Transcript: Is Your Organization Growing Rapidly? Discover Insights You Need Now // Ryan Stanton, Compass

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

“Is Your Organization Growing Rapidly? Discover Insights You Need Now“

April 26, 2021

Ryan Stanton

Intro: Are you looking at the possibility of exceptional growth in the next year? Listen in to today's guest, that saw rapid growth in his organization while on the way to a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Welcome to another episode of the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where our goal is to equip and inspire you to build a flourishing workplace. As we all face today's leadership challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe having a healthy culture is more important now than ever before. We are here to help you eliminate toxicity, improve your employees’ engagement, speed up new innovation, and grow your organization's impact.

And before we meet our guest today, I urge you to subscribe to this podcast. As a result, you’ll receive our action guide. It’s our gift to help you lead your organization’s culture to the next level. To subscribe, simply go to bcwinstitute.org/podcast. Hit the Subscribe button and receive our free action guide.

If you can share this podcast with others, and rate it, it would mean a lot to me. Thank you.

And now, let's meet today's special guest.

If you've ever known the joy and challenge of raising a child, if you've adopted a child or fostered a child, then the next few minutes are for you. I want to welcome Ryan Stanton, the chief executive officer of Compass, a very special organization based in Kearney, Nebraska. Ryan, I'm so glad to have you on the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

Ryan Stanton: Thanks, Al. It's an honor to be here today and share about our organization's journey to a flourishing Christian workplace.

Al: Yeah. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

So, on your organization's website, it's a simple, very powerful statement that reveals the heart and the purpose of Compass: helping children and families navigate life. Say more about that.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, helping children and families navigate life is kind of a play off of our organizational title, Compass, and it's definitely something, a theme, that is weaved throughout everything that we do. There's kids right here in our hometown that have experienced a lot of trauma, and there's also biological families in our neighborhood that are really struggling, especially now with the pandemic and everything going on in the world. But there are also foster parents who provide love and guidance and hope to kids and families in need. We at Compass want to be known as God's servants, to help those that are struggling and to help them get through those difficulties and challenges that they're experiencing. As Christians, we do have hope, and it's a hope that certain, so we want to be all about that at Compass.

Al: And I bet you've got a child or family that comes to mind as you think about fulfilling the life-changing mission of Compass. Who comes to mind?

Ryan: Well, there's a couple of short stories that came to mind. Shortly after Compass, I went to our local youth shelter, and I went there to interview a 17-year-old girl for possible placement in our foster-care program. And when I go, I usually ask a few questions, just to get to know them. And the very first words out of her mouth was, “Do you know it's my birthday next week? I'm going to be 18 years old, and I'd really love it if you'd accept me into your program.” And then she said, “I know I haven't made the best choices in the past, but I'm going to be real good, the best you've ever seen.” And that really spoke to my heart, just hearing those words come out of her.

And I try to know all the kids that we are interviewing for potential placements. That way, we can find the best match for the foster parents. Foster parents in Nebraska go through about 30 hours of pre-service training, and they go through background checks and also a home-study process. And that is all to complete the foster-care licensing process. And so we get to know those families. They’re in our office 10 weeks for that pre-service training. And then we're in the home several times to complete the home-study process. And at the end of training, we always ask the family, “What kind of issues in a child are you willing to serve, will you accept into your home?” And so we ask about, like, age and gender and behaviors and diagnosis and past experiences.

So without getting into too many details, Brianna was the girl that I was interviewing that day, and she experienced quite a bit of trauma in her short 18-year life. And the bottom line is that her mom was unable to take care of her because of addiction to drugs. She’s actually never met her dad. She was in a long-term foster home with her half sister, and she was supposed to be adopted, but instead, her half sister got adopted, but Brianna went to a different foster home. And unfortunately, it wasn't just one foster home, but there were many foster homes. And then she also went to shelters and group homes and residential treatment centers as well. And then, at this point in time, she was quickly nearing the point of becoming a far-too-common statistic, those that age out of foster care. Most of those youth end up homeless and trafficked or even dead. And that isn't even addressing academics.

One of the things that we've learned in the past few years is that kids that move from place to place, especially outside of their home school district, it sits them back about a year academically. And so with all the placements that I talked about that Brianna had experienced, you can just imagine how far she was. And I was taking her to school one morning, and she asked me a question. She said, “How do you spell Katelyn?” And I was like, “Well, there's several ways to spell it, Brianna. Why do you want to know?” And she said, “Well, that's my middle name. I don't know how to spell my middle name.” Anyways, she had to overcome a lot of challenges that she was facing.

And, you know, there's this statistic that says that each year, 27,000 of those youth will age out of foster care with no permanent family. And so Brianna was about to turn 18 with no real good options. And so I had to do something, right?

Al: Yeah.

Ryan: So I went back to the office, I looked over a list of our foster homes, and ultimately, I found a great fit, which happened to be with my wife and I. So we took Brianna into our home. And at that time, we had three biological kids and two other teenaged foster children living with us. And we kind of saw our job as somewhat simple. We wanted Brianna to know that there's a family that cares about her. We want to help her finish high school, and we also want to help her get a job and learn independent living skills, all in about a year, because in Nebraska, the age of majority is 19.

So, was Brianna the best kid ever, like she claimed she was going to be? No. But she did finish high school, she got a job, and she learned some independent living skills. So I consider that a success.

Al: Yeah. Fantastic.

Ryan: And then there was another family that kind of came to mind. We placed a young child into foster care a few years ago, and he was removed from his home because of neglect. Both the parents had some physical disabilities, and they were actually homeless, and they had multiple mental-health diagnoses. And when the child was in placement, they have monthly family team meetings. And when those monthly team meetings first started, Dad was really overwhelmed at what was being asked of him, and he actually stormed out of every single monthly meeting, and he was very angry. After about nine months, the meetings were still not going well, and Dad would still leave the meetings angry. And at that point in time, he really hadn't made any progress on his case goals. And that made reunification unlikely, unless something changed very quickly.

Shortly after this point, Mom and Dad did start attending weekly counseling sessions, which were a part of the case plan. So he’s starting to work on one of those goals. And one of the main focuses were on his anger issues. And one of the things we saw is at the next family team meeting, there were some positive changes, and Dad ended up making it through the whole meeting without leaving. But they were still far from meeting the other case goals. And when child-welfare cases are open for a year, a concurrent plan starts. And reunification is still possible, but at that point in time, the caseworker’s looking for a permanent option in case those goals aren't met.

So it was at this point in time that the biological family actually reached out to a local church. They had attended a couple of community events at this church in the past few years, and they realized, they acknowledged, that their situation was pretty desperate. So in addition to receiving that mental-health counseling, they also started receiving pastoral counseling. And the family actually asked the pastor to start attending the family team meetings so that way he could help them make some progress on their goals, to, hopefully, help achieve reunification.

And the transformation that we saw was actually really amazing. First, they acknowledged their need for help in all the areas of their life. The pastor and also a small group at their church were willing to step into a very messy situation. And they loved them, and they served them, and they supported that family. And then they were receiving counseling as well as other professional family support. But that pastor stepped up and helped this family in their time of need.

It took another year to get everything in place, but the family found a home to live in, Dad had a job to provide for the family, and now they had a church home, who was providing the needed support so that the reunification could happen. And we were just praising God, number one, for the pastor, but also for the church that wrapped around that family. And then we were praising God just for the changed hearts and lives of this family.

Al: Yeah. Changed hearts is really the key, isn't it. That's fantastic. Thanks, Ryan. Yeah, two great stories. Wow.

Someone once gave me an unforgettable life truth with the words nothing works until you do. And I kind of like that saying, nothing works until you do. I can only imagine the depth of the quality of work required every day to help these children and their families begin again and to navigate life to experience God's best. So, Ryan, when you became the CEO of Compass—well, actually, co-founder—what was the condition of your workplace culture? What was working, especially as you began to work with us, and what wasn't working so well?

Ryan: Yeah. So, when I co-founded Compass just over 14 years ago, I was actually the only employee for a while, but in just the first few—

Al: It was a pretty good place to work, then, is what you’re telling me.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. It was probably the best place to work in all of our area of our state, for sure. But for the first few years, it was just myself and the other co-founder. He started a few months after I did. But ultimately, it was quite an interesting set up, setting up the nonprofit from scratch. We didn't really have any legal representatives. We wanted to do it cheap. But once we started hiring, we were about four years in, and we actually went from two employees to 14 almost overnight.

Long story, but the child-welfare system in Nebraska kind of blew up, and we were kind of thrust into a situation where we could help provide some services to families. And so as we fast forward a few months, we're up to 21 employees. So you can imagine that was a huge learning curve, and there were so much that we didn't know, but ultimately, we figured it out together.

A few years later, we're up to 40 staff. And at that time, we kept hearing from our staff, “You know, Compass isn't what it used to be,” and there was definitely some disappointment with their comments. And the problem was that we were so focused on the day-to-day operation that I couldn't necessarily tell you the difference between how things used to be and how they were currently.

Al: Right.

Ryan: But we eventually got to a point where we felt that we were just putting out fires and always being reactive. But what we wanted to get to was a point so that way we could turn a corner and be proactive and then work on the strategy for the future. So we ultimately needed to make some changes to our organizational chart and then starting it to set us up for success.

Al: Wow. So from two to 40 employees in a short period of time. And again, you're focused on the day to day, you're focused on getting an organization starting, you're focused on serving the needs of kids and their families, and boom, there you are. So as things went along, you and your senior team made a decision at some point to do something about your culture. You know, how would you summarize that thought process, and what did you choose to do as a team?

Ryan: Well, I mentioned restructuring. Part of that process involves several things. One of the things that we did was create a senior leadership team, and we wanted to meet regularly so that way it would help move the organization forward.

One of the things that we became aware of was an operating system for nonprofits and small businesses called EOS, or entrepreneurial operating system. That helped us dig into our mission, our vision, our core values, and really determine what was important to us as an organization. We had all those things in place, but ultimately, one of the things in our core values is it was just in a handbook, and we went through it at our orientation time, but that's as far as we went. We really wanted our core values not to be aspirational, but to be core to who we were. And we wanted to hire, fire, recognize and reward employees based on our core values.

So, the other thing that we did was created one-year goals, and also, what would things look like in three years, but then also kind of a long-term target for us to create that strategic plan. So the other thing that we needed to do was to be able to communicate to all of our staff where we were going. So, you know, we could be on the same page, and we could all be going in the same direction.

So as part of the EOS process, we started having an all-staff quarterly. We called them state of the organization meetings. That's where we highlighted what we accomplished as a team the last 90 days and then what we were prioritizing for the next 90 days. And then, we also did a one-on-one quarterly meeting with all of our direct reports so that way we could go over those 90-day rocs. And then we also talked to them about our core values, reminded them of those. And then we talked about the direct reports, three to five roles specifically in their seat or position that they had. And then we wanted to evaluate every quarter if the employee gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to accomplish what we're asking of them.

The other thing that we realized is that we needed to establish a baseline so that way we can measure our health and culture at Compass. And I actually heard about BCWI at the Global Leadership Summit several years ago. And once I looked up more information about BCWI, I realized that that was going to be the perfect thing to help us establish that baseline. And after our first Survey and after we debriefed with Cary Humphries, I knew that was exactly what we needed.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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The first step to begin the journey is our well-known Employee Engagement Survey. This proven online tool pinpoints where your organization is already strong and where you can improve your employees’ workplace experience, resulting in more productive people. That's right. You'll have more engaged, productive, and fulfilled people. Time-consuming guesswork won't get you there. Instead, let us help you with a fact-based, hope-inspiring action plan that only our Employee Engagement Survey and skillful coaching can provide. Sign up now to begin the journey to build a flourishing workplace culture and a thriving organization. Find out more at bcwinstitute.org.

Al: And now, back to today’s special guest.

So, EOS has been kind of your mode of operation, probably for the last year or so, would you say?

Ryan: It's actually been the last three years.

Al: Three years, wow.

Ryan: Yeah. But that in tandem with BCWI, I would say, is the most important thing of our 14-year history is implementing both of those.

Al: Yeah. We know exactly what you're talking about. It's interesting, Ryan, in the last couple of podcasts, they've both been using EOS and how that's really a system that has gone broadly.

Ryan: Yeah.

Al: And we're using it ourselves, so I know exactly what you're saying.

Ryan: Yeah.

Al: Well, let's talk about the Best Christian Workplace Survey. The results of your first Survey showed you had a fairly healthy workplace culture, so you really started off at a good place at 413, for many of our listeners that know what that means. So in your mind, as CEO, what was the biggest benefit of surveying your employees’ engagement levels for the first time?

Ryan: Well, as I said earlier, we as a leadership team, we were excited about BCWI, but we were also nervous about what it might uncover for the very first time. We were looking for some baseline data to help us measure how we were doing. And after we surveyed that first time, we're so glad that we did. You know, we were a little surprised that our rating was healthy, because we actually had a department that had recently gone through some struggles, and we brought somebody in from the outside to help lead that team, and we were kind of unsure as far as what things would look like. But Cary really helped us dive into that data and helped us to understand what our people were saying, and they gave us ideas on how to make our workplace even better. So no longer was it just opinions or anecdotal stories, but we had data to extract and understand and build upon, and Cary helped us in such a great way to be able to understand it for the first time. And it really felt like we had discovered something, like the lost city of Atlantis. You know, that awe of discovery was really overwhelming, but it was also super helpful for us.

Al: Yeah. It's really interesting how over and over I hear the same response of now we know what to work on and even the priority of how we can work on it rather than just guessing that, well, I've heard this or that from a couple of people, and, you know, really what people are saying about how they’re feeling.

Ryan: Yeah.

Al: Yeah.

Which leads to the next question of one leader in this organization surveys annually says either we can rely on guesswork or we can actually trust and build on objective facts where our culture is. So tell us a story about how your workplace culture then improved after that first Survey.

Ryan: Well, over the past few years, since we started surveying with BCWI, we've implemented a few things that I think really have made a difference to our employees. We started a focus group, and this is a group of employees from all departments of Compass, to talk about kind of what's working and what's not working. And then, we gave them a platform to talk to leadership team about what they've talked about, on how to make Compass the best place to work in our area. So the focus group, not only do they meet on a regular basis, but they also help us organize special quarterly employee events and activities.

So a couple of months ago, we did a Bob Ross painting party, where we had everybody have paint and something to paint on, and then we watched a Bob Ross YouTube video. And it was just, it was really engaging, and our staff that participated in it really loved it. And some employees have amazing artistic skills and some of them don't, but all of them had such a great time. We've also done pumpkin-carving contests and also food contests, and then we award employees on that. And those things, like, it actually costs very little, but it has reaped a benefit, a ton.

And the other thing that we've started doing is I mentioned that we have those all-staff quarterly gatherings, and we've started awarding several staff quarterly, that have demonstrated our core values and staff who have gone above and beyond. We want to celebrate and reward what's important to us at Compass. So every quarter our meeting is uplifting, and it's inspiring, and it's a celebration of what God has done through our employees.

Al: Oh, that’s great.

So, Bob Ross painting video, I can only—I don't know who that is or I can only imagine. So it's on YouTube? And it shows you how to paint? And so you can—

Ryan: Yes. So, you don’t know who Bob Ross is?

Al: No, I don’t know.

Ryan: Okay. So, he’s really a cultural phenomenon, a cultural icon. I don't think he's living anymore. But he just—he obviously creates some pretty amazing paintings, but he does it in such a fun way. And so you have to YouTube a Bob Ross painting video, and you'll understand in a short time what we mean by he's a cultural icon, and he makes painting fun. So you've got to try it, Al.

Al: Sounds like fun. That’s great.

Well, while the COVID vaccine has been spreading nationwide, and so to speak, no ministry organization, no church, no Christian-led organization or company has been immune from this pandemic. You haven't either. So where has your culture felt most vulnerable during the pandemic, and so how have you responded to it?

Ryan: Well, our main source of revenue for Compass are actually through contracts with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. And in February of 2020—so right before COVID became such a huge deal in March time frame—a new director was appointed by the governor, and she came from another state. So not only was she getting accustomed to a new job and a new place, but she was immediately thrusted into those constant issues that COVID has brought us. And there were so many unknowns early on and how her decisions might affect how we directly care for children and families.

But then in April and May of 2020, it was decided that we would move all services virtually. And so we provided a lot of face-to-face, supervised visits with families as well as family support and also direct support to foster-care families and foster kids. So that was kind of a big shift. So for those two months, if you can imagine, an 18-month-old and a two-year-old child, that they're in a foster home, but then they're trying to have a FaceTime chat with their mom, you can just imagine how difficult that it would be to engage them in relationally meaningful connection for very long. So not only was it hard on the kids, but it was hard on the parents. It was hard on the foster parents, and it was hard on the Compass staff who was monitoring those visitations, those contacts. It was hard on the caseworkers. And so because of this shift, we actually saw an 85 to 90 percent drop in the time that we are providing those services.

And so, as you can imagine, it caused an immediate anxiety come across our staff. So how could they, number one, engage the parent on the other end of the video or a phone call? How could they engage the child to interact with their parent? And so how is this going to affect the reporting, and how is it going to affect the case and the ability for parents to reunify with their kids? And how could the family accomplish their case goals and help move the family forward? But then also, how is it going to affect our employees’ paychecks? You know, there were so many questions, and we realized that we were facing a real challenge. And so some of the questions that we were asking as a leadership team, should we look at furloughing our staff? If so, how many staff should we keep on board? If we keep everybody, how do we pay them? Or maybe it would be better for them to collect unemployment and then bring them back when things were to turned around. And would things really turn around? So many questions.

But to wrap it up a little bit, we were able to negotiate an emergency contract change so that way it would pay service providers differently so that way we could do everything that we could do to help children and families, even if it didn't look the same as what it did before. We also got a PPP loan, and we also got a stabilization grant through the Cares Act. So we made a commitment to all of our staff that we would pay them at the hours and at the rate that they were projected to get if there was no pandemic going on. So our staff didn't have to go for weeks without just 10 percent of their paycheck. We were committed to take care of our people, and I think that spoke volumes.

Al: Yeah. That's great. It's during times like this, we're all challenged as leaders, aren't we. And I've been wondering. So would you be willing to share with us? So what have you been learning as a believer, as a follower of Jesus, and as a leader in this turbulent time?

Ryan: Yeah. Well, with all the unknowns that are going on in the world, I knew that I had to turn to something or someone who is constant, and that person was Jesus Christ. He's given us His Word to help us understand who He is and how He works in the world. At church, the last quarter of last year, we read through the New Testament, using a Bible-reading plan. And to me, that was so encouraging and refreshing just to read the whole New Testament in its entirety with my church family.

And I knew at the beginning of this year, of 2021, I wanted to continue reading the scripture as a whole, so I started a reading plan. I hadn't read through the Bible in a year. It's been a while. So I wanted to read it, and I wanted to read it chronologically. So I downloaded a podcast called The Bible Recap by D-Group, and it helps us read a portion of scripture for the day, and then the podcast helps us unpack what we just read. And, again, it's just been so refreshing just to learn new things every time I read the Bible. The podcast really helps us get through, especially Leviticus and Deuteronomy that so many people struggle with getting through when they're reading through the Bible.

But then as far as growing as a leader, I never want to stop learning and growing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I've made a commitment this year that I want to regularly reach out to other leaders and seek to learn from them. There are so many areas, personally and professionally, that I need to grow in. And I've also listened to podcasts this past year, more than all the other years of my life. But the other commitment that I've made is I want to help others in my sphere of influence grow in their leadership as well. So I don't want to just take in information, but I want to help others grow. And so that starts with my family and my work coworkers and my church family. And so those are the commitments that I have.

Al: Yeah, great. Help others grow and to be grounded in the Word at the same time. Fantastic.

Ryan: Yeah.

Al: I've got to ask, what's one area or challenge, perhaps even an opportunity, at Compass that our BCW team and those listening can pray about? Do you have anything you want to share with us?

Ryan: Yeah. Well, thanks for asking that, Al. And to give a little bit of context to what my prayer request is, at Compass we have what we call the beyond 2030 vision, and that's our core target of where we want to go. So we want to go beyond the need, beyond just the need for foster and adoptive parents. So we want to go beyond the demand for services in our areas for children and families. We also want to go beyond the challenges that are facing our staff. And we realize that it's going to take just beyond us. So we want to make connections with the churches in our area, and the community, to help us accomplish those things. But in order to accomplish those things, we realize it's going to take radical steps of faith by everybody at Compass, and it's also going to take radical generosity from all of our partners and stakeholders in our work.

It's so easy when we accomplish something big or maybe receive a large donation or a large grant to say something like, “Look what I did,” or “Look what we did,” and sometimes we take our eyes off of Christ. And we see in the Gospels what happened to Peter when he took his eyes off of Christ. When Jesus asked him to step off that boat, look what happened. He started sinking. So I guess my prayer request is just to pray against the pride that can easily sneak in and take our eyes off the Savior.

Our staff are doing great things, and I really believe that our impact to children and families are going to multiply over the next 10 years. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that Jesus gave us what we needed, everything we needed—the grace, the patience, the love, the strength—to get us there. And it's because of Him that we might see this success that we're hoping for.

Now, I do want to clarify something. I'm not saying that we shouldn’t celebrate. We should celebrate when there's a win for our organization, and we should celebrate when an employee is modeling our core values, and we should celebrate together and celebrate often. But that would be my prayer request is just against that pride that can easily sneak in.

Al: Yeah. Great. Well, Ryan, this has really been a great conversation, and I've really enjoyed everything we've learned. There was a 19-year-old named Brianna, whose life has been changed as a result of your work and the work of your organization. And also, think about the way you've used EOS. Of course, you grew rapidly, and you were looking for a way of, okay, how can we effectively operate this organization? And you've worked with this operating system along with getting data, getting information, that can help you with your culture. And that's something we can all learn from. We at the Best Christian Workplaces survey our culture every year, and I know what every leader thinks about as they wonder, well, what are those results going to be? And how you have a focus group. And so this sounds like a group that meets regularly and how they work and engage with your leadership team. And they, then, also come up with some fun ideas on how to bring people together, including this painting video and giving everybody a chance to paint and show off their work and to celebrate it regardless of how good it is, right?

Ryan: Yep, yep. Absolutely.

Al: But then, the way you've walked through this pandemic journey and how you were committed to your staff, and I know that just builds trust and enables you to really work together to go faster as you seek your ten-year goals. But also, again, in times of challenge, I think you're a great example to really dig into the Word of God, to focus on your own quiet time, and then also to focus on helping others and to seek out other leaders, to help them grow and to grow yourself in that process.

So it's just been a great conversation. But I bet you've got something that you'd like to add that we haven't talked about yet.

Ryan: Sure, Al. You know, I just want to encourage the listeners to today's podcast to be as flexible as possible. And I know the larger that an organization is, sometimes it's harder to be agile or flexible. But there are so many things that are outside of our control for our organizations, companies, churches, and sometimes it takes a pivot or a mind shift to make things work that didn't work previously.

For several years after we started Compass, we knew that we needed to get others involved in our work. We needed foster parents, and we needed adoptive parents. We needed volunteers and employees. We needed donors to fund our work. And we found ourselves constantly going to individuals, businesses, and churches, and asking them to give to our work in some way. But a few years ago, after some times of prayer and a leadership retreat, we realized something. What if we could lead in our community by serving? What if we went to churches and instead of asking them for something, what if we asked the question, What can we do for you? How can we serve you? How can we add value to you as a pastor, as a church?

And it was at that point in time that we actually started getting more calls from pastors. Sometimes they were dealing with difficult family situations in their church. They were asking us how to get involved with meeting needs in our community, but they just didn't know how to get started. So some of the things that we've done is create a church tool kit that we've made available to our local churches. And we've helped train church volunteers on how to work with kids with extensive trauma history. And we've partnered with churches to help meet physical, tangible needs in our community. And that's led to meaningful connections with people who aren't attending churches on Sundays. And so it's been amazing just how that mind shift happened for us. And we've actually had more individuals, churches, and businesses reaching out to help us guide, build, and restore those children and families than we ever did before.

Al: Wow. That's great.

And how about, I bet you've got one final thought you'd like to leave with our leaders, our listeners, that are listening.

Ryan: Yeah, you bet. Well, I heard this quote the other day. It's from Bishop W.C. Martin, and he says, “We must do everything we can to preserve the family.” You know, God is all about redeeming and restoring. His design is for families to be together. But in reality, the child-welfare system is needed. But the church is also desperately needed to get involved in this work. We can't just leave it to the government. The government is a terrible parent. But these kids are God's kids. And so even in the midst of a broken system, Bishop W.C. Martin also said, “Don't give up. Don't throw in the towel, because there's a child that needs your help.” Children and families need you, need every one of us, to get involved in some way. Jason Johnson said a quote that we use all the time at Compass. He said, “Not everybody's called to do the same thing, but most certainly everyone can do something.” And so I really encourage everybody to do the work of exploring what God wants you to do and just do it.

Al: Preserve the family. Gosh, there’s real truth there. Thanks.

Ryan Stanton, chief executive officer for Compass in Kearney, Nebraska, thanks for being so open and genuine about the things that really matter and the things we've talked about. I really sense your integrity, commitment, and I appreciate your devotion and desire to seek the Word of God and serve our loving God and Savior. So, yeah, thanks for your time, and thanks for taking time out today to speak to so many of our listeners who are leading organizations much like yours.

Ryan: Thank you, Al. I appreciate everything you guys are doing at BCWI to support organizations, churches, and businesses. And it was great to talk to you today.

Al: Appreciate it.

Outro: Thank you for joining us on the Flourishing Culture Podcast and for investing this time in your workplace culture. If there's a specific insight, story, or action step you've enjoyed, please share it with others so they can benefit, too. Please share this podcast with friends on social media, and show your support by rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen.

This program is copyrighted by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. All rights reserved. Our writer is Mark Cutshall. Our social-media and marketing manager is Solape Osoba.

Remember, a healthy workplace culture drives greater impact and growth for your organization. We'll see you again soon on the Flourishing Culture Podcast.