EP 75: Transforming Nonprofit Operations with EOS

Positioning review: No significant adjustments needed. Content is naturally conversational with Jeff and Jay discussing EOS implementation. Handbid references are organic first-party context about their own experience adopting the framework. Minor filler words removed throughout.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. In today's episode, we're joined by Jay Strear, a nonprofit veteran with over 30 years of experience. Jay's here to share how the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, can transform the way your organization operates. We'll dive into practical tips on turning your big plans into daily actions, keeping your team aligned, and staying focused on your mission. Whether you're a nonprofit leader or just looking to streamline your operations, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss. Let's get started.

Jeff: All right, welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better, or maybe even just make your overall nonprofit operate better. I mean, we've got one of those experts in the room with us today. I'm really excited to introduce Jay Strear. Jay, why don't you go ahead and give us a little bit of background on you and what you do, and then I will fill in some info because Jay is helping us here at Handbid as well. So we'll talk about that.

Jay: Yeah. Thanks. First of all, I'm really excited to be here. I always love to chat. And certainly chat about the nonprofit space. So background -- I'm a 30-plus year veteran. You can't quite see all my scars. I was, my last gig was a CEO of a statewide nonprofit. And prior to that, I was in a senior leadership position at a university in Los Angeles, where I ran a fundraising shop for 20 years. And in addition to that, for the last 10 years, I was a senior VP dealing with macro planning and crisis management and chief legal and all sorts of interesting challenges. So a long, long experience in the nonprofit space.

Jeff: I love it. I mean, it's broad experience, right? You've been kind of in all the various types and aspects of running a nonprofit, which is great. So what do you do now? Tell us a little bit about what you're up to specifically with nonprofits or even some corporations.

Jay: So after leaving the nonprofit I ran, after four and a half exhausting years through COVID and all of the demands on the front end and back end of that, I just said, I really want to get back to my roots. And my roots have been as an educator. I taught an MBA program. I taught in education programs in that university where I was a full-time executive. So in my role as CEO, I had been advised, guided, told that I needed to lay out a strategic plan. And I was exhausted from nearly 25 years of strategic planning in the university setting. And I sat back and I thought, number one, I really need to hear what the community needs and wants. So I took a year to do that and spent a lot of time repairing and rebuilding and forming new relationships. And then I spent the next year studying comparable organizations and their strategic plans. And they all basically said the same thing, minus some adjustments based on structural differences.

Jay: And so I then really focused on execution and thought, these are great words on paper, but they don't mean anything if you're not driving every single day, every single month, and every single quarter towards those one-year, three-year, long-term objectives. So somebody had handed me the book Traction by Gino Wickman, which frames out the tools of the EOS system, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And when I launched this strategic planning process, I wasn't going to do a traditional strategic planning where you spend a year and bring together all these resources and you have a beautiful document and you never then go back to check what progress you're making. You need an iterative set of tools to be able to make adjustments on the fly. And frankly, I was exhausted by crisis management. It was just firefighting, right?

Jeff: That's how most nonprofit management is. Firefighting, exactly.

Jay: Right. And what we understand is sometimes you got to slow down to go fast. So I thought, if we can introduce a different process -- and EOS was 80 to 90 percent of what I was looking for. And so I had a donor, and I had the opportunity to introduce it, and we launched it in 2020. And thankfully, the organization continues to operate on that system. So when I left the CEO role, I thought, this is the gift that I can now give. I was a CEO. I brought this system to the organization. The organization is doing much better because of it. Life is better for the executives because they're training themselves out of that firefighting dynamic. And how can I bring this to nonprofits?

Jeff: Yeah. And so, full disclosure, we were looking for ways to improve operationally at Handbid, and so we came across Jay. And I had definitely heard of EOS, and I had implemented, or tried to implement it in the past. I read the book Traction. And conceptually, I love the principles of what it teaches. And I would tell you that I think one of the biggest things that is helpful with it is that it does force you to constantly relook at where you're going on a quarterly basis, a weekly basis. And so it's not one of those, hey, let's do that five-year strategic plan. I actually was involved with a nonprofit that got a donor to pay for that. And that thing was gorgeous. And then it sat on the shelf.

Jay: Exactly.

Jeff: And it was really frustrating to the donor. The hard part of it is, how do we get there? And then to your point about crisis management, you get off track so fast sometimes because you're just reacting to everything. And so having something that you can constantly go back to on a weekly basis and a quarterly basis helps get you back on track. But it also allows you to reset when you're not going to get back on track for a variety of very acceptable reasons sometimes.

Jay: Right. A hundred percent. So the flaw of a traditional strategic plan is it doesn't talk about execution, right? It doesn't say, once you've approved that plan, now what are you going to do on day two? Most organizations don't need that 50-page report. They need a very clear synopsis of what that North Star is. They need everybody around the table to buy in and understand. Every single week, make sure our behaviors are driving to that North Star. Every quarter we're going to take a step up out of the business. And every year, we're going to really take a holistic view. It's going to help you learn how to take punches way better.

Jeff: I'll say something else -- people ask, why'd you hire an implementer? Why don't you do it yourself? We tried to do it ourselves. I've always had this belief that consultants are those people that come in and charge you a lot of money to tell you what you already know. But that's not the case here. One of the things I think has been so helpful with you being involved at Handbid is you've come in and not just told us what we already know. You help us flush out issues. You help us get to the root element of some of the challenges that we're facing. I would almost say you've helped us figure out what we don't know.

Jay: And so what you're touching upon, Jeff, is the book Traction really frames out the tools. But the white on the page -- that's where the facilitation happens. That's where the coaching happens. I said to you from the outset, I'm not a consultant. A company that wants to dive into this, they need to recognize that they can do it themselves, but it's going to take a lot longer, and they will struggle to gain that objectivity that a facilitator has. What I'm able to do is help you see the problems, the challenges, the opportunities, and facilitate you to the solutions that are right for you. I don't dictate. I guide. But I can also push. Because it's like running a marathon. That process is a lot about enduring the grind. It's about grit.

Jeff: Oh, it's not something you flip the light switch on. Getting good at a framework like this is practice.

Jay: Yeah, it's a discipline.

Jeff: It is a discipline. And you get better at it over time. Sometimes you have good days, and sometimes you have bad days. So don't think for a minute that you have to be perfect at this. But let's talk about EOS. I think a lot of people will say, oh, that's a commercial type of thing. I want to stress that it's not. This is about how you could effectively structure and operate a business. And I think you called it dynamic strategic planning?

Jay: Yeah, I've kind of coined that term.

Jeff: I like that. So let's talk -- we started out with you with a mission, vision, values. Then we got into a 10-year target. Then we did a three-year. And then you have a one-year. And then from there, we do this on a quarterly basis. You come in, we spend a day with the team. We go through -- we identify what is the one-year. Are we still on track? What did we accomplish last quarter?

Jay: Moment of truth.

Jeff: How well did we do? And those objectives that are on a quarterly basis are called rocks. For those of you who haven't read Traction, the concept is you fill the jug with the rocks.

Jay: Yeah. It comes from Stephen Covey. If you're going to not focus on your rocks, but you're going to deal with the pebbles and sand and all the water -- the demands of your time -- you never get to those big things. So let's put those rocks into that jar first. But most of us sit down at our computer in the quiet of the morning and we read our email.

Jeff: Exactly. For two hours.

Jay: Well, that's sand, right? And now you're in the black hole of that and you never get to your rocks.

Jeff: 100%. So your priorities after the quarter have never been achieved. And it is so true. Even if you get up and the first thing you do is see your rocks for your quarter written on the wall in your office, you remind yourself, this is the stuff I committed to getting done.

Jay: What is the value that Jeff brings to this company? Those rocks are the things, the priorities that drive you to bring your greatest value. What is my superpower? What do I bring, the unique sets of skills and abilities, that are going to drive value through my contribution that nobody else can do in my unique way?

Jeff: It just constantly reminds us. When we go into our weekly meeting as a leadership team and we look at those rocks -- are we on track to deliver this? Because right after that, we get into the sand, the issues. This is not a framework that tells you to ignore those things. It's a framework that tells you how you prioritize them.

Jay: Right. And it's a framework to deal with them. It brings focus to your leadership team around the table to make sure you have one conversation.

Jeff: So you think of it from a nonprofit perspective. Say we're doing a million dollars a year in gross fundraising. And we want to, in three years, be at three million dollars. So what do we need to do next year? Are we going to run an event? Expand an event? Do a capital campaign? Apply for grants? Does the CEO need to clear off half of his or her demand because he or she is going to drive two-thirds of that?

Jay: And what I've been able to teach you and my other clients is -- what we measure is what we prioritize. For a nonprofit that wants to grow its donor base, what are the activities that are going to drive to that? What is the fundraising staff going to do every single day to actually get people in the room? What are those measurable activities? It's not just dollars. It's relationship building. How many phone calls are people making? How many coffees? That's often what nonprofits don't connect.

Jeff: Yep. And I will tell you it works. I'm on the board of FCA here in Colorado. And they use EOS in certain parts of their group. And those metrics have evolved over time as we got smarter about what is it really that's going to drive engagement or drive revenue.

Jay: The other side is healthy. The human dynamic -- if we are constantly firefighting, part of the brilliance of EOS was it changes the whole dynamic where it says, hold on, we're going to have one conversation where all of the influencers in those decisions are going to be around the table. And sometimes my ideas are going to be adopted. And sometimes my ideas are not going to be adopted.

Jeff: You're touching on a very important subject, but a tough one. This is team dynamic, leadership team dynamic specific. A dysfunctional team makes it tough to implement anything. You've got to ground your team in -- it's one team, it's one voice, it's one conversation.

Jay: There's an adage -- the only real meeting is the meeting after the meeting. And you don't want that. When you create a social pact, which gets us to the values -- you define values, and now you live by those values. One of those is disagree and commit. We can disagree, and when the leadership team makes a commitment, we are all committing.

Jeff: We have a value at Handbid called Pilots, Not Passengers. The story is about Sully Sullenberger, who took off from LaGuardia and ran into a flock of birds and had to land on the Hudson River. He focused on solving the issue and not complaining the entire way.

Jeff: The beauty of this framework is they're called issues. And every week, we get to discuss them as issues. And the person whose rock it is cannot be defensive about it.

Jay: That's exactly right. Collectively, we've said four minds or seven minds are better than one mind. And there's a discipline to it. Everybody first works to resolve what the root issue is. And more often than not, what you think is the issue turns out to be something much deeper.

Jeff: Always is. You'll throw an issue on the table. It could be a customer issue, a software issue, a business issue. And you keep digging down until you get to the root of what this really is.

Jay: And it's liberating. Because you get to the root of the issue. Once you agree on that, then you have usually a much shorter conversation. Everyone contributes. And now you solve it collectively towards a resolution.

Jeff: We actually unofficially did this with our fundraising event. We do a Kentucky Derby fundraiser. A lady came up to me to say it was too loud. And we went through the IDS process post-event and realized the real issue wasn't the sound -- it was that the premium seating needed to be further back from the stage, in the optimal experience zone. You can use this anywhere.

Jay: The other tool that I talk a lot about is predicting. Let's predict what those issues might be. What do we need to begin to plan for today that might rear their ugly head in two weeks or a month from now? Slow down to go fast.

Jeff: Amen. This has been awesome. Any sort of framework like this, but I think this one in particular, has been useful to us. This doesn't have to be commercial only. So if you're a nonprofit, you're listening to this and you want to figure out how to improve -- not just operations, but connecting your long-term vision to your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual activities. This is it. So how can they get a hold of you?

Jay: So you can go to the EOSworldwide.com website. Look up Jay Strear. They can always email me at jay -- J-A-Y -- D-S-T-R-E-A-R at EOSworldwide.com. Can hit me up on my LinkedIn page.

Jeff: Or reach out to us at Handbid if you're having a hard time getting a hold of Jay. We will connect you to him.

Jay: The one thing that I love to bring to the nonprofit space is how to communicate and appropriately engage a board in this. It actually helps demarcate the board into the space of strategy, governance, and fiduciary as opposed to micromanagement.

Jeff: Yeah. I'm sure a lot of people love to hear that right there. Thank you, Jay.

Jay: Yeah, thank you guys. We'll wrap up this episode of Elevate Your Event. Until next time, happy fundraising.

Jeff: If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.