[00:00:00] Caryn Ryan: At the end of the day, sometimes it's the simplest questions and sticking with the simplest, high-level questions that matters for solving problems and creating transformation. Because I remember one of the first questions I asked the traders was, “Where did the oil go that you thought you were trading?”

They didn't know where the oil had gone. And so, we spent a lot of time having to come back to that question and analyzing, digging through years of data and models that would go from trading models that went from the floor to the ceiling. But we always had to come back to that basic question, “Where did the oil go?”

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Our guest this week is Caryn Ryan, the founder and managing member of Missionwell. Missionwell was formed out of the belief that nonprofit organizations should benefit from the same efficiency and expertise as the for-profit sector, despite the significant resource differences between the two sectors.

Caryn spent 20 years with Amoco Corporation and BP plc, and then later with the merged company BP / Amoco. She was recruited by World Vision International, where she served as their Chief Financial Officer. Caryn was an early champion for virtual and shared services models for the nonprofit sector. Let's pick up on my conversation.

[00:01:20] Tommy Thomas: Before we dive too deep into your professional career, let's go back to your childhood. I'm always curious about how people got their start. What's your happiest memory of your childhood?

[00:01:30] Caryn Ryan: That's an interesting question. I'm not sure I have a single happiest memory, but certainly one of my happiest memories is a trip to downtown Detroit.

I lived just north of Detroit growing up, going shopping with my mom and my grandma and my sister and getting a new winter coat, and shopping at Sanders. Have you heard of Sanders?

[00:01:48] Tommy Thomas: No, we didn't have that in the south, I don't think.

[00:01:51] Caryn Ryan: They're a local chocolatier near Detroit, and sometimes even out here on the west coast, you can find chocolate from them. But we had a hot fudge sunday after we went shopping. So, it's a wonderful memory.

[00:02:03] Tommy Thomas: Thinking back on that, what was the greatest gift you got from your parents?

[00:02:07] Caryn Ryan: My perseverance. My parents themselves came from families that didn't have much and so they had come through a kind of late depression era and they knew the value of a penny and they knew that to get ahead, you had to really persevere. And they passed that on to their kids.

[00:02:26] Tommy Thomas: What are people who don't know you always surprised to learn about?

[00:02:30] Caryn Ryan: A lot of people meet me through my company Missionwell. And they assume that I'm an accountant, and that I like the details, but I don't and I'm not. And over time as time goes on, usually they see that I'm more of an analyzer of leaders and situations and work and, a really pragmatic solution finder, a really persistent person looking for solutions.

I'm an entrepreneur, although, who would have thought it? And I'm a reasonable strategist. And those who are extra observant will probably also be able to tell that my work is my Christian mission in life.

[00:03:07] Tommy Thomas: When you went to college how did you decide on your major?

[00:03:10] Caryn Ryan: Hey, I'm from Detroit. It's the Motor City. And growing up in a rather poor family, I wanted security. So, I thought right away I'm going into business in some capacity. I didn't have any idea what aspect of business, so I double majored in economics and psychology for my undergrad and for my MBA. I added finance and information technology and some organization development and organizational behavior.

So, it was all general business-oriented, but with a core of finance and HR-ish kinds of things. And that's pretty much been what I've stuck with throughout my entire career. It's always been something to do with business whether that's a non-profit business or a for-profit business, and something to do with that core of finance and HR, but then a whole bunch of things peripherally around that, that those can branch out into a whole lot of things.

[00:04:02] Tommy Thomas: Thinking back to the first time you had a staff to report to you, what do you remember about that?

[00:04:08] Caryn Ryan: That would've been in the Financial Analysis Department of Amoco production, that's part of the old, pre-BP, part of the oil and gas exploration production division.

There. And I have to say, I was a mediocre boss at best. I didn't see the role as servant leadership initially. I really saw it as leading a production team to goals. And in addition,

I had a boss at the time who was a great example of how not to treat people.

But as my time in that seat progressed I learned that every boss has to protect their people. They have to advocate for them, and they have to develop their staff. And these are the things that allow people to flourish. And to this day maybe just based on how tough that job was, one of my joys is mentoring young people and bringing them along.

And going back to that bad boss, as the years have gone by, I've thought about that bad boss from time to time. And I think that people who don't treat other people well, usually have one or two things going on in their life. Tommy one, they either have really low self-esteem and they must assuage that by criticizing and tearing down other people.

Or two, they're motivated by greed and power. Understanding that has helped me quickly diagnose, is this a person type A or is it a person type B when they're really behaving badly. And if it's an issue of self-esteem, there's a way you can work with people over time to just bring them up, help them feel better about themselves, and help them transform how they interact in the world. And I think that's part of our job too. So, he taught me a lot.

[00:05:44] Tommy Thomas: We can learn from sometimes less-than-ideal circumstances that's for sure. In September of 2002, you were living in London, you have a senior-level finance position with BP, probably very well compensated, I would imagine. What happened to cause you to leave the private sector and take that CFO job with World Vision International?

[00:06:04] Caryn Ryan: It was really lovely working in London. I thought you might ask that question. I had my family with me and I bought and remodeled an old home in Hamstead for the family, and we had an amazing life with fun schools for the kids and lots of travel and adventures.

But if I step back from that, go back about five years before I'd already started noticing in the late, mid to late 1990s before the merger of Amico and BP that something was missing in my life. And this feeling grew while I was in London. And until around the year 2000, I went to a choir practice at the American Church in London.

And I saw a poster and it was for an Alpha class and I was convicted. I needed to go and talk to my pastor about it. And he tried to persuade me not to, and I said, no, I need it. I need it. And I went to this Alpha class. It was 10 weeks long, and these questions about faith just poured out of me. And I was talking about Doubting Thomas in the Bible.

That was me. And I told God eventually that if he would speak to me plainly on two big life questions, I'd be his person forever. And he did, for better or for worse, he did. He spoke to me in the Holy Spirit that week of the Alpha class, and very clearly in very plain language, and advised me what I needed to do.

And I have been his person ever since. Although I'll never be the type of Christian who believes easily, and definitely I was a late comer to having a really true deep belief. But it's a commitment and it's a promise. And entrances, interestingly, I left Amoco with BP at that time without a job about two years later.

But shortly around that time when I took the Alpha class, BP very generously referred me to Nick Isbister, who you know.

And he is a consultant or coach who looks at motivated abilities. And during this time when I was wrestling with various issues including my career, I cannot tell you how much his SIMA profile meant to me.

As I was really trying to decide whether to stay or leave BP, where was I going next? And it was really part of God's gift to me. He was part of God's gift to me. And to see my gifts laid out so beautifully and my motivated abilities laid out so clearly really helped me move forward.

And it helped me take that step to give my notice to BP and really have the view of, God has a plan and I just want to see what adventures are out there next. And I've used his profile from time to time. I go back and read it and review it and just try to understand this is still me and, what do I need to pay attention to now? And it's been amazing.

[00:08:37] Tommy Thomas: So did World Vision come looking for you, or did you go looking for them?

[00:08:41] Caryn Ryan: After I left BP I made a matrix about 57 different things, and over the next few months I whittled away at those to try to figure out what I should do. And when I got it down to the top three, I was like I don't think being a CFO was the problem.

I like that. I don't think I was in the right place in a for-profit. I think I nee...