9 Steps to Guarantee Growth by Focusing on Culture

It was about six months into my tenure as a nonprofit CEO when staff was stressed beyond capacity trying to double the size of our event series and launch a brand-new program at the same time. Leadership team meetings stretched to three hours, and we weren’t coming out of them with direction. It was an exhausting time. 

Things needed to change. I went downstairs from our office to a local bookstore and picked up as many books about management and leadership as I could possibly carry. I remember feeling guilty spending so much time on enrichment rather than in direct contact with cancer patients or rolling up my sleeves to help work on our current projects. 

We had a terrific strategy and had pioneered new fundraising mechanisms but all of them would have failed without building the right culture first. What resulted over the last 10 years as a nonprofit CEO, my organization received awards for its culture, but, more importantly, our annual budget grew 500%, and we increased annual federal funding for prostate cancer by $30 million, bringing 25 new treatments to patients. 

We did it all with culture. Some organizations dismiss the importance of culture in the success of a team and others will say something like, “We have a committee that plans pizza parties on Fridays.” They then call that culture. Organizational culture is a collection of practices and behaviors that guide our experiences, beliefs and actions. Organizations that are fully aligned on culture have 316% greater revenue, according to a Stanford University and Culture Partners report, while a Glassdoor survey shows more than half of employees consider the culture more important than salary. 

Here are nine steps to remember when building or rebuilding the culture at your highly aligned, dynamic organization. 

1. It All Starts at the Top

No one is going to implement culture and communicate its importance besides the CEO or executive director. Some leaders will delegate this responsibility in favor of staying external but without fail, staff will always look to the leader to learn the importance of an initiative. The leader sets the tone and there are no days off from setting an example.

2. A Bundle of Sticks Is Unbreakable

It was in one of those books (“Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek) stuffed in my arms that explained it is the responsibility of every leader to create an environment where staff feels: 

• Safe to innovate and not fear retribution for their ideas.
• Inspired to do work that inspires them.
• Fulfilled at the end of the day when reflecting on their jobs. 

We do this by doing things like responding positively to feedback no matter the message and saying things like “I appreciate you because you make our cause stronger.”

3. Values

Here’s a challenge: Look up the values of any company or organization. Chances are that its set of values fall into one of three categories: 

1. There are too many (a half dozen or more). 
2. They are values, like “honesty” and “trust.” These should be everyone’s core values. Who has an organization and says, “Hey, let’s not worry about trust”? 
3. They’re just marketing buzzwords, like “ideation” or “disruptor,” etc. 

A successful culture is dependent on having no more than three or four values that are internally facing to give context to staff about expectations and how success will be measured and rewarded. For example, “humility,” “hunger” and “empathy” sketch out a clear picture of the type of people you might want on your staff. Someone who is team-orientated, takes initiative, and understands how their words and actions impact others is likely well-equipped to help make everyone else around them a better person. 

4. Create a Cohesive Team

Build vulnerability-based trust where your team feels comfortable admitting mistakes and easily lends genuine support to one another. When teams can build a level of trust that we typically find in a family member or a friend, they will openly disagree with one another then agree to commit on decisions and hold each other accountable (or call one another out) when necessary. 

For example, the marketing director and advancement director should have each other’s backs, talk about why a fundraising campaign is not working, and align and buy into a potential solution much more quickly. 

5. Communicate Effectively

Half of the population has been divorced. The root reason in most cases is because one or both fails to have healthy conflict or hold themselves or the other person accountable. Another great book (“Radical Candor” by Kim Scott) nails how to have healthy conflict. The key is to find the balance between challenging someone directly and caring personally for them. 

For example, saying something like “I can see that you really love this cause as it comes out in everything you do, but if we try to make each of these fundraising appeals perfect, then we’re not going to be able to raise as much as we hoped.”

6. Communicate Clarity

Who remembers the movie, “The Incredibles”? The famous line I’m thinking about is “I’m going to make everyone super because when everyone's super, no one is.” The same thing is true about priorities, and one of my favorite questions to ask leaders and teams is “What’s most important right now?” 

We get caught up in the adrenaline rush of trying to make the world a better place and to make good on the commitments we’ve made to our staff, supporters and stakeholders. This is different from a mission statement or keeping a certain idea as your North Star. Asking “What’s most important right now?” or saying “If our team doesn’t figure this out right now, we will have failed.” brings clarity and alignment to the team on what is the one realistic and achievable accomplishment that needs to be made ahead of all others. 

7. Build Alignment

We’re hard-wired for bias. There’s one that’s called the fundamental attribution error that causes people to explain someone’s behavior based on personality rather than influencing factors. 

For example, we might say “Michelle is always late because she doesn’t care about her job.” when the real answer may be for reasons we don’t take the time to understand. 

The same is true when communicating. We live in a world where we say something once and say it in a way that we expect others to completely hear and understand it. Teams that have the patience to say the same thing — sometimes as many as seven times — and in different ways are far less likely to make mistakes and allow something to fall through the cracks or duplicate efforts.

8. High Freedom and High Responsibility

This culture philosophy has gained some popularity since the pandemic. Netflix popularized it but it’s about removing controls and rules in favor of context while giving staff the responsibility to self-govern their work. As staff enjoys more freedom, they act more responsibility and act in the organization’s best interest. As staff acts more responsibly, management can feel confident in giving more freedom. 

As CEO, I jettisoned travel policy, time-off limits and end-of-the-year reviews. If I trusted staff to do critical work, like fundraising, helping patients, and managing payroll and benefits, I could trust them with making the best decisions on spending money and using vacation time and I could give real, in-the-moment feedback. Over all of that time, no one ran off with the company card on a month-long trip to Bora Bora.

9. Make Meetings Interesting

If the cliche is true that we spend most of our awake hours with our colleagues, then we’re spending most of that time in a meeting with them. There are too many meetings and to counteract that, there’s the trend of having a meeting free workday once per week. And we’ve all heard the saying, “This meeting could have been an email.”

As leaders, it’s our responsibility to let staff opt out of meetings if they want (see point No. 8), and to make meetings interesting and engaging. One of the best ways to make meetings interesting is to not have an agenda. 

I learned this from a meeting I had with former Ford CEO Alan Mulally. His global senior leadership team made an agenda in real time during the meeting. The idea is to have a thematic goal, like increase fundraising or rebrand the organization (see tip No.6), and have each team member report on their part by assigning a color — red, yellow or green. Only the “red” issues go on the agenda.

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.