How can we balance performance and purpose to sustain growth? Well, look no further than a successful non-profit for the answer to that! And while your organization may sell anything from software to shoes to services, you can indeed leverage a clear, co-created purpose to ignite performance. And you can embrace empathy for employees or customers who are nothing like you in order to do it.
Today, Shilpa Alva shares the powerful childhood experiences that led her to this work, with a stopover in corporate America, where the skills she learned now serve her very well in the non-profit world. We discuss what her shift from corporate culture to the non-profit world was like, and how she balances mission with results, like 70% growth! She talks about values versus process and why values light the fire, so your people will achieve results. Shilpa shares how they co-create solutions with local partners, gathering input from everyone to get the most impactful ideas, and offers a great model for clearly communicating back those final decisions to increase buy-in.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- We are all part of a shared humanity and are way more alike than different. Exposure to different perspectives can help build your empathy muscle.
- Partner with the community, don’t just assume you know what is best for the community.
- The organization and structure that got you to where you are today is not going to be the same one that gets you to your wildest, most audacious goals.
- Bring all stakeholders in your ecosystem together in the vision to make your goals a reality.
“You keep your values and your foundation strong so that it doesn’t shift. But then you use those values to guide you in achieving your goals.” — Shilpa Alva
Episode References:
- Joy McBrien of Fair Anita
- The Empathy Edge podcast: Heather Hiscox: The Surprising Empathy Gap in Social Impact That Hinders Change
About Shilpa Alva, Founder & Executive Director, Surge for Water
Shilpa Alva is the founder and Executive Director of Surge for Water, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the cycle of poverty through access to safe water and sanitation solutions. Since its founding 15 years ago, Surge has impacted hundreds of thousands of people in 12 countries. Shilpa’s journey didn’t start in the International Nonprofit world. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University with a Chemical Engineering degree, she joined the corporate world and earned her MBA from the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota. After a successful corporate career in Supply Chain Management, she made the bold choice to follow her purpose and live fully in alignment with it. She went from running the organization on nights and weekends to going all the way in!
Connect with Shilpa Alva
Surge for Water: surgeforwater.org
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shilpa-alva-858b841
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books
Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. How can we balance performance and purpose to sustain growth? Well, look no further than a successful nonprofit for the answer to that. And while your organization may sell anything from software to shoes to services, you can indeed leverage a clear co created purpose to ignite performance and you can embrace empathy for employees or customers who are nothing like you in order to do it, my guest today is Shilpa Alva, the founder and executive director for surge for water, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the cycle of poverty through access to safe water and sanitation solutions since its founding 15 years ago, surge has impacted hundreds of 1000s of people in 12 countries. Shilpas journey didn’t start in the international nonprofit world. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University with a chemical engineering degree, she joined the corporate world and earned her MBA from the Carlson School of the University of Minnesota. After a successful corporate career in supply chain management, she made the bold choice to follow her purpose and live fully in alignment with it. She went from running the organization on nights and weekends to going all the way in today, Shilpa shares the powerful childhood experiences that led her to this work with a stopover in corporate America, where the skills she learned now serve her very well. In the nonprofit world, we discuss what her shift from corporate culture to nonprofit was like, and how she balances mission with results, like 70% growth. She talks about values versus process and why values light the fire so your people can achieve results. Shilpa shares how they co create solutions with local partners, gathering input from everyone to get the most impactful ideas, and offers you a great model for clearly communicating back those final decisions to increase buy in so many insights and parallels today, take a listen. Welcome Shilpa to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to hear all about your story and your nonprofit and the work that you’re doing for women and people around the world. So welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Maria. So before we dive in to the conversation today, let’s talk a little bit about your story and how you got here. I know you made a jump from corporate to nonprofit work, and we’re going to get into all the juicy details of that later, but tell us how you got here and what was your inspiration for starting surge for water.
Shilpa Alva 03:23
So Maria, the story for me starts all the way when I was like seven years old, and I grew up in Dubai, and for daycare, my parents would send me and my sister to India to basically be with extended family for the summer. So not everyday daycare, but the summer breaks, and from a very young age, like as early as seven years old, I remember recognizing injustices, like seeing poverty around me, seeing children my age without the clothes I had, or, you know, begging on the streets, and just a lot of like, vivid images of how that was different from the life that I was leading and we were middle class, but still it was quite a big difference. And at that very young age, I recognized that there was a need in the world and that I was privileged. However, a seven year old can process that right, that there was that difference. So fast forward, right? I just continue to be a child and do the things that child does. Fast Forward, when I was at university, going age, I moved to the United States, went to University in Baltimore, and during that time, while I was in university, that seven year old child kept coming back up into like, hey, like, you need to do more for people. And I was always drawn to, I’d say, international development work because of my childhood experiences, spending every summer in India growing up. And it was in my junior year that I decided to do what a lot of college kids, I think, do, and especially back then, was volunteer for like, a summer in a very tiny village, Rajgir in India. And it was on that trip where I was there thinking I was. Were going to be teaching like English and math and science, which I did, it was like a scholarship from my university. It was STEM related, and English was the bonus thing thrown in. And while I was there, I recognized very early on that my students wouldn’t show up to class, almost always related to a water situation. They were either sick from a water related illness, or it was a farming community. So we had situations where, if it was their farm stone, a family stone, to get water from these tankers that the government would bring around, everyone would stay home in that village to help with whatever duties were related to that water supply. And while I thought at that time that I was, like, passionate about education, which I still am. I care deeply about the right to education. I recognized that that was not possible if you had basic needs unmet, such as water and sanitation. So that’s sort of like the spark started when I was seven, and grew a little bit bolder when I was in my, you know, sort of college years, and then I continued to continue life the way, you know, a college kid does. I came back, I graduated, I went into the corporate world, which I know we’re gonna possibly talk about a bit more later, but that was the original, like starting of search. Search didn’t start until, you know, years later after that, when I finally was able to put this like Spark into reality. But for me, it was always about this childhood, like realization and like listening to that at different stages in my life, and for it to keep
Maria Ross 06:30
coming back. So you built up your skill sets. You built up your talents in corporate world, and then it sounds like you took those talents now to create something sustainable and sort of an infrastructure around being able to solve these problems. How did that happen? Was it something you were doing on the side as you were still working in corporate, and then you decided to go all in, like, how did the shift happen? And then in a little bit, I want to talk to you about the stark differences between those worlds. Yeah,
Shilpa Alva 06:59
yeah. You know, in retrospect, when I look at it, it’s like the perfect formula. I have an engineering background, by the way, it’s, I can’t help doing these balances. But, you know, I saw a need, I was privileged, and now I’m building the skills and the network, and you put it all together, and you have this recipe to start something right? It just depends on what it is. I thought I was ignoring this child and this fire within me, well, it was still a flame, then a little bit of spark even. But in retrospect, like in hindsight, it really was the path I needed to be on, because I needed to build that network. I needed to build those skills, even the engineering background, the business skills. I was managing a global supply chain. So like the working with international governments and, you know, just different cultures. So all of those spaces came together. I’d say that the final transition happened when I could no longer ignore what I like to just call, like, my calling, right? Like the purpose. When you’re in tune to that and it’s starts getting louder, there are ways to silence it, but you’re not living in peace with yourself, right? If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. And I just say that that got louder Now, having said that, I definitely try to silence it. I definitely try to do it in different ways. So when I first started surge for six years, I ran it nights and weekends. I was too afraid to go into it full time. I mean, I just started something. I didn’t know what was going to be. And I also want you to know that was going to be something I wanted to do full time, right? I was just a volunteer hobby sort of thing. It turned into something else. But, yeah, while I was doing that simultaneously, what happened was, as I spend more time the communities that we work in, my passion just started getting bolder, right? That flame started to become a full on fire within me. And while I was good at my corporate job and actually quite passionate about that too, at some stage, it was reducing, right? And I just knew that the energies weren’t aligned, and couldn’t do both because of, like, the differences in how I felt within each space, and I just wasn’t showing off, like, fully. And I had to make that decision eventually. Yeah.
Maria Ross 09:12
I mean, it’s so interesting to me, you know, you talk about not realizing that even when you sort of thought you were ignoring the flame, you weren’t, because you were actually building the skills you needed to be able to have more of a amplified impact when you were ready to jump into it. And you’re reminding me of a woman I interviewed for my previous empathy book, the empathy edge. Her name is Joy McBrien, and she started a company called fair Anita, which is about creating opportunities for women and girls in third world countries and and providing goods and services and jewelry and artisan crafts, but not but actually to level them up, not necessarily like poor quality goods, like helping them up level the quality of their goods so they could sell them to an audience that needed it, and that was not going to buy from them solely for pity. But was going to buy it because it was beautiful, and it was handcrafted, and it was well made, right? And she spent many years where, when she went back to school, she felt guilty about she couldn’t let go of the people she had met South America. And, you know, she came to the realization that where I can do the most good is to do this at scale, like, instead of going back to help that one person, I’m actually going to be, it’s going to be a better use of my talents and time to create something that can help even more people. That sounds like you sort of came to that realization too absolutely and she was building the skills that she needed in order to run a social, you know, a social venture. So I love that. So tell us what I mean when we talk about empathy, right? Like your work is all about empathy. So the first question I want to ask is from the perspective of running a nonprofit, and I want to say this because it’s so important for many leaders to try to grasp when you are serving a population, when you’re serving an audience that you can’t necessarily relate to, right? It’s easy to be empathetic with someone who’s just like me, right? Because I can kind of we’re at some similar level. We have some similarities. But even leaders who are leading people they don’t understand. Maybe it’s a cisgender leader leading a transgender person, maybe it’s, you know, a white leader leading a black or brown person. The experiences are not the same, and especially if you look at customer bases that they’re serving. So how do you tap into empathy for a population that you serve or a group that you lead when you are not like them? What are some of the ways that you have made sure that you’re still in lockstep and alignment with the people that you serve and the people that you lead?
Shilpa Alva 11:41
Yeah, my response here might be a bit controversial, Maria, but I’m gonna go with it. Go with it. I kind of feel like that. You know, I’m an immigrant in the US, right? And I do think this is a very individualistic society, so I’m gonna say that. So for me, that question is very hard, because I come from a society where people don’t need to be like you to care for it, because we don’t think that way, like it’s not it’s a very foreign concept for me. So it’s just so natural and so innate. I’m really it’s a struggle for me to think about that, because just culturally and like my blood, right, is, in a way, where you think about community, and when you think about community, it’s for me, I think now, just the experiences of like living in different places, like having moved here at a college, going age, grown up in Dubai, spending time in India, now, spending time in all those communities, if we’re looking for people who are just like us, I think that’s hard. But if we can go beyond that surface, right beyond the skin color, beyond you know, yeah, what we are, where we are, in a socioeconomic status and all of that, like, who are we at the end of the day? Right? We’re just human beings who have the same hopes and desires, right? If you’re a mother, what do you want from your for your child? And that’s guaranteed, very similar from what a Ugandan mom in a very small, remote village that’s underserved, and Uganda would want for her child, right? So if we’re looking for similarities, there are way more that are there if we look beyond the surface, because, yeah, children want to go to school, get an education, or find ways to get out of school and go hang out with their friends, that’s
Maria Ross 13:18
universal, exactly,
Shilpa Alva 13:19
right? Right? So there’s so many common themes among who we are as a shared humanity, and that is like the way I think we I would encourage people who have not grown up with the background I’ve had to think about right, like stop looking at the differences. If the way to connect is our commonality, then what’s deeper, what’s beyond the five layers of like, what you see as a person and what’s within that, right? Yeah, I love
Maria Ross 13:47
that. Yeah, it’s true. And I also think, you know, you and, I mean, I have a similar background, it’s we’ve had more exposure to different types of people. And I think that’s really, you know, that’s why representation is so important to me, because when you see something different or someone different, you understand that there’s more out there than what’s in your own little tiny part of the world. And it doesn’t necessarily make you automatically empathetic. You know that’s still a muscle that you need to build, but it’s you have a better understanding that like, Oh, I get it. Not everyone is like me. Now, whether you tap into being able to connect and engage across those differences is something else entirely. But I think a lot of the challenges, and I’ll just say it in our country, is that there’s pockets of people in our country that don’t experience anything else, they don’t know anything else, they’re not exposed to anything else. And this is why books and films and documentaries and music and travel and food are so important, because just to acknowledge that there’s difference, and difference isn’t bad, it’s just different. So it sounds to me, if I can paraphrase, it sounds to me like that exposure to difference, that mindset. Set of difference is something that helps you connect with people, regardless of socioeconomic differences, regardless of where they are in the world. It’s just being able to understand them. And then do you do a lot of work within the organization around sitting down and talking with the people that you’re serving? Like, what are their thoughts and their fears and their hopes and like, how much time does the organization spend on actually getting the insights from the people that you’re serving?
Shilpa Alva 15:24
Yeah, so everything that we do is community owned. So it’s not just led by the community, but it’s full ownership. And what that means is in we’re currently Serge is currently working in Uganda, Haiti and Indonesia, very remote, rural, hard to reach underserved communities in these places, and all the work is implemented by local leaders from those communities, and they are deeply integrated into the community. So they understand, like everything that happens there. They understand the political systems. They understand the challenges, the unique challenges, Nuance challenges with the woman, the men, the children and so and all of our solutions are based on a response to a community need, which means the community is physically usually coming up to, you know, our local offices, our local partner offices, demonstrating a need. We are talking to that. And I’ll also add that our work, even though it’s like water, sanitation, hygiene, it’s that’s just the beginning. It’s really to serve a larger community that, like, drives improvements in education and income now, right? So you have to understand, like, what that like pulse is, of like community doing, and as an outsider, I would not be able to do that like no matter what, no matter how many times I visit. Of course, I’m talking to them when I’m there. But the relationship happens from local to local. Right, right? Local Community Leader talking to their people, from our program officers, you know, from those places. And that’s, I think, the true, like, essence of how we do our
Maria Ross 17:00
work. Well, I think that’s a great model, regardless of your if you’re a nonprofit or a for profit, is what I hear you saying, is giving people the tools and empowering them to give you the feedback. And that requires empathy. That requires leaders and people in the organization to say, I gonna put my ego aside. I don’t know what’s best for you. You need to tell me what’s best for you, and then we can partner with rather than us doing for you. And I know I’m trying to think about which episode it was, and I’ll put it in the show notes when I can remember, but I’ve spoken to quite a few social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders, and that is always the theme over and over again, is the most successful ones are the ones that don’t come at it. Of we know what’s best for you, it’s partnering with the community, and that, again, is empathy. That’s about listening to another perspective and not I know what you need. It’s no I need to be open and flexible and empathetic enough to listen. You tell me what you need, and we’ll find a way to get there together. Because it never works when you try to do it as something for someone. That’s why so many community initiatives fail, because they’re from these very well intentioned people that think they know the neighborhood, think they know the community. And like, from what I see, what you need is this, rather than asking
Shilpa Alva 18:16
them, yeah, absolutely. And I’d say, I’d add to that, it’s also putting your ego aside, right? Because there are so many situations where I don’t necessarily agree with what the solution is being that’s being proposed, but we have to go with what the leaders want, right, unless right something really wrong with it from a technical standpoint, but right, you’re not always going to agree like, you’re going to have to defer to local wisdom, to community wisdom if you truly want to do this in the right way, and you learn together, right? But right things happen, and that also strengthens empathy, right? Maria, like, as you do those things, you put yourself out of your comfort zone. You’re listening to something, you’re leaning into something that you would not normally have done. It’s exposing you to a different way of thinking. Right is also another tool. Right continues to get built, because even if I say I naturally grew up with empathy, keep building on it. I liked your your reference to to being a muscle that you need to like, keep strengthening. And this has other ways to do it right, right comfort zone, to trust, strengthen relationships
Maria Ross 19:23
well, and that idea of of having those diverse points of view. I’ve talked about this on other episodes before, the reason why companies that continue to invest in diversity, equity, inclusion belonging is there’s a good business case for that when you make better business decisions, when you have people with different perspectives looking at the challenges in a different way, because I might not see the opportunity or the risk that you see because you’re local to that community, or you know that audience, or you know, in a corporate setting, you work in that department, right? I need those multiple points of view to make sure that we’re not missing. Opportunities and that we’re not accidentally stepping into risks that we don’t see. And so that’s where, again, it’s like we’ve got to put ego aside. And it doesn’t mean you as a leader don’t lead. It just means you’re open and you’re providing the guidance. You’re providing the guardrails. You know, a CEO has a bigger view of the market than maybe like the marketing manager right in their little department, but the CEO can also listen to what’s going on in the trenches and what’s going on on the ground for someone that’s living and breathing this task or this function or this challenge on a daily basis, right? So yeah, I love it. Okay, so tell me a little bit about the shift from corporate into nonprofit, from a culture perspective for you, what was that like to shift into that, and what were some of the good things, and what were some of the like challenges that you had with that?
Shilpa Alva 20:55
Yes, I started my career in the corporate world. I grew up in it. It was all I knew in many ways, and I definitely felt like when I first started surge, I was taking all my corporate skills and applying that right. So I took all the strengths of like, how you run, you know, a department or a functional area in my corporate experience, and I applied that to search, and I also surrounded myself with corporate leaders, managers, you know, at that time, who were similar, like, as my board members, right? So I’d say in the first, like, years of surge, that probably was not a lot of difference, because that was all I knew, right, right, right? I was literally, like, not coming to this. I didn’t grow up in the nonprofit space. I didn’t grow up in the international development world. So I actually don’t even know really what that kind of culture would be like, because I’ve never written it now the org, right? I think over time, what started to change is that I started to, you know, really think about and formulate, like, what is surges culture, right? And for me, a lot of that was built with through our local partners, and like the relationships we have with them, because I was understanding, like, you know, truly like needs on the ground, and like how they approach it, and like that started to shape us, and like how we were different. And I’ll just say another personal journey is I started to notice that it was definitely like my masculine side, like the from the energetic standpoint that was leading in the corporate states, place I was in a male dominated industry, and I think that in order to be successful, like, those were the skills that I perfected, right? The Type A, the very like high strung, like, you know, just leading the way I was leading them seemed to tap into my masculine side. We all have masculine feminine sides, right? What surge has allowed me to do is highlight the feminine a lot more. Highlight more of the empathy, highlight more of the compassion, the love, the passion, the softness, being more uncomfortable with the uncomfortable, the unknowns, the gray areas, leaning more in towards my intuition, not saying you don’t do this in the corporate world. But that was not the corporate leader. I was right, and now I see it like a balance or formula that has both like of course, I know that certain parts of what I learned in the corporate world are important, and how you run a business and balance your books, and, you know, do all of those kinds of things, but I make sure that that’s not what you’re walking into in an experience with surge. You see warm first that you see people who are passionate about other people. People have empathy, people have compassion. Like that’s the leading part of our culture that I think is very different,
Maria Ross 23:46
but it didn’t start that well. And I you know, that’s it’s interesting because I’ve spoken to a lot of nonprofit leaders through all my research over the years. And it’s interesting because one thinks, because the cause is noble and the cause is empathetic, that naturally, the culture of the organization has to be empathetic. And many nonprofit leaders have shared with me, actually, some of the worst cultures internally are nonprofits because they’re so resource and time strapped. They put all the empathy and compassion into the people that they’re serving, but they kind of grind everyone down to a nub inside the organization, which is a little counterintuitive, right? So I find that really interesting, and I find it also interesting. And what I would love to hear from you next is given you came from the corporate world now you’re running a nonprofit. The question always in even in the for profit world, is, how do I balance purpose with profit? How do I balance purpose with results? What is the balance you have found to balance the compassion and the warmth and the service you know, service mentality for your for the people you’re trying to serve, with the fact that you also still need to hit benchmarks. You also still need. See Results you also still need to have the impact you want to
Shilpa Alva 25:03
have. Yeah, I think I view it as the values versus, sort of the process to achieve that, like, our value, yeah. So, you know, focusing on like, you know, what drives me to do this work, right? That’s my love, that’s my compassion, that’s my empathy, you know, words I’ve used a few times already, and I think that’s always there, like that’s there, that’s the fire, that’s what drives all of it. But because of my corporate experiences and running PNLs, and like you know, in management consulting, having experience with sweet people, I also understand what you need to do in order to stay alive as an organization, right? So I’ve been able to compartmentalize that, I guess, in a way, like when you have to, like, run a fundraising campaign, or when you’re, like, going after funding or pitching. Of course, my compassion comes through on the pitches. It’s not separate from that, of course, yeah, but it is a different mindset, right? It is very much target and goal oriented, right? If we have obligations to reach 5000 girls who are menstrual health programming grant, then we’re going to hit 5000 girls. And you figure out and you work on all the logistics and the operations and the funding to ensure you meet that target. The thought comes in to make sure that your staff properly, of course, and that people are taken care of. Like, I don’t think you compromise that. So it’s like almost holding these multiple like, you keep your values and your foundation strong so you like, that doesn’t shift. But then you you use those values to guide you in achieving those goals, right? I’d almost look at it that way, right? Being like empathy as a goal, parallel to hitting a financial target. And I think that would be very impossible in a constant daily struggle, if you’re thinking about that. But yeah, always be compassionate. Always lead with love and then and softness, and then also realize that you got to double down to achieve those goals when, like it’s all possible and when it’s not, you have more compassion and self care to like yourself for it, I guess, yeah, that’s your value at the end of the day.
Maria Ross 27:13
Well, that’s exactly the crux of my work. Is trying to get leaders to understand it’s both and you’re not. You’re not. It’s not either or. I’m all about both and leadership, like empathy and performance, empathy and accountability, yeah, and I love the way you’ve articulated this, that it’s like the values create the fire and the create the momentum around the work that you need to be doing, but then it has to have a container to go into. It has to have processes. It has to have targets, it has to have objectives in order to us, for us to continue to feel good about the mission that we’re on. Because even if it’s a noble mission, if we don’t achieve it, no one’s going to feel good about that. So it’s not just about like, Oh, it’s okay that we didn’t make our goals this month or this quarter. Like, yes, there’s forgiveness, there’s compassion around that. But like, we need to change something in order to make this happen. It’s not enough for us to just be purpose driven. We have to be able to create those processes around it that help us. I love how you said it was in order keep the values strong, but use them to achieve your goals exactly, and using them as the fire and the fuel. And I think that’s why purpose driven organizations, you know, the data show that many of them perform better, and I think it’s because people have a reason. They have a reason why to follow the process, a reason why to hit the objectives, and it’s a reason that resonates with their heart and mind. Yeah, right. So I love that. That’s great. Okay, so we could probably talk for hours more, but let’s talk a little bit about what’s next on the horizon. So as you go forth and you’re achieving these goals, you know, just like any organization, nonprofits need to keep stretching and they need to keep growing, because the mission is never completely done. So how do you Well, what is next on horizon, and how do you balance, like, how much further you have to go? I guess this is more of an emotional mindset question for your people, how do you keep them motivated that there’s still a lot more we have to achieve, but help them still feel good about what they’ve achieved so far. So kind of two part question there, yeah,
Shilpa Alva 29:23
so it’s an interesting story there. Maria, so in the last, like last fiscal year, we grew 70% as an organization from a revenue perspective. And then this fiscal year, we just closed in March, actually, we sustained that because that was the big scare, right? Okay, you just had this huge, significant growth. Now, can we sustain? It? Was a one time thing. We sustained and grew from that, not another 70% we’re still working, you know, closing our books, but Right, let’s just say 15% right, right, huge. So in the last two years, we’ve doubled in size as an organization. Wow. Yeah, incredible. But parallel to that, I mean. That we achieved all our strategic goals. You know, people, we wanted to reach communities way earlier than we planned, and we didn’t have that aspirational plan. We thought it was aspirational, but we got there years faster than we thought we were going to. So last summer,
Maria Ross 30:16
nice problem to have. Yeah,
Shilpa Alva 30:17
it was a nice problem, and it
Shilpa Alva 30:19
was very exciting, but that celebration lasted a very short time, because then my board was like, So what’s that plan? What’s next? Yeah, no idea. Like, literally, I was like, I had an idea, but it wasn’t documented. It wasn’t thought through, right? But we thought, we got together with board members, if you know, core team, and we worked on what that next strategic plan and that vision would be. The next one is way bigger and way bolder. It goes to 2030 which is actually aligns really well with the sustainable development goals that the UN has set for water being one of the goals. And we put a goal that’s really bold and really strong. And in establishing a goal which is reaching a million people, you know, and serving a million people daily. By that point, we developed it, or CO created that goal, with our partners, our existing partners in each of the countries. So they were part of it. We know their expansion plans. They were in there. That actually was the foundation of it, right, right? So that’s where we’re going next. And to achieve that, we’ve got to be three times bigger than we are today by 2030 right? That’s Wow, really aggressive. That’s not and with that, we realized the organization and the structure that got us here is not going to be the same work that gets us there. We’ve got to do different things. So we’ve been really smart and mindful about how we invest the revenue, the revenue growth, talking to donors about investing in infrastructure, things like we just did a brand refresh, like, what’s our messaging? Our messaging today is different from the messaging we had even four years ago, because we’re a different organization, completely investing in development, investing in data analytics for the programs that we’re doing in the community. So again, this is a lot of business sort of things that you would do when a company grows. And you know, yes, we’re taking some of that money away from mission, like direct mission, where we know that by doing that, we can get to a larger size, or we’re taking that risk, at least calculated risk. And that’s been a lot of the process. And I’d say, because we’re in this planning stage and we’ve done it so collaboratively, my board is fully aligned and excited about it, because we’re all part of this plan, right? Donors and partners are excited about it because we’re sharing it and we’re getting feedback on it, and then the most important people in our whole ecosystem are the community partners doing the work, and it’s their plan. So they’re excited about their vision right for their communities. Each of them are going to go from like, you know, three to four times their size right now, and, you know, and with, we’ve just hired a resource to focus on their structure and their
Shilpa Alva 32:52
command, yeah, and all of that. Well, it’s
Maria Ross 32:54
all, it’s exciting, and it actually, I this was kind of going to be our wrap up question, but from you talking, I want to ask one follow on question to this, because you are so collaborative, and you do a lot of co creation. This is sometimes the challenge I hear from leaders of, Okay, I’m getting all these points of view, I’m synthesizing all these points of view, but at the end of the day, I have to make a decision that is going, you know, by the very nature of getting all this input, not everyone’s going to get their way. So how do you do you have any tips for leaders listening on how you balance that prioritization and how you communicate those decisions back to the people that have contributed, because potentially their input was not part of the plan going forward. How
Maria Ross 33:35
do you Yeah, that’s really hard. I don’t think thank you for being vulnerable about it, but yeah, that’s
Shilpa Alva 33:42
really hard, and I don’t I can’t say I have the answer for it. I think I struggle like everybody else on that situation. The only thing I do differently, I don’t not necessarily differently. Others may do it as well. What I tend to do in situations like that is I don’t shock them in a community or larger setting, like if there’s something that we’re not incorporating in their plan, make sure to have those conversations on the side, explain the reasoning. You know you’re gonna disappoint some people when you make hard decisions. And I think that’s okay, like we’re doing a brand refresh now, we changed our colors. A lot of people are not happy about our new color. I
Maria Ross 34:13
mean, I’m a brand strategist by background, and I do and like, no one’s ever happy, but you have to get into a point where they can commit even though they disagree. To your point, I mean, this is why, in the new book that I wrote that came out in the fall, the empathy dilemma, I talk about the art of decisiveness is not the art of decisiveness is not everybody gets a say necessarily in the final decision. It’s you’re factoring all that in to when you make the decision and you just shared a really good point. There’s no shock. There’s a communication back that says, Thank you for all the feedback and ideas. It really sparked a lot of great conversations. And Shilpa, here’s why your idea was great, and we had a whole, you know, day long conversation about that, but here’s why that’s not going into the final decision. But please keep that feedback coming. Because it was really useful to us in the decision making process, you sort of reveal. So it’s not a black box that people are going into and they step out. It’s like surprise we listen to any of you, yeah,
Shilpa Alva 35:12
yeah. It’s just about respect, right? And making sure that they feel valued. And then I think the hardest part of this too, and I think we all have to recognize this as leaders. Not everybody’s gonna sign up for your vision and your journey and your path, and that’s also okay, right? And I think that’s hard for me, because I, you know, we treat our team as a family, and we’re all in this together, but I’ve seen that that’s not always the case. Some people decide to go out on their own, and, you know, we’re heavily volunteer run, so it’s like even more, you know, complicated from that perspective, yeah? And that’s just something that’s part of it, right? So, like, that’s the part of like, yeah, you’re not going to make everyone happy, but you do what, right, the best decision you possibly can. And know there are consequences, and has to handle them the best you can, yeah, and there might be losses,
Maria Ross 35:58
well. And there’s also, like, I always remind people, you know, if you’re clear and you’re fair and you’re empathetic and you’ve at least considered it at other points of view, there’s a certain point where the other person, or your employees, they have agency too. And if you’re being clear about here’s what we’re doing, and we would love for you to come with us, but if that’s doesn’t align with your values, we totally understand that, like we respect that, and if you need, if we need to part ways, we need to part ways. But it doesn’t mean we’re changing our business decision. And that’s a much more empathetic approach than like, it’s my way or the highway, right? It’s an acknowledgement of, I get that this might not be what you thought you signed up for. I get that this might not be the way you want to go. And, you know, talk to me about that. Are you still able to commit? Do you kind of understand our rationale? And if you don’t, and you feel really strongly about this, then, you know, how can we support you in transitioning out of the organization or into a general or whatever? But we forget to give people the agency back. But we can only give them, like you said, the only give them the agency back when we’re clear and there’s no surprises. So I think that’s a great tip. I know you were like, I’m not really sure how we balance it, but it sounds like you guys are doing all the right things. So Shilpa, we could probably talk more, but we’ve got to run so I am going to have all your links in the show notes, and also the link to surge for water so that people can donate or get involved or, you know, just see what you’re up to and see how they can be part of the effort. But for folks that are on the go or exercising while they’re listening to us right now, where’s the best place they can get in touch or find out more about the work.
Shilpa Alva 37:35
I mean, if you’re on social media, when all of the channels so choose your favorite and search for water as I handle and if you want to connect to me personally, LinkedIn is probably the best place.
Maria Ross 37:44
Great. And like I always tell people, my public service announcement is, if you reach out to Shilpa on LinkedIn, please put a note that says you heard her on the podcast so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Shilpa, thank you so much. It’s been delightful to connect with you, and I really admire the work that you’re doing, and I hope that we’ve kind of amplified the message and the brand to more people that haven’t heard of you
Shilpa Alva 38:06
before. Thank you for this opportunity, Maria. I really appreciate it, and thank
Maria Ross 38:10
you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review or share it with a friend or colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit theempathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slicemaria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
