Different Verse of the Same Song!

I’m sure more than a few crusty old managers tuned me out completely when I tied the volunteer work my Granny did to leadership. They’re certainly entitled to their opinions, even when they’re wrong! That said, I know all too well how important it is for each of us to get results that show up on our bottom line when we’re responsible for running a business, or even a department within a business, so I can (kinda) understand the disconnect… But if we’re going to debunk the leadership myths that take a toll on organizations in every sector, I believe we have to have a clear understanding of some of the most common leadership issues; the ones that pop up just as much when the focus isn’t solely on profitability and productivity!

I mentioned before how Cindy and I are always intentional about emphasizing that having folks report to you doesn’t mean you’re a leader, and that not having direct reports doesn’t mean you can’t effectively lead the people you interact with each day. Along those same lines, we’re often asked how the productivity and profitability concepts that I hammer apply in the nonprofit world, public sector organizations, or in churches or civic organizations. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s any real difference. I can think of very few organizations of any kind with no stated goal for serving clients or providing services. Regardless of how it’s phrased in any given sector, that’s productivity. And with the exception of our federal government, I’m not aware of many situations where there’s no requirement to stick to a budget. While that may not always be a representation of true profitability, there’s still a need for being good stewards of the resources we’re responsible for. We’ll look at each of those in more detail soon…

Before that though, I’d like you to consider a conversation I had not long after meeting a friend of mine who has been a pastor for the bulk of his career. Since John Maxwell also started out in ministry, I nearly always assume everyone in that field is familiar with him. When I mentioned him to my new (at the time) friend, he shared that he didn’t really know that much about John’s work since so much of it was specific to the business community and how it just didn’t apply to his role with his church. Before you get mad at me for even appearing to be critical of my friend, hear me out because that’s most definitely not where I’m going with this! In fact, I heard another pastor ask John directly how any of his teaching on leadership could tie back to the work he was doing in his own church. John chuckled a bit before explaining that his biggest struggle for years had been translating the lessons he had learned as a pastor into something he could share widely with the business community, and that he could tie all of it back to the Bible.

Now back to that early conversation with my friend… He mentioned that, as a pastor, his responsibility was to build relationships with and to meet specific needs of the folks in his congregation, not to make sure they were following the rules or to dictate deadlines; to which I replied that the most effective leaders I’ve ever known have taken the same approach. In my experience, the business owners, executives, managers, and even frontline supervisors who had earned the most influence, engagement, and discretionary effort from the teams reporting to them have also been the ones who had developed reputations for building relationships and meeting the needs of their teams! That’s certainly not to say that they didn’t deal with tough situations when necessary, that certainly comes with the territory, but the majority of the results their teams produced had nothing to do with a carrot or a stick. If you really think about it, what my friend was doing to earn influence with (and lead) the people in his church wasn’t all that different from what the best business leaders need to do as they run their organizations, a different verse of the same song if you will…

 Since eliminating some of the biggest misunderstandings around leadership can make such a difference in every sector, let’s look at some of the issues this can help avoid...

Impacting EVERY Organization

I see or hear something every couple of months that gets me all riled up and on a soapbox calling attention to the stark differences between managing a group of people and actually leading a team. One of the biggest misconceptions I’ve seen is that those two words, leading and managing, can be used interchangeably. I have plenty of firsthand experience watching managers who were responsible for huge facilities with hundreds of employees and hundreds of millions in revenue who couldn’t lead silent prayer. The majority of those employees only complied with these managers to keep a paycheck. And when they found a comparable paycheck somewhere else, they took it! On the opposite end of that spectrum, I’ve had the privilege of being around some incredibly effective leaders who were able to achieve tremendous results through large teams of people with no positional authority whatsoever!

If we compare the day to day results my pastor friend needs to achieve with his congregation, it can indeed be a little difficult to draw a straight line to what most of us are required to produce in a more traditional business setting. But when we look at both scenarios at a very high level, as well as any other nonprofit or civic organization, the fact remains that any of these entities need the people involved to have at least a fair amount of buy-in and engagement to reach the organization’s stated goal or purpose. To that end, each type of organization really is just a different verse of the same song!

While those folks I’ve seen working for managers who ran their organizations with an iron fist usually stuck around until they identified a better option for putting food on their tables, I can’t imagine many people showing up on a Sunday morning if my pastor friend took that same approach! Let’s be honest though, this doesn’t just apply to him and his church. I nearly threw a fat guy out of a third story window a few years ago for giving me a tongue lashing about something I had volunteered to do for a civic organization. And the same thing applies in most nonprofits and public safety roles where the employees have chosen those fields out of a passion for serving - in spite of the meager wages that come with it…

The reality in each of these scenarios, especially the ones where the participants are showing up for little or no wage, is that better results WILL be achieved when there’s effective leadership instead of someone just filling a role where they’re barking commands. That effective leadership can reduce, and often even eliminate, some of the most common issues that impact EVERY organization. I nearly always frame this in terms of productivity and profitability but I realize that’s not necessarily the focus in every sector so let’s connect those…

Connecting the Dots

As we close every single lesson we share, whether it’s in-person or something virtual that will end up on our digital platform, we challenge whoever we’re working with to identify one specific thing they can take action on immediately AND to detail the specific results they want to achieve in the process. In doing that, I nearly always take it a step further by setting an expectation for the participant to consider how their action step can increase productivity and profitability in their organization. I do that because that’s something I was held accountable to for years, which taught me just how critical productivity and profitability are even for folks in support roles like safety or human resources. All that said, I’ve seen that verbiage end up being a bit of a curveball for some folks so let’s make sure it translates to any role, even those in a nonprofit organization or for someone in the public sector…

Even after we’ve done the work to prevent anyone from falling prey to the leadership myths we looked at before and we’ve developed an understanding of how it really does impact EVERY organization, we still need to be able to connect the dots as to where or how it actually shows up. As I broke down each of the specific ways ineffective leadership and poor communication can kill profitability, I was very intentional about detailing specific costs incurred within each area. While nonprofits and many organizations operating in the public sector may not track (or even use the terms) productivity or profitability, they most certainly have responsibility for both - even if they’re calling them something else!

During a recent conversation that Cindy and I had with a friend who heads up a great local nonprofit organization, we worked to connect the dots by comparing the productivity that’s measured in basically any production environment I’ve ever been around to her team’s effectiveness in serving their clients. She had targets for the number of people each of her team members served each week or month and she had clear expectations for the quality of service each of those clients received. While they weren’t logging it on a throughput report like widgets coming off an assembly line, I made a case for how similar what they were doing really was to measuring productivity… Regardless of the specifics of the industry we’re working in, we’re all engaged in providing something to someone. When better leadership is in place, the number of people who are impacted will increase and the level of service they receive will too!

As we consider the idea of profitability, I’ll confess to being one of those greedy capitalists who believe more profit is better than less! With the exception of the federal government, I can’t point to many scenarios where an organization has benefited anyone long term without generating a profit - and I’m very willing to argue that the federal government isn’t doing much to benefit the people they’re servicing. (For clarification, the word servicing is used here in veterinary terms…) The disconnect though is in how that profitability is measured! Be it a nonprofit or a department anywhere in the public sector, there’s some kind of budget in place. Very few organizations have the opportunity to operate indefinitely with a limitless checkbook funded by other people’s money. To that end, even the feds run out of the money they’ve pillaged from us peasants - they just have the ability to print more…

Probably the best example of how profitability ties to nonprofit or public sector roles is what a lifelong friend shared for me to include as a testimonial for What’s Killing Your Profitability?:

Profitability is a rarely heard term in government service, but careful financial stewardship applies to the government just as much as business owners and shareholders. The citizens of this great nation provide their hard-earned tax dollars for the benefit of their communities, with the intention that government is managing those funds in the most cost-effective manner. “What’s Killing Your Profitability” provides critical lessons for government as well as industry! Government executives and agency heads must recognize that profitability killers have the same effect on taxpayer funds! Wes illustrates how poor leadership kills profitability which, in public service, means killing efficient government administration. From high turnover to disengaged employees to an unaccountable workforce, the lessons ring true in the halls of government. This is a must-read for every public servant!

And I can’t point to a single nonprofit that I’ve ever been involved with that this statement wouldn’t apply to! The question that most naturally follows any of this though is likely, “How does the style of leadership differ between not-for-profit and for-profit?” My short response is It Doesn’t! but we’ll work through that in more detail soon…