Gen Z in the Workplace (EP.75)
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Updated
March 26, 2024
In this episode, Tim Cynova is in conversation with Tammy Dowley-Blackman, an entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience in leadership and organizational development. A differentiator for Tammy in this work comes in that she’s sat in many of the proverbial seats at the table: serving as a CEO and key decision-maker, a board member, a sought-after consultant, a leadership development content creator, and a key partner to corporations, government entities, nonprofits, and philanthropic institutions.
Episode Highlights:
The needs and expectations of Gen Z in the workplace,
The impact of the pandemic on work and how organizations can adapt to the changing landscape,
The importance of rethinking and reimagining performance evaluations and strategic planning,
Developing futurist mindsets,
And, the need for organizations to invest in professional development and create equitable and inclusive work environments.
Stay tuned for upcoming episodes on executive coaches who center equity and inclusion in their practice, and the authors of "The In-Between: A Companion Book For Uncertain Times.” Plus, catch season two of "White Men and the Journey Towards Anti-Racism" as well as an episode on values-based collective bargaining processes.
Bios
Tammy Dowley-Blackman (she/her) collaborates with the corporate, government, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors to build an intergenerational pipeline of leaders equipped to deliver solutions for today’s complex global workplace. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and Harvard University is an author, entrepreneur, leadership expert, nonprofit executive, philanthropic leader and professor.
She is the CEO of Tammy Dowley-Blackman Group, LLC, a certified National Supplier Development Council Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Small Business Administration (SBA) Woman Owned Small Business (WOSB), and Women’s Business Enterprise Network Council (WBENC) woman-owned company, as well as a graduate of the C200 Champion Program and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program. The company is comprised of a suite of brands, including TDB Group Strategic Advisory, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational and leadership development for the corporate, government, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors; Looking Forward Lab, a media content company focused on Gen Z, which partners with corporations and higher education systems to offer a full-service learning engagement model that delivers workforce development solutions; and Cooper + Lowe, a company that serves as an incubator offering full back-office management support for women interested in transitioning to entrepreneurship and thought leadership. Each of the companies has a long legacy of embedding diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) in its values, collaborations, and outcomes.
In addition, Tammy recently completed her six-year term as the president of the TSNE Board of Directors, where she helped lead the $64 million-dollar organization through unprecedented leadership and business model strategic alignment and planning. She also provides leadership as a Board Director for the Proteus Fund and as an Advisory Board member for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the University of North Carolina School of Law Director Diversity Initiative. Find Tammy online at tammydb.com.
Tim Cynova, SPHR (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design, and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Learn more on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I am Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well that. In this episode I have the honor of chatting with the awesome Tammy Dowley-Blackman. Tammy is an entrepreneur who has spent twenty-plus years building companies focused on delivering innovative approaches to leadership and organizational development. A differentiator for Tammy in this work comes in that she sat in many of the proverbial seats at the table serving as a CEO and key decision maker, a board member, a sought-after consultant, a leadership development content creator, and a key partner to corporations, government entities, nonprofits, and philanthropic institutions. You can find more about Tammy in our bio linked in the episode description, so let's get going. Tammy, welcome to the podcast.
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
So nice to be here. Thanks for having me, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
Before we really dive into the conversation, why don't we just start with how do you typically introduce yourself and the work that you do?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
Some of it you covered. Thank you for that great introduction. These conversations are always interesting because sometimes it is about, well tell me, you used to be a former CEO and executive director of nonprofits. Some other people know me because I used to be in higher education and then there are others who only know me because of the work I've done for twenty-plus years in philanthropy. So it's always funny in terms of which of those conversations we're going to start with and what I always say is that it always comes back to the same through line that for me it's always been about two things, access and leadership development.
And over time that leadership development extended out to organizational development, but it really is that through line for my entire career and really got defined in this pivotal transformative moment when I was 14 years old, fellow friends and students and kids knew they wanted to be doctors or NBA players or ballerinas or whatever it may have been. And I was talking about nonprofit and foundation and development and looking at me like I was so weird, but I learned about it at 14 and I was intrigued. So just depends on where I meet people or where they've gotten to know me. But I always say that through line is about access and leadership development.
Tim Cynova:
In preparation for our conversation, I was reflecting back on when we first met. I looked back in my calendar and it was January 2020, you were helping facilitate a planning session and then global pandemic and so much about what we factored into our plans changed seemingly overnight, personally, professionally, organizationally, really testing values and shifting priorities from that moment pre-pandemic. As you reflect on the work that you were doing pre-pandemic and into the pandemic and where we are now, what's been the same? What's changed? How are you thinking about work differently? What are some of the themes that maybe have emerged during this unique time in our lives?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
It's definitely been this unique time in all of our lives, and to your point, personally and professionally, there was no way around that. Somehow someone could just kind of silo this and it only was going to affect their work or only affect their personal lives. It was all of it and continues to be. So prior to the pandemic, I had moved to Baltimore from living in New England, particularly Boston, Cambridge for about 13 years, and I moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 2018 with the intention of really now trying to more center my travel because I traveled 45 weeks a year, trying to center that travel so it wouldn't be as extensive to get to Atlanta or New Orleans, though I love Boston and Cambridge, it could be a little bit longer to get to things. Now I'm based in Baltimore, I could hop on an Acela train, be in Philadelphia in an hour, go to meetings, then go on to New York and end up in Boston by the end of the day. Which people think, well, you could do that from Boston, but the timing is a little bit differently to get all those cities in the same day, unlike when you're coming from the South.
So that mattered. I was traveling and I loved that being in person. I love the kinds of projects that I was able to work on. Everything from the Surdna Foundation, working with Fractured Atlas to work that I was doing with Haley House and with symphonies and other arts organizations, Cambridge Innovation Center, which is a real estate company, they were just varied and I love that we were in place with their teams and asking questions and really trying to think through. But what was difficult is trying to sometimes get those teams to think about, they could have these conversations, they didn't always need to be in place in space and we could do that, but that we could actually get more done if we had the ability to tap into them sometimes quicker, sooner. And if we could do some of that virtually and for many of those teams, they just could not wrap their heads around that.
And of course all that changed in March 2020. I literally was in a board meeting with a client February 24th of 2020 and having a board member say, "Oh no, we could never be remote. That's ridiculous. People would think down on us, we don't have an office." Just going on and on about this wasn't a realistic thing to not have an office and to be in place and space. What I did certainly appreciate was that he was saying that I love the ability to connect with people, to riff off of things, ask questions, put new questions out there and that's right. That was harder over Zoom sometimes when particularly after you've done this for 18 months, two years and on and on, that was harder. So it's been really nice to now be back in person, but that real shift around how we did our work, not how much work, it actually gave us a chance to do even more work deeper and to be really in service of all the people we were working with across corporate, government, nonprofit and philanthropic.
But it also was really odd to have gone an entire year, 18 months, working on a project with a team and have never met them in person. So now as we've come out of the pandemic and resume travel, though many of those companies, organizations still might have full remote or hybrid. I've now been trying to go to those cities to meet clients that we've worked with but didn't get a chance to ever meet in person, to finally meet them in person, do updates, check in on them, and so there are ways in which we've changed our work around those check-ins as well. Those are much more extensive processes or ways in which we offer them the opportunity to reconnect on the project, sort of almost an addendum to that work we were doing, knowing that it just was a little odd to do it that way. But there are other ways in which we got to do the work more deeply and again to give them a lot more time because it wasn't, we've now got to schedule only this meeting on the calendar when we all can be in the same building.
So definitely has changed and it's certainly as you said, not just professionally but also personally as well. In terms of how I get to be in my own city, I lived here in Baltimore, but for literally the first two years I did very little in Baltimore because of being on a plane train or in an on-world deal for eight, five weeks a year. And so literally walking my neighborhood and getting to know my neighbors in a different way, being able to spend more time at things like the Baltimore Museum of Art, which I enjoy. So there've been things that have been pros and there certainly have been things that have been cons and harder, but it has definitely changed.
Tim Cynova:
I feel like we're in a moment where there's such a pull or in the words of Liz Lerman, the Snapback, to what it was before the pandemic and forgetting that we did work and we coordinated in different ways and that work doesn't all have to happen in the same way, but that intentionality as you were talking about what has to be done in person or what benefits from being done in person versus we really don't have to do that in person. And this seems to be this sort of wholesale snapback to, well, we need to be in person because productivity is better or getting better results. And rather than thinking like, okay, so who does that benefit? Still in this moment where people are still pretty exhausted in the uncertainty of life and as you think about organizations that you work with, what seems to work better when you're in person and what seems to work better virtually?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
We're seeing that in person works better now when we actually come and we can focus over a couple of days. I was working with the Schott Foundation for Public Education and I love that they had offices, but they really did a lot of work remote because the team was on the road making connections, they were at conferences, they were meeting doing site visits. But one of the things they always held true was that they came together every two or so months, the full team came together for two days to work deeply together, be able to have lunch together, be able to just be in community, but really putting all that brain power in one room so they could just power through a lot of work together. And they really thrived off those opportunities to have everyone together there. And they were doing that before the pandemic, of course had to then decide to do that virtually as we moved into the pandemic, but was really happy to see, even though they were a team that decided to give up office space, they didn't give up that tradition and actually that tradition has become even more important to them and it's way of not only how they personally thrive, it feeds them individually as team members, but it feeds the work.
It feeds their ability to be innovative in place and space. So that's healthy respect for both and it's something that we certainly have recommended for other teams that we work with. I was just working with the team on Tuesday and we came together, they've got team members in Massachusetts and in New York and Chicago and other places, and we were all in Philadelphia over the course of an evening for dinner and then a meeting all day. And everyone left just saying it was the first time they had been in person altogether for 18 months and everyone just feeling really rejuvenated and feeling like they can't wait for us to do this again in September. Does that mean that team wasn't effective? Not at all. That team works and the kind of work they take on national work that has national significance for all of us. They have just added more great work and they've been innovating and adding other partners.
It didn't stop them and they were always working remotely, but this way in which being much more intentional and conscientious about how they use time when they come together is really important. So we're seeing many more of our teams doing this more formal gathering, actually formalizing it with the agenda and how we're going to move through that work and how we're connecting it to their strategic plan or some other particular work that they've got coming on deck, how they're preparing for the board meeting, for example. Using it for these really important deep dives but also leaving some visioning time in there as well and not visioning in that it only has to be visioning connected to strategic plan visioning for thinking about actually trying to get ahead of things, trying to be forward-thinking, trying to do that foresight thinking that just if you don't make that intentional can just get away from you and I meant to do that or we just never got a chance, but very difficult to do when you're just in the thick of it.
So we're seeing a lot more of our teams that we work with who are hearing us about that. So another example Tim, I'm getting is, I've got a meeting next week back to back with two co-directors, planning meetings, opportunities for them to connect. They're together, they're doing a ton of work, but they're not getting a ton of time to just be and to really just be able to reflect without putting out the fires, answering questions, working with the board. This is just an opportunity for them and they wanted to facilitate it. So not facilitated in that it's highly formalized but facilitated in that they've given me a list of here are the big things we're challenged with right now. We're working through and asking me to help be a thought partner and how they can then sequence that thinking and how they can come out with a set of decisions. So we're seeing people being much more open to these sort of deep dive times that they can do a lot of work and they don't have to be in an office per se all the time, but they are more conscientious about we've got to still build in these ways in which we connect and build in this planning time that's more precious than ever.
Tim Cynova:
You're someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about differences between generations. In particular, you've done work focusing on Gen Z leaders. One of the other things we've heard a lot over the past couple of years is this is better for young people or they like to do this or their values are not aligned with being in office five days a week, or all these stereotypes that come into play and you're someone who has actually worked on this, thought about it, worked with different groups and think about attitudes and beliefs and values shared between generations and amongst generations. How are you seeing it these days that might differ with what the common narratives are around how people want to and how people do show up in the workplace?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
So let me answer this by actually giving you a little context. So there are three companies that live under Tammy Dowley-Blackman Group. One is the strategic advisory management consulting, the longest serving company, and that's our TDB group strategic advisory. Then there's Looking Forward Lab, which you were just talking about, which was an idea that began over 10 years ago. I am a mother of a Gen Zer and I really was beginning to think about Gen Z when my daughter was five years old thinking they're going to be really different, they're showing up differently as children, they're going to be really different and I wonder what this is going to look like and I was just intrigued by it, but really doubled down on the idea that this was a company to develop when I was asked to come in and do work with a team in Boston.
The CEO presented is, "We've been doing some diversity, equity, inclusion work, but we had to stop to do some other kind of thinking expansion. I think we may have gotten off track and I'm worried that now team members just might not be connecting as much to the work or feel like disillusioned because we had to take a pause. Can you come in and just help me sort this?" When I get there, I realize what I had to go back to this, the CEO and say is, "Sure, there's always a conversation about diversity, equity, inclusion, and we've extended that to accessibility and belonging, but what you actually have here is about generational issues, how generations are showing up differently in the workplace about different definitions of what it means to understand the work, do the work, professionalism." Certainly not lack of passion, certainly not lack of care, certainly no lack of respect, but just really different in how they were doing the work and that really was the genesis of where it had been a notion, a concept, and I had developed a company but was fairly [inaudible 00:14:03] now it was, "No, you're onto something."
And so I'm so glad that I was already thinking about this, doing the work, asking the questions well before the pandemic because then that added another layer that none of us ever could have imagined. So yes, this generation, what we know are a couple of things. When we talk about Gen Z is that generation roughly between 1995-2012, those who are the older end started entering the workforce in 2018 and really had only just begun and then the pandemic happened. I think about my own goddaughter had been in the workforce only a year there and laid off, there and missing all of those things now that she was loving about being in place and space, asking questions, digging in, mentoring. She was working for a tech company and just really loving it and now she's back home in Philadelphia, loves being with her parents, but this is not what she thought she was going to be doing at 23/24 years old.
And so when I talk to Gen Z and I talk to those who are hiring them and managing and supervising them, I'm trying to find this middle place and say, "Here's the sweet spot. This isn't about right or wrong, good or bad, we're always going to have generational differences, but here's where you all actually overlap." And where they overlap is that people make a lot of assumptions about Gen Z. Gen Z actually, yes, would like the opportunity for there to be more space and to be hybrid, but many Gen Zers report liking being in the workplace because many of them are very acutely conscientiously thinking about the fact that, "If I don't actually see people, will they know me? Will they get to know me? How will I learn?" So much of you and I can point to so many instances where literally you were in the conference room and you just watched the meeting happening.
You just watched those senior leaders, the way they talked about the work, even the word usage or the way in which they teed up conversations, or the ways in which they manage conflict or tension or invited questions. Those things are much harder to do and gauge over Zoom, and so many more Gen Zers are really aware of that. What I do think that we end up having to also manage though is what it looked like in terms of professionalism. Gen Z is the first generation to come with minimal to no work experience, the first generation in 50 years that doesn't come with a lot of work experience. And so there are things that by not being actually in the workplace, they don't get to see.
And so sometimes many of them can show up lacking professionalism to someone who's more established and it's not an intentional, "I want to be disrespectful." Literally, "I just never learned and I would've learned had we been still in the workplace, but now I only see you on a screen and as soon as we finish our conversation, everything's done. I don't get to walk with you back to the kitchen. You don't invite me to go grab lunch or go to Starbucks or I don't get to invite it to just sit in on a meeting and hear."
And so a lot of that's getting lost. So we're trying to really promote the ways in which you can do some of those things earlier to connect Gen Z. So there are differences. I'm always emphasizing this is not a bad or a good. I'm also emphasizing with those who are established in their careers, don't assume it should be like what you had. And literally I've had to say to some supervisors, "They're angry. They're angry." "Well, why isn't it like when I did it and I had to figure it out and I had to take care of myself." And I said, "And how did you like it? You wish that you didn't have to, so why are you now wanting to do it to a next generation?" So there are parts on both sides where it can get a little tough and I invite humility, but there's no right or wrong here, but there are some ways in which Gen Z is being asked to show up and to do big work without the undergirding that many of us got by being actually in the workplace day to day.
Tim Cynova:
That's one of the things, when I was at Fractured Atlas and we were moving to be an entirely virtual organization before the pandemic that-
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
Wow, you all were pioneers.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, I did. Well, I'm so grateful too because then everyone else had to do it overnight, and really was able to leverage that experience to help other organizations like, "Here's how you move money when you can't access your check stock or you don't have the signature stamp with the check stock." I remember though conversations that we had working with our anti-racism commitment around who benefits when you don't show up in the office, or how does it negatively impact different groups if you can't be in the office? And thinking about that now with the articles that are coming out about Z, as you mentioned, I want to be in the office to hear, to get that mentorship that I can't when we just log off and whatever happens when you're not on the screen, trying to think how we, through a values centered way, intentionally design workplaces that are inclusive and at the same time recognize the other commitments that people have in their life and other responsibilities.
So one part of the dynamic is the flexibility that it allows us and also to flip that being in the office, there's so many benefits to your professional growth in your career that you don't get or that are more challenging. And I think this moment of pause as we're really co-creating thriving workplaces, taking what you're talking about and why do we do it this way? Who benefits, who's included, who feels like they belong and who doesn't, and then how can we iterate into something that's better than what this is? It's really exciting, but it's also really messy part about the work these days is there's no playbook for this. As you're working with organizations that are in this messiness, how are you seeing it? What are you advising that might be of interest to other organizations who are wrestling with these same questions?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
Yeah, we're actually trying to create the playbook. We are actually saying, "Here's some things that we believe are going to be important." So some others have heard me say that, "Look, those things that we used to see for you're more established in your career and they were more status for, I'm more established in my career, think like executive coaching, professional development. We have got to move those things to the front. We have got to offer those things in order to be equitable, in order to be conscientious about our values and in order to actually provide Gen Z with the experiences that we need them to have to become the problem solvers we need them to be." We can't say I want global leaders. I want incredible leaders and then actually never do anything to prepare them to be those leaders. They're not going to get it through osmosis across the screen.
We are going to have to invest in a very different way. We are working with teams to help them re-sync everything from how they might deploy their resources differently, divvy those resources up differently, so that they can have a bigger bucket for professional development and actually making it a part of what they negotiate with in terms of making it a benefit for Gen Z as they come in the door that we are making those really specific kinds of calls to action. We're also saying to Gen Z, "You're also going to really have to understand the performance review process very differently because again, for some people it's only what I see and if I don't see you then I actually just don't know you. Even though you could be doing incredible work, be really thoughtful, really be innovative and smart, be a good person, all these things. But if I never get to see you, I'm not quite sure how to evaluate you and thus I may not put much effort into it all."
And this is really for me, an equity issue here because I worry that the people who be at the greatest disadvantage when it comes to performance review, and I'm thinking about three, four years down the road from now, as particularly as then it's really looking at salary and growth and trajectory, next step opportunities, that it will be people of color, it will be women and it will be non-binary that it will be all of those folks that have tended to be marginalized in some way, those who are differently able. It is going to be much more difficult. And so I am really concerned that we are building out performance review processes that allow everyone to shine, that allow them to show up in the way that really is representative of them and giving them a chance to be at that table, getting great assignments, all of those things.
And so I think that there are some people of all different backgrounds and when we're talking about Gen Z, who hooray about having this flexibility without thinking this all the way out about what does this mean for me three, four years from now, it might feel good here in the moment, but is it in any way going to detract from my ability to be able to move into advance or to be at different tables later? Those are the kinds of things that I'm starting to really and have been advocating for, but really now putting a curriculum around it. For example, we've created a course as one of those other elements to be able to say a residency program for corporations and others who are hiring numbers of Gen Zers saying, "Give them these things up front. Allow for them to have an understanding. What does it mean to create your portfolio? What does it mean to understand the performance review process? What does it mean to manage up?"
And then also wonderfully able to help those who are hiring and managing them as well because so many of them have said, "Well, I just thought I'd do what I did before, and what they're saying is I just thought I'd treat them like millennials and others." And again, it's not because Gen Z is so precious and special. It's a generation that has a lot of firsts that we've never experienced before in the workplace. It's the most diverse generation, it's the most technologically advanced, but as I said, also the first generation in 50 years to come to the workplace with very little work experience, and so people are expecting a lot of them, of things that they just actually don't know and have no experience with.
Tim Cynova:
This piece about performance evaluation is a theme I increasingly am hearing over the past couple of months. I think it has something to do with, let's get back to productivity and performance and outputs and back to what it used to be before and how most performance management systems, processes, structures, are pretty horrible and don't do that at all. It's very punitive. It's not a learning and growth opportunity. I've been spending a lot of time around regenerative cycles, regenerative business, regenerative HR with my colleague Katrina Donald, and think about what might actually be a better way of approaching this piece, this crucial piece. Because without it, we don't grow. We don't know what we need to be working on sometimes, but also feel like most systems don't recognize that. What's some of the stuff that you've been noodling on in this area that you think would be particularly helpful for organizations who are feeling like they need a performance management system but maybe are more stuck in a model that's not as helpful?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
We've been talking about it in terms of just that what you said, it is not an annual process, but this should be an ongoing conversation. Everything from even trying to help Gen, Zers understand, "The better you prepare for your meetings with the people that you work with, as well as the people who supervise you, you are signaling to them that you want something more that you require, need something more substantive so that you can do your work and really be a contributor. Not I'm high maintenance and I'm super needy. No, I'm trying to really be a contributor and I need to invest in this in a different way and need you to invest in this in a different way." So even there talking to them about the ways in which they actually request to have regularized meetings so that they can get to know the people they're working with, people they're on projects with, even those kinds of assignments that they'd like to be on and are requesting and the ways in which they think they would again best contribute to those assignments.
Not just having something handed to you but being really proactive and asking about what's the array of what's possible here? Where can I be of the best service, but also where can I learn the most? Thinking about, again, even what professional development offers. We're not talking about professional development in the sense of just that skill set that you do, but we're talking about why don't we talk not only organization, but also the people in those organizations actually teaching them the skills of being futurists about forward-thinking, foresight, thinking about where they can innovate. I'm in this particular group and I'm supposed to work on these five things. Then actually give them time to say, "We need you to actually innovate some element of that. That can be anything from creating a new template so that it gives us better information, helping us to pick a new software or really rethinking our whole intake process on some project that we do."
If we don't start tying this to actual real-time work, experiences, opportunities, questions, that the organization is actually trying to solve for, then it doesn't really feel like anything other than just performative. But when I get to really sit down and we've agreed on, these were the kinds of big questions we were trying to solve, and then I can connect with you and say, "Well, here's what I've been thinking. The research I did or the lit review I put together for my team so that we could better understand what New Zealand was doing on this particular issue." We've got something very different. We're giving people, again, a very different way to show up. I think about even with the philanthropic institutions we work with those that have been really thoughtful about changing their reporting process. This and having worked so many years in this field, the reporting process has been one around you get a grant and you're supposed to report back and it has been blah, boring, uninteresting, unproductive.
It's just again, performative. You're filling in a report length, barely anyone reads it, and it's just, it's really unfortunate. I really started thinking about that even many years ago when I was with the director of the Diversity Fellowship in Boston, and I remember that the Bar Foundation in their report asked one question. They said, "Tell us the thing that was the hardest that you don't actually want to tell us." That was a question in reporting, and I just thought here it is, that's a different thing than asking me how many people did you serve and what were the materials you used? Again, I'm not saying those things weren't important, but they were asking something that was far more valuable and was going to actually give us a way to talk openly and honestly to learn, to continue to learn, share learning, and also ask other questions.
And that's what we are really tying to performance review. And I think the organizations that are going to do that better are going to be doing it in that way. It's not punitive. It's really about learning and it's about innovation and about forward-thinking. We're even doing it, Tim, in the other work we do around, for example, one of these things that has always been really tough for nonprofits is strategic planning, the way in which we've revised what strategic planning looks like is similar to this in the way in which we're saying performance review is one of these things that's tired and it has to be changed.
Tim Cynova:
In the words of our colleague Lauren Ruffin, she would say, it's dusty.
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
You got to love Lauren.
Tim Cynova:
She just has a way of putting something-
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
A way with words.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, very much so. Yeah.
There's so much there. I was reminded of something at Fractured Atlas that we were trying to figure out how to highlight the contributions of everyone in the organization to a way that everyone saw what people were working on this. When you sit in the CEO chair, you don't know what everyone's doing on a day-to-day basis, that's contributing to the mission, the vision, the values, the people that you're serving. And the team came up with this idea to do peer-to-peer bonuses based off of our core behavior values, and they put it in Slack and my colleague Nicola Carpenter and Jillian Wright came up with a system for this, and it was this really beautiful moment where every month people got I think like a hundred points to give out for recognizing contributions around the organization and they would highlight things like, "So-and-so just got off a really challenging call. They did a great job, 25 points."
And every one of the organizations saw this. And to your earlier point about when we're doing performance evaluations, oftentimes we don't know what someone's been working on or you might, recency bias, you kind of forget what they did 10 months ago. That actually was hugely beneficial to the organization and I felt like this was a seemingly small thing to do, but really elevated all the contributions from a great phone call, a well-written email to designing a video that people wouldn't have seen otherwise because it was for a grant proposal and it went through the development office. Thinking about different ways that we can have our, I guess, finger on the pulse, if you will, of what an organization is doing. There are so many different tools now that we can use to do this. You mentioned a couple of times, foresight science, and I know this is a topic that we mentioned, Lauren Ruffin, something that she shares as well. Thinking about the future and what's coming together, what's resonating, what's really of interest for you right now? What's piquing your interest, intellectually stimulating in that area right now?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
This is where I always feel such great humility in that the work that we get to do, you, Lauren, many of the colleagues you mentioned, other colleagues that we share, that we all get to do. And this is where I am so humbled at the fact that I get to be an entrepreneur because I get to work on so many different projects across so many different industries across the country, and I'm just always so humbled by you seeing so many people doing the work. And one of the things that early on in doing this, I've had a company now for almost 20 years, I realized that it was, yep, the big piece was that people were going to need me to be a thought partner, but they certainly were going to need me to help them create a vision and execute on it. But I also early on realized that they needed a conduit to be able to think about things that they just wouldn't get a chance to think about because so much of it is that they have just got to keep moving on what's in front of them, the strategic plan or the mandate from the board of directors, whatever it might be.
But there are just few times they get to sort of lift their heads up and they were looking to people like me to be able to help them or bring things to the table to say, "Hey, have you thought about this? Have you seen this? Or are you aware of this?" And so always, again, just with great humility and glad to be in that space and appreciate it. For me, what I'm seeing and around thinking about foresight, and I saw Lauren recently and we just had such a great time riffing off of this, of the things that we were seeing and asking and was asking me about this most recent project that I was mentioning around rethinking what strategic planning could look like, particularly for small to midsize organizations that need to do this, but they have to make the case and they need to do the work, but tend to have smaller budgets and just don't have a lot of time, more importantly.
And that's one of the reasons in which we were reimagining this. But it's all kinds of things, again, it's the work with Gen Z. we've been reimagining what their workplace experience looks like, reimagining how we think about leadership. You certainly know this and the work that you all did at Fractured Atlas, again, you all were pioneering around thinking about co-directors and co-leadership. Some of the other things that I'm seeing that we are going to have to rethink, I mentioned performance review, we certainly have been paying a lot of attention to what it means for board of directors for nonprofits, what that is going to look like. We have been paying attention to what the actual development of fundraising for nonprofits, what that's looking like and how that's changing. Thinking a lot about what entrepreneurship looks like and for example, also that this is not, "Oh, I've got a great idea and I'm starting a company. And that's what we're going to do."
Even there, one of the things I mentioned there, three companies under Tammy Dowley-Blackman Group, and the last is Cooper + Lowe, and it's named after two of my sheroes and Anna Julia Cooper, who was this amazing educator, and she attended Oberlin College as I did, and went on to become a teacher, but then this woman's amazing and goes, and to get a PhD at the Sorbonne when she's 65 years old. And then Ann Lowe, many people don't know her, but she was one of the first African-American designers and actually designed Jackie Bouvier's dress when she was marrying President Kennedy, then Senator Kennedy. And this woman is not celebrated for all the ways in which she did this work. And so in this, we started thinking about all the women in particular who were coming and women of color who were coming to ask questions about what does it mean to build a business when you really didn't have that as a background and didn't have funds and family wealth and you didn't get incubated and all of that.
So essentially this company has created fiscal sponsorship, back office support for women entrepreneurs, particularly women of color who otherwise don't have a place or space to land. So that's the kind of additional force I'm thinking, what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? They may not go on to build $20 million companies. That's not the point. But giving them a place and space to actually get their legs under them and to be able to think about what's on the horizon for them, particularly in this professional services industry, which continues to change. All of those things have been things that have been on this plate. So whether again, performance review or what does it look like to introduce Gen Z into the workforce? What do they need? But also entrepreneurship and also what it looks like to think about how these big issues affecting all of us will cut across all of those industries.
Everything from climate change, always have embedded diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging in our work. But it's also been thinking about what innovation looks like there. So many people are still doing it. Let's do a training, and that's not what we are and never have been and don't dismiss training, but saying these are much bigger questions. These are much bigger opportunities to think about and have added accessibility and belonging, very intentional, to say, you can have equity, you can have inclusion, you can have diversity. But then I get there and if you actually then have created no way for me to assessably be a part of anything, obtain anything, what does it mean? And if you then shut me out and I never get to feel like I belong, you always let me know I'm an outsider. Then again, what do any of those things mean? So those are some of the things that I've been focusing attention on around foresight, science, thinking forward and love it when I get into being conversations with others who are also doing that work.
Tim Cynova:
We've talked a little bit about being creative, thinking differently, different approaches. We've talked about entrepreneurs building businesses as you've mentioned, as you think about those things being creative, being entrepreneurial, caring for oneself in entrepreneurial efforts where sometimes it feels like a solo endeavor and it's like you're working all the time, what does it mean to you to be creative, to be an entrepreneur, to do those things in a way that cares for yourself so that you can thrive?
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
There are a couple of things there. There are different ways. To be an entrepreneur is the first part of this. And I think that when people come into this, they really have to say, "There are lots of ways to be successful in your work." And that was one of the greatest lessons for me, and I'll give you this quick, what I mean by that. When I first started my consultancy, I moved it from Berkeley, California to Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts. When I got there, my daughter was ill and was ill for the next 10 years. So I couldn't be a traditional consultant and I couldn't be the traditional consultant who was all over the place and really had to accept that I was going to be in place and space for the next decade while my daughter was being treated at Children's Hospital or just really needed to be there.
My husband was traveling domestically and internationally, so we both couldn't be on the road. And it was easier for my work because I was able to actually grab on to these amazing colleagues and opportunities in Boston. So it wasn't about I was the mom and I needed to have made this choice, but it was really about whose work was actually gravitating to Boston, and it was more for me. And in this case, I decided, you know what? I'm going to just build here. I keep on my desk a quote that I saw when I was a nineteen-year-old intern at a bank that no longer exists in Cleveland, Ohio called Ameritrust. And I walked by this woman's desk and there was this little sticker and it said, "Bloom where you were planted." And I remember she wrote that to me on a card when I left that summer, and I never forgot it.
Fast-forward a few years later, I go to a new job and there's a little magnet on a cabinet and I see it, "Bloom where you were planted." And I asked this woman about it and she said, "Oh, I inherited it. The magnet was on the file case when I came into this office. Do you want it?" And she gave that to me 30 years ago and I still have it. So that's what I did. I bloomed where I was planted in Boston, I had to be there for a reason. My daughter was ill, I wasn't going to be able to fly all over the place and was able to build a business that is very different than this. So this business of Tammy Dowley-Blackman Group is five years old, but I've been in business for 20 years. It took those 13, 14, whatever it was to get to this new business that could grow nationally and do all of these things.
And I just had to hold steady. And what I realized is that I was building the relationships, I was building the understanding, and I was building all the things that were eventually going to launch that next phase. And when I got to that next phase, then it was going to go really, really fast. So it's that idea when people say, "Oh my goodness, you're overnight success." You're like, "No, I was doing this for 15 years prior, but I was just having to plod along and I couldn't do it in a big way because I had another responsibility. But it was seeding it." And it really is. I think that this idea about having to understand why you're doing it, understanding where you are in that moment, and even where it can feel disappointing, you feeling like, "Whoa, I'm losing ground, or I'm not building as fast or quickly."
Instead, what I understood I was building more deeply. And that really was a lesson for me, Tim, and it was one that filled me, and it was one that actually gave me greater license to be more creative. So I got a chance to be a professor. I loved being with my students. I love teaching nonprofit management and leadership and to be a senior fellow at places like Boston University. That's probably something I wouldn't have had a chance to do if I was on the road 45 weeks a year, not even probably I wouldn't have. I got a chance to really be a thought partner in Boston and work with just about every philanthropic institution and got to know almost all of the nonprofits in some way, even if I wasn't working directly with them, trying to send resources their way, trying to answer questions and again, be a thought partner to them just generally.
That was just so important and a huge lesson and as I said, it filled me, it taught me, but it also started giving me the license to be far more creative than I think if I had just started this company and was able to do it in the traditional way. I keep feeding that creativity by the kinds of partners we take on the way in which I keep thinking about entrepreneurship and building the various companies. Each of these three companies were built out of a request for something, instead of me assuming what was needed, they were requests. And that was important to me as well. But that's also gave license to creativity. I try to take really good care of myself in the sense of the people I get to be around. I get to work with taking the time off that I need, which I wasn't always so great, and if I could give a piece of advice to do that.
And so there are times when we close the office where the whole team so that we can get the rest that we need. We do it from mid-December until after the New Year, and we do it again from mid-August until after Labor Day. We work really hard. And having those set times off means that everyone on the team gets to have that time off. And then lastly, I'll say that what has been for me, and everyone has their thing, I was never the most athletic. I was never the one who was the most artistic or any of those things. But I absolutely adore, crave, need, enjoy, cherish art. And so everywhere I go, I make art a part of that experience. So I was not one who was interested in social media, not because I didn't see the value of it just because in this instance, I was shy, which I'm not typically, but just shy.
But I realized actually where I love social media was that if I didn't talk about... It Wasn't about me and I wasn't putting pictures up of me, but it was about talking about art. I loved it. And so that's why a lot of times the things that people will see on social media, for me, certainly about the clients I work with, the talented team leaders I work with, and Gen Z, those are things, but I wanted to have something else. And it was about, and it was about museums and what I'm seeing and what I'm getting to see differently. And so I think people can see that just pure joy in me when I go to a museum. I just went to the Ackland Museum and when I was in Chapel Hill for a meeting, I saw a piece of art that I literally had just seen the recently in my midnight on Instagram. And I learned about this new African-American artist, Rose Piper. And I walk in and there's one of her pieces, the literal, the childhood joy of what I experienced in that moment. So that's the way I'm taking care of myself, and everybody has their thing and this is mine.
Tim Cynova:
That's wonderful. So much richness in that. Tammy, our time has flown by.
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
No.
Tim Cynova:
Thank you so much for making time and sharing your perspectives and your openness, and your genuineness and your awesomeness to be with. And thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Tammy Dowley-Blackman:
Well, Tim, thank you and just really appreciate your work and that you, again, were one of those pioneers who said, "There's some conversations to be had," and just started talking to people and it became this. And so congratulations and thank you for inviting us to these conversations. It's important, it's helpful, and with great humility, I'm glad to be here.
Tim Cynova:
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