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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
How Can You Maximize AI for Good?
00:32:25
In this episode, Dr. Rob Harter sits down with Adam Boddison, CEO of the Association for Project Management and Managing Director at Grant Genie, ...
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- [00:02]
Dr. Rob Harder
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast, Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All these reasons combined led me to start this show. And it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who are are successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Welcome everybody, to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. So today the conversation is about AI. And before you change the dial and say, wait a second, we've had lots of conversations about that, and I know we've had many guests on the show about AI. This one's slightly different. In my focus, it's going to be much more about leadership and how you utilize AI for good, not just about how is AI impacting us. How is AI changing the landscape? So it's much more about the leadership aspect of things. Because really the question is not, is AI changing the nonprofit sector? Is AI changing our world? Yes, it is. It's not so much that. It's how are you and I best maximizing AI for for good, whether that be in our own personal life or in the social impact sphere that we lead. So the guest today who's going to help us process through that conversation is Adam Bodensen, and he is the CEO of the association for Project Management, and he's also the managing director at Grant Genie. We're going to talk all about the impact certainly the AI is having, but here's some of the questions and the nuance, and that is this. We talk not only about what impact that AI and digital transformation is having on the social impact sector, but beyond AI, what are other emerging technologies or trends in the charitable sector that he's most optimistic about? So we're going to talk about a lot of different issues again through the lens of leadership and how you can impact your team at your social impact organization. As always, great to have you here. Now, onto the show. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox. DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. We've got Adam Bodensen here with us. Adam, first of all, thanks for taking time to be on the show today.
- [02:31]
Adam Bodensen
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
- [02:33]
Dr. Rob Harder
You bet. Well, and you are calling at a late evening hour. So thank you for staying up for this interview. I love the fact that we have people from all over the world that have been both guests on the show as well as listen to the show. So with that, maybe I thought it'd be good for my listeners always to get a bit of the background and of the guests that I have on the social. Give us a bit of your background, particularly your involvement in the social impact sector.
- [02:55]
Adam Bodensen
Of course, yeah. So I started life out as a secondary school maths teacher or high school maths teacher, you might say. And over my whole career all my focus has been on things that are either education related or social impact charity related. I've had a bit of a theme running through recent years around special educational needs and disabilities and also kind of governance board role type roles within the kind of charity sector. I suppose my most kind of prominent, three most recent roles is I spent six years as the chief executive of the national association for Special Educational Needs, which is a national charity here in the uk and currently I have kind of two hats on. One as CEO of the association for Project Management, and the second one is managing director of a grant finding charity which uses AI called Grant Genie.
- [03:43]
Dr. Rob Harder
And I'm glad you mentioned both of those. And we're going to get into both of your work, but kind of through the lens of technology and AI to begin with. In fact, I've had several show guests on my show talk about AI, talk about the latest in technology and how they're impacting the social impact sector. Maybe you could speak to that because that is something that you really have specialized in. So let me start with this from your work at Experience. How are most NonProfit leaders leveraging AI to achieve really strategic objectives and strengthen day to day operations such as fundraising, stakeholder engagement and risk management? What are you seeing in the social impact landscape?
- [04:19]
Adam Bodensen
Well, I think in many ways, if you think that in just general organizations there's a real Marmite type approach to AI. There's the evangelist organizations that love it and are kind of putting all their eggs in the AI basket, if I use the expression. And then you've got the others who are really terrified of it and think it's going to take all of their jobs and it's unethical and all of that. I think you see that in the charity sector as well. In fact, I would say that you see that amplified in the charity sector. So you've those that are really into it and those aren't doing it at all for the Organizations that are into this and the leaders that are really driving this. I kind of think there's two levels, right? So you've got those that are using it really strategically. So you know, you talk about stakeholder engagement there. You know, they're using that to kind of have targeted content generation for particular stakeholder groups. They're using it to super prompts as they call it in the AI world to kind of help create and drive strategy by looking at what other similar nonprofit organizations are doing. So you've got all of that stuff going on, on, but then you've also got the really mundane stuff going on, you know, so people who were saying, well look, you know, I can't get, you know, buy in from my board to really kind of go all AI, but I can probably use it to help me day to day. So, you know, I've got a speech that I've got coming up, I'll use that, I'll use AI to help me write my speech or I'm looking for a theme for my conference next year or I've got to do some data analysis. And so they're using it for kind of day to day tasks to save time. But I think they're the kind of the two extremes really that you've got. Those who are really into it and those who are just terrified.
- [05:55]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's interesting. I think you're right. I think those two extremes are definitely present. And as I interact with my colleagues, I think both of those have been well represented. So moving on from that, what would you say when it comes to common misconceptions, when it comes to adopting AI in the non profit sector and the social impact sector, what are some of those common misperceptions? Particularly those, maybe the doubters, the people that are really afraid of it. And what would you say to help them understand it better and address those misconceptions?
- [06:22]
Adam Bodensen
Sure. I think there are two that I hear more often than any others and there are many out there. One is around AI bias and the other is around AI is going to take all of our jobs. You know, it's going to take all of our people. So let me just say a little bit about each of those. So AI bias. I don't think we can really deny that there is any bias in the AI. It's implicit, it's there made by people who are themselves biased. However, I think the real question is, is it more or less biased than people? And when you start looking at it through that lens, it's perhaps not as quite an acute Threat, as people might think. I think the bias is a reason to be careful for sure, but it's probably not a reason to say no. And what I do see is organizations using. Well, so there's a bit of a tongue twister anti hallucinogenic workflows, in other words, a human sense check to make sure that the AI is not giving them erroneous crazy answers which are based on bias or whatever to kind of just say, does that look right? So that's that first thing. And then on the people side of things, this AI will replace people. I always say, look, it's not replacing roles, it's replacing tasks. And the comparison I would make. Do you remember when the spreadsheet came in, the Excel spreadsheet and people said, guess what? We're not going to need finance professionals anymore because the spreadsheet can do all of the formulas, it can do all the calculations. I don't see any shortage of roles for finance finance professionals. In fact, what I've seen is we still need finance professionals and now we also need analysts to be able to analyze all the stuff that's on the spreadsheets. My hunch is that that's what's going to happen with AI. Yes, there'll be some things that, you know, some roles that are here now that won't be here in the future, but there's also going to be a whole load of new roles that, that we can't even imagine at the moment. So it's probably going to be a net gain, is my hunch.
- [08:12]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's a good analogy with the Excel spreadsheet. I think that's a great way to look at it. Actually. That's an interesting. I never thought of that connection, but I think you're right. Well, okay, let's talk about digital transformation. So when it comes to digital transformation and AI influence, when it comes to the skills required for successful project leadership both across public and private sectors today, how does the digital transformation really influence nonprofits in a good way? Like what is the positive impact that AI and digital transformation can make that you say is a good thing?
- [08:43]
Adam Bodensen
I would say it's actually helping to accelerate things that nonprofits should have been thinking about already. But we know that in nonprofits, you know, we're driven by core purpose and, you know, values the people we're trying to help. And so some of the things that we might do that, you know, that a for profit organization might think of in terms of maturity of an organization, sometimes that gets put on the back burner in the nonprofit space. And I think this is actually bringing some of that to the fore. For example, things like data driven decision making, you know, AI is kind of bringing that to the fore, adaptive and agile kind of leadership. But the pace of change that AI is driving means that you can't survive in any organization, whether it's a for profit or a nonprofit, if you're not really having that adaptive and agile type approach. So I think it's driving some of those things. It's also in my mind the key thing is this thing about digital fluency, I call it. So this idea that your people need to be more, not just AI literate, but data literate. Because actually AI is meaningless without the data, right? So some of that process stuff is going to be automated. But actually when you automate all of that stuff and we get more digital fluent organizations or digitally fluid organizations, it's easy to think, oh great, you know, then we're not going to need people anymore. To come back to my most point of my last question, actually, I think what it does is it means we're going to be even more reliant on good people. Because once you take the process bit of people's jobs away, that emotional intelligence piece of roles becomes very visible. There's nowhere to hide. You can't hide behind process anymore. So we become even more reliant on good people. So I think that's also going to force nonprofits to invest more in people, not just in tech, which might sound counterintuitive when it comes to just practical.
- [10:27]
Dr. Rob Harder
Recommendations for organizations that are looking to embrace digital change. They're looking to embrace AI specifically in project delivery. Again, what are some of the things that maybe someone who's on the sidelines a bit right now about utilizing AI specifically that you would maybe share, that would help them cross the line to say, okay, actually this would be worth it. This would actually help me with mission accomplishment when it comes to project delivery. Tell me more about that from your experience.
- [10:54]
Adam Bodensen
Yeah, so I think some of the traditional approaches when it comes to technology we know are not necessarily going to work. So being able to say, right, in 10 years time, or even in five years time, even in two years time, this is what I want my digital readiness to look like as an organization. That might not be possible anymore because the pace of changes so quick. So that means we need to take a different approach. I talked about agile type approaches before. I like to think of it as kind of test and learn, right? So we're going to try something. You know, let's try something as an organization, it could be something small, it doesn't need to be huge. Right. And if it works for us, let's do more of that or let's build on that and do that in more areas. And so we. So I'm not saying we should not have a strategy, but I'm saying you need to have a strategy which doesn't necessarily have a well defined endpoint of what success looks like in, you know, two, five, 10 years. It's more about changing the culture, the knowledge and skills and building that up in a kind of iterative way over time. So building that kind of digital maturity and also being prepared to stop something and say that's not working anymore. Even though we put X amount of time and money and effort into it, it's not going to work. We'll try something else. Yeah.
- [12:05]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay, so let's speak to that a little bit. For leaders who feel like maybe they're leading to organization and they know they need to make a 60 degree turn perhaps as an organization, but they've got major resistance from either donors, their board, maybe other staff members, how would you walk through and coach somebody who really sees the opportunity to change because it's not working and maybe they do need to lean into AI or digital transformation in some other way. What would you recommend them to do as a leader? How do they manage that transition with major resistance from other key stakeholders?
- [12:37]
Adam Bodensen
I think the key thing is having some firsthand experience with this stuff. In my experience, the people who are most resistant are also the group of people who haven't actually tried it for themselves. Not universally, but I think there is some significant correlation there. So I think having a really kind of non committal, let's say, imagine you're having an away day with your board or your volunteers or your staff and you say, look, this is not an attempt to try and convince you to do AI, but let's try and rule it in or out one way or the other. Let's just try some stuff. Sometimes organizations have these hackathons. I don't know if you have these in.
- [13:15]
Dr. Rob Harder
I've heard of them.
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Adam Bodensen
Yes.
- [13:16]
Dr. Rob Harder
Oh yeah.
- [13:17]
Adam Bodensen
Oh yeah, these are great, right? So you kind of say, look, you know, we'll bring some people in who are the evangelists and we'll mix them with people who are maybe more skeptical and we'll just think of some common problems that we've got and let's just give them a day and let's just see what they come up with. And usually these, those types of things are so powerful because people go, I just had no idea it could do that stuff or wow, you know, that's come up with things. I never would have, would have taken me a year to do that. So sometimes it's about pace of doing stuff. So. So I think ironically the way to convince people is not to set out to try and convince them, but to try and educate them. And if you try and educate them more on it, I think they come to a sensible conclusion themselves.
- [13:54]
Dr. Rob Harder
I like that approach to educate rather than trying to overly, you know, influence them by trying to convince them to change their mind. I think that's a really good approach in many ways. Okay, so you do a lot with your work on surveys, research when it comes to the impact that AI can have. I'm curious, like with some of the surveys and the sector studies that you've done, what are some real opportunities and challenges that you see as AI and digital tools really continue to shape and reshape project management? Specifically, what are those opportunities that nonprofit and social impact leaders could really see as great opportunities for their organization?
- [14:30]
Adam Bodensen
Yeah, and thank you for the comments about the, the education. But as well, I think it's my natural instinct as an educator, you see that I always see education as the.
- [14:38]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's a good point, well said.
- [14:41]
Adam Bodensen
But yeah, but yeah, on the kind of what we've seen in the research and so on. So a number of things. So one, we talked earlier on about the kind of marmite perceptions of AI. I think that happens across sectors as well. So you know, when we're talking about, about what we're hearing from the research, I think it varies very significantly. So if I, if I think about the kind of the sectors which are, I don't know, let's say health related or health and safety related, health care construction, those types of things where health and safety is really, really high on the agenda. You know, there's less appetite there to start doing AI because they don't see it as being mature enough that they can take those kind of risks. But if I look at education and then, you know, schools and universities and so on, actually they're quite forward facing on this. I mean they get a bit of bad press, right, for saying, oh, we're going to go back to traditional exams and all of that. But actually, if you look at what's actually happening, they're using it for assessment, they're using it to identify reasonable adjustments and things that they could put in place, data analysis. So they're using it in some quite, I would say progressive ways. The other sectors you get some objections in are the creative industries, you know, because it's all, it's in the news all the time now. People have got concerns about, you know, art, music, literature, copyright and all of this type of thing. So there's a lot of variation in terms of the kind of the positive side of things. And what we're seeing, I think is before we get to AI, it's a real focus on looking at the kind of data architecture side of things. So organizations have often got a lot of data, but it's not in a pretty accessible format. It's not machine readable, for example. It's not in the same place. So I've started hearing organizations in the past 18 months. This is nonprofits talking about things like data lakes. They weren't talking about that stuff two years ago. So this is a precursor, I think, to all the AI stuff. They're trying to get themselves ready and they're talking about what type of data analytics they want to do and using that to drive their ambitions. I think the final point I'd make is just around ethics. And we haven't really touched on this so far. This is not so much the ethics of AI itself, but the environmental sustainability point. There's all of these horror stories out there. I think I hear things like, oh, every 50 searches of something like ChatGPT takes the equivalent of a 500 milliliter bottle of water to cool the data center. Or if you generate an image, it takes the equivalent of 50% of a smartphone charge. So if you're a charitable organization which cares about societal impact, you're trying to weigh up the contribution that using AI can make versus the cost, the environmental cost of AI. That I think is a conversation that's all got to play out.
- [17:21]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yep, that's interesting. You bring that up. A really good point there. We don't talk about that quite a bit, or very often, I would say that's not in the conversation typically is the environmental impact of AI and all these new technologies. So maybe that's a really good point for probably in a whole nother conversation, a whole nother episode. We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofits donations? Well, look no further than DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations and simplifies giving for your supporters. With DonorBox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations, and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly Fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. in the meantime, you know, we spend a lot of time on AI. Besides that, with your research, are there other technologies or trends that you feel like are just as relevant to nonprofit leaders and social impact sector leaders that you're studying or you're seen in your realm of your research?
- [18:40]
Adam Bodensen
Yeah, so it's interesting. So I think there's a general kind of context thing here, first of all, which is that I think nonprofits are, unless it's probably a global point, I think increasingly having to step in to do the job that governments should be doing, you know, when it comes to, I don't know, supporting homeless people or tackling inequality and disadvantage, you know, all of this type of stuff. Governments just seem to be saying around the world, oh, well, we've got charities that doing this stuff anymore. We've got lots of pressures on our time and money, so we'll let them do it. So I think there's a pressure on charities now increasingly. So that wasn't there before. And that kind of aligns with something else that's happening, which I think is being driven partly by some of the technology trends and so on, which is that if I look at the workforce that's coming through, so your Gen Z, your Gen Alpha, you know, they're not so much driven by salaries and benefits and all this kind of stuff. You know, when they're taking jobs, they're driven by social justice values, sensible work life balance. You know, I wish I had the better work life balance. You know, I'm a millennial. You know, we're in the bad group when it comes to work life balance. Right. But this can only be a good thing for charities. Right? Because it means that, well, two things are going to happen. One, I think at the time that charities are having this big pressure put on them, expectation put on them. We're actually having this workforce that really believes in type of stuff. And that workforce, by the way, are not just going into charities, they're also going into public sector, private sector. So I think in the future we'll see much greater collaboration between charities, public sector, private sector organizations because of that. So I think that's kind of that wider piece that's so interesting.
- [20:21]
Dr. Rob Harder
And I think if we just kind of zoom out a little bit even more, you're touching on a couple of these issues when it comes to some of the other challenges as a whole for the nonprofit and the social impact sector, what are some of the things that you feel like? Are some going to be either currently or going to be soon, the next year? The biggest challenges or maybe even barriers for social impact leaders today, particularly in the context of this digital transformation we're talking about. And how are you personally navigating them or the people that you lead there at your organization? What are you helping to coach them on when it comes to these big challenges they're going to be facing them here in the near future?
- [20:53]
Adam Bodensen
Number one, in my mind, by a long, long way, staff burnout, right? Pace of change is so, so fast in organizations. I mean, there's the famous Justine Trudeau quote that the pace of change has never before been as quick as it is now and never again will it be so slow. I don't know if it's exactly that, but something along those lines. Basically it's just getting more and more and more and more and faster and faster and so on. And so I think leaders are really having to cope with a workforce that's saying, look, we can't cope with doing anymore. And at the same time the world is saying, we need more, we need you to go faster, do more with less. We've got to go digital. If you're a small charity with limited resources, how can you transition into AI and digital and all of that? I mean, that's just really, really hard without burning out your staff. So I think there's this massive issue around staff burnout. And it's no surprise if you look at almost any kind of health survey. Mental health is right at the top of the concerns globally for all kinds of reasons. So that for me is number one, I think the second one, which is kind of quite broad, it's a bit of a catch all, so forgive me, but it's around kind of leadership paradoxes, let me call it that. So these are these things where leaders are trying to do two apparently opposing things at exactly the same time. So on pace of change, it's do it right or do it fast. You've got to kind of do both of those. Stakeholder engagement. We want alignment of all of our stakeholders, right, so that we can put something in place that's going to work from it. But at the same time we're saying we want real diversity amongst our stakeholders and we want different voices and views, value creation, we want quick wins, but we also want to achieve our long term strategic goals. We want to meet today's challenges and get it right for today's kind of customers or Volunteers, but also we want to get it right for tomorrow's. That might be completely different. So which one do I invest in? So I think leaders facing this kind of all these paradoxes every single day, and that's just a few examples. There's loads of them you could imagine.
- [22:50]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah, well, both of those things you bring up are big, big issues. I see them as well. Let's look at those leadership paradoxes real quick. Talk to me about. Yeah, if you were to coach somebody through some of those key paradoxes, what advice would you give them? Like, if given a choice between different scenarios, what do you feel like is the best way a leader navigates? Who that. Is it just based on their mission? Is it based on their budget? Is it based on the scope of their mission? Tell me more about what would you coach somebody to do based on what you see, what you're sharing is. I do think there seems to be no middle ground. Right. It's one or the other. And so maybe, I'm guessing you have a bit of a way to navigate through those challenges. So what would you say as a coach?
- [23:33]
Adam Bodensen
One of the things is around collaboration. The truth is there is far more that unites the kind of nonprofit sector than divides them. And even the organizations that are apparent competitors because they work in a similar field, actually, there's quite a lot of collaboration that goes on. And I do wonder whether some of these paradoxes actually force organizations to work together a bit more. Look, we'll think about today's customers, you think about tomorrow's, and we'll pool our intelligence, that type of. Of thing. So I think there may be more kind of collaboration going on. I think the workload one that I talked about, there's something there about being able to have meaningful conversations about workload because one person's busy day is another person's kind of meltdown because they're just completely overwhelmed. So there's something about, do we have a consistent understanding of what is normal? If you like, and then what is being asked to do too much. And if you're a line manager and someone comes to you and says, I've got a workload issue, I've got too much on my plate. How do we help them with that? So in my organization, for example, we actually have development sessions where we help people to be able to respond to those questions, where we start to. It's really basic stuff in some ways, actually. Tell me what your typical day is. Tell me what a typical week is. Oh, I didn't know you were spending two Days a week on that. Crikey. No, that's not a good idea. Why is that taking you two days? Oh, actually, did you know tech could help you with that or did you know that we already have some of that information that'll half your time. You get the idea. But the old motto, a problem shared is a problem hard. Right. But people have got to be able to have the conversation. And sometimes good line managers know how to have that conversation, but sometimes they don't, and that's not their fault. It's because we as leaders maybe haven't given them the opportunity to learn how to do that. So that's something we can do. Yeah.
- [25:22]
Dr. Rob Harder
You say something really interesting about proximity, right? People working together, having the time to have those conversations, building that into the day where you are interacting with your team. Talk to me about that a little bit because there's still this ongoing. I feel like a bit of tension. After Covid, a lot of people worked remotely and just barely were in person for their, you know, team, for their organization, for their business. But now you see major corporations in the US Particularly, maybe in Great Britain as well, where they're. The corporations are saying, no, you need to be in person. Again, there's, there's pushback on that because people got so used to that they like the remote flexibility. Talk to me about what is that? Perfect balance, right? Because there is some advantages to having some remote life work balance. Right. Because you talked about that earlier. But at the same time, no doubt just what you. An example, you just gave this idea of being in proximity enough to ask those kinds of questions of, oh, you're spending this much time on that. You shouldn't be. Well, those conversations are hard to have over a zoom call. When you're just packed out back to back with zoom calls, you're not really in the office. Where do you find that balance? And building your own team, how much time do you need to have some close proximity and how much time do you give freedom to your team to have a little bit more independence and remote work?
- [26:33]
Adam Bodensen
Yeah, really great question. And if I, if only I had the million dollar answer right, I would.
- [26:38]
Dr. Rob Harder
Be supposed to have the answer. Adam, everybody's.
- [26:40]
Adam Bodensen
Everybody's tackle, everybody's tackling this problem. But look, I'll tell you, I'll tell you how we've done it, right? So what we, we've done in, and this is in my association, project management role is we've gone for a hybrid approach where we ask people to be in the office four days per month. And I'll explain a little bit about why we've done per month rather than per week. Right. So per month, because we have. Some people have to travel quite a distance in. And so sometimes they want to come in and do a block of, you know, their four days all in one go, and they've done them, you know, others just want to come in a day, a week, and that's fine. And by the way, that's a minimum. So there are some people who come in a lot more than that because they haven't got a suitable work environment at home or. Or actually, we've had a lot of heat waves here recently, I'm sure nothing compared to what you've had over there. But. But people came in for the air conditioning, right? I mean, oh, wow. They wanted to go for that. But the point is this. I think going completely remote is challenging. I think asking people to be in all the time or most of the time is challenging. But if you can say, look, the reason we want you in four days a month in our case is because that's going to build the relationships and give you the opportunity to have these kind of conversations, these touch points, then actually people get that. And I think they get the best of both worlds. And the only other thing we did consider we didn't do it in the end is whether we should actually weight the requirements to people who are earlier in their career coming into the office more. Because there is something about those who are earlier on needing some of those role models around them and all the stuff you pick up by osmosis and so on. But in the end, the reason we didn't do that is because we decided that if they were in there without the senior people, it kind of defeated the point. So they all had to be in together or not at all. Right?
- [28:21]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's a good point. Absolutely. Catch 22 a little bit. Okay, well, this is a great segue into when it comes to emerging leaders that you just kind of referenced. What advice would you give to them when it comes to creating meaningful change in the social impact world? You're right. I think this next generation, everything I've read about them, all the research and the study that has been done on this next generation, they really want to make a difference. They're driven much more about the mission of an organization than how much they're being paid by the organization or even, you know, where that location the organization's located. So mission and making an impact is really foremost in their mind. So what advice would you give to some of these emerging leaders coming into the social sector and with, of course, an eye on digital trends and AI. Any thoughts on these next leaders are going to be leading this organization for the next 20, 30 years?
- [29:08]
Adam Bodensen
I mean, you kind of touched on the kind of purpose over ego, and I think that's kind of a natural trend anyway. I think that's there. And I think implicit within that is that point around having the relationships. The relationships in a world which is increasingly digital are so much more important than they ever were before. And so I would, you know, I would say to anyone who's in or taking on a leadership role, build the relationships. Take time to invest in the relationships. Sometimes some of the best decisions I've made in my entire career have been because I got good advice from someone who was able to give me that advice because I had a good relationship with them, and they were able to say, that's a good idea, Adam. Don't do that. That's not going to work. Because. And I could take that in the spirit it was intended. So I think that's the first thing. The other thing I would say is you've got to pick your battles. So the sweet spot I always think about is they've got to be small enough to win, but big enough to make a difference. And if they don't fall into that sweet spot, you've just got to leave it alone, because there's so much you could pick on as a leader, but you've only got finite resources, right? So you've got to pick those battles that fall into that sweet spot. And the final thing I'd say is, is don't feel like you need to have all the answers. I certainly don't have all of the answers, but what I do think I can do is I can ask good questions, and I'm able to listen. As my wife sometimes says to me, adam, you've got two ears and one mouth, and you need to use them in that proportion. So I do try to listen twice as much as I talk. But, you know, it's a really good point because when you listen to what people are telling you around, you find actually you've got people around you who collaboratively do have the answers that you're looking for, and as a leader, that's invaluable.
- [30:43]
Dr. Rob Harder
Now, well said. Great advice from your wife. Well, Adam, again, it's been great having you on the show. I love your energy, I love your enthusiasm, your intellect. So people that are listening and want to connect a little bit more, find out more about you maybe connect with you, find out more about the two organizations you lead. Where would you send them?
- [30:58]
Adam Bodensen
Okay, so I personally am on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find Ambodison in terms of the two organizations. So for Grant Genie, it's www.grant genie.AI for association for Project Management, again, www.apm.org uk.
- [31:16]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay. Well, Adam, again, thanks for sharing your insights. Thanks for just your your mind. You put a lot of thought into how this social sector can really maximize AI, for example, and really go with the digital trends. But also you have a heart for people and that proximity we talked about of leading people. Well, so thanks for all you're doing and thanks for sharing those insights and on the show today.
- [31:36]
Adam Bodensen
And a pleasure. Thanks, Rob.
- [31:39]
Dr. Rob Harder
Hey, friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google podcasts, and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to like subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You could also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox, DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.