money to dig the car out of the ditch?
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Uh-uh.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: No, what I did was I painted a picture of where we wanted Glad to go.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, here it is.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Keep going, keep going, okay.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: So I said okay.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: I have come to an organization that has been for X number of years, has been a media watchdog, a finger wagging organization.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: No, that's defamatory, no, that's offensive.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: And I believed that if we actually built our credibility as an organization and put the right people on the bus, we could start having proactive conversations with producers and journalists to actually help them get it right, so that we could give them props for getting it right.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: We then we had a media awards ceremony, which was the most mission-centric gala, so that we could then honor people who got it right.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: And we could.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: I made the argument we could do both, we could wag our fingers.