The Human Side of Strategy: Engaging Teams in Nonprofit Work

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to The Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. Welcome in everybody to another episode of The Strategy Gap. Joining us today is Dave Parker. Dave has decades of experience in both the not for profit and for profit sectors. His work is focused on helping purpose inspired individuals and organizations forge better futures through innovation and entrepreneurship. Along the way, Dave has led the national center for Social Entrepreneurs, been actively engaged with the Social Enterprise alliance and Conscious Capitalism, and currently serves on the board of the Blue Ridge Institute.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:54]:

Dave is currently the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Evergreen Life Services where he oversees all aspects of ELS's innovation initiatives. He balances his time across key responsibilities like developing a coherent and compelling innovation strategy, cultivating a culture of creative imagination and possibilities, evaluating ideas for incubation and launch, and managing the portfolio of launched initiatives. Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave Parker [00:01:20]:

Thank you very much. Glad to be with you, Jonathan and Joe.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:23]:

Well, before we jump into really the heart of the conversation today, let's talk a little bit about your organization. We talked about it on our first call, but for our listeners and for Joe, tell us a little bit about Evergreen Life Services and its focus as an organization.

Dave Parker [00:01:36]:

You bet. So Evergreen Life Services is a. We're celebrating our 65th anniversary this year. So we were founded in 1959. It is a nonprofit organization and we have a presence in seven states. That's Texas, Louisiana, where we are founded, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida. And we focus on servicing individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That is runs the gamut to day programs, group homes, supported independent living, we help with employment.

Dave Parker [00:02:14]:

We have some initiatives where we employ folks, but our focus is on making their lives as fulfilling on their terms as possible. And our tagline is everyone matters. Great.

Jonathan Morgan [00:02:27]:

And I think it's an important way to kick off this conversation because certainly every organization is going to have things they're doing for innovation or plans, maybe on the more corporate side. Not that they're bad things. Right. But you're driven towards financial incentives. Right. And increasing shareholder value. Your organization is certainly doing some of that aspect, but speeding or not for profit. And certainly a lot of the other mission oriented aspects are very important in this case based off the type of work that you're doing.

Jonathan Morgan [00:02:53]:

So, you know, beyond that, where I want to start the conversation is in your introduction that I gave. There's a lot around innovation, but also a lot around engagement and collaboration. Very important things towards strategy and strategy execution. Unfortunately, one thing I've seen a lot of organizations struggle with on innovation execution is due to that lack of engagement, particularly when you get into those more traditional organizations that are stuck in their ways a little bit. And while innovation is important, really, it doesn't mean anything unless you can get those humans engaged in it. So I want to start with, how do you think about, kind of, in your perspective, the human side of strategy? It's certainly a big part of your organization, but also is an important aspect of strategy as well.

Dave Parker [00:03:31]:

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I think two things come to mind. One is we're probably all familiar with Stephen Covey's first Seek to Understand and then to Be Understood. The other thing that comes to mind is I might be dating myself, although it's a little bit. A little bit older than me. That heiress, the John Wooden, famous basketball coach for ucla, he said, be quick but don't hurry, which is kind of counterintuitive. And I learned the hard way over the years. I'll be 58 here soon.

Dave Parker [00:04:06]:

I learned the hard way early on because it was so obvious to me, let's just go like hell. And all the while not bringing others along and, you know, even worse, not understanding at all what I had articulated as a strategy or where we were going. So not only have you not involved me, I also don't understand what you're talking about. So obviously there's some humbling times in my history, but ultimately they were useful in that I learned from them. But what it involves is, of course, you know, looking at through the Covey lens is engaging people where they are, and everyone is engaged in strategy every single day. And so across all of our divisions, we have upwards of 20 divisions. And they're in different markets, small to large. So as large as Memphis, Dallas, Fort Worth, as small as Greenville, Tennessee, or Lake Charles, Louisiana, Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

Dave Parker [00:05:07]:

And so each one of those is kind of a different context. And, you know, the workforce that is there is typically from that area. And so to understand not just where people are coming from from a work standpoint, but understand the language they're comfortable with. I had what amounted to a really useful conversation. This was in the last year, so you're constantly learning these things, but it was engaging in a conversation around, hey, what's going on in your community? How do we define what are the best, smaller set of choices within that context. And we're about 20 minutes into the conversation and the individual said to me, it might be useful if I understood what the heck you were talking about. And thank goodness this person felt comfortable. And there's a level of trust to just be that level of candor.

Dave Parker [00:06:02]:

So this gets to the John Wooden lesson. It takes time to get that level of trust and to understand the language that we're talking about. What do you mean by strategy? What do you mean by tactics? I don't understand the language of the intellectual developmental disability industry space necessarily. I understand the language of business. I understand the language of strategy from the so called strategy experts. But until we, until we get to some kind of common understanding of what the heck we're talking about, which oh by the way, is a nice thing for just human beings to do, never mind to make professional progress until we get to that point, we really can't have a productive conversation. And so two things happen. One is we are going to have more of a sort of in that dimension of productivity, a more productive conversation, but we're also going to be feel better as human beings trying to do good things in service to the organization and then of course in service to the world.

Joe Krause [00:07:03]:

I think you touched upon a couple of key points that our listeners typically grapple with, which is how do we prevent for people stumbling into the room not really knowing why they're there or what's being discussed? It happens all the time. And the importance of pre reading and sending out materials, that was important. But the other topic that I see pretty much on a daily basis because of my work with clients to this day is they're about to have their strategic planning retreat where they're going to make their plan and they really labor over the idea of who to involve. So you have 20 divisions. Is it one person per division? Are there key staff in each division that we need to include additionally? Okay, that balloons the meeting up to now 40 people. Because if we allow two from each division and it becomes a situation where they usually air on the side of less is more. So how do you create your guest list so that the strategy that's being created gets the amount of voices needed to make it a viable plan, but not so many voices that nothing gets done. Like what's the happy medium there to make that a reality?

Dave Parker [00:07:55]:

Yeah, so we're still calibrating that, but the way we're approaching it is because you're absolutely right. We're an organization of 2,000 people and kind of the two, two to three tiers of management are upwards of 150, 200 people. It's just not. It's not tenable. And so we're really trying to cultivate the conditions whereby every conversation could be considered strategic. It's related to what we're trying to accomplish near term, long term, it's related to something that we're doing in service to that. And so there's an opportunity for any of us in leadership positions to glean something from that conversation that we might call insight. And so that's just kind of a.

Dave Parker [00:08:43]:

Cultivating the conditions and getting to a level of understanding about what constitutes strategy has. Gets people more comfortable, understanding that these conversations are all meaningful on a regular basis. And so throughout the organization, there are regular conversations, meetings, if you will, that happen on the more local level. So the leadership and Greenville, Tennessee, for example, is speaking to their state lead, who's speaking to the regional vice president. And those are regular conversations that are happening on a kind of a siloed level. But then we also are cutting across. So the idea being that the leadership at those different levels brings that insight to the conversations that we might have as a senior leadership team on a quarterly basis and then of course on an annual basis when we plan for the next year. So the idea is the insight is always coming and we're revisiting it or discussing it often enough that it doesn't become stale or useless.

Dave Parker [00:09:47]:

So that's one area. The other area is we're having deliberate conversations horizontally. So for example, one of my roles is to have conversations at the kind of middle management level on a regular basis. And those conversations really are kind of a form of guided interview. I'm not necessarily asking specific strategic questions, but it's just a conversation, kind of like we're having now. You know, what's happening in your world, what's most keeping you up at night? How about your folks? What's going on with them? What input, insight are we getting from the folks that we're serving and the parents and guardians of the folks that we're serving, the other stakeholders in the community, you know, what are other providers doing that is kind of makes us nervous or something that we could maybe look at to apply? And so then what I'll do is occasionally get that group collectively together and say, hey, here's what I've been hearing from you folks. Here are the top things. Am I right? Am I wrong? What's missing that helped me improve this? And so to the extent that's happening, like once every six weeks, and this takes a little bit of time, but doing that once every six weeks, we kind of current check on where folks are and then we're able to accelerate if something's really kind of urgent when we meet, say on a quarterly basis with the senior leadership.

Dave Parker [00:11:11]:

So we just kind of chunk it up and two things happen. One is folks feel involved and engage. And two, we are able to, on a kind of a regular rolling basis, have insight that's critical to make adjustments to this strategy in the moment. But then also we've got current good insight when we go to do our annual kind of planning retreat that plans for the next year. Does that help?

Jonathan Morgan [00:11:40]:

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And you may have just answered my next question with some of the strategies that you were talking about, but earlier on you mentioned that people are doing strategy every day. I think that's a great perspective to have. But I think a lot of times you hear in organizations, particularly frontline employees are like, why am I going to do the strategy? I am so busy with day to day aspects. I'm trying to make sure my patients are safe and fed and getting the services they need that I don't have time for this so called extra stuff. How do you change that mindset where you can instill in people that no, no, you're doing strategy every day? This is part of what we're doing to achieve our strategic objectives?

Dave Parker [00:12:14]:

Yeah, again, I think it comes down to human conversation and kind of a common language in the course of a given day and providing services to a group home or individuals. Stuff happens, stuff comes up, something isn't going quote, unquote to plan. This day is abnormal for these reasons. And so the leadership in that territory, in that division, in that group home has to make a decision. And that decision is within a number of decisions they can make against that particular issue that to solve that problem, whatever it is. And so that's a strategic choice. And so it's not so much an extra burden in that framing is in fact, you are a strategist and you know, feel good about that. You're a leader in that respect.

Dave Parker [00:13:06]:

And so the idea is that they feel empowered. In fact, they are strategists. Most people don't walk around thinking that they're strategists. And so in fact we need increasingly across industries, at least in my observation, we need people that are good critical thinking in the moment, the problem solved and that, you know, that fits enough within the sort of amalgam definition of strategies, as you might see. So it's it's less of a we're adding more onto you. It's recognizing you for what you already are. And then of course, enacting that decision is more of a tactical question. So I think, I think of it that way as opposed to adding something else onto that.

Dave Parker [00:13:49]:

Now, the jury might be open in a particular instance how someone feels about that. And that's where the feedback loops come into play. Let me ask you, director, is this working for you? You know, we've been about around the bend for the last 18 months with this. Tell me how it's going, what you say, how is it being received on your end or perceived within your team?

Joe Krause [00:14:10]:

It helps because, I mean, most of the time when we're thinking about our labor strategy, it's like, you know, who's on our team? Who's, who's the best we have? Who do we make sure we keep a tight hold on to make sure they never leave are the folks that maybe are embodying the strategy to the point where they're like, yeah, I have my day job, but I also care about this place so much that I'm going to take it to the next level in terms of making the strategy that you're asking me to do, making it something that I just do and that I model. And it really helps to understand your next layer of management, who's going to come up from the ranks and who can be an asset. And so a lot of people struggle around succession planning and a good fertile ground for knowing who those people might be would be the ones that are truly just running with this and are critical thinking and you're giving them an opportunity. So I think that was helpful insight.

Dave Parker [00:14:50]:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's kind of a dynamic and obviously most things aren't binary, but there is kind of gradations between just tell me what to do, tell me what to do and I'll do it. If you introduce to me that's out of the norm, I'm going to turn and look at you and say, hey, you know, Joe, tell me what to do as opposed to, you know, maybe take some initiative. Now some of that gets to again, cultivating the conditions that please take the initiative that you're not always going to be right, but we trust your judgment enough. And that takes some time. Especially in a dispersed organization that is really tradition bound. The older you are and the more dispersed you are, sometimes, you know, we can get into a dynamic of, well, this is the way we do it in Oklahoma. This is the way we do it in Louisiana, this is the way we do in Texas.

Dave Parker [00:15:42]:

But trying to create the dynamic where across the board there is the belief in you as an individual, as a professional, as a strategist, whatever terminology we might want to use, equipping you, of course, but then believing that because you care about the work that we're doing, about the mission of the organization that we entrust with you, being a leader, to step into that role. And I do want to, I mean, there is, you know, non profits by definition are subject to and in service to the overarching mission. But I see the same dynamic done right within my for profit counterparts. To care so much and believe so much about the organization, what we're doing, of that mindset.

Jonathan Morgan [00:16:28]:

Yeah, I want to build off the decision making part of the conversation that we're going on here because I think most organizations, I think we're past the days, at least in this conversation of hey, we've built the plan and it's, you know, set in stone and we're not going to change it at all. But you know, getting to that process, we're having to change up what we're doing and how we're doing it is still a big challenge for organizations. I think you can implement certain processes and equip certain leaders to say, hey, here's the decision criteria we go through, here's a matrix we use or here's a scorecard we use. But as you start to expand out, I think particularly in an organization like yours, it's not a simple organization. Right. Things are matrixed together. One decision impacts another, impacts a person, impacts a region, impacts our competitors or the competitors impact us. How do you break down something that's a complicated matrix system like that to make sure that you're still thinking about that human aspect and keeping people engaged through part of that strategy, Particularly when it's not you making the decisions every time.

Dave Parker [00:17:26]:

Yeah, I might come at this a couple of different ways. One is in the different regions where we are, there are different competitive dynamics and there might be different urgency with different aspects of what we're trying to do. Like for example, Texas right now, there's urgency around getting the legislatures to change their approach and their thinking about providers of services like ours. And so the strategy there is going to be very tailored and that is more of a kind of a top down strategy, big strategy kind of element. Whereas in Tennessee it's kind of a different dynamic. I mean, the markets are distinct enough and each, you know, again, you know, Nashville and Memphis are bigger markets But Knoxville, Chattanooga and Greenville are vastly different and we have a different mix of services in different markets. So, you know, striking that balance between something that's hyper tailored and emergent from that context, but at the same time consistent with the macro strategy of the organization. And they kind of support each other.

Dave Parker [00:18:45]:

So that requires a kind of a different level of agility. It also means that what we're tracking and measuring might be different. So the objectives that we're measuring against in Texas, in Louisiana, say, might be more oriented towards reducing loss, whereas in Tennessee it might be, let's do more of this. And so one of the decision frameworks that we use, that the framework is useful in that it's objective and everyone can kind of understand it. But the real magic of it is the constructive tension in deciding where things plot on that matrix. And the matrix is, we call it the mission money matrix. Everything that we do, whether it's a program or services, but let's just stick with programs and services. Everything that we do costs something.

Dave Parker [00:19:39]:

And everything that we do, again whether it's a product or service, is designed to produce a result that we desire. From a mission standpoint, you know, that's quantitative and qualitative, that are measures in there. And so, you know, deciding all of the elements around that involves a group of people making that decision. So it's not just me producing, hey, here's your scorecard, love it or leave it. But it's deciding together what that scorecard is, which takes time. So already when you get to kind of that decision matrix, you've involved people in that, you know, this is going to be the way we approach it. But then you get into, okay, how do we understand the data and insight so we can make a collective judgment about where it might plot on the mission money matrix. And so, you know, everything's going to be to some degree have huge mission impact of result or less.

Dave Parker [00:20:40]:

So everything's going to have, you know, it's going to perhaps generate a surplus which is good or be in the red. And so, you know, if it's in the red, does it have enough of a mission impact to warrant the mission investment? And so we've got a construct that we all agree with that sort of reduces some of the complexity being in a mission organization. And so there are elements on two side, human elements, human conversation on two sides of that matrix discussion. The matrix provides the objectivity, but there's human participation in creating the matrix and then there's human participation. And plotting on the matrix doesn't mean we're always happy. But everyone, if we have fidelity to the process, everyone walks away understanding the decisions that have come from the process. Did that answer your question? I kind of took a long way around the barn there, I think. Jonathan.

Jonathan Morgan [00:21:41]:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I haven't heard that mission money matrix. That's going to be a, a new scorecard there I'm going to think of for the future.

Dave Parker [00:21:48]:

Yeah, I'll send it along to you. It's. I mean, there, there are variations of it, but I'd be interested in what you think of it. But it does provide can kind of. Because where you are talking about human lives and when you boil away the particulars, you know, the nonprofit organization is about love of humanity. And if you're talking about love, how do you measure that? How do you calculate that? And so at the same time, you've got to make traction against certain results that we all desire and that that can be a constructive tension. And so again, you know, I use the word, the phrase cultivating conditions to make sure that it's constructive and to make sure that tension is there. I think part of a leader's job is to make sure that there is constructive tension.

Joe Krause [00:22:36]:

Ex. And you're just going to have a plan that's too big to ever get executed and it doesn't align with anything. So makes sense. And you know, another topic you're bringing up is something that we discuss every day with our clients too, is the idea of top down versus bottom up. And it sounds like, and I, I do, I'm firmly in this camp as well, is that you have an organization with a mission, vision, and values that has to be the lead in terms of, like, what are we focused on and what are our goals? What are we like, what does good look like in each of our focus areas? But then to engage each of your different markets to say, I need you to help me with your measurements and your projects because we need to understand what success will be evidenced by in your market. If our goal is X, the evidence of that happening in your market is potentially going to be different. So you may measure it differently, like you mentioned. And that's helpful because they have to be guided in some way because the plan has to show them that we could be focused on 50 things, but we chose these four.

Joe Krause [00:23:25]:

I need you to really think about your projects on that matrix there. But I'm going to leave it up to you to say what measurements are you going to use to show that you are progressing and which projects you're going to use to Move the needle, so to speak, on your various KPIs. So do you find that that's a, an easy concept for people to really grasp in terms of like having that ownership over that part at the bottom, so to speak, the bottom's up. Or do you feel like you have to provide more guidance? Because it's a question.

Dave Parker [00:23:51]:

Yeah.

Joe Krause [00:23:52]:

How much guidance? It's not your plan anymore, it's mine.

Dave Parker [00:23:55]:

Yeah, it varies. And I will say we're taking the second turn of the flywheel, so to speak. So we've instituted an approach in the last couple of years. So we're going around the bend again. And a lot of it is just, again, a lot of the first go around was to get some commonality around language and to go around together to develop that kind of not just cadence, but sense of trust and to take the time to do it right. And by that I mean the process as opposed to we're not going to get everything right as far as what comes out of the process. And that's a part of it being part of the dynamic. The other thing we've been doing is we are having those regular conversations.

Dave Parker [00:24:39]:

So every month we have a conversation around across the key strategic priority goals, the key objectives under there, we have a conversation around them. How are we doing against these objectives? Is the strategy, the key strategies, are they working? If not, why not and how can we help you? What other resources do you need? And that's a cross section of folks that are engaged in that conversation in support of the domain lead, if you will. And so it's just continuing to iterate, if you, if I can use, use that somewhat overused word. And I would expect that if we were having this conversation this time next year, it will be different enough as to be notable because we'll have sort of jiggered with it a little bit more. So we're starting with a kind of a template, but we need to tailor it to our organization and borrow from other templates to make it something our own. But something that you, Joe and Jonathan would recognize in the roles that you are, you'd reckon, okay, there's coherence here and there's a set of indicators that any reasonable person could say you're able to tell whether or not you're making progress against those.

Jonathan Morgan [00:25:55]:

Yeah, and I think honestly that's a great takeaway for our listeners really to surprisingly to close out the conversation because we're already getting close to the end here. But what people may think is this set in stone process or oh, I have to use the balanced scorecard or I have to use a strategy map or whatever the case may be. It's no, you need to fit what mixes in with your organization into how you kicked off the conversation, meet your people, where they're at. Whether it's aligning the financial aspects with the mission, whether it's doing the financial aspect with the goals of the organization or an aspect of what you're looking to achieve for your people, or something entirely different. It doesn't have to be this proven out method. It's hey, figure out what's important to your organization, what's important to your people and build a strategy that overall meshes with that, that then enables you to achieve your results. I mean, it sounds simple saying it, but obviously it's more complicated than that. But be flexible.

Jonathan Morgan [00:26:47]:

Coming up with your own thing is my point there.

Dave Parker [00:26:50]:

You're 100% right. And then there's some pride of ownership. You know, the individuals have kind of co created a process that we all have had a say in and you increase the odds that folks will feel good about it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:27:03]:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dave, appreciate all the insights in today's conversation. I definitely learned a lot. As we close it out, just going to go to our final question that we ask all of our guests and that if you were to think back on your career and strategy across your different roles. Not for profit, for profit had to go back and give younger Dave Parker a piece of advice. What would that advice be?

Dave Parker [00:27:23]:

Tough to contain it to one domain, but it's be comfortable with and eager to say, I don't know because there's no way any of us could know it. All of it certainly. But know something fully enough to say, I'm certain of this. And I think it does two things. Not only is it true, secondly, it invites people into the conversation to share what they think or what they know and what emerges out of that. Conversations can be so much more useful and perhaps even magical because we've come at it with a sense of curiosity and inquiry instead of certainty. Boy, if I'd have learned that when I was, you know, 35, I think I could have done a lot more good work to the extent I've done good work up to now. Good question.

Dave Parker [00:28:12]:

I like that question.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:13]:

Yeah, no, I love the answer. I think most people will espouse by the hey, fake it till you make it. But now you're saying, hey, just be honest, you don't need to make it by faking it. Well, Dave, we appreciate the time today. Looking forward to catching up, hopefully a year from now to see how things are going. And we'll talk soon.

Dave Parker [00:28:29]:

Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.