E134: Quality Improvement for Society with Dr. Yvonne Howze

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In this episode, I share an interview with Dr. Yvonne Howze from December 2025. She specializes in Personal Mastery Leadership along with Organizational and Operational Excellence. She shares her remarkable journey from kindergarten lessons to becoming a nationally recognized leader in education, quality, and nonprofit improvement.

With professional experiences spanning education, healthcare, transportation, and major corporations, she describes herself as a lifelong learner driven by a passion for helping organizations excel. Her early experiences serving on multiple nonprofit boards revealed a major gap: organizations were tracking participation but not success. That insight led her to launch her consulting business, CYA (Cover Your Assets) focused on evaluation, leadership, and performance excellence.

Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes systems thinking, leadership development, and practical quality tools that nonprofits and government agencies often overlook. She highlights the importance of training nonprofit boards (not just staff) in data literacy, strategic planning, and continuous improvement. She also shares memorable examples, such as Disney’s approach to creating “delight,” and explains how tools like SWOT, Pareto charts, nominal group technique, and mind mapping can transform organizational culture.

Listen to the podcast on this page, download it on your favorite podcast player (search “Lean Six Sigma for Good”) or watch the entire interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQxZQE9UJEY

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Have you ordered the book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 2)?” The book is made up of 8 chapters written about experiences from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners, to give you tips and tricks to help you work with nonprofits in your area. All proceeds donated to charity. Now available in audiobook as of Feb 2024. You can also order Volume 1 released in 2019.

Transcript
Note: may contain typos and errors, generated with AI

Brion

Okay, thanks everyone for joining. I’ve got Yvonne Howze here with me today. Thanks for joining the podcast with me. I wanted to talk to you about your work with nonprofits and how you’ve helped them improve and your journey with work and tying it to nonprofit work. So if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got kind of started in your work career, that’d be great.

Yvonne

Okay, I thought about that question, and it began with Ms. Mumford’s kindergarten. Ms. Mumford played the piano with two fingers, but she sang, you know, she belted out, you know, her songs every day, and she had our kindergarten rocking. So that was a very fun experience. And they say everything you need to know you know, about life you learn in kindergarten. So what I learned was a lot from her that I should have a song in my heart every day, that I should eat my vegetables, which I didn’t do. And I never got a chance to go to recess because she would line us up at the door and make us hold our hands out. And then she would look in our hands and she would say, okay, You don’t have enough pink in your hands, so you have to go back and eat your vegetables. So I never got a chance to go to recess. Okay. Wow. Yeah. So that made me very studious over the years. You know, like, I’m never going to get a chance to play. I’ve just worked all my life. So I learned that in kindergarten. Then my mother passed away when I was five. So my father and my grandmother raised me, and that was an education in and of itself. And then went off to high school, of course, and then I went to college. So from a formal education standpoint, I got my undergraduate degree in English at Talladega College, which is the sister college to Tuskegee, because most people know Tuskegee, but not Talladega. And then I got my master’s in education at UAB. with emphasis in special education. And then I got my doctorate at Vanderbilt University, and that was also in education. But over the years, I’ve done stints at MIT, I’ve done stints at University of Maryland, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So I have always been inspired by education. So I’m a lifelong learner. And that is what I’ve learned and taken into nonprofit sector with me is how do I help a nonprofit be the best it can be? So I was married to a chemical engineer who could do data analysis and statistical process control on peas. And so I became interested in the American Society of Quality and Control. That’s how long ago it used to be. It’s now. And then I became interested in the Balrich. And now it’s it was called the Balrich National Quality Award. And now it’s called the Balrich performance excellence criteria, framework and criteria, I think is how they named it now. Okay. So I’ve been heavily involved in this whole quality movement for a long, long time. When I was invited to join boards, and I joined three at one time, I was on three boards at one time, and I was chairperson of two of those. And I would say, I guess the experience for me was a great one, but it also led me to think, what do I need to do or what can I do to make this situation better? Because every board meeting, I didn’t care which one I was on, when the staff came in and made a presentation, they always wanted more, but they couldn’t tell you what they had used, the other money that you have provided or the other approvals that you had agreed to, they had no way to tell you how successful they were or unsuccessful they were. And so I started my company as a result of that. And the name of my company is CYA, Cover Your Assets.

Brion

That’s great.

Yvonne

Because I was very much into evaluation at that time, you know, we weren’t using quality, we’re using quality tools, but most of it was through an evaluation process for a nonprofit, which was quite different than what you’d see in manufacturing, for example. But that’s kind of my history and background. I’m a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow. I mean, I’ve done a lot of stuff, Society Research Fellow. I mean, a lot of those things are important for my career path, but as it relates to my nonprofit work. What I found was having an experience as a board member and as chairman of boards. led to my interest in leadership, and I have maintained that interest over the years. So that’s kind of a I mean, that’s a quick. That’s not a quick and dirty, but that’s that’s how it has flowed.

Brion

Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s really interesting how you landed in Asq. What was the training that you were doing in education? Were you teaching classes? Were you administration?

Yvonne

Yeah, I was in all of that. I started there. I started in education. And yes, I started as a classroom teacher and then went to a principal, went to superintendent, and then I left education and went into health care and then relocated to another state. ended up in healthcare, headed up the Center for Health Statistics and Vital Statistics Bureau for the state of Texas, and then left there and went to the Texas Department of Transportation. So all of the things that I was doing, I was doing this master, what I declared myself as a master trainer. Other people are using that term now, which is so comical. I remember this guy calling me and saying, How did you become a master trainer? I said, I just gave myself a name. Yes, it’s self-appointed. But other people are using it, which is kind of cool, you know, like you’re a pace setter, you know?

Brion

Right.

Yvonne

But yeah, that started out as a teacher and then over the years became more active in quality. I did a two year stint at Anheuser-Busch Corporation. You know, I’ve just done a lot of things. It’s hard for me to just put it altogether in perspective but yeah I I don’t know lifelong learner that’s yeah well.

Brion

I think that gives you a lot of different perspectives yeah both Consulting and working in different sectors I mean you talked about healthcare education nonprofits I mean those are the big areas that you know we’re looking to bring these tools and skills into those fields and I I know they have some things like that in place but it doesn’t seem like it’s as mature as maybe other larger companies and organizations and some of the for-profit sectors.

Yvonne

Yeah, government really is an area that I think could be expanded. Yeah. Well, okay, so I served on these three boards, right? And one of them was looking at employment of youth. Okay. And we were doing what we thought was a great job, but we were only looking at the numbers. How many people participated in our program? You know, we weren’t looking at, you know, how successful they were, how long term their assignments were. Did they have problems with their supervisor? We weren’t tracking anything other than we had this group of people, we have some demographic data. And that’s all we needed. That was how we saw it, right? When I got, okay, so that’s a nonprofit kind of mindset. Like if you’re producing the numbers and you can show back to, as most of the nonprofits, nonprofits have grants, either state, federal, or local grants. And so at one time, all they were doing was tracking how many people participated. You know, but then it got to the point where I was saying as a board member, you know, so what? And, you know, of course, everybody would look at me like I was cross-eyed. But I couldn’t fathom how much money we were spending only for you to tell me how many people participated in the program with no success measures. no indicators of anything of any kind. So that’s what we start putting in place, looking at, you know, length of employment, you know, interactions with peers, you know, we don’t track any of that stuff. And that’s what makes a successful job. So the the board in a lot of the nonprofits don’t have an understanding about that data collection, that need for speed, that need for precision, they don’t get that. So if we’re starting in the arena, in the nonprofit arena, and we’re only looking at your managers and your frontline staff, it’s not gonna be as successful as if you can get your board trained up, skilled, upskilled, although I hate that word, but anyway, if you can get them, to increase their knowledge, you know, which is a Deming thing, then you can get them to support the initiatives that the, the staff are trying to, to take, you know, take to the next level. So I always say to people, you know, I’m big in leadership. So if we can go back and look at your governing structure within the nonprofit sector, then you can potentially have a better outcome than if we just take, let’s say, a Lean Six Sigma into the operation and say, okay, I think you could do this if you collect this data or if you did it up. If you start with that board, you’re going to have a better outcome, I think. But that’s the nonprofit. In the government sector, you’ve got usually a deputy or a commissioner or something like that. They’ve got to be trained up too. You know, and so when I went into the Department of Transportation and to the Department of State Health Services, that’s the first thing I did was train my staff on, you know, how do you team, how do you get together and create a charter, you know, and how do you use a SWOT analysis? How do you use Pareto data? I mean, all of those things, and we don’t, that was non, that was unheard of. When I walked through the door and that was first in 2012 was in state health services, they were like, what is she talking about? You know, so, but every single person, and I trained over 400 people in those, in those agencies or more, I’m pretty sure it’s more, every single person whose love I touched that way got an advance of some kind, either a promotion, uh, increase in pay. They, some of them started their own business. So if you can get people to buy into not just mapping it out, but also tracking it so that you can see what the return on your investment is, then I think we get better traction. and we get better results from people, and then they see the long-term benefits. So if I go back to some of the people that I’ve coached, mentored, trained, they’re in top level positions now, and I’m looking at the LinkedIn and I’m like, oh, go, girl. So I said, this is my mentee. This is my cog. Oh, right. Okay, I’m good with that. So anyway, that’s more than you. Wanted to know, I’m sure.

Brion

No, that’s exactly what I wanted to know. Yeah. So you’re explaining that, you know, we think of those maybe not even as that analytical of tools, but it’s more team building and problem solving and maybe just some basic data like Pareto charts and things like that process map, you know, how to work together and a charter and put together, you know, follow templates. When you’re going through and defining a problem, clearly, you know, those aren’t seemed as very exciting tools to learn, but they are so powerful and helpful, especially for organizations that don’t have that structure or use those tools very often.

Yvonne

Right. Yeah. Sprint Corporation, let’s take them. They use a SWOT. Okay, for a week, they get in the trenches and look at their squat for a week. I couldn’t believe it. And as a result, now they are for profit, of course, but that’s the kind of mentality that we have and kind of the excitement that we’ve got to create with the nonprofit arena, you know, where you don’t have to be in there a week, but you do need to take, you know, a pulse check of how the organization is going. And what we typically have is we overwhelm people with the agenda. So when the board meets, for example, they’ve already got a board packet. Can you imagine? You got a big old thick packet that you got to be prepared to talk about in the meeting. Nobody’s paying attention to that. We all know the attention span of the person– I mean, this is research from long ago– is that person’s age in minutes plus one minute. So if you have some 35 year olds sitting there, you know, you lost them after 36 minutes. If you have, and then people take issue with, well, what about a board member that’s 75 or whatever, you know, are they going to last 76 minutes? No, because they have to go to the restroom. I mean, come on. But you’re going to have complex sense when you’re dealing with governing boards anyway. And there’s a lot that they can make happen within those nonprofits, but they need some direction, they need some help, and they need some training, and they need some tools. we talk about the seven quality tools, and they’re great, but do I really want to learn how to do a fishbone? Do I even know what a fish bone is? Yes, I get that from Captain D’s. That’s how they would see it. Of course, you’re in Florida like I am, so we know seafood very well. You know what I’m saying? But you go in and you say, well, let me teach you a fish bone to the average board member. They’re like, what’s a fish bone?

Brion

But yeah, it’s so helpful. And to know that that’s what they’re going to expect from their staff and, you know, directors that where is your fishbone and where is your Pareto? And how did you get to this answer? Because I, I think that’s, you know, people are going to come up with answers no matter what approach they take. But the being able to go back and say, show us the logic on how you got here with the data or the interviews or the survey results or something that’s guiding them so that we We know that this is going to result in something positive. And if we don’t have that data or the information or interviews or observations to go with it, then we’re just guessing and that’s not very good. That’s right.

Yvonne

No, I’m very much a proponent of the systems thinking process. In fact, I wrote a book about it in the Companion Handbook because What I was finding was we’re trying to do things piecemeal. We’ll just do bite-sized pieces of things, and then we go on to the next thing. But if you can get people to start thinking, the executive director of a nonprofit, for example, to start thinking holistically using a systems thinking process, not breakthrough, ’cause you know, technology’s out there is gonna, you know, you break it, you fix it very fast, not design, where you’re only looking at your customers and their feedback, even though that’s important. But looking at your entire organization and looking at it from the standpoint of the leadership, standpoint of planning and strategy, standpoint of teaming and valuing of your customers and your employees, standpoint of data collection analysis and that whole continuous improvement process. Project management is critical. Process improvement is critical. They don’t know how to flowchart. They don’t, I mean, I could go down that whole list and so you’d be, So your executive director has to, there it goes again, upskill in order to be that liaison between the board and their staff. And so that’s an entry point also. You know, it’s like in a school. I was just telling somebody the other day, you want a job in a school, you can go through the state’s application process, but you better go down there and talk to that principal that’s running the school that you want to work in because that’s where the decision is going to be made. So we’ve got a lot of work that we could do to try and up people’s skill sets. They can know where they stand. So when the data comes in, you know, not only do you have to collect the data, you’ve got to analyze that data and you’ve got to use it for decision making and you got to use it for improvement processes. And if they don’t know how to not only collect it, but analyze it and use it for information, you’ve wasted a whole bunch of time.

Brion

Yep. That’s right. It is a lot of wasted time collecting information that’s not used.

Yvonne

You’re right.

Brion

That’s as bad as not collecting it at all. It’s better not to collect it in some cases.

Yvonne

Yeah. And speaking of waste, in nonprofits, this is the other thing. I think we have a wonderful opportunity to get them to understand those eight types of waste. But at the same time, the ones that are the most important are redoing work. You got to go back and redo something. You’ve got errors and defects and you got to redo it. The time, the money that takes, the resources that uses and consumes, That’s crazy. And then waiting, you know, like in healthcare, if you’ve got a nonprofit healthcare arena, I mean, in every situation, whether it’s private or profit, not private or nonprofit, if you’ve got a patient waiting, that’s waste. Reducing errors and wasting time, you know, those are my two favorites out of the eight types of waste. But there’s so much we could do. There’s so much we could do just to increase their understanding of how they could make a difference with some of the smaller things, not the major mega kinds of things we do in quality, but just some of the smaller things, you know, bite sized pieces of things that they could do, I think would make a difference.

Brion

On your systems thinking book. So how, and I’ll link up to that in the show notes for people to check that out, because I think that would be really good.

Yvonne

Oh, cool.

Brion

How did you like evaluate an organization around their approach? Is it like an assessment or were you utilizing some framework? I know you were starting probably before there was Baldridge, but or were you using something like that to help assess that?

Yvonne

Yeah, I created my own systems thinking framework. Okay, and it includes those four things that I mentioned. leadership being number one, which parallels to both the American Society of Quality’s personal, I think they call it personal learning, as well as to leadership category one in the barrage. Because you know, the barrage has those seven categories. Okay. Well, my model, leadership and followership, because we forget that there are people who are great followers. Okay. And They don’t want to be in a leadership role as we think about it, but they also have to realize that that’s a very fluid spot to be in because the leadership is driven by your mostly by the situation at hand. So sometimes you need to be a follower. Sometimes you have to take the leadership role. So if the fire alarm goes off, you’re not going to sit there and ask somebody, should I leave the room? No, you’re going to get out of the room. That’s a leadership role. So that first focus area is what I call my framework, is leadership followership. The second is strategic planning. Even though Vorage is now, they used to have strategic planning, but they changed it to strategy now, and it’s gone through several iterations. It’s been planning and strategy, it’s been strategic planning or whatever. I’ve stayed with strategic planning because in the organizational work that I do now, That’s the term that they most understand. And it’s easier to get them to do a PDSA, for example, you know, plan it out, study, I mean, do it on a small scale, study results, and then act so they can reduce this chaos because everybody wants to take off and do something without planning it. They don’t think about where they are in their current situation. They don’t think about establishing some preliminary goals. they don’t think about setting that strategic direction. So that’s my second focus group is strategic planning, focus areas, strategic planning. The third is, like I said before, teaming and valuing of employees and customers or patients or whatever stakeholders. And that’s where I teach. Like when I do the instructional pieces of it, that’s where I teach. How you how do you team? How do you create a team charter? How do you evaluate that team’s work? That’s a good one. And what are the roles and responsibilities of the people on the team? All of this stuff has to be clarified. You can’t just limp along. Same thing with your patients. You can engage them in teaming. You can use surveys to get feedback there. You can get focus groups. You can get interviews, questionnaires. You’ve got all kinds of things that you can use to determine whether or not sure Customers are happy, your employees are happy or satisfied or whatever. But I like the word delight, Brian. You know, satisfaction is not good enough for me. I like delight, you know, and I guess that’s because I’m a Mickey Mouse fan, you know? And so, you know, it’s not just on with the show, as Mickey would say, but also how do we have fun, you know, and how do we encourage other people to engage in such a way they enjoy being in the position that they’re in and the work that they’re doing. Okay, so that’s that whole thing. So employee recognition and appreciation is all part of that teaming process or teaming and valuing of people. And then finally, the continuous improvement, data collection analysis, project management, and then your process improvement. That’s how my thing is set up. Now, under the Baldridge, you’ve got categories four and six that look at results. And you’ve got category three, I believe now that’s human resources and category five. No, category three is customer and category five is resources. So it’s similar in the sense, but at the same time, it’s not as cumbersome per se. And I can simplify it through the training and people really get it. They can wrap their minds around the concepts and they’re not lost, you know, trying to answer a question because that’s mostly what borrowage is. It’s non-prescriptive. It’s ask questions and you’re expected to have a response to those questions if you’re going to apply for the award, which is all about improvement anyway. So yeah, but mine is more, you know, let’s do some fun stuff to get you to understand what it takes to run this organization and get the data that you need. about your clients or your patients and your employees that are going to make a difference and create change, not just for the sake of change, but change that’s going to be meaningful.

Brion

So did you design this for specific types of organizations or any organization?

Yvonne

You can use it for anybody.

Brion

Yeah.

Yvonne

Yeah. So the books are systems thinking model for the education and training of performance excellence. It’s a long title. And then there’s the Tools Companion Handbook that goes with it. And then I just recently wrote a book on leadership. It’s called Is Leadership Stupid? And it’s been gaining quite a bit of traction. It’s a fun read, though. The others are more academic and more intellectual. This latest one is just about my childhood through adulthood and the experiences that I had becoming a leader. You know, when I was planning to run away from home and my grandmother said, none of that stuff belongs to you. So now she’s gonna make those clothes on your back don’t belong to you. Oh, okay. I don’t think I want to run away from home nude, you know? Yeah, but it’s a fun read, so.

Brion

Yeah, that sounds good too. I’ll put that in there too.

Speaking of delighters, this came up the other day. That’s why I’m asking. How does that connect with like an improvement program and having systems thinking and alignment to strategy and planning and all these elements? How can an organization tie all that together? Because, yeah, I think a lot of the improvement work is is more about meeting the customer needs, right? Like we’re lacking in somewhere, we need to get to that minimum level or get to that, the threshold that they’re expecting, like, and usually it’s not like exceeding that. And so I think that could be a missing part is that we’re not shooting for the lighter status with the customers, we’re just trying to get to a point where they’re not upset or frustrated with us. And so I don’t know if that Yeah. Your thoughts on that?

Yvonne

Okay. Well, the thing that comes to mind, because you’re, again, you’re in Florida. So, you know, we know that Orlando is, you know, the home of the mouse. That’s the house of the mouse, right?

Brion

Yeah.

Yvonne

Okay. So you ever been to, um, to the house of the mouse? You ever been to?

Brion

I have.

Yvonne

Okay. All right. So the example that I would get, give you about becoming delighted, uh, and that we can, what Disney calls case copy and steal everything is if you’ve ever been on the Tower of Terror. Okay, so there’s a ride and or in the part called the Tower of Terror. And the Tower of Terror is where you go up and, you know, then it drops you really quickly, right? But before you get on that ride, there’s a kiosk there where people’s pictures are coming down, where the camera snapped at that drop. So your hair is standing on your head, your eyes are popping out, you know, and you want to get your picture off of that kiosk as fast as you can. So. You go up and you do your ride, they snap your picture and oh my goodness, and you look like you just came, stuck your finger in the electric socket. And so, but what Disney does, it’s very clever. Okay, so they, they say in order for you to get that picture, you gotta pay $35, right? Okay, so now, because you want that picture because you don’t want anybody else to see it, so you pay that $35. And then you go. out the park and you’re getting ready to go out the park and you see this t-shirt or sweatshirt that says, I survived the Tower of Terror. Gotta have one, right? Got to have one. So now you spent $50 on the sweatshirt or whatever, $35 on the picture and you get outside and you can’t find your car. Okay, so what happens? You’re out there and a little question mark comes over the top of your head and this little trolley comes along and the guy says, may I help you? And you say, I can’t. And he says, find your car. You say, yes. He says, well, when did you come into the park? I got there, oh, I got there about 10 o’clock. Okay. So he goes to his computer, he pulls up the screen, he says, your car’s parked on row I or J. hop on and I’ll take you there. Now, that’s delight. Because if you had come out of this and you had spent $85 and you come out and you can’t find your car, what are you going to remember? You’re going to remember how hard it was for you to find your car. Disney parts cars all over the place. They don’t have time to have you being mad at them. They want you to have a delightful experience. So they put everything in place. There’s an article that I read years ago called The Experience Economy. And it’s from the Harvard Business Review. I can’t remember who the author is right now, but it’s a wonderful example of how do you create delight. you know, give the patient, give the customer, give the employee a delightful experience, and therefore it will be memorable. And you can always return to that. And people will always return to you because loyalty, you know, we don’t a lot of times check our loyalty managers, but repeat business, you know, if, if somebody wanted to use, let’s say in this employment situation, returns after they’ve been, you know, successful for a couple of years or whatever, and they come back to you as a non in within your nonprofit profit sector, then you that’s a that’s a win for you. So yeah, they were delighted. They enjoyed it. They want to return to you. So we shouldn’t just be collecting satisfaction data. We need to be collecting loyalty data as well. And we need to be looking at how can we make it a delightful experience. no matter what the situation is and no matter which organization it is. So that’s more than you wanted to know. I know.

Brion

No, not at all. That’s great. I think that’s, you know, tracking the right things. Like you said, maybe it’s return guests or loyalty or something like that, that gets at a different type of thing than just visitors, right? Right. Just counting. number of people, but that could be for many different reasons. But if they’re not coming back, that’s pretty insightful. And so, yeah, I think being able to think about like, what is our real goal and can we measure that somehow, at least an indicator that would point to we’re going in the right direction?

Yvonne

Right. And you can always ask your, your, your clients or your customers, your patients, You know, I love focus groups. I wrote an article about that for ASQ. Focus groups is a qualitative, I consider it a qualitative measure that you can use or a process that you can use. And it’s about the questions that you ask. Okay, so if you spend some time in the trenches, really coming up with seven to nine good questions. then you can get some good information. And you can also repeat, have repeat groups, which gives you more people. So even though you might run a survey and your return on that survey is 20%, if you have seven to nine or seven or eight people in a group and you run that group four times, you know, now you’re looking at 32 potential pieces of data that you can use to make decisions about what worked, what didn’t work. And we don’t We don’t ask that question, what didn’t work? We don’t wanna know, you know? But if we start looking at what didn’t work and then talk about how we can improve that and what opportunities have we missed, then I think we have a better conversation. It becomes more of a scholarly conversation as opposed to, oh, we’re doing great work, you know? But we never ask any question, what didn’t work? What could we have improved on? You know, the biggest room in the world. This is my theory. The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.

Brion

I like it. Yeah, I think that’s the, you know, the mindset that a lot of organizations struggle with is connecting like problems and making it seem like that’s negative reflection of the organization or that they’re going to get reflected on negatively if we talk about the opportunities or the improvements or the problems that are happening. But without that, you’re not focusing on the right things and you can come up with new programs and initiatives and marketing and stuff, but people get frustrated with the problems, right? And that’s a deterrent. And so if they can look at it more as an opportunity, as potential improvements to make things better, to meet their goals and mission work like, and it’s not a negative, it’s everyone’s got problems. The best companies in the world, Toyota is the model.

Yvonne

You’re right.

Brion

How to do improvement. They’ve got problems every day that they deal with. So like, no one’s perfect. But I think there’s a fear that still shows up in some of these sectors and organizations that they’ll have to get over in order to move in that direction.

Yvonne

I remember going into a job. I, you know, I always, whenever I go into a job, I always convene a, what would you call it?

Brion

A listening session or something?

Yvonne

Well, yeah, it’s every employee though. Yeah, every employee. And they have to, in one situation, I had them write down, you know, ways that needed to be improved. Okay? And you could not leave the auditorium. You couldn’t leave the area. I would stand at the door and they would have, in order to get out of the auditorium, you had to hand me at least one thing on a post-it note, right? Yeah. So you collect that data and you look at it and you know what it showed? Out of the 312 people and their feedback, the number one concern was there was no water in the staff canteen. That was the number one concern, right? I was a hero of a night. I was a hero. I can get water in here. That’s not that hard. You know what I’m saying? But you gotta ask the question. You have to ask the question. How can we improve it? If you never ask the question, you don’t, you don’t really. I just did a nominal group technique with, with an executive team. I think they had like 160 ways. And that’s always my question. How can we improve your organization? And I think they had like 162 ways to improve. But if I never asked the question, they never even thought about it before. They just were clicking along, you know, happy go lucky. But when they really started getting attrition, number one, of course, like most organizations, is a lack of communication. That was number one. So then we know we need to that’s an area we need to work on. How do we get people to work together in teams so that they’re communicating, so they’re collaborating, so they’re cooperating, you know, but you don’t ask. So, you know, people are angry about things and nobody’s even asked them. You know, what’s upsetting to you today? What is stressing you out today? Nobody’s asking the questions. And then people have their lips poked out, as my grandmother would say, or they’re rolling their eyes, as my father would say. And, you know, And we’re just going along, you know, pretending that everything’s fine. And it’s really not. So yeah, we got a lot of work.

Brion

We have a lot of room for improvement. Yeah. Yes, watch. On the nominal group techniques. I don’t think I’ve talked about that much. So I’m assuming you’re doing a ranking with different weighted criteria. Can you talk through that tool and why you chose that?

Yvonne

Oh, sure. Okay. So the nominal group technique is a brainstorming technique. Brainstorming comes from Stufflebeam from years ago, maybe even in the fifties. But anyway, the nominal group technique and the reason they call it nominal is because you’re numbering things. Okay. So once you go around like a round robin, each person can offer their idea. Or if you get to a person who doesn’t have one, you just pass. They just say pass and go to the next person. So the idea would be is to get to at least 26 ideas because that’s when, you know, the first 26 are supposed to be just kind of routine. But once you get to number 26 and go to number 27, then you get more creative and more innovative thoughts and ideas and you see it happen, you know, so you have to be a really good facilitator to push it. So I usually try and push it at least another 26, right? But once they get, like if you got eight, nine, 12 people, once they get going, you know, you don’t want to stifle that innovation. So you could go probably, I guess the highest I’ve ever been is like 170 something, but you can really push that. So the ideas are there. You go back, you start at number one and whatever that is, let’s say lack of communication was number one. And then you look on that whole list of ideas that relate to that number one. So people say, you know, people aren’t talking, you know, it may be something as simple as that or, yeah, they’re not reading their emails or whatever it is. So anything related to communication, you make that the point of tracking the rest of the things that are in the list. related to communication, and you just mark that each one of them has a number. So now you just mark through that, not that particular statement and take that number and put it up by #1. So let’s say #11 said, people don’t talk. Okay, so you mark out people don’t talk, you put #11 up. And so what you start to see is about 7 or 8 categories that develop, you know, and so First you do the numbering, then you do the prioritization or the categorizing, put ’em into categories. And then you do like, I do a gallery walk, which is where you list the top seven to eight categories. And then, you know, you can do an affinity diagram where you put the little dots, but you can’t let other people see what other people are putting up there. So you turn it around, you know, turn the flip chart around, let’s say, And then people give people the dots and they go up and they pick their top three. And then these are the things that the top five are the ones that you want to work on for the organization. It’s a pretty cool tool. I really like it. I use it a lot. I’ve used it with boards and it works very well with nonprofit boards. They really like the excitement of it because they get a chance to have input, which a lot of times the boards are never asked to join into the organization’s you know, operations. And so that’s problematic. But I’ve also used it with frontline staff. So it can be used with any segment. Yeah.

Brion

I think that’s nice is because there’s a lot of things that are complicated and you don’t have all the data to be able to just look at the numbers and say, we’re going to solve this one problem because it’s the biggest one, right? So I do like the ability to bring in everybody’s views and perspectives and thoughts around importance. And, there’s a lot of knowledge that’s not captured in data. So it helps, I think, pull out those key things when they’re voting. It’s like all that knowledge and information experience is all coming to the front when they’re doing that voting, which hopefully gets people to say, yeah, those are pretty important. And #2 and #4 were the ones I voted for. So I’m excited for this move, this initiative to begin because they could see how their problems were being reflected and part of the solution that’s going forward. So yeah, I think it’s a good tool.

Yvonne

Well, the other thing that happens that I do after it is I turn it into what I call a GPS, greatness positioning strategy. and it’s 18 months okay so the goals that they identified are those categories are now their top goals okay and the activities or the things that they suggested um become part of the strategies okay and then we create metrics how are we going to measure these strategies so now you’ve got an 18 month Uh, if you look at the PDSA cycle, using it that way, you’ve planned it out. You’re going to try it out for 18 months before you act, you know, and study it. Well, try it out for 18 months, study the results and then act. Okay. And then that prepares you to have a three to five year strategic plan. See, most people just want to hop to the strategic plan. But for me, it means having that piece in there that gives them allow allows them to have trial and error to collect some data to analyze. Are these the appropriate metrics? Do we need to add some other things? Can we use success indicators that don’t have a rank or a rate or a number or a percentage? Are there other things we could be using that would also indicate success and better results for us? So that’s why I like the nominal group because I can turn it into this 18 month GPS. This is what it’s called.

Brion

Yeah, I like that.

Yvonne

And organizations like it too, because now they have a working document and you can put your teams in place using it. And then they can have, you know, feedback about whether it’s working or whether it’s not working and what other things are possible. So it’s a pretty cool tool.

Brion

And so after 18 months, they’re starting to now reflect back. So would it be like every couple of years they would go through this exercise and reassess now where we’re at? Or is it like after the end of 18 months, you’d come back with that nominal group?

Yvonne

Well, you start around 15 months, three months out, you know, before you get to that 18 months. And then you’re, you know, that’s when you get in the trenches and start thinking about where you where you’ve been and where you want to go now. But at that point I would switch to a SWAT. That’s what I do. I mean, I’ve got other tools. I use the idea map. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. I see, that’s the other thing. We’ve got a lot of tools that are out there that are also creative. You got the six thinking hats out there, you got the idea map out there, mind mapping. One of the practices that I use is something called a reflective practice. So I’ve learned over the years that there are so many tools that are available that you can pick from. Like I was picking on the fishbone, but I had a staff member, that’s the only tool she would use. That was her favorite go-to. you know, and I have other people who really liked, uh, the burrito. Like I got a guy that I trained years ago. He, that’s the only tool that he really likes, you know? Uh, and he’s all the way in Indiana now, and he’s a top level executive in EPA. I mean, so, you know, people have their favorites. My favorite is the idea map, but okay.

Brion

Can you explain that one for everyone?

Yvonne

Oh, the idea map, you know, you know it. Uh, it’s nothing but mind mapping. It comes from Tony Bouzon from the 1950s. which is where you put the little circle in the middle and then you bubble out. So if you wanted to start a restaurant, for example, you’d put restaurant in the in the middle bubble and then you’d ask yourself what else needs to be considered to start this restaurant. So you’d have a bubble for menu, you know, and on that bubble, you might have Italian, Southern fried, whatever, and then you’d have location as a bubble. downtown, uptown, around town, whatever. And then you have dollars, of course, because you got to have a license, you got to pay a payroll. And so the idea, Matt, is just that. It’s just to generate ideas. It’s a mind dump. It doesn’t mean that you have to solve anything, but ultimately, you come back with some things that you can do. So yeah, that’s my. But you got computers that’ll do that now. You got software that’ll do it for you, but I’d still do mine hard copy.

Brion

Yeah, I think it’s the engagement with everybody and building the conversations and capturing it and showing the connection. But yeah, it’s the exercise going through those that helps you decide what to do next, whether it’s directly from the map or the tool you use, but it’s at least creating a framework for discussion Because I think a lot of these tools are really good at. And it’s almost like it doesn’t matter what tool you pick, as long as it’s something related that’s going to help you have those conversations. And I try to remind people, it’s not about the tool. It’s the tool is a way to help you get to something. And we need to use tools just because it gives us guidance versus just allowing someone to dominate the conversation or having it disorganized or not having a voice for everybody. So yeah, it’s more just, let’s pick a tool to use for this conversation. And it may not be the right one exactly, but it’s probably better than if we didn’t use something. So I think that’s great for people to learn some of these different techniques to try out. And they’re not too difficult, right? practice them or do them once. Even if you mess up, it’s still going to probably result in a good outcome.

Yvonne

Yeah, exactly.

Brion

I think encouraging people to build confidence to say, let’s try a tool. Let’s try the fishbone. I’ve never done one, but let’s give it a try. I’m sure it’ll be okay. Can’t screw it up too much.

Yvonne

It’s hard to screw them up. Yeah, you have to try them out. Yes. And see, and like I said, people have favorites, you know, they learn over time to have favorites. So Anyway.

Brion

That’s good. Any other suggestions or thoughts for people getting into, let’s say, nonprofit or government agencies. You know. Any lessons learned or things you’d give to people that with some background and improvement, or interested in learning more about improvement to that that could help these organizations do better and get more accomplished?

Yvonne

Oh, that’s a tough one. But the thing that comes to mind comes from John Connor. And he didn’t say it exactly like this, I don’t think, but this is how I’ve interpreted it. Never get seduced by your track record. Just because it worked one time doesn’t mean it’s going to work next time. So don’t get seduced. Don’t get. A friend of mine asked me one time, well, he is actually my accountability coach. We meet on the weekends sometimes. So he asked me, he was talking about pathways and he says, So what pathway of advice would you give younger people? No, no, follow the yellow brick road. But after I got off the phone with him, I was thinking, you know, that wasn’t a bad suggestion, you know, and I’ll use it here. You got to have a heart, okay? You know, you got to be in trenches and understanding what’s important to people. You got to have that heart, okay? So you got to care, I guess is bottom line. You got to think. Okay, so you need your brain. And I tell people this, you know, you need to read because, you know, reading is not just fundamental. reading will provide you with information that perhaps other people don’t have. Because a lot of people have abandoned reading, you know, they’re just doing everything, audio, listening, and that’s great. That’s a great tool as well. But you also need to sometimes just pick up a book and read it. Okay. And everything you want to know about leadership, about quality, about performance excellence, it’s in a book. Yeah. And then the courage to act. So we got a heart, you got the brain, you got to have the courage. Because even if you come up with something that you want to take further, you got to have the courage to really stand firm in that and be totally convinced that and have faith that it’s going to work. So perseverance is something that I learned. I tell people all the time, they roll their eyes at me, speaking of rolling eyes, I said, the only characteristic I guess I should call it that or attribute. I don’t know which it is that a leader needs to have is perseverance. Cause it’s like your kid. I don’t know if you have kids, but like if you say to, um, your child, you know, your child says, will you take me to McDonald’s? And you say, yes, you’re going to McDonald’s. I don’t care if you go home, take, put on your pajamas. That child’s going to come in there and say, you said you were going to take me to McDonald’s. And they’re going to stand there until you get up in your pajamas and go to McDonald’s because you promised. And that’s what we do in quality. We promise and then we have to deliver. That’s what, that’s the advice that I would give. You persevere, you act, you have the courage, you think, you do all those things, you read, persevering, but you gotta prom, if you promise, you gotta deliver, you know, because if you don’t deliver, you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose people and they won’t, you’re gonna, your reputation’s at stake. You know, so if you deliver promise. So those are the kinds of things I would never give up, you know. Oh, you know what? There is one thing in my book that if people get this last one is honoring your dash. Are you familiar with that? The dash? Okay, it’s from your birth to your death. It’s your legacy. There’s a dash from 19, whatever you were born to 19, whatever you were born, honoring your dash, give it purpose, fill it with love, appreciation, you know, all those things. What are you doing with your dash? And of all things I do with mine is have fun. So that’s what I would say to people. If it’s not fun, you don’t want to be engaged in it. You want to have a good experience. So.

Brion

And it could be fun. Yeah, we should make it fun. to get people engaged and more interested in improvement when they feel like it’s not a chore or a bad thing or a. Yeah, we could definitely use help on making that more fun. That would help.

Yvonne

Yes. Okay.

Brion

Those are great. I like the Wizard of Oz analogy. It’s a good one to think about. Yeah.

Yvonne

Yeah. All right. Well, I don’t know. I thought of it. I don’t know why I said it that day, but since that time I’ve come back and really kind of rationalized it, I guess. Yeah.

Brion

Yeah, I think it’s being able to speak up and talk about problems and be persistent to be able to follow up. I know that’s been something I think I’ve done well is, hey, where are you at? Let’s keep it going. I know you’re stuck. I know it’s frustrating. I know you got a lot of stuff on your plate. Let’s keep going. Don’t forget about that. Let’s finish that project up. I want you to get certified. I want you to get that problem solved and get people saying, thank you for reminding me. Thanks for following up. Thanks for getting me back on track. Right. It’s there’s so many things we can get distracted with. So it sometimes just needs that persistent kind of chip away at it. You’ll get there, keep going. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get to the end. But it’s easy to want to start something new because it’s fresh and exciting. But the hard part is really sticking with it.

Yvonne

Yeah, it sure is.

Brion

Well, great. This is wonderful. I’ve already got an hour going, so it goes fast.

Yvonne

Okay. So you just go fast. Well, I hope it will help, you know, and people get a better understand a little bit more about the nonprofit sector. And in terms of me, I’m I’m doing profit work right now, for-profit work right now. I’m not really engaged in the nonprofit arena, but if people have questions or need to talk or, you know.

Brion

Yeah, what are some of the things you’re offering right now? Is it like your systems thinking assessments or is it training?

Yvonne

If people want to take the Gallup assessment for StrengthsFinders, I can certainly work with them and interpret that information for them so that they look at their top five talents, for example, because I believe, and it’s the Gallup philosophy, that you focus on the things you’re good at. You know, don’t spend a whole bunch of time on trying to do things that you’re deficient at because you’re never going to get better at those. But if you take that same amount of time and energy to propel yourself to look at the things that you are good at, you’re going to get better at those. So, you know, the Gallup assessment, if somebody wants to take it and then contact me and I can interpret what it means, that’d be fine. I do offer executive coaching. I use. I only take 3 clients a year, though. And right now I I have one opening coming up in 2026. I do do the performance training. I haven’t done a virtual But if people wanted me to do that, I could certainly do that. I don’t know. I just have a lot of stuff. You know, I got books, I got T-shirts, I got all kinds of things. Because leadership, you know, like I said, my focus is leadership and it’s hard work. You know, it is really hard work. But if you don’t have it, you can’t get good data. Okay. And you certainly can’t get to excellence. Okay. So you got to have it. And in the nonprofit arena, you’re going to start looking closer at what we’re doing with the boards, because I think that can affect a lot of changes that would be necessary. So that’s kind of where I am. So.

Brion

And how can people get ahold of you if they want to reach out?

Yvonne

It’s my first name, my last name, no dot, no space, at Bell, B-E-L-L, south.net. And then I’m on LinkedIn. Uh, under my name.

Brion

Uh, I’m into that too.

Yvonne

Yeah. And then I have the website, the CYA website, you know, cover your assets website.

Brion

Do you spell out like that or how do you, what’s the call?

Yvonne

CYA consulting group.com.

Brion

Okay.

Yvonne

Um, I was going to tell you that my, um, my company is named after my grandsons, Christopher and Andrew. c y a okay and money so that’s great I know you wouldn’t know that information right you would not be able to get through the weekend without knowing that right?

Brion

What else does it mean what’s the hidden meaning yeah yeah all

Yvonne

right well thank you.

Brion

I appreciate it yeah it was fun talking to you and yeah hopefully we’ll connect up again somehow.

Yvonne

Okay well let me know all right have.

Brion

A great weekend bye bye

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