The Surprising Corporate Advantages of a Nonprofit Background
The news this week has gotten me thinking a lot about my early career in nonprofits. When I first came to Marriott, there were pretty widespread assumptions that a background in nonprofit program management doesn’t prepare you for a corporate career. Yet I quickly found that everything I was praised for came from my years working at domestic and international nonprofits.
Agility: Nonprofits never have enough people / time / resources. I had to be able to quickly pivot at the drop of a hat (or our USAID Program Officer): make a training for Rwandan NGOs on financial management - and fly to Rwanda - in the next 36 hours, write a proposal to expand library access in Moldova, go in the same day from talking to the Minister of Education, our staff, Malaysian kids, and our teachers. I learned how to parachute into any program and figure out how to solve it, regardless of my skills or expertise.
Influence without Authority: Being able to influence others was 100% of my job. I learned (the hard way after getting shoes thrown at me in Egypt) that the most important trick to influence was listening to what others truly want - what is the need behind their words - and demonstrate that you’re on their side.
Make Meaning from Ambiguity: I think the only job where I really got clear direction was my very first. After that, it was sifting through pieces of information to try to find the signal through the noise, from designing programs in proposals to creating project plans.
Learn from Failure: Because of that lack of clear direction, I failed. A lot. I delivered trainings to NGO leaders in Rwanda who glared at me in silence for being a miserable facilitator for 8 hours straight because it was a requirement of their grant. I fought with experienced experts in Romania and Ukraine over the right way to design a measurement strategy before I learned to shut up and listen. I wrote proposals that failed, created budgets that missed whole categories… Anyway, from all this I learned how to pick myself up after a failure and see how I could do it better the next time. The difference between those who succeed in nonprofits and those who don’t aren’t those who make mistakes, it’s those who don’t learn from those mistakes.
Accept Feedback: A big part of learning from mistakes is being able to hear, listen, accept, and integrate feedback. It’s particularly hard I think in nonprofits, where your identity is so tied up in the work that you do. But you have to be able to sit in difficult conversations - whether it’s your boss or the Minister of Women - and hear people tell you you’re wrong. And then discern what of that is truth that you want to act on and what to discard.
Work Across Lines of Difference: From drinking with Ukrainian librarians (that was a mistake) to supporting DC foster youth in their first real job, I worked with people who came from radically different backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, ways of working. I learned (once again, the hard way) that “my way” of doing things wasn’t the right way but rather the way of a white, suburban, upper middle class, highly educated woman. Whether it’s slowing the speed of my speech so non-native English speakers could follow to figuring out how to message something to both Indonesian and Dutch staff, I learned to de-center myself and approach others differently.
All of these skills are highly valued by corporations in this VUCA world - I can’t count the number of execs that have asked for support in one or more of these areas. Short of sending all their staff for a rotation at a nonprofit, what can corporations do? I have five suggestions:
Ruthless Focus on Purpose. People who work at nonprofits do it because they live, breathe, and sleep their purpose. The idea that if I don’t send this email then a kid will die is a real motivator. But even without a traditionally altruistic purpose, companies can make sure that their purpose is at the core of everything they do. This is not putting your purpose statement on a wall or the title of a CEO email. This means being honest about your purpose - if it’s to increase stakeholder value, say so! Don’t make up an inspirational purpose that doesn’t really matter; people can see through it and become even more disconnected. Once you’re honest about your purpose, ensure that it’s at the core of every decision. It’s not wrong to ask: how is this action / decision serving our purpose?
Set People Up to Fail. OK it sounds harsh but hear me out: putting people on tasks that are way too hard for them pushes them to make mistakes that they learn from or figure out a way. I think of this like the Kobayashi Maru - bumping up against the limits of your capabilities shows you how much further you can stretch, or you figure out how to hack the system like Kirk. Neither are bad options.
Push Down Decision Making. The higher up you go in nonprofits, the more your role is focused on donors and external stakeholders and the less on running the programs. That means decisions are made the closest to the work - by the Program Managers and Program Officers who manage the day-to-day work. Forcing the decision making down helps staff build strategic thinking skills, ability to operate in ambiguity, and influencing without authority.
Give Feedback. All the Time. I think I’ve built trainings on giving feedback for 5 different organizations, but I’m going to take back what I’ve taught: it doesn’t matter how you give the feedback. Just give it constantly. Yes, you’re going to screw up sometimes. But if you create an environment where constant feedback is expected - not just down but also up and across - and there’s a focus on effective positive feedback, it gives you space to sometimes do it wrong.
Build Teams with People from Different Backgrounds. I’m not suggesting the D word that is currently anathema, but think about different experiences, skill sets, personalities, ways of thinking, strengths when building a team. It speeds up the realization that one way isn’t the right way, pokes holes in bad ideas, and creates an environment where feedback can thrive. That means being very aware of your own like-me bias in hiring.
You don’t need to become a nonprofit to implement these suggestions - it just requires rethinking how you grow and develop your talent. If not, you’ll keep building trainings on agility, influence, etc - without ever seeing results.