1948 – Coaching Non-Profits and Purpose-Driven Businesses with Kenny Lange

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1:05With us right now, Kenny Lang. Kenny, you coach nonprofits and purpose-driven businesses, and you're the founder of Kenny Lang Coaching. Your website is kennylang.com. That's L-A-N-G-E.com. Kenny, thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Josh. Yeah, well, give us an overview of your work and who you serve. Yeah, as you mentioned, a lot of nonprofits and purpose-driven businesses, I like to think they have nonprofit hearts, but business-savvy minds. in that world. But really what I'm doing is I'm helping a lot of those organizations turn their purpose into performance. And I do that in a couple of different ways.

1:46I help them focus the organization, foster high performance teams and create leaders worth following. Yeah. So tell us a bit about that world. And we'll talk about purpose-driven in just a second, but certainly if you do work in the nonprofit sector, what's been going on in that world? like any major trends or any maybe challenges that you're seeing in the nonprofit world that those maybe who aren't in there might want to be aware of? Yeah, they are facing, one, I think that there's a complexity when it comes to, say, the grant-making system, just in terms of the length of applications, how long it takes to review and getting money.

2:31And when you think about all of the worthwhile causes, and there are many, then getting resources to fund that good work should come a lot more easily, should come more quickly. You should have volunteers. But it's tough because they're not driving profits. And that's where a lot of people want to invest their money is something that's going to give them an inherent financial return on investment. So as I get to interact with them and help them find ways that they can organically scale the organization so that they don't have to beat down every door to get some money and they're not begging and pleading, but they actually look like a very strong sort of horse to back in a race to do good.

3:18So helping do-gooders do more good. Yeah. And when you talk about purpose-driven companies, I think a lot of us might make assumptions on what that means. Would you maybe just pontificate a bit on what it means to be a purpose-driven company? Yeah. So a lot of the companies that I interact with that are for-profit, that are my clients, they obviously are in business to grow, to serve their clients, to have great products, services, things like that. But I find that the people that I'm helping that I would qualify as purpose-driven are those that see their business as a way to build people instead of using people to build their business.

4:00Now, you could have both of those, but I think one is probably a priority over the other. As a matter of fact, an interesting story was running an annual session for one of my clients at the turn of the year. the CEO sent a pretty decent email the night before we all got together and included me along with the other executives and went along saying, yes, we have systems, we have processes, we have things that we need to get done in order to grow this business. But I want us all to remember as we make decisions about our year and our quarter and everything else over the next two days, that we are a mission-driven company, that our ultimate purpose is to do good work with good people.

4:45And I want that to be profitable, but we can never sacrifice our people for the sake of profits. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I would agree, or I would say that consumers care about that. Like if it's just, why are you in business to make money? Okay, I guess. like if we're not here to make the world a better place you know what are we here for i don't know yeah there's a lot of people who give lip service to that yes it makes for good buzzwords and maybe you could share about like how how the difference between someone who is giving i know you probably were and i interrupted you i'm so sorry kenny uh you know someone who says it versus someone who does it?

5:31Like, how do you tell the difference? Because I also see a lot of people who do their service quietly. Yeah. You don't have to be, you know, seeking publicity for it. I would say if somebody seems a little too eager to tell you about how good they are, then there's probably not much below the surface on that. One of the ways that we, that we see that is taking, you know, what I call taking the core values off the wall and into reality, right? Like there's all these, you know, great, you know, pieces of art and things in people's buildings about our core values. We are this, that, and the other thing.

6:10And there's posters and images, but they don't travel much further than they do off the wall. And so one of the ways that we do that is by helping people build organizational habits. How will you express these core values collectively on a regular basis. I use something in system and soul in that framework called the culture equation. So we say that core values, who you are, plus organizational habits, things you do together will create our culture. And we name those attributes and help them reverse engineer that. So when we build those organizational habits, we now get to name three to five things that are going to be really important that we could probably point to on the calendar.

6:53It might be, you know, we do 360 evaluations, that's our style, or we have quarterly socials all together, or we're going to do something else that really helps us live out whatever we value. And when I see companies that actually have actions that go with their beliefs and their words and things they say they are, you tend to see those companies are more authentic in saying we do good and we're for our people, because they put a stake in the ground, they've made it public that we're actually going to walk the talk. Yeah. Well, so take me through maybe someone that's listening to us right now and they're like, you know, yeah.

7:34I mean, we feel like we've come up with some core values, but what might be some ways that we can start to practice what we preach a little bit better? Yeah. So number one, I would say is if you can get really clear on your core values to make them unique to you. I run into a lot of people and someone's going to feel called out. And if you feel called out, feel free to email Josh about this. But, you know, Patrick Lencioni talks about there are three values traps that people often fall into. And if you're not familiar with Patrick Lencioni, he does lots of great work around values, culture, leadership, and team development.

8:19but he says that you can have them be aspirational things. We wish we were, if that's not you today, that's not a great core value. You could have the permission to play values, which are things like we value honesty and integrity. Oh yeah. Now if you, yes, you should value those. I sure hope you do. But I would say that if, if, if you're using that, you, you should have a really unique take on those words. Otherwise, I would ask you, okay, well, how is that unique? Because would you ever value being inauthentic, deceptive, or something like that? No, you wouldn't. So I sure hope you value those.

9:01And the others can be things that no longer serve the organization. So if you're a founder-led organization, and maybe when you started, innovation was the thing. But now you maybe don't need innovation at the central part, your core, and it needs to be something else and it iterates and evolves. So I think if you create really unique to you core values, and the way I ask people once we go through the exercises, or anybody that I'm talking to is, if I were to cover up your company name, take your core values into maybe say five of your competitors? Would those employees say, oh yeah, that's our core values, not knowing it was actually another company's?

9:43Well, then maybe we haven't passed the test. And I think we get clear on those. The expression of those things becomes very easy to come up with those organizational habits so that you can live those out. And now suddenly there is an integrity between who you say you are and how you act and behave in the workplace. Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely love it. And again, there is, there's a very distinct difference between, you know, again, kind of lip service to something and also, you know, kind of generic value statements. You know, I love seeing illustrations of how an organization may be implementing it.

10:26And I think sometimes, Kenny, I kind of alluded to this earlier, too, where maybe some of this work is being done quietly. and I think it's important to showcase and not doing this in a braggadocious way, right? So if you believe in giving back, listen, when you tell that story and you do it in an honoring and loving way, like we know you're not doing it just for the kudos or at least, you know, unless the most cynical of us might, you know, might think of it. But see, my justification for that too is hopefully that inspires other good activity. It's important for us to tell those stories or, or to encourage others by our example.

11:12Again, just doing that authentically. I know I sometimes struggle with that. Like, oh, you know, I want to talk about this thing that we did because I'm proud of it, but I also don't want to come across as braggy. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, absolutely. One of the ways that I've seen my clients implement this and that I teach and was really impactful when I learned it at the organization that I sold my first company to and got to help them really scale their business. And we went through an evolution through COVID. I think everybody had to evolve. It was like evolve or die during that time, right?

11:49But we teach that during any, really any meeting, but especially these weekly, these regular meetings, at the very top of it, we need to spend some time connecting as people before we spend some time really getting down to business and the tactical. And we would do something called a core value shout out. And it was a way to operationalize the core values inside the organization. But the cool thing was, you got to shout out a fellow team member, whether they were in the meeting or not for modeling the core value. So yes, your core values likely have an image associated with them or maybe some sort of short definition to them.

12:30And that's great. And it's always nice to hear the president, the CEO, whoever, give a state of the company, talk about our values. This is who we are. This is how we believe and behave. But it's really great when everybody throughout the organization can say, oh, yeah, Josh really modeled this value of, you know, everybody makes a copy. this week. And Susie did it this way. Now you're starting to collect dozens, if not hundreds of stories and examples of this value being lived out. And then as a company, you can share those out. So now you're not talking about how awesome I am as a company or how awesome I am as an executive or CEO or founder.

13:13You're now talking about how well your people model your value. and you now have dozens of examples and you're not bragging on yourself, you get to brag on your people, which I think comes across in a lot more authentic way, but it also takes the pressure off of you if you're really concerned about coming across in a sort of self-aggrandizing way. Yeah. Kenny, your website is kennylang.com. Share with me a little bit more about maybe resources that you offer or how you help and serve the market. Yeah, so there's a couple of things that most people are finding really helpful on the website. Number one is what's called the System and Solar S2 Diagnostic.

13:57And you can find it in the top menu. It says Org Health Score. It's less than five minutes. It's about 25 questions. And it'll give you a score of health on six key elements of a really healthy organization that wants to blend both healthy processes, but also wants to grow healthy people at the same time. So they can, you know, you can increase profits and build up your people at the same time. What a novel idea. But it'll give you a nice benchmark on where you are. And for my clients, you know, at a minimum, we do that once a year. So if you'd like to take advantage of that and use that, send it out to your team members and see how close, do we see the company the same way?

14:37Usually the CEO is either much higher or much lower than the rest of the team. So that's fun. I enjoy that. the other would be are you building a one-page roadmap and that's just the website forward slash roadmap and I give a 15-minute video that walks you through some questions to answer so you can really articulate your vision that culture equation that we've been talking about is there so you can help you know organize that and then what are some bets you're making over the next three years this year and the next 90 days and gets your entire company all on one page literally and But I'm always happy to answer questions through the website, email, LinkedIn, however I can help people make progress.

15:20Kenny Lang, again, you coach nonprofits and purpose-driven businesses to focus your organization, fuel high-performance teams, and create leaders worth following. Your website, KennyLang.com. To our friend that's listening, just click in your podcast app. You'll find the show notes. We've got a direct link, Kenny, to your website. Kenny, great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh.

15:49Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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