#91: Heather Lenz (Sangfroid Strategy)

Heather Lenz (Sangfroid Strategy) [00:00:00]:
We've put a ton of resources into improving the lives of people, and things like child poverty, employment, infant mortality, they're just getting worse. Like, the numbers aren't getting better. Right? And yes, the population's growing and yes, the world is changing but like, gosh, we've been working on these for a really really long time. And and and that was the point where I start to like really question like, what are we doing here? Like, there's a ton of money going into the industry. It's supposed to be improving the lives of people, and the lives of people are getting worse. And so it started to get me to think about, like, how do we measure progress? How do we think about impact in this space?

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:39]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the lay of the land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host Jeffrey Stern and today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with Heather Lenz. Heather has spent the last 16 years working in the social impact space with nonprofits, with governments, and with foundations who are all trying to make improvements for the good of humanity, the environment, and for society. About a decade into her work in the social impact space, she realized that in order for this sector to be effective, there needed to be a dramatic shift in the way that most of these organizations and institutions thought about and used data. This realization is at the center of Cinqfua's strategy, the company that Heather founded back in 2016 to help organizations tackle some of the most complex and difficult issues of our time. From combating systemic racism to changing the antiquated systems that create barriers for people in poverty.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:46]:
Heather is on a mission to shift this landscape from one that makes people feel good to one that is actually effective for the people who need it and has done so working with many Cleveland organizations like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the city of Lakewood, just to name a few. I loved hearing Heather's story and learning about how data is currently used in the nonprofit sector and how as a country, we have a massive opportunity right now to leverage advances in technology from automation to data science to open source software systems and more for social good. So please enjoy my conversation with Heather Lentz. Glad we can, finally connect here. I know we've been coordinating to have you on for for a little while now, but well worth the wait. So thank you for for coming on, Heather.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:36]:
Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:39]:
So I would love to start with, you know, you just kinda taking us through the the arc of of your career and and just sharing a little more about yourself personally. I think that would be a great place to start.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:51]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Gosh. Where to start? I have never been very intentional about my career path. So I'm gonna start by just admitting that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:00]:
You

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:00]:
know, I kind of floated through and and did things that interested me and and left things when they didn't interest me. You know, I think about specifically, like, my pathway to entrepreneurship and reflecting on, like, what what got me to this point. Right? What was the thing in my life that was like, yeah. You can do that. Go ahead. Right? I've always been someone who just from a really young age is, like, a incredibly curious person, but I also like to make things work. Right? I also like to think about, like, what is it like to look at a a particular system or a particular problem or or a particular organization and think about, like, how do you make it better. Right? So I'm naturally a problem solver.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:47]:
My first job, and I I didn't know this at the time. I didn't think about it as a job, I thought about it as a chore, really. But, you know, there was this period in my life, and it's quite a strange period for someone to have, where my dad and I had, and again, I didn't know it at the time, this, like, incredible business when I was a kid. And I didn't recognize it as a business because it's so strange. But, gosh, I must have been, like, 6 or 7, and my you know, I grew up in a pretty large family working class. And my dad was always someone who was trying to figure out, like, how do we make extra money. Right? And so, about 6, 7 years old, we started garbage picking. And what that means, if you don't know

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:30]:
because I was going to ask.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:32]:
What that means is you drive around on garbage night, you know, and we didn't live in, like, the wealthiest neighborhood. So you went to the wealthy neighborhoods, and you literally garbage picked things people were throwing away. Incredibly embarrassing thing to do as a developing young woman. Right? Very, very embarrassing. So trying to go to places that, like, no one would recognize me when we went there, but we would find all sorts of things like lawnmowers and record tables and furniture and all sorts of things. We'd bring it back. We did this every summer. We'd bring it back, and we would fix everything up.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:09]:
And then, Saturday Sunday mornings, we would go to the Memphis Flea Market in Cleveland. And we would set up a stand, and we would sell everything. And it took a couple years for me to, like, negotiate a cut. Right? But when I negotiate a cut, like, my life was different. It was like a pathway to freedom. And so I negotiated with my dad that I made 10% of everything that we sold. And so as soon as that hit, like, gosh, I wasn't even 10 years old at that time. Like, I was quickly strategizing on, like, how to get the money to buy the shoes that I wanted, to buy the clothes that I wanted.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:46]:
You know, by the time I was, like, 12, I was making 4 or $500 a weekend. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:51]:
Oh, wow.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:52]:
Not just on my cut, but on my markup. Right? So I would, like, set up supply lines for things that sold often and, like, have people dropping off lawn mowers, and then my dad would be like, this was supposed to be $20, and I'd be like, hey, you can have this for 30. And so I'd make that 10% cut, and I'd make those $10 extra, and just kind of, like, stacking it. Right? And so I never really conceptualized as a business. I just always thought about it as this weird part of my childhood. Fast forward into, like, you know, having to work as an adult and, you know, I mentioned, like, not a lot of intentionality there. Kind of rolled into college, like, not even knowing what I was gonna do. So I dropped out of high school in like, I don't know, 10th grade, and I started going to community college.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:39]:
And, got an associate's degree, and then like someone pulled me aside and was like, hey, you're not supposed to get more than one associate's degree. It's not like a thing here. You don't get 3 or 4. You you should, you know, think about moving on. And so went to, Arizona State University and was holding random jobs. I worked at a homeless shelter, coffee shop. And then when I graduated there, I moved back to Cleveland. And that move back to Cleveland was like a space in my life where I had to think about where I was going with my career, and I had had this experience working in Arizona at a homeless shelter.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:15]:
And I was like, you know, I think I really wanna learn about nonprofits. And so, you know, I did the wildly traditional thing that I didn't realize was so traditional. Of trying to save the world and went to go work in the nonprofit sector. And then I quickly realized, like, how complicated, like, the social service, the social impact landscape was and and I worked at the local United Way for a while, worked at various other other nonprofits and started to get kind of a good lay of the land, if you will, of the nonprofit sector in, Northeast Ohio. And when I got out of grad school, I was recruited by a consulting firm. So that was, like, one of my first kind of serious segways into consulting. Through grad school, I worked, you know, on some consulting projects on behalf of university. But I started consulting on a national level, and I was very young at this time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:09]:
I was 20 years old when I took that job. And I I kinda took pieces and parts from each job that landed there, but there was this, like, moment when everything kinda came together for me and that was like, I started to realize like, woah, like, what is this sector doing? Right? When you when you zoom out and you look at like the evolution of social services from, you know, the 19 thirties, 19 forties, 19 fifties until now, like, and you look at the big indicators. Right? What you see is we've put a ton of resources into improving the lives of people. And things like child poverty, employment, infant mortality, they're just getting worse. Like the numbers aren't getting better. Right? And yes, the population's growing and yes, the world is changing but like, gosh, we've been working on these for a really really long time. And and and that was the point where I started to like really question like, what are we doing here? Like, there's a ton of money going into the industry. It's supposed to be improving the lives of people and the lives of people are getting worse.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:13]:
And so that started to get me to think about, like, how do we measure progress? How do we think about impact in this space? And one of the the things that I saw, and it was one of those moments when you, like, see a problem and you then can never unsee that problem, you know? And that was looking at, like, the pace of change within the sector. And so typically, you know, nonprofits, governments, they roll out programs. Right? So companies roll out products, social impact space, we roll out programs. So you you roll out a program and then 3 to 4 years, you conduct an assessment. And then you say, like, how do we do on that program? And then you come up with, like, some things that you should change about the program. You implement them. And then 3 to 4 years, you do it again. And that just made no sense to me because, like, the world moves way faster than that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:05]:
Way faster. Like, of course, we haven't made any change on these big things, or we haven't made massive changes in these big areas because we move so slow. Right? So when I started to see, like, this cadence of problem solving in the the lag I mean, and we're looking at, like, at years at best. Right? A lag time of years between data, information, strategy, decision making. It was one of those points where I was like, I we have to do this differently. And in the moment that that sunk in, I just quit my job. Like, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do anymore of these 3 year assessment cycles.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:46]:
This is this is horrible. Like this is like actively bad. So I didn't have another job and I I went and worked at a coffee shop actually. I started freelancing and 7 years later, here I am. Small small business focused very specifically on, solving that problem, that that lag time between information, data, and, like, strategy that we use to solve problems.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:10]:
I'm excited to to talk more about that. But I'm curious, was it just kind of serendipitous that Cleveland happens to be kind of such a mecca for the nonprofit world? Like, did that influence the decision at all or just kind of a a lucky coincidence?

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:26]:
Yeah. And and that's a good thing to pick up on. Cleveland's actually one of the largest concentrations of of nonprofits in in the world. Right? We have Cuyahoga County alone has, over 58 100 functioning nonprofit organizations. So that's one nonprofit for every 200 people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:44]:
Wow.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:45]:
It's that's insane. Like, what are we doing?

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:47]:
Right? That is crazy. I mean, you know, anecdotally, you'll you'll hear thrown around the the non industrial the nonprofit industrial complex in in Cleveland as kind of a a throwaway term. But well, I I I did not know that number.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:02]:
It's massive. I I didn't know that, you know, coming in Cleveland, which just happened to be, like, a a comfortable home, you know, my comfort place. I grew up here. So that's why I came back here. But we actually have one of the oldest nonprofit sectors in Cleveland. You know, there's a lot of literature and books out there that really attribute the birth of the nonprofit sector as we know it to Cleveland. The First Community Foundation was started here. So we have a a massive massive history regionally as leading, you know, the the nonprofit world, the nonprofit landscape.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:33]:
Got it. So so you had, you know, seen this this problem that you could not unsee, and that kind of guides, you know, the path forward. How do you take that that idea, that longing to work on this problem to to creating an actual a business and organization around that?

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:51]:
Yeah. And I mentioned earlier, like, the lack of intentionality that I've had throughout my career. We're gonna throw that in here. Right? So my first, you know, 4 years was I was freelancing. So I had a a business structure. I had a business name legally, but it was just me. And during those 4 years, like, my work had grown and and I had held, you know, other kind of ad hoc positions at this time. I, you know, worked at so many coffee shops, and and I worked at Case Western for a while.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:24]:
And I was kinda growing this business on the side and then there was this point where I was like, okay, I can't do this on my own. So I started, you know, subcontracting, running internship programs to kind of help out, partnering with other kinda solopreneurs in the space. And it took me a few years to kinda figure out, like, what is it that I'm doing? And at the same time, like, you have these fields just popping off around. Right? So the last 10 years brought us, like, almost accessible AI. It brought us, completely open source automation and and data analytic capacity in the form of dashboard. So making things that were very exclusive to to money, right, to people with lots of resources, accessible to everyone else. And so as I started to integrate and use, you know, some of the some of the open source technology, open source tools that were around, I started to solidify, you know, what is data driven strategy mean? How do you use data driven strategy to increase whatever social impact an organization is trying to make? What does that look like in practice? I think when I started, I just knew that we couldn't do it the way we were doing it. Right? The broader we.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:42]:
And as I started to try and do it differently and and tripped over my own feet for several years doing that, started to refine like, okay, these are the fields that I'm bringing together. Right? The data analytics and evaluation background, strategy development. And strategy development is is a very, very deep deep field of of knowledge and and a lot of learning. Right? You could spend a whole lifetime learning strategy development, technology, and and and web development infrastructure, and and merging all of those together to say, like, how do you actually give someone the tools and resources they need to make good decisions every day? When you look at other fields like marketing comes to mind. Like someone doesn't just launch a marketing campaign and then 4 years later, it's like, how did that campaign go? Like, every day they're looking at a specific metrics and they're adjusting their strategy every single day until they have the right ad, the right messaging, the right language, the right image, the right platform, the right algorithm to to make that, you know, particular advertising campaign work. We should be doing that in the social sector. We we we have the technology, we have the tools, we have the data, we have the information. We don't have the mindset.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:57]:
And so that's what really brought it to together for me was to, like, oh, that's the piece that's missing is the mindset. And the mindset happens in, you know, it's looking at the world through a design thinking lens, a prototyping lens. Right? And so I think that was the kind of the culmination of making that leap. There's a ton of things in between, but it took me a bit to figure out, like, what is it that I'm actually doing here? And and luckily, a lot of people hired me while I was figuring that out. So thank you to all those people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:32]:
It's interesting though, because, you know, of all those things that you mentioned, mindset is probably the hardest thing. Right? The the other changes, they just happen, inevitably, like, whether you wanted them to or not. But to to run with it, you know, people can get quite grounded in the way they have done things. So I'd I'd I definitely wanna understand, you know, how how you've approached trying to shift how people have thought about the way they've done things and and, their adaptability, you know, willingness to to adopt new new things. But I I wanna come to just the the company itself and and just, you know, kind of set the stage for the rest of the conversation with what the the company is, what it's called. I think there's a whole conversation to be had around the the name itself, which I'll I'll attempt to pronounce here as a sangfa strategy, which phonetically is not spelled as you think it would be. No. But, yeah, how about, you know, just kind of outline what what the company is today, and and we can kinda work through, a lot of those those challenges and initiatives, from there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, St. Paul Strategy, you pronounced it correctly. Thank you. I'll start with the name. So it that was a very risky branding decision. I had some advice on it, and and, one of my favorite local artists, Jordan Wong, said go for it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:58]:
Right? Go for it, and let's wrap your branding around it. You know, I chose that word because I I really wanted a word that captured what we did at our core. Right? What I was trying to do at our core. But, you know, it's a French word. It means to hold a sense of calmness, a sense of coolness, composure during difficult trying or complex circumstances. And, you know, in the social impact space, like, you're dealing with the lives of people, the experiences of people, layered with system upon system upon system upon system. That by the way, we we're all built a 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 200 years ago. Right? So they're not systems that really work that well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:42]:
They're incredibly complex. They're incredibly difficult to navigate. They're incredibly frustrating. And what we're trying to do is say, like, we're gonna help move you through that. Right? We're gonna help you think about what data you need, what information you need, what cadence of operations that you need to move through that. And so so that's why I chose that word is because it really captures, like, the core essence of of what we do. You know, I also wanted to stand out. Like, what I'm trying to do is different.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:11]:
It's it's not the same as all the other nonprofit consulting firms. Right? We don't operate the same. We don't have the same types of processes. And so it was important to me to have a name that stood out. The direct translation is interesting. The direct translation from from French to English is actually cold blood.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:30]:
Oh. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:32]:
So that kinda makes people, you know, weirded out a little bit. But what that means in that context is more like cool headed.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:39]:
Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:40]:
Great conversation starter. You know, when when one of our customers or potential customers, you know, is up against something that feels so insurmountable. Right? And I'm talking about, like, improving educational outcomes in the city with the highest child poverty rate in the country. Right? Or closing a very long standing racial disparity in the allocation of resources. Like, things like that, those are huge. They feel like so heavy, so insurmountable, and and, you know, having as a company allows us to look at that and say, you know, like, we can do this. Like, it's gonna be tough, but we can do it. And we can do it without, like, feeling like we can't do it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:28]:
Right? And so it's been incredibly kind of grounding for us when we come across really big hard stuff to be able to say, you know what? We're gonna have on this one. You know? We're going to we're gonna move through this and we're gonna kinda like compose ourselves while doing it. No one can pronounce it. No one can. It's a it's a conversation starter, you know, at best. 1 year, we did this fun little, like, montage of all of our clients trying to say the word. And I was, like, fully prepared for every single one of our clients to butcher it completely. And I was so surprised.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:07]:
I was floored. All of them pronounced it correctly.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:10]:
And Amazing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:11]:
That was the moment. I was like, this is the right name for this company. Like, because people you know, that took, like, 4 Googles. You know? Right? That's not easy. Like, people spend time on it, which is it just made reinforce, like, what we're doing is really, really important. As a company, you know, I always say this, the future is made up of a collection of moments. And and strategy is executed through the day to day decisions, behaviors, actions of people. And as a company, our goal is to equip people in the social impact space with the information they need to make the best day to day decisions.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:56]:
Make the best, like, day take the best day to day actions, behaviors, that help them do their work. And and right now, I would I would strongly argue that the social impact sector is not equipped to do that, because data is almost absent from the social impact space. And we have a ton of it. The use of it, the translation of it into information, the connection of it to the actual service that is intended to help an individual in whatever circumstance that they're in is just not how we use data in the sector. And and I I truly believe that it's it's a disservice, right, to, society as a whole. And so so that's our whole goal. We do a lot of evaluation work. We do a lot of strategy work.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:40]:
We do a lot of, you know, facilitating large groups of people through, you know, a process of making sense of information and applying that information to really big program changes or, efforts that happen kind of community wide.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:56]:
I love it. Cool, calm, collected. That's great. I think just one more denotation that that would be important. Because I think when you say social impact, people there's something that comes to mind for people, but it can, I feel, be some this like vague Yeah? You know, somewhat superficial level, you know, understanding of the meaning attributed to what what actually is social impact? What what how do you think about it as both, like, a sector and, you know, terminology?

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:26]:
Yeah. You know, the notion that society as a whole has a responsibility to take care of its people is a notion that kinda dates back really far 1400, 1500. Right? We see that dynamic today. Just look at US politics. Right? That's a division of of our entire political system. Like, it's so entrenched in our culture and it's entrenched in many cultures around the world. And as kind of civilizations evolved, what this actually looks like, what it means, evolved alongside it as well. So when the the the birth of the social impact spaces is tied to 2 places specifically.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:10]:
1 is a lot coming out of religious communities. Right? So this work was really born in in in the church, in the synagogue. Right? It was born in out of religious groups taking care of the community. Right? This is much much very much so a charitable space. After World War 1, you saw this move move a little bit into government. The Great Depression, you saw it move a lot into government. And after World War 2, it was really solidly sitting in government. It's about a $1,000,000,000,000 industry in the US.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:43]:
Actually, the exact number is, like, not quantifiable, hence data. You know, the the the work is shared by 3 sectors, the government. Right? So US government sends spends about $750,000,000,000 a year towards social services. These are your welfare systems. Right? These are, whether it's SNAP benefits or or, Medicaid or, childcare, voucher reimbursements. Right? Paired alongside that, you have 1,600,000 nonprofit organizations in the US. So massive, massive amount of organizations working across health, education, youth development, after school programming, environmental, environmental justice, environmental health. Right? There's there's so many types of these organizations working.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:33]:
Then you have your corporate sector. And your corporate sector contributes in in a couple different ways, intentionally through investing in social responsibility efforts or having some sort of social good that they further or through, a pathway to philanthropy. Right? And philanthropy is foundations. It's it's individuals giving dollars, to nonprofits, so donations. It's also corporations giving dollars to nonprofits and a good amount of foundations in in the Cleveland area, but also nationally that support the nonprofit sector. So much of the work's done through government. Much of the nonprofit landscape locally, but in the US is supported by government funding as well through whether it's, you know, Medicaid or Medicare reimbursements or government grants to address specific issues. And then about 5%, nationally comes from individual donations or philanthropic efforts.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:31]:
And so it's kind of this weird sector that sits across, so many different systems and and so many different industries, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:42]:
Is there a a self awareness on the part of the organizations that you work with that they need your help? Or is it a reluctance and you have to sell them that that they need your help?

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:53]:
Yeah. You know, that's a that's a good question. So usually, it's a self awareness that, like, oh, we need a consultant. Right? That's usually what it's Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:02]:
They they know they have this data. They don't know how to use it. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:05]:
And they they usually, you know, come to us on the strategy side. They say, you know and sometimes they come to us on, like, the through through the evaluation lens. But usually, they're like, we need to figure out how to do this, or we need to build this program. And that kinda opens a door for us to say, awesome. How are you doing that? Like, let's help you do that in a really data driven way. Sometimes, organizations will come to us through, like, a pathway of really wanting support with with data infrastructure or evaluation infrastructure. And it's us pushing them to shift that mindset to, like, okay. If we're gonna do all this, it's not a one off.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:46]:
Right? We won't work with you if you want us to just do a point in time thing. Like, that's not what I'm interested in doing. That's not what our employees are interested in doing. Like, we'll work with you really over the long term to help your organization or effort or collaborative or whatever it is, agency, be able to make really good use, of the information that you have and the data that you have. And also, by the way, help you stop collecting all the crap you don't need. And actually, you know, really identify, like, what indicates success for you? What indicates progress? How do you know if things are working, if things aren't working, and help them kinda shift that mindset. I don't think anyone's ever come to St. Croix Strategy and said, hey.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:30]:
I wanna buy data driven strategy. Right? People usually come on, like, I wanna buy data and evaluation, or I wanna buy, you know, some sort of strategy support. 9 times out of 10, you know, we're able to kind of say, like, okay. Well, you also need this other part. And, so it's a little bit of both.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:48]:
So I think it would be helpful just, you know, in practice what the what the whole kind of process looks like from from soup to nuts when you're working with a a client, you know, from from evaluation to strategy to implementation. What does that look like? What is the process that you take them through?

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:07]:
We well, I will start by saying everyone enters at a different point. So, we look at our process more like a cycle. Right? And it follows, you know, similar cycles that you see in prototyping, that you see in design thinking, where in an ideal world, the first part of the first part of the cycle, and I'd say probably where half of our customers start, is looking back at something that they did and trying to learn from it. And so there's this period of, you know, empathizing or evaluation where you look at and you say, like, what what just happened? What can we learn from what just happened? And then we take that and help people actually then say, like, okay. What does that mean to implement what you've learned? That's where I think the industry has trouble sometimes. So they commission these big evaluations. They commission these big, like, let's look back over the last 5 years, and then they get this, like, monstrous report that, you know, has a ton of information in it. And then, like, what do you do with that? You like read it, you say, it's interesting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:14]:
You, you know, convene a couple people and tell them about it. And then typically, they put it down.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:19]:
Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:20]:
What we do at that point is we help them actually build the infrastructure to to integrate or improve or implement all of those pieces. And that looks different depending on who we're working with. Right? So sometimes it's literally like, let's help you build the structure. Right? Like, send me your communication materials. You know, send me your process. Like, let's look at that, and let's help you overhaul that. We do a lot of implementation consulting, which just means that, like, we literally do the work for our clients. Right? We're usually standing behind them and we're, you know, helping them go through every single step of program delivery.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:59]:
And doing that with a mind specifically for how do you truly take what you've learned and integrate it into the fabric of your program. We also, at that time, build ongoing assessment or monitoring infrastructure. And so, you know, just do a lot of our work in, like, tools like Google Data Studio. Right, where you have this open source tool. You can connect it to a lot of different data sources. You can use it to identify and report on key indicators, have key progress, and then continuously meet with a a program staff or an organization staff throughout implementation and say, this is what you wanted to do. This is how it's going in real time. That cadence looks different for every customer depending on what we call program cycle.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:46]:
Right? So, how long it takes them to deliver whatever program they're delivering. And then we we essentially repeat that. Right? So from there, again, evaluate, refine in as close to real time as possible. Very rarely can we get it real time because that's just not how, like, the program cycle works, but we typically work with clients very deeply and over the long term. So we have 12 clients this year. We'll close out 2022 with 12 clients. So we we aren't running, you know, a massive consultancy where we have a small work with many, many organizations. We're running very deep, very intentional engagements with a small group of of organizations.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:32]:
But even if it's not real time, it's not on a cadence of 4 years. Right? There's a Not

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:36]:
on a cadence of 4 years. Yeah. And, you know, as much as we try to assess what's right for like, you know, organizations assess whether or not we're the the best or the right, you know, firm firm to work with them, like, we're also doing that. Like, I don't wanna work with people that that don't have a continuous improvement mindset. Like, we don't have time for that. You know? Maybe they don't know how to connect data to strategy and they need help learning that. Maybe maybe they, you know, could use support in their department or their organization, like, really making sense of information and applying it. Because it's hard to do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:08]:
It's not natural to be able to do that. You know? But if someone's just interested in checking off the box, we did our evaluation, or we built our strategic plan, or, you know, we completed this particular thing. We we typically just don't work with those organizations, when when we kinda get a hint of that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:28]:
And that and that gets at what I I wanted to ask about next because I imagine there's a lot of tangible things you can, you know, track that might relay or or get at the kind of impact that you're having at an organization. But you mentioned mindset again, and, you know, how is it that you actually kind of gauge how effective you've been in shifting mindset? Like, what what is the the measure of of mindset change? And and then just more generally, how how do you think about success? Like, how do you know that you've done a good job, and how do you hold the the organization, accountable to that?

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:03]:
Yeah. I have so many answers to this question. I will give you an can I give you an example?

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:09]:
Oh, please. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:10]:
And then and then I'll answer the company success one as well, because I I think that's important, and it's a little bit different. So let's see. In in 20 20, and this is all public, so I could say this. We started working with the Greater Cleveland COVID 19 Rapid Response Fund. And that was a collective of of many, many, many foundations who were working on, you know, rapid response, basic needs relief, you know, couple like, they started, I think, a day into the pandemic. Like, they, you know, started very, very quickly. We worked with them starting a few months after they had gotten up and running. And we were helping them try and figure out and, you know, if we knew now knew then what we know now, you know, summer 2020, and we're helping them figure out, like, what does what does the future of this look like? Do we still need to exist? And luckily, we were like, yes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:58]:
You still need to exist. Everyone was agreed there, and we're like, well, what do you wanna do? Right? We did this, like, massive, like, what is what is our region, our sector, need to recover from COVID 19, come back stronger, which is a silly question in retrospect to be asking in in July 2020. But one of the things that we have learned at that time that, you know, a lot of the front lines of basic needs work that was coming out of the nonprofit sector was getting to people in need, through very small organizations, through grassroots organizations, people with really, really deep deep relationships in the community. Right? And so people well, Matt, well, yes, tons of people got food through the food bank. Like, tons of people got food because there was someone living on their street delivering food to houses. Right? And so it it is different way to look at this work. And this group said, you know, we wanna we wanna support small black and brown led organizations who are serving black and brown communities because that's where we see the most need being met, right, in the sector. And this trend's like national at this point.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:11]:
And so locally, of course, we say, like, we have a state and information, we need to shift gears. And so we started to measure, a couple of new things out of this fund. It's like, where's your money going? Let's let's let's measure resource allocation. Right? Let's measure it across population served. Like, are you actually putting money into communities that are are, you know, at greater risk of of getting sick or dying from COVID 19? And then are you also putting that money into the hands of, individuals who are not only representative of those communities, but also, you know, are are more effective at at providing solutions. And so we started to measure that. It's a first time multi organization measurement of of demographics and resource allocation. And it was a rapid response funding, so that meant every 2 weeks, money was going out the door.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:04]:
So very, very fast for the field of philanthropy. Very Yeah. Yeah. We typically work on, like, a 1 year cycle or, like, a quarterly cycle. And so very, very fast pace. We set up, you know, an automation between, like, the an export from one of their systems into our systems. It was really rudimentary. I think we did it in Google Sheets.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:25]:
I'm not kidding. Like, we just did it really quickly. Let's automate. Let's pull all your indicators up, and let's look at this. And a couple weeks couple months into this, we realized, like, oh, wow. There is a huge disparity in resource allocation. Mhmm. This is a group of really, really committed, really equity focused organizations and leaders, incredibly diverse group of people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:45]:
And we had to come to them and say, you know, we believe based on this data we got from you that your program is actually significantly reinforcing systemic oppression in the middle of a pandemic. And that was a really tough thing to say, you know. And and we have the kind of the data to back it up to say that, like, for some reason, white led organizations are are way more likely to get funding from you all than black and brown led organizations. And, you know, equity is a core value for this group. And so let's talk about that. And it took a couple of really, you know, thoughtfully designed conversations to move them through that and and to say, like, okay. Well, let's test out doing things differently. Then let's measure what's working and what's not.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:38]:
And they did this, you know, kind of process of of prototyping. How do we you know, it's really like, how do we not unintentionally be racist? That's what was happening. Right? How do we not how

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:48]:
do we

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:48]:
stop doing that? And they closed that disparity within 3 months and they flipped it within 4 months. Meaning they started operating equitably by putting more resources into the hands of black and brown led non profits versus white led non profits trying to reach black and brown communities. Right? So that's makes it very, very important, for for the sector and something that that many organizations, many foundations strive to do. But typically, it's like, oh, that's our value, you know, let's continue to keep moving. But when you when you actually put, like, a metric to it and you say, you hey, you can improve this. You know, people weren't very happy about where they started. Like, it wasn't a comfortable conversation to say, actually, we're not doing so great. But this group of people, like, shifted and changed and and completely closed one of the toughest disparities to close.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:45]:
Right? And that work, gosh, happened through 2021. You know, today, locally, you have a good network of of our largest philanthropic entities in the region continuing this work. Continuing to hold themselves accountable to making sure that they're they're living into those values, but also measuring it. Right? And so we were able to give philanthropy a way to measure this and also leverage automation and, you know, more advanced data analytics so it wasn't such a burden to be able to do it, to make a massive, massive change in in just the resource allocation of, money going into the nonprofit sector, which means a lot. Right? When you look at, like, where money comes from and where money goes to. And so when I think about success, I think about it like we're doing, you know, connecting data to strategy on a really micro detailed level, but in the long run, like, we're changing systems. Right? We're changing how systems are operating. We're changing how people are thinking about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:51]:
Our team is also trained facilitators and so we can bring, you know, really uncomfortable data to a group of 20 people and move them through it in a way where they really start to internalize what's happening with them, what's happening with, you know, across their organization, and then can effectively move past that initial shock of like, oh, no, the data said something I didn't expect. And and that is the case I would say in like probably 95% of the work we do. When we start measuring it, people realize that, like, they're not as far ahead as they thought they were. Mhmm. Which I think is an amazing realization because then you can improve it. Right? You can't improve what you don't measure. I forgot who said that. But you That's

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:35]:
definitely true.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:36]:
Yeah. So that's to me a success is when you can look at and you can say, wow, we changed the system. Right? A whole system, a whole group of of 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars going into the sector, by by teaching people how to have that mindset and how to use data in an effective way, and not just use it to report on, like, what is or what was or, you know, high level numbers, but actually make it effective. Measure things that matter. Right? In terms of measuring success for the company as a whole, you know, we measure so many things. We measure all your traditional metrics that companies are supposed to measure. But a few ways that we think about, like, what does what does success look like? I think putting it in 2 categories. I think there's, like, success of a workplace.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:28]:
Like, I take being an employer very seriously. Like, very, very seriously. Like, what does it look like to have a good workplace? Right? We measure gratitude. We measure gratitude across employees. We measure it by the amount of times people express gratitude to our customers or our network. We have a metric called t's and i's, where, like, we promise everyone it's not connected to your performance framework and it's really not. But, like, how much effort did you really put into this this week? It got to the level where we can be honest about it. You know, it's a 5 point scale and, like, I have put on there, you know, as the founder of this company, I really only put, you know, a 3 of effort in on this particular thing this week.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:09]:
And what that allows us to do is as a team, look at, you know, are we putting in the effort needed to truly take part in our work and have a really honest conversation about it. We measure progress towards quarterly goals. We measure, you know, we probably have 30 or 40 things on our own internal dashboard that we're looking at constantly. But there's a few of them that, you know, we we pay more attention to. I think the thing I look at most often outside of, you know, financial projections is probably recognition of core values in the company. So so when our employees are saying, you know, this person was really considerate to me or or this, you know, project, like, I really took pride in that. Right? That's probably the thing I pay attention to the most because to me, that's like an indicator of, like, is the indicator of, like, is the team operating in a way where where people are happy, where people are Yeah. Are, you know, feeling safe in the workplace, things

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:04]:
like that. You you mentioned

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:05]:
that, you know, on average, maybe

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:13]:
the the organizations you work with are coming to you at different stages in the cycle. But how ubiquitous are the general problems that you see, you know, with these companies? You know, they might be focused on completely different problems. You know, one's focused on education, another on food and security. But is are the data problems very similar, or are they they quite distinct?

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:35]:
They're very, very similar. And and for a long time, I felt like, oh, well, it was, like, kinda similar based on tiers of organizations. And then I realized, like, no. Your biggest organizations have this problem too. Like, they might have more money, but they also have this problem. And there's some, you know, organizations that are more advanced in this space. And that's because the individuals within those organizations see the importance of it. You know, but the the history of data collection in the nonprofit sector was not is is was never intended to improve the program.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:10]:
The history of data collection in the nonprofit sector is two things. 1, to report on outcomes which are connected to money. So we say this is this is how many people we served. This is how they did in exchange for money back. Right? So grant reporting, and this came out of, you know, the the federal government really setting this up. And then a lot of you see a lot of advanced technology in the fundraising space. You don't see a lot of data and metrics used on the social impact side. 1, because it's hard.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:41]:
Like, how do you measure that you changed a life? Like, how do you measure that you that you were equitable or you were not equitable? They're really hard things to measure. And typically, we just look at these massive indicators like this rate or that rate or employment rates. Right? These really big things, poverty rates. But when you can find a way to measure all of the little things that add up to success, you can break down those into, like, indicators of moving in the right direction. Right? I'd say most of the sector has this problem. And and it's not because the people don't want data, don't want information to their jobs better. It's because, like, since the the birth of the sector, we've almost trained the sector to use data for the purpose of getting more money. Not to use data for the purpose of of doing better work.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:30]:
Right? Which I think big disservice. That has just naturally occurred over, you know, the evolution of of 200 years of our ability to use data. The other piece is, like, not a lot of money goes into infrastructure building and nonprofits. You know, a key metric that nonprofits are applauded on is, you know, how low their administrative costs are. That really means, like, how little money Like, if you spend less money on people, on technology, on re on internal resources to operate, then you are applauded more. And, like, you I mean, you've talked to so many entrepreneurs. You know, it's not that's not how you do great work. You know, you've gotta you have to invest in those things.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:13]:
And so, you know, this this work has been significantly under invested in. And so, therefore, deprioritized.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:23]:
How optimistic are you about this space? I know, like, starting a company to address the problem is is a is a sign of optimism, but what what have you how is your perspective on, you know, the industry overall? Like, how how much can it change? What is the the time scale on on which you think it can, you know, meaning meaningfully, you know, alter alter course?

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:45]:
You know, when I look at the industry, it's it's a collection of people who honestly really care about what they're doing. And and I've never met anyone working in the nonprofit sector. I was like, hey, did you know that if you did this or that with, like, data that it would help you with this? And they were like, no, we're good. You know? Usually they're like, oh, this is awesome. Like, how could we how could we have this? We need this. Right? And so I think for that reason, I have pretty optimistic view. I mean, there are my days where I'm like, what are we doing? I should go work at the coffee shop. But most days, like, it's I'm incredibly optimistic.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:22]:
And you see these shifts happening, you know, nationally where where, you know, I think about the Tableau Foundation or I think about Microsoft, like, making their infrastructure more accessible to organizations who don't have, you know, the latitude to just spend money on whatever they want. And so you see that the technology is becoming more accessible. It's becoming used more Generationally, you see a lot of millennials taking leadership positions. So this is a generation of people who grew up on technology. Right? Which is very, very different than than previous generations. Right? And I think the the important piece is bridging it. Like, techno the technology to do this type of work isn't gonna change anything. Right? The thing that's that's going to shift is the ability to apply it, the ability to to extract information from data, and to really critically think about that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:23]:
And I think that's we're at a really unique time where the sector is led by people who've been doing this work for 40 years. You know, a bunch of us kids with smartphones. Like, hey. Look at what you could do or whatever. Right? When you bring those 2 generations together, those 2, like, perspectives together, I I think it's it's so so powerful of of that ability to take information and apply it to, making really awesome shifts. Right? So I I'm really optimistic. I don't know. Maybe I'm naive, but incredibly optimistic.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:59]:
What has surprised you most throughout this this whole journey?

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:03]:
The level of responsibility that comes with being an employer. Like, doing the work's great. Like, love it. It's actually like it's it's the place that I'm happiest. But as our company grows, like and I and I I remember the moment that I had to decide whether or not I was hiring another contractor or I was hiring an employee. And in thinking about, like, oh my gosh. It's a whole different space to be in. You know? Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:33]:
That's there's a lot of responsibility. And I and I know this because I, like, you know, not intentionally floated through however many jobs I had before I started 20. Like, I know what it's like to work in a great work environment. I know what it's like to work in an awful work environment. I know what it's like to have, you know, a completely non non self aware, non emotionally intelligent person at the helm of your organization. Right? Like and in making that decision to me was like, okay, that's a big commitment. Like, not even not not even on the payroll side. Like, I'm not worried about that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:06]:
Like but, like, making sure that there's an environment where people are gonna commit. Right? Couple 1000 hours a year. Right? We have, like, real committed staff over here, so people work a lot. Like, they're gonna commit a good portion of their week here. They're showing up to work on some of the hardest, some of the most complex issues every single day. You know? Like, it's not like the the stuff we work on is neutral. Like, the stuff we work on is heartbreaking. And so you're just in this environment that all of the time, like, you're you're up against the most complex, most difficult topics and and you have to, with composure, help people move through it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:49]:
Right? And and so I think to me, like, what it meant to be an employer and really reconciling, like, what I wanted if I was gonna be in that space was was the most surprising important thing to me. And I didn't realize it until until I was there. Right? That wasn't like there's been a ton of other things where, you know, I was surprised this went well. I was surprised this wasn't went well. I was surprised we pulled that off or I was surprised this person hired us. You know? But I think at the core, like, being an employer is a massive responsibility and, like, no one tells you that. What you're saying. Right? No one's like, by the way, that's a huge responsibility.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:35]:
You just are there one day and you're like, oh my gosh. This is a lot, you know? In a really good way because you you're shaping people's lives in a a large amount of their time. And so for me, like, it's I that's the most surprising and I think that's something that I I have learned over the last couple years to take extremely seriously.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:56]:
I I love that answer because, like, I don't think anyone sets out to be an employer. Right? That's never the intention, but it is this consequence and it and it is. It's people's livelihood. It's people's career trajectory. It's most of people's time. It's a big responsibility. So I I wanna maybe kinda circle back and and bring it full circle, with as much as you've you've had this, philosophy of unintentionality in in your career, it sounds like, you know, the nature of what you're doing, it's it's quite intentional. But, you know, just like thinking about the the future and what comes next and, you know, how how much are are you committed and, you know, doubling down on that philosophy of, you know, as it comes and, you know, serendipity is kind of maybe the flip side of that coin versus there's a, you know, a more specific direction that that you're trying to go.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:52]:
Yeah. I would say in the in the last probably 3 to 4 years, I got really intentional. Really, really intentional. And so and I think that part of that was clarity and part of that was vision and part of that was like, okay, we're doing this. Right? Like, we're we're we now have a company out of this and and we're gonna we're gonna nurture and and build and to the extent that we want grow this company. And that has taken a significant amount of intentionality. To be honest, like it it's really comfortable to have that level of intentionality between things to be able to be a little bit more methodical. To be able to say this is where we wanna be in 5 years, let's get there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:30]:
Right? To be able to say this is where we wanna be in 5 years, let's get there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:34]:
Right? And so I'd say like, I don't know when or I don't

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:34]:
know what made that shift in me, but I for the last couple of years I've been incredibly intentional about every decision I made. Every single one. And I think part of that's the responsibility that comes with being an employer. Like, you know, no more unintentionally serendipitously walking through life. You can't do that with other people's lives. You do that with your own life all you want, but you can't do that with other people's lives. You know? And I think part of that is realizing, like, the actual impact that we could have and that we have had through this work.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:12]:
I love it. What is kind of most exciting to you looking forward over, you know, the next however long?

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:18]:
Honestly, the rise of the field of AI. I mean, most of the data on in this space lives in case management files, lives in, patient records, lives in, you know, notes that people are taking in the field. AI could help us use that data if we train it well enough, and that's that's most exciting to me. And and I we haven't ventured into that space, but I think about it once a week. Like, we're we're gonna get there. I don't know how we're gonna get there, but we're gonna get there because that is the biggest opportunity, and that is like we could go so fast with that. Right? And we can connect so deeply to the experiences of individuals interfacing with any type of social service if if we could harness the power of patterns in that data. And and AI can do it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:14]:
It's it's incredibly expensive now, but, so was all the other stuff when it came out. And so I'm I'm really excited about the growth of that field and and being able to merge that field with our work when when the time is right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:30]:
That is it's quite exciting. Alright. So I think we'll we'll close out here with, our traditional closing question that that we ask everyone who comes on, which is for your favorite hidden gems in in Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:42]:
You know, the first time I heard this question on your podcast, I was mad about the response. I forgot what the response was.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:49]:
But I was like, what's

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:50]:
the hidden gem? The hidden gem, and we tell and I tell this to everyone all the time. Like, Cleveland, we are a mecca of ice cream greatness.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:00]:
Ugh.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:01]:
We are a mecca of ice cream greatness. Like, honestly, we have some of the best ice cream in the world. And I feel

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:07]:
In the world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:08]:
Really qualified to talk speak on this topic. Because, like, I I eat ice cream all the time. And and I pretty well traveled. Like, I've eaten all the ice cream everywhere I've gone. Right? We have Honey Hut. Like, grew up on it. Like, it is I love Honey Hut. Like, it's so good.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:24]:
We got East Coast custom. We got Mitchell's in Ohio City. We have Mason's. We have a massive landscape of, like, mom and pop ice cream shops. And most of them are really good. Excellent. And some of them are incredibly bad, but amazing ice cream. We we should have a banner about our ice cream somewhere or like a tourism ad or something about ice cream because we we're killing it over here.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:51]:
We we are. I'm glad you brought that up because that one hits close to home for me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:56]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:57]:
Well, Heather, I I really appreciate you coming on today and and for sharing your story. This this is fascinating. I learned, I think, an incredible amount. So so thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:06]:
Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:07]:
If folks had anything that they wanted to to follow-up with you about, what would be the the best way for them to do so?

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:14]:
You know, I wish this was easy to say, but you just send me an email at heather@sangfroistrategy.com, you know, or LinkedIn or something, or go to our website, which is also sangfroistrategy.com. But that would be sangfro idstrategy.com.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:33]:
Sangfroid?

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:33]:
Sangfroid.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:34]:
Great. Well, thank you, Heather.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:36]:
Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:38]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.