Transcript
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Everyone is busy, especially if you are a nonprofit executive director.
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I'm pretty sure I've never heard a nonprofit leader say you know, I really don't have that much to do.
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So if we're all busy, wouldn't it be a good idea if we learned how to be the most productive that we can possibly be with our time Today on the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership?
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We are going to tackle that and we are going to learn about being busy versus being productive Welcome to the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership.
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I'm Tim Barnes and I'm Nathan Ruby.
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Well, nathan, I got to ask are you having a productive day?
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Well, you know, hey, tim, and you know I've had a pretty busy day.
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You know lots of things going on.
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However, I have seen flashes of productivity here and there.
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So, yeah, I'm having a pretty good day.
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Well, I think I say this every time we do a podcast, but I'm excited about today's topic and I think oftentimes I say that because we bring topics that we ourselves are wrestling with in our organizations or in our personal lives, and it's always a good reminder that, as nonprofit leaders, we do important work.
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Leaders, we do important work.
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We do things that impact people in such meaningful ways.
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Whether the mission of your organization reaches across your hometown or a special place in our heart for Nathan and I is reaching across the world.
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Whatever it is, what we do really matters, and we all want to be as productive and, I guess I would say also as effective as possible.
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But that can be a struggle, because it just feels like we are always crazy busy, so many things coming at us every single day, every single hour, and so this is a really important topic for us to wrestle with.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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This is a really important topic for us to wrestle with.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And for those of us who not naming any names, tim, but for those of us who may have a titch of ADD in us it can be even more difficult to stay focused and to stay on track of what we need to accomplish.
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And you know, sometimes I feel like I spent all day putting out fires and I feel like I've really had a great day and it was full, the day went by really fast and I just, you know, it was such a good day, but then, when I really think about it, all I've got to show for it is a whole lot of smoke, you know, for putting the fire out, and but I haven't really moved us closer to, to, to, to achieving our mission.
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I haven't moved us forward and so, yeah, so that is the topic for today and I'm excited to get into it.
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Yeah Well, and I'm sure if you're listening you're probably thinking, yeah, this sounds like stuff I'm wrestling with.
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So, if it is, stick with us, let's dig into the idea of what does it mean to be busy versus productive?
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You know, we should start this recording about a half hour before we actually do, because we have so much fun talking back and forth.
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There's so much going on in our studios as we prepare.
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I mean, you can go to Barnes and Noble, you can go to Amazon, you can go to wherever, and find one gazillion books about productivity and we're not going to be able to answer every question, right, but we are going to do something and maybe you can let us jump in and tell us kind of where we're headed.
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You know what we should do, tim, just as an aside, is, we should start like an insider group, and that we should.
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We cause we filmed that or we filmed this, we record this on on video, uh, but we just do the audio version.
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We get to have an insider group and then we could film it, and then people could watch the actual video, and then we'd catch all the pre and post things that we do.
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So anyway, I don't know if you're interested in that, shoot us a note in the, in the, the note, the show notes, or there's a place that you can respond to us if you're interested in that.
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But we could do that, tim, all right, except then I'd have to, like, comb my hair, you know, before you know every show.
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And oh, wait a minute, tim, I don't have any hair.
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So I guess that's not an issue.
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All right, here we go.
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Sorry, we've been babbling on here, all right.
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So what we're going to do today is we're going to take four examples of being busy and, like Tim said, there's a gazillion different ways that we become overly busy in our daily life, both at work and, of course, in our personal lives as well.
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But we're just going gonna take four examples.
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We're gonna talk about how that is busy, or what that might look like, and then what it would look like if we did some changes and made it productive.
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So we've got four examples and then we've got some examples of in our own life of how this comes up.
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So that's what we're gonna do.
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So let's get at it.
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Number one everybody's favorite meetings.
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Now, just like Tim said, you know you go to Barnes and Noble, you could Google meetings and there's all kinds of resources out there on this, but I think it is something that comes up over and over and over and over again, and so there's a couple of different ways that meetings become busy, work Too many meetings, some organizations are created in existence to have meetings, and my younger sister came out of the academic world and in that world.
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If you're listening to this and you have spent any time in the academic world.
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They have meetings to have, meetings to set the agenda for the next.
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I mean it is unreal the number of meetings that they have in that sector, and I'm not saying they're good or bad or needed or not needing, it's just an overwhelming number of meetings.
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So that's one way is that you have too many in total.
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Another example is meetings are too long with no clear purpose.
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That would be another thing.
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And then, thirdly, some days you have going from one meeting to the next, to the next, to the next, and you felt like, oh my gosh, I had six meetings today.
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I was really busy.
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Well, yeah, you were busy, but I'm not sure you got anything done.
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So those are three examples of where meetings can become overly busy.
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Now, nathan, before we jump into what it means to be productive, I think it would be good, as you mentioned before we even started our episode.
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This is such an issue that we actually did a whole podcast on meetings and that happened.
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That was published on April 19th 2023.
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So if you're interested in going back and listening to that episode and getting more about meetings, feel free to do that.
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That's April 19th 2023.
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We'll put that in the show notes.
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Yeah, yeah, and that'll give you some more specifics on how to make your meetings more effective.
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But I think, looking out of a lens of where we are today, I think the first thing on making sure that your meeting is productive is having a very clear purpose for the meeting in the first place.
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And you know, does this issue, does this topic, does this problem that that we have that we're going to be talking about does it require a meeting?
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And, if so, who really needs to be there?
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And I, I know, Tim, that you and I have both of us they're a little different, but both of us every week, we have weekly team meetings or staff meetings with people, and that is an example of an ongoing, scheduled meeting and that has a very defined, clear purpose.
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Side of those, this other meetings that we get drawn into is you know you get a meeting request or you get an email that says, hey, you know we're having this meeting, and I think the default is okay.
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Well, it goes on the calendar and and I'm going to go to this meeting without any forethought at all is to do we really need this?
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And I know that, Tim, this is something that you're really uh, you've in the last couple of years, you've really spent time focusing on this and making sure that we even need to have the meeting in the first place.
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Yeah, I mean having a clear purpose, and I say that.
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It's easy as an executive director to get pulled into meetings, but you also initiate a lot of meetings and the question you should always ask is is there a real purpose or what is the purpose for this meeting?
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And if it's not clear, I wouldn't have the meeting and you could ask the same question.
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Someone says, like I get people who say, hey, can we meet, can I get on your calendar?
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And oftentimes the first question I ask is well, can you let me know what's the purpose?
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Why are we meeting?
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And sometimes people go, well, yeah, I just want to hang out.
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Yeah, anyway, having a clear purpose, that's a key.
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Well, and sometimes just hanging out is an okay, that's an okay, purpose, that's good enough, but it's not automatic, and I think that's our purpose, and Tim and I on this podcast we talk a lot about you'll hear the word intentional intentionality, and so making an intentional decision.
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Is that a?
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I don't know, tim.
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Do I want to say good enough purpose or is that a?
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Is that enough of a of a outcome that I do need to do that?
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Next is after purpose.
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So, yep, we've got a meeting.
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It's important.
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We really, you know, we really need to do this.
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Next one is a clear agenda, and I, I love agendas.
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Uh, I, and I'm the one to be to be honest.
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Uh, you know, I, I'm the one with the ADD.
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It's not Tim, it's me.
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Uh, and you know you may have uh, uh, uh, figured that out in episodes of listening to me, but I'm the one at the ADD, and so I have to have agendas so that I stay within the scope of the meeting.
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It is really easy for me to chase rabbit trails.
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It's shiny objects oh my gosh, I love shiny objects.
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And so the agenda helps me stay focused on what we're trying to accomplish.
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It doesn't have to be 1, 1a, 1a2, 1a2-a, it doesn't have to be that detailed, but even if it's just four bullet points, these are the four things that we're going to cover.
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These are the two things.
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Whatever it is, I think agendas will help make sure that we get in, do what we need to do and then get out.
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So agendas will help you be productive.
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Another thing is starts and ends on time.
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I think that is important for meetings.
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It helps it be productive, because you don't want to create a culture where you start 15 minutes late and then you go 30 minutes after it's supposed to end, because if you have that culture, pretty soon your meetings are going to be starting 20 minutes late, then 25 minutes late.
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Set a time, set a deadline.
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This is going to be a 30 minute meeting.
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We're going to start at one, we're going to be done at 1.30 and you start at one and you do that a couple of times and people come in at 1.10 and you're already halfway through the agenda.
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Because you've got an agenda, people will start getting there on time.
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So clear purpose, clear agenda, starts and ends on time.
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And then, lastly, making meetings more productive is clear, actionable outcomes, and this is way easier if you have a clear purpose.
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It's way easier to have clear, actionable outcomes, and so you know.
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One of the ways to do that would be to have a template, and so in that template it could be filled out after the meeting of you know what has to be done, who's going to do it, when's the deadline, when's it got to be done.
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So something like that, to where everybody, when they're walking out of the meeting or when they're signing off of the Zoom call whichever it is for you that everybody knows what they're supposed to do and when they're supposed to have it done by, and so that'll help your meetings be very productive.
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That is so important because I can't even say how many times I've come back and go now, what did we decide?
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And somebody comes back to me a week later and say oh, I'm doing excellent.
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And it's like well, wait a minute, we said we were going to do Y.
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Being able to capture the outcomes is really important.
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We can refer back to it and say, yes, we decided this so important.
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Yeah, and it even rears its ugly head at the practice of nonprofit leadership podcast, because every once in a while we have to text each other and say, are we recording today, are we recording tomorrow?
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And the other one responds uh, yeah, I think so, and so, anyway, so we're, you know we're, we're, we have our, our cause.
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We're doing this on video.
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We're actually looking at each other right now.
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So, tim, I'm looking at you and looking at myself.
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We need to do better on that, absolutely All right.
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So the productive part of meetings is do we need meetings?
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Yes, absolutely.
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We're not saying get rid of them and we're not saying don't get rid of them, or we're not saying get rid of them, but it is only productive if you come out of the meeting and everyone is clear about what the next steps are, what their role is in moving it, furthering towards your organization's mission.
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Number two emails.
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Just a quick question, tim how many emails do you have in your email inbox?
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Oh, I have tons, man, I am not.
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I'm not an inbox zero kind of person which I need to get better at, but I've got tons of them.
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Um, you know, I am the same way.
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I actually use my email as my organization, I use it as my file cabinet and uh, so I have 9 000 emails in my work email account and um, and I do that because it's really easy for me to go in and search a keyword and, whoop, there it pops up.
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So that's just how I do it.
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Now, I'm not saying you have to do it, I have.
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I have friends that uh, and people I know in the industry who you know.
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If they have 10 emails in their inbox they go into a type of a shutdown.
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They can't stand to have that many emails.
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But that's how many are on mine.
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So emails are obviously just part of everyday life for all of us, and I think here the busy example that we're going to use for this is your notification goes off.
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Your buzzer, your ding, your applause sound, whatever it is that you have for a notification, that notification goes off.
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Oh well, for me, tim, it's the vibration in my pocket, because I carry my phone in my pocket and that thing goes off and we are conditioned to respond right away.
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Right away.
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And all of a sudden, if you're getting 10, 15, 20, 25, a hundred emails a day, like a lot of us do, all of a sudden you find yourself in a state of being react, reactionary, and you're reacting to what's happening in real time as opposed to being intentional with your time.
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Um and so here's a couple of ideas on how to stop being so reactionary with your emails, and one of them is to implement a communication strategy that prioritizes important messages.
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Now, the first question that comes up then is well, what is important and what is not important?
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So is an email, tim.
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If you get an email from a board member, is that automatically important?
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Usually it makes me at least want to look at it, because, yeah, they're on the upper level of my list for me yes.
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So, board members, some of your largest donors, if their name pops up on an email, I'm with you.
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I will open it Now.
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Does that necessarily mean that you have to respond to it at that moment?
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Not necessarily.
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Yeah, not necessarily, and so it depends on what it is.
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And so it depends on what it is.
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You know, if the email says, hey, I was looking for, uh, you know, xyz and XYZ, is it going to take place for two months?
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Okay, it's probably not a priority in this, in this minute, if you get an email that says, uh, you're off the property, you know, you're at a meeting somewhere else or you're doing something else, and you get an email from somebody at your, at your location, at your physical location, and they say, um, hey, that, that Oak tree in the, in the backyard, it just fell on top of the building.
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Okay, well, that's probably a more immediate issue that needs to be dealt with and that probably gets my attention in that moment.
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Um, and so the point here is is that you just you don't have to respond to everything right off the right off the bat, just because it comes into your email, all right.
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So that's one.
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Number two for this is have dedicated specific times for email management, and I think when you, when you read this, the things I'm managing an email, when you read the things I'm managing in an email, typically you'll get once or twice a day.
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For me, I have twice a day Once in the mid-morning and once in the mid-afternoon is when I will respond to emails, and that's actually the same for phone calls and for text messages as well.
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I kind of lump that all into one.
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But typically I will give you a response the day that you send it to me, but sometimes the response will be hey, I got your email, thanks.
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I'm going to need a day to respond, or I'm going to need some time to respond so that they don't think that they're getting ignored.
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They're, so that they don't think that they're getting ignored.
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But I'm also managing my time so that I'm not spending all day just responding to everybody's need to um, you know, whatever their need is at the moment.
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So it's okay to not to respond once or twice a day, as opposed to every minute.
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I think for a lot of us, that feels really hard because we're conditioned to be responsive to what comes at us, and I think if we can really wrestle through the idea that if we manage our life by our emails, it can take us in directions that are not always helpful.
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Yes, it's important to be a good communicator.
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Yes, it's important to respond to people, but don't start with email.
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Start with what are the priorities, what are the things that are going to help your organization move forward?
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Take that next step forward today.
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Your mission has to drive you, not your email when it comes to leading your organization.
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Yeah, absolutely so, all right.
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So what is productive about handling your emails in a better way?
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And so the key here is to own your email.
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Don't let your email own.
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You have a system in place that works for you so that you're not wasting your time reacting when you should be spending your time leading your organization towards its mission.
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So that's emails, all right.
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Number three program expansion.
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I think there's a pressure, and there's there's a probably another podcast episode on this, tim um is this pressure of of growing your organization.
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And if we're growing our organization, that comes typically in growing program.
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Either we're going to add programs, we're going to expand a current program, we're going to expand into a different territory, and there's this drive, I guess, to if we're not growing, we're dying, and it will take organizations, especially smaller organizations, and it will stretch them to the breaking point.
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And so, when it comes to program expansion, you have to be really, really, really careful about growing too quickly or growing too much.
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So all right.
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So how do we become productive when it comes to program expansion?
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Well, first is carefully evaluating each opportunity against the organization's mission, strategic goals and focusing your efforts only on high impact initiatives.
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And so I think, when this comes up is is this expansion, whatever it is it's a new program or expanding one we already have?
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How is this specifically going to help us reach our mission and vision?
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And I think when you put through that lens, it really forces you to look at an expansion critically and decide is this really a good thing or not?
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I think one of the things I might push back just a little bit.
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When we think of high impact initiatives, I'm not sure what that always means.
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I know one of the things we talk about in our organization is oftentimes we look for gaps, we look for places where somebody needs to show up and then we say, well, who should show up?
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Is there resources, is there people?
00:21:48.373 --> 00:21:49.055
Is there whatever?
00:21:49.055 --> 00:22:10.247
But sometimes and this is one of the things about nonprofits sometimes we step into places that don't look like they're probably the most sexy place to show up and the most high profile, but sometimes there's a real need and we feel like we're the ones that we need to step in and do it.
00:22:10.247 --> 00:22:26.798
You still need to answer all the questions about finances and people and resources, but sometimes nonprofits need to show up in places where someone else would say, ah, you know, it's not worth our time, and we might say it's not not worth our time, and we might.
00:22:26.798 --> 00:22:29.728
We might say, well, maybe it is worth our time.
00:22:30.769 --> 00:22:46.673
Well, yeah, and, and excellent, excellent, uh, uh, pushback, tam, and, and I think, cause I'm the, I'm the one that wrote the high impact phrase and I think when it for high impact, it is uh, what's an example?
00:22:46.673 --> 00:22:50.739
Chasing money is an example.
00:22:50.739 --> 00:22:55.112
So you get a grant funder that comes in and says, hey, we want you, or an existing donor.
00:22:55.112 --> 00:23:09.224
It's way harder to do this with existing donors, where their donor says, hey, I want you to do X, and X is maybe not obviously outside of your, of your vision of your organization, your mission.
00:23:09.224 --> 00:23:38.471
If you're an animal shelter and a donor wants you to start a let's be facetious and a donor is going to give you a ton of money to start a medical clinic for human beings doing eye surgery, okay, well, that's easy to say no because that's so far outside of our, of our scope that it just, it just doesn't make any sense for us to do that.
00:23:38.471 --> 00:23:39.093
That's easy.
00:23:39.753 --> 00:23:50.105
But what if that donor, what if your, your organization, is covering a four square block section of your community?
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You know we handle these.
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You know Maple Street, elm Street, sycamore Street and Birch Street, those are the four streets that we cover.
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But now if a donor comes and says, ok, I want you to also handle a street on the other side of town.
00:24:05.592 --> 00:24:10.720
To also handle a street on the other side of town, okay, well, now, doing the same thing, all right?
00:24:10.720 --> 00:24:18.308
Well, now, that becomes much more difficult to say no to.
00:24:18.328 --> 00:24:41.169
And so, when I say high impact, it is something that lines up perfectly with your vision and mission and what you're doing, and, um, and you, just you gotta be so careful, uh, about that, and I and part of that, I think Tim is is this you know, you look at quality versus quantity and, like Tim was just talking about both, both Tim and I are, are, have international organizations, and for FATCO, we do our.
00:24:41.169 --> 00:24:49.441
Our vision is health and hope for the people of Haiti, and our mission is Southeast, is Southeast, uh, haiti.
00:24:49.441 --> 00:25:08.578
That's our, that's where we are, and so one of the things that come up to us is, you know, central Haiti or North Haiti, and we gotta be really careful that we are um, staying, uh within our scope, within our ability to do really, really good work and not get ahead of ourselves.
00:25:10.365 --> 00:25:19.796
That's a great point, and the needs that we focus on are huge all around the world and we have requests all the time.
00:25:19.796 --> 00:25:20.759
Can you come and help?
00:25:20.759 --> 00:25:23.948
Can you come and do something for us?
00:25:23.948 --> 00:25:34.237
And we have to take a real good look at it and say do we have the ability, do we have the resources, as I said earlier, do we have the people?
00:25:34.237 --> 00:25:36.027
So, you, you.
00:25:36.027 --> 00:25:39.434
The thing is you need to not just respond to everything.
00:25:39.434 --> 00:25:48.074
You need to take some time, look at it with your mission, look at it with what's in your hand and whether this is a place that you need to step into.
00:25:48.074 --> 00:25:49.675
All right.
00:25:49.797 --> 00:25:51.739
So that was program expansion.
00:25:51.739 --> 00:25:54.307
Number four leading your team.
00:25:54.307 --> 00:25:59.355
And leading your team is can be, oh man.
00:25:59.355 --> 00:26:05.652
There's just so many opportunities to to fall into busyness, but the the most.
00:26:05.652 --> 00:26:16.798
The easiest place, the simplest place for that to happen is if we start micromanaging our team members, and especially when it comes into micromanaging their daily tasks.
00:26:16.798 --> 00:26:23.433
And it is exhausting, exhausting to do that.
00:26:23.433 --> 00:26:32.694
If you want the opportunity to be busy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, then you start micromanaging your team and you'll see.
00:26:32.694 --> 00:26:34.046
You'll see what it's like.
00:26:34.366 --> 00:26:39.946
And now I know, if you're, if you're running a small shop and it's just you, you're the only employee.
00:26:39.946 --> 00:26:49.741
Well, guess what You're, you're, you're, you're already experiencing it because you already are the fundraiser and the program director and the maintenance director.
00:26:49.741 --> 00:26:53.250
You know, you're already do the HR director, you're already doing all those things.
00:26:53.250 --> 00:27:00.433
And, um, but I my my point here, our point here, is that you can't, you can't keep that up long-term.
00:27:00.433 --> 00:27:03.328
You may be able to do it for a short period of time, but it's just.
00:27:03.328 --> 00:27:10.511
There's no way to micromanage your team, whether it's staff people or volunteers, over a long period of time.
00:27:10.511 --> 00:27:17.531
And so here's a couple of quick ideas for you to, to to not do that, so you could be more productive.
00:27:17.592 --> 00:27:23.490
So one is empowering your team members through clear expectations.
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What is it that you are expecting them to do?
00:27:26.717 --> 00:27:32.273
And again, this could be staff, it could be volunteers, even contractors that you have.
00:27:32.273 --> 00:27:50.133
Make sure that they have a clear understanding of what's expected of them, because if they don't, then you may have to come back in and micromanage some tasks to get them back on track, but it was your fault because they didn't know what they were supposed to do in the first place.
00:27:50.133 --> 00:27:51.846
So clear expectations.
