Powering Up Non-Profit Leadership: Reflections and Strategies for the New Year

Announcer: 0:08

Welcome to the practice of non-profit leadership, a podcast specifically designed for executive directors of non-profit organizations. With a touch of humor, your co-hosts, tim and Nathan, work to provide encouragement, insights and practical strategies to help you be a more effective leader. And now here's Tim and Nathan.

Tim Barnes: 0:32

Welcome to episode 117 of the practice of non-profit leadership. I'm Tim Barnes and I'm Nathan Ruby. Well, nathan, I know we mentioned it in our last episode, but I'm just really having a hard time believing that we are at the end of another year and another year is just around the corner 2024. Man, I remember as a kid that seemed like that was you know like so far in the universe, away from where I'm at. I won't say how old I was at that point.

Nathan Ruby: 1:01

You remember, tim, those old clocks that we used to have in school and the big, you know the big round ones that be up on the wall, and it had that second hand going around and you just watch those seconds and it's like man, that one revolution was like hours to get around. I don't know if their clocks are smaller now that they're digital or what, but man, that thing, that second hand, is just whipping around and around and around it goes at the speed of light, I don't know.

Tim Barnes: 1:30

Anyway, you know what, though? The one thing I can guarantee is that 2024 will be a year full of new possibilities. Undoubtedly some real challenges, new challenges probably for us, but plenty of opportunities to keep making a difference in our world.

Nathan Ruby: 1:49

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, as we talk about here on the podcast, leading a small to medium organization is one of the toughest, in our opinion, one of the toughest jobs out there. And you know, we got through the year. We had ups, we had downs. I know, tim and I and our day jobs, the organizations that we lead, we had some really amazing things that happened this year that you know. I don't even know how they happened, but they happened, and I'm sure you did too in your organizations as you went through year to year, and we also had some incredibly difficult things that we had to deal with. And, as we talked to people from listeners on the show that have called in and shared some of their issues, and, man, there are some. There's just some tough things that as executive directors, as nonprofit leaders, we have to deal with. And it is good at the end of the year to kind of maybe take some time and look back a little bit and evaluate what went well and then also looking into next year. And so, tim, you know, I'm just curious, how do you personally prepare for a new year? Is there any specific planning that you do and what does that look like for you?

Tim Barnes: 3:06

That's a really good question, I think. Before I answer that, I also want to just mention that. So this is our last episode of 2023. We're going to take a couple of weeks off to celebrate with our family, take a deep breath, enjoy the holidays and we'd encourage you, if you got some time off during that time, go back and listen to some of the episodes. Maybe you've missed some of that. That would be great.

Nathan Ruby: 3:29

Yeah, Tim, I'm going to leave the practice of nonprofit leadership podcast microphone behind and I'm going to spend Christmas with family and friends and enjoy the few days that's Christmas and then we're heading to the beach. We are out of here and I'm going to go spend some time with my parents and with my in-laws and hang out at the beach for a little bit and do nothing for a few days.

Tim Barnes: 4:01

That sounds really good. Well, I will tell you. You asked me a question. Do I have some? You know how do I prepare for the new year? And part of what I do is and I know this might be really hard, because I know, especially like guys like Nathan normally are like really going crazy all the way down to the last day of the year trying to get the money in and I'm like, oh, somebody will bring it in, I think. I don't know, but no, not really.

Nathan Ruby: 4:27

Yeah, I'll still be making. I may be on the beach, but I'll still be making phone calls.

Tim Barnes: 4:31

That's what I thought.

Nathan Ruby: 4:32

Yes.

Tim Barnes: 4:33

No, but seriously, I really set aside intentionally time between Christmas and New Year's to really think about to think about what's coming up next year. But you know, one of the things that I do is I have a series of questions that I go through just to think it through, and I think it includes both looking back and looking forward. And a couple of years ago I got some questions from a guy named Dicky Bush of Ship 30 for 30. It's kind of a writing. They do a lot with writing and I did a course of theirs and Dicky had put out some of what he does at the end of the year. So I got a bunch of questions for him and I'll put a link in the show notes if you're interested in that. But I start by looking back and here's some questions that I consider. One of the first questions is just take some time and write down what were some big moments or some milestones or some memories that you're taking from 2023. And just have a good look. Really savor that. I mean when I think about my 2023,. I spent a lot of time traveling this year, both for my family and for my work, and so my son moved to Seattle, so we did a couple trips to Seattle. This year, my wife and I did a big trip to Australia, which we cashed in all our miles, and so that was. It's a lot of good memories and that definitely is on my list of 2023 and just showed up in a lot of different places for my work as well. So as I'm thinking about that, I put those down and I'm really appreciating and for me, this is a huge milestone. Nathan, I made one K status with United Airlines, woo.

Nathan Ruby: 6:31

So anyway, well, when you're flying to the African continent five times a year, that kind of helps a little bit.

Tim Barnes: 6:38

Yeah, for some people it's like well, I don't care or whatever, but for me that's a big thing.

Nathan Ruby: 6:45

Hey, once you fly in the front, you just don't ever want to fly in the back again. So, yeah, you enjoy that seat up front, tim, you love it.

Tim Barnes: 6:53

We'll see, anyway, but I think it's important for you to go back and think of those moments and those milestones. What is it that you accomplished? Did you do what you said you were going to do this year? So being able to look at that is really important. I think one of the other things I talk about, too, is what brought me energy and joy this year. Sometimes we can just be so overwhelmed with the kind of work we do. Sometimes the pressures are just overwhelming and I think it's really important to think back and go hey, what gave me energy? What brought joy to my heart in the work that I was doing? Because we need to identify those things so we can make sure that those go into our plan for the coming year.

Nathan Ruby: 7:38

Yeah, Tim, I was just talking about this to somebody yesterday. I didn't even know this was. I hadn't looked at our agenda yet for today, so I didn't even know we were talking about this. As executive directors leaders we have to work in areas that are outside of our skill set. Typically, the things that we're best at, the things that we are in our skill set or in our wheelhouse, so to speak, are fun things to do. Typically, things that are not in our skill set are not as much fun. That's one of the reasons why I say running small organizations is so hard because we have to spend such a big amount of time outside of those God-given skills that we have or those skills that we've developed. You do that enough, tim, day after day after day after day after day, and all of a sudden, you get ground down. This job's not what I thought it was, or I'm not getting to do the fun stuff anymore. Yeah, I think that's incredibly important is yes, we have to do these things. There are things that we have to do because there's nobody else to do them above us, but we also have to make sure that we intentionally put in time to do those things that do bring us joy, bring us happiness, get us back in our wheelhouse so that we have time in there as well, because usually, tim, those things are also important. You can't ignore that all the time either, that's true.

Tim Barnes: 9:15

It's important because we carry so much. It is important to remember the good things and the successes and all that, the things that you were really excited about. At the same time, I do take time to identify another question. I identify what drained my energy and what weighed on me. I think it's important to be able to write those things down as well, because at some point you need to say am I the only one that should be doing that? Or is there a way that I can give this to somebody who's more gifted, who has more of a passion about it? Or I just need to think about what zapped me, what took the joy away from me, because I need to be asking what can I do about that. So I take some time and write that down as well. One of the other things I think we talked about this a couple episodes ago, but another thing that I do at the end of the year is I create a gratitude list. That is, what am I grateful for. I think that's important to do that as well. In fact, I do that every day. I try to come up with at least one thing every day that I'm grateful for. I think putting that all together at the end of the year. It puts you in a different space. What am I grateful for? What would I just be so tremendously sad if it wasn't there, and I'm grateful that I have it. Putting together a grateful list is really important. Another thing and I appreciate Dickie Bush putting this there I think this is good. He talks about creating a best of list. What were the best books you read this year? What was some of the best music you'd listened to? What about some of the activities, experiences that you had? Just creating a best of. What was the best tech you used? I don't know if you may not be into tech, but I love tech stuff. What was the best tech? What was the best software program or the best app? Maybe you enjoyed gaming. What was the best game you used this year? What was some of the best food you ate? It's the idea of just having that list to remember the best of things that happened to you this year. Then I think another question to consider is how did I grow as a person? How did I progress? How did I get better? How did I do with my habits? Did I grow in some of the habits that I wanted to implement? How did I handle priorities? Did I grow in the things that I prefer, or even in my perspective? If you keep the same perspective all the time, you're just stagnant. How do you continue to grow as a person? Taking some time and identifying that is really important, I think as well. The last two questions, when I think back over the year, is I also put down where did I fall short? You said to Gail, thought about your father, you wanted to go to your wedding, let Gail do she. All right, sorry, but you were at the same considerable number. And I heard the last person's store be able to please me. You know, maybe I had some goals that I thought that I was going to implement and I didn't even come close. But where did I fall short? Maybe there's a relationship that just went south and maybe that this year I need to go try to fix that relationship. But being able to identify some of those things is important. It's not to put a burden on you, it's not to make your life feel miserable, but you need to be honest. The point of leadership is speaking reality and we need to be real with ourselves. So where did we fall short this year? But then finish with what were my biggest achievements. So what are you proud of? What did you feel great about? And I mean, I know just the number one I've told Nathan knows this and we've talked about it on there but I mean my health this year. That was my biggest achievement, I think, where I was able to go this year. A lot of people have encouraged me with that, but it could be something in your work, in your family, in you personally. Maybe you ran a half marathon or a marathon this year. You're like oh yeah, what an achievement. But it's important, man, celebrate those, celebrate what went right for this year as well. So that's kind of taking a look back, just spending some time. And that may sound like man. I need hours to do that and you don't have to make it rock and science, you don't have to just let it overwhelm you, but it's just taking some time to simply and I would say, write it out. Don't just think about it, but actually write it out and keep it journal so that you can look at it at the end of 2024 and look at, kind of compare the two and see how things are going. So that's first thing I do is I look back. Then the second thing is I start to look forward, and this is a good first question what's the single biggest bottleneck to my growth? What's the single biggest bottleneck to my growth? What's stopping me from growing? Is it Netflix, whitter?

Announcer: 14:28

No.

Tim Barnes: 14:29

What? There's so many things and again, it's not that Netflix is bad or whatever, but what is it? Is there a habit? Is there a mindset? Is there something that needs to be addressed because it's the single biggest thing that's holding you back from moving forward and growth? So how are you going to change that this year?

Nathan Ruby: 14:54

That is a pretty scary question to answer, because if you answer that, and you answer it thoughtfully and you answer it authentically, now, all of a sudden, now the ball's in your court. If you don't ask that question and answer it, it's like, oh well, that didn't work because of that, or I couldn't do that because of that or that or whatever. But once you identify that now it's like okay, if I want to change, if I want to grow, if I want to get better, if I want to do more, then I have to fix that, which takes proactive steps on my part. Now the ball's in my court, tim, and I don't know. That could be kind of scary to have that. I don't always want the ball, tim.

Tim Barnes: 15:49

Well, ignorance is bliss right. That's the way it works. But don't we long for that for the people that we work with, the people we lead, the changes, the organization that we lead and the changes we're trying to make? Don't we want to see growth? Don't we want to see impact? And if we're going to ask those questions for other people and for an organization, we need to ask it for ourselves as well. We need to model that, and so I mean you find, if you want to cross that out, that's fine, put it aside, but I think it's the first step, as you think about 2024. It's like this is one of my top priorities.

Nathan Ruby: 16:33

I mean, if you don't fix what's holding you back, then it's kind of hard to move forward from there, right? I mean, it's probably one of it might be the most critical question you ask yourself.

Tim Barnes: 16:44

Yeah. So here's a couple please don't turn off but here's a couple of money questions. This could be good, but the first question has to do with I had unlimited resources, unlimited money. How would I invest them today to increase my time and my energy and my happiness and joy? So you could say, well, that's crazy. I don't have unlimited, so what could I do? That's a great question. If you had unlimited resources, you could just make these decisions. What would you do? How would you invest that to increase your time, your energy, your happiness, your joy? And maybe it doesn't take unlimited resources, maybe there are opportunities to step into that, but it's really important to think about what could I do to increase those things?

Nathan Ruby: 17:45

Yeah, and I think there's probably two sides of that. There's probably the personal side and then there's the work side and so many nonprofit leaders, again in the small to medium-sized organizations, they can become and I put you and me in the same category we can become. So I don't know if obsessed is the right word, but I'll use obsessed in the organization and what you're trying to achieve and accomplishing, the vision and the people that you're serving, and it consumes who you are as an individual and it's really easy to forget. Well, I really do like playing golf, or I really do like whatever painting, or I really do like X, y or Z, whatever it is, but you lose track of that because you're more worried about trying to make payroll at the end of the month or whatever. So that's a great question, both on the personal side and on the work side as well.

Tim Barnes: 18:49

Well, let's ask this other question. So we do feel like right now we have finite resources, we get a paycheck or whatever. We do so with our finite resources, do we find that we are spending them or investing in them?

Nathan Ruby: 19:09

And what needs to change that's a good one.

Tim Barnes: 19:13

So, with the resources that I have in my hands, am I spending them and there's nothing wrong with spending and buying but am I doing more spending or am I actually investing them? Where am I putting my resources that I'm investing in my family, or I'm investing in myself, or I'm investing in my leadership and in my growth? What am I doing? And we've said this before if you want to know what your priorities are, you look at your paycheck or, sorry, you look at your checkbook and you see where you put your money. So it's really, really important. So how am I going to? Am I spending or am I investing in the resources that come my way? And what do I need to do different? Maybe something needs to be changed. So here's another great question, nathan. There's a couple. The next two questions are two of my favorites. Actually, they're not my favorites, but they're good. But here's the first question If I repeated my weekly actions every week for five years, where would I end up? And is that where I want to end up and what needs to change? So if I look at everything I do, if I take all my weekly actions, and if I did those weekly actions every week for five years. What would it look like? And that's a challenge. As you think about it, as you plan your week, as you plan your month, as you plan your year, we're not throwing stones, we're challenged. I mean, we want to be challenged. So these are the things that I need. These are the questions I want Nathan to ask me. I want Nathan to challenge me. He has on a number of times and we challenge each other on some of these things, so just think about it.

Nathan Ruby: 21:07

Another way to phrase that question, tim, is if everybody on my team all staff, all volunteers, so the team if everybody on the team did what I did today this week, would that move us forward or would that drag us back? It's the same way of looking at it, because not everybody on the team does the same things, but is everybody on the team coming to work excited and happy to be there and doing your jobs and pushing forward? And whenever stuff like this comes up, because I'm a fundraiser at heart, my mind always goes to well, how many donors did you talk to today? How many phone calls did you make? How many emails did you send? How many texts did you send? And sometimes I give myself an A plus and other times I give myself a D minus. So, yeah, that's a great question and that's when you can ask yourself almost every day Tim, how did I do today? Did I do what I should have been doing or did I not?

Tim Barnes: 22:18

And I don't know about you, but my mind tends to go to work. Did I do all the work things I needed to do? Was I super productive? And some of that's important. But you could be like man, I'm a workaholic and I work like crazy every week. Five years from now, if you're a workaholic, you may lose your family, you may lose your purpose, you may lose all kinds of stuff If work is the only thing that drives you. Did you play golf this week? Maybe that's something that should be on your list. Did you do something fun this week in your schedule? If you never do anything fun, then you're dull, right, right, anyway. So it's just talking about it's looking at what are your habits. It's looking at where do you give your time, what are the things that get your priority, and where will that lead you over a period of time. I love this next question. So what are some things that I could start doing today that would guarantee an absolutely horrible year, and how can I avoid those things? So that's another great question how could I really screw up this year and how can I not do that? So I think that's always a good question to consider, and then probably another one that challenged me over the last couple of years is, I think, about things that are currently nagging me, that really kind of maybe weighing me down, and to ask the question how could I automate them? Is there a way that I could automate those things that seem like take so much time or just weigh on me? Are those things that maybe should be eliminated? Sometimes we just need to say you know what it's got to go, throw it out, it's not doing its job, it's not worth my time and effort, so maybe I just need to go through and prune something. I need to eliminate this. Or the third one and we've talked about this on several episodes delegate. Is there somebody who's just so much better and could be so much more effectiveness? Can I hand this off? So look at those things, look at those things that weigh you down, the things that you're struggling with, and ask can I automate it? Can I eliminate it? Can I delegate?

Nathan Ruby: 24:39

it. That's a good question. You want to know something I need to automate in 2024?.

Tim Barnes: 24:46

I can hardly wait Go ahead.

Nathan Ruby: 24:48

There's a risk in letting me talk here, tim. I use Outlook for my email and I have 14 board members and there was a time when I had an Outlook group or whatever a group email, so I had it called Fucko Board or whatever, and so I just had to do was email that and then it all went out and I didn't have to worry about that. Something happened and that quit working and that was like two years ago and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to create that group again, because they changed how to do it and I can't figure it out. I've looked at YouTube videos. I just finally gave up. So when I do an email to the board I have 14 board members I do it the same way every time, based on geography, from East Coast to West Coast, and so it's in the same order every time. But it takes me three minutes to get it all the way I want it. So if anybody out there, if any of our listeners, knows how to create an Outlook email address group, please let me know how to do that. I would very much appreciate that.

Tim Barnes: 25:58

Our contacts are always in the show notes. So if you can solve this problem for Nathan, send away. We'll make sure he gets it.

Nathan Ruby: 26:06

But that's what you're talking about. It's the things that nag you, things that are maybe it's not every day I mean, I don't email my board every day, I email them sometimes, whatever but it's just these little things that's like okay, I'm doing this again, I'm doing this again, I'm doing this again. Well, just kind of, you could stop 20 minutes to fix it and then you don't have that nag on you anymore, you don't have that weight that comes and makes life just a little more difficult.

Tim Barnes: 26:34

Yeah, I want to give you real quick two bonus questions, and this is more just like thinking out of the box, like just pushing you to think something different that maybe you wouldn't think before. But here's one of the questions how could I achieve my 10-year goal in one year? So I think that challenge is to ask what's stopping us, what's holding us back? What could I do? Maybe I'm not taking enough risks, maybe I need to take some risks, or whatever. But how could I achieve my 10-year goal in one year? Sometimes we put ourselves in boxes that we just need to push away. And the other question is how could I achieve 10 times my one-year goal this year? So if you think you're going to, how could you go from raising $100,000 a year to $1 million a year and you're like, yeah, you don't know me, you don't know my situation, you're absolutely right, I don't. But what would that do? If we pushed ourselves to think about that, to talk to somebody about it? Go, hey, what do you think? No-transcript. Don't settle for conventional wisdom. Sometimes Push yourself and who knows, maybe it'll take you five years to get your 10-year goal, but that's half the time I don't know, or maybe you're right, maybe you can't get 10x, but what if you got 4x?

Nathan Ruby: 28:09

What if you got fewer times what you did this year? Instead of raising 10,000, you raised 40,000. Wouldn't that?

Tim Barnes: 28:16

be huge. Yeah, so these are just thought questions. They're questions that challenge you to think about what would it take, what would it look like, what would I have to do? And again, all these kind of set you up for looking back and then looking for what does 2024 hold, where do you want to go, and so taking some time to do that. You know, there's another thing that we do we're going to wrap up here in a couple of minutes but there's another exercise that Nathan and I do, and we'll plan on doing it again this year, and that's where we identify three words, and, nathan, you want to talk a little bit about that and what are your thoughts around that?

Nathan Ruby: 28:56

Yeah, and so we've done this for several years now. We do it together and we each pick out three words that we are not that it's the sole focus of any given year, but it's three themes, kind of how what we're going to focus on for the year. That's going to be important to us. We review these individually, you know, on our own we review these all the time, and then, tim and I, when we talk several times, we'll bring these up hey, how are you doing on this? And it's just a way to keep focused on particular things that are sometimes it's in work, sometimes it's in our personal life, and so it's really a good way to track how you're doing in certain areas and to continue to grow in other areas. And so we'll be doing an episode on this in early January, when we come back after our little break, and what we do, how we do this is we'll talk about our words from last year, from 2023, and how we did on that, what successes we had, what non successes we had and I had a couple of successes and I had a few non-unsuccesses as well and then we'll talk about what our words are going to be for 2024. So we're excited about that it's one of our favorite episodes of the year and kind of give you a little glimpse into Tim and I and what we're thinking and what's important to us.

Tim Barnes: 30:28

The words really provide kind of an energy and focus for us and in fact I write it down every day. I write my three words down in my journal every day so I remind myself oh yeah, this is what I said I was going to focus on for this year.

Nathan Ruby: 30:44

Yeah, I do the same. I put it on my daily sheet that I keep of what I'm doing. It's at the top, so yep.

Tim Barnes: 30:50

Yep, and it just kind of keeps it in front of you. So if you're sitting around one day going, I don't know, I got some time, what should I do? Oh, those words, what would those words have me? Do so yeah, I go for it, so anyway.

Nathan Ruby: 31:03

There is really nothing special about a new year. It's just a marker of time, but it can be used as a new starting place, a chance to restart, to begin to take small, consistent action each and every day that leads you in a direction towards a better and preferred future. As you prepare for a new year, we would like to encourage you, as a leader, to look back, to look forward and plot out your future direction and then begin to take steps in that direction each day. Your organization, your family, your community, you yourself, will be glad you did.

Tim Barnes: 31:44

Well, nathan and I would like to say thank you for showing up and listening to us each week this year. We counted a privilege that you would share your time with us, and we look forward to continuing to journey with you in the new year. If you'd like to get in touch with us, and especially if you have a solution to Nathan's problem, I need one. Our contact information can be found in the show notes. That's all for today and for this year. Until next time.