Strategic thinking for nonprofits with Michael Butera
1/20/2025
““Strategic thinking for me is embodied in an acronym FOCUS. Now that seems pretty simple, but let’s talk about what it really means. So the F stands for foresight. This ability to anticipate, not predict, anticipate future trends, challenges, and the opportunities that might be out there. O stands for observation, an individual, a team, or a board’s careful attention the internal and external environment gather relevant insights. O. Relative options. C stands for collaboration. Engaging diverse perspectives. Focusing teamwork on enhancing decision making, often doesn’t occur when you’re just busy saying, well, this is what we’re going to do. U stands for understanding. Understanding, meaning a deep analysis of information to identify patterns, to identify relationships, to identify the underlying causes that we’re engaged in. And S stands for synthesis.””
In episode 115 of Nonprofit Mission: Impact, Carol Hamilton and Michael Butera dive into the challenges and opportunities facing associations as they adapt to 21st-century realities.
They talk about:
The difference between strategic thinking and strategic planning
Why acting like a three year old can be good for you (ask why five times in a row)
How adaptability will be a key differentiator as to which organizations continue to grow and thrive.
Episode Highlights:
[00:10:05] Strategic Thinking vs. Strategic Planning
Strategic thinking is a process focused on foresight and insights, while strategic planning is a product with short-term goals. Michael shares his focus acronym: Foresight, Observation, Collaboration, Understanding, and Synthesis.
[00:15:18] VUCA vs. BANI Frameworks
The BANI framework (Brittleness, Anxiety, Nonlinearity, and Incomprehensibility), and its relevance in today’s rapidly changing world compared to the VUCA model.
[00:20:58] The Role of Membership in Associations
Associations need to rethink membership strategies, pointing out that organizations often lack clarity about their stakeholder communities.
[00:24:30] Governance Challenges
Governance in associations is highlighted as an area needing modernization. Diverse perspectives on boards are important rather than limiting them to individuals from a single profession.
[00:28:06] Foresight and Observational Practices
To apply foresight, organizations need to to prioritize defining the right questions over rushing to solutions. Examples of how asking “why” repeatedly can lead to deeper insights.
[00:36:47] Adapting to Change
Adaptability is key, referencing Darwin’s principle that survival depends on flexibility, not strength or intelligence.
[00:45:57] Building Sustainable Cultures
Michael provides a five-step guide for nonprofit leaders:
Take guilt-free rest – Avoid burnout by prioritizing personal well-being.
Say no to unnecessary tasks – Focus on what truly matters.
Ask for help – Leverage external perspectives for better outcomes.
Celebrate small victories – Acknowledge progress and learn from mistakes.
Leave work at work – Maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Guest Bio:
Michael Butera is a keynote speaker featuring Strategic Thinking, Innovate or Stagnate: Adapting 20th Century Traditions to 21st-Century Realities. Practice areas include governance, restructuring, strategic facilitation, foresight, and coaching. He is an expert partner at the Rogue Tulip Consultants, a Toastmasters, and a Certified Maxwell Leadership Team Speaking Coach and Mentor.
Important Links and Resources:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelabutera/
Association ActiVision, LLC
https://www.michaelbuteraspeaks.com/
ASAE Drivers of Change: https://www.asaecenter.org/resources/asae-foresightworks
The Heath Brothers (Author of Switch and other books) https://heathbrothers.com/
SCARF model: https://www.bitesizelearning.co.uk/resources/scarf-model-david-rock-explained#:~:text=The%20SCARF%20model%2C%20introduced%20by,take%20steps%20to%20mitigate%20these.
BANI: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeroenkraaijenbrink/2022/06/22/what-bani-really-means-and-how-it-corrects-your-world-view/
VUCA: https://executiveacademy.at/en/news/detail/bani-vs-vuca-how-leadership-works-in-the-world-of-tomorrow/
Related Episodes:
Episode 110
Episode 109
Episode 102
Episode 90
Episode 69
-
Carol Hamilton: Well, welcome, Michael. Welcome to Mission Impact.
Michael Butera: Well, it's nice to be with you, Carol. I'm looking forward to the opportunity for us to discuss things.
Carol: Excellent. Excellent. So I start out every episode with a question of what drew you to the work that you do? What, what motivates you or what would you describe as your why?
Michael: In my case, the why is a strong belief that we're entering a new and point in evolution of the association world. We have been using 20th century, maybe longer than that, Ways of thinking when it's time to look at the new realities of the 21st century. And so I've devoted most of my time over the last number of years now, to this whole issue of how we really upgrade the association community to think in a 21st century way, or put more simply, prefer strategic thinking. And learning to think strategically before we get into all the strategic planning.
Carol: No, I love that. And that's definitely one of the things that I wanted to ask you about. Usually on this podcast, I'm talking to folks who do consulting for nonprofits, but in different areas than I do. So fundraising and marketing and board governance and all the things that I don't dabble in, but you and I do very similar work.
So I was like, well, this is going to be fun. Cause we get to talk shop. And yeah, one, one of the things that you had talked about was this difference that you see between strategic thinking and strategic planning. So can you say a little bit more about that? what, where do you see the distinctions and what, what, what, why is that important to you?
Michael: Well let's start with the simplest way of thinking about it. Strategic thinking is really a process. Strategic planning is really a product. And sometimes we don't see those things the same way. In strategic thinking we want to focus on the why. How'd we get here? Look at the insights. What are the trends?
What are the potential futures that might be there? Strategic planning is rather short term. It's one, two, three years. Of course, they're gonna modify it from time to time, if they're good. They're gonna modify it from time to time. But it really is, here's a set of goals. This is how we're gonna measure our achievement on those goals. And we're going to do it for a fixed period of time. What worries me about what we're doing in strategic thinking, even when it's that two or three years down the road thing, sometimes five, is this idea that we know enough to decide what we have to do over a very long period of time. Put differently, Too many strategic plans are short term thinking instead of long term sustainable activity for the organization.
Carol: And it, I, I think I've often described strategic planning as a, as a process. It does end up having a product, right, a plan. And it seems to me that like this there's probably a both and in this, that, that the practice of doing planning and, and setting goals for yourself is important. And you don't just want to be buffeted by, by.
whatever waves come, and the wind sends you in whatever direction you want to go. But at the same time, it is, you can only, you only know what, you only know the situation that you're in, you can't predict the future. I am always telling people, strategic planning isn't about predicting the future or, or being, you know being under the illusion that you can, right?
And so I wonder if there's a way to, to wait. We've both of these together and how, and so what are some of the things that you do to help organizations move more into that strategic thinking practice, if you will over the longer term?
Michael: I describe it by using an acronym, strategic thinking for me is embodied in an acronym focus. Now that seems pretty simple, but let's talk about what it really means. So the F stands for foresight. This ability to anticipate, not predict, anticipate future trends, challenges, and the opportunities that might be out there. O. stands for observation. an individual, a team, or a board's careful attention to the internal and external environment gather relevant insights. O. Relative insights. C. stands for collaboration. Engaging diverse perspectives. Focusing teamwork on enhancing decision making, often doesn't occur when you're just busy saying, well, this is what we're going to do. U stands for understanding. Understanding, meaning a deep analysis of information to identify patterns, to identify relationships, to identify the underlying causes that we're engaged in. And S stands for synthesis. This Intriguing idea and the information into a set of coherent strategies and actionable plans. So, I argue that you should first build the capacity to learn to think strategically before you go. busy building your strategic plan. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get a call and some association says, Yeah, we want to do a strategic plan. We're having the board in. We're going to do it Saturday afternoon.
We met for five hours. That should be enough time. Well, I don't, I often don't take those gigs because I,
Carol: Me neither.
Michael: I think the product won't be very good.
Carol: Right.
Michael: You're right when you say, well, of course, there is an interrelationship between the two things. What I've been trying to do, and I don't find it easy, I might add, is this idea of strategic thinking. Because it depends a little bit on the association. they're all really different. There's a big difference between the trade associations and the professional societies, the individual member organizations. We have a lot of higher ed people. people in individual member organizations.
I want to smile through this. These are smart people, very capable, oftentimes have PhDs. I could go on and on about their brain power, but it doesn't mean that they necessarily know how to run an organization. And so we have to be in a perpetual, always learning mode. And I'm worried that with all the changes we're facing.
Economically, socially, demographically, technology that we're just, we're just not there. I don't want to go on too long, but let me know if you are familiar with VUCA and Banny World views. Now, I'm a Banny World guy. That doesn't mean that the other one isn't right. It just means that it, I've
Carol: That's another acronym that you should probably
Michael: yeah.
Carol: Spell out. We had Jeff DeCagna on the show. I guess it was episode 102. And we talked about that because that was the first time I had run into that acronym, but maybe spell that one out for folks as a reminder.
Michael: Thanks for, thanks for making me go back. So, BANI, B A N I, that's pretty easy, that's the easy part. So, B stands for this idea that we're engaged in a time of great brittleness. And brittleness in this, we have a brittle world, where systems and structures they're just, not working in the same way they used to.
That's why I think we see problems with institutional dismay by the public in general. They just don't understand, why did this just happen? Well, the world's changing at its enormously rapid pace, so there's a lot of brittleness out there. A stands for Anxiety or Anxiousness, whichever way you want to say it, and that's pretty self explanatory, but we are more anxious.
People are more worried, more concerned, and because of the newer cultures that are invading each other, the lack of real territory. Integrity in the way we used to know it in the 20th century, there's a lot of anxiousness out there. A lot of us don't know about other cultures. then there's this issue, N stands for non linear in many business academic worlds that, we have this process.
If this happens and this happens, then this happens and this, well, of course, there's When processes are developed, we do want to recognize those things. But the world may be much more non linear. You know we're grappling with the cause and effect thing in a new way. And we have to recognize that.
And last but not least is incomprehensible. A lot of the stuff that's happening is really hard. comprehend because we grew up at a time when there was, more, is the way it's done. And of course, I'm sure you've seen this in organizations you work with the first time someone says, but we've always Xed, I just wanna, I almost wanna scream not because they're they're being wrong. What they're being is closed sighted. And what we need to do is open up. So that's the be all world thing. And of course VUCA, I don't want to, I don't think we want to go back there, but VUCA was developed by the military. And it, which stood for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, is still used in military planning in large ways, but there's this move towards the Banny of existence.
So,
Carol: Yeah, and I think you can see that the brittleness I mean, we saw it for sure during the pandemic with a breakdown of systems in terms of supply chains and all the things that we took for granted. the incomprehensibleness of the pandemic that that, could be which definitely spiked people's anxiety, but I think the brittleness in terms of folks, the, the declining trust in major institutions in, political institutions in the media, all sorts of things, the splintering of media that, that has led to all sorts of unforeseen and nonlinear consequences.
And I, my, my guess is that those nonlinear things were always there. We just like to operate under the illusion that we could create a logic chain that says, this thing happens, then this thing happens, and then this thing happens. And, and, We operate, we, as, as animal creatures, we like certainty, we like order, we like routine, and, and doing things the way we've always done them.
But yeah, what you're talking about in terms of It's just not fitting the current realities. And so many ways in which organizations were set up. you, you said 20th Century and then laughed. Of course, you know de Tocqueville back in whatever, 17,
Michael: yeah,
Carol: I don't know, I was talking about voluntary associations in the United States and now it was the foundation of our democracy.
But then all of those organizations that bring together people that have some commonality around usually a profession they've, they've become ways. And so you, at the beginning, when we, I was talking about your, why you talked about how you do feel like there hasn't been an evolution in terms of membership organizations and that they, they need an upgrade to deal with these 21st century realities.
What are some things that, We've always done ? You think it needs to be rethought.
Michael: I start with the one you were just talking about, and that's membership. It's interesting to me that when We work with organizations, they always say they want to gain more members. we want to increase our member size and then you start to ask them about Who they invite in, who are they really targeting? And what we find out is that they don't even, they don't really have a firm grasp on what the stakeholder community is. And so if you were an electrical engineer, let's use that as an example. You only want electrical engineers to be in your organization and to only run it. I just say to myself, Well, well, let's think about this. What does an electrical engineer know about running an association? Does an electrical engineer know about content management? What does an electrical engineer really know about membership promotion? I mean, that's just one to talk about because everybody in the association world is worried about membership.
I'll give you my second favorite one, which is much more difficult to deal with, and that is the best governance that we've ever had. Now, some of that is because of all these big changes that we're talking about. Again, it's not that the people were not smart. It's not that they don't care, but it is let's, let's continue on with the electrical engineers.
So only electrical engineers are going to be on our board of directors. I mean, let's be realistic. They don't, with kindness, they don't know enough about organizational development as is necessary to run, run an organization. I've probably lost business saying stuff like that once in a while. You know they just, know, they're almost stuck in this belief that, They have all the answers.
Now, I'm not really referring to electrical engineers, as you know. I'll just use it as an example.
Carol: Well, people get very comfortable with that there's, I think there's always Or, or with, with groups that I've worked with oftentimes there's that sense of relief almost when they come to an association event and everybody else understands what they do. And maybe at their place of work, they're the only ones who do XYZ.
And so they're constantly having to explain themselves. And so there's that like, Oh, I'm with my people, you know? And, and so there's that sense of belonging. And in, in the brittleness of the, the current world people are really seeking belonging. And so associations are one place that they find them, but then it's like, they take that too far.
Right. Of when everyone is in a particular discipline, they're working within a set of assumptions that they learned through, all of those years of school, all of, whatever apprenticeship, whatever, whatever path they took to, to learn that they, they get inculcated with a set of assumptions and then, forget them.
That's really the curse of knowledge that I think we've talked about too. And so then being able to look a little bit further out of like, what are other stakeholders that could help us see things differently and question our assumptions? I know with some boards that I work with, they're actually required to have what they call public members, which are people that come from outside of their field to work with to be that beginner's mind to be able to ask the quote unquote dumb questions to, to poke holes in those assumptions or bring perspective from, from other, other areas.
So there are ways to get around it, but yeah, you can get into a real sense of group think. But it feels good when everybody agrees with you.
Michael: Well, of course, people like, like stability. You mentioned that a little bit earlier, and predictability, you know. It's very difficult to predict what's going on these days. We're in a very turbulent time. You know going back to the membership engagement thing that you were just how we engage all these people. And so what we want to do is build strategies that are how would I say this? Rooted in a deep understanding of foresight, in a deep understanding of, of how we attract, what's the cohort we're trying to attract? Retaining, we're doing, actually we're doing a pretty good job of retaining members. If we ask ourselves why, why did they stay? Why did they come? It could be some of the things you just, you just mentioned to us. I don't think we know all the new ways of engaging people, technology has changed. Look what we're doing. Technology has changed things. So much and so fast. I mean, I was talking about the 20th versus the 21st century.
I like to ask people, well, you have a smartphone. Yeah. Well, how long have smartphones been around? And the answer is not all that long. we're talking about 20 years. That's, that's, that's one generation, 20 years. just one small example of all the strange and new things. that has happened.
websites. When we had websites initially in the 1990s, don't know about you, but I remember a lot of associations just slapped up their old newsletter, and thought people are going to, Hey, they're going to read this thing. No. And we found out they didn't, but what are we doing to change that? What are we doing to really analyze, look deep? Down into what the future generation is demanding of us, the generations of the past have to offer in terms of their wisdom and knowledge. we, I'm not big on generational differences, to be honest with you, I am big on evolution of knowledge. things change, I always, if I may, I always remember how poorly we understand evolution because when Darwin said it, he never really said survival of the fittest, that's what we always hear. What he, what he actually said was those who survive are not the smartest. Are not the strongest, but that, but rather those best able to adapt.
Carol: Right. That adaptability and flexibility. And you've talked about foresight a couple times. How do you help organizations dig into trying to look ahead and, and, think about what's coming?
Michael: Well, let's let foresight is much more complicated than meets the eye, so to
Carol: Amen.
Michael: Now, of course, there are resources and we should give ASAE credit for having produced, the drivers of change and all the pieces that are with it. Unfortunately, not much resource is devoted to associations. For that learning And so when I talk about foresight what I again for me, it's about learning to ask more difficult questions with why not how And you
Carol: Amen. Ha ha ha. Amen.
Michael: you've been there, you know as soon as you know Did they even define the problem?
I love this when we're dealing with academics because like I said, they're very bright people. And I say to them, now, if you were dealing with a student who wants to get a PhD, how much time do you spend helping them define the question? They want to research and answer versus how much time you really spend on the writing and so forth and so on. almost to a person, they say, yeah, that's the most important part. And I said, well, if that's the most important part then, why isn't it the most important thing now? Let's really start to discuss, you know this idea of did we identify the problem? Did we ask the right question? Good.
Carol: Right. And, and, and, sometimes you said it can be difficult questions, but sometimes the one thing that comes to mind is the exercise of the five Y's, which, it can, it's, it's really the simplest, you end up sounding like a three year old, you know? So, why do X, Y, Z people talk about it?
So tell me more about why you do. What they just described, and then, continuing to ask them that question, and it helps them go deeper and deeper. So, but I think, it's so hard when there's so much coming at people to take the time to, to even pause them. have a conversation like that.
Or, when I'm, when I'm doing strategic planning with folks, we definitely always do part of, at the very beginning of the process, some piece where we're looking outside the organization and looking at all the, what trends people see and like, what's most important to them. And I've even gotten pushback, like, why did we bother doing that?
Nothing of that ended up in the plan. I'm like, well, maybe not. directly, but not linearly. It did. You had insights by going through that, that informed what you decided were your goals. And that's probably not a perfect way. It's always that, for those kinds of things, it's a snapshot in time.
And so how do you like how people continue to have that discipline around really, looking at the Y versus how are we going to get this done?
Michael: You use the most important word here, I think, is the discipline of. know, how do we discipline ourselves, to Stretch our understanding of what's going on out there, stretch our ability to see alternatives. we have fancy words for, ideation and so forth and so on. That's not the way to deal with it with most people.
the average member isn't into all that stuff. The average members into it for what is, what is it for them? it's this constant battle between, local and national and international. I mean, I know you do chapter work, it's amazing to me how difficult it is to really develop and respect the chapter activity. thinking on a national level, it's, and again, it's not about bad people. This, this, see, I think what happens to us in this crazy world we're in is we get to the right, wrong, good, bad, left, right, and all those kinds of things. I mean, you mentioned.
Carol: All the finger pointing and us and them.
Michael: the Heath brothers, the curse of knowledge, things and so forth and so on.
So what we have to do is, if there are two sides to a question, there must be a whole array of things between those two sides. Are we exploring the array? Or are we? Are we just going to go this way or that way? I just think it's so bad when we do that. And again, we're just going through a time of enormous upheaval and change. And technology being one of the biggest aspects of that. I mean, they buy, they buy a program and, six months later, there's a better program out there. Why don't I don't like the word AMS? By the way, why doesn't my AMS do that? I much prefer that we accept the idea that what we really need are sophisticated CRMs, customer relationship management systems. The problem is that they were never built for nonprofits, the tax exempt community, they were built for the business community and the thinking just, it's the same thing where we need to find new ways to do that. So. I'm sure you experienced the issue I brought up about chapters, you know good grief.
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. It's a perennial one. And I, I work at the national level and the local level and chapters of organizations, but also, separate. It's small and medium sized organizations at all levels, but one of the things that you were talking about in terms of being able to think more broadly, I think one of the things that's really challenging is that when people are anxious and they are fearful, they You like your brain literally shuts down into that black and white thinking.
you, you, you get tunnel vision. Like this is all just like biology. This happens in our brain. And if you're, if you're, if you're threatened, I'll have to look up who came up with this model, but there's the scarf model and I can't remember what all the things mean, but we're using too many acronyms here.
We must be consultants.
Michael: 50
Carol: Scarcity, certainty, autonomy, relationships, and fairness, I think are the four. I'll look it up and make sure, but those are things that typically, like, if, if those feel threatened to folks, they will go into that fight or flight, fawn, freeze mode. And so you can't think creatively when you're in that space,
Michael: well,
Carol: You know?
So.
Michael: biological.
Carol: It's, it's how you then help the group calm their nervous system down and be in the moment and be able to be fully present and be able to open up when they're not feeling threatened. And that really can be hard.
Michael: absolutely. You know one of the things I've done a few times is I've asked Boards of directors and executives to write an obituary for the association. I've seen some pretty interesting things. Items come out of that or to say to them, it's 10 years from today and you're talking about what the organization has accomplished and you have to do it in no more than three sentences.
So. What did we accomplish as an organization? And then you get to the, well if that was true, what do we have to do in order to get? And it's amazing some of the wonderful ideas that are out there. But they're not loosened up to think about the ideas. They're so busy today. They're so busy with the budget. they're so busy with making sure that the conference comes off just right. And I could go through a whole list of those, but you already know them.
Carol: And I mean, all of those are important, right? They're, they're important. They need to be done and you do need those times away. And, and yes, it usually needs to be more than a few hours on a Saturday. Can you come next week?
Michael: right. Yeah, that's right. Well, it's, it's to the point you were just making, I think, I have to be careful here. And not giving people the idea that the things we just talked about, the annual conference, the professional development, the certification, and so that they're not important.
No, no, they're important. There's no question about it. But what we're trying to do is we, we, in the old Covey model, we have to come up with the things that are not urgent, but important. And we start thinking about those things, our institutions can't recreate themselves well. They'll create something.
The question is, how good will it be? And so, that's what I'm trying to get people to do more often. Then not. And, we make some progress. Sometimes we win some. I, I, I like a book that's written by John Maxwell. He says sometimes we win. Sometimes we learn.
Carol: Right. Can you, but can you be open, open to that learning when, when things don't quite go your way in your focus? Acronym, one of the things that you talked about was observation. Can you talk a little bit more about that? That seems like, so, for example, I talked about my process where it's basically, Part piece of the process.
We do that looking out, but that's probably not something that folks are doing very frequently. And so what might be some things that a board or in a leadership team, because you also talked about collaboration and, I've talked about how. strategy really needs to be from the whole organization, not just the board.
What are some ways and practices that help boards be more observational?
Michael: You know what a great way of exploring this issue. I'm thinking about a group I was working with in Florida. Happen to have built large communities along the waterfront. And, we were exploring issues that they were observing. And As, as we ask, you got to go through a question and answer period to what, what do you observe? And long story short. one of their biggest problems was that the water is seeping under their facilities now and so forth and so on. So no one would use the word climate change when we talk, because the organization says, well, we don't want to get into that, but the observation was, well, you Okay.
Let's ask. Well, why is that happening? Well, there's more water than they're used to, but why is there more? You get the idea. So I, I use that Socraterian thing, let's just ask more and more questions. It's more important what the question is initially than the answer. That's why when I said that I see strategic thinking as process oriented and strategic planning more as product oriented.
It's not that things don't happen. They do. So when we observe, we have to know what we're observing and that requires us to ask questions we otherwise would not ask. So people, let's take a membership thing. Why isn't our membership increasing is one way of asking it. Another one is why are people in X States not joining? Why are people? You know academic communities forming smaller and smaller niche organizations that are in your field, though. And it's amazing that most of these folks that we're talking about, they do have great observations. They are actually seeing this stuff. But The world comes in on them, every day comes in on them. So I, I like to tell them that what we need to work on here is just, what are you observing in the world? What's going on in your family? What's going on in your community? Don't start with. What the heck do we have to do here at Association ABC? We have to start with what the world really looks like. That's done by asking questions that have little to do with the organization. You may use another method. That happens to be the one that I use most frequently.
Carol: No, I like that a lot. And I, and I think, where we can tap with where we can build that both and is, so think of strategic planning maybe as more of an episodic thing and then, how are you building in some of those things that you did in that process into your more regular, meetings like having a once a month we're going to have, we're just going to talk about observations for half an hour at this meeting and just, go bigger and start with those questions that, that seem unlikely, right.
That get to that nonlinear that you're talking about of, let's not always be just looking at the, at the, the
Michael: The here and
Carol: Target
Michael: target. Yeah, you're
Carol: or the right or do you know this situation, but go wider and see what we can bring in what insights we can do. A lot of this is making me think of the work I've done in terms of design thinking where, you know mapping a customer journey or a member journey, or a lot of times when you're doing that fancy Lee named ideation, one of the things that you do is that, say your organization.
So we'll talk about the electrical engineers and we'll have them. So we'll think, if your organization was Disneyland, What would you do about XYZ, or, FedEx, or Beyonce, or whatever it just helps you get out of that box that you're in, in terms of your thinking. People are always talking about, thinking outside the box, well how, how do you get yourself out of the box?
And it's some of these questions that I can, I think, can help people get out of those boxes.
Michael: And you know what, what you just did was a perfect example of observation, and we need to get people there. I find that people want to talk, they want to get it out, but they have these boring agendas where, you know, report after report after report who in God's name, what you already sent them the report.
Now we're going to tell them the report. I mean, give us a break.
Carol: Right. Another person that I talked to talked about being bored, always looking in the rearview mirror instead of looking forward.
Michael: Yeah. And that's where we have to, we, we have to go. And and, and of course our world is more complicated than it's ever been before. I mean, we're struggling here in the United States to know what it means. for us to have a multicultural environment. Forget about the politics of it. That's not what I'm talking about.
We're in a multicultural environment. When I grew up, I'm no spring chicken. So, when I grew up, mom stayed at home, gave up her job, and raised the kids. That's just not the way it is. And whether it was good, bad, right or wrong, as we like to say, that's not the issue anymore. The issue is it isn't. That isn't the world we, we live in,
Carol: That isn't the world we live in. And yeah, I mean, the United States is always an experiment. And we're, we're the most diverse country in the world.
Michael: Yeah.
Carol: We have people from every corner of the earth and every culture, and we definitely have not figured out how to, how to, work together effectively yet.
And I just hope that we continue to try to work towards learning how to understand each other across cultures and, and that so just to, to wrap up the episode, I always ask. a question of each guest of what permission slip would they give nonprofit leaders or what invitation would you have them consider to I always want people to avoid being a martyr to the cause and and basically to work towards that cult, that healthier multicultural I usually am talking about organizational cultures, but obviously that ripples out.
So either a permission slip or an invitation to nonprofit leaders to avoid being a martyr to the cause and, and to contribute to building really healthy organizational cultures.
Michael: What I would do is prioritize your own well being to devote yourself to your attention to building a sustainable culture in the organization. And how do you do that? I'll give you my five. Okay, we'll see if this works. Are you ready? First one is that you should take a rest without being guilty about taking a rest. We're in a business where people put in
Carol: Oh my goodness. That is so hard given that we've grown up in the Protestant work ethic.
Michael: me, I know, I know. My second one is, we have to learn to say no to tasks and projects that make no sense. we're often afraid to do it. Say no, that's a permission slip we really need. My third one is, never be afraid to ask for help. There's wonderful people out here that are perfectly willing to give you their time. If you have something that you want to try out, ask for help. Nobody knows everything. Nobody knows everything. The fourth one is to celebrate the small victories. We're so busy celebrating this. So when someone in the organization, you or one of your team members or a team does something really well, celebrate it. I used to work in an organization where every year we gave out the good of the year award. The good of the year award was the award for someone who does something incredibly Sometimes dumb, we learn something special from it.
So celebrate the little things and last but not least This is very hard. I wish I could do this better myself. You need permission to leave your work at work and Boy,
Carol: boy. Yeah,
Michael: I don't know about you, but you know This is what I do, so I'm constantly thinking about it, but my family wants to constantly think about it?
I don't think so.
Carol: right.
Michael: That's, that's, that's my five, no guilt, say no, ask for help, take on the small wins and celebrate them. And last but not least, leave the work at work.
Carol: All right. All right. So you've got your five lists, folks. And yes, I've been, I've been trying to, to implement those for, for a while now. It's easier said than done, but definitely worth it every time I get it. And I want to celebrate the small wins along the way. Right? Versus have I done this perfectly?
Yes. So progress, progress over perfection. Well, thank you so much, Michael. It was great to have you on Mission Impact. Really enjoyed the conversation.
Michael: you for the opportunity to share your time with me. I hope someone listens and gets just one little small thing out of this that works for them. Thank you again.
Carol: Exactly.
LISTEN + SUBSCRIBE
APPLE PODCASTS ● SPOTIFY