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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
How to Bring More Innovation to Your Organization
00:36:20
Innovation and nonprofits don’t always seem like a natural fit—but they should be. In this episode, Rob Harter talks with Leah Kral, author of ...
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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. Who 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 to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. When you hear the word innovation, do you first think of the nonprofit sector? My guess is a lot of you don't. You may think of the for profit sector, the startup sector, entrepreneurs that are constantly coming up with new technological ideas, but the nonprofit sector, for whatever reason, for a lot of people, innovation and nonprofits don't always go together. Now, I think that's a shame because I think the nonprofit sector should be one of the most innovative sectors in the world because what we're doing is so mission driven, number one, and we really need to innovate in order to continue to respond to the biggest needs we're facing, whether that be food insecurity or housing shortages and housing affordability, et cetera. Well, my guest today is Leah Krall, and she wrote a book called Innovation for Social Change. And she's going to share a lot about how the nonprofit sector actually is way more innovative than most people think and give it credit for, and why innovation is so important for your nonprofit organization, not just in general, but for your nonprofit organization. So ask her questions about how do you build in innovation into the organizational DNA of your organization? I'll talk about why there's so many barriers to keeping people from innovating at their nonprofit. Even creativity, which is often related to innovation, that can be stifled too often in nonprofit organizations. So that and more is discussed as Lee and I go through a really just fascinating conversation and hear more about our book. I think you're going to really enjoy the conversation. As always, thanks for tuning in. Now, onto the show. This podcast is sponsored by Donorbox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Thanks for joining us. I've got Leah Kral here today to be on the show. Leah, thanks for joining us today.
- [02:31]
Leah Krall
Oh, thanks so much, Rob, for having me. It's an honor. Absolutely.
- [02:35]
Dr. Rob Harder
Well, it's fun. We were just chatting before we hit record. It's great to just connect with fellow nonprofit leaders in this space. You do a ton, Leah, and just based on your LinkedIn profile, writing, thinking, leading strategy, just a lot of different things to help leaders become better leaders for their organizations. And we're going to dive in about that today and talk about your book, which I know you've been getting a lot of different opportunities to talk about that, so I want to dive into it. So let's just start with that. What first inspired your passion for helping nonprofits innovate specifically? And why is this journey so personal for you?
- [03:08]
Leah Krall
Oh, yeah. Well, let's see. So my career is. I've been in the workforce for around 30 years, and my career has taken some wild, unexpected twists and turns. We were just chatting earlier. I'm originally from Northeast Ohio. That's where I grew up. And all my family was in, you know, industry. There's so much industry and manufacturing in that area. So I started out as a junior CAD designer and I was in quality systems. And I, you know, kind of liked it, but something just felt like it was missing. And, you know, I did like the innovation aspects that kind of drew me to that work. But so my husband and I were having all these late night conversations about our career paths, and he had this dream of experiencing overseas development. And so since I was going through this career uncertainty, we decided, well, you know, if there's ever a time, you know, now's really the time to do something radical. So we applied as a married couple for the US Peace Corps.
- [03:55]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay.
- [03:56]
Leah Krall
And got in and we went to Jamaica. And so we lived in Kingston, Jamaica, for two years. And it was, of course, life changing. And, you know, just so many things were unexpected and just so much growth from that experience. I mean, first of all, there was all this kind of terrible poverty, you know, that I'd never seen anything like, you know, like squatters building their homes by hand, you know, children scavenging garbage heaps, you know, just, you know, so that they could, you know, sell cans for cash so they could eat dinner that night. You know, people were just surviving. And that was a shock. But in the midst of all that kind of poverty and need and, you know, sad things, I kept thinking about that Fred Rogers, quote, quote, in the midst of crisis, look for the helpers.
- [04:38]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah.
- [04:39]
Leah Krall
And, you know, just immersed and surrounded by these, like, her very heroic helpers. And so that, of course, just really kind of captured my heart and my attention. And I thought, you know, if there's some way that I could Shift my career so that I take those good things that I learned, those good management practices from people like Drucker and Covey and Deming, but apply it, you know, in some way that's helpful for these nonprofit heroes. That's really what I would like to do. And I've. I've since found a way to do that for these last 20 years now.
- [05:06]
Dr. Rob Harder
Thanks. I always love hearing people's personal experiences and I mean, what a shaping experience it sounds like and really gave you a great foundation to launch into what you're doing, of course, even now. So, okay, let's talk about your book. You've obviously got this book out there. It's making some good waves. What motivated you to write the book initially and what do you hope readers will take away from your book?
- [05:27]
Leah Krall
So, yeah, I feel like it's just been a privilege that I get to do the kind of work I love for these last 20 years, working alongside very entrepreneurial nonprofit teams. And in a way, it was kind of my secret heart's desire to write a book, but I just thought, oh, that's way off in the future when I'm retired.
- [05:44]
Dr. Rob Harder
Right.
- [05:45]
Leah Krall
But then it was a nonprofit executive who approached me. That's the crazy thing. It wasn't me pitching it to him. He pitched me with Leah, I've been hearing all these good things you're doing with teams and your workshops. Why don't you put it into book form? And I just, yes, yes, I need to do this right. And so I set out to write a book that would help the kind of people I worked with, with busy nonprofit practitioners. And the book started out kind of related to nonprofit effectiveness, but the more the stories were coming in and the more it took shape, kind of took a twist and turned into nonprofit innovation. And part of my passion for that, you know, we really need organizations that empower us, ask courageous questions and innovate and experiment to find what works best for the people that we're serving, you know, and that we care so much about. So I just wanted to know, you know, what makes some nonprofits inspired, creative and innovative, while others misfire and is there a secret sauce? And so researching the book, all in all, it took about two and a half years. You know, lots of interviews, lots of stories in there, but I learned so much. So I'm really excited to. So you asked, what do I hope people walk away from exactly? You know, in a way, I think of it kind of like it's a four hour read. And I think of it in a way Like a mini MBA for nonprofits.
- [06:55]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay.
- [06:56]
Leah Krall
You know, and just very practical things that any nonprofit can do, you know, any, any type of nonprofit, any size budget, you know, and it's really about unpacking the how of nonprofit innovation. And what I've heard from readers, I've learned that some teams are treating it as a workplace book club, which is really great. So once I heard that, I very quickly created a book club discussion guide that you can download from my website.
- [07:20]
Dr. Rob Harder
Oh, perfect.
- [07:22]
Leah Krall
Leahcrawl.com is my website. You'll find it there. And then I'm also hearing readers just come out to me, like after a book talk or, you know, they'll just come up to me and say that the stories really make them feel encouraged and energized.
- [07:33]
Dr. Rob Harder
Right.
- [07:33]
Leah Krall
And that, that makes me so happy.
- [07:35]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's awesome. No, I'm glad. And way to go to get a workbook right away. I mean, I think that's an excellent way to provide practical applications for people to really dig through it and not just read it and then go on to the next book, but really implement some of the principles you put in there. You know, it's interesting you talk about innovation. I think for whatever reason, right or wrong, we often think of innovation more in the business sector or the startup industry. Entrepreneur was doing that, but maybe not so much nonprofits. So what really led you to think about innovation and focus on that? And then what does innovation look like in the nonprofit sector?
- [08:08]
Leah Krall
Yeah, I think if we stopped any random person on the street and just asked, you know, what, what is innovation? What do you think about when you hear innovation? I'm sure just, you're right, you know, most of them would immediately think of the for profit business innovations, things we all love, you know, like the iPad or, you know, now you can visit the dentist's office. And they are using these 3D printers that are so super cool, you know, just out a crown right on the spot.
- [08:31]
Dr. Rob Harder
Right.
- [08:31]
Leah Krall
And so that makes sense that those, I mean, the for profit world is a much bigger sector. So it just makes sense. We're surrounded by those innovations, but we do have innovation all the time in the nonprofit sector. I think it's just, we just don't get as much credit for it. But, but if you ask, well, what does innovation even mean? I think about innovation just as finding new and better ways of doing things. And so in our sector, it could be big or it can be small. And so when I think of really big innovations, I think of the American civil rights movement. They were super strategic. They really changed the landscape of things, changed Jim Crow laws. The story of the creation of the 911 emergency system is also a really cool story that came about because of a collaboration between philanthropy and nonprofits and first responders. There's a great story on that. Or, you know, the XPRIZE foundation, they work on really big, you know, big things with an international scope, like the global water crisis. So those are big. But innovation in our sector can also be an invention. There's a story of a professor at Stanford University who asked his students to work on the problem of premature deaths of babies in India because even though there were incubators in hospitals, they weren't being used. And so they were just seeing, you know, terrible, tragic deaths. And so he tasked his students with this. And what the students discovered after working on it is that rural families couldn't reach the hospitals. And so instead the students brainstormed, came up with a new design for incubators that were portable and far less costly. They look kind of like little sleeping bags, like infant sized sleeping bags that were heated. That's an invention from the nonprofit sector. But then innovation can be very small and humble. And the way I like to. The story I like to use on that is imagine a legal aid clinic where people are walking in and they have to take a lot of information and maybe they're sitting in the reception area with the clipboard, you know, like, you know, filling in pages of answers. And what if the receptionist just comes up with the idea, like, what if we switch to an iPad? And now the data's going right into our system. We don't have to pay someone for double entry. Right? That's innovation. It's a process innovation. Right. It may be small, but if you shaved off five minutes a day of time, that's, you know, resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. So that's, that's how I think about it. And I think it's really important, you know, because in our sector, people are counting on us and we really need to be our effective and innovative best.
- [10:54]
Dr. Rob Harder
I like that. Well, thanks for bringing up some good examples of innovation in the social sector and the nonprofit sector, because I think you're right. I think it's undervalued and it's probably under promoted, if you will, for lack of a better term. I think there is a lot more there. But it is funny, isn't it? People do think of the business world and startup world much more. So good for you though, to continue to highlight. Hey, no, there's a lot of innovations going on. And I'm a big believer that if we're going to continue to really try to solve these world's biggest problems, you know, in the nonprofit sector, working with, course, the government sector and the for profit sector, we need to continue to innovate. So I think it's good that you're really pushing us to continue to innovate. Okay, so now let's talk about practically, how can nonprofits build innovation into their organizational DNA? I think it's something that you really have to be intentional about it. So how would you recommend if someone's listening, like, well, I want to be more innovative, how would they put that into their organizational DNA as an organization?
- [11:46]
Leah Krall
Excellent. Yeah, that's really the middle part of my book. And so if we think about the many things that feed into our workplace function, how our workplace functions in reality, what do our processes and systems look like? For example, who in our organization gets to make decisions? And why? Are we top down? Are we bottom up? Are people empowered? And one of my very favorites. I can give you a brief story on this. Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic is probably the best nonprofit hospital in the world. They're really famous for finding innovative solutions for people who are very sick. And their reputation, as you say, intentional. Right? Their reputation did not happen by accident. And in interviews, team members say that good patient outcomes are because they are empowered to carry out their organizational values. And one of those values is the needs of the patient come first. And they seem to truly live this. So then getting to the intentionality part, team members are trained, empowered, and encouraged to put Mayo values into practice. And then those values become part of their culture, you know, guiding all decisions, big or small, guiding situations. For example, the Mayo Clinic night staff were concerned about how noise can affect a patient's sleep. That's really important to the healing process. And so the night staff kind of came forward with this idea of, like, why don't we conduct noise studies? And they did. And that actually led to designing quieter flooring, quieter wheels on food carts, lower decibels for overhead paging. And to me, that's beautiful story, right? Of intentional structures that are allowing, you know, the folks in the workforce to come forward with good ideas. And that's not accidental, you know. So that middle section of my book is really all about your question of what are all those things? And there's multiple chapters on things like one on workplace culture, one on metrics. How can metrics either help or hinder innovation? Because done poorly, they can squash it. The Budget process or how should annual performance reviews, you know, how can those help innovation, the donor grantee relationship. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of meat in that middle section of the book.
- [13:46]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's good to know. And you know, speaking of your book, then you also talk about what you call six principles of social change innovation that should guide one's work. Maybe you can dive into that because that, that'll give a good sneak peek for those who have not read the book yet. Tell me more.
- [14:01]
Leah Krall
Yeah, I didn't come up with this until I had finished the entire manuscript. And then I'm like, you know, I need to kind of sum this, you know, 13 chapter book into something kind of small and punchy. And so I was looking at are there overall themes and, and six just kind of like bubbled right up. So yeah, six principles of social change innovation. Number one, like a detective, be a fearless problem solver. And you know, we have to uncover hidden needs. And then two, we need to ask courageous questions. Idea. You know, we could start small but dream big. And I saw as I was looking at, you know, many stories of origin stories of nonprofits we've heard of, even big ones, you know, like habit or the civil rights movement, they all started small. So I think that start small but dream big is really helpful. Number three, when people on the front lines are empowered to speak up and collaborate, breakthroughs will happen, like the Mayo Clinic example. The fourth is to leave room for experiments, you know, leave room for play, risk taking, and even failure. I know that that's a big scary word, failure, right. But it just comes with the territory with innovation. The fifth, embrace continuous learning by asking ourselves hard questions. One of my nonprofit CL clients, they have a saying that we ask ourselves a hard question so our donors and board don't have to. I like that. And the sixth is persuasion. We have to be so good at persuasion. And, you know, not just persuading donors to, you know, give us a grant, but persuading people all the time. You know, like maybe we're trying to persuade superstar talent to come work at our nonprofit. So all those six things kind of work together. Like you can't take one out. You can, you can do all five. Great. But say if your workplace culture, you have a culture of fear where people aren't going to speak up, then you're not going to have an innovative workplace. So I think they all work together in a really important way.
- [15:46]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's interesting you point that out and there's a lot in there, obviously, and for people to probably hit pause and then rewind and then go back to get all six of those. But say someone who's really an organization, who's really trying to innovate and bring those six principles in, is there room for them to slowly implement those things? I agree that you can't pull one out per se, but I also know you can't be perfect overnight. How would you recommend someone to not get discouraged or a team to not get discouraged if it takes a while to implement all six of those?
- [16:14]
Leah Krall
Yeah, I think it does. I've had the privilege, like a lot of my nonprofit clients that I work with are pretty high functioning, you know, and so that's not always the case, you know, but yeah, change takes time. I think one thing that can be encouraging is just, you know, these are all practices that any nonprofit can do. You don't have to be, you know, huge like Cleveland Clinic, you know, with a massive budget. These are things that, you know, I work with small, volunteer only based nonprofits that are doing some of these things and taking the practices in the book bit by bit. I don't know how. There's no way that you could really just, you know, snap your fingers and implement all of them. So I think it is kind of a piece by piece process. But you lock one thing down and then you can move on to the next. And I've seen that.
- [17:02]
Dr. Rob Harder
We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's 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. hey friends, thanks so much for listening to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Many of you know that I provide leadership and life coaching. With my 30 years of nonprofit experience, I know firsthand how hard leaders like you work. I also know how important it is to have someone you can call on and to get help with the barriers and leadership challenges you will face both professionally and personally. I really want to help people thrive and become all they were meant to become by providing coaching and consulting services. And it's been so much fun working as a coach, working with clients who are leaders just like you, looking to grow personally and professionally. What you may not know is that I also provide consulting services. Currently, in fact, I'm working with an organization to help them create a clear strategy and plan to raise $3.5 million to expand their organization. So perhaps you're an executive director and you sense your organization has hit a lid on growth and you need a strategy as to how you can scale your nonprofit. Or perhaps the culture you set out to create is not the culture you have currently and it's impacting your staff retention. Or maybe you're facing a major resource challenge and you don't know what to do. That's where I can help. I come alongside leaders and organizations to create strategies to grow their organizations and maximize their impact. If your nonprofit needs help with fundraising strategy or operational effectiveness, reach out today. You can simply email me@robharter.com you can go to my website, robharder.com or you can call me 435-776-5173. I would be happy to provide a free sample coaching session or a consult to see how I can best be of help to you and your organization. Well, thanks again for listening. Now back to the show. Well, we've kind of touched on a little bit earlier, but I'm curious, when it comes to nonprofits being more innovative and more effective, and because of that, what are the barriers? Why is it hard for nonprofits to become more innovative? Is. Is it a fear factor? Is it the fear of failure? You mentioned the failure word. Talk to me about what you found.
- [19:44]
Leah Krall
Yeah, I love that question. And I actually make a point. Usually when I'm giving a book talk or doing a webinar, I'll ask the audience that question, and I take note of their answers. You know, I think we should be really honest about the messy realities of the nonprofit workplace and not try to pretend they don't exist. I think there's no doubt that people in our sector have hearts, you know, a lot of heart and passion. We care. You know, I mean, usually people are opting into a career and like me, you know, in the nonprofit world, because you have this passion and you care.
- [20:12]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's right.
- [20:12]
Leah Krall
So if passion isn't, isn't the problem, what is? You know, and so what I hear from folks, just kind of summarizing it in my own words. But first, there's sort of this fog, you know, I think we have this fog of good intentions. You know, having good intentions by themselves don't automatically mean we have clarity about what we need to do, you know, with our strategies or program design. There's this great quote by Stephen Covey that goes something like, we might be climbing up the ladder, but is our ladder even leaning against the right wall in the first place? You know, how do we know?
- [20:40]
Dr. Rob Harder
Great question.
- [20:42]
Leah Krall
You know, and we suffer from compassion fatigue. You know, it's. There's so much we want to do. You know, we don't want to say no, right? We want to help, you know, drive our mission forward to help people. But when we don't say no, when we don't prioritize, then we end up being stretched too thin. We can't confidently say no to things, and we need to be able to do that. So then we end up being pulled in too many directions and getting burned out. And there can be this sort of related. Right, There can be this sort of misguided thinking that we don't have time to be strategic because we're too busy putting out fires. You know, and then workplace culture, as you mentioned, that matters a lot. There might be fear to speak up, office politics or, you know, if, if there's a culture of fear, the people are just going to keep their heads down, kind of stay in their own lane. I mean, that's natural, that's human. So if we fail to empower people on the front lines, you know, the ones doing the work and carrying out the work, they're going to be the people with the best ideas. And if we don't pay attention to those obstacles, you know, and kind of call them out and recognize them, you know, entrepreneurial people are going to take their time and talents elsewhere, and donors, you know, may end up taking their funding elsewhere.
- [21:47]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yep. I'm glad you mentioned that. You know, and it's interesting, we're kind of talking about both innovation and creativity. They're, they're so tied together. Is there anything else when it comes to creativity specifically, maybe even, you know, as a parallel to innovation that are specific obstacles that you've bumped into, they're pretty common. And then how have people really successfully overcome those specific obstacles again, to creativity? Because I think that can be stifled a lot in non profits again for the fear of, hey, what is this donor gonna think about what if we fail? Or what if this doesn't work? What if we waste a lot of money and we can't do that? We have to be good stewards of our money. Anything that you found along your research with this particular issue, I think just.
- [22:24]
Leah Krall
Kind of giving you an overview of how the whole book is structured because really the whole book is trying to get at that. And so I broke the book into three kind of main sections. The first is all about surfacing hidden needs. So that first third of the book has a lot of creativity exercises that you can either take your team through or just read yourself and do your own back of the envelope kind of brainstorming. But really that whole first third of the book is meant to, like, no matter what your culture, just to draw out good ideas for whatever the social problem is you're trying to solve. And then that middle section of the book that we just talked about briefly, how do you build innovation into your system so that it's just part of your everyday workplace? And then the third is how to bring your own innovation, a game. And I would say the thread of creativity is really woven throughout all three of those of those sections and they provide, you know, practical things we can do to kind of overcome all those obstacles and, you know, open the workplace up to creativity.
- [23:24]
Dr. Rob Harder
You mentioned something interesting in your book. You talk about the getting creativity from frontline workers that oftentimes the people are on the front lines, so to speak. And every organization has that, even if it's metaphorical. But there is that sense of the frontline workers that really see things differently perhaps than the executive level or the executive desk. How do you draw that creativity? What have you found to be really successful there?
- [23:44]
Leah Krall
Yes. So bear with me. So I've got a little bit of a longish answer on this one, but it's taught me any time, if I'm running out of time.
- [23:51]
Dr. Rob Harder
Sure.
- [23:51]
Leah Krall
Yeah. So I'm a big believer in stealing good ideas wherever you see them, including stealing ideas from the for profit world. And so Pixar, Pixar's movies have won 23 Academy Awards and are some of the highest grossing animated films of all time, like Toy Story. So I can't.
- [24:06]
Dr. Rob Harder
They're the best Pixar of the best. Yeah.
- [24:09]
Leah Krall
So what's the secret to their success? You know, how do they come up with all this amazing creativity? And so as I read and researched about them, I learned that at Pixar, teams are expected to give brutal feedback to each other. And that, you know, brutal, really? But a Pixar executive says that they assume early on that all of our movies suck. And the role of the creative feedback process is to get the movie from suck to unsuck. So language is a little shocking. Brutal and suck. What? But that same executive explains that importantly, everyone in the room knows that the questions raised must be in the spirit of making the creative product as good as it possibly can be. And without that manager setting the tone as a safe space, that kind of tough love feedback process would never even get off the ground. So then I wanted to know, well, how do they do this? And is there anything we could kind of of steel for our sector? So they use a creative process called design thinking. And, you know, a lot of people have heard of design thinking. It's been around for decades, often used more by, like, marketing firms or creative companies. But I think there are some parallels to designing a movie and designing nonprofit program interventions that we can steal from them. So what I set out to do then, and I tried this a lot in my own consulting work, is translating design thinking for our own use. And so just to explain, in brief, a little bit more of what it is or kind of the Leah version of design thinking, it's a process for exploring what's possible and then thinking creatively and strategically. And so in my version of design thinking, we can ask ourselves three questions. What's desirable? What's scalable? What's feasible? That's kind of the ideation part. And then that leads to a fourth question, then the action part, which is how might we design small experiments?
- [25:53]
Dr. Rob Harder
Right.
- [25:54]
Leah Krall
And so I'll just start with one, the what's desirable? So, so really it's asking, what is the social problem we're trying to solve and are we good at identifying hidden needs? And nonprofit teams can struggle with this. It can be kind of murky. You know, we talked about that fog of good intentions, and there's this great quote by Henry Ford that goes something like, if I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. You know, so it's. It can be clear, unclear. Right. It can be tricky. And so we have to kind of work to uncover those hidden needs. And, and so, for example, let's say you work at a work nonprofit that focuses on workforce development. Well, what aspect of workforce development are you trying to solve? Are you focused on those who are temporarily unemployed and readily find their way back into work with just a little bit of help? Or what about the chronically unemployed or underemployed? Right. So there's a story from a bakery in Yonkers, New York, I could talk about, but I want to check on our time, too.
- [26:51]
Dr. Rob Harder
Sure, sure. Okay. No, this is good. Well, I'm glad to hear more of that. And I think, yeah, there's so much that we could dig into. We're going to. Out of. But let's go to another topic. You mentioned it before, but I like how you phrased it. Bringing your innovation aame. How can individuals that are listening to this podcast hear you and say, okay, this is what it looks like to have my innovation AAME on so I can really help my nonprofit move forward faster. What would you say to them? How do you implement that? What does it look like?
- [27:16]
Leah Krall
Yeah. So the last section of my book, the third section, is how to Bring Our Innovation a Game. And at this section, where the other sections are more about kind of organization and structures and taking teams through exercises, this part is really the personal, where it gets personal and helps you think through a lot of self reflection questions. And what I found in just, you know, finding lots of examples and doing a lot of research is that social entrepreneurs and nonprofit innovators are really good at understanding themselves, their own gifts and their passions because, you know, we have to say no to things and prioritize what we spend our time on. And are we guardians of our time in the same way that we're guardians of our bank account? You know, we can't say yes to everything and we have limited time. We have to make trade offs. Life is short, right? So how do we confidently say no to things and focus on what we do best? And it starts with being clear about our personal unique abilities and our vision for our life. So one of the chapters in this last section is called what's yous Superpower? But how do you figure that out? You know, my own career path has taken a lot of wild twists and turns, you know, as I shared. So how do you think about this? So in that chapter on what's yous Superpower? Of a lot of questions you can ask yourself and thought exercises, but just some examples of that you can ask, you know, what in your life sparks joy? What do you enjoy doing? Or what the converse. What do you hate doing? Like, I volunteered for a nonprofit conference to help organize it. I very quickly learned, like, I hate doing that work.
- [28:39]
Dr. Rob Harder
Very quickly learned that.
- [28:42]
Leah Krall
I learned, like I tried it. I learned that that career path is not for me, you know, huge respect to people who do that. I, I just learned that about myself. Right. Or another question. Do you have a really wacky combination of interest? You know, like you think of Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers neighborhood. What an odd combination of talents he had. Right? He was brilliant with puppetry. He was a very accomplished musician. He went to Presbyterian Seminary. You know, so he had this deep compassion for people and values. And then he had this interest in television, which was kind of new and burgeoning. So that's a Pretty wacky combination, right? We all have those kind of oddball things of traits that we love. You know, maybe it's economics and chess. Who knows? You know, what everyone's might be. You could ask your colleagues, like, what are 10 words that you might use to describe me? It might really surprise you, you know, or take an online strength finder. And then a last one I'll share is just think about has, has there ever been a major life trial in your life that has shaped you in some way? If you look at Martin Luther King Jr. S life story, right, he was very much shaped by unjust Jim Crow laws that deeply, personally affected him and his loved ones, you know, or Fred Rogers had severe childhood asthma, which his family kind of had isolated in a room with air conditioning to help him breathe. And so because he was alone as a child, he just started being creative with and creating puppets, right? And so, you know, sometimes a major life trial can really shape your passions. I think it was a congressman, Elijah Cummings, who said that he told his children, you know, don't ask why something happened to you, ask why it happened for you. And I think that's really powerful. So, you know, finding your superpower can help you be more entrepreneurial, you know, and other chapters in that last section include, like, persuasiveness, tenacity, how to challenge the status quo diplomatically. These are. And the good news is these are all traits we can learn and get better at now.
- [30:38]
Dr. Rob Harder
Thanks for sharing that. Just interesting combinations, great examples. And then I want to ask you a philosophical question, because I know you touch on this a little bit in your book, but kind of the big, big question of why should we care about the role of nonprofits in civil society when it comes just the big picture? What did you. I mean, you've been involved with nonprofits a long time now. Why should we put so much care into that? Why does it matter?
- [31:01]
Leah Krall
That's a really good question. I. I had to ask myself that, too. I'm like, I'm going to dedicate two years or my whole career, you know, I need to have this clear in my own mind. But, yeah, why do nonprofits matter? Why should we care about them? And if you think about it, nonprofits really provide some of the greatest gifts to the world and take on some of its hardest problems for your listeners. You know, I bet a nonprofit has touched your life, or touched a lot life of someone you care about in some way. We're building civil society. Our work eases hunger and fights injustice. Nonprofits that advance education Help break the chains of ignorance and poverty. Their recovery programs, mental health counseling, you know, medical care and research, provide healings, arts programs, lift the human spirit. And so many people are counting on our work, you know, but if you think about what it means if a non profit provides mediocre services to an at risk young person, I've seen it, you know, stakes are really high. So I mean, you could also get into discussion of, you know, the different sectors, government, business, nonprofit, civil society. And I think each brings their own, you know, kind of comparative advantage. And each sector is important and especially as you see more complex problems like say ocean health or overfishing, it's going to take all three sectors working together, but each, you know, does play an important role.
- [32:14]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah, well said. No, this is good. Okay, maybe share a story of one of your favorite, most innovative nonprofits that you've run across, you've worked with, or maybe has emerged since you've written the book and then you've learned about them in your research. Could you share one example?
- [32:29]
Leah Krall
Yeah. So there's so many. Like when I finally finished the manuscript and counted up, I had stories of 70 nonprofits, in addition 20 foundations. So there's a lot of stories. That's a lot great stories. It's hard to choose, but I'll just, I'll pick one. Well, well, so the opening chapter of my book is about a student run school. I felt like they did everything so right and I had to make them the opening chapter. But I think I want to talk a little bit about experimentation. I think that's so important. So, you know, one of my favorite examples of nonprofits that experiment is World Reader. So World Reader is a nonprofit with a mission to bring digital books to disadvantaged children and their families. And so when they launched in 2010, they began several experiments at the same time. So in one experiment, they gave these Amazon Kindle E Reader kind of tablets to a small group of elementary students in Ghana. And what they found though, was that when the children would play during recess, the devices kept breaking. And so at the same time, though, their team was experimenting with a mobile app. And what they learned from observation was that the young users actually ended up much preferring the mobile app. And so today, about 200,000 users a month are reading books on their mobile platform, which is great. And so I think they there's several good lessons to unpack with their innovation and their story. One, I really liked how they spread their bits because if World Reader would have just gone all in on those Kindle tablets, which they were actually really excited about they may have never discovered the far better solution with the mobile app. So I think it's just far better to fail fast and fail small before investing too big. And you know, experimentation really does help us learn and innovate. But you know, we have to build in some expectation and toleration of failure when we do that. And that's so important, a lot of leaders kind of miss that or have blind spots, you know, about having the right attitude towards failure.
- [34:20]
Dr. Rob Harder
Right.
- [34:20]
Leah Krall
Related Story I love is from the Hewlett Foundation. They offer a prize to grants officers and they encourage them to share what they call the worst grant from which you learned the most. And I think they offer some like silly door prizes and they bring the team together and you know, they just talk. It's so human. Right? I think that's really great because it takes the pressure off and allows us to be honest and really laugh at ourselves.
- [34:43]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's great. Great example. I know if we have more time, there's more in the book. That's why I encourage you to find it out. So for my listeners who want to get the book, find out where they can get the book and learn a little bit more about you. Where would you send them?
- [34:54]
Leah Krall
Yeah. So feel free to visit my website. It's just my name leahkrall.com, l E A H K R A L.com from there I blog on Substack regularly. I'm very active on LinkedIn and you know, also on Twitter X. And yeah, feel free that my website's probably the good jumping off place and the book's available at all major retailers.
- [35:16]
Dr. Rob Harder
Great. Well again, Lee, it's so fun to talk to you. I know there's more we could chat about, but we'll do another interview for another day. But thanks for what you've just collected into your book and thanks for all the efforts you do just to help nonprofit leaders across the board. I hope this book gets widely read. And again, thanks for taking time to be on the show.
- [35:32]
Leah Krall
Oh thank you so much for having me. It was an honor.
- [35:35]
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 can 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.