We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leah Kral a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Leah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

In my early career, I worked in industry in quality systems and engineering, for 7 years. But something was missing, though I didn’t know what. And my life ended up taking a wild detour. My husband, who is far more adventurous than I am, had always had a dream to join the Peace Corps. Since I was at a point of career uncertainty, it seemed like now or never. So, we did a 2 year tour of duty in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. And it ended up being amazing, a profound life changing experience.

The whole experience, those 2 years in Jamaica, just rocked my world. I taught computer literacy at a teachers’ college and on weekends helped with Habitat for Humanity. I couldn’t stop thinking about the huge social needs in the world and the heroic efforts of those working to make a difference. It got me interested in, how do we solve these things, what are real solutions to poverty? From then on, I knew I wanted to work with people doing the important work of philanthropy and social change.

In hindsight, I’m so glad that I got to have a foot in both worlds, of the world of the private sector and the great management thinkers (Drucker, Covey, Deming), and the world of philanthropy. I found a new north star for my career. I set out to combine the intersection of those two worlds, entrepreneurially solving problems and building empowered teams with the best management frameworks tailored for the nonprofit workplace. I became good at testing and translating best practices for those doing the hard work of building civil society, and that has been my passion ever since. And I was invited to write a book about it!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a facilitator and author who helps nonprofits innovate and further social change. As senior director of strategy and innovation at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, I provide tailored workshops and consulting to internal teams and to a network of nonprofit partners across the country. For decades, I have been helping teams to break out of the busy daily routine and draw out their best creative thinking. I love it! Testing and translating best practices for those doing the hard work of building civil society is my passion. I help teams to design pilots, program strategies and meaningful evaluation approaches, leading to better outcomes and more compelling stories for supporters. My new book, Innovation for Social Change: How Wildly Successful Nonprofits Inspire and Deliver Results, is available at all major retailers.

With more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, I have been doing a lot of public speaking of late, at nonprofit industry events and for advisory boards. It has been my privilege this year to speak to groups such as American Fundraising Professionals, the Social Impact Advisory Network, The Stand Together Foundation, The Forbes Funds, Pacific University School of Nonprofit Leadership, and the Center for Public and Nonprofit Management. I have enjoyed being interviewed by thoughtful podcasts including Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership with Patton McDowell and We Are For Good. My book has been featured in outlets such as Philanthropy News Digest and Philanthropy Daily. It has been a whirlwind!

Any advice for managing a team?

Every time I provide a webinar or consult with a nonprofit team, I make a point to ask them, what gets in the way of workplace innovation? And I hear responses such as the fog of good intentions, in the world of philanthropy, it isn’t always clear how to solve problems. Burnout – we can be spread too thin or pulled in too many directions. Bureaucracy. There are also obstacles inside of us, like fear to speak up, or deciding to keep our head down and stay in our own lane. If we don’t pay attention to these obstacles to innovation, entrepreneurial staff will take their time and talents elsewhere.

The opportunity is that we need organizations that empower us to ask courageous questions and innovate and experiment to discover what works best. There are many practices we can put in place to encourage bottom-up innovation and creativity. We can incentivize team members to challenge the status quo. We can empower people on the front lines, the ones who are doing the work, to speak up and challenge the status quo. To get out of their way!

One of my favorite stories is from Mayo Clinic, perhaps the best nonprofit hospital in the world. They are famous for finding innovative solutions for people who are very sick. Their reputation didn’t happen by accident. In interviews, team members say that good patient outcomes are because they are empowered to carry out their organizational values. One value is, “the needs of the patient come first.” They seem to truly live this. The night staff were concerned for how noise can affect a patient’s sleep, very important to the healing process, and they came up with the idea to conduct noise studies. This led to designing quieter flooring, quieter wheels on carts, and lower decibels for overhead paging.

That’s innovation and bottom up empowerment. We can intentionally design processes and systems that support a workplace culture of innovation and bottom-up empowerment, without losing sight of accountability.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Unfortunately, sometimes we neglect to listen to our stakeholders, and we learn things the hard way. Take it from me. Some years ago, as a Peace Corps volunteer newly arrived in Jamaica, I joined with a team of other volunteers. One of our earliest training assignments was to find service opportunities in our community. One of the volunteers noticed an unsightly ravine full of trash and suggested a clean-up day. Soon we kicked into high gear, energetically planning the event, putting up posters, organizing how we would carry out the work. Then the day came. We American volunteers spent a very sweaty, dirty Saturday gathering many bags of trash. We noticed that none of the locals were out helping us, which was somewhat demoralizing. But by the end of the day the ravine looked much better.

Then the stunner. Two weeks later, the ravine was again full of trash. The culprit? None of us had spoken with people in the community about the trash cleanup day, whether they wanted it or had better ideas. We failed to ask questions and identify their true needs. It turns out that the ravine was their only option for disposing of trash. How arrogant and foolish they must have thought us. The lessons learned from that training assignment stick with me to this day.

I learned a powerful lesson that I will never forget. We must always make a systematic effort to ask questions and pay attention. What are the unspoken needs of the people we are serving? How are we going about surfacing and discovering their hidden needs? How are team members asking questions, or immersing themselves in their circumstances to better understand the nuances?

Contact Info:

• Website: leahkral.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahkral/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeahKral
• Other: https://leahkral.substack.com/