The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series
How Flourishing Culture Can Help Your Organization’s Impact Explode
October 31, 2022
Justin Miller
Intro: What are the values that help your organization’s impact grow? Well, today we’ll hear from a founder who has seen his organization’s impact explode in just 15 years since founding it. Listen in to learn how he, his team, and board have built a ministry to help others flourish.
Al Lopus: Hi, I’m Al Lopus, and you’re listening to the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where we help you create and lead a flourishing workplace. We find the problem many employers are facing today is readjusting to our post-COVID, hybrid world. The great resignation is still evident, where employees are quitting at record levels, filling millions of open jobs, even as we face a cooling economy and record-setting wage inflation. We know that having a flourishing workplace with fully engaged employees is the solution. So this week, we’re talking about moving forward on the road to flourishing, no matter where you’re starting from.
What are some of the key leadership practices that facilitate growth in your organization, and how do you keep a growing organization focused on a clear vision so your people keep going in the direction of your vision and mission? In today’s episode, we’ll learn from a leader who has consistently provided an environment for growth and healthy employee engagement in an organization that spread across several countries and continents.
I’m delighted to welcome Justin Miller, the CEO of Untold. God put a spark of an idea in Justin’s heart and mind while he was still a student at Vanderbilt University. He wanted to have a positive impact as a Christian on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. And then 2007, he started CARE for AIDS with two Kenyan co-founders. Well, just a few years ago, the organization changed their name to Untold.
Justin, it’s great to have you on the Flourishing Culture Podcast.
Justin Miller: Al, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Al: I’m really looking forward to our conversation. And let’s start with the origins of your concern for people impacted by HIV/AIDS in Africa. So why that issue of all issues? You know, there are so many things and needs in the world. How did God grab your heart for people impacted by HIV/AIDS? And, really, quite at a young age; you were still in college. So tell us the story.
Justin: Yeah. Well, it’s mysterious, Al, how God works in those situations. I look back, and I had not been impacted by HIV in my life in any way. I didn’t know anybody that had it, and I probably couldn’t have told you much about what it was. But as I reflected on this journey that I’ve been on the past 15 years, one of the things that God has shown me is that He used some of the pain in my past to help reveal my purpose and what He was calling me to.
And part of that is the story of my brother, which I won’t tell at length. But my brother David is non-verbal. He lives with cerebral palsy and autism and has been faced with a number of physical and intellectual challenges throughout his life. And as I look at the disabilities that he lives with, oftentimes in our society, people with disabilities oftentimes are treated like those with certain diseases and are often overlooked and undervalued. And I saw that my brother really struggled to find a community, struggled to find the care that he needed. And there was always a level of stigma around disability. And it was through that realization that God used to really prepare me and lead me into this work to deal with what I believe is one of the most stigmatized issues in our world today, which is HIV and AIDS.
And so that’s really, if you go back to the true origin of it, it started when I was a young kid growing up with my brother. And then, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, 2007 at 19 years old, I’m on a plane to Kenya for the first time to produce a documentary about this issue of HIV and AIDS. And more specifically, what was the church’s role, the global church, in responding to the needs of those suffering with HIV and AIDS? Because to that point, the church had really not taken a stand on this issue because it was an uncomfortable issue for them to deal with. But I felt like that was not reason enough for us as the church, with the ultimate hope to offer through the gospel, to not go all in with this very marginalized group of people and invite them to experience the love of God and to be embraced by a local church.
And so it was that trip that, it was the catalyst was the Global Leadership Summit in 2006. I went on a trip in 2007 thinking that my trip there was for the sole purpose of producing a film. I met my two like-minded co-founders who were Kenyan. We had this common vision for seeing the church take up the leadership of caring for those living with HIV and AIDS and seeing the Kingdom of God go forth because of that. And that partnership gave birth to CARE for AIDS 15 years ago, and we’ve been faithfully trying to walk that out since then.
Al: Yeah. What a wonderful story. I just love it. And it’s interesting how the Holy Spirit does put a spark in our lives, a spark that goes on to impact many others.
And so now over 15 years of work, Untold has impacted thousands of people who have HIV-plus, and people who serve are now thriving in terms of their physical, economic, and emotional health from the participation of your local staff. And I’m thrilled to know, also, that your staff are both health counselors but also spiritual directors, so you’re adding a clear spiritual dimension to your work.
But the organization started small. I mean, on a trip, you didn’t know anybody. You were going to do a documentary. And it’s just exciting to see how you’ve grown over the years. So tell us about some of those leadership lessons that you learned in those first few years. I mean, there you were, a young man coming right out of college. What were some of the early decisions that helped set up the ministry for success that our listeners can learn from? Because I know, probably, there’s several that are thinking about something much like what you’ve done. And perhaps even, you know, on the other side, there’s some hard lessons that you learned that you’ve adjusted over the years. So Justin, share a couple of those with us.
Justin: Yeah, I’d be happy to. And I think you’re right. I think there are some things that we intentionally decided and some things that we learned the hard way through trial and error. And as a 20-year-old starting this organization, I definitely did not have all the answers, and I don’t have all the answers today.
But there were some things that I believe were critical decisions that were made in the early days that set us up for success. And the first one is this, I would say, and this is probably something that I, in my own kind of personal wiring, have contributed to the organization, is that my top strength on StrengthsFinder is focus. And I believe that I have tried to imbue the organization with that value of focus.
And when I think back to those early days, one of the defining conversations we had with my co-founders was sitting around a board room, where we were talking about the first kind of six months of our programing that we’d been doing in East Africa. And my co-founders talking about how we were doing this programing for adults living with HIV during the week, but the kids on the weekend didn’t have a place to go, so they weren’t getting a good meal. So we’re doing some programing on Saturdays to feed the kids in the community. And the time I didn’t even know the word mission drift, but there was something in my spirit that said, “Is that all? Are we missing the mark?” Like, we had talked about how the focus was on caring for men and women living with HIV and AIDS so that they could care for their children, so that we could strengthen the family. Direct services for children either living with or affected by HIV was not part of the plan in the initial early conversations. And so we had one of those hard conversations to say, do you stop providing services to vulnerable children? Like, that is one of the hardest decisions you have to make. But to learn where we felt called to and to honor that by being focused was critical. And we did not continue with that program. And we continued to focus on, how do we provide integrated, holistic care to men and women living with HIV and AIDS to strengthen families and ultimately prevent children from becoming orphans or becoming vulnerable in the future? And that was one of the decisions.
And I think we took that same focus, and we applied it to how we think about donor engagement. We said, “Hey, we can’t be all things to all donors. We can only maybe serve one segment of our donor community really well. So let’s focus and let’s develop in one area.” And that has allowed us to not only for our program model to, I believe, flourish, but for our donor growth community to flourish as well. So that’s one thing. I would say focus.
And then I’ll just tell you a second one that I think has only been reinforced through our mutual friend Peter Greer is just this idea of an abundance mindset. Someone shared that with me very early on in our work. And without going into great detail, I mean, just this idea that God owns it all, there’s more than enough, and He is not asking me or Untold to save the world, and that we can be participants in this greater kingdom story without feeling like we have to own it all and be responsible for it all, because that leads to a scarcity mindset, which leads to fear, which leads to exploitation. And instead, when we have an abundance mindset, we can, in this upside-down kingdom, we can share resources; we can partner well with other organizations; we can see other people as our co-laborers, not our competitors. And I believe that’s just the posture that we’ve wanted to have as an organization.
Have we always practiced it perfectly? Probably not. But I think that that has set us up for success, and we’ve been able to build great relationships along the way because of that posture.
Al: Yeah. And that abundance mindset, Justin, I’m sure that allows you to partner with other organizations that others might have thought might be competitors. Is that something that comes to mind?
Justin: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’re a close partner with Hope International, and we both do the work we started. As we grew the organization, we realized that savings groups were an important part of our organization, but honestly, it wasn’t really a competence that we possessed. But if we were insecure, we might not want to bring another organization that I believe is an excellent best-in-class organization, because, you know, what if that overshadows us, or what if our donors like them better, and they go to support them? I mean, you can play out all the scenarios, but the reality of it is we are better for our partnership with Hope, and our clients are better for our partnership with Hope, and we have to fight against that territorialism that is so present.
Al: That’s great, Justin. A lot of leaders are shaking their head or nodding their heads saying, yeah, that’s true. And you know, I love your focus and staying on focus. Yeah, there is a lot of vulnerable children, but, you know, God’s given you a purpose, and you’re sticking with it. And I appreciate that, that focus. That’s also actually my number one strength is focus on the StrengthsFinder. Yeah.
So one thing that’s interesting about your structure as we talk about Untold and what you do and that is you’ve got a small U.S. staff. And I remember this from the very beginning, a small U.S. staff, but all of your staff in Africa are local. You don’t have any Americans or Westerners running operations in Kenya or Uganda or Tanzania. So share with us your value of diverse local leadership and how you built that into the DNA of your organization.
Justin: Yeah. Well, I would say that it was, part of it was present from day one because my two co-founders are from opposing tribes in East Africa, and not just, like, we see the world differently; we have different policy beliefs. But, like, these tribes at times in Kenya’s history have killed one another. And so even 15 years ago, less so today, but 15 years ago, for two men from these two tribes to partner together sent a strong message that I love, that speaks to the unity in a body of Christ. Because in a cultural context, these two guys should not have been close friends, much less co-founders. And so that was one of the things that we knew from the beginning was going to set Untold apart.
And we also knew that as we developed our model of working in these underserved communities in and around East Africa, that we needed to hire staff that weren’t just indigenous to the country that we worked, but they needed to be hyper indigenous to—and I’m not sure that’s a word or not, but I’m going to coin that word hyper indigenous—to the communities where our clients lived and worked and their kids went to school. And so as we go into a community, whatever the makeup of that community is, it’s often then reflected in our staff who are going to be living there and serving our clients. But we also, because we have a commitment as an organization to create these centers, which is where we provide our care, Al, and we’ll shortly be opening our 100th center in East Africa. And we want people who have historically been stigmatized by the church, they’ve felt nothing but condemnation from the church to feel like they can come in, and they can have a safe place to pursue a path to flourishing.
And so one of our organizational commitments that all of our staff commits to is that we exist to create spaces of belonging. And we believe that we’re better for many different perspectives, backgrounds, and we believe that all people have value. That includes our staff. That includes our clients. And so we as an organization have just worked really hard to say whether it’s our center, where our clients are coming to be served; whether it’s our meeting room with our staff; whether it’s our donor events, we want to create spaces where people feel like they belong and that they have something of value that they have to offer. And I think we’ve just really tried to make that part of our culture.
And the last thing I’ll say about that, Al, is that when you talk about an abundance mindset, that for us fuels this organizational curiosity that we have, I believe, and desire to grow. And we just have this belief that we can learn from anyone. That doesn’t mean that everybody gets to join our team. But I think for us, we want to hear different perspectives. And if you have a culture where people feel threatened or they feel insecure, you’re uneasy about bringing people in with different backgrounds or perspectives because they might threaten your own. And for us, I think we’ve tried, through this abundance mindset, giving birth to a spirit of curiosity and learning from different people, different perspectives. That has encouraged us and fueled this desire to build, what we say, build big tables that can hold a lot of different perspectives and different viewpoints.
Al: Yeah. Create spaces where people belong, and what a great, you know, important sense, especially for people that kind of have the stigma. And even going back to your brother and how you saw the stigma of disability, how certainly there’s a stigma with AIDS, and creating that space where, you know, they belong. The big table. I love it. Yeah.
Well, Justin, let’s switch the topic a little bit to what a lot of leaders are very interested in. That’s the brand, an organization’s brand. And you’ve been through a rebranding process. You’ve already kind of mentioned, you started off with the CARE for AIDS, and now you’re Untold. So tell us about that process. You’ve changed your name. You’ve rebranded. How did this rebranding help you focus—to use that that word again—focus on the value of the whole person in your work? And how will this change help you set you up for additional growth as you meet the needs of the people you serve?
Justin: Well, let me say, Al, that we could probably spend a whole episode talking about the process of rebranding and the landmines to avoid and the value of it. But I would do it 100 times over, even though some people looked at me and said, “This is something you’ve been building for 14 years. Why would you erase that brand equity? Why would you…?” and ask me how it feels to me, like it’s somehow a part of my identity. And I think at times it was. But that’s another whole podcast—
Al: That’s right.
Justin: —about how we as founders, how do we as founders keep our identity secure outside of the organizations that we lead? But there was this realization about 18 months ago that when we talk about—identity is a core thing that we talk about, especially because so much of our work is counseling based with our client—that one of our theological pillars as an organization is this concept of the imago dei, the image of God, that our clients and our staff and everyone is made in the image of God. And we see that as somebody’s primary identity.
When we say the name CARE for AIDS, even though people don’t realize that in the beginning CARE was an acronym, so we were actually using CARE. It stood in the beginning, kind of insider secret here, it stood for church alliances for the relief efforts. And so, but it now, as it morphed into CARE for AIDS, it sounded like we were describing our clients and identifying them primarily by their HIV status, which was incongruent with our beliefs on that. Not to mention the fact that we learned as we listened to our constituents that the name actually, in many cases, actually induced more stigma than it helped to erase. And so we decided, okay, we need to make this change. And we wanted a name that invited people universally into the story of our organization, and Untold was something that didn’t come easily. It took us about six months to get there. But our mission as an organization is to embrace and equip people to live a life beyond AIDS.
And when we talk about that, we say if we can create a space for our clients where they feel embraced to share and confront the untold stories of their past, then we can equip them to live fully and boldly into the untold stories of their future. So we have loved telling that story because we may not all have the universal experience of understanding HIV and AIDS, and most people here particularly probably don’t. But we all know what it’s like to have stories and voices and pain from our past that is holding us back and keeping us from really pursuing the fullness of what God has for us in the future.
So that’s been one of the ways that we think this shift is going to help us as an organization is to invite more people to relate on a more personal level to the story of our clients, not to the HIV and AIDS piece, but through dealing with a lot of the stigma and shame that is associated with the disease.
Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.
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Al: And now, back to today’s special guest.
Embracing and equipping people into the untold stories of their future, yeah. And so many times, it’s our own issues that keep us from really moving ahead with a new story. That’s great.
Justin, this is, of course, one of my favorite parts of the discussion. You know, you and your team have participated in the Best Christian Workplaces Employee Engagement Survey now for five years. Six times this fall you’ve been doing it. And, you know, you’re really showing really strong, healthy engagement, certainly above the sector averages, in just about every area. And your Surveys have included your whole staff, people in Kenya and Tanzania and Uganda, as well as your U.S. staff. So why do you continue to assess the health of your workplace culture every year? What do you keep learning as you continue to discover the health of your staff culture? You know, what do—some leaders might say, “Well, we’ve done that. Why would we do it again?” Tell us your story.
Justin: Yeah. I’m going to try to avoid spending too much time here because I could talk about it for a while. But you’ve probably heard this before, Al, that when we started this process, we didn’t come in with a particularly toxic culture, as maybe some did, but we didn’t know what our culture was. We were completely blind. I mean, we were trying to improve it, but we didn’t know what dials to turn, what things to focus on. So that was such a gift and an eye-opening experience for us to be able to look for the first time and see with great detail where we were winning on culture and where we were losing.
And first of all, why do we continue to do it is we believe that if our focus as an organization is to help our clients flourish, how can we work towards that as an organization if we’re not committed to the same thing for our staff? And one of the things, it’s almost for us is like as a governor on growth is that we only grow to the extent that we can preserve the impact of our programs and the health of our staff. And if we see that either of those two things are not keeping pace with the growth, that to us is a really clear indicator that we need to probably slow down. And so we’re paying close attention to that, and that’s one reason why we continue to monitor it on an annual basis.
And as you know better than anybody, think with organizational culture, I think the idea of maintenance is a myth. Like, once you get to a certain point, it’s not just going to stay there. If anything, every year, we find ourselves sometimes scratching our head because the areas that we’ve chosen to focus on have improved, and the areas that we’ve neglected have seen a decline. So every year, the priorities of what we need to work on need to continue to change and shift. And really looking at it annually and saying, where are our critical gaps we need to close, and what are the strengths we need to leverage?
But we also, as you’ve outlined very clearly to us through your book and through the work of BCWI, is that I’m just reminded that everything rises and falls on leadership. Not only is inspirational leadership one of the strongest predictors of success, but it takes those leaders, it’s necessary for the leaders in the organization to drive change in the other areas of culture as well, the other seven big areas. So for us, it’s a really good opportunity for us every year to sit down as leaders and assess how are we doing at leading the organization and especially the pace of growth that we have been changing. We know that there’s going to be new issues evolving at every turn the more that we, the faster that we grow.
So those are a few things that stand out to me, but it really has given us such rich insight, and we’ve been able to tailor our cultural interventions, if you will, a lot better because of the data.
Al: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I love your comment. I might mention it again. There’s no such thing as maintenance when it comes to your organizational culture. Without intentional effort, it’s not going to stay where you’d like it to stay. Yeah, well.
Justin: And sometimes you’re putting in intentional effort, and you’re just doing enough to keep it where it’s at.
Al: Yeah, yeah.
Justin: I mean, it takes a lot of intention to be able to see a culture move to flourishing.
Al: Yeah. Wow.
Well, your staff feel really strongly, I know and the Survey shows this, that you’ve met your goals and as well as that you’ve changed for the better as an organization in the past year, and that the quality of the programs that you have meet the needs of the people they serve. I mean, and that’s just for me, that’s just a heart-fulfilling statement that people really feel like the quality of your programs are meeting the needs of those that you’re serving. So I think it’s important to keep this in perspective. We’re talking about feedback from people in a variety of geographical and cultural settings, all focused on one mission. We’ve even had people say, “So does this Survey work in a non-U.S. kind of a situation?” But you’re using this throughout Africa and many, many places. And so this is really a strong employee-engagement foundation that you’ve got.
What are some of the leadership practices and processes that you have in place that really create this positive sense of accomplishment and mission focus amongst your staff?
Justin: Well, let me first say, Al, that—and this relates to everything we’ve talked about so far—is that it would be unfair for me to take too much credit in all this because I do feel like I have been able to play a hand in this over 15 years. But I will say we have, as you mentioned earlier, a very large team in East Africa and about 275 right now. And it’s the responsibility of my amazing leadership team in East Africa to really focus on our culture and our engagement on that side of the world. And so just recognizing their role in this, I think is really important.
But I think one of the things they do so well and I partner with them in is that we try to do a really good job of, one, in keeping the focus of our mission and vision so much in front of them. I believe that every staff, you could ask them, “What’s our vision and what’s our mission?” and they could tell you. And so we’ve tried to impart that same level of focus and clarity to them as we can.
And then annually we try to share with them, what are the goals that we’re pursuing as an organization? What are the areas of growth? What are the priorities that we’re focusing on? And that’s not always easy to do in a distributed team in an emerging economy like East Africa. But we get our team together, at least as a whole organization, at least once a year, which is a huge investment. But we need that time to share, what are the goals? And we want our staff to know, like, we need them to know, are they being successful? How do we measure success? And it’s not always been easy for them to know the score, if you will, of what is happening in their center or in their region or in the whole organization. But we try to keep that in front of them because we want them to see how their individual contributions in their work not only are impacting the lives of our clients, but how they’re affecting our success towards our goals as a whole organization. So we just really try to keep that in front of them.
And we try to listen. I think that’s been the area that we can continue to grow in. But when we do hear feedback, particularly from our staff on, “Hey, this part of the program is not working well. Our clients are not resonating with the session. I don’t feel like I have the tools to deal with this issue that our clients are presenting me,” we try to respond, and our programs team is so effective. And that’s why I think our staff feel like we have changed for the better because the core model of what we do has been pretty consistent for 15 years. But the way that is implemented daily and practiced is constantly changing because we are learning new and better ways to do that work.
So that’s some of the ways that we try to keep growing and changing for the better.
Al: Yeah. Well, Justin, you’ve already begun to answer this next question, because another of the keys to a flourishing culture is the communication, healthy communication. And that also is a strong area amongst your staff. People feel like they’re involved in decisions that impact their work. And we know that good communication involves getting information out to staff in multiple locations. And you’ve already mentioned the priority you have of bringing your staff together so that you can communicate. That’s one thing.
But to be effective, and you’ve already mentioned this, it’s not just one-way communication, but you also need ways to listen and respond to people throughout the organization. And some of our listeners may not have quite the geographic spread that you do. I mean, you’ve got a huge geographic spread, and I’m sure they can learn from your experience. So what are some of the things that you and your team have learned about communication, especially in a diverse, multi-site organization, not only multi-site, but multi-geographic organization?
Justin: Yeah. Well, we’ve learned some hard lessons. I mean, think about—this is hard to imagine because it’s ruled our life for so long—but really, it wasn’t till just a couple of years ago that all of our staff had access to an email communication. So that idea is, I mean, you have to rely on phone or in-person communication to get your message across. That really forces you to get really focused on, how are we doing with communication?
So for example, I would say when it comes to even the BCWI results, that is something that I think our staff have done an excellent job of taking the raw data; going around, spending time with our staff in smaller focus groups in all of our regions; getting that deeper context, that nuance; and rolling all of that up; determining what can or will we act on as an organization. And then coming back either in a regional setting, but oftentimes as a whole group, and reporting transparently, honestly to the whole staff, “This is what we heard.” And my favorite part of when you say, “This is what we heard, and these are the things we’re not going to do anything about. Yes, you want more chai.” They drink a lot of chai. “You want more chai breaks, or not even breaks. They want more chai provided. And we’re not going to do that right now. But this is why. This is the tradeoff that we’re choosing to make here.” And then saying, “These are the things that we’re going to change, and this is how they’re going to be implemented.”
So we have tried to be as transparent as we can with our staff, with the data that we’re getting back, and processing it with them in a very open way, and letting them know the things that we are going to change, the things that we are not. And that has been a really great feedback loop, even though it’s not as frequent as maybe you would oftentimes like in our context, even having that on a six-month or 12-month basis has been really helpful.
And then for us, particularly during COVID, we learned that if we were going to respond to the needs of our clients in the best way, we had to listen to the people that were closest to our clients. And in any organization, especially one like ours that has grown so much, it is easy to let the “experts” at the top of the organization set the priorities or set the programmatic goals for the field. And we realize that, particularly in a time of crisis like COVID, that we had to listen and respond very quickly to what our frontline staff were saying the needs of our clients were. And I think we’re still trying to figure out how to do that well on a regular basis. But we really want to kind of always flip the hierarchy and put our center staff in the position of being able to create and speak into the most effective programing for our clients.
Al: Yeah. To really listen to the frontline staff to meet the needs of those that you serve. And especially in constantly changing times like that we’ve just experienced, boy, that’s great advice. Thanks, Justin.
You know, you’ve recently grown—we’ve talked about this—and again, the 275 people alone in East Africa. You know, you’ve grown by adding some new centers and geographic areas to your reach. But HIV/AIDS is still a huge issue. You can easily get discouraged just think about the challenge because of the magnitude of the problem. So how do program leaders and frontline teams, including your health counselors, even your spiritual counselors, keep the staff focused on their work without getting discouraged? There’s a fine balance there, isn’t there? How do you help to keep them from getting discouraged at just the size and the scope of the need that you’re addressing?
Justin: Mm, yeah. Well, I’ll say that our staff is not immune to discouragement, but I will say that they are resilient people and have been exposed to a lot of hardship, and that has developed a muscle there in resilience that I oftentimes feel like we lack. But we really try to remember and keep in front of our staff that God cares for and loves our clients way more than we ever could, and that He is ultimately the one that is looking after them. And it’s not our responsibility to save them or to carry their burdens. In our field of work, we call it differentiation, the ability to maintain a strong sense of self and identity and emotions that is disconnected and differentiated from the people that you’re serving. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t show empathy and compassion, but it can become a very toxic situation for both our staff and our clients if they take on each other’s needs and create some kind of codependent relationship.
So we really have created programing for our staff to make sure that they’re cared for in the same way that we’re caring for our clients, because they’re experiencing a lot of second-hand or vicarious trauma through our clients. And if we’re not careful, they’re not going to be able to sustain this work, or they’re going to burn out. And so part of our focus on how do we work in such an overwhelming situation with our clients who also are experiencing a lot of complex trauma, is really helping our staff remain differentiated and really stay spiritually grounded, spiritually healthy individuals throughout the process.
I will say, though, that our staff also gets to have a front-row seat to see the transformation of the individual clients happening on a daily basis. And there are clients whose situation doesn’t turn out okay, and the clients who pass away, and we mourn that. But they also get to see the radical life transformation happening in their center every day. And I think that is a shot of life for them, to be able to witness that kind of transformation. And as we think about these hundred centers operating with 30,000 people having completed the program so far, it is an overwhelming problem, and we know that we are not alone going to solve this global pandemic. But 15 years in, I believe we’re starting to see the community-wide and country-wide impact of the church working together to care for those on the margins with HIV. And so I hope our staff is encouraged by the fact, beyond the individual client’s life or their family’s lives, that we are going to see this, I believe, transform the continent over the next ten, 20 years.
Al: Yeah, wow. And I’m sure these regular gatherings you talk about, and as you say, you’re able to communicate the radical life transformation. As you’re on the front row, you can see that happening even though there is a lot of heartache and trauma in the process. Yeah. Wow.
Well, our leaders that are listening, every nonprofit organization has some kind of a board, and some boards are more effective than others. And looking at your board members, you’ve got really high-caliber people on your U.S. board. And also, you’ve got country boards that provide some local insight. So tell us about your board-governance model, and how do they help you as the CEO, and how do your boards set up the organization for continued growth and effectiveness? How have you felt that?
Justin: Yeah. I know that many people in my seat probably have a love-hate relationship with their board. But I honestly have been—that our board, one of the things that has accelerated the growth of our organization, and I love the relationship that I have with my board, even though we’ve evolved over time as well, kind of we’ve operated differently as we’ve grown and matured. Right now we are, and for a long time, we’ve been operating as a policy-governance board. That may not mean something to some of you listening, but for those who can know it, I believe it’s a really powerful structure that allows the directors and the CEO to understand and have clarity on who’s responsible for what, and avoid boards who are either disconnected or meddling in the work of the organization every day. And it creates very clear guardrails and expectations for the chief executive. And really, the goal is to enhance both empowerment of the leader as well as proper accountability. And I think that does that. We’ve achieved that, I believe, through the way our board is structured.
So because we’ve got good policy governance in place, then my board really just helps me think about vision and strategy and, obviously, counsel me if we’re experiencing difficult challenges. And I get to invite them into the operations as I need them to be. But largely, they can stay at a level of helping, clear the way for us as an organization to think about vision and mission at a high level. And then each of my board members brings a certain depth of expertise in some area that I’m always leaning on as I try to kind of lead us forward.
And we do have four boards, one in each country that we work in. And over time there’s been different levels of how active and engaged those boards are. They’re all pretty engaged right now. And we are now thinking about, how do we make sure that we remain aligned as an organization across those different entities? So we still function and look like one organization, but we’re actually four organizations that’s governed by a grant, kind of a granting relationship. So that’s more on the technical side. But for us, we wanted boards in these countries to have a local ownership and oversight into the work and that our men and women who are passionate about the work and who are proximate to the culture that we’re trying to work in. And so we’ve had a very good relationship with those boards, but we will probably create a global board here in this next season, but not to add another level of governance, but to have clear alignment and partnership with those other country boards.
Al: Yeah. It’s always interesting to see the connections in our community. I mentioned before, Shannon Miles, your board chair, who was the co-founder of BELAY, has been on our podcast, and we’ve had the benefit of both of us of BELAY assistance and people that have helped both of our organizations grow. And also, just again, some other outstanding contributors to your board. So congratulations.
I love it when I hear a CEO say, “Our board has accelerated the growth of our organization,” and hallelujah. That’s a great thing to be able to say.
Well, Justin, we’ve learned so much from our conversation. And I just looking back, what an exciting story. And one of the things that you did from the very beginning was really focus on what you’re doing, not to have any mission drift, and how that has helped facilitate your growth, and also to have that abundance mindset. And then to really have local, diverse leadership and where on a local level you’re able to have people really recognize that all people have value, and to be hyper indigenous. Yeah, I think that’s a new word that we can say, where again, you’re creating a space where they can belong, a big table for everybody to come and be engaged. And of course, the discussion about rebranding was very helpful. And so your experience with the Employee Engagement Survey. And your just value, you know, if we want our clients to flourish, then we need to make sure that our staff flourishes well. And that is so true. And then you mentioned John Maxwell as everything rises and falls on leadership, and that’s so true. And having strong inspirational leadership as measured by the Survey is just a very helpful thing. Just lots of conversation around communication, around resilience, and how a board can actually help an organization grow and has been very effective. This has just been a great conversation, and I know our listeners have come away with a number of things.
So Justin, how about, is there one more thing, something that maybe we haven’t talked about that comes to mind?
Justin: Maybe it’s related to what we have already talked about, but I’ll just maybe remind everybody again that when I think about the mission of our organization that has these two words embrace and equip, we talk about those, and we’ve mostly talked about them in the context of the work of the clients we serve. But I think as it becomes a creating a flourishing workplace and flourishing culture, those two things are still really critical. And it’s really what we all need. We need a place where we feel safe, we feel embraced, that we feel we have something to offer. And then we need to feel fully equipped to carry out whatever responsibility or role that we’ve been given to do. And so for us, the idea of embracing and equipping is not just a mantra that we talk about with our clients, but it really does affect how we think about developing our staff as well. And I encourage everyone to think about their own culture as it relates to embracing and equipping.
Al: Yeah. Well, Justin, thanks so much for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to providing holistic help to people who are impacted by HIV/AIDS and embracing and equipping them to live in a helpful and hopeful future. Thanks for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many listeners. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Justin.
Justin: Thanks, Al.
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