When Strategy Meets Organization Design for Nonprofits with Jeanne Bell
2/9/2025
“The recurrence of that experience has led to more conflict, more unionization, more, … conflict ‘us them’ thinking. Because you keep pretending that [the cross functional group has] power and then not granting it to [them]. Stop doing that unless you genuinely are going to [say] here’s your options. Or put two senior members on that group. Stop assigning it to junior people if it’s so important…We set these task forces up … as if they are adversarial to the primary structure and so they become so.”
Nonprofit organization design is about how an organization works: how decisions get made, how power flows, how people collaborate across boundaries, and how strategy actually gets translated into day-to-day action. In episode 142, of Nonprofit Mission: Impact, Carol Hamilton and Jeanne Bell dig deeply into why organization design—often overlooked or reduced to org charts—is actually a missing discipline nonprofits need to truly operationalize their strategy and values.
They discuss:
How nonprofits are too often stuck in false dichotomies (flat vs. hierarchical),
Why too many organizations are burdened by overly complicated compensation systems, and hindered by management team structures that don’t reflect how strategy actually needs to happen.
How by aligning Galbraith’s STAR model elements—strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and people, nonprofit organizations can genuinely act on their missions.
This episode offers nonprofit leaders a grounded, liberating framework for rethinking how their organizations make decisions, how people collaborate, and what it really means to design for impact.
Episode highlights:
09:05 | Why the STAR Model Matters in Nonprofit Life
Jay Galbraith’s STAR model—strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and people—and why nonprofits rarely consider how these five elements reverberate and influence each other. Nonprofits often “atomize” decisions—changing structure without shifting compensation, or revising processes without considering staffing capacity—leading to misalignment and frustration.
13:20 | A Clear, Shared Definition of Strategy (And Why It’s Non-Negotiable)
Jeanne pushes back on letting strategy mean “anything an organization wants it to mean.” Without a shared definition, org-wide alignment is impossible. Strategy should explain: How do we believe we cause the change we seek? She notes that many plans labeled “strategic plans” are actually organization development plans, which is fine—but different.
15:15 | When to Revisit Strategy: The Changing Sociopolitical Context
Given how much has shifted in recent years—movements, political climate, public narratives—nonprofits should examine whether their strategies are still truly causal. Strategy shifts less frequently than OD goals, but now is a moment when re-examination is necessary.
17:25| Beyond Flat vs. Hierarchical: Designing for Roles, Accountability & Power
Jeanne debunks the “flat vs. hierarchical” binary. Not everyone in an organization has the same accountability or experience—and pretending otherwise creates confusion and conflict. She invites leaders to think like designers: Who is responsible for stewarding the system? Who needs access to strategic conversations? What roles support learning and development?
20:20 | The Critical Role of Cross-Functional Spaces
Most nonprofit work spans functions—yet cross-functional spaces are typically underpowered or treated as side projects. Without intentional design, reorganizations simply recreate silos. Cross-functional groups need real sponsorship, skilled conveners, and clarity about their authority.
23:05 | Stop Creating Ineffective Committees & Task Forces
Most task forces are set up for frustration: little authority, vague mandates, and no clear line to decision-makers. Jeanne describes how this leads to demoralization, conflict, and even adversarial relationships. A cross-functional group must have:
● Senior-level sponsorship
● Skilled facilitation/convener leadership
● Clear decision or recommendation rights
Otherwise, it becomes performative rather than meaningful.
27:25 | Recommendations vs. Decisions: Be Honest About Power
Most cross-functional groups actually make recommendations, not decisions. Clarity matters. Leaders must be ready to receive and respond transparently to recommendations—not treat committees as buckets for difficult issues.
30:05 | Rewards & Compensation: The Hidden Restraints on Organizational Design
Compensation systems inherited from the corporate world undermine collaboration and flexibility. Current norms:
● Reinforce silos
● Over-emphasize narrow roles
● Create massive administrative overhead
● Limit cross-functional work
Jeanne advocates compressing pay bands, raising floors, and acknowledging that many roles share overlapping skillsets.
35:35 | Job Descriptions: A Mechanistic Tool Limiting Flexibility
Traditional job descriptions encourage people to say “that’s not my job,” even when they want to contribute. Nonprofits need to to rethink the assumption that every role must be neatly bounded and tiered. Many nonprofits could operate with just a few compensation bands and more fluid, collaborative role expectations.
38:20 | Why Management Teams Don’t Work (And What to Build Instead)
Jeanne notes that management teams typically focus on budgets, hiring/firing, and board prep—not on strategy. Meanwhile, programmatic decisions get bottlenecked through teams whose members may have little connection to the work. She recommends:
● A management team strictly for operational management
● A separate strategic stewardship group focused on interpreting context and guiding program direction
These overlapping but distinct bodies better reflect how nonprofits actually function.
42:05 | The Question Every Nonprofit Leader Should Ask
Jeanne closes with the question she wishes every ED would ask:
“In my heart of hearts, do I believe we are configured in the right way—with the right people—to carry out our theory of change? If not, what support do I need to address it?”
Too often leaders know something isn’t aligned but avoid making structural or people-related decisions. Organization design gives leaders a clearer, more liberating framework for addressing these mismatches with creativity and courage.
44:35 | Closing Reflections
Carol and Jeanne close with appreciation for a rich, expansive discussion—one that offers leaders tangible ways to rethink structure, collaboration, compensation, and strategy alignment.
Guest Bio:
Jeanne Bell is the co-founder of Just Org Design. She has consulted on nonprofit strategy and organizational change for over 25 years. Jeanne also curates Nonprofit Quarterly's Leading Edge Program, recruiting and presenting nonprofit practitioners advancing more equitable nonprofit leadership practices. Previously, Jeanne led Compass Point Nonprofit Services, one of the country's premier leadership and capacity-building organizations. While serving as CEO, Jeanne also chaired the board of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, a national association of nonprofit capacity builders and academics. She currently serves on the boards of Community Works and The Resilience Initiative (advisory). She has a Masters in Nonprofit Management from the University of San Francisco. Jeanne loves living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Important Links and Resources:
Designing Organizations by Jay Galbraith
Related Episodes:
-
Carol Hamilton: Most folks think organization design is all about the org chart and what is in people's job descriptions. In fact, this is just one small part of the discipline, and as my guest today on nonprofit Mission Impact Jeanne Bell, as well as my guest on episode 135, Julian Chen argue: it's actually the least important aspect.
Jeanne originally joined me on episode 69 to talk about her work that centers on the intersection between organization design and strategy implementation. One of the most overlooked and yes misused structures and nonprofits is the cross-functional group. As I learned back in my graduate school organization design class,
these groups are what actually address silos. It's not reorganizing, it's cross-functional groups. They provide the connective tissue within an organization to build connections across teams and department boundaries, but they have to be well designed. As Jeanne says they have to have a clear purpose and a clear goal, and even more importantly, they have to understand their role and their boundaries and scope.
What is within their power to decide? What are they being asked to do? Are they being asked to make a decision for the organization or make recommendations to a senior group who will actually make the decision? When the senior group has veto power over the recommendations, does the group ask to investigate the issue, actually fully understand this, otherwise pulling this group together can actually have a result that's opposite of the impact.
That was intended. The task force or committee is convened to work on an issue, but also often to provide leadership development opportunities for staff. Yet if staff leave the group with the impression that their work was a waste of time and effort, it can be very demoralizing. So instead, ensure any cross-functional group that is charged with working on foundational issues for the organization has several things.
A clear understanding of their purpose, their goals, their scope, and who ultimately is charged with decision making, strong and engaged. Senior sponsorship, as well as skilled facilitation. This is just one of the issues we touch on in exploring how organization design is, what nonprofits truly need to operationalize their strategy and values.
Our conversation references Jeanne's article in the nonprofit quarterly, the Missing Discipline, how Organization Design can Align and Propel Adjusted Committed Nonprofits.
We also talk about how nonprofits are too often stuck in false dichotomies, for example, flat versus hierarchical structures. Why? Too often organizations are burdened by overly complicated compensation systems, as well as slowed down by management team structures that don't really reflect how strategy actually needs to happen.
We also explore how aligning by Galbraith's star model elements, strategy, structure, process, rewards, and people, nonprofits can genuinely act on their missions. I hope this episode offers you a grounded and as well as a liberating framework for rethinking how your organization makes decisions, how people collaborate, and what it really means to design for impact.
Welcome Jeanne. Welcome to Nonprofit Mission Impact. This isn't your first time coming on the show. Welcome back. I can't believe it was back in 2023 that we had a conversation
Jeanne Bell: I know.
Carol: It was episode 69, and I know
Jeanne: Wow.
Carol: a lot of different things in your, over the course of your career, but you've kind of landed this in this space of working on organization design.
And I'm curious about what led you to that and why. Why the focus on organization design at this point?
Jeanne: Yeah. Thank you Carol. I'm really glad. I'm really glad to be back with you. You know, it was organic in the last five years of my executive leadership tenure at Compass Point, like a lot of progressive organizations, we were reconsidering our structure. We experimented a lot. We tried on Holacracy, which is a whole sort of structural model.
Then backed down from that, but kept some of the ideas of circles and cross-functional spaces. And then in, in the six years since it really hasn't stopped that, my experience of organizations that want to. Operationalize their values internally. They keep revisiting the question of design, whether they call it design or not.
They're, they're revisiting the question of structure and hierarchy and decision making. And so I've sort of organically over the last 10 years have been spending a lot of mind share there and. About almost four years ago now, I just started thinking, you know, I can't keep compartmentalizing say strategic planning or other kinds of change work from this question of design.
And since then, I have really been a student of it and a practitioner, and of course created software as well. So that's really now how I think about strategy. Actually. It's not a departure from strategy, it's strategy operationalized. I
Carol: Right, right. And I had Julian Chen on I'll have to look back to see what the episode number was, but we talked a lot about that and kind of, you know, that it's a little bit of a new concept for, for nonprofits and, cite one of one of the models that I had to cite in my comp exam for my organization development program, the STAR model from Jay Galbraith.
In your article in nonprofit quarterly the, the Missing Discipline, how Organization Design can Align and Propel Adjusted Committed Nonprofits. As I said, it's one that I'm familiar with because, you know, we spent a lot of time in one course working on it and talking about all the different things and all the different pieces and he, the, the star is five elements, including. Organization, structure, process, rewards and people, and the idea that they all need to be aligned in order for the organization to be effective. Beyond kind of knowing the model or being familiar with it, what, why do you think that's important for nonprofit leaders to kind of think about all of those five pieces?
Although we're not gonna be able to dive deep into each of them today.
Jeanne: Yeah, thank you. It's, you know, they sound so obvious, strategy, structure, process, compensation, talent. But my experience, which is now, for better or for worse, about 25 years of either leading organizations or partnering with leaders, is that we actually don't engage in the reverberation of those five things as leaders and managers.
Very often at all. And again, as I said in my intro, because of our concerns with power, with structure, with operationalizing our values, sometimes we atomize each of those things. Something like a decision making process, right? As a key process, we get really interested in moca or RACI or you know, flattening our organizations or what have you, but we don't address how that would be impacted or need impact from Well, who?
Who do we have? Who can function like that? How does that help us activate our strategies? Right? How does our compensation system allow us to get flatter if we're so stratified financially? So what, what I, what I think is that e, even though each of those star elements sounds like an obvious management.
Domain, it's actually their reverberation or lack thereof. That's hurting us nonprofits. Right? And we don't typically have a ton of expertise at the management team level. You know, people that have done four or five different approaches to compensation or four or five different approaches to structure, right?
We're kind of learning as we go. And so I think keeping the star in front of us. It helps us remember that we can't just pull something out and say, I'm gonna change our structure. We're gonna have coeds and that's gonna make us X, Y, and Z. It's like, well, but not if everyone else doesn't change and the compensation doesn't address the desired flatness, et cetera, et cetera.
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of that ripple effect
Jeanne: Yeah.
Carol: it all
Jeanne: They rely on each other. Mm-hmm.
Carol: Right. Right. One of the things that you talked about in the art article was when you come, when it comes to strategy, that oftentimes people don't have a shared definition of what they actually mean by that. I mean, I, I, you know, I feel like the word is thrown around all the time for all sorts of things and meaning all sorts of different things. What would you say is really kind of. Grounded, useful cover definition that you found when you're partnering with organizations.
Jeanne: I mean, this is one Carol where I'm gonna go to my grave saying that we've opened the doors too wide and we've let people think that strategy is anything they want it to be.
Carol: Mm.
Jeanne: And I think. Think we've done that because we wanna be inclusive, because we wanna meet organizations where they are, because we're really interested in organizational development as nonprofits, which we need to be.
And so we like to set strategies that are actually org, org dev goals not strategies. And I, personally , feel that it has really hampered us. Just a period. Strategically forget about organization design. I think it makes us weaker in pursuing our visions and missions, right? Then if you add the org design lens, it's really problematic because if you're going to actually see strategy as the driver of who you hire and how you configure them, right, and what processes they need to be successful.
If we don't have a shared definition, it it, it's obviously a non-starter, right? So both for the primary reason of impact and then because I'm really interested in org design, how we structure organizations to create impact, we simply have to have a shared strategy definition. Now there are multiple.
Useful definitions, right? But the organization, your organization has to choose one and socialize it. Right. You know, theoretically, even if you chose one, I didn't, like, if you all agreed on it and socialized it and made decisions based on it, it could function from an org design perspective. Right? So the definitions that I like, and again, I, I don't really actually think this is that complicated.
I mean, they have to do with the choices you make to create. Influence, right? Whether that influence is on a person. How do we do childcare here? Whether that person influences a system, how do we, you know, look at decarceration or create reparations or, you know, what have you, right? But we have to be able to articulate.
How do we contribute in a causal way to the thing we say we want to have happen? Whether that's the healthy development of a child you know, the experience of low income people, of producing art, you know, whatever it is. We have to be able to say how strategy is the how, how do we do it in a way that makes us think that we are causing the thing we said we wanted to happen in those vision statements.
Carol: So that makes me kind of think of a theory of change or that kind of work.
Jeanne: Mm-hmm.
Carol: I, I probably led strategic planning processes where most of the girl goals that we ended up with were ways to strengthen the organization. They really were organization development goals.
Jeanne: can't we call that an org dev plan? There's nothing wrong with that. Like, why do we have to call that a strategic plan? I'm just, you know.
Carol: And I'm curious because with that it would seem that the strategy piece, once you, you know, you work on that theory of change and you build that out, that actually probably changes less often than maybe those org development goals, process goals.
Jeanne: I completely agree. I mean, some org development goals are almost kind of like painting the bridge. You're, you're never done. Right. Once you're finished, you have to start over because
Carol: and then become an or
Jeanne: Yeah.
Carol: and then stay
Jeanne: Yeah. Yeah. So
Carol: your,
Jeanne: You know.
Carol: your reps or
Jeanne: Exactly. So I mean, even in org development, you're gonna see some, some sort of evergreen-ness, but the little things change, right?
So we wanna be stronger at measuring impact. Well, this year it might be even sharing a definition of impact. Five years from now, we might be using our own data to change models or whatever, right?
Carol: Yeah.
Jeanne: still measuring impact. But you know, I, I think I agree with the theory of change piece, what we're talking about strategy, how does the organization work?
Contribute in a causal way to the change we wanna see that is, you know, only changes when it has to. Right. And, but I would argue that over the last five or six years, this might be one of those zones where it has to. Right. I, I think that the. Sociopolitical context and just the state of thinking about how nonprofits and movements work has evolved.
Right. And so if, if we haven't revisited whether our strategies are actually causal in the change we wanna seek, we need to, right. And I would call that strategic planning, but, but, but so often we don't, you know, we focus on org, org development.
Carol: Yeah,
Jeanne: Mm-hmm.
Carol: I mean it's also important, right? I mean,
Jeanne: It's very important.
Carol: it's often what folks are focused on and what they feel like the gaps are and need
Jeanne: That's right. And it's how we experience work. Right. And so that's what we wanna talk about. But honestly, the purpose of the organization is to cause change in people or communities or systems. Yeah. I
Carol: Right. Right. One of the things that you talk about in terms of the structure piece, that that kind of is a common place that non, that organizations kind of get caught up is this kind of false dichotomy between hierarchy and then a flat structure. That if we have a flat structure, we're more equitable hierarchy, you know, is bad. Those kinds of thoughts. So I'm curious, kind of, can you say a little bit more about that and what might be an alternative?
Jeanne: Yeah, I mean, you know. Most of us at this point in our lives, if we're midlife or older, we understand contradictions, right? We understand never, never ending paradoxes, right? And so binaries almost never work intellectually or practically right? And so the binary of flat or hierarchical just doesn't work for people who've given it any.
Real thought or had any real lived experience inside organizations? I think that most nonprofits benefit from a set of people who are willing to take on more responsibility and more accountability for strategy money. You. People, right. So to be stewards, right? And, and so I, it's not, I don't find that confusing that, you know, an entry level person who wants to get involved in an issue and learn some skills.
It's not confusing to me that they wouldn't have the same accountability or responsibility or power that somebody who's dedicated 15 years to understanding that field and that organization. Right? So part of this, we kind of just need to get serious about, like you don't actually think that those two people have the same wisdom, the same accountability, the same responsibility, right?
So when we can get past that, I'll say though. You do meet people who think they do, right? I mean, you do meet people who think, no, that that 24-year-old entry level, you know, marketing coordinator should have the same strategic influence as the ed, right? That's been a real red herring, I think for, for progressive organizations, and instead to get to your point.
I think we wanna think of ourselves as designers, right? That's what I love about org design. It's not her. HR is very important, right? But org design is saying, alright, we have $2 million, we have 25 people. We're trying to co contribute causally to reproductive rights in this state, right? How are we gonna organize ourselves?
Being very clear-eyed about our skill sets, our influence, our power, right? And we can bring our values to that. We can make sure that a 24-year-old communications coordinator has access to strategic conversations, has great development and learning opportunities, and has the systems and training she needs to learn communications, right?
That's our responsibility, not to treat her as. Though she has the same, you know, influence as a 15 year veteran. So what, what, what, what that comes down to structurally for me is a combination of some kind of leadership group of those people who are willing, able, skillful at stewarding a system. Right?
Which is not everybody. It's not everybody. Right. People who are skillful at stewarding a system and then a combination of teams that are working on kind of recurring work that can be understood. Right. And then cross-functional groups that are really sense making, setting course. Seeing that almost nothing is purely vertical in a nonprofit.
Right. And so we need spaces to interpret and make sure that those teams are understanding the context in the, in similar ways and therefore making team level choices that are strategic. Right. So some kind of leadership body, again, is it co-executive? Is it a vision group? People have all kinds of names for it.
Right. But who's gonna steward the system? Teams for sure. You'll notice I don't use the word department 'cause I'm, I'm just over it. Right. I mean, it, it, it's not typically, there's actually a lot of teams inside most departments, and what we need to do is visualize the work and put the right people in the right teams, and then invite them into spaces, usually cross-functional where they can get enough influence and insight to do their teamwork in an exceptional way.
Carol: Yeah, that the, those cross-functional spaces, I feel like
Jeanne: Mm-hmm.
Carol: my, if I remember anything from that class, it was about being intentional about building those spaces. 'cause that feels like the piece that. is missing, that is forgotten. Not even, maybe not forgotten because it was never known that that was the, the most important thing I've heard.
You know, been the victim of so many reorganizations that were supposedly gonna make us more collaborative and break down silos. And of course all they did was create new silos,
Jeanne: Right.
Carol: There was very little attention paid to those kinds of cross cutting spaces. Can you say a little bit more about what you think makes what? How you might structure those, what might be some different ways to kind of integrate that into the, into the work of the organization,
Jeanne: Yeah,
Carol: look like.
Jeanne: absolutely. So a couple of things. First of all, cross-functional spaces need very strong sponsorship and what we've seen historically in nonprofits is the creation of task forces or committees that are satellite to the structure and usually. Merely defined and pretty unauthorized to execute the ideas they come up with.
That is so tiresome, right? It really is. And, and we're still doing it and it's like, please stop, please, please, please stop making a task force or a committee called, you know, equity or culture or you know, those equity and culture. If you're serious, they are fundamental to the structure of the organization.
Randomly putting six cross-functional people with no power over here and saying, why don't you guys meet monthly about equity and culture is obviously, again, like, let's think, is obviously a setup for failure and in this climate, a waste of people's time. Right. Is it really a waste of time and resources, which is also problematic when we have so much to do, you know, in our movements.
So we need an executive sponsor or a senior sponsor, somebody in that stewardship group who says, I'm accountable. I'm a coach, I'm a translator. I'm gonna make sure that this group, which we've decided needs to be in our structure. It's not a satellite, it's something we've decided needs consistent attention.
It's bigger than any one team. I will be the sponsor of that. I will make sure they're meeting, I'll make sure the conveners understand what we're hoping for. I'll attend meetings if that's appropriate. I'll interpret it back and forth to the stewardship group. So sponsorship is huge, right? And then the second thing is convener.
Like who is skillful enough? And excited enough about that cross-functional topic to facilitate that space to come up with agendas that are actually interesting to people, right? That they can, they, you know, be clear on their charter right, to activate the work that's been assigned to it. Right. So I, you know, long and short of it is we've gotta put the right people, stewarding it, we've gotta have the right people facilitating it.
And then finally, we have to be explicit about the decision making and or recommendation making authority of that group. And one of the things I, I really wanna emphasize is recommendation making is actually what many, many people and groups are doing. And when we try to call it decision rights, we're tripping ourselves up right from the jump.
Because if you have a stewardship group that has veto power on anything significant, then technically what you're really saying is equity. People in culture, cross-functional groups, please, you know, do the annual staff survey, interpret it, recommend to the stewardship group, changes in policy or benefits, but you don't get to decide.
So don't even pretend that that group,
Carol: because that
Jeanne: right, because that's just so frustrating and, and really,
Carol: disempowering and, and
Jeanne: It's performative.
Carol: and, and it, and then people doubt.
Jeanne: That's right.
Carol: instead of, instead of creating the outcome of, you know, engaging people and getting them excited about something, it has the opposite impact because folks
Jeanne: demoralizing.
Carol: Yeah, it's demoralizing.
Jeanne: Yeah, and, and honestly if you wanna be political about it, I think the recurrence of that experience has led to more conflict, more unionization, more, you know, sort of conflict us them thinking, because you keep. Pretending that we have power and then not granting it to us. And so stop doing that unless you genuinely are going to see here's your options, or put two senior members on that group, stop assigning it to junior people if it's so important.
Right? So part of our message in design is rather than keeping senior leaders on the management team all the time, right, send them out into the system. If you're serious about people and culture, you should have some very senior people on that cross-functional group who do have the authority to say, you know, I know we can't afford that, so let's stop here, but here's what I think we could do, right?
But instead, we set these task forces up almost as if they are adversarial to the primary structure, and so they become so. Right.
Carol: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jeanne: and, and, and I mean, I've seen this, I'm still seeing it. I mean, this really started in 20 16, 20 17 as groups started reckoning with racial justice, et cetera, and this structural choice to keep doing this, we're still doing it in 2025 and it doesn't work.
And in fact, it produces very adversarial outcomes. Yeah.
Carol: Can you give another example of kind of what might be a, a focus of one of those groups and what kind of work they might do, but then, you know, in, in the realm of like the deeper work and then the recommendation. Can you just kind of, you, you kind of said one example. I'd love to have another one because kind
Jeanne: Yeah.
Carol: folks.
Jeanne: Well, I mean there, there's two things. I mean, I think there's any number of issues that benefit from that, kind of a cross-functional piece, both internal developmental issues like people and culture and programmatic issues like narrative change or leadership development, or these kinds of strategies that groups adopt.
But there's no narrative change Department, there's a comms team and there's. People doing programmatic work, right? And there's executives speaking to the media, but, if we haven't actually identified what do we mean by narrative change? What narratives are we addressing, right? That's typically done by a much more cross-functional group because it's very heady stuff, right?
You need people from the program. You need people from the executive, right? So I just wanna make sure people hear that there's a lot of extra strategic work in nonprofits that's not appropriate for. Only a functional team to be responsible for or, or creating on their own. Right. And that's what causes conflict, because as soon as comms attempts narrative change, the programmatic leaders go, whoa, that's, that's not what we're seeing in the field.
That's not the language we would've used. That's not the case study. Right. So that's where a lot of conflict comes in, because we don't have that interpretive sensemaking learning directional cross-functional spaces. In terms of recommendations, I mean. I think it's true in resource development. I think it's true in budgeting.
I think it's true in, you know, all of these choices that we say, everybody contributes to the annual budget, everybody contributes to, you know, a culture of philanthropy, right? All of these pieces need much more structure if we're genuinely saying. This group is allowed, invited to recommend changes in money, people, strategy, resources to pursue any of it, right?
We need to get really clear on what's being invited. And I wanna also finish by saying that when you get clear on that. If you're inviting a recommendation rather than that being disempowering instead of a decision. What that does, the way we coach leaders is, are you ready to receive that recommendation?
I mean, are you serious? Because we're gonna coach this group. To get really serious, to do its homework, to weigh the trade-offs, to provide you with real options, and so you better be ready if this wasn't just performative, right? If you weren't just trying to kick this issue out of your zone, right? Then you have to be ready to consume that recommendation and be transparent in how you received it, what you ultimately decided.
How we're gonna follow through, right? So it's again, because we often try to deal with these power issues by just pushing them out and saying, see, I created a task force. Anyone wanna be on it? That's not the same thing as you getting ready to say, yeah, I am open as an executive team to shifts in practice and policy.
If they're well researched and recommended, I will prepare myself to receive that information and act on it. Right? It takes two.
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. And so talking about well, let's kind of jump to one of, one, another, one of the parts of the Star around
Jeanne: Sure.
Carol: And some, some things that you think get in the way. You know, I think some of those things that you just mentioned that might be studied and then recommended around, you know, changes to the way people are compensated.
And I mean, one of the things in the article was you're talking about the kind of this model that we've borrowed from the for-profit sector of a kind of market-based compensation. And I, I have another episode with the a about, you know, equitable compensation and the, and the, the real deep thinking about that.
But I'm curious about some of what they are. Things that you see getting in the way in terms of rewards that we've set up that maybe we didn't intend, or
Jeanne: Yeah, this one's big.
Carol: That is a little bit hidden.
Jeanne: Yeah, this one's big, big, big. And again, it sounds like, oh, compensation. Yeah. So-and-so handles that. That's not part of org design or strategy. And I would really beg to differ, right? I 'cause what we see is that our compensation models, both our index, our, our opaque philosophy about compensation, and then our actual tactics are keeping people constrained.
And how we define jobs and how we define spaces and how we define cross-functional spaces for sure. Because, you know, if you have a really high performing, you know, 3-year-old, you know, whizzbang person and everyone wants them on their cross-functional groups, well it's gonna take about 30 seconds for, you know, he or him to say, Hey, I seem to be as strategically valuable.
As the program director, why am I in all these spaces? Right? And so, and I'm not necessarily validating a, you know, a simplistic point like that, but I'm saying that the clearer we are about the levels of collaboration and emergence and so on, that we talk about, then we gotta be ready to pay people differently.
And recognize that we don't necessarily have five wildly different skillsets in this organization. We have levels of experience and accountability, but, and those are very important as I mentioned earlier, but we may not have us. Seven x difference, and we may not need all of this administrative garbage that it takes to maintain and rationalize that you're a step 3.5 and you're an associate, you know.
Blah, blah, blah. Again, I'm talking about in, you know, progressive, typically knowledge-based organizations. It's not working and it's consuming so much energy and it's also keeping people in verticals that they don't wanna be in, especially middle and junior people, right? And, disincentivizing collaboration, which I think is where we need to be for almost all core justice strategies.
Right.
Carol: So say more about how, you know, for example, something as prosaic as job descriptions get in the way of that.
Jeanne: Yeah. I was at an organizational design conference that Julian, your other guest, was at too. And I can't remember the person who said this, but very provocatively. One of the presenters said, you know, what happens if we just let go of this model? Right? And again, you know, the job description model, right, comes from a very mechanistic vertical, you know.
Performative kind of assumption that each job is different and each, you know, and you can only do this, and I'm only asking you to do this, and you don't have to listen to anything else. And of course what happens is when you enforce that kind of culture and then you invite people to the cross-functional table, they're like, that's not my job.
Carol: job.
Jeanne: Right. Even though they ask to be at the table. Right. So you're creating that, those conditions. Right. So, I mean, you know, I, I'm not in a place where I wanna say no job descriptions, and no, I'm not, I'm not saying that, but I, I would say that. For an average, you know, again, justice oriented nonprofit that's, you know, under 150 people.
I'd be surprised if you really needed more than four. Compensation bans. Right? And that those bans could be transparent. Maybe not the number within the band, but you could say our floor is a living wage. We're in Milwaukee, that is $70,000. And you know, that's our floor. You know, level one is 70 to 85, level two is 80.
I mean, so again, there's lots of room between. Everyone's salaries are on the board, you know, on the wall to what we have now, which is just creating so much administrative overhead, frankly, that I don't think is producing satisfaction for individuals nor the kinds of design choices we actually wanna make.
Right. So I would, I would just, my bottom line advice is compress, you know, elevate the floor. And I'm not the only one saying this. Right. Elevate the floor as high as you can because this is an unaffordable country. Right. Compress a And then I wouldn't focus so much on every different type of job that needs to be in a different band.
I'm not so interested. That's, that's what we mean by market based or what is a mid-level comms career pay. Really. I mean, you know, like you're a mid-level in this 75 person organization that pays 85 to 99 and you know, like, I, I just think we can greatly simplify it.
Carol: And I feel like sometimes, you know, folks go to things like job descriptions and and that compensation because it's been so, because decision making has been super murky or,
Jeanne: mm-hmm.
Carol: Because it's been very, like, who happens to be your boss? All the, all of that group gets paid more because that person's boss is a super, really strong advocate. And you
Jeanne: There's no doubt about that.
Carol: systems then are kind of the answer to those things. And then as you're saying, they bring their own challenges if you go too deep and I guess make it too, Get, get too down into the nitty gritty or try. Yeah, I think it's that kind of pretending that each job is so specific. And the other thing that I appreciated in the article was this notion that, you know, pretending that each person is kind of doing these things themselves. I mean, yes, you do your own work, but almost, you know, you're always dependent on other people in the organization to get something done. Rarely are, do you have something that you're beginning from here to the end without some kind of interaction and collaboration with others?
Jeanne: That's right. I mean, especially in knowledge work writ large. And, and so the faster we admit that and celebrate it, the more we can let go of some of these false differentials between people, right. And be much more creative with our design. Because right now we're basically saying, oh. She's only an associate.
You, you can't make her do this or you can't invite her into this. And it's like, but what if she's the best person for it? And what if that would be divine for her? Because that's exactly what she wants to learn and she's intrinsically motivated. Instead, you have the senior person in there going, oh, I don't wanna do this again.
You know, like those choices should be more available to us. Right?
Carol: Right. You could have that senior person then be her mentor or
Jeanne: Yeah.
Carol: as
Jeanne: You bet.
Carol: it's a,
Jeanne: bet.
Carol: different way of, of organizing. I think that the piece that people think about with design is structure. Are there particular things that you think or maybe we've talked about it in terms of the silos and the, and the cross-functional spaces. Is there anything else that you would wanna say about structure that you think really trips organizations up?
Jeanne: I do, I, one thing I wanna say is that by and large, management teams don't work. Right. And we, and, and, and so again, we know this and we keep doing it. And this relates to the compensation, the, see what I mean? You can't, the part of the reason we keep doing it is that executives think without even thinking it, it's just in the water.
That everyone who reports to me makes the most money other than me and should be in some group together. Why, why? And that's why management teams don't handle strategy well. Because half the people in the room are not doing program work. Right. And I'm not saying that finance isn't part of strategy and that people and culture isn't part of strategy.
But you get my point, right? If, if there's some coalition thing that needs to be decided. And the people who aren't on the executive team who are closest to that coalition decision have to send it up to a management team that meets every other Tuesday. Half of the people in the room have never heard of the coalition, and we're waiting for that message back because the coalition thing is so important.
Just categorically it's an important decision. So that just means it must go up to the people that report to the ED who make the most in the, you know, see how it's all related. It's like, no, that's not a good decision making process about a coalition. Right? And in fact, the one or two pro management team members who know a lot about coalition work should be out in the system in some kind of partnerships and coalition table.
Smoothing the rails for this and making sure that people are experiencing strategy in real time and able to say, oh, no, no, no. Remember you weren't here, but we had a real problem when we got that far field in our movement work. So as cool as they are, we we're, we just don't go that farfield right? And, and do that right there.
Right. Be in that space with them.
Carol: And, and you talked about something different, kind of a vision group or a group that's stewarding the, I can't remember if you said well, tell me what you said. It wasn't
Jeanne: I think I said stewardship. Yeah. I mean I, you know, which is nice and well, the organization. Yeah, the organization. Right. And so listen,
Carol: So
Jeanne: Now.
Carol: Would that be different than say paint a picture for me of how that's different from your standard management team.
Jeanne: Well, I think it's additional. So what I would do is contract the management team to issues of management, which is all they focus on anyway, because those are the fires, right? Money, hiring, firing. Getting ready for the board meeting, right? Consumes 99% of most management teams, even in really progressive organizations, right?
Like this isn't a question of like, oh, that's just conservative thinking or something. No. That's what ends up consuming people's time. And so program strategy is left to sort of wither,
Carol: Mm.
Jeanne: creates a lot of conflict and confusion out in the majority of the system, right? And so. If you're gonna have a management team, that's what it is.
It's dealing with issues of corporate management, you know, budget, board readiness, hiring and firing. Great. But something else has to exist, which is how are we interpreting this climate? How are we adjusting our programmatic work, our partnership work, et cetera. And that's not. There's a Venn diagram, but it's not the identical group of people,
Carol: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jeanne: right?
And what we have is a group focused only on money and hiring, firing. And then we have all these programs out now in a virtual world trying to work in concert without, again, without any cross-functional spaces, without executive team members helping them interpret and authorizing their adaptation, right?
And that's causing a lot of conflict and drag in our systems.
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. Well, to close out this feels a little circular, but what's one question that you would wish more nonprofit leaders would ask themselves when thinking strategically about their organization organization design? So, what's one or two questions that you would have them ask themselves?
Jeanne: I mean, I think these are, these are fundamental, but the first one is, you know, in my heart of hearts. Do I believe that I have the right people configured the right way to pursue this theory of change? If the answer is no, why am I not dealing with it? And some of this is coaching, right? I mean, I can tell you that you have to deal with it, but there's reasons you're not that ha, that are as varied as, you know, as people are, right?
Conflict avoidance you know, wanting. To please everybody believing that social justice work is just a big tent, that everyone should do whatever they want basically and think, gosh, they're trying. Right? There's a whole million reasons why executives leave things in place that they know aren't optimized for strategy, right?
But I think that's actually the job of an executive director to optimize the organization given its resources to be causal. In the field or issue it's trying to. And so if you know in your heart of hearts that there's a mismatch there. I guess my question is, what are you going to do about it? Right? How do you get the support to do something about it?
I have found that organization design as a mental model is liberating because you're trying, instead of trying to tackle each of these little decisions, it gives you a way to step back and say, and answer the question I just posed. Are we designed to do this work optimally? The answer is self-evidently no.
Then let's empower ourselves to make changes. Right.
Carol: Yeah.
Jeanne: and if you let go of some of these arcane ideas about job descriptions and compensation and power, you'll have a lot more freedom to answer that question if you trust people, right? If you, if you take some of those, you know, walk around the bars of some of that traditional corporate thinking, you're gonna have a lot more options to configure people and assign them things more creatively and more powerfully.
Right? But if we stay in this, you know, corporate. Assumption about what people will and can't do. It's gonna be hard to answer that question creatively. Right. Because we do have limited resources and we do love people and wanna empower them. Okay. But let's do that optimally, right?
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. It's been a rich conversation. I'm
Jeanne: Oh yeah.
Carol: back and kind
Jeanne: Thank you.
Carol: Again. There's, there's lots and lots here that people can take away from, so I really appreciate
Jeanne: Thanks for having me, Carol.
LISTEN + SUBSCRIBE
APPLE PODCASTS ● SPOTIFY