Episode 77: Exploring Product Management in Nonprofits with Steve MacLaughlin
Melissa Perri welcomes Steve Maclaughlin to this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Steve is the Vice President of Product Management at Blackbaud, a cloud computing provider that serves clients within the social goods community. Steve shares his insights on what good product management looks like in nonprofit organizations, product managers as decision makers, the importance of benchmarking, and what it means to operate as a data-driven nonprofit.
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Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Steve talk about:
Steve talks about his induction into the world of product management and why he started to help nonprofit organizations with product strategy. [2:04]
Melissa asks Steve how to set product strategy and OKRs for nonprofits since they're not working towards increasing revenue but towards the greater good. He responds that the main objective as a product manager of a nonprofit is to "get revenue, keep revenue, grow revenue, and reduce cost". [4:42]
To have a successful product that achieves your goals, you need the trifecta of time, talent, and treasure. [10:01]
In today’s digital world, the product is the whole experience – it must be a holistic experience for the consumers. [13:43]
Despite opposing opinions and ideas on strategy, product team members must ultimately make a decision that takes all perspectives into account. [18:50]
Steve explains how he was led to the field of data-driven nonprofits and his journey to becoming a best-selling author with his book, "Data-Driven Nonprofits". [20:34]
Data health, data quality, underlying technology, and data science are all important, but the most important thing is the culture surrounding the data. [22:18]
Benchmarking is crucial in the nonprofit space: your organization can compare their progress to their competitors’ and determine how to replicate success. [24:42]
It may be difficult to stay true to your original mission and vision while ensuring you’re progressing towards your goal, when running a nonprofit. Steve advises using data and benchmarking to measure your progress; more importantly, choose a goal that people would be interested in and build on it over time. [28:11]
Melissa asks Steve how to balance keeping the long term mission in play while ensuring that you're not just over-optimizing for revenue. Steve responds that best practice is to be "very firm on vision and very flexible on details". Once you achieve your vision and mission, it does not matter how many times the fine details of your plan change over time. [31:32]
Resources
Steve MacLaughlin on LinkedIn | Twitter
Transcript:
Melissa:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the product thinking podcast. Uh, today we're talking to Steve MacLaughlin, who's a vice president at product management at Blackbaud. Welcome Steve.
Steve:
Hey, thanks for having me on the show, Melissa.
Melissa:
Yeah, I'm really excited. So today we're gonna talk all about product management and non-profits, um, we're also gonna talk a little bit of Steve's product management experience and dive into some insights around data driven nonprofits and data-driven companies as well. So, Steve, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into product management and maybe, um, why you decided to, you know, start helping nonprofits?
Steve:
Yeah, it's been of bit interesting journey. So I spent the first part of my career, um, in the consulting world, primarily on the, the digital and online side, uh, for a number of years. And when I came to black about 18 years ago, um, I started in professional services. There was doing consulting with, um, some of our nonprofit customers. And one of the challenges I found myself running into at a software company was that things that we knew were best practice or the things that we knew would help improve our customer's results, the products weren't capable of doing . And so there was sort of a mismatch there of things we knew we had tested or things that we knew were, were definite wants and needs from customers. We just weren't there yet on the product side. And I reached a point of feeling like the, the best way to ensure that success was to jump over the fence on the product management side and help drive more of, uh, what we were doing with, uh, different parts of the product set for those customers with that in mind.
And now I've been doing that for well over, I don't know, 15 years. So, um, I think part of that certainly has helped me, I think always be much more customer first, um, inside or sort of outside in mindset because that's the world I came from. Um, and I think that's always helped, um, especially when it comes to discovery or really trying to zero in, are we solving our problem or are we solving the customer's problem? I I'm just start with the customer side and then figure out how we make that work for the business.
Melissa:
Cool. So one of the, we were kind of talking about before we started hitting record here, um, was a question I get from a lot of people who work in product management for nonprofits. Um, and I'm not, I actually have never worked with a nonprofit. So I feel like I can only guess what the answer is for some of these things, but I'd love to get, you know, your opinion on it because you've got so much experience, you know, working with them, helping them, trying to, you know, accelerate their business. So the question I get is how do we set product strategy? How do we think about OKRs and goals for nonprofits when we're not a, you know, purely revenue and cost driven business? You know, we're, we're out there for the greater good. Um, sometimes it takes a really long time to see results from those greater goods. So like what do we do to really balance, you know, setting our strategies, um, when it's not just as clear cut and we can't just measure revenue increase or cost decrease. So what would you say to that? How do you get, how do you think about that with your, with your nonprofits?
Steve:
Yeah, those are great questions. I think that's something very early on. I struggled with, um, because from my perspective it was, well, the things I'm observing or saying about customers is other than the tax status in the us or whatever it happens to be in, in other geographies, you, you have people, you have projects, you might not have shareholders, but you certainly have stakeholders. You have a board, um, you have all these ingredients, like other than that special thing about the, the tax status piece, um, you operate just like a, a company in some ways. Although I think the difference being that ultimately, um, the organization, you know, needs revenue to drive the mission and to support stakeholders, um, versus a for profit corporation, which may, may or may not have shareholders, but certainly that revenue is driving, um, you know, other types of, of activities.
So to me, I think it's partly, certainly there are a lot of people in the nonprofit sector who are there because they're extremely passionate about the missions of the organizations and that's very important, but, um, that's where I think, especially I've seen this as both working with nonprofits over almost 20 years. And, and at one point being on a board of a nonprofit for a number of years is it's a, it's a, it's a mindset versus probably a skillset, um, thing where understanding, um, we want to do good things in the world. Um, and in order to do that, to fund that mission, uh, you need to do four things. Um, you need to get revenue, keep revenue, grow revenue, and reduce cost. And it took me, probably 15 years to figure out that that's it, that's the list. It's those four things. If you do those and, and the revenue could be, we run summer camps or we run a conference or we, you know, something that's fee for service, we're an aquarium, we're a zoo.
Um, or we may do work that, um, we get grants from foundations, still revenue. Um, we get, uh, individuals who give us private support through fundraising it's revenue. So I, I stick with the word revenue as opposed to money or whatever else, cuz it's like, it's a source, right? I need to, as an organization, we need to get it. We need to keep it, you know, retain it. And that could be, we keep people who come to our program and pay for something to keep doing that. Um, we might have a grant through a foundation that allows us to run a program and we need to show that we're delivering on the results. Um, because oftentimes that grant funding is contingent on per, on showing, Hey, we got a particular outcome or impact. Um, we need to try and grow it if we can. Um, and then also reducing cost because when you reduce cost, that's also growth, right?
Um, you, you know, when you can reduce cost in an area, certainly that allows you to do more with the mission. And what I found is when I explain it in that way, it resonates a lot more versus trying to have a discussion about profit versus nonprofit and talk about PNLs and gross margin, but just break it down to the real simple components. Um, and then showing some data around, you know, most, you know, there's one and a half million nonprofits in the us. And the vast majority of the revenue is, you know, fee for service, then government grant, uh, government grants and contracts and then fundraising. And then there's a small amount that's, um, investment revenue. Um, and just getting them to think about what's your mix, right? Where are you today? Um, you know, one of the challenges I see with, with organizations of all sizes, and I think this could apply to companies too, is they often have, um, that are, um, they're often over indexed on revenue from one particular source, right?
Like we've got this big multimillion dollar grant and it's like, well, if that went away tomorrow, what would happen? Wow, we'd really be in trouble. Okay. So let's talk about how do we diversify that revenue mix and that's not probably too different when having a discussion with, you know, a, for profit organization about their revenue mix of how much is coming from, you know, maybe retail sales versus online, but understanding and appreciating that revenue mix is, is really important. Um, you know, just as a way of thinking about having that source of revenue, um, you know, helps drive more of the mission, um, and, and looking at it through that lens versus a purely tax status or some other jargon that we might attach to it.
Melissa:
Um, I think that there's one piece I wanted to hone in on this as well. Uh, and then I wanna talk a little bit about like OKRs and goals. Uh, you mentioned like our revenue and the way that we get revenue comes from many different things. We've got our, we've got donations, we've got fees for service. What does product management kind of look like in a nonprofit since it doesn't, it doesn't sound like to me, but I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, um, that a lot of the software is driving some of this revenue or is that a shift that people are making? So like what what's, how do you kind of think about your goals as a product manager and what do they tend to orient themselves around in a nonprofit compared to a for profit company?
Steve:
Yeah, yeah. It, it can, it can vary. All right. Part of it is I think, um, I think, I think of the word product in a very broad you can, you know, lots of things can be product. So as I noted, you know, it could be, we're a nonprofit organization and we run a set of, you know, educational programs for, at risk youth, right. And our product is that programming. And so in order to put on that programming, we need resources. We need people, um, you know, we sort of need the, the trifecta. We need time, talent and treasure . We need, you know, time that people may be volunteering to participate in, we need talent. So we need to build, to bring, bring people in who are experts or, or at least capable of, of running those programs. And we need treasure, right?
We need the revenue piece that goes along with it. And so thinking about that now, I would say, this is something I have definitely seen change in the past two decades, um, which is I'm seeing a more, uh, nonprofit organizations starting to think about the programs they run or the, the, the mission driven things that they do more like product. And I think that's partly cuz you've had a lot of people come from, um, the for-profit sector into the nonprofit sector have a bit of that background. And so I think there's certain charities where people go come, they used to be, they literally used to be in retail or they used to be in something that was in the for-profit side. And they've now gone and worked for the nonprofit organization. I think they bring some of that mindset of, Hey, let's think about this pro this program we run as, as a product, right.
It's gotta have, um, certain characteristics to it. Um, certain there's certain things that we would want to, to measure and do I think the other area where it can certainly be, um, you know, product is, you know, there's examples of things like donors choose where, you know, I can go online and I can buy school supplies for an entire school district or a teacher or something like that. And again, there's, there's a product there cuz there's an online experience. They've gotta manage the inventory if you will, of, of needs, uh, that are out there and things like that. And so, um, it's, it's interesting for years I've, I've spent more time talking about trends and data and best practice in the nonprofit sector. Um, but more recently I've been doing more talks and things like that related to that my actual day job, which is product management.
Um, for example, I've, I've done a couple sessions lately about OKRs for nonprofits. I'm introducing this concept, um, from, because I've found them to be so useful, but introducing it and it's been an interesting response, um, cuz I think people are eager regardless of where you worked or what you do of wow, okay. This, it would help us achieve some of our goals. And so I think that's certainly positive and there's a lot of things. Certainly we, you know, from a product management perspective that is directly applicable. Um, if you're working in a nonprofit in particular, those that run sort of larger programs and a lot of cases, those programs are grant funded or are funded through private support. Um, and, and nonprofits are looking for people who can help drive those forward to, to achieve their goals.
Melissa:
That's cool. So, so it's like, you're thinking more, it kind of reminds me a little bit of, you know, how we explain products in financial institutions or other institutions too, where it's like, you know, it, you've got the overarching product is the thing you sell, like the credit card, but the software contributes to making sure that you can sell that well and you can, um, you know, you, you bring more value to it. Let's put it that way, um, to those programs and help streamline it, help minimize cost, but also help provide more value in it. Am I getting that right with the way that you think about like the programs it's, it's the overarching thing, but the product piece of it is the actual program you run, but product managers will come in there and help build software around it too.
Steve:
Yeah, it's both. I think, you know, I came to this realization years ago that uh, product is the whole experience, especially in sort of the digital world we live in now that it's not just, you know, oh, I got this discette and I install it on a machine and that's the product I think now, you know, sort of the SAS world that we live in and things like that, the whole experience is the product. And that then often is why you would think about as an overarching, Hey, we run this camp, we run this program, we run this conference. Um, there's, uh, you know, something that we, that we do, right. Uh, we, we run a food bank, we run, we, we, um, accept blood donations, all those things could be, you know, in a sense it's a product, right? It's a, it's something that we're providing, um, and there's value attached to it. And it may or may not always involve software. Um, but thinking about it holistically is super important, I think
Melissa:
For sure. Okay. That, yeah, that totally makes sense to me too. Um, I think you just made some UX designers out there nervous though. Cause I feel like anytime I explain like product is the entire experience and we get into this whole thing about like, who owns it, is that UX design that owns the experience or is it product? And then we go back and forth. I don't know if you've had those tensions before either.
Steve:
Yeah. Uh, would say, yeah, we, that, that you can go down, you can go down a rat hole on that debate about that. I, I oftentimes when I hear the O word, the ownership word, I often redirect of like, you know, let's no one owns anything, right. Doesn't work that way. Um, we work together as a, as a triad or as a team on things. Now there might be clear accountability, but yeah, I I've tried to scrub, there's a bunch of words. I've now tried to scrub from my vocabulary and owner and owning is one of them because I think so much of good product, you know, UX, design, engineering, DevOps, product management, it's a team sport. And so you don't really own it. I think you have people who are accountable for things and that's changed a lot too. I mean, when I first started out late nineties, um, you know, do an online eCommerce design.
Yeah. You could have one or two people who could do everything. I don't, we don't really live in that world anymore. Um, it's a team or at least to do it at a, at a particular level. I think it's a team sport. So making sure there's people who are accountable for things, um, and to your point about the UX piece. And I think this is probably cuz I've came more from the design side of the world, um, that often is underappreciated. But again, if you think about the whole experience is the product, um, that design element is super critical. I mean, certainly we see this in the nonprofit sector as well, where you get into a lot of challenges around, um, you know, compliance accessibility, where in some industries, those things might be optional, right? Like, do we really need to have it work for this, but for our customers it's in, in many cases it's part of the mission. Right? So making things that, um, can be used by other technology for those who might be, uh, visually impaired, um, or, or, or other types of things like that's, that's sort of like now it that's a non-negotiable requirement because of, of who our users really are. But again, back to the point of, um, you know, design is a huge aspect of that because, um, if it's not simple and usable, the, all the cool stuff you're doing, you know, is kind of pointless, at least from my perspective.
Melissa:
Yeah. Uh, good philosophy. I think the ownership to be always, really bothers me as well. I'm digesting it and I'm like, yep. I agree. I'm sitting here nodding.
Steve:
It's tricky. Right. It's also like, you know, when ever in a discussion, you know, either internally or, or, you know, conferences or talking with peers and when someone uses, oh, well maybe we need RACI, whenever I hear RACI. Okay. I feel like you're try, you're gonna try and solve some other dysfunction with this framework. Cuz if you're talking about RACI, what you're, you know, so re responsible, accountable, consulted, informed, you know, I feel like if you had a therapy session, what you'd really find out is there's there's trust issues, there's control issues, there's trust issues. And we want this artificial RACI thing because, well, I need to know what you're deciding to do, or I need to, I, I get to have a veto on something and whenever I hear those frameworks brought up, I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. like, let's figure out what's really going on here versus some framework that, you know, just, I think it sometimes can exacerbate the dysfunction in some ways.
Melissa:
Yeah. It's getting back into, let's just find the one throat to choke when something goes wrong, which is not a great cultural thing either when you get into that, it's just, it, it usually ends up being a lot of people who don't understand their job functions, a lot of overlapping management problems. And then somebody looking to blame somebody when things go wrong, which all is very, very toxic at the end of the day.
Steve:
So yeah, no, absolutely. Totally. And I think that's part of the, the product management discipline as well, which is I always reinforce to, to my team, whether they've just started or been with us for years on the team, that one of the key roles we serve is, is being a decision maker. Um, lots of our, you know, team members who are in different disciplines may have opinions, perspectives, expertise, um, but ultimately we drive a lot of that decision making. So we, we can take all those inputs, but oftentimes we're, you know, and I say, you know, get used to making decisions, uh, you know, when people first come on the team, they say, well, you know, what, should I, 36, first 30, 60, 90 days. It's like get in the habit of making a decision every day. Even if it's not a big one, like you need to get very comfortable making decisions. And especially from people who maybe came from a background or a different area where that was not, part of their job, they it's a muscle tone you've gotta develop. Right. And I think that is something that definitely falls into the, the product management wheelhouse is, you know, being able to make decisions, um, and drive to those decisions as well.
Melissa:
Yeah. And one of the things that you actually a bit, um, in your past was helping to make better decisions by bringing data driven decision making, to like nonprofits. Right. So, um, I saw that you, you taught nonprofit management at Columbia university in New York. Um, you've written a book on data driven nonprofits. Uh, what were you observing that led you to get into this? Right. And to start talking about data and analytics and nonprofit, like what was happening at the time that you started researching this and, and what have you found since you've been published a book and, and started teaching it more?
Steve:
Yeah, there's, I think there's, there's two sides to this coin. So from a personal perspective and also professionally, so personally it, you know, up until that point, which was, you know, five or six years ago, I'd spent my entire career mainly in the digital side and data analytics, AI, although they've been around a long time was really, it was starting to become a real thing. And I thought to myself, you know, if I remember back to the beginning of sort of the online world, there was a window of opportunity where if you, you got into it early, um, you could really do some really interesting things. And you, you sort of had to get your timing. Right. And I really felt like there was something happening that, that AI analytics, a lot of this stuff was becoming much more mainstream, much more accessible. And so that was an area I had a lot of interest in, you know, you know, spending another, I don't know, 10,000 hours on or something like that.
But, uh, when I started to dig into, well, how were nonprofit organizations using data or in many cases not using data. Um, a lot of my research just uncovered there wasn't, there wasn't a book or a manual or any, really, a lot of guidance for organizations who raised their hand and said, we know we need to be more data driven or maybe data informed, but we're really struggling to get there. And so that was sort of impetus for the book. Uh, the book, uh, did really well, you know, which interesting that a book about data in the nonprofit sector, um, gets the number one on Amazon is there must be something going on there. And then, um, the folks at Columbia said, Hey, you know, we've got a graduate program in nonprofit management, but we don't have a course about data. Could you come help us put that together and teach it for a couple of semesters?
And so it started to snowball. Um, but I learned so much along the way, which was that. And probably, maybe this is the biggest thing I learned that it's not about data quality or data health, although that's important. It's not about the underlying technology, although that's important. It's not about how many data scientists you have or don't have, although that may or may not be important. That so much of being more data driven is cultural. And what I really zeroed in on with the book was talking to a, sort of a diverse set of nonprofits to understand what was it that they were doing that allowed them to be more successful than others, um, with data. And a lot of it came down, there was a cultural element. Yes, they, you know, they had some T or yes, they cared about data quality or something like that.
Or maybe in some cases, they actually had a chief data officer, very rare, but they did, but it was a cultural, um, aspect. And, um, I think the way I think over time, the, you know, one of the reasons why I do believe certainly data is so important in the nonprofit sector is the mission of these organizations is so critical. And in many cases it fills a critical gap in society, um, that, that we need, right. And that society benefits from, but we need to be able to measure whether or not we're being effective. Right. And I think a lot of this comes into a discussion about outcomes versus outputs, uh, which is an area I think, you know, I've been fascinated in for years, which is driving more of that outcome and impact conversation versus, Hey, can you add this widget in the product so we can do more outputs and pushing customers and discovery of like, why do you wanna do that?
Why what's the, and try to actually get to, well, what's the outcome you're trying to achieve here versus being very output focused. So that's, and I think data is a, is a key part of that, of, you know, being able to understand what are we doing, what impact is it having? Um, and you know, how we, how might we improve as well? Um, yeah. So the other thing I think it, that became really interesting, um, is I got to work with, uh, gentleman by the name of Chuck Longfield, who was black lives, chief scientist, but he's someone who'd spent 40 years in the nonprofit sector with data. Chuck probably has seen more data about nonprofits than anyone, maybe in the world. And he taught me so much about the value of benchmarking. So once you understood the basics of metrics, like, do we measure a thing and can we do that repeatedly then really what you want to get to is benchmarking.
Cuz what I want to know is how are we doing not compared to last year or last month, whatever, but how are we doing relative to our peers? Because that's when you really learn like, wow, why is it what's that organization doing where they're able to retain so many of their, so many more of their donors than we are. Why are they able to, to get that one fundraising channels work so much better and you can't do that much. You're doing the benchmarking. And um, what was fascinating I think on that adventure is when I worked in the corporate world, there was no way that I could probably get two of my customers who are in a similar industry to sit in the same room and share their data and share how they got those successful results. But in the nonprofit sector, we've been able to do that because with a few exceptions, most of them don't view them as being, um, competitors, right. Uh, university on the east coast doesn't believe it's really, truly competing with the university on the west coast when it comes to fundraising or, or, you know, you know, uh, food banks or um, other types of, um, social, good organizations. It's different. They are much more willing to share how they're doing things, but they need the benchmarking and the data to help them, you know, to see that which, um, has been an interesting journey for sure.
Melissa:
Yeah. That's really fascinating that that's such an issue coming from corporate. Like you said, I can never get benchmarks on a lot of stuff. You have to go through tons of research or find a study that somebody did by surveying like a ton of companies or get into Bain, you know, or McKinsey reports or yeah. Forester or something like that to find some of the benchmarks. And even then it's hard to tell what's real and what's not. So it's really interesting that the nonprofits are so open and they don't really see themselves competing against each other. So they'll all share with that.
Steve:
Yeah, it's it, it's been interesting to see that cuz again, I never would've saw that in, you know, work I did previously, you know, you, you're not gonna get, you never get Coke and Pepsi in the same room to compare their sales in , you know, California in which doing whatever, but these organizations are willing to do it. But I, I think that's where, you know, technology is an enabler that makes that possible. Right? The fact that you could, you can do that analysis that you can do, you can do true apples to apples comparison. Um, it's an eye opener for some organizations cuz I, you know, it's been interesting to do that with organizations who've never done it before and they're like, wow. I mean, you can do this. I mean like you can tell me how I'm doing relative to these thousand other organizations is like, yeah, it's just, I mean it's math and some statistics but um, but that's an example of like focusing on the outcome, not the output that technology can do all of these things versus the expectation of, I think for some organizations is wow, we, we couldn't do that ourselves. And they're like, well, the good news is you don't have to do that yourself. A lot of the technology can do this for you so that you can use it as a way to, um, inform your decision making.
Melissa:
So it's interesting. You're diving back into the outcomes and I wanted to touch on that too. Um, we talked about a little bit, but I wanna go a little deeper on it when you are in a nonprofit, um, or government or anything like that. Right. You've got these outcomes that are pretty lofty, like, you know, American cancer society wants to cure cancer and help, you know, save a lot of people. How do you measure? And especially when you're setting OKRs, like you mentioned, how do you measure that you're making progress towards these things and what do you recommend for people who are, you know, trying to stay true to that mission and those outcomes, but they gotta make sure what they're doing is actually making progress towards it.
Steve:
Yeah. It, the, it's probably not too different for an organization, uh, you know, a software company or a product management team, which is, you know, have that clear vision, mission, purpose, and it's okay for that to be lofty. And, but it cuz the intent there is to set the direction, right? This is, this is the impact that we're trying to have on the world. And it could be, we want to, you know, uh, erase homelessness or we want to cure a particular disease. But then I think once you get sort of that, um, strategy or um, you know, outcome OKR level, it's about breaking it down into, okay, well what would be the first step that we could take that shows we're making progress towards that particular goal? You know, and I think that's the way to think about it is, is to, is breaking that down, right?
Um, just like you've got a product vision, um, which may be lofty and you don't know how you're gonna figure out all the things yet, but you know, then you break it down into pieces and you figure, well, what would we have to do first? Or, you know, what would have to be true in order for this to, to move its way, um, forward. And again, I think there's an element there that it's this relationship between using data to help you measure progress against those particular outcomes. Um, and this was a trick that I learned, um, from when I was writing the book and interviewing people, which is there was a common theme, which was when you want to, you know, either start using more outcome measurement or you want to do anything data related, you don't try and pick the biggest baddest complicated problem in the organization.
Like that's a, you know, recipe for failure, but you can't pick something that no one cares about either. And so I think what I found was it's the Goldilocks problem. You need something in the middle, right? Big enough that people would care that you found a way to improve it, but not so big that everyone would care that you're attempting to do something. I think that's often the balance, right? Uh, you can have those very lofty goals and ideals, but you know, you've gotta pick where do you wanna start? And you know, the challenge there is getting it just right, right. You can you pick something too small and no one cares and it doesn't pick up steam or you pick something too controversial or something that's just too big for the organization to want to go through that change that it never moves forward. So you're trying to, I think strike that, that balance with those particular, with those particular, um, measures or outcomes that you're trying to run.
Melissa:
Yeah. I I've seen that a lot when I've done transformations too. Like just biting off everything at once is not gonna work. You gotta, you gotta start small somewhere, just show some impact and then, you know, figure out how to get there. Um, I guess when you're, when you're choosing this and you're looking for those right outcomes as well, I'm curious, like we, going back to what we talked about at the beginning with the revenue and cost part, right. You gotta manage towards those things. How do you balance keeping the long term outcomes and mission of the company in play? Right. And making sure that you're not just over optimizing for revenue or cost, without those in mind, like what are practices that you've seen work really nicely in non startups, not startups, nonprofits, um, nonprofits to, uh, help keep everybody aligned, but you know, focused on the overall outcome. And, and what do you do to like set and deploy strategy in those cases?
Steve:
I mean, I think the things that I've seen work really well are where, um, whether people realize it or not, they're channeling their inner Jeff Bezos, which is the whole, we're very firm on vision and very flexible on details. Um, which I, I have found is, is a great way to think about it, right. Have that big, audacious, bold mission vision about the change that you wanna make in the world, um, and make that whether you want to call it your north star or something else, but, but everyone in the organization knows what that is with, with clarity and simplicity, that, that if they ran into anybody on the street, that they could explain what it is that that organization's doing and those, you know, and from a, from a vision mission, uh, purpose perspective. Uh, but then it's, okay now let's get into the details and it's okay if the details might change over time.
Uh, let let's think about how we might wanna, you know, tackle this or, or the things that we would need to do, um, over time, right. Do we have to have certain resources in place? What type of programs might we have to run and just checking yourself? I think back against, you know, I don't think it needs to, it it's, I think as long as the work that individuals or teams or groups within organization are doing can connect back to that higher purpose. That vision mission purpose is great. Um, I, I'm a bigger fan of it being able to connect rather than top down, bottom up. Like, you know, if you can't go straight up and down and see how it works, then we, I don't think that works well at teams at any scale. I think you just, it's more of, can I connect, can I connect the dots right. Um, about what we're doing to those particular areas and then certainly measuring it to know whether or not we're we're being effective or not,
Melissa:
Well, Steve, this has been incredibly enlightening and I learned a lot. Um, I always felt unsure when people ask me about nonprofits, cuz I've never really worked at one. Um, but you helped kind of relay, you know, confirm some of my assumptions about, you know, managing towards revenue and costs and keeping the big outcomes in line and trying to use data there. So I think there's a lot that we can learn and help. Um, nonprofits out there become a little bit more, you know, product driven, um, help establish their product management practices in there. So if people wanna learn more from you or learn more about, you know, data driven nonprofits or how, how you do product management, where can they find you?
Steve:
Sure you can find me on probably LinkedIn, uh, Steve McLaughlin, uh, or on Twitter S at S McLoughlin, um, willing to bet if you Google my name in nonprofit, you'll probably find some things as well.
Melissa:
Cool. And then where can we buy your book?
Steve:
Uh, Amazon or wherever books are still being sold.
Melissa:
Cool. And it's called data driven nonprofits.
Steve:
Yep. Data driven nonprofits.
Melissa:
Yep. Great. So definitely go check that out. Uh, thank you so much, Steve, for being on here again. And for those of you listening, make sure that you subscribe to the product thinking podcast. If you've like this, we have new episodes out every Wednesday and we will see you next time.