Challenging Nonprofit Norms - Visionary Leadership & Performance Culture with Nicole Lawson

What if nonprofits could break free from traditional constraints to achieve greater impact through visionary leadership and a strong performance-driven culture?

In this episode, Nicole Lawson, CEO and President of Orchards Children's Services, shares her journey of leading an organization that serves over 8,500 children with the support of a dedicated 350-member team. 

With a background in behavioral healthcare, Nicole brings a unique perspective to nonprofit leadership - challenging outdated norms and redefining what success looks like in this sector.

Nicole dives into the importance of fostering a resilient organizational culture, emphasizing the connection between internal dynamics, external perceptions, and mission fulfillment. 

She candidly discusses the need for competitive wages in nonprofits and highlights how balancing people, processes, and profit can sustain long-term success. 

Her innovative strategies show how reinvesting in staff and building a culture of positivity and accountability can drive meaningful change.

Tune in to learn how Nicole's visionary approach is reshaping the nonprofit narrative and inspiring leaders across sectors to rethink what’s possible.

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Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Lever Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Address organizational change. Our guest today is Nicole Lawson, CEO and President of Orchards Children's Services. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Nicole Lawson: 0:32

Thanks, Will, I'm really glad to be here today.

William Gladhart: 0:35

I'm glad to have you as well. So let's start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and, of course, your organization.

Nicole Lawson: 0:43

I'd love to, thank you so much. As you said, my name is Nicole Lawson and I've been with Orchards for a little over a year and, in terms of education, I have a master's degree in counseling psychology. I'm a licensed professional counselor here in the state of Michigan and I have a PhD in business administration. I've spent 20-plus last years of my career in the behavioral healthcare care space, working in quasi-governmental, for-profit and non-profit settings, and personally, I've been married to my wonderful husband for 23 years and we have two smart, kind and super talented daughters aged 22 and 18.

Nicole Lawson: 1:17

As I said, I've been in my role with Orchards just over a year now, and we're a child welfare organization that I like to say was started by a group of visionary women, and we're a child welfare organization that I like to say was started by a group of visionary women who saw a gap in services to children in their community over 60 years ago and they pulled together to fill that gap. Fast forward to where we are today, where we have a dedicated staff of about 350 people that serve over 8,500 children across the entire state. We have a family preservation arm that works really hard to keep families together and, unfortunately, if kids can't be safely kept in their family home. We do have a foster care and adoption business line as well to help kids who are moving through that part of the child welfare system, and we also have outpatient mental health counseling to address the often traumatic experiences that both parents and youth who are involved in the child welfare system may experience.

William Gladhart: 2:10

Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you for the fantastic work that you do. That is impacting not only families, kids, but also, you know, you have a caring and compassionate staff that is facilitating those interactions and engagements. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Nicole Lawson: 2:27

Absolutely. I think your culture is a direct reflection of how everybody in the organization feels about the work you do. When they're reflecting that, they reflect that out back to the rest of the world about what those feelings are and I just think there's a direct correlation to this idea of them carrying your organizational culture out to the rest of the world and the success of your business. So, regardless of what kind of business you're in, if you have a poor culture, it's going to poorly impact your business and the rest of the world's perception of your business and then, conversely, if you have a really good culture, it's going to have a positive impact.

William Gladhart: 3:04

I love that response. So let's begin with question one. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process or profits. In your new role as CEO, could you identify which one of these areas presented a cultural challenge within your organization?

Nicole Lawson: 3:20

Sure, I mean, I think all three are always on my radar and something we strive to keep in balance, but picking one, I pick profits, and I just think there's this really weird for lack of a better term significant case of mistaken identity in the world that nonprofit organizations should somehow function differently than other businesses.

Nicole Lawson: 3:41

And the most obvious example I can give is a demonstration of market rate wages. And so if I look at a market rate study of people with the same, similar education and experience as my workforce in a for profit or governmental setting, those market wages are significantly higher than in the nonprofit arena. And there's this sense that nonprofits shouldn't strive for significant or marketable margins and that our staff should somehow earn less for the greater good or in the name of the mission and I'm on a mission to change that a little bit I like to say that nonprofit is a tax status and that allows us to reinvest our profitable business ventures back into our mission and into our staff. But I don't think we should be asked to, or certainly not expected to, sacrifice or accept anything less just because we work in a nonprofit space.

William Gladhart: 4:33

Yeah, that's really interesting. That's definitely something we don't hear often as we talk with people in the more private sector business space, but I love that you know. Obviously the profit piece impacts your ability to bring on talent, to find the right people to streamline your processes and serve not only your clients and the greater public as well. I really appreciate you identifying that challenge. You know so as you worked through some of that. Changes around the profits, people, performance, et cetera. What did that look like and how has that negatively impacted your organization?

Nicole Lawson: 5:11

In terms of what it looked like when I first started my role.

Nicole Lawson: 5:14

One of the things I noticed was we had this warm and welcoming, relational, just positive culture, and so it was critical to me that I maintained the key aspects of that while identifying where we had room to grow.

Nicole Lawson: 5:25

And so I sent out an all-staff survey and I asked people what they were happy with, where we could improve, and the responses were overwhelming related to comp and benefits. So, to your point, it impacts our talent pool, which then impacts the service we're able to deliver. The report we got was that people felt that their salary reflected that they were undervalued and under-recognized, not only by the organization but by the wider healthcare service industry as well. Certainly, kind of putting that out there and seeing that impacts morale. So you can have this really warm and relational culture, but when people are feeling undervalued because of their comp and benefits, it has an impact, and I also think it's really important to know that I published those survey results to all my staff and my board. I thought being transparent was really critical to my ability to build trust and I wanted to create a sense of accountability for myself as well as across the larger culture.

William Gladhart: 6:22

Yeah, I mean I think you've shared. The impact of the next question, of course, is I love that you've been transparent but also shared that information back, because that's what we that's. A hangup that we find with many leaders is they get all this great information and then it doesn't go anywhere. It only goes to the leaders, directors board, et cetera, and no one else knows what's going on. It's not that people are tired of pressing the button. They're tired of pressing the button and then not hearing back from their leaders. So I highly commend you for being transparent and sharing that. You know you kind of, as I alluded to in this next question, you know what was the one thing you identified that helped impact your culture positively? Obviously, sharing that open line of communication. But what was something else that you did?

Nicole Lawson: 7:05

So I mean to your point.

Nicole Lawson: 7:07

I think that when you ask a question you need to be prepared to respond, and I have a strong belief in data decision, data-driven decision-making, and I think if people can understand the why or they at least have a healthy basic grounded understanding then they can accept things.

Nicole Lawson: 7:29

My team went out, they got market rate surveys from across the state. They worked really hard to conduct an analysis for us to see where we were in line and out of line in terms of comp and benefits with the nonprofit market here in Michigan, and so, based on action and we adjusted salaries up where they were appropriately, I'm very proud to be able to say today that every job classification in our organization is paid at or above market rate, and we also made some benefit adjustments and increased some of our offerings so that we were more competitive in the market as well. One example I can give is we now have an employer-paid short-term disability plan. This is no longer elective and it's no longer on our employees to cover the cost of that, and so I think the effort to listen, combined with that transparent process and then having a very targeted response, went a long way to reinforce the positive aspects of our culture.

William Gladhart: 8:19

That's really powerful and that's a really powerful sentiment to share. So is there anything else you'd like to add or share with fellow leaders?

Nicole Lawson: 8:27

I just think that perhaps my synopsis makes it sound a little easier than it was.

William Gladhart: 8:34

You just walked in and it happened right.

Nicole Lawson: 8:36

Yeah, exactly it was. You know, waved my magic wand and everything fell into place. I mean, it was hard to read the responses, it was hard to publish that information. We did a lot of analysis around market rate. We had very passionate discussions around where our final decisions should land and how it impacted the broader organization from a financial standpoint, and so it was really hard and time consuming work that we took on in addition to our day-to-day, but I really think it was just so worth it in the end.

William Gladhart: 9:05

Yeah well, I think that's something that other leaders can aspire to but also learn from, and I appreciate you point out that it wasn't a cakewalk. It was difficult, it was easy, it took time and it took a lot of energy from you, the board and other leaders and everyone in the organization to come to a consensus and move forward with next steps. Nicole, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Lovers podcast. Thank you again for your insights.

Nicole Lawson: 9:28

Thanks so much. Will, happy to be here.

William Gladhart: 9:32

Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at wwwt. t heculturethinktank. com or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.