Marina Martinez-Bateman: Tech Policies That Reduce Toxic Productivity
First, what is toxic productivity? Then, as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally, what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez-Bateman, from New Coyote Consulting. (This is part of our continuing #22NTC coverage.)
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Transcript for 602_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220801.mp3
Hi thanks for having me it’s a joy to be on the show. [00:02:31.96] spk_0:
Oh joy thank you very much and we’re just getting started joyful already I love it. Thank you your session topic is tech policies for reducing toxic productivity. Natural question is how could productivity possibly be toxic? What what is this thing? [00:04:06.63] spk_1:
Well, it’s like anything else, right? You know, you buy a couple of pairs of nice shoes that you like. It’s not toxic, there’s nothing wrong here. It’s just engaging in some, you know, some trade some some joy of craftsmanship. If you start buying shoes instead of food, buying shoes instead of paying the rent, then you have a real problem, right? And productivity is like that, you know, it’s just like any other thing that we engage in, we can do it so hard that it hurts us. Um toxic productivity is when we will choose work over things that we need like taking lunch breaks or moving our body or engaging with family and community things that sort of are essential to our mental and physical health. And then you know what happens is as we engage more and more with this toxic level of productivity are actual real true product. Our output diminishes and then we see our output diminish, we get really upset about that and then we double down on being more and more productive and and then our output diminishes because we’re exhausted and we’re not getting filled up in other places and we double down again and it can lead to, you know, you can create uh you know really unhealthy spaces, you can um you know make yourself ill, you can hurt yourself. You can get hurt. You know how many people have fallen asleep while driving um because they’re working too many hours. Um you know, how many times do we make really silly mistakes when we’re exhausted? Um Those things sort of creep in and creep in and then your identity starts to change into being someone who can’t get things right, who isn’t able to perform when that was never a part of your reality. You’re just engaging way too hard in work. Thinking that that’s the answer to your problem when really it’s the cause. [00:04:55.89] spk_0:
And before we go further and toxic productivity, let’s remind folks in case there’s any question. Uh, you said, you know, and it replaces being filled up by other spaces like community, family friends. Let’s remind folks of the joys that and and maybe there’s even research that shows the physiological changes when we’re engaging in things that are not work. [00:06:45.10] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. So you get different parts of your brain activated when you’re engaging in hobbies that are different from your work, um, your creative life. You know, if you have a creative job, um sometimes doing something that’s not so creative or doesn’t require a lot of like big innovative leaps. Um can be nice, like, you know, tidying up or taking a walk or um doing something physical, like hiking or going out into the outdoors, going fishing and camping etcetera. Or even going shopping or going to the movies, like those things when they’re safe. Of course, because it’s still covid right now um are important to engage in because they activate other spots of your brain and also just your body moves differently on a hike than it does in the office or at a desk. Yeah, first of all it moves your standing desk, even if you attach a treadmill to it or something can never really replicate going outside. Um and then, you know, were people even introverted people need other people. We just do, we’re not um we cannot exist completely alone. Um we have to be able to engage in the people that we have in our personal bubble, However big that bubble is we have to be able to sort of like activate um that empathetic drive that we all have as humans or that, you know, the vast majority of us do. Um and we we just have to be in in concert, you know, how many of us have been at work, especially in the nonprofit sphere and things are sort of looking gloomy and we’re thinking, oh, the world is filled with bad people, everyone’s making terrible choices. This is the worst. You know, And then you go to dinner with a friend and you’re like, wait, the world is wonderful, this is great, everyone’s making great choices. I bet all these people are just trying to figure it out because that human connection needs to exist for us to be people in the world, which is you know why we’re here is to be people. [00:07:04.40] spk_0:
Thank you for that reminder. We are we are communal, we are social, [00:07:08.46] spk_1:
even [00:07:33.77] spk_0:
the most introverted to some degree still as you said, you know with however however however many or few it may be uh contact community. Alright. Alright. So what are nonprofits doing that uh is leading us to toxic productivity and we’ll certainly get to the solutions. But what are we doing to? I don’t wanna I don’t wanna say improve it to induce it, induce [00:11:52.01] spk_1:
it. Yeah. I mean part of it is that we have these and these are, it’s great that we all want to end hunger and that we you know, no one’s being like though But it’s hard when you have 16 people and they’re all making 20-50 to 100% less than they could make in the free market trying to end hunger from a small office with broken chairs and a raccoon that won’t leave the trash alone. You know like we are so severely under resourced in non profit and that’s not our individual fault by any means. It’s the culture and the structures of the culture that we live in um where poor people are the people that build this country and their labor is so exploited that they are um kept poor so that the rich can stay rich. Um and then we get the nonprofits and generally those are the people we serve are the poor or people who are missing something from their, their experience or their needs. And uh, and we’re under resource too. I mean it’s a whole, it’s a whole culture, right? It’s a whole structure, It’s a whole system that’s made to make it so that we have these incredibly vast missions and we have a broken pencil and our own gumption to make it happen. And um, and it is, you know, we as individuals cannot solve that entire problem by ourselves. One, we can’t solve the problem that we’re working on by ourselves. We can end hunger alone. Um, even the most vast and well resourced organization would have to work with others in order to make that happen. Um, and part of that. So we have this like we have these vast resources. We are severely under resourced. We have these vast missions. Yeah, and were severely under resourced. And then, um, what we as organizations do on the, on the organization to organization level is that we compete with one another. We don’t coordinate with our organizations in our same sphere or it’s hard we find it hard to coordinate. Um, we also don’t recognize that we’re under resourced. Um, frequently we will sort of like, you know, when you get a bunch of nonprofit workers together in a room, we’ll joke about, you know, how we don’t have a chair that works in our computer is 15 years old and all these things. Um, but we don’t talk about how that makes the mission harder to do. And nor do we talk about how we’re still hitting goalposts were still crossing finish lines were still making things work. And where did those resources come from in general? They come from the individual workers. Um, and some of us have vast resources to put to this and some of us don’t. Um, but there’s no adjustment, a there’s no adjustment of expectation based on how much resource we’re individually putting into the work to make it across the finish line. And there’s also no um, it’s seen as an individual failing if we can’t do this impossible work with very little resource in the, in in in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of support, in terms of whatever we’re all fighting an uphill battle. And um, and our organizations frequently lean into that martyrdom and lean into that, you know, while I was working 17 hours yesterday, while I was up at two o’clock in morning, finished with this grant, Well, I was, you know, and um, and it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean if we live in a world where we think that our clients deserve education, food, um, healthy ecology to, to roman community art, all of these things, you know, medicine and um, recovery and all these things that we provide to people if we think that our clients deserve that. How come we’re not getting that for ourselves. Like how many of us are pushing off things like doctor’s appointments? How many of us us have skipped um, significant times in our family members lives because there was some campaign or something that had to go on. And then also how much of that um, happens because of expectation, you know, when we start a nonprofit, we’re working with nothing. We work our way up, we become leaders in the, in the sector. And then it doesn’t seem weird to us that the people of the workers that are coming behind us are experiencing the same hardships that we experienced because it’s normal for us to struggle in this way. [00:13:14.45] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications media relationships, you know, how important relationships are in fundraising. They’re just as important in media exposure. Both of the turn two partners are former journalists, including one peter Pan a pinto who was an editor at the Chronicle of philanthropy. So they both know what to do and what not to do to build your relationships with journalists. Those relationships are going to get you heard in the media, turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o now back to tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. A lot of what you’re saying is that it’s it’s culture and and mindset. So I guess you’d like to change the culture and change the mindset and change the investments. Um, so please, let’s, uh, let’s start talking about what we can do differently. [00:14:17.04] spk_1:
I think what we can do differently is it starts with the leadership and nonprofits. People who are lower on the work chart do not have as much power, although a lot of people, especially right now with the great resignation, um, a lot of people who are lower on the r chart are sort asserting their power by leaving, um, environments that are toxic or don’t work for, um, what their vision is for the future. I think gen z is a great motivator for us to all take a look at how we’ve been working in the past and how it has harmed us and how if we don’t get right and start cycle breaking, we are going to be perpetuating the same harm that was done to us, which while it’s not fair that we were harmed, it’s also not fair to, to sort of sloth that off onto others. Um, but in leadership in the non profits, we have to stop thinking that because it happened to us. It’s okay for it to happen to other workers, especially younger workers. [00:14:18.77] spk_0:
Like it’s some sort of, you know, rite of passage, you pay your dues and then you’ll then you’ll emerge a better leader in the, in the sector, you know? That’s, that’s silly. Yeah. [00:14:31.40] spk_1:
Yeah. And [00:14:32.07] spk_0:
punishing to be, you don’t have to be punished to be successful. [00:14:41.74] spk_1:
Exactly. Can we be like, can we be the non profit executives and ceos that we needed when we were younger and that we didn’t get, can we do the things that that would have helped us to heal or would have helped us to be safe or be properly resourced or succeed even if that’s not something that we experienced when we were younger in career. [00:15:03.98] spk_0:
Alright. Um do you have specific uh specific things that leaders can, can encourage? Like you must take time off. So, you know, I don’t wanna see anybody not using their vacation time. And you know, these folks who say, hey, I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I’m so proud of myself thinking like, don’t blame me, that’s your own [00:15:23.35] spk_1:
fault. [00:15:24.55] spk_0:
Yeah. It’s been that long. It’s your own fault for not taking, you know? So what, what, what can leaders do, you know, specifically to avoid this? The toxic productivity [00:18:02.90] spk_1:
is, Yeah. That that sort of thing where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault that Sharon hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years saying that is a thing we can put to bed and we can say actually, if I’m in charge of this organization and of course we work together with our boards and advisory council sometimes with governmental agencies, whoever we’re helping to steward this change with. Um but if I am the Ceo here, I am the executive here then if someone hasn’t taken a vacation in four years, that’s, that’s on me. Um, This is the, this is the container I’m building for workers. Um, I see my view my duties as the Ceo very explicitly to keep the people in my, you know, in my organization safe. That’s one of the things that, that I have, you know, task been tasked with is to keep people safe. Um, if I can tell people what kind of work we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, then I have to take responsibility for their safety during that journey because I’m the one taking them at that place. I’m the one on that journey with them. Um, and so asking, you know, why is it, why is it that Sharon feels like she can’t take a vacation. Um, Is there something going on internally that is making that happen? Does she not have anyone who’s trained on the thing that she does? Does she, um, has she not gotten a performance review in four years and she’s so she doesn’t feel like she can take a vacation because she doesn’t even know how well she’s doing her job. You know, there’s just a bunch of little things that we can look at and it takes time, which most of us don’t have. And I advise leaders to look at our plate and find out where we’re being performative lee productive, How many of the things do we do every day That looks like we’re doing something but at the end of the day it doesn’t actually, it doesn’t actually contribute to the mission. We can spend three hours on something and um and not only are no more Children fed, they’re not going to be on that labor that we just did, but it looks really good. It looks like we’re doing a lot. How can we cut that out and then focus on, let’s get somebody cross trained on Sharon’s job so that she can finally take a vacation. Let’s let’s make this a safe space for our workers to make healthy decisions. And the truth is that because a lot of our sector has for so long leaned into this under resourcing of workers, there becomes a pathology around being under resourced. There becomes a sort of like um system wide martyrdom. [00:19:20.63] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. They have an offer for you. An exclusive offer for nonprofit radio listeners, complimentary 24 7 monitoring of your I. T. Assets for three months. They’ll monitor your servers, network and cloud performance, they’ll monitor your backup performance all 24/7. Any issues they will let you know ASAP Plus at the end you will get a comprehensive report. After the three months They’ll throw in a few surprises a couple of things as well that I did not mention. It’s all complimentary and it’s for the 1st 10 listeners. The offer is on the listener landing page, go grab it, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. And this offer goes even deeper than that. Let’s return to tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. There’s something called the brotherhood of suffering. [00:19:23.27] spk_1:
Exactly. [00:19:24.01] spk_0:
It’s it’s I’ve read about it in prison populations where I mean the phrase says it, the brotherhood, sisterhood, um the hood of suffering, the uh the shared experience among all folks of being in something that’s ritualistic, punishing suffering difficult. And then and it ends up being a source of almost pride. [00:19:52.07] spk_1:
Yes, [00:19:52.65] spk_0:
that we’re suffering this way together, right? I’m sure you want to turn that on its head and and disabuse us of [00:21:28.90] spk_1:
that. It’s and it’s hard, it’s entrenched. There are people for whom for whatever reason and then this does become an individual problem. Once you’ve done all of the systematic things around alleviating that suffering around creating um you know, the concept of abundance even as we’re in these systems where we’re under resourced and part of that is acknowledging how we’re under resource and and and speaking its name out loud um which is capitalism and racism and colonialism. Um once we sort of do that in our organizations, there are still going to be people for whom it is necessary they need, that they feel for whatever reason that that this is what they have to do, this is how they have to work. Um and and in general what I find um in the times that I’ve managed to create this package, which is really hard to do, Well we have all these other external forces sort of like working for us to have this hero complex to keep in this savior mindset. Um When I’ve been able to make this abundance package the sort of container where we can all work in abundance towards our common goals. There are a couple of people who will leave and sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s not thankfully, but sometimes it is messy. Um But it’s because they need to be in an environment that feels like home to them and that toxicity is going to feel like home until they make the choice to step out of it and and recognize that this is this is a choice that that they’ve made their systemic issues at hand and then there’s individual issues at hand and we as C. E. O. S can do a lot to solve the systemic issues and also we can never make someone heal [00:21:54.39] spk_0:
themselves. What’s some of that performative work that you uh that you mentioned, just if you could take off two or three things that are performative but lacking in value and and and benefit [00:22:13.27] spk_1:
um staying in the office on a day when there’s no reason to, you know, if uh something like something tragic frequently happens, if there’s something terribly tragic in our community, [00:22:19.73] spk_0:
requiring [00:23:47.90] spk_1:
requiring everyone to keep their butts in their seats is just ridiculous. No one’s working. That’s not gonna happen. Um, even sort of staying in the office when there are things going on that are, are wonderful. Um, for example, uh, if it’s, you know, if we are living in a beach town and it’s a great surf day and we are a surf, you know, protecting the surf non profit everybody goes surf. Like come on, this is our whole thing. Like it doesn’t make any sense. If we are, say we are, you know, very into free media and we have a free media conference in town, nobody should be expected to come to work. We should get tickets to the free media conference and we should go to that. Um, you know, there are a lot of things I think, um, you know, if we’re a big sports town and our team is winning, nobody’s going to pay attention to work. There’s no reason to be here. All of these things. You know, they’re all individual to the nonprofit. Then there’s also things like, you know, some of us and I’m one of these people, I admit it, I love to see a meeting room packed with people. We love it. But half those people do, they need to be there. Do they really do this really important to, to the running of the nonprofit that, that, you know, so many people are there for an hour doing nothing and, or you know, getting information that could have been in an email or you know, etcetera. Um Yeah, I think there’s some people have gone into the, Oh, I can’t remember what they call it, but they do 15 minutes stand ups every morning and they’re never 15 minutes long. They always run over. [00:23:55.84] spk_0:
Yes. [00:24:43.06] spk_1:
Yeah. The morning huddle. I mean if the morning huddle makes you guys productive and it helps your nonprofit do the thing you’re, you’re put here to do great. But a lot of times these huddles are just performative and it’s awful and everyone’s so tired because it’s the first thing in the morning and there’s no reason for them. Um I think also there’s a lot of like email checking that happens throughout the day for me as one of the ways that I am performative li productive and and my my only employee is remote. We’re all remote here so no one’s watching me. No one can see me in here. But I will sit here and check email because I want to quote unquote, feel productive. And so then I spent 2.5 hours moving emails around the digital space doing nothing and I leave and then I leave, you know, I have to go to lunch or it’s the end of the day or something. I didn’t need to be there and do that. There was there was no reason. [00:28:05.26] spk_0:
Alright. Those are good. Yeah, good examples. Thanks. It’s time for Tony’s take two. This is still my silver jubilee in planned giving and august is still national maker Will month. So let’s take part due of starting your planned giving program with wills. These are gonna be reasons 45 and six reasons one through three were last week reason number four. There’s no lifetime cost to your donors. These are long term gifts. A gift in a will is a gift of cash to your nonprofit at the donor’s death. So no lifetime cost for your donors giving by will sustainability. This is all about the sustainability of your work, your mission, your values. That’s what the conversations are all about. It’s the survivability of your work in the long term. That’s what the conversations are about. That’s what plan giving is going to help supplement is gonna really be more than a supplement. It’s going to be critical to your long term survivability, your sustainability reason number six endowment, whether you have no endowment and you need to start growing building one or you have a modest endowment, you want to grow it more or you have a good size endowment and you still want to grow it more because when do we ever say the endowments big enough? No need to add to that anymore. Let’s stop that. Cut that off. That. Never. So wherever you are with endowment, even if you’re at $0.0. Most of the gifts by Will the vast majority come unrestricted and that means you take as much of that unrestricted money as possible and put it into your endowment. That long term savings for your nonprofit, that you’re only spending a little bit of the income or maybe even less than the annual income each year. That’s how you grow that endowment gifts by Will I realize there’s tension there. You have immediate short term costs, expenses that you have to cover as well. But as much as possible, those unrestricted dollars that come from gifts by Will’s sock that away into the Endowment, That’s how you build your endowment. And of course that helps, uh, reason number five, your sustainability. Right? It all works together. So that’s reasons 4, 5 and six for starting your planned giving program with wills. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo Yes, the boo koo is back, boo koo, but loads more time for tech policies that reduce toxic productivity with marina Martinez Bateman. Is there more that, that we can ask of our of our leaders. You not that you haven’t given given, given a lot of, a lot of advice, but uh, is there any more that, that we can expect from our leaders to help us make the right choices. [00:32:17.95] spk_1:
Yeah. And part of that is so we are in a unique space as leaders where we are suffering from the exact same ailments that our people are suffering from and we are suffering from the exact same structures of oppression that our people are, something, I mean not the exact same ones, but we’re here. We’re in it, right? So all of that. Um, you know, all the systems that are set up to make it so that personal health and art and the environment and food and health like um, communities and all these other things that we fight for right in the nonprofit sector. All these things are devalued, we’re in the same boat. Um, and also we do have power within the walls of our organization. Sometimes it’s limited, Sometimes there’s other factors at play, but we have more power than anyone else in the building almost um, with very few exceptions and so part of it is that we have to make certain sacrifices as leaders, which I think all of us know, but those sacrifices are probably not going to be the ones, the ones I recommend are not gonna be the ones that we expect. So, um, we need to protect our own time. We need to be seen eating lunch. We need to be seen taking time to move our bodies. Um, a lot of the things that we do as leaders are are the second we get to work the second we log on whenever our day starts, we are being seen by everyone of the organization. Even if it’s a small organization, even if it’s a remote organization, we don’t realize how visible we are. Um, and so when we model these behaviors for people taking vacation, telling people about how wonderful and restoring the vacation was, reassuring people um that it’s okay to take vacation for themselves, leaning into abundance even though we know what the budget is and we know scarcity very intimately um making those choices um that are that are on mission, um that are values driven because that’s what we’re called to do. Um and then having to make tough calls as a leader is it’s why we’re here, it’s why we got put in this seat. Um it’s why we sought the seat, we wanted this position most of us and um and so it’s time to sort of like what we sacrifice when we have this out, like when we’re modeling this good behavior is we sacrifice any delusions that we might have had towards the productivity nature of of, you know, performative productivity, right? So those big meetings have a ton of people in them that are really kind of just ego strokes for us, we can get rid of those, that’s a sacrifice that that is a good sacrifice to make. Um a lot of times we do things like we have those big meetings because we’re not feeling very productive, but we want to see everybody’s face, you know working. Um and really what we needed to do was take lunch and start taking lunch probably three months three or four months ago or years ago or 10 or 1520 years ago. Um and then we would feel productive and filled up and we would need a big meeting of 15 people that doesn’t do anything. Um So so modeling the behavior ourselves is very very important and um and specifically in a way that is seen um It can be very hard because as leaders we want to say well I’m gonna take I’m modeling the behavior, I’m gonna take off early, I’m gonna go home and um that is valid and if we need to do that we should do that. And also say okay everybody we’re going home early this day is just whatever happened this day is in the pits, let’s go home early. If we can of course some of us can’t do that because we have certain service obligations. Um But we can do things like look around the room, take the temperature of the room and say all right, everybody we’re getting you know pizzas delivered or whatever. Uh We’re just going to sit down and hang out together and blow off some steam. I can feel it, we just we’re not doing productive work right now. You [00:32:40.29] spk_0:
know, be thoughtful, be intentional about creating about the culture you’re creating and that culture starts with leadership. Whether whether you might be the Ceo or you might be a mid level leader, you might be uh lower on the work charter. Lower level leader, but you’re still leading two or three people. Right? I mean it applies. This is not only for the ceo your ceo but this is not only for C E O S. Alright. [00:32:58.79] spk_1:
Yeah. The people like your choices are going to be dependent on what’s up with the people and focused on them and then model the behavior that you because you know that a lot of us don’t realize how seen we are in our organizations were very, very visible if we’re in a leadership position. [00:33:17.88] spk_0:
Yeah, interesting. You made the point, you know, even even in a virtual organizations like yours? Virtual company. Well so flesh that out. How do you feel like folks know when you start logging in, when you’re reading email etcetera. How is that seen, how is it seen, [00:34:04.48] spk_1:
how am I checking in? You know, if we have a digital chat platform, how am I checking in? Am I showing up? Am I saying Hey I’m here. Am I asking questions um am I you know, am I asking for feedback? You know, am I am I visible enough for you? Am I you know, am I bugging you too much like um and listening to people interesting people when they tell you what’s going on with them? Um and also trying to remember, it’s very hard, it can be very hard with everything going on that you have to do as a leader. But when someone says, hey I’m gonna be out for the afternoon, put it in your own calendar and make sure that you don’t reach out to them during that time. Yeah. [00:34:31.80] spk_0:
Right. Those, those uh slacks or texts or emails, whatever it is that start sorry to bother you on your day off. But, but of course the university and the gator cancels everything before it. But I need, you know, blah, blah. That, you know, there’s so much of that could, you could just wait until the day off is over. So the week off, you know, and, and you, you said earlier, you know, cross training so that people feel they can take time and so that the organization doesn’t suffer when they do [00:35:20.51] spk_1:
exactly if so, and so doesn’t have the thing. I’ve cross trained this other person, which of course, you know, it’s easy for me to sit here in my office and say cross training when a person listening is looking at me like what with what resources with what people, but that’s where the sacrifices come in. You have to say, okay, well, this vanity project of mine doesn’t happen because cross training is happening instead or this. And somebody bristled when I said vanity project, I know it, but we all have them, They exist. We’ve got to accept that that they exist. So instead of the thing I want, we do cross training because that’s, that’s, and eventually I’ll get the thing I want probably, especially if it’s mission aligned. And it makes sense. But we have to prioritize workers needs and comfort because we have a lot of options here. The people that we employ have less options than us have fewer options than us. And so we need to to honor that. [00:35:33.89] spk_0:
What about some questions that you got questions or comments you got in your session and what, what do you what do you what stuck out for you? [00:35:56.29] spk_1:
I always get this question in all, every time I teach this training, I get this question. And it’s some version of the, you know, my co worker, my direct report, my boss, my board member is very into toxic productivity. They’re very into this. They’re they’re the ones that are always, you know, I was answering emails from the hospital when I was in labor with my second daughter or, you know, all of this stuff. Um, that’s, that’s very badge of honor. You know, we wear these sort of like wounds like metals and non profit. Um, [00:36:14.11] spk_0:
that’s the personhood of suffering. The personhood of suffering. It isn’t bad. They do become a badge of honor. I’m always the last person to leave the office. Yes. [00:39:21.34] spk_1:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And uh, and and and this person is that they’re they’re toxic productivity is harming people. They’re pushing the culture, you know more and more to work more and more. Um, they have unrealistic expectations of people that work nearer with them, etcetera, etcetera. It’s harmful. And what I always tell people is, you know, you can do this. Uh first of all, your proximity to this person is not a coincidence at some point, you guys probably saw eye to eye on this or were working together in tandem to create something that really worked for you. Um you know, I look back on my nonprofit career and one of the my best times, one of my favorite times in my career was just deeply into toxic productivity. And so was everyone else around me. And it was wonderful because we were all on the same page. We felt like such a good team. We were so unified and the way we thought about things and the way we thought about things was deeply unhealthy. Um, but I tell them, you know, you can tell this person, especially if you really care about them outside of work. Um, you can say, I think we’re in a toxic relationship. I think we are operating in a way that is making each other less healthy. That’s not not helping us thrive. I want to try and heal from this. I think that healing is going to bring about a really incredibly positive change not only for me, but for the work that we’re doing here. Will you, will you heal with me, will you come in this on this journey with me and you can ask them with sincerity and the truth is that you can’t do anything else other than that. Just ask them and if they say no, you can’t keep asking them, you have to you have to respect that and everyone has has their own path, you know and not everyone is going to hell at the rate that you are going to hell at, not everyone is going to hell the way you think you should or they should. Um Some people just have other journeys and so if you are that person’s boss you can make decisions about, okay well we’re going in a different direction, we need competencies around healthy productivity, you don’t have the competencies around healthy productivity that we need, therefore we’re no longer a good fit and that hurts. It’s hard to say those things, but if I had, you know if I said you know we’re gonna go we’re gonna move towards gap accounting, everyone, you know, we’ve got to do things uh best practices ways and and not have you know our accounting all willy nilly and our account at the time was like nope, I do my accounting on post its and I will never not do that. You can’t make me change then we would have to get into accountant, wouldn’t we? So it’s the same thing when we’re trying to create this healthier productivity. If someone doesn’t want to learn or become competent in this in this new work way, we can’t keep them on just because we like them or because of what they did in the past that was helpful. Um, we can honor them and say that, that, you know, thank you very much and we can also release them to continue on their own journey, whatever that is. [00:39:39.03] spk_0:
What have we not talked about that? Uh, you want to? [00:39:50.18] spk_1:
Um, good question. Uh, I [00:39:58.22] spk_0:
mean I do my best to channel our listeners, but you’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m just coming to it. So maybe the stuff that we, I haven’t raised, [00:40:02.09] spk_1:
Yeah, let’s talk about perfectionism [00:40:04.55] spk_0:
because perfectionism [00:41:37.88] spk_1:
is a, we know for a fact, we know that perfectionism is a, is a feature of white supremacy. Perfectionism is um pervasive and insidious in our culture as a whole, but also a nonprofit culture. And so when we are practicing healthy productivity, when we’re trying to learn how to do things differently, the fact that we’re doing things in a way that we haven’t done them before means that we’re not gonna be as good, effortlessly good at them. Um, as we were before, even if we were doing something that ultimately harmed ourselves and our organization and our mission, we were really good at it for a long time, we had a high level of proficiency. So when you sort of like decide to go home at five o’clock and walk around the block and then take a bubble bath or whatever. That’s not gonna feel super good because you’re not gonna be super good at it. Um I can’t tell you how many times I used to buy coloring books because I was like, I need to be less, you know, work centric and I need to do creative things. I miss being creative and so I would buy those adult coloring books and I would hurt my fingers from coloring so hard because it had to be perfect. Um and then I would think, okay, no, I can’t do this, it’s too, it’s too physical, this coloring is to physical, I’ll go get in a bath that will relax me and I would sit in this bath just tense because I’m supposed to be relaxing and I’m, and I’m not doing [00:41:42.14] spk_0:
right, [00:42:34.73] spk_1:
Exactly right and but it’s not working because you, you’re not familiar with it, it’s hard. The first time you did anything, it was just kind of a little bit difficult and a little bit unwieldy and overwhelming and you know, for those of us who have been neglecting our other, the other parts of our lives for however long because of work, it is daunting to go into a place, we feel very new act, especially when we’ve been in a place where we feel extremely um you know, experienced and Exactly yeah, so the perfectionism of like if you are going to engage with your community and if you are going to engage your creativity and you’re going to go on a hike and you’re going to, you know, reclaim the other part of your life that isn’t work, be willing to do it badly [00:42:38.22] spk_0:
because [00:43:06.34] spk_1:
It’s that important, you have to be able to do it badly because you have to get through that sort of like new, unwieldy part. Um and it’s okay to say like I’m really new at this, I’m only going to hike for 15 minutes or I’m only going to sit at the trailhead and look at the hiking place and then I’m gonna go get back in my car and go home there. There’s no level of engaging with your non work life that is not going to be beneficial. There’s no, it’s not like you have to hike to the top of the mountain. I mean, this is part of the toxic productivity that’s been, you know, making this this bad scene this whole time, right, is that we feel like we have to um do everything the best the most, regardless of what else is going on. [00:43:29.56] spk_0:
You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna start your physical fitness journey with a triathlon. You know, you’re gonna run around the block and in a week you’ll be able to run around the block twice, pardon me, or [00:43:37.66] spk_1:
maybe just walk to the end of the block [00:43:51.58] spk_0:
or whatever, however you start, right? But but starting and you’re saying, you know, your embrace the discomfort because it’ll become comfortable and you’ll get better at it. You know, you’re in a pattern now where you’re, you know, you’re like you said highly efficient, highly efficient at toxic behaviors. [00:44:40.44] spk_1:
You’re really good at this and you can be really good at something else too. I mean I remember there was an interview with terry crews who is an actor and he’s very muscly and um, people always ask him, how do you get so buff? Like you always, and he said, look, the gym is my happy place. And so I can’t tell you a person who doesn’t really like the gym how to get like me. I look like this because I hang out at the gym all the time. It’s my favorite place. But he also says, you know, go take, if you really like something, take it to the gym with you. So if you really like romance novels or mysteries or something, go and go and take your mystery novel to the gym and just sit there, read your mystery novel and then go home and then, you know, you don’t have to pick up a weight. You don’t have to do a single thing. Just hang out there because it’s for a lot of people like the weight room at the gym even, especially it’s like a very new place. It’s pretty foreign. There’s a lot of traditions. There’s rules, You don’t really know what they are. Um, so climb acclimatizing yourself to a new place, you [00:45:01.71] spk_0:
know? [00:45:03.53] spk_1:
Yeah, [00:45:06.13] spk_0:
Alright leave us with with something inspirational, please marina, [00:45:11.70] spk_1:
there’s been [00:45:12.13] spk_0:
A lot of inspiration summit up some up 40 minutes as best you can. [00:45:56.91] spk_1:
Well when we think about how much we as non profit workers on an individual level, on an organizational level and on a sector wide level have been able to achieve and and move the needle on with with how little we’re given if we made sure that we ourselves were properly resourced in order to do this transformative work. Imagine how much more could be accomplished by people who are showing up fully in their power to this mission work. I mean it’s incredible. And then also the thing I like to remind everyone in my trainings is that this is generational work. I have generations of people behind me, you know relatives and ancestors who have done their own mission work and I will have generations of people in front of me doing the mission work that they’re called to do and all I have to do is show up for my part my link in that chain [00:46:15.19] spk_0:
marina, Martinez Bateman ceo. New coyote consulting. I have to ask why is it new coyote consulting. What is that? [00:47:51.63] spk_1:
Its new coyote because I wanted a name that spoke to my ancestry which is Mesoamerican and uh and which spoke to my sort of like presence and the way I show up and the Aztec there’s an Aztec god way which means very old coyote and um I thought he’s um frequently gendered as a as a male but very also frequently gendered as non binary or female. So I’m non binary. It felt very like I felt a lot of kinship with with that and then um old very old coyote is a storyteller and he teaches through storytelling so that felt very appropriate to me as well. You know, he’s not didactic, he’s not teaching humans lessons or if he is ever teaching humans lessons, it’s in this very jokey sort of way. Um, he brings people along with him on journeys rather than sort of like telling them to go places. Um, and I uh, I also feel like in the context that I’m in, which is a very white context and a very colonizer context frequently a lot of people will call my work new, they’ll say that the things I’m doing are new, these new ideas, their new concepts and for me they’re not new. They’re very, very old. Um, but also new coyote is a transformer. He’s a trickster. So he, he becomes the thing that you need in the moment and I thought, well then we’re a new coyote, we’re not a very old coyote, we’re a brand new one. So that’s why I named us new coyote. Yeah, [00:48:02.71] spk_0:
again marina Martinez Bateman Ceo at new coyote consulting marina, thank you very much you’re [00:48:09.07] spk_1:
welcome. Thank you so much for having me on [00:49:33.75] spk_0:
you’re welcome to and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of the 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10 next week increase data literacy across your nonprofit you see how all these data and tech topics are fit together. It’s all very highly produced here very highly. If you missed these things just don’t happen if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go on to mention deeper and now they’ve got the offer, grab the listener offer at the landing page. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, thank you for that affirmation scotty you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great
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[00:02:04.85] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with sudo a graphia if you wrote to me saying that you missed this week’s show tech policies that reduce toxic productivity first, what is toxic productivity then as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people you work with? Finally what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at new coyote consulting this is part of our continuing 22 NTC coverage On Tony’s take two. Please start your plan giving with will’s part do we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies I Tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for d just like three D but they go one dimension deeper. Here is tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T C. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by the very smart folks at N 10 will help us all use technology in our work with me now is marina Martinez Bateman. They are ceo of new coyote consulting marina. Welcome.
Hi thanks for having me it’s a joy to be on the show. [00:02:31.96] spk_0:
Oh joy thank you very much and we’re just getting started joyful already I love it. Thank you your session topic is tech policies for reducing toxic productivity. Natural question is how could productivity possibly be toxic? What what is this thing? [00:04:06.63] spk_1:
Well, it’s like anything else, right? You know, you buy a couple of pairs of nice shoes that you like. It’s not toxic, there’s nothing wrong here. It’s just engaging in some, you know, some trade some some joy of craftsmanship. If you start buying shoes instead of food, buying shoes instead of paying the rent, then you have a real problem, right? And productivity is like that, you know, it’s just like any other thing that we engage in, we can do it so hard that it hurts us. Um toxic productivity is when we will choose work over things that we need like taking lunch breaks or moving our body or engaging with family and community things that sort of are essential to our mental and physical health. And then you know what happens is as we engage more and more with this toxic level of productivity are actual real true product. Our output diminishes and then we see our output diminish, we get really upset about that and then we double down on being more and more productive and and then our output diminishes because we’re exhausted and we’re not getting filled up in other places and we double down again and it can lead to, you know, you can create uh you know really unhealthy spaces, you can um you know make yourself ill, you can hurt yourself. You can get hurt. You know how many people have fallen asleep while driving um because they’re working too many hours. Um you know, how many times do we make really silly mistakes when we’re exhausted? Um Those things sort of creep in and creep in and then your identity starts to change into being someone who can’t get things right, who isn’t able to perform when that was never a part of your reality. You’re just engaging way too hard in work. Thinking that that’s the answer to your problem when really it’s the cause. [00:04:55.89] spk_0:
And before we go further and toxic productivity, let’s remind folks in case there’s any question. Uh, you said, you know, and it replaces being filled up by other spaces like community, family friends. Let’s remind folks of the joys that and and maybe there’s even research that shows the physiological changes when we’re engaging in things that are not work. [00:06:45.10] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. So you get different parts of your brain activated when you’re engaging in hobbies that are different from your work, um, your creative life. You know, if you have a creative job, um sometimes doing something that’s not so creative or doesn’t require a lot of like big innovative leaps. Um can be nice, like, you know, tidying up or taking a walk or um doing something physical, like hiking or going out into the outdoors, going fishing and camping etcetera. Or even going shopping or going to the movies, like those things when they’re safe. Of course, because it’s still covid right now um are important to engage in because they activate other spots of your brain and also just your body moves differently on a hike than it does in the office or at a desk. Yeah, first of all it moves your standing desk, even if you attach a treadmill to it or something can never really replicate going outside. Um and then, you know, were people even introverted people need other people. We just do, we’re not um we cannot exist completely alone. Um we have to be able to engage in the people that we have in our personal bubble, However big that bubble is we have to be able to sort of like activate um that empathetic drive that we all have as humans or that, you know, the vast majority of us do. Um and we we just have to be in in concert, you know, how many of us have been at work, especially in the nonprofit sphere and things are sort of looking gloomy and we’re thinking, oh, the world is filled with bad people, everyone’s making terrible choices. This is the worst. You know, And then you go to dinner with a friend and you’re like, wait, the world is wonderful, this is great, everyone’s making great choices. I bet all these people are just trying to figure it out because that human connection needs to exist for us to be people in the world, which is you know why we’re here is to be people. [00:07:04.40] spk_0:
Thank you for that reminder. We are we are communal, we are social, [00:07:08.46] spk_1:
even [00:07:33.77] spk_0:
the most introverted to some degree still as you said, you know with however however however many or few it may be uh contact community. Alright. Alright. So what are nonprofits doing that uh is leading us to toxic productivity and we’ll certainly get to the solutions. But what are we doing to? I don’t wanna I don’t wanna say improve it to induce it, induce [00:11:52.01] spk_1:
it. Yeah. I mean part of it is that we have these and these are, it’s great that we all want to end hunger and that we you know, no one’s being like though But it’s hard when you have 16 people and they’re all making 20-50 to 100% less than they could make in the free market trying to end hunger from a small office with broken chairs and a raccoon that won’t leave the trash alone. You know like we are so severely under resourced in non profit and that’s not our individual fault by any means. It’s the culture and the structures of the culture that we live in um where poor people are the people that build this country and their labor is so exploited that they are um kept poor so that the rich can stay rich. Um and then we get the nonprofits and generally those are the people we serve are the poor or people who are missing something from their, their experience or their needs. And uh, and we’re under resource too. I mean it’s a whole, it’s a whole culture, right? It’s a whole structure, It’s a whole system that’s made to make it so that we have these incredibly vast missions and we have a broken pencil and our own gumption to make it happen. And um, and it is, you know, we as individuals cannot solve that entire problem by ourselves. One, we can’t solve the problem that we’re working on by ourselves. We can end hunger alone. Um, even the most vast and well resourced organization would have to work with others in order to make that happen. Um, and part of that. So we have this like we have these vast resources. We are severely under resourced. We have these vast missions. Yeah, and were severely under resourced. And then, um, what we as organizations do on the, on the organization to organization level is that we compete with one another. We don’t coordinate with our organizations in our same sphere or it’s hard we find it hard to coordinate. Um, we also don’t recognize that we’re under resourced. Um, frequently we will sort of like, you know, when you get a bunch of nonprofit workers together in a room, we’ll joke about, you know, how we don’t have a chair that works in our computer is 15 years old and all these things. Um, but we don’t talk about how that makes the mission harder to do. And nor do we talk about how we’re still hitting goalposts were still crossing finish lines were still making things work. And where did those resources come from in general? They come from the individual workers. Um, and some of us have vast resources to put to this and some of us don’t. Um, but there’s no adjustment, a there’s no adjustment of expectation based on how much resource we’re individually putting into the work to make it across the finish line. And there’s also no um, it’s seen as an individual failing if we can’t do this impossible work with very little resource in the, in in in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of support, in terms of whatever we’re all fighting an uphill battle. And um, and our organizations frequently lean into that martyrdom and lean into that, you know, while I was working 17 hours yesterday, while I was up at two o’clock in morning, finished with this grant, Well, I was, you know, and um, and it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean if we live in a world where we think that our clients deserve education, food, um, healthy ecology to, to roman community art, all of these things, you know, medicine and um, recovery and all these things that we provide to people if we think that our clients deserve that. How come we’re not getting that for ourselves. Like how many of us are pushing off things like doctor’s appointments? How many of us us have skipped um, significant times in our family members lives because there was some campaign or something that had to go on. And then also how much of that um, happens because of expectation, you know, when we start a nonprofit, we’re working with nothing. We work our way up, we become leaders in the, in the sector. And then it doesn’t seem weird to us that the people of the workers that are coming behind us are experiencing the same hardships that we experienced because it’s normal for us to struggle in this way. [00:13:14.45] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications media relationships, you know, how important relationships are in fundraising. They’re just as important in media exposure. Both of the turn two partners are former journalists, including one peter Pan a pinto who was an editor at the Chronicle of philanthropy. So they both know what to do and what not to do to build your relationships with journalists. Those relationships are going to get you heard in the media, turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o now back to tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. A lot of what you’re saying is that it’s it’s culture and and mindset. So I guess you’d like to change the culture and change the mindset and change the investments. Um, so please, let’s, uh, let’s start talking about what we can do differently. [00:14:17.04] spk_1:
I think what we can do differently is it starts with the leadership and nonprofits. People who are lower on the work chart do not have as much power, although a lot of people, especially right now with the great resignation, um, a lot of people who are lower on the r chart are sort asserting their power by leaving, um, environments that are toxic or don’t work for, um, what their vision is for the future. I think gen z is a great motivator for us to all take a look at how we’ve been working in the past and how it has harmed us and how if we don’t get right and start cycle breaking, we are going to be perpetuating the same harm that was done to us, which while it’s not fair that we were harmed, it’s also not fair to, to sort of sloth that off onto others. Um, but in leadership in the non profits, we have to stop thinking that because it happened to us. It’s okay for it to happen to other workers, especially younger workers. [00:14:18.77] spk_0:
Like it’s some sort of, you know, rite of passage, you pay your dues and then you’ll then you’ll emerge a better leader in the, in the sector, you know? That’s, that’s silly. Yeah. [00:14:31.40] spk_1:
Yeah. And [00:14:32.07] spk_0:
punishing to be, you don’t have to be punished to be successful. [00:14:41.74] spk_1:
Exactly. Can we be like, can we be the non profit executives and ceos that we needed when we were younger and that we didn’t get, can we do the things that that would have helped us to heal or would have helped us to be safe or be properly resourced or succeed even if that’s not something that we experienced when we were younger in career. [00:15:03.98] spk_0:
Alright. Um do you have specific uh specific things that leaders can, can encourage? Like you must take time off. So, you know, I don’t wanna see anybody not using their vacation time. And you know, these folks who say, hey, I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I’m so proud of myself thinking like, don’t blame me, that’s your own [00:15:23.35] spk_1:
fault. [00:15:24.55] spk_0:
Yeah. It’s been that long. It’s your own fault for not taking, you know? So what, what, what can leaders do, you know, specifically to avoid this? The toxic productivity [00:18:02.90] spk_1:
is, Yeah. That that sort of thing where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault that Sharon hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years saying that is a thing we can put to bed and we can say actually, if I’m in charge of this organization and of course we work together with our boards and advisory council sometimes with governmental agencies, whoever we’re helping to steward this change with. Um but if I am the Ceo here, I am the executive here then if someone hasn’t taken a vacation in four years, that’s, that’s on me. Um, This is the, this is the container I’m building for workers. Um, I see my view my duties as the Ceo very explicitly to keep the people in my, you know, in my organization safe. That’s one of the things that, that I have, you know, task been tasked with is to keep people safe. Um, if I can tell people what kind of work we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, then I have to take responsibility for their safety during that journey because I’m the one taking them at that place. I’m the one on that journey with them. Um, and so asking, you know, why is it, why is it that Sharon feels like she can’t take a vacation. Um, Is there something going on internally that is making that happen? Does she not have anyone who’s trained on the thing that she does? Does she, um, has she not gotten a performance review in four years and she’s so she doesn’t feel like she can take a vacation because she doesn’t even know how well she’s doing her job. You know, there’s just a bunch of little things that we can look at and it takes time, which most of us don’t have. And I advise leaders to look at our plate and find out where we’re being performative lee productive, How many of the things do we do every day That looks like we’re doing something but at the end of the day it doesn’t actually, it doesn’t actually contribute to the mission. We can spend three hours on something and um and not only are no more Children fed, they’re not going to be on that labor that we just did, but it looks really good. It looks like we’re doing a lot. How can we cut that out and then focus on, let’s get somebody cross trained on Sharon’s job so that she can finally take a vacation. Let’s let’s make this a safe space for our workers to make healthy decisions. And the truth is that because a lot of our sector has for so long leaned into this under resourcing of workers, there becomes a pathology around being under resourced. There becomes a sort of like um system wide martyrdom. [00:19:20.63] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. They have an offer for you. An exclusive offer for nonprofit radio listeners, complimentary 24 7 monitoring of your I. T. Assets for three months. They’ll monitor your servers, network and cloud performance, they’ll monitor your backup performance all 24/7. Any issues they will let you know ASAP Plus at the end you will get a comprehensive report. After the three months They’ll throw in a few surprises a couple of things as well that I did not mention. It’s all complimentary and it’s for the 1st 10 listeners. The offer is on the listener landing page, go grab it, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. And this offer goes even deeper than that. Let’s return to tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. There’s something called the brotherhood of suffering. [00:19:23.27] spk_1:
Exactly. [00:19:24.01] spk_0:
It’s it’s I’ve read about it in prison populations where I mean the phrase says it, the brotherhood, sisterhood, um the hood of suffering, the uh the shared experience among all folks of being in something that’s ritualistic, punishing suffering difficult. And then and it ends up being a source of almost pride. [00:19:52.07] spk_1:
Yes, [00:19:52.65] spk_0:
that we’re suffering this way together, right? I’m sure you want to turn that on its head and and disabuse us of [00:21:28.90] spk_1:
that. It’s and it’s hard, it’s entrenched. There are people for whom for whatever reason and then this does become an individual problem. Once you’ve done all of the systematic things around alleviating that suffering around creating um you know, the concept of abundance even as we’re in these systems where we’re under resourced and part of that is acknowledging how we’re under resource and and and speaking its name out loud um which is capitalism and racism and colonialism. Um once we sort of do that in our organizations, there are still going to be people for whom it is necessary they need, that they feel for whatever reason that that this is what they have to do, this is how they have to work. Um and and in general what I find um in the times that I’ve managed to create this package, which is really hard to do, Well we have all these other external forces sort of like working for us to have this hero complex to keep in this savior mindset. Um When I’ve been able to make this abundance package the sort of container where we can all work in abundance towards our common goals. There are a couple of people who will leave and sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s not thankfully, but sometimes it is messy. Um But it’s because they need to be in an environment that feels like home to them and that toxicity is going to feel like home until they make the choice to step out of it and and recognize that this is this is a choice that that they’ve made their systemic issues at hand and then there’s individual issues at hand and we as C. E. O. S can do a lot to solve the systemic issues and also we can never make someone heal [00:21:54.39] spk_0:
themselves. What’s some of that performative work that you uh that you mentioned, just if you could take off two or three things that are performative but lacking in value and and and benefit [00:22:13.27] spk_1:
um staying in the office on a day when there’s no reason to, you know, if uh something like something tragic frequently happens, if there’s something terribly tragic in our community, [00:22:19.73] spk_0:
requiring [00:23:47.90] spk_1:
requiring everyone to keep their butts in their seats is just ridiculous. No one’s working. That’s not gonna happen. Um, even sort of staying in the office when there are things going on that are, are wonderful. Um, for example, uh, if it’s, you know, if we are living in a beach town and it’s a great surf day and we are a surf, you know, protecting the surf non profit everybody goes surf. Like come on, this is our whole thing. Like it doesn’t make any sense. If we are, say we are, you know, very into free media and we have a free media conference in town, nobody should be expected to come to work. We should get tickets to the free media conference and we should go to that. Um, you know, there are a lot of things I think, um, you know, if we’re a big sports town and our team is winning, nobody’s going to pay attention to work. There’s no reason to be here. All of these things. You know, they’re all individual to the nonprofit. Then there’s also things like, you know, some of us and I’m one of these people, I admit it, I love to see a meeting room packed with people. We love it. But half those people do, they need to be there. Do they really do this really important to, to the running of the nonprofit that, that, you know, so many people are there for an hour doing nothing and, or you know, getting information that could have been in an email or you know, etcetera. Um Yeah, I think there’s some people have gone into the, Oh, I can’t remember what they call it, but they do 15 minutes stand ups every morning and they’re never 15 minutes long. They always run over. [00:23:55.84] spk_0:
Yes. [00:24:43.06] spk_1:
Yeah. The morning huddle. I mean if the morning huddle makes you guys productive and it helps your nonprofit do the thing you’re, you’re put here to do great. But a lot of times these huddles are just performative and it’s awful and everyone’s so tired because it’s the first thing in the morning and there’s no reason for them. Um I think also there’s a lot of like email checking that happens throughout the day for me as one of the ways that I am performative li productive and and my my only employee is remote. We’re all remote here so no one’s watching me. No one can see me in here. But I will sit here and check email because I want to quote unquote, feel productive. And so then I spent 2.5 hours moving emails around the digital space doing nothing and I leave and then I leave, you know, I have to go to lunch or it’s the end of the day or something. I didn’t need to be there and do that. There was there was no reason. [00:28:05.26] spk_0:
Alright. Those are good. Yeah, good examples. Thanks. It’s time for Tony’s take two. This is still my silver jubilee in planned giving and august is still national maker Will month. So let’s take part due of starting your planned giving program with wills. These are gonna be reasons 45 and six reasons one through three were last week reason number four. There’s no lifetime cost to your donors. These are long term gifts. A gift in a will is a gift of cash to your nonprofit at the donor’s death. So no lifetime cost for your donors giving by will sustainability. This is all about the sustainability of your work, your mission, your values. That’s what the conversations are all about. It’s the survivability of your work in the long term. That’s what the conversations are about. That’s what plan giving is going to help supplement is gonna really be more than a supplement. It’s going to be critical to your long term survivability, your sustainability reason number six endowment, whether you have no endowment and you need to start growing building one or you have a modest endowment, you want to grow it more or you have a good size endowment and you still want to grow it more because when do we ever say the endowments big enough? No need to add to that anymore. Let’s stop that. Cut that off. That. Never. So wherever you are with endowment, even if you’re at $0.0. Most of the gifts by Will the vast majority come unrestricted and that means you take as much of that unrestricted money as possible and put it into your endowment. That long term savings for your nonprofit, that you’re only spending a little bit of the income or maybe even less than the annual income each year. That’s how you grow that endowment gifts by Will I realize there’s tension there. You have immediate short term costs, expenses that you have to cover as well. But as much as possible, those unrestricted dollars that come from gifts by Will’s sock that away into the Endowment, That’s how you build your endowment. And of course that helps, uh, reason number five, your sustainability. Right? It all works together. So that’s reasons 4, 5 and six for starting your planned giving program with wills. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo Yes, the boo koo is back, boo koo, but loads more time for tech policies that reduce toxic productivity with marina Martinez Bateman. Is there more that, that we can ask of our of our leaders. You not that you haven’t given given, given a lot of, a lot of advice, but uh, is there any more that, that we can expect from our leaders to help us make the right choices. [00:32:17.95] spk_1:
Yeah. And part of that is so we are in a unique space as leaders where we are suffering from the exact same ailments that our people are suffering from and we are suffering from the exact same structures of oppression that our people are, something, I mean not the exact same ones, but we’re here. We’re in it, right? So all of that. Um, you know, all the systems that are set up to make it so that personal health and art and the environment and food and health like um, communities and all these other things that we fight for right in the nonprofit sector. All these things are devalued, we’re in the same boat. Um, and also we do have power within the walls of our organization. Sometimes it’s limited, Sometimes there’s other factors at play, but we have more power than anyone else in the building almost um, with very few exceptions and so part of it is that we have to make certain sacrifices as leaders, which I think all of us know, but those sacrifices are probably not going to be the ones, the ones I recommend are not gonna be the ones that we expect. So, um, we need to protect our own time. We need to be seen eating lunch. We need to be seen taking time to move our bodies. Um, a lot of the things that we do as leaders are are the second we get to work the second we log on whenever our day starts, we are being seen by everyone of the organization. Even if it’s a small organization, even if it’s a remote organization, we don’t realize how visible we are. Um, and so when we model these behaviors for people taking vacation, telling people about how wonderful and restoring the vacation was, reassuring people um that it’s okay to take vacation for themselves, leaning into abundance even though we know what the budget is and we know scarcity very intimately um making those choices um that are that are on mission, um that are values driven because that’s what we’re called to do. Um and then having to make tough calls as a leader is it’s why we’re here, it’s why we got put in this seat. Um it’s why we sought the seat, we wanted this position most of us and um and so it’s time to sort of like what we sacrifice when we have this out, like when we’re modeling this good behavior is we sacrifice any delusions that we might have had towards the productivity nature of of, you know, performative productivity, right? So those big meetings have a ton of people in them that are really kind of just ego strokes for us, we can get rid of those, that’s a sacrifice that that is a good sacrifice to make. Um a lot of times we do things like we have those big meetings because we’re not feeling very productive, but we want to see everybody’s face, you know working. Um and really what we needed to do was take lunch and start taking lunch probably three months three or four months ago or years ago or 10 or 1520 years ago. Um and then we would feel productive and filled up and we would need a big meeting of 15 people that doesn’t do anything. Um So so modeling the behavior ourselves is very very important and um and specifically in a way that is seen um It can be very hard because as leaders we want to say well I’m gonna take I’m modeling the behavior, I’m gonna take off early, I’m gonna go home and um that is valid and if we need to do that we should do that. And also say okay everybody we’re going home early this day is just whatever happened this day is in the pits, let’s go home early. If we can of course some of us can’t do that because we have certain service obligations. Um But we can do things like look around the room, take the temperature of the room and say all right, everybody we’re getting you know pizzas delivered or whatever. Uh We’re just going to sit down and hang out together and blow off some steam. I can feel it, we just we’re not doing productive work right now. You [00:32:40.29] spk_0:
know, be thoughtful, be intentional about creating about the culture you’re creating and that culture starts with leadership. Whether whether you might be the Ceo or you might be a mid level leader, you might be uh lower on the work charter. Lower level leader, but you’re still leading two or three people. Right? I mean it applies. This is not only for the ceo your ceo but this is not only for C E O S. Alright. [00:32:58.79] spk_1:
Yeah. The people like your choices are going to be dependent on what’s up with the people and focused on them and then model the behavior that you because you know that a lot of us don’t realize how seen we are in our organizations were very, very visible if we’re in a leadership position. [00:33:17.88] spk_0:
Yeah, interesting. You made the point, you know, even even in a virtual organizations like yours? Virtual company. Well so flesh that out. How do you feel like folks know when you start logging in, when you’re reading email etcetera. How is that seen, how is it seen, [00:34:04.48] spk_1:
how am I checking in? You know, if we have a digital chat platform, how am I checking in? Am I showing up? Am I saying Hey I’m here. Am I asking questions um am I you know, am I asking for feedback? You know, am I am I visible enough for you? Am I you know, am I bugging you too much like um and listening to people interesting people when they tell you what’s going on with them? Um and also trying to remember, it’s very hard, it can be very hard with everything going on that you have to do as a leader. But when someone says, hey I’m gonna be out for the afternoon, put it in your own calendar and make sure that you don’t reach out to them during that time. Yeah. [00:34:31.80] spk_0:
Right. Those, those uh slacks or texts or emails, whatever it is that start sorry to bother you on your day off. But, but of course the university and the gator cancels everything before it. But I need, you know, blah, blah. That, you know, there’s so much of that could, you could just wait until the day off is over. So the week off, you know, and, and you, you said earlier, you know, cross training so that people feel they can take time and so that the organization doesn’t suffer when they do [00:35:20.51] spk_1:
exactly if so, and so doesn’t have the thing. I’ve cross trained this other person, which of course, you know, it’s easy for me to sit here in my office and say cross training when a person listening is looking at me like what with what resources with what people, but that’s where the sacrifices come in. You have to say, okay, well, this vanity project of mine doesn’t happen because cross training is happening instead or this. And somebody bristled when I said vanity project, I know it, but we all have them, They exist. We’ve got to accept that that they exist. So instead of the thing I want, we do cross training because that’s, that’s, and eventually I’ll get the thing I want probably, especially if it’s mission aligned. And it makes sense. But we have to prioritize workers needs and comfort because we have a lot of options here. The people that we employ have less options than us have fewer options than us. And so we need to to honor that. [00:35:33.89] spk_0:
What about some questions that you got questions or comments you got in your session and what, what do you what do you what stuck out for you? [00:35:56.29] spk_1:
I always get this question in all, every time I teach this training, I get this question. And it’s some version of the, you know, my co worker, my direct report, my boss, my board member is very into toxic productivity. They’re very into this. They’re they’re the ones that are always, you know, I was answering emails from the hospital when I was in labor with my second daughter or, you know, all of this stuff. Um, that’s, that’s very badge of honor. You know, we wear these sort of like wounds like metals and non profit. Um, [00:36:14.11] spk_0:
that’s the personhood of suffering. The personhood of suffering. It isn’t bad. They do become a badge of honor. I’m always the last person to leave the office. Yes. [00:39:21.34] spk_1:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And uh, and and and this person is that they’re they’re toxic productivity is harming people. They’re pushing the culture, you know more and more to work more and more. Um, they have unrealistic expectations of people that work nearer with them, etcetera, etcetera. It’s harmful. And what I always tell people is, you know, you can do this. Uh first of all, your proximity to this person is not a coincidence at some point, you guys probably saw eye to eye on this or were working together in tandem to create something that really worked for you. Um you know, I look back on my nonprofit career and one of the my best times, one of my favorite times in my career was just deeply into toxic productivity. And so was everyone else around me. And it was wonderful because we were all on the same page. We felt like such a good team. We were so unified and the way we thought about things and the way we thought about things was deeply unhealthy. Um, but I tell them, you know, you can tell this person, especially if you really care about them outside of work. Um, you can say, I think we’re in a toxic relationship. I think we are operating in a way that is making each other less healthy. That’s not not helping us thrive. I want to try and heal from this. I think that healing is going to bring about a really incredibly positive change not only for me, but for the work that we’re doing here. Will you, will you heal with me, will you come in this on this journey with me and you can ask them with sincerity and the truth is that you can’t do anything else other than that. Just ask them and if they say no, you can’t keep asking them, you have to you have to respect that and everyone has has their own path, you know and not everyone is going to hell at the rate that you are going to hell at, not everyone is going to hell the way you think you should or they should. Um Some people just have other journeys and so if you are that person’s boss you can make decisions about, okay well we’re going in a different direction, we need competencies around healthy productivity, you don’t have the competencies around healthy productivity that we need, therefore we’re no longer a good fit and that hurts. It’s hard to say those things, but if I had, you know if I said you know we’re gonna go we’re gonna move towards gap accounting, everyone, you know, we’ve got to do things uh best practices ways and and not have you know our accounting all willy nilly and our account at the time was like nope, I do my accounting on post its and I will never not do that. You can’t make me change then we would have to get into accountant, wouldn’t we? So it’s the same thing when we’re trying to create this healthier productivity. If someone doesn’t want to learn or become competent in this in this new work way, we can’t keep them on just because we like them or because of what they did in the past that was helpful. Um, we can honor them and say that, that, you know, thank you very much and we can also release them to continue on their own journey, whatever that is. [00:39:39.03] spk_0:
What have we not talked about that? Uh, you want to? [00:39:50.18] spk_1:
Um, good question. Uh, I [00:39:58.22] spk_0:
mean I do my best to channel our listeners, but you’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m just coming to it. So maybe the stuff that we, I haven’t raised, [00:40:02.09] spk_1:
Yeah, let’s talk about perfectionism [00:40:04.55] spk_0:
because perfectionism [00:41:37.88] spk_1:
is a, we know for a fact, we know that perfectionism is a, is a feature of white supremacy. Perfectionism is um pervasive and insidious in our culture as a whole, but also a nonprofit culture. And so when we are practicing healthy productivity, when we’re trying to learn how to do things differently, the fact that we’re doing things in a way that we haven’t done them before means that we’re not gonna be as good, effortlessly good at them. Um, as we were before, even if we were doing something that ultimately harmed ourselves and our organization and our mission, we were really good at it for a long time, we had a high level of proficiency. So when you sort of like decide to go home at five o’clock and walk around the block and then take a bubble bath or whatever. That’s not gonna feel super good because you’re not gonna be super good at it. Um I can’t tell you how many times I used to buy coloring books because I was like, I need to be less, you know, work centric and I need to do creative things. I miss being creative and so I would buy those adult coloring books and I would hurt my fingers from coloring so hard because it had to be perfect. Um and then I would think, okay, no, I can’t do this, it’s too, it’s too physical, this coloring is to physical, I’ll go get in a bath that will relax me and I would sit in this bath just tense because I’m supposed to be relaxing and I’m, and I’m not doing [00:41:42.14] spk_0:
right, [00:42:34.73] spk_1:
Exactly right and but it’s not working because you, you’re not familiar with it, it’s hard. The first time you did anything, it was just kind of a little bit difficult and a little bit unwieldy and overwhelming and you know, for those of us who have been neglecting our other, the other parts of our lives for however long because of work, it is daunting to go into a place, we feel very new act, especially when we’ve been in a place where we feel extremely um you know, experienced and Exactly yeah, so the perfectionism of like if you are going to engage with your community and if you are going to engage your creativity and you’re going to go on a hike and you’re going to, you know, reclaim the other part of your life that isn’t work, be willing to do it badly [00:42:38.22] spk_0:
because [00:43:06.34] spk_1:
It’s that important, you have to be able to do it badly because you have to get through that sort of like new, unwieldy part. Um and it’s okay to say like I’m really new at this, I’m only going to hike for 15 minutes or I’m only going to sit at the trailhead and look at the hiking place and then I’m gonna go get back in my car and go home there. There’s no level of engaging with your non work life that is not going to be beneficial. There’s no, it’s not like you have to hike to the top of the mountain. I mean, this is part of the toxic productivity that’s been, you know, making this this bad scene this whole time, right, is that we feel like we have to um do everything the best the most, regardless of what else is going on. [00:43:29.56] spk_0:
You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna start your physical fitness journey with a triathlon. You know, you’re gonna run around the block and in a week you’ll be able to run around the block twice, pardon me, or [00:43:37.66] spk_1:
maybe just walk to the end of the block [00:43:51.58] spk_0:
or whatever, however you start, right? But but starting and you’re saying, you know, your embrace the discomfort because it’ll become comfortable and you’ll get better at it. You know, you’re in a pattern now where you’re, you know, you’re like you said highly efficient, highly efficient at toxic behaviors. [00:44:40.44] spk_1:
You’re really good at this and you can be really good at something else too. I mean I remember there was an interview with terry crews who is an actor and he’s very muscly and um, people always ask him, how do you get so buff? Like you always, and he said, look, the gym is my happy place. And so I can’t tell you a person who doesn’t really like the gym how to get like me. I look like this because I hang out at the gym all the time. It’s my favorite place. But he also says, you know, go take, if you really like something, take it to the gym with you. So if you really like romance novels or mysteries or something, go and go and take your mystery novel to the gym and just sit there, read your mystery novel and then go home and then, you know, you don’t have to pick up a weight. You don’t have to do a single thing. Just hang out there because it’s for a lot of people like the weight room at the gym even, especially it’s like a very new place. It’s pretty foreign. There’s a lot of traditions. There’s rules, You don’t really know what they are. Um, so climb acclimatizing yourself to a new place, you [00:45:01.71] spk_0:
know? [00:45:03.53] spk_1:
Yeah, [00:45:06.13] spk_0:
Alright leave us with with something inspirational, please marina, [00:45:11.70] spk_1:
there’s been [00:45:12.13] spk_0:
A lot of inspiration summit up some up 40 minutes as best you can. [00:45:56.91] spk_1:
Well when we think about how much we as non profit workers on an individual level, on an organizational level and on a sector wide level have been able to achieve and and move the needle on with with how little we’re given if we made sure that we ourselves were properly resourced in order to do this transformative work. Imagine how much more could be accomplished by people who are showing up fully in their power to this mission work. I mean it’s incredible. And then also the thing I like to remind everyone in my trainings is that this is generational work. I have generations of people behind me, you know relatives and ancestors who have done their own mission work and I will have generations of people in front of me doing the mission work that they’re called to do and all I have to do is show up for my part my link in that chain [00:46:15.19] spk_0:
marina, Martinez Bateman ceo. New coyote consulting. I have to ask why is it new coyote consulting. What is that? [00:47:51.63] spk_1:
Its new coyote because I wanted a name that spoke to my ancestry which is Mesoamerican and uh and which spoke to my sort of like presence and the way I show up and the Aztec there’s an Aztec god way which means very old coyote and um I thought he’s um frequently gendered as a as a male but very also frequently gendered as non binary or female. So I’m non binary. It felt very like I felt a lot of kinship with with that and then um old very old coyote is a storyteller and he teaches through storytelling so that felt very appropriate to me as well. You know, he’s not didactic, he’s not teaching humans lessons or if he is ever teaching humans lessons, it’s in this very jokey sort of way. Um, he brings people along with him on journeys rather than sort of like telling them to go places. Um, and I uh, I also feel like in the context that I’m in, which is a very white context and a very colonizer context frequently a lot of people will call my work new, they’ll say that the things I’m doing are new, these new ideas, their new concepts and for me they’re not new. They’re very, very old. Um, but also new coyote is a transformer. He’s a trickster. So he, he becomes the thing that you need in the moment and I thought, well then we’re a new coyote, we’re not a very old coyote, we’re a brand new one. So that’s why I named us new coyote. Yeah, [00:48:02.71] spk_0:
again marina Martinez Bateman Ceo at new coyote consulting marina, thank you very much you’re [00:48:09.07] spk_1:
welcome. Thank you so much for having me on [00:49:33.75] spk_0:
you’re welcome to and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of the 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10 next week increase data literacy across your nonprofit you see how all these data and tech topics are fit together. It’s all very highly produced here very highly. If you missed these things just don’t happen if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go on to mention deeper and now they’ve got the offer, grab the listener offer at the landing page. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, thank you for that affirmation scotty you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great