Brooke Richie Babbage (0:00)

When change inside your organization isn't locked in, it always slides back to the status quo. Not because you're doing anything wrong, but because growth creates pressure. And under pressure, we return to what's familiar. So let's make sure that doesn't happen. I want to talk about what it takes to sustain the changes and shifts that you make inside your organization so that you can actually grow without unraveling. Welcome to the Nonprofit Mastermind podcast. I'm Brooke Richie Babbage. I've been in the social impact game for 25 years as a social justice lawyer turned two time nonprofit founder and leader turned growth strategist and coach for leaders around the country. I grew my nonprofit from me and an intern in a tiny closet to a high impact seven figure organization. And along the way I learned so so much about how to build an organization that has real impact and how to do it without burning out. In this podcast I share the nuts and bolts of all of it so you can do that too. We dive into the mindset, strategies and tactics of how to scale a high impact organization and how to do it in a way that's truly sustainable. So this is the third and final episode in my Design Shift sort of mini series. Hopefully if you followed along with the last two episodes, you've come to understand, or more deeply understand, that the chaos of growth, the sort of messy phase of things in your organization, is not a you problem, it's a design problem. In the last episode, I shared some questions you can ask to diagnose where your organization is absorbing pressure it shouldn't be. And I shared some strategies and actions you can take that help you choose a single focused shift to make something small, something structural and strategic, one at a time. So in this last part of the miniseries, this is going to be a quickie one. I just want to address one last thing, one last question. How do you make sure that your shift sticks because they fade? Energy wanes. January you and June, you totally different use. People revert unless we build things that hold the shift in place. So this episode is all about the last critical shift in your redesign process, sustaining the shifts you make. So step one, diagnose step two, one shift at a time. And here we're going to talk about sustaining those shifts. The big idea I want you to leave with from this episode is that if a shift only lives in your brain or in conversations with your team, or in your energy, then it's not actually a structural shift. It's more like a phase or an experiment which happen and are good. But I want to talk about structural shifts. Right? If you want it to last, it needs to live inside your organization's infrastructure. That means things like systems, documentation, rhythms. I use a simple three part approach to help leaders do this. And you can apply this to any shift that you make, no matter what which strong pillar it's connected to. When I say strong pillar, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go back, listen to the first two episodes. I walk through the strong framework, which is by organizational design framework that I teach inside my next level nonprofit program and inside my elevate program. Talk about that in episode one. And I walk through how to sort of think about and apply it in your organization. Episode two. So here I want to talk about systematizing or sort of concretizing your changes. So the first step is to systematize it. I want you to ask yourself, what's the repeatable process that supports the shift you've made? You want to turn the shift into something that doesn't depend on you remembering it or driving it manually every time. For example, if you decided to clarify your team roles, what's the process now for onboarding a new hire? So they're clear too? If you set your strategic priorities, what's the system for checking progress against that each month? This does not have to be fancy, but it does need to be repeatable. So think about the repeatable process that supports the shift. Name that process. Second, document it. Here you want to ask yourself, where does this live? Where does the system live? How do people know about it? How do they access it? If the only person who knows what's changed is you or the people on your leadership team that you've talked to, it's not actually embedded in your organization. You're just aware of it, which is a good first step. But we want to embed it so that it lasts. This part's simple. Write it down, save it somewhere shared. Make it visible and referenceable. For example, update your team manual with clarified roles and norms. Add a strategy document with your quarterly goals and OKRs, outcomes and key results. We talked in the last episode about an sop. Write out a bullet pointed SOP for donor follow up. Just document the system. I want to make the point really quickly. The documentation is not about adding unnecessary structure or bureaucracy, which can be a resistance point for some folks on your team. It's always about clarity. And clarity helps make sure that your shifts don't evaporate under pressure. So the third thing, the third step first is Systematize second document. The third is rhythmatize it. So yes, I made that word up. But stick with me here. Ask yourself, how does this get reinforced in our organizational rhythm? If you want to shift a stick, it has to be part of how we do things, right? How we move together as a team, as an organization, as an organism. And that means figuring out how to fold your system into check ins and meetings and reviews and retreats and conversations. Think about what you've documented and ask yourself, when do we review them? How often? How do we check them? What does that look like? Do you review okrs every Monday? Do you check cash flow trends on the first Friday of every month? What happens at the end of every board meeting? Right. Rituals, norms and rhythms are how you build your shift into your organization's muscle memory. So here's your sustain checklist. I told you this is going to be a quickie. This is really simple stuff. You just have to decide to do it. First ask yourself, can we repeat it? Then ask yourself, can we reference it? Then ask yourself, do we enforce it? The answer is yes to all three. Then you are not just shifting, you're designing. So I want to leave you with one question and this is just a sort of a working question for you. Look at one shift that you've made, maybe on the back end of the second episode in the series, and then ask yourself, what's one system, one document, and one rhythm that will lock this in? That's your next move. Now, if you want some support doing this, if you want help choosing the right container for the shift you've made and embedding it into your organization, there are a couple places you can First Light touch. Take my strong quiz. It's a diagnostic. It'll help you figure out where to get started. You can text the word strong to 66866 or go to Brooke ritchiebabbage.com strong if you want more hands on support and you'd like my help, me and my team making and embedding and really locking in these core shifts in your organization, you can apply to the next level nonprofit program. Go to Brookerichybabbage.com NextLevel Nonprofit. I'll put both of the links in the show notes. Now here's my final reminder. Your organization doesn't need more speed or hustle or grit or passion. You just need a structure that matches the scale of your impact. Resilient organizations are not built through adrenaline. They're built through architecture. One shift, one system and one rhythm at a time. That is it for this week. I'll see you back here next week for more Mastermind. Thanks so much for joining me this week. If you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to leave a rating and a review. I read every single one and they really do matter. I also share extra tidbits and resources building on what we talk about here in my newsletter, Leadership Forward 321. You can sign up by texting the word impact to 66866. And finally, definitely check out the links and resources that I mentioned in this episode@brookrichybabbage.com backslash podcast see you next week.