Throughout my career, I’ve worked and volunteered for several national organizations across the country. Generally, they work the same way with some obstacles to overcome to achieve their goals. Strategies, revenue streams, timelines, building boards, and more. All of these organizations have things in common. They have great missions, visions for the future, goals. But one thing that I never was prepared for at all of these organizations, the culture sucks.

But how? These organizations have great missions, amazing history, thousands of volunteers. They each have people who have dedicated their lives to the very mission that has saved their families or themselves. Why or how would this environment breed toxicity?

As culture comes from the top and trickles down, I’ll start by discussing culture at the executive level and above. Organizations are stagnant. To prove my point, I’ll ask that you do a bit of research. Top leadership in any organization is public information. Choose any nonprofit that you’re familiar with and look at those top leaders. Generally, you’ll see a pattern pretty quickly and look at these three points. The first one is noticeable pretty quickly. There is minimal diversity if any. Secondly, most of these individuals have been in their positions for decades. Finally, there are no openings for top leadership positions. These positions get filled and stay filled until that individual chooses to retire. But why is that a bad thing?

These leaders are who drive the organization’s processes, strategies, employee development programs, and set the tone for what standard practices will be. If there is a lack of diversity or lack of change, the organization stays motionless in a world that is constantly changing. This model also sets the tone for local level chapters of these organizations to model that same behavior. Top division leaders stay stagnant while bringing in bright new diverse employees, full of ideas, changes in strategies, but new workers can’t create meaningful change. See the problem?

These new employees bring in new best practices, offer diversity, and are innovators. They are not afraid to make changes to processes that have been in place for decades. But as they do not represent top leadership, they are unable to make impactful changes even if the strategy works. The old systems and processes don’t work and the new employees try to follow directions and do the job, but they burnout quickly and are unhappy that processes could be simplified or changed to work smarter. Staff that are unable to make a change, inspire processes, or be creative in ways that would and have improved organizations are likely to turnover quickly.

How to we make the changes needed in the industry to address the culture? Change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s important to recognize that small changes now impact bigger change for the future. Organizations can start by creating opportunities for sharing best practices, opportunities for career and professional development growth. For more information or ideas to impact culture, contact me.