We talked with Veronica LaFemina of LaFemina & Co. about managing change.

Jami, hello and welcome everybody to our impactful projects and Planning series. I'm Jami Yazdani. In today's session, I'm talking with Veronica LaFemina, founder and CEO of LaFemina and Co, about change management. Veronica is a strategy and change management advisor to executive leaders at established non profits. So welcome Veronica. It's great to have you here today. So tell us a little bit about your work and your business. What impact are you hoping to create for your clients?

Thanks so much for having me and Jami, and it's always great to spend time with you. So LaFemina and Co, our focus as an advisory firm is to help give executive leaders at nonprofit organizations the support that they need to do some of the big, important work that needs doing. Increasingly, that work deals with helping executives and their leadership teams having really important conversations about the future of their organization, so facilitating some of the tough questions and conversations that need to be had, especially in these times, and also really helping leaders learn how to lead change well, change management and change leadership are not something that often get covered in formal professional development opportunities, but they have a massive impact on how effective new initiatives, new strategies are and how well they are adopted. And so I love helping the people who power nonprofit organizations be their very best at work and bring their unique strengths, as we're always saying, How can we make it easier to do good better? What can we give leaders and their teams and we have tools so that all this great impact nonprofit organizations are trying to have can be realized while also honoring the expertise and energy of the people who power the organization. Great, wonderful.

So what are some unique challenges that you see in nonprofits and other mission driven organizations face when you know they're trying to make a change or change has kind of been forced, forced on them from the outside? Yeah,

I mean, change is such a bad category, but I think there are some critical things that are different in the nonprofit sector that don't always get addressed in traditional change management models. One of those things is many of the people who work in nonprofit organizations have a deep emotional connection to the cause that they're serving, or to the mission that they're looking to advance, whether or not it impacts them as an individual or someone in their family. They are being inspired. They're feeling a sense of purpose by the work they do. And so when we're coming in and saying we need to change the way we work. That brings up different kinds of feelings than it might in other environments. It also, you know, you'll hear the phrase like, people need to know what's in it. For me, it's true that all of us need to understand. What does this change mean for me? How will my job be different? But also in nonprofit organizations, staff are often asking, how is this going to impact the people we serve? What will this mean for the families I talk to every day, or the clients I support, or the folks I'm teaching or learning from, right? So they're really thinking with that community lens, and that provides some additional challenges and potential areas of resistance when we're thinking about change, right? Because it's not just about what's in it. For me, it's Is this really the right choice for the people we serve? Are we doing this with them in mind, and also in a way that's sustainable for those of us who work here? So a kind of mission driven aspect does really emphasize how important it is to be considering the people side of change beyond just like an initial launch or implementation, you know timeline, you and I have talked about this certainly before, that a lot of the good work of a project happens or of a strategy happens in that how we actually start changing the way we work, rather than flip the switch. And this thing is on now. And so those emotional elements, the enlarged organizations that may have several vacancies on their staff, which is something our sector is experiencing a lot more these days, and at a higher rate than a corporate sector. We may be in a situation where we actually don't know what we're doing now, and so in order to change it, we need a. Shared basically like an understanding of where we are. So we might know we need a new kind of technology, but not know truly how people are using it now, because we haven't documented SOPs, or it's been evolving as we go and we're not all on the same page about where we're starting from, so it's harder to be on the same page about what it will look like when this change is successful. Yeah.

I mean, I think those are all really great points. And something I sometimes see in change management approaches is that a lot of the people work is very leadership heavy, and I feel it kind of leaves out the people who are actually going to be implementing the change. And I do think you're you're right on that in nonprofit and other mission driven work, the the work people do feel so tied to the work that they're doing. And so it's not just I'm changing this process. It's, you know, almost like you're asking me to engage differently with the community I'm serving, or the need that we're meeting, and you want to bring those folks along, right? Like you said, it doesn't just flip a switch. And so, yeah, I think those people aspects sometimes are left out in some change management approaches. And I know we've talked, and I've I've seen you talk with clients about this, how leaders often have kind of a lot of time, even whether they understand what's going on in the organization or not, more time to think about a change, and by the time you know it's kind of introduced to their staff or team, they're sort of over it a little bit, you know, they're ready to move on to the next thing. And for their team, it's like, oh my gosh, what is happening? This is the first time they've heard of it so well,

and especially in the nonprofit sector, you know, I would say, over the past decade or so, we've had a hiring bias for leaders who are great visionaries, right, who bring a lot of action, who introduce a lot of new and there's so much strength and opportunity with leaders who have those skills, but ultimately ensuring that we effectively do the new thing is A study in stamina. It's a study in consistency, and it takes a supportive and connected executive team to say, Okay, we're using those visionary strengths, but we also have great strategic strengths, implementation strengths, the ability to do process improvement so that we effectively make the change, and it doesn't just stay part of a vision, but it actually becomes who we are, and that is one of the things that comes up often when change leaders are asked like, what would you do differently next time? I love looking at that kind of data, because it's kind of easy to tell people what to do, but it's easier to learn from what didn't go so great and so many of them say, I wish I had thought more about what behavior change was needed for this, you know, new project or new initiative to get underway and then spent the time to really focus on. So how is how can we make that behavior behavior change happen? How do we set our teams up for success to make that behavior change instead of potentially putting barriers in place, because we are still operating this way and we're expecting them to deliver on things in certain ways, but that's counter to the new behavior that we need in whatever this changed system or process or approaches.

Yeah, definitely. So how can we keep projects and initiatives moving forward while supporting staff through these changes that as a leader, we may be excited about, at least initially, and want to make happen. So what can we do to support our staff?

Yeah, so there's always this balance, right? We have business goals as organizations. We have impact goals. We want to keep moving that forward, but in order to make those advancements, we're relying on our team. We're scaling our impact through our team as leaders. And so there are a couple of really practical things I think leaders can do when they're thinking about how many changes they're going to implement in a year, how ready the organization is for change, like, is this something we practice often, or is this going to feel very new and very different. Do we need time to adjust? So from that perspective, Thing Number one, which is no one's favorite thing to hear, is it always takes more time than you expect, because it's not just about doing the steps to you. You know, for example, launch a new software system or put a new policy in place, the doing the steps, part of of that kind of work is often easier than helping people come along in the process of those steps, and even when people are willing and ready, we need time to communicate effectively, to make sure we're addressing people's changed needs. And we all have needs as humans, for what kind of information and support we need in order to effectively change so really thinking about timelines, not from a What's the fastest we can do this, but what's the way we do this most effectively, so that we are communicating well, ensuring that we're incorporating feedback from the team along the way, when concerns get raised, and then we're able to get to that end result of change that we really want, rather than here's this deadline we put in place, and the most important thing is that we can say we were done by that thing. One is allowing ourselves the time for that part of allowing that time is understanding that all change actually starts with a goodbye, not a lunch. Thing new, right? And this is something you and I have talked about before. Leaders are excited. They're ready, you know, they're on board for whatever the new thing is. But often we're not giving time and space for folks to understand that. What this means is where we are stopping working in this particular way in order to transition to something new. And often that can be interpreted as the old way was bad, or we were doing something wrong, right, we might take that personally as team members within an organization, especially if leadership messaging isn't giving us the reassurance that, you know, the way that we were working before was so powerful to helping us get to where we are now, and new realities have come to light as time for us to adopt this new way. So taking that time to really understand that change even good change comes with loss loss of control, loss of loss of expertise, loss of you know, and in times of transition, it could be loss of friendships, if people's job functions are moving around and giving people space and time to grieve like that part of the process, if we want to effectively implement the change so that we're not stuck in a years long grieving process, because we never addressed the that very human need up front. And so by allowing time for those things, and then also ensuring that our supervisors are prepared to be the leaders we need them to be in times of change, so ensuring we're communicating with them, effectively providing the right tools for them to communicate with their team about what's going on, providing our cross functional team leaders or our project managers with the right support and authority to move things forward. All of those are key to this effort. Right? We don't want to just keep hitting, I don't want to say arbitrary, but hitting what can be arbitrary lines, if what we're just doing is creating more resistance along the way? Because when we flip that switch and turn on the new thing, the success measure is, how well was it adopted? How many people are actually working in that new way, instead of the fact that it's now live, or we're now paying for this tool, or whatever the case might be, and so really recognizing that the timing is often different, and our people need the right resources and support to be able to help each person in the organization move through this process.

Yeah, I feel like, you know, when I'm doing project management or training folks on project management and nonprofit environments, I tend to talk about how the communication and stakeholder management is more important in our not that it's not important in some, you know, corporate environments, but you are trying to, most of the projects are bringing change or something new, and you need to bring people along, and that means spending a lot more time planning how you are, you know, going to be talking with people, how you're going to be bringing people In, how you are going to, you know, can you create communications and things that can help a leader or a manager communicate to their teams about what's happening? You know, really engaging your stakeholders. And so, yeah, I think those are critical, critical pieces. That we often, you know, we're so focused, like you said, on these tasks to get, you know, the switch this thing turned on, but that's not going to make it successful. I do know we're at time, and so, you know, the only other question I had for you is about reasons that change fails, and I know that you've done whole sessions on that. So I, you know, I might, I'll just encourage folks maybe to to look you up and some of the things that that you've done there, unless you have one, one quick reason that that you want to share why change tends to fail. And nonprofit,

I can do this one quickly. I think so the number one reason why change fails is lack of executive visibility and engagement throughout the process. So what that often looks like in nonprofit organizations is something I call executive stamina. So I think when leadership can ask themselves, am I willing and able to be a visible and engaged sponsor and champion of this initiative for the next 18 months to three years, that is a really important lens for leaders to look at these changes. Are not four month or six month processes. Most of them are multi year endeavors, and so being real with yourself about your own stamina and how you'll cultivate that as a leader, but also using it as a barometer to say, is it worth this much time and energy? Is this change really going to have the kind of impact we would like it to so that's definitely you know, big on the list every time that I'm working with organizations to have that reality check about our own stamina and what, how many changes we can really take on at once.

Now that's that's great. So how can folks reach out to you? What's the best way for them to learn more about your work and and what you

do again. Definitely come to our website, which says LaFemina.co, or look for me on LinkedIn. Veronica, LaFemina, I share advice about leadership and change leadership and management, and a lot of practical tips. As a practitioner myself, I want things that work, and I'm always curious to hear about challenges folks are facing in that area, and happy to put together more content on that as well.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm sure we could have talked talked much longer. Maybe you'll have to come back again. And so thanks everybody. Thanks. Veronica, thanks for joining us for our impactful projects and Planning series. You can find recordings all of the sessions in the series at YazdaniConsulting.com/IPP, thanks.