Ep. 84: Innovative Transformation: A Conversation with Guest Daniel Sims

Can you imagine turning a struggling local music festival into a half-billion-dollar enterprise? That's the compelling story of our guest today, Daniel Sims, a consultant, author, and a true leader in developing funding systems. Raised in Helena, Arkansas, Daniel’s journey from his modest roots in the nonprofit world to his current work in philanthropy and organizational change is nothing short of inspirational. He gives us an in-depth view of his innovative Allen Sims Transformational Model, a tool designed to revamp systems in organizations, making them more mission-focused and revenue generating.

Daniel recounts the gripping tale of how he breathed new life into a local music festival in Helena, transforming it from a floundering event into a successful enterprise. This feat not only testifies to Daniel's uncanny ability to understand community needs but also his talent for building equitable strong relationships for fundraising. He also emphasizes the significance of creating safe, equitable community programs, and the need for collecting data and engaging in frank dialogues with community members to ensure the right use of funds.

We wrap up by discussing the important, and often tricky, issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Daniel shares his thoughts on Gallup's Inclusion Index and why he believes it's a must for organizations. If you've ever thought about how you could bring about transformation and positive change in your organization or community, this episode is a goldmine of practical advice and inspiring examples. It's a revealing exploration of the transformative power of community engagement and organizational change. So join us, and let's learn together.

Daniel Sims is a highly accomplished consultant, speaker, trainer, researcher, and author who has dedicated his career to promoting equity and social justice. He is a recipient of numerous awards and has an unparalleled ability to optimize organizational culture, increase fundraising capacity, and create strategic cultures with a JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) lens. Sims hails from a small, impoverished area in the Arkansas Delta, and he uses his upbringing as a guide to promote justice-led advocacy for all.

Sims is an influential figure with an unwavering commitment to equity, and he has a remarkable track record of driving transformative systemic change in philanthropic, corporate, and social landscapes. He delivers captivating speeches that inspire action towards creating a more just and equitable world. Daniel has trained and spoken at multiple conferences and events, and his work has been featured on various podcasts, including Lead with Levity, Human Capital Innovations (HCI), and Better Humans at Work. Outside of work, Sims enjoys trivia (he even competed on Jeopardy!), playing Magic: The Gathering, and watching Lucy Worsley documentaries. He

Transcript

Daniel Sims: 0:01

In 2018, I believe, corporations invested roughly $19 billion in DEI initiatives, many of which are filtered through HR or people management departments or organizations, or they bring in consultants with HR lenses.

Kyla Cofer: 0:24

Welcome to the Leadership School Podcast. I'm your host leadership and self-care coach, Kyla Cofer. Here at the Leadership School, you'll hear leaders from around the world sharing their stories and expertise on how to lead with balance and integrity. Our goal: Teach you how to be an extraordinary leader. Welcome back, leaders.

Kyla Cofer: 0:51

I'm privileged to introduce Daniel Sims today. Daniel is a consultant, author, a leader in developing funding systems. He talks a lot about how to create better systems in our organizations, in our companies, in our workplace cultures, so that we can be more mission focused and ultimately bring more money into your organization. So how does he do that? He uses his Allen Sims transformational model, a model that he has created through his research and how to build transformational systems that can really advance your mission. So he's going to tell us all about that today. Give us some really practical tools on what that looks like and how to actually do that. So thanks so much, Daniel, for joining me. I'm so grateful to have you here on the Leadership School Podcast. I'm just really honored to have you here and I'm just so excited to have this conversation. So can you maybe tell us a little bit about your story and how you got here and kick us off?

Daniel Sims: 1:44

Absolutely. Thanks, Kyla, for having me. It is really exciting to be here and be able to share some space with you for the next little while. So I'm from or live in Madison, Wisconsin, by way of Helena, Arkansas. So small town of just under 10,000 people about 70 miles southwest of Memphis. That is really, you know, kind of at the root of who I am as a person, learning about what it means to advocate for others, what it means to be part of a group working towards, you know, transforming a community where people are in need.

Daniel Sims: 2:21

So Helena is in the Arkansas Mississippi River Delta area, one of the poorest areas in the world and certainly in the country, and so a lot of my experience growing up was navigating the social nonprofit world, whether it's a food pantry or a youth center or something around violence or drug prevention, you know really formed the foundation of my life and led to what I do now in Jedi and organizational change, philanthropy, kind of all the areas I've had a chance to touch down in over the last 20 years.

Daniel Sims: 2:57

But I think in 2003, it was kind of a pivotal year for me.

Daniel Sims: 3:01

I was working with a youth tobacco coalition in our town because we had a super high rate of teen tobacco use at the time and got a chance to write my first grant supporting the staff members there, and it was at that point I realized this is the work I want to do.

Daniel Sims: 3:19

I don't know how you do it, I don't know what the path is, but I want to end up here doing things that I know are going to change the trajectory of people's lives, and so the 20 years since has given me an opportunity to see that manifest in a number of different spaces. And so at this point in my career and in my life, it's important for me to be able to share that story through multiple lenses, but also giving people the spirit of the story by figuring out how that affects the trajectory of organizations and how we think and how we have conversations with one another. And so it's definitely almost a full circle moment being here now thinking about everything that's happened in my life to get me to a space where I can now share and be a resource and hopefully an inspiration for someone who's trying to find their path, find their way towards changing the world in the way that fits the vision that they've been given. And so, you know, I'm happy to share more about that as we kind of navigate this conversation.

Kyla Cofer: 4:20

You grew up in Helena, Arkansas really impoverished area, and the nonprofit world was really big there because it was a lot of trying to help the disadvantaged in your low income area and so you kind of grew up in that in your career, started growing into that nonprofit space. But in 20 years ago that kind of changed in that youth group that you were in where you really helped people learn how to be better advocates, and that just kind of propelled you into what you're doing right now. Tell me more about, then, what you're doing right now. I would love to hear a little bit more specifically like what has that turned into today?

Daniel Sims: 4:52

So I would say that it really started to look more like my current work in 2009. So I returned home after college and I had some challenges in college. So returned home for a while in 2009, and kind of fell into an opportunity to help a local music festival that happens in Helena in early October each year. It started in the mid 80s, actually a few months before I was born, started on the back of a truck to honor and really highlight the importance of blues music to the Delta and particularly to Helena, because it's played a very major role in the formation and the propagation of blues music in America and around the world. And so I ended up at a city advertising and promotion commission meetings, A&P Commission meeting, where the treasurer for this event was there asking for community support from what's known in Helena as the hamburger tax, so the tourism tax that's then collected to promote things like the festival and other kind of historical sites around Helena that talk about the blues or the Civil War or what have you. And they said they needed help with grants and so, having had that experience a few years prior, I kind of put my hand up and said, yeah, I'm happy to help with that. But then, as I got deeper and deeper into the process, I realized that philanthropy was an issue, but not the issue. Because typically in this work there are people that are really passionate about a mission, have a clear idea, have the emotional and mental fortitude to get the mission done, but then when it's time to raise the money, it takes a certain skill set or, borrowing from Liam Neeson it takes a very particular set of skills to be effective and go out and be able to raise the money that you need to make that vision come to fruition. So I ended up slowly but surely becoming a leader of putting this event on.

Daniel Sims: 6:49

That had had a number of challenges before I came home, but mostly was having social issues. So blues music is by and large a black art form. It was formed in black communities and the town I grew up in is over 70% black, but the festival was being run by a team that was 95% white and wasn't necessarily connecting effectively with the black community in town. Really for three things how does the programming affect you? Because at one point over 200,000 people were coming to our small town each year for this event, which was kind of the event for business owners and that really wanted to make their money for the year. They'd be open to have food or do have lodging or whatever, but they were largely left out of that conversation and so, as an extension, it became how do we create equity in how we choose vendors and how people are being involved in the planning process, but also make this the business that it is and ensure that it's profitable, moving forward?

Daniel Sims: 7:53

And so we worked in partnership, through community conversations and bringing people in, to help us figure out a path to that, which included paid tickets for certain stage areas for the first time, because this has been a free festival this whole time, with the exception of receiving a portion of proceeds from vendor sales and so we were able to modernize the business model, build a bridge to bring people back in and then turn a organization that was severely in the red to a little over $4 million in the black and under a year, and that's really where it all started to string together.

Daniel Sims: 8:31

We need people to feel safe, to feel heard, and couple that with philanthropic intent because there are people that are watching for that to really put a fire under a vision and ensure that it's really effectively helping the people that are most affected by the outcomes. And so that then was kind of the propeller or the propulsion point, I'd say, for what I'm doing now and identifying in organizations who's at the table, who's not at the table, why aren't they at the table and how do we recreate the wheel, where necessary, to break down those barriers and keep perpetual iterative change at the center of how we do business and how we connect with one another?

Kyla Cofer: 9:17

I'm impressed and in awe of that number that you just mentioned, because you said four million. Is that what you said, four million?

Daniel Sims: 9:24

I did, I did.

Kyla Cofer: 9:26

That's huge, that's a big change.

Daniel Sims: 9:29

I had a chance to do a little bit more of that over the years. Currently that's like about 15 years in I've helped raise just under half a billion dollars across the organizations I've worked with through this time and I found it's pretty, not that it's simple, building relationships and leveraging that to make philanthropic impact is simple. I enjoyed that part. But there's really a science to how we cultivate and build those relationships and really align the potential for that impact with real issues and real problems. And I find that particular experience unique because we were able to make that very perfect, general, almost once in a generation alignment in that area for what it needed at the time to keep this thing going and to keep its legacy alive.

Kyla Cofer: 10:19

You said that there were some things that made the difference there because you were being more intentional about certain things. Can you repeat what you had said there? I want to go a little bit further into that.

Daniel Sims: 10:28

Yeah, absolutely. I think that we were able to properly align the philanthropic interest of funders, individual donors, with real world problems that they could see. And that's not always easy, particularly when you are raising money at that higher level from, say, the Walton Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation, those large scale funders that are somewhat removed from the ground level of what's taking place in the communities that they partner with, and we had an opportunity to bring those people directly into the environment. And not to say that that doesn't work for other types of organizations or for fundraising in general, but we found that for this particular organization to turn its corner, that sort of visceral impact was necessary to make the difference.

Kyla Cofer: 11:21

So this is something that you are also working to kind of replicate, right it's because it matters and the people that you serve, and seeing what the actual needs are, and finding those out and integrating those with the money givers, right where the money is coming from, and finding ways to integrate that all that together. So where do you start with that? I mean, how do you start to really to break that down in a way that's really helpful, because I think this is really important when we talk about, I mean, not just fundraising, but just the communities that we serve overall and even in business and our leadership roles, because we're not finding out like this is market research 101, right. If we're not finding out exactly what it is that people want and we're just giving what they think they want, we're not successful. So that's kind of what you're talking about.

Daniel Sims: 12:02

Absolutely, and I think that what happens 99% of the time in philanthropy is that we assume that we understand the best interest of people that we serve, or people that we want to serve, without ever having had conversations with them. As a result, when we hear terms like, say, donor-centric fundraising and also now, on the other side of that, community-centric fundraising, these opposing schools of thought really provide a stark view, I think, in some regards, of how the community is invested and involved in its transformation and how outside influence, no matter how good the intention, transforms communities anathema to the needs and the trajectory of the people who are living there and are experienced in doing life there. And so that's really the beginning. If I want to do a thing as a program leader, as a nonprofit leader, as a business leader, I need to understand how the end user is going to be able to utilize, experience, have their life transformed by whatever thing A or thing B is, and that takes a lot more work and intention, and that's why a lot of organizations just don't do it or they don't do it as effectively or as intentionally as they should. But it's very much like we hear in something from Stephen Covey. You know, we begin with the end in mind and when we do that, thinking very outside of the box about how we're bringing people in to say we're not just here to give you a thing or give you something we think you need. We're here because we want to co-create a community that makes sense for you and that is safe for you and that is giving you the things you need to live a good life, whatever that means for them. And so that's the hardest part and it takes the most work. And then you can add in the other traditional pieces: Who are our donors? What's the research? How are we cultivating them? How do we get them to that end gift?

Daniel Sims: 14:02

But I have found that's really been the difference maker in my own work.

Daniel Sims: 14:05

Is that, as a consultant, as an in-house fundraising or development officer, as I've been over the years, that's what I need to figure out.

Daniel Sims: 14:14

When one of my last roles, I was working at the University of Wisconsin Foundation in the College of Engineering and we had several projects going on, but one in particular in the department I worked with was creating an endowed chair for this department that was really focused on ethics and engineering, but also in diversifying the field and creating safe spaces to do that. And so I had the opportunity to have conversations with students because I needed to understand, certainly from an undergrad, but then also from a graduate perspective, because I had come in in a time after there had been some very highly publicized stories about toxic cultures in graduate programs in the College of Engineering, particularly in the department that I was working with, and so understanding what safety meant for them and understanding what this money funneled through a leader could do for them helped me to have, you know, key or ideal conversations then with the particular donors we wanted to target. Because I knew then what needed to be co-created in a way that made sense and was endorsed by people that were going to be living in it on a day-to-day basis.

Kyla Cofer: 15:29

How are you gathering this data? Are you doing surveys? Are you just asking people? Are you looking at broader communities? I mean, this is some data gathering, and how do you get people to be honest in the data that you're asking of them and the questions that you're asking of them?

Daniel Sims: 15:46

Absolutely. I would say in fundraising work it's really perpetual thing. It's not so much a survey as it is building up the human capital to have those honest conversations. And so in development you know you don't have the time necessarily to do a full-on environmental scan because you need to raise the money for the thing, but you also need to raise the money in the right way for the thing. And so it's a very delicate balancing act of continuing to do the work of engaging with donors and bringing in funds to fund this vision, but really being cognizant of how we're spending the rest of our time in community with people and being intentional.

Daniel Sims: 16:27

And sometimes that's a post-9 to 5 thing.

Daniel Sims: 16:30

If I'm working with donors from 9 to 5, but it's a youth program that meets from 6 to 8, I should probably hang out from 6 to 8 a couple of days a week to get to know the kids that are coming in to do dance or to play a sport or to get their homework done or to generally just be and feel safe in the neighborhood that they live in or the space that they inhabit.

Daniel Sims: 16:50

And so that's really the easiest way to do it fundraising, or at least in my day-to-day fundraising work, but in general consulting and the work that I'm doing now in research, there are a couple of ways to go about it and it's certainly still all we're doing in trust.

Daniel Sims: 17:04

But it really begins then with creating safe, sanitary spaces where this data can be gathered and knowing how to both aggregate it properly but effectively disaggregate it, when you are getting similar stories about toxic culture, in competent leadership, a barrier to entry for promotion, a lack of attention to economic justice and pay equity, and so a lot of that then comes from just providing space through conversation, also making sure that survey-driven tools that we are using aren't leading people places, and so that takes a lot more work to figure out how we use our tools that are not non-bias, inherent, to make sure that we are getting the data that we want and then analyzing it in a way that is taking as much of our bias out of how we then write out that roadmap for how they make those improvements and hope that makes sense.

Kyla Cofer: 18:06

Well, what I'm hearing is that it's really kind of like a circle and you can tell me if I'm wrong here, because what I'm understanding is we're talking about raising money to keep programs and resources going right, fundraising, leading the way there. But then, in order to do that, we need to first have the safe workplaces, so that we can raise the money to create more safe workplaces and or safe places, and not just workplaces, but the safe places and safe programs and things that we're creating. And in order to create the safe places, we also have to have justice, equity, diversity, inclusion. We have all of those things in place and they kind of all play off of each other and just keep going around and you're hopefully. Maybe not a circle, but maybe more of like upwards by where we're starting and we're kind of putting all these things together and we're getting better at it. We're going up in the level and we're getting better at it. Moving up a level is that kind of what you're talking about.

Daniel Sims: 18:59

So I would describe it as a circle. So the research model and the methodology model that I use is a circle because it signifies that there is a perpetual level of attention that has to be done for transformation. And so in all the work that we do and what called the Allen Sims gen transformation model is, we're discovering where these gaps are. Through those conversations and through other data collection methods, we are creating then safe spaces to dig into that data, figure out where the specific organizational level and personal level opportunities for growth exist. We look at the systems change that needs to happen simultaneous to this transformation in person to person knowledge, and then we're re evaluating what's happening. But as that's going on in your learning new information, speaking to that upwards spiral, it is always allowing you to surface and examine your point in time, set of beliefs and principles and how that is juxtaposed to this transformational

Daniel Sims: 20:01

end game that's been established or co created with an organization and that goes for philanthropic organization or a for profit corporation, is that we all want to be in a place where, ultimately, we are bringing strategy to a key intersection with innovation, to do good work and to use systems to drive positive change, but I think for a lot of groups it just comes down to oh, we don't know how to do it or we don't have the money to do it, or something, something, something. And so we like to use that to disabuse people of the notions that certain aspects of transformational or organizational change can't happen if resources are present, for example, there are a lot of things that can be brought to the table to make that happen. But I think to your question, it's kind of a combination of those things, but ensuring that people understand that this is a long term iterative growth journey that they're on.

Kyla Cofer: 21:00

Yeah, I'm glad that you said we don't know how, or we don't have the money, and sometimes it feels overwhelming right, so we just need to get the money in the door, we just need to get the program continuing to operate, we just need to get the next day. And sometimes it's hard to take that step back and go okay, how can this be even better? How do we actually do this? How do we create this transformation that we're looking for within our organization, within our company? So where do you start? I mean, you mentioned the Alan Sims transformational model. Tell me exactly what that is. And then I want to I'm curious, if we've got listeners here in the audience who are leading the way, they're wanting safe, equitable workplaces, they're wanting to grow, they're wanting to move forward. So where do they start? So that's two questions. Let me back up question one what is the Alan sims transformational model? And then question two is how do you actually start?

Kyla Cofer: 21:49

Hey leaders, have you ever considered starting your very own podcast? Podcasting is a really amazing way. I want to just say for myself my own experience and creating this leadership school podcast I have grown my business, I have learned exponentially, I've had a ton of fun and my confidence level has increased tenfold by continuing to show up and put on a really great show. If I could help you to start your very own podcast without feeling overwhelmed, without the confusion of what do I do or how do I start, without dealing with all the self doubt, would you take me up on the offer?

Kyla Cofer: 22:24

If so, what I want you to do is right now go to podcaster school. net. That's podcaster school. net. You can start out by taking the quiz on what kind of podcast should you create. From there, go ahead and schedule call with me and let's check. So I want to hear about what your potential ideas are. What would make you interested in starting a podcast? It's such a fantastic way to really grow, increase your knowledge, your business and really get yourself out into the world. So take a look at podcaster school. net, take the quiz, schedule a call with me and let me help you get started on your very own show.

Daniel Sims: 23:00

Absolutely so. The Allison's Jedi transformation model is a byproduct of my master's research, so I hold a master's public service from the Clinton School of Public Service, which is part of the University of Arkansas and is attached to the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I lived for about a decade before moving to Wisconsin. I decided that I wanted to focus my research in community philanthropy because a lot of the work I had done to that point, particularly in the period starting in late 2014 after the death of Mike Brown in St Louis really started to focus on how does diversity and DEI or Jedi values affect the operationalizing of the systems change of how we do philanthropy. And then I was grown to how do we operationalize how we do multiple types of work across a number of industries and sectors. But as I had conversations with roughly 70 nonprofit leaders, both development officers, ceos, chief development officers, everyday donors, high level funders and philanthropists from around the world, three key things became clear. There are many organizations around the country that are ready to invest in this kind of work. In 2018, I believe, corporations invested roughly $19 billion in DEI initiatives, many of which are filtered through HR or people management departments of organizations, or they bring in consultants with HR lenses I don't have. I don't come from an HR background. Because of what I've been able to unearth and to gather from my pre-master's research I've been working with clients and certainly in the interviews that I got to have, in putting together my thesis that people need a clear path, no matter if it's free. If it's free work that's happening within the organization, if a consultant's coming in, that they need to understand what the very specifics path might be to help them make a change.

Daniel Sims: 25:14

For example, one area that I spend a lot of time on in my work today is looking at how we are identifying donors. Many of our research tools in the profession are used in a very bias, inherent way, where most of our lists are probably spitting out wealthy white men or white women or whoever however, that are giving in what we consider traditional philanthropic ways to a university, to a community center, which doesn't take into account how philanthropy is realized in other non-white communities, where the assumption is black communities or Hispanic communities or Asian communities may not be philanthropic, but they are at a much higher rate than most other ethnic groups. When you have an organization and wants to figure that out, we want to then look at how do we discover what the point in time starting point is, how do we look at how your systems can be changed? But how do we change the minds of the people doing the research? Because a system can only do what you tell it or what you allow it to do, and so that simultaneous wow, this is transforming how I see, how I understand thing A. This is how I can technically change how I input thing A or thing B into system C. Then we're able to then have a baseline by which we can evaluate.

Daniel Sims: 26:42

All right, now we've seen that the number of non-white donors in the pipeline has increased by 40%. Our level of engagement with black donors ages X to X, has increased sixfold with the average gift size of this. And so those are the things that help in philanthropy, and they help in any field. But being able to really show and demonstrate how gift sizes change, how donor pools change, how it can change the trajectory of research of donors and who are our partners, both in cash but also in non-cash giving ways that are still advancing the mission, that helps to open up eyes and usually brings more leaders to the table, because that is a vantage point from which they can understand how the transformation should happen. And then you're bringing them along with a journey, with the iterative knowledge that you're providing them. So then it makes more sense that, oh, I'm not on a hill looking on this thing. I'm now in the work, co-creating, co-working with my colleagues and with my team to keep this moving forward, because it has to, because it's valuable, because these people are valuable.

Kyla Cofer: 27:55

What I just heard from you is that by doing this work that you're doing and using this model, focusing in these ways and doing this research upfront and getting to know the way that this group of people thinks, you're taking transformational, systemic I don't know about systemic change, but maybe the change of a culture or transformation of an organization. You're taking that timeline down from 10, 20 years down to like a few years, because change takes so long. Any type of big major change or a perspective shift, thinking shift takes so long, but by doing things this way you're going to shorten that time because we know what it takes to make that change happen. You can do that and follow it methodically.

Daniel Sims: 28:41

I think that's what I've always found most fascinating about doing this work is that people, and really with a lot of things in systems change and organizational change, people feel that things just happen, especially in smaller or mid-size shops where the goal is to just get the thing done. I understand it'll be so. I've worked both as a consultant and as a staffer in those shops and the pressures of keeping things moving usually are much higher than other cultural considerations more often than not. But they do exist. They tend to exist in an outsized manner compared to other organizations. So much of my work is focused on building the business case for why shops of that size, which make up the lion's share of non-profits and in businesses in this country, need to take that pause to figure out what makes the most sense for us, who are the people we serve and where is our focus at this time. We could still do the work, we still must do the work, but there's an opportunity here to do it. So that is still one of the great battles that is yet to be decided in the workplace, largely because this is for the first time we have four generations of people in the workforce and that is changing in this next 10 years.

Daniel Sims: 30:10

But while we're here and while these conversations and debates are happening, there are very unique and interesting vantage points from Gen Z to the boomers to Gen X and certainly to millennials, about how do we go about making these changes and how do we bring people along.

Daniel Sims: 30:31

From my perspective, in a way that challenges beliefs in that. But we're ahead of time and I think we talked about this at one point earlier where we think about the public square generally as a place where we can reason and have debates and think about how we're moving forward. That place is under attack and it's under attack in public as we think about politics, and it's certainly under attack as these conversations have taken hold in the workplaces of the world over the last several years. So that is also a key consideration, I think, as organizations are starting that; is, how do we maintain the space to work through our issues with dealing with the issues? That's an important conversation and safe space to be had, and most people don't talk about that and the need for that, in addition to the work that must take place to make the changes.

Kyla Cofer: 31:29

Well, because it's hard, it takes a lot of effort and it takes critical thinking and it takes some I don't know if patience is the right word but some peace building efforts. It takes within yourself, within ourselves, and our willingness to pursue things that are hard and be intentional and not give up, and that can be really intimidating, especially when you've got a lot of work to get done. Okay, so we've got audience, we're listening. Hearing you talk this sounds great and amazing. What are the first three things you want to tell somebody? Where do we start? What are the first three things that they need to do and the first questions that they need to ask or things that they need to do to get really started in building this process?

Daniel Sims: 32:06

Very good question, thank you, and I'm always thinking about the answer I'll give today will probably be different in six months or in a year, but you know, as my baseline for for Jedi and I use Jedi rather than DI or EDI or DEIB or IDEA or many of the other terms that are used because justice, leading the way to creating psychologically safe and emotionally safe spaces, so that the other levels of the work cultural competence, the inclusion, the actual diversity and equity and the mission readiness piece gets us to the level of operation in that lens that's necessary. So, at the baseline, we have to understand what is the change that needs to be made and what does that look like from the perspective of leadership and what does that look like from the perspective of non-C-suite, non-management employees. And so, using a survey tool, and there are several available, I work with a team that uses a tool called a mosaic that looks at five axes of interaction so that can include race, gender, sexual identity, economic justice, just to name them a few, and allows us to understand from the personal level and then organizationally, how do people perceive where the great challenge of, or the great barriers to creating their ideal safe space live? And more often than not you're going to get answers that are starkly different between leadership and the day-to-day staffer. Then it's bringing it. So it's getting that information, bringing it together.

Daniel Sims: 33:52

And then two, asking the question what do we want to tackle first, because everyone wants to tackle everything all at once, typically when they're doing this on their own. Let's deal with pay, let's deal with pay equity, let's deal with hiring, let's deal with you know, environmental space, let's deal with our community relations, and all of those things need to happen all at the same time. But If you're doing this on your own and you're trying to be intentional, it's okay to pump the brakes, to take a look at what people are saying and are being bold enough to share, to take that to heart and go. I won't say go slow, because I don't think that's the goal, but go well. And what I mean by that is if it takes you two years to change how your CRM is identifying potential clients or potential or working with folks, especially in social services, rather than six months to bring in X number of people that are from non-white or from different underrepresented communities into your workplace is okay if, at the end of the day, the two years you took gives you a higher level of service. If you're bringing a bunch of people in in six months to a place that's not safe, they're going to leave and yeah, you got the numbers, but you brought people into an unsafe space to do all these things that have been identified and that's not fair to them and it's not fair to the organization that's willing to take the step.

Daniel Sims: 35:24

And then, third, I would probably say, making a commitment to reflection is important. In a lot of my conversations now people will tell me oh, we did the work, but we don't know where to go from here. Based on what we've done, is because there hasn't been a proper reflection space put into place to be the mirror to say, all right, from point A, we were here and point C, we're here, what did we learn and how does that continue to take us on this quest and I can look any number of ways exit surveys, community conversations, what have you? But making a visible, public and an enforceable or an accountability driven commitment to reflection and using that to propel future iterations of conversations and systems change are my big three.

Kyla Cofer: 36:19

You started out with the gathering, the data, and then you ended with the kind of measuring it. And that's how we measure it right with the reflection is by knowing where we are and then seeing how far we've come or if we've come anywhere at all, like if we've grown at all and having that moment and having that period of time where we know we've started somewhere and we are checking in. We're not just assuming it's going the way we want it to go, but we're checking in, we're looking back. And that's how we get that like accurate, literally be able to see kind of like numbers and changes and growth, and to really get a good picture of, okay, this is where we wanted to go. Are we actually doing what we said we were going to do?

Daniel Sims: 36:57

Absolutely.

Daniel Sims: 36:57

We've had several surveys over the last few years that talk about how workers that are part of change efforts around DEI are feeling, and many of them who are, who have been part of surveys, namely one done by Deloitte, I think, in 2021, maybe early 2022, showed that roughly 40% of workers that were surveyed would consider leaving the organizations altogether after having seen how change efforts were implemented and subsequently failed in some regards, and then about 60% said that they wouldn't recommend it as a place to work to other people, and that number is higher in different segments, such as LGBTQIA+ employees, senior management, younger employees, and so that level of trust being broken or lack of trust is a key indicator that the work isn't being taken seriously or it's happening in a vacuum, where that accountability can't truly isn't happening in the light of day.

Daniel Sims: 38:07

Something that I would probably add, that is, if you don't know, if you don't understand, one of the best professional guideposts I've seen is Gallup's Inclusion Index, and there are three pillars of what they consider to be a truly inclusive culture are trust, respect and appreciation of unique characteristics, and so being able to have a litmus test, even if it's one just as a baseline as that, to help initial discussions about how well we're doing and where we still have an opportunity to grow, really does then position an organization and the people within it to increase their knowledge and increase their utility of the knowledge in the long term.

Kyla Cofer: 38:51

If you were going to give our audience like one piece of your best advice. What's that one piece of best advice that you want to make sure people hear today?

Daniel Sims: 38:58

There's so many things to think about.

Kyla Cofer: 39:03

I know it's an impossible ask.

Daniel Sims: 39:05

Yeah, but one thing that I think about, actually, that I learned about in working on my marriage and in learning on how to be a good spouse that is actually really key in this work, especially now is that days are long but the years are short. And what it means is that, as we're having these conversations and we have an opportunity to turn corners and change the trajectory of a mission, of an organization, of the lives of people that are affected by it, whether they're customers, clients, etc.

Daniel Sims: 39:37

Etc. It's a big deal and, with everything else that we have to deal with in the world that we're living in now, we have to learn how to treat ourselves kindly while holding ourselves accountable, and know that the deep, deep work is going to require really a plunge into the trenches. But people are watching and what we're doing today, people will hold us accountable for six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, if we are moving at a slow pace because we think we have all the time in the world, and the world is moving on without us. And you never want to find yourself in a place where the culture of society is so far removed from your lived experience or your daily existence, working or living in space that you can't catch up and you're causing communities to die, to die at the stem as a result.

Kyla Cofer: 40:33

Daniel, this has been so great. I really appreciate it and I actually I really appreciate hearing that the term Jedi, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, because the first time I hear it I think you know Star Wars. So I really appreciate hearing that learning that new term, hearing some really practical things that we can do. But also just opening up the conversation, sometimes even just being willing to have these conversations and say, okay, like this matters to us, like we're going to be in a company, an organization, I'm going to be a leader who says that this matters and I'm willing to have conversations, even if it's hard, even if I don't understand them, even if I don't know where to go or what to do next. But the good thing is is that we can come and we have resources like you to reach out to and to help us along the way. So, Daniel, how can we reach you and how can we find you and interact and work with you?

Daniel Sims: 41:22

We are super active on LinkedIn as we are building a new site this summer, so our website is down. But you can go to simsconsultinggroup. com and join our mailing list and we'll be launching a brand new web space this fall, which we're really excited about. But find us at Daniel Sims Consulting Group on LinkedIn, also on Facebook, or you can email us at Daniel@ dsconsultinggroup. net.

Kyla Cofer: 41:47

Awesome, Daniel. Thank you so much for joining me on Leadership School today. It's been such a pleasure to talk with you.

Daniel Sims: 41:52

Thank you, it's been great to be here. Thanks.

Kyla Cofer: 41:57

So I started this podcast because I wanted to learn and grow in my leadership journey and I have been so incredibly inspired by the guests and the conversations. So once the interview ends, I actually keep the conversation going because I have found that sometimes the richest part of the conversation is when we feel like the interviews over and we can just kind of have a relaxed, more casual conversation. Also, if you've noticed, if you've been following this podcast for some time, I used to ask every guest two questions what does integrity mean to them and what does balance look like to them? Well, I haven't stopped asking those questions. We're just putting those over on our Patreon page. So go check it out at patreon. com/leadershipschool and for $6.50 a month you can support this podcast.

Kyla Cofer: 42:44

It takes a lot to produce every single episode and, honestly, I can use a little bit of support. So anything that you're able to contribute would really mean a lot to me and would able to help me to continue to bring these high caliber guests in to have conversations on what does it look like to be an extraordinary leader and how do we practically do that. So those conversations are continuing over at patreon. com/ leadership school, where I'm asking guests some extra questions, some bonus questions. You'll get some bonus content over there, so be sure to go check it out. Thanks so much for your support and thanks so much for subscribing, listening and sharing this podcast. It really does mean a lot and I'm so honored to show up here in your podcast feed. Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you've liked what you heard and you want some more tools and resources to help you on your journey, go check out kylacofer. com/ free stuff.