Why More Information Rarely Results in Greater Understanding

0:00 You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we reveal why more information rarely results in greater understanding. So stay tuned. If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.

0:40 It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them. Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there folks. Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode. I hear from Nonprofit leaders all the time about how frustrating it is that they've explained their work to decision makers a million times and they still don't get it.

1:27 And you respond by going out and gathering even more convincing data and information, thinking surely this will make them see the light. And then they still don't get it. I've been guilty of this myself. Of thinking that if I just explain it better or break it down into simpler pieces or come up with even more powerful data, that they'll finally get it. So I understand. I have beaten my head against that same brick wall many times. What I finally realized is that until we uncover the reasons for their not getting it, no amount of information or clarity of explanation is going to cause them to get it.

2:19 So how do we deal with this? The first thing we have to do is understand what it is that's in the way. Now, with most decision makers, chances are it's not that they're stupid. Although that's always a possibility, so check that. But assuming that's not it, then we have to look at what else is in the way. It's usually one of two things. It's that they have one or more beliefs that are in the way, and/ or they don't see how your solution solves a problem they care about. So let's talk about beliefs. In almost every encounter with a decision maker, unless you already have a deep partnership relationship with them, they've probably got one or more beliefs that are at least a little bit in the way.

3:08 And some of them are a lot in the way and are actually costing you funding. Now the trick is, often they may not be stated directly. They may not walk around going, I believe such and so and therefore blah, blah, blah. Instead what'll happen is the decision maker will voice an objection to what you're asking them to do, and then you have to dig to identify the underlying beliefs. An objection that Nonprofit leaders hear a lot from various money decision makers is some version of, your prices are too high, or your stuff costs too much, or you're asking for too much money. That's an objection. But the beliefs underlying it typically are things like a belief that Nonprofit services should be cheap.

3:55 Or, this is super common. They believe the problem you solve is simple. And then there are beliefs that stack on that, which are that if the problem is simple, the solution should be simple and therefore it should be cheap. Also, if the problem is simple, then a one size fits all solution should work just fine. And to cap it off, there's often a belief at work that all service providers in your niche are basically the same, so they're interchangeable. You can see how any one of those beliefs or several working together could create some real problems for you. But what we often don't do is stop and figure out how to address those beliefs and do something about them.

4:39 The exciting news is that there is something you can do, which we'll get to in a minute. Now, the other common issue is the decision maker doesn't see how your solution solves a problem that they care about. For example, oh, it's great that this Nonprofit is helping out needy folks in the community. But you know, I'm focused on bigger issues like infrastructure and taxation. I don't deal with social services. Or, mostly I don't deal with that, but I'm really focused on helping veterans. Now there's something worth expending time and energy on, or, you know, fill in the blank. The good news is both of these problems have a solution. But I'm gonna deal with the beliefs first, because what's going on there is not obvious.

5:24 And it's really important that we understand it so that we can devise some strategies to deal with it. When you're dealing with those kinds of problematic beliefs that are getting in the way, here's what's going on. The way the human brain works, if you're operating from a belief, then to you that belief is true. It is fact. And if your reticular activating system in your subconscious has adopted the belief that something is true. Then it simply ignores facts and information that contradict the belief. This is why when you try to explain your stuff to a decision maker who has a belief that's in the way, it's like talking to a brick wall.

6:10 It doesn't matter how cleverly you frame your facts, they're simply not gonna let them in. All the facts and information you might try to give them to prove their belief is not so, will just slide right off. So what do we do about that? In the case of objections and underlying beliefs Essentially what you have to do is disrupt, discredit, and ideally dismantle that belief. And basically what you have to do is to create a dilemma for their brain. Cause this is all the brain doing this here. Their brain's over there doing all this stuff that they're not aware of. They don't know that's going on. Something like 85 to 90% of the decisions we make every day are made by the subconscious.

6:56 Alarming in a lot of ways, but that's the reality and it's important to understand it. And this is true for all of us humans. I'm not picking on decision makers in particular. This is how we are all wired. So if you or I are operating from a particular belief that we have trained into our reticular activating system, it's busy doing that same set of stuff that we're annoyed with the decision makers about. It's just how it works. So if we understand how it works, then we can figure out how to work with those brain behaviors and make them work for us. What we have to do is create a dilemma for their brain that's gonna force them to consider the possibility that their belief might not be true.

7:40 At least not all the time, not a hundred percent of the time. Once you've put a crack in that belief, you can wedge it open and bring in additional messaging that will help you expand on the doubt and disruption you've created. And show them how it's possible that your new and better belief could also be true, and in fact is true. There are a bunch of techniques for doing this. And I teach a lot of them in my coaching programs, but two of my favorites are using analogy and metaphor and using exaggeration. And you can often use them together.

8:21 With exaggeration, you're taking their belief up a notch and challenging whether the thing they believe is true, is true all the time in every situation. And if it's not, then they're forced to consider the possibility that it might not be true in this situation either. Here's how you might use this with the belief that Nonprofit services should be cheap. What is not persuasive is to give them a bunch of facts about your budget and the cost of providing services, et cetera, et cetera. We now understand that all that information will just slide off as long as they hold that underlying belief. If they believe that Nonprofit services are always or should be cheap, you can do a combined analogy and exaggeration strategy.

9:08 You could say St. Whoozy-do Hospital is a Nonprofit hospital and they're one of the biggest healthcare providers in the area. Would you expect them to charge less for their healthcare services than any other hospital in town? Isn't it likely that their charges are mostly based on the cost of doing business? If they started charging rates that didn't cover their costs, how long do you think they'd stay in business? Would it be responsible management practice and financial stewardship if they were to charge rates that didn't cover their costs? And would you ask the hospital to charge rates that don't cover their costs and then tell them to go out and ask for donations to cover the rest? What would be the impact on their services?

9:48 If you wound up in the emergency room there, would you want their ability to treat you to depend on whether or not they got enough donations that week? Now their brain is working. You've created a disruption to their belief by asking questions, not by presenting facts. And once you ask those kinds of questions, the conscious brain has to go to work on them. That is also how we are wired. Maybe one question they can manage to go la, la, la, la, la. I can't hear you. But a series of them that keep exploring the question and forcing the realization that there are some flaws in their belief.

10:28 While that disruption is in progress, you can introduce the question that ties all of this back to your work. Why would it be any different for the services we provide? We have the same labor, materials and facilities costs as any other provider in our space, be they for-profit or Nonprofit. We have the same responsibility to maintain reliable services. And that requires steady funding that covers our costs. And there you've closed the loop. Now this doesn't work instant miracles. But this is critical messaging and a critical technique to disrupt a problematic belief that is in the way of them understanding the value of your work, and taking the action you need them to take.

11:12 This technique works with any belief you want to come up with. But it's not instant. They don't go, oh my goodness, you've shown me the error of my ways. How much money do you need? Just make sure that happens right today. But what it does do is it opens a conversation that is a different conversation than the one you've been having. And it starts them actually engaging and hopefully asking you some questions. And considering that maybe they should take a second look at the services you provide, at the value, and at the prices you're charging. And that the investment really does need to be the level you say it needs to be. Maybe that's really just so.

11:53 It will probably take them a little time. None of us really loves having our beliefs disrupted. It's kind of uncomfortable. They may need to sit with that for a bit. Don't assume that you're gonna do this, and then you're just gonna close the deal right then and there. That's very unlikely to happen. But you're shifting the conversation, you're changing their thinking. You're opening the door to a whole other conversation that is gonna be much more productive for you, and that will eventually lead to them expanding their thinking and considering what you're saying to them in a new light. And you build from there. Let's look at the other common problem, where the decision maker doesn't see how the problem you solve is relevant to them and the things they care about.

12:38 Here you have the messaging and engagement task of making those connections for them, to get them to consider how your work aligns with, supports or compliments the thing they care about. And you may very well have to get creative here, but there is almost always a way. Now one big caveat with this is you need to have as much intel as possible about what it is that they care about. So you have to do that digging. And there's lots of different ways to do that. We've talked about that in other episodes. A lot of how you learn that is simply in conversation with them. You can do a ton of research online. You can talk to other people, et cetera, et cetera.

13:19 But you wanna gather as much of that intel as possible so you understand them and their concerns as thoroughly as possible Let me give you some simple and common examples. If they're a fiscal hawk, you'll want to address things like the cost of not solving the problem. And of course, ROI. Always ROI with any decision maker that is concerned about fiscal responsibility, scarcity of money, any of those things. The return on investment conversation is always very important to have. But having that conversation in a way that resonates with how they talk about it can be a lot more productive than framing things entirely from your side.

14:04 Particularly if a program already exists and there's already funding for it, they should be very interested in getting the best return on that money that is already being invested. It's not a decision about should we invest that in the future. It's that investment is being made, are we using it wisely? And that's where you can find space to talk about, you know what, actually, because of these five reasons, because of the quality of services, because of the complexity of the problem. This is what it costs to actually solve it for real, versus solving it halfway and having the cost keep recurring. Which is not only a bigger drain on the budget, but it's also a waste of the original investment because if it doesn't really solve the problem fully.

14:54 If you try to spend it on a cheaper solution and it doesn't solve it, you didn't solve the problem, it's still there. It's still costing money. And now you've got the person who still needs the help. You gotta make the investment again or allow the cost of not solving the problem to persist. This is a lose- lose scenario if you do it that way. And you can take all of that and frame it in the form of questions, which is what I always recommend. Again, leading them through, asking them to put the pieces together themselves. And depending on the problem you solve, you can highlight multiple aspects of it and ask some version of, what do you think the cost is if we don't solve this?

15:36 And then you are ready with the answer. But by simply asking that question, you've planted two very important new ways of thinking in their head. First of all, they are probably not considering the cost of failing to solve the problem. They like to assume that problems are cost neutral and that the only cost happens when you go spend money on a service to fix it. Which of course is nonsense. But it's a very convenient way to think about things, especially when you're a fiscal conservative. Because then it lets you say things like, oh, well, you know, this is all just too expensive and we should just let people fend for themselves. Yeah. Well, how's that working out?

16:16 You know, there are all kinds of costs to not solving the problem. You need to have prepared and be able to present a cogent analysis of the cost of not solving the problem. But then you reverse engineer that into questions that lead them to the conclusion. Once again, the strategy being forcing them to engage their brain, forcing them to consider it for themselves, to answer a difficult question that doesn't have a simple pat answer. Now if they care about anything that's population specific, like the example I gave was veterans. It's usually pretty easy to show how at least a subset of the population they care about also needs your services.

16:58 And you can focus your stories and your impact messaging on that population. When you talk about the impact of your work and how it changes lives, pick examples that reflect the populations that they've indicated they care about. Now, a word of caution. With any of this, don't stretch too far. First of all, you're not trying to convince them of anything. We get stressed out about getting them over to agreeing with us, and we start to go into convincing mode, which is a total losing proposition. That does not work. It is the wrong energy, it's the wrong vibration. It is not a productive way to engage people. But asking questions is very productive.

17:39 So avoid convincing mode, but also just don't try to stretch too far in drawing a connection between your issue and their issue. Sometimes there just may not be one. And then you've gotta find another angle. I'll give you an example of how this can go sideways from an experience I had where I was on the receiving end. I was the decision maker that somebody was trying to convince to do a thing they wanted done. At the time, I was president of a statewide women's advocacy organization, and I get a phone call in the office. I'm there late one evening, the phone rings and it's this guy who's an advocate for the people who staff the cabooses on trains.

18:27 Apparently that was at the time, a niche occupation. And there was talk of railroads eliminating cabooses, doing away with them so that they could do away with the staffing cost. And he was rounding up everybody he could think of to lobby the railroads and legislators who regulate them to say, no, you have to have the cabooses and they have to be staffed because it's a safety issue. Okay. I mean, that is a perfectly rational argument. I don't have a position on it one way or another, but it's a rational argument. There's nothing wrong with it. And my reaction was something along those lines. It was like, well, um, I hear what you're saying. It makes sense to me. It's not really anything our organization deals with.

19:09 There is no piece of this that connects to our work. Sorry we can't help you. I wish you well. Good luck. And he wouldn't let it go. He was like, oh, no, no, no. You see, you don't understand. This is a women's issue. At which point I was like, oh, do tell, sir. Do tell me how your caboose issue is a women's issue. And he went on to spin this whole tale about how mothers of children should care because it's the children who get hurt when there's nobody in the caboose to communicate that there might be a kid on the tracks. And so because kids, because mothers, this should be an issue for a women's organization.

19:54 I probably don't have to tell you that that did not go over well on so many levels. I was irritated at his complete lack of understanding of the issues we did work on, or of what our organization was about. He had clearly done nothing to learn about the work that we do. He just saw women in the name of the organization. He's like, I'm gonna call all the women's organizations and tell'em how they gotta support this. 'cause mothers and children and train accidents, cabooses. So that was annoying. The fact that he was trying to tell me my issue was extremely annoying. The fact that it was a guy trying to tell the head of a women's organization what constituted a women's issue was extra irritating.

20:35 He was doing okay when he was just presenting his basic argument. But my reaction was, I hear you, but it's just not our thing. Sorry. Can't help you. Good luck. It was from that point forward that he just made a hundred different mistakes. And each one made it worse, and pushed me further and further away, and made me less and less sympathetic. To the point where at the end of that conversation I was just flat irritated with him and thought, what is wrong with you? Get outta my face. So don't let that be you. When I tell you that story, it's probably fairly easy for you to realize, oh gosh, yeah. That would be super irritating. So that's what we wanna be careful not to do as advocates.

21:19 To be trying so hard to make a connection that we start overreaching and inadvertently being disrespectful in the process. It's on us to do lots of digging ahead of time. To really think through connections that are legitimate. And then find ways to talk about them that are gonna make sense. And we can often bring allies from other organizations, we can find bridges who can help make that happen. But when we work on messaging for that piece, we have to just be careful that we don't overreach. So let's come back to where we started. Now you know why it is that you have those brick wall marks on your forehead. And you know some ways to make it stop.

22:01 You understand why decision makers sort of have a Teflon coating when you try to give them your facts and information. They're just not taking it in. Now we understand that probably a lot of it is that there are some objections and underlying beliefs that are getting in the way. And there also may very well be just a not understanding how it connects to anything they care about. When we create messaging and engagement strategies that disrupt those beliefs, engage their brain in a different way, and then make those additional connections for them. That's when they start leaning in. That's when they start engaging and saying, okay, wait a minute. Maybe we should talk about this some more.

22:43 And that's really what these are designed to do. They're not designed to get you all the way to the goal line. They're designed to get you back in the game, back in the conversation. Think on this a little bit. Reflect on where this has been showing up in your conversations with some decision makers. Think about the conversations you've been having that have been repeatedly frustrating. And consider which of these pieces may be at work. And then think about how you could use one or two of these strategies to shift that dynamic. To shift the conversation and get them back into being engaged with you. Give it a try. I know it'll help.

23:24 Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode, right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.