Episode 39 of “What is Innovation?” is here! Jared talks with Elizabeth Head, Director of Operations at LEAD Institute + Orchard, responsible for incorporating LEAD's capacity-building curriculum into Orchard, talks on progression and having the mindset for innovation in the non-profit industry. They also talk about how innovation works in politics.
Elizabeth Head, Director of Operations at LEAD Institute + Orchard, responsible for incorporating LEAD's capacity-building curriculum into Orchard, talks on progression and having the mindset for innovation in the non-profit industry, and how innovation works in politics.
More about our guest:
On April 1, 2021, the LEAD Institute became a part of Orchard, and Liz Head joined the Orchard team as Director of Operations. Her role is to incorporate LEAD's capacity-building curriculum into Orchard and launch a refreshed virtual training opportunity in Fall 2021. In addition, as Operations Director, Liz will lead financial operations, human resources, and strategic initiative implementation. Liz joined the LEAD Institute as the Deputy Director in January 2019 and assumed the role of Executive Director in July 2020. An experienced strategist with a 15-year career in investment banking and operations management, Liz’s role was to position the LEAD Institute for future growth through strategic planning. Before joining LEAD’s staff, Liz coached three nonprofit leaders through LEAD’s Ten-Month Program.
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Episode Guide:
1:37 - What Is Innovation?
5:00 - Instilling innovation of forward-movement
6:43 - Progression and Mindset for Innovation
8:48 - Profit vs Non-Profit: Similarities and common ground of populations
11:59 - Georgians United
14:53 - Independent Voting and the State of Georgia
18:18 - What is NOT Innovation?
21:37 - Power in functional partnerships
23:41 - LEAD and Orchard Merge
25:09 - Resources for Orchard, Institute for Political Innovation, Georgia Alliance
27:27 - Advice for innovators
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OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management.
Jared Simmons 0:05
Hello and welcome to What Is Innovation. The podcast that explores the reality of a word that is in danger of losing its meaning altogether. This podcast is produced by OUTLAST Consulting, LLC, a boutique consultancy that helps companies use innovation principles to solve their toughest business problems. I'm your host, Jared Simmons, and I'm so excited to have Liz Head.
Jared Simmons 0:29
Liz Head is the Director of Operations at Orchard+. Her role is to incorporate LEADS capacity building curriculum into Orchard and launch a refreshed virtual training opportunity in Fall of 2021. Liz also leads financial operations, human resources and strategic initiative implementation. An experienced strategist with a 15 year career in investment banking and operations management, Liz provided advisory services to small to medium sized companies. She most recently worked with the investment banking groups of Fifth Third Securities and Cary Street Partners. She's a graduate of the University of Georgia and Harvard Business School. Liz, her husband Hugh and their daughters Eleanor and Camille live in Chamblee, Georgia, and are active members of Peach Tree Church. Liz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.
Liz Head 1:20
Thanks for having me.
Jared Simmons 1:22
Yeah, I'm excited about the conversation. You've done so many amazing things in so many different industries and domains and things that I can't wait to talk to you about about innovation. Thanks again for making the time.
Liz Head 1:36
Absolutely.
Jared Simmons 1:37
So let's dive in, what in your mind is innovation?
Liz Head 1:44
I guess in my mind, innovation is, especially in what I'm doing now with nonprofit ministry and working with Orchard, I really believe that innovation is being available, being action oriented towards something that you see that is a problem or an issue. I really think it's looking to find some sort of solution; and being passionate about it and just being kind of willing to jump in. That's been my personal experience, I guess. But it's it's also been the experience that I've seen with innovators in nonprofit ministry, which is the organization I work for now, Orchard, that's what we're trying to do. It is help Christians learn how to launch and lead creative initiatives serving those in need. That's my frame, I guess for innovation.
Jared Simmons 2:34
Yeah, I love that, especially the jumping in part, the action oriented aspect of it, because when I, you know, I've had an opportunity to work with you on some things as part of your organization. One thing that always jumps out about you with LEAD or you with Orchard+ has always been the proactivity, the pragmatism about what will help this team, this leader, get to the next step, move things forward? Is that something that is that comes naturally to you? Or is that something you've tried to cultivate over time?
Liz Head 3:08
It's definitely been a cultivation process for me. I think if you asked me naturally, if I enjoy change, the answer would be would be no, right? It's kind of an object in motion, stays in motion. It is how I think about it. I think if you let me sit too long in a place, then I'm perfectly content to stay there. I actually think that my personal story might show some of that. When you start working towards something, you just keep marching towards whatever society or people you go to school with tell you is the next step. That was probably a lot of the background for me. But I think I had a moment after having a family, after thinking through things and saying, You know what, I don't think I want to take this next logical step in my career path, and I'm going to shake things up. What I have tried to be in the past maybe five years, if I see something that seems like it has the capability to make an impact and a change, I want to go after it. But I still have to, on a daily basis, remind myself that it's all about forward progress, because otherwise I might get I might get complacent.
Jared Simmons 4:21
I am certain odds are against that, especially in this space, you clearly have such a passion for it. It sounds like you found something that has where your passion and energy for is greater than your natural preference or natural tendency to sit still. You're almost propelled by your passion in this space. As you think about innovation and change and connecting those two things. How do you help people in your program? Maybe tell folks a little bit about LEAD and that program because a lot of what I'm going to ask you about isn't just things that I - we (sic) already know intuitively, but how do you think about instilling that mindset of innovation forward movement in the participants in your program? Is that something you intentionally do?
Liz Head 5:11
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So just a little bit about kind of what we do right at Orchard now we are partnering with nonprofit ministry leaders on a daily basis, we can help them get something from idea phase into launching. It's an official 501(c)(3) and we're off and running but we can also help folks that already have something started figuring out what the right next steps are to keep it moving. Essential to that is actually where I come from the LEAD Institute, which is now a part of Orchard and it's a basic business sustainability training course. Its curriculum and teaching on how to set your strategy and story and be real clear about it, about how to inspire investment through fundraising training, and then about how to build a sustainable organization that's really bigger than the founder of that organization. That's what the training program is really about, it is teaching those things. LEADS training program in the midst of Orchard as an organization that consults and coaches with nonprofit leaders, I think is the tab between those two. But I guess I might need you to, to ask your question, again, with that as the backstory. What question do you have about that? I guess some things change.
Jared Simmons 6:42
Yes. Just around the forward movement, the progression, and the mindset for innovation, is that something you select for? Is it something you try to coach into people? Or how do you think about that?
Liz Head 6:55
Honestly, most of the leaders that we work with, have no problem naming their passions and their call. I think part of what inspired me to take action steps versus just being complacent and living the life that it seemed like I had been handed is because I was around a lot of nonprofit leaders and realize that these folks are folks who are willing to take risk. They're willing to step into something because they see a problem. They're action oriented people and they want to do something about it. The action orientation is not necessarily something that we have to look hard for. I think that's already there. I think what we have to do at Orchard and with our curriculum has helped folks figure out how to focus that and how to think about, I guess, the healthy ways to keep that energy going, but also investing in the right places to make sure it's sustainable. Both from a sustainable on a personal level for that leader, but also sustainable on a organizational level as well. A great passion, and a great energy, and a true heart for service is going to carry a long way but it won't sustain. If you don't have the right foundational building blocks underneath it as well. I don't know that we have to go looking for the change or the discomfort and stepping out in undiscovered territory, with the folks we work with, I think it's more helping make sure that they can keep doing that.
Jared Simmons 8:33
It's more about providing them with the tools and the resources to allow them to have impact. Allow that passion to translate into actual community mission driven impact. Interesting. It's interesting to me, how you shifted from one set of companies, so advising, small and medium sized for profit companies, to another set of organizations. Are there any similarities? When people think about the for profit and nonprofit world, it's usually pretty binary. You and I have had careers in both spaces but there aren't a lot of people that actively work in both spaces. Have you seen any common similarities or common ground in those two populations?
Liz Head 9:20
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a ton of overlap. There's some pretty stark differences too, but when it comes to basic business sustainability, like how do you build an organization around your call or your passion or what you see as a problem? I think there's a ton of similarities. If you're going to start a new for profit business or a new nonprofit business, you still got to put a lot of the same building blocks into place. The differences do come in though in that a nonprofit organization and this is the one of the things that we think about and we try to share with the folks who go through our program; you are ultimately the person who had the idea but once you become a 501(c)(3) organization, you are community owned. It is no longer 'you' who are the primary benefactor. While there are so many different phases and stages and growth opportunities and ways that your organization will shift and change over its lifecycle, that's a foundational piece from the get go, you're saying, "this is not meant to benefit me, it's meant to to benefit the community owners of this organization" That profit motivation maybe looks a little different. It obviously looks different that changes a little bit but in terms of running an organization, the similarities are very much there.
Jared Simmons 10:43
The operational side of things. I feel like sometimes the the mindset, like a small business owner and a nonprofit leader, some of the leadership principles, you have to learn, some of the elements of humility, and owning the spaces where you need help and need support, and finding ways to close those gaps. I've seen some of those things play out on both sides of the fence. I think there's often an assumption, that type of organization or another has more issues with certain elements of things. But I think you've crystallized the difference very succinctly, I mean, either you're community owned or some version of shareholder-member owned. That's really the distinction after that, things get very, very similar when you actually go start to go to work.
Liz Head 11:35
Yeah, you can do community good through either of those models, right? It's not that I'm saying that a nonprofit, a 501(c)(3), approved organization model is the only way to see community impact but if you decide to go that route, you were certainly saying something about the benefactors of that organization and how you plan to structure it and run it.
Jared Simmons 11:59
We've talked for-profit, we've talked nonprofit, and somehow you found a way to squeeze yet another, another domain into your world and way of thinking, tell me a bit about this political organization that you've gotten involved with recently.
Liz Head 12:18
I have joined the board of; actually a nonprofit that has political innovation implications, it's an organization called Georgians United. The goal of the organization is actually to innovate the way that we elect congressional representatives. The reason I got involved is because, again, I guess, in the last five years of my life being willing to just step in and be action oriented, and things that really grabbed me as important and meaningful. I guess, just being frustrated feeling left out of the political process, or at least not feeling like the options that I have had in the political process, as of recent election cycles, I just was throwing up my hands and going, there's no way this is going to get fixed, and then sat in a lecture hall and listen to a woman named Katherine Gail talk about, it was actually an HBS for Union for me, how you apply the five forces of Michel Porter's Strategic Market Evaluation to the industry of politics.
Liz Head 13:27
It was so interesting to me, because she just walked through and I realized, this is why this system doesn't seem to work for so many people. When I first heard her talk, there was all the explanation of why it felt like politics was broken but there really wasn't a whole lot like "what do you do about it" It's just "okay, now I understand why it's broken, or why it feels broken to me." The nice thing is, is that the Institute for Political Innovation has come up with some very interesting ways that are both achievable and impactful, and being able to fix some of that, that feels broken. That's what I've gotten involved in. Georgians United is an organization here in Georgia that is working to implement a final five voting solution and that really is twofold. Primarily, it is changing the primaries. The first step in the process is rather than having two separate primary elections, you would have one nonpartisan, everybody on the ballot at once and rank your top five choices.
Jared Simmons 14:39
Instead of Democrats having a Democratic primary, Republicans having a republican primary, you would have one, like you said, non partisan primary with all of the candidates,
Liz Head 14:51
All of the candidates running. The great thing about the state of Georgia is you actually can as an independent voter choose to vote in either primary election. They've already, I guess, at least become open to the idea that you don't have to be a registered Republican or Democrat to be able to have impact in a primary election but there's still two of them. There's no way for you to have impact in both of those. If you wish to help out one candidate over here in the Democratic primary and one candidate over here in the Republican primary, you can't do that in Georgia, you have to choose one or the other.
Jared Simmons 15:27
Interesting.
Liz Head 15:29
The idea would be to be able to have all of those candidates again, talking about federal congressional election, so your senators and your representatives, you would be able to select those candidates on one nonpartisan ballot. Then you'd have the top five candidates that would move to the general election and the general election, you would use an instant runoff voting process that would allow everybody to write-choice their top candidates in that instance, that's a whole lot of the how but the real reason for doing that is because the problem that was stated so clearly for me when I was listening to the conversation in that lecture hall was that right now in our current system, there's really no connection between our elected officials solving problems, and the likelihood of them getting elected. Those two things, solving problems and getting elected completely in the Venn diagram don't overlap right now. In fact, you keep your office more likely if you don't solve problems, because that's probably the thing that makes your your primary voters happiest in the current system. But if you change that system, if you go after the ruling incentives, I guess, if you go after what is set up right now and you change the way party primary elections are done, then you actually can put that; the overlapping aspect of being able to solve problems that face the general voter population, and the fact that will also potentially get you elected.
Jared Simmons 17:10
Exactly.
Liz Head 17:11
I don't think there's any other system where doing nothing wins you more business. Somehow that seems like where we are in our political system right now.
Jared Simmons 17:21
That's fascinating. I wonder, and I'm sure you've thought about it, or I'm sure it's part of the platform for the organization, I really like that this solution is so focused on the primary aspect of things. I've heard other people expressed similar concerns and then start talking about things like amending the constitution to extend the term, term limits, in house or institute term limits or things like that as solutions. To me, this feels more practical, it feels like it has a higher likelihood of success, and it feels like something that you can wrap your head around and understand the process for.
Liz Head 18:03
There's a lot of different ways or a lot of different ideas to view, if you look at what might be going wrong in Washington, you can point your fingers at a lot of things, gerrymandering, you can point your fingers at term limits, you can put your fingers in a lot of places. I guess one of the questions you posed before this session with us is what is not innovation. In politics, I think what is not innovation is that if something is not both powerful, and achievable, as a solution, that is not innovation because it doesn't have a snowball's chance. You can try to amend the Constitution, but the process to do that and change term limits, the process to do that is so out of the possibility of being achievable that, why would you propose that as an innovative solution to the problem. What is not innovation is highlighting the problem and not coming up with some way to address it that is actually something that could change the way it's being handled.
Jared Simmons 19:06
Exactly. Well said and that plays out in the non-political, nonprofit space as well, yeah, you know, it's great to have a vision and a mission that's lofty and firing. And, you know, wouldn't it be a perfect world if nobody was hungry? Wouldn't be a perfect world. If you know, there were no nuclear weapons, you know, what have you. But you can't innovate around that there are powerful and achievable goals you can set to set a society on a path. But what as long as you're only talking about that, wished for, in state, perfect world, it doesn't set you up for being able to craft and implement powerful, achievable, innovative solutions.
Liz Head 19:51
It's funny, I hadn't really thought about that and it's application to the rest of my job but you're exactly right. That's a good way to think about what we are trying to help nonprofit leaders do. We're trying to help them clarify, we're trying to help them focus. We are also trying to help them understand that just reinventing something that's already out there is not the thing to do. We don't want folks to stop in their tracks or not start something that they feel compelled to start just because somebody out there is doing something similar. But if you don't pause and take a moment and go, is what I am doing something that can be powerful and achievable? It's also not just basically saying, Hey, I know you do that over there, but I don't like the way you do it. So I'm gonna do it myself kind of thing? There are so many pieces in that, that probably deserve to be unpacked more. I agree with you. It's trying to help people focus and think about, where can I have an impact? Where can I move something forward? Where can I have a piece of the solution, knowing that it's going to take partnering with other people who have another piece of the solution in order to see something truly reconciled? To see a solution that is that is having a much broader societal impact? I think you're right. It's okay for a lot of people to be running after a lot of things. But hopefully, we're helping folks figure out how to partner with other people and other organizations to add to see a complete solution and understand what piece of it is theirs to do, and what piece of it isn't.
Jared Simmons 21:37
That makes a lot of sense. I think there's a lot of power in partnerships, structural partnerships, mergers, whatever you want to call them, functional partnerships. All those things on the nonprofit side, I think are underutilized, sometimes because of the the zeal and the passion of a founder, and their ownership for the mission. Sometimes it's about, I think, falling in love bit more with the outcome that you want for the world, and not so much the solution that you've crafted in and of itself, because I do think there's lots of places where I get emails and invites to things all the time, and I'm thinking, Oh, this, this organization is doing almost the exact same thing this organization is doing, and they're competing for funders, they're competing for attention. They're competing for volunteers. If they combine their efforts, everybody's life will get easier. Things would and they'd all get where they want to go faster but it's hard to see that sometimes when you have such a personal connection to what you're trying to accomplish.
Liz Head 22:42
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we definitely see that with nonprofit leaders and in fact, the LEAD Institute merged into Orchard. I do think about that, because, I mean, I've spent the first half of my career in helping with mergers and acquisitions and helping for profit companies do those types of things. When I left that world and entered into nonprofit, I wasn't really thinking that one of the first things to be involved in is a nonprofit merger but that's exactly where it led me and I'll say, I haven't been around mergers and investments and those things for a long time. It's never easy but if you can do it and do it well, and if you see the future opportunity of two organizations coming together. That are really hoping to achieve very similar things. It's hard, but it's good work. I definitely think that's what what we see with the LEAD and Orchard merger. There were so many reasons for us to be doing things together. But it did mean that each of us had to set aside some things that we felt like were important that maybe not central to the way that we operated. Maybe that was made a little easier and that both Orchard and LEAD were being run by folks who had taken over from founders, that I think both Orchard and LEAD or organizations run by people who were very, very respectful of their founder, hopefully, thankful of their founders and their visions for the organization and wanted to make sure that those were shepherded well through the process of bringing two organizations together, but I can see those types of partnerships. I see them as very valuable. I can see why sometimes they are hard to both identify as well as then solidify once they have been seen because there's just so much tied to the founders of nonprofits and their visions for the organization so you have to be willing to let go to be a part of that.
Jared Simmons 24:54
I know exactly. It's so funny that as I was saying that, it didn't even click to me that you had just walked through that and live that. I do want to ask, where can people learn more about the things you've been talking about today? About Orchard? About the Institute for Political Innovation? Georgia Alliance? Can you just let folks know where they can find information on those things?
Liz Head 25:25
Absolutely, if you are interested in learning more about Orchard and what we do, you can go to our website, which is www.meetorchard.org. Then for the Institute for Political Innovation is political-innovation.org. That's the national organization that has been thinking about the final five voting solution for the past three, four, or five years. Then Georgians United is the nonprofit organization that is here in Georgia that has been set up to educate about these opportunities, that is georgiansunited.org
Jared Simmons 26:19
Perfect. I'm going to spend some quality time doing some light reading on those sites. I'm excited about all those concepts and even some of the non-obvious overlaps with... do we do innovation work in the consumer goods space? Do some services innovation work, I'm sure it's going to spark a lot of thoughts and ideas for us in that space as well. My interest in the fractured political system, I'm sure it'll be useful for that as well. That's also part of what innovation is about is. It's reapplying from one domain to another. You do that masterfully from your corporate world to the nonprofit space, both for community impact and also political impact.
Liz Head 26:59
Well, I appreciate that. I'm not sure masterfully is the idea through there. It's fun to do something, reflect on it, process, and then just see, look back and see the breadcrumbs to see where the connectivity was, and to see where it still is. I agree with you, sometimes those things are really clear, sometimes, there's aha moments, but I guess it's nice that life still surprises you.
Jared Simmons 27:23
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Given your career and some of the things you alluded to in terms of making choices about being on the path, stepping off the path, all those other things, what kind of advice would you have for innovators?
Liz Head 27:39
In thinking through that, what would be the advice for somebody who either is, or is considering, something new or different or has big ideas? My takeaway is just that, even if it doesn't feel comfortable, sometimes you just have to innovate your life. You have to shake things up to see what needs to be different. When I first decided to make some of those initial shifts or changes in my life, I guess I expected to make a change, and then find a new path and be like, okay, now I'm in my new path and I'm settled there. Maybe there's a little bit of that, but I think I've just came to the conclusion that the change is part of life and by continually looking for ways to implement that change, but maybe reflect on it, process it and try it differently. I mean, I think this is a day to day commitment, as well as a year by year commitment. You got to be willing to do it and you got to be willing to continue to redo it if innovation was gonna be part of your life. So just get out of that comfort zone and keep growing that's probably my advice for innovators.
Jared Simmons 29:02
Perfect, it's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you so much for your time and stopping by to talk with me and share with our guests. I really appreciate all the work you do for the community and everything you do, particularly for nonprofits here in the Atlanta area. I can't wait to see them bigger and better and greater things that you're going to do as part of Orchard and the amazing community that they've built there as well. Thank you for your service to the community, for your friendship, and for your continued partnership on things that I'm working on. I appreciate all of that and maybe we'll try to do this again and cover some of the ground we didn't have a chance to cover.
Liz Head 29:43
That sounds great. Thanks for having me and allowing me to share, obviously enjoy any conversation I get to have with you, Jared.
Jared Simmons 29:52
Thank you so much. We will talk again soon.
Liz Head 29:55
Sounds great.
Jared Simmons 29:56
Alright. Take care.
Jared Simmons 30:02
We'd love to hear your thoughts about this week's show. You can drop us a line on Twitter at OUTLAST LLC, or follow us on LinkedIn where we're OUTLAST Consulting. Until next time, keep innovating. Whatever that means.
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