“Being productive is one thing. Being nonprofit productive takes something more.” - says Mike St. Pierre, productivity geek with over 25 years of nonprofit leadership. Together with his team, he aims to equip nonprofit leaders with simple productivity strategies to help them maximize their team efficiency and avoid burnout. Watch and read to learn more.
🎥 Watch the interview on NGO productivity
Watch this short interview Michael did with Mike St. Pierre on the occasion of the Productivity Summit launch. Learn about the right way of giving & taking feedback as well as the productivity-related efforts and strategies in the nonprofit environment.
Productivity Summit is a free, virtual event where the experts and practitioners share their tips on time management, remote work, Agile, asynchronous communication and automation and much more! You can sign up right now!
If you prefer to read, then here is the interview
Michael Sliwinski
Apart from being good friends and good productivity geeks, we share our journey of using different productivity tools and we just like making things more productive and easier to work right?
Mike St. Pierre
We do. I work in the nonprofit world. You can have a great mission statement. You can have a great work ethic. You can be a great public speaker. But if your day to day work isn’t effective and efficient and productive, a lot of the rest of that can fall by the wayside. So, yeah, we are really passionate about productivity because it impacts every other part of our lives.
Michael Sliwinski
I remember when I was involved in our local school Parents Association, and some of the parents were complaining that they’re here pro bono. And I said, yeah, that’s great. But it’s not an excuse to do a poor job. We are not being paid for that. But we still have to do our job if we said we would do it.
Mike St. Pierre
I had a boss one time. He said: “A lot of us suffer from “nice guy syndrome”, where we say: well, they’re a volunteer or we’re a Church, a synagogue, a nonprofit, whatever, and we need their help. And we do need their help! But that doesn’t take us off the hook from giving some feedback and setting an example. And I think a lot of us just don’t like to give hard feedback. We’re just a little bit of afraid of what’s the person going to say. But I think the more we do that, the better. And we just sort of build that muscle of constantly giving people feedback. And it is important to set the culture for an organization that we all get feedback. You’re the owner of Nozbe. So I don’t know if you get feedback, but I have bosses above me and they give me feedback all the time, and sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes it’s really direct, but we all get feedback. It’s just part of trying to do a good job, whatever our role might be.
Michael Sliwinski
Just today, in our company, we had the retrospective of our recent marketing activities. We were analyzing our Black Friday promo and stuff, and we got lots of harsh feedback from our team about many things that we did. And it was really constructive feedback. But some people from my team just took it really personally. And I did as well at some point. You can be a little bit defensive because they’re attacking what you did. But then, when you start digging deeper, you’re like: “they are right here”. We could have done it differently. And the moment you pass the defensiveness and the human reaction, and you start being rational about it, you see there is lots to improve here. Yes. We also have to acknowledge that we did this and this very well. But in these points, they’re spot on. There are things that we still need to improve. And that’s great.
Mike St. Pierre
Well, I think that’s the power of something like a retrospective. Let’s give ourselves permission to say things that could feel a little awkward or could be hard. But this is the place where we can do that or even saying something like: “Can I speak freely here?” and then go into it? Or “Can I say something that might feel a little bit off? But I want to say it in the spirit of teamwork or charity or whatever.” I think sometimes those little bridge statements give people a little window to say: “Okay, I can receive that. I might not like it, but I can receive it.”
And as long as it’s done respectfully, I think it can produce great results. And we have to do these things because none of us sees ourselves objectively. We look at a photo of ourselves and we say, oh, my gosh. I put on a few pounds or I lost more hair or whatever and day to day, you just don’t see it. And so we need that feedback as difficult as it might be.
Michael Sliwinski
That’s so true. Coming back to you, I haven’t really properly introduced you, but I just wanted to just lean into this conversation naturally. So before you got involved so much in the nonprofit world, you were a manager of a high school, right?
Mike St. Pierre
I was the President of a Catholic high school here in the United States. And my whole career has been in K to twelve faith-based education and concluded with seven years as a President of a Catholic high school. And it was a wonderful season of life where we got to test out a lot of different productivity strategies and protocols, and some of them worked. Some of them didn’t. But it was really fun because you had this laboratory, if you will, to try out different things.
Michael Sliwinski
And then you did your PhD.
Mike St. Pierre
Did what’s called an EdD. So a doctorate in education, which is called a practical doctorate. So not so much in the clouds, but what they call action research. My dissertation was on the use of iPads in a high school setting. And so we had taken our school to a one to one. We first started with iPad touches, and then we went all iPad, and it was very hard. And so I thought my doctoral research probably should come on the heels of that. And we learned a lot. And looking back, I would certainly do some things differently. But that’s where my interests were and still are.
Michael Sliwinski
I’m so envious. You did a doctorate on the iPads. This is like a music in my ears.
Mike St. Pierre
Well, it was really fascinating. I honed in specifically on the skill of collaboration, and whether or not everyone having an iPad would contribute to students collaborating on a deep level or not have any causality to that reality. It was fascinating… but I was really glad when it was over. They say: What’s a good dissertation? One that’s done. And so, when I finished it on time, I said, I don’t plan to read that anytime soon, but I’m glad it’s done.
Michael Sliwinski
Anyway, Congratulations on that. So now you’re in the nonprofit environment, and what is exactly that you do?
Mike St. Pierre
My role is Executive Director of an organization of professionals who work on College campuses here in the United States. Our organization is called the Catholic Campus Ministry Association. And so wherever you’re reading this from, you’ve probably seen some of these top basketball or football programs from the United States on TV. Almost all of them are members of our organization. And so we provide professional development to those members, whether it’s through in-person events, online courses, online webinars, Zoom events, symposiums, you name it. It’s an incredible group of people to serve. They’re very entrepreneurial and willing to try new things. We’ve been all trying new things, and there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Michael Sliwinski
Yeah. And now you’re organizing Nonprofit Productive - Productivity Summit. Can you just tell us more about this? Because I don’t think it’s exactly what your nonprofit is doing, but I think they kind of approve, right?
Mike St. Pierre
I am very fortunate because I report to a board, and I told them early on that I really felt drawn, in my free time, to help other nonprofits, some similar to ours, some very different. Here in the States, we have over a million nonprofits, and these can range from hostels to soup kitchens to pet shelters. It’s really impressive. I just felt like that would be a really interesting space to share what I’ve learned. I don’t know everything, obviously, but I’ve been doing this for long enough that I could start to share some things that I’ve learned specific to productivity, because again, as we talked in the beginning. I just see so many nonprofit leaders, executive director, specifically, they’re working harder. They’re chasing their tails, the work never finishes, and they can be left feeling very demoralized, exhausted and then eventually burn out and leave their nonprofits. And so that seems to me like kind of a shame that you could have a really dedicated, good person who just because they haven’t figured out some of the productivity stuff their nonprofit work could suffer. And so if we could just help them along the way with the productivity strategies and the tips and tricks and the mindset, it could actually help prolong their career and then help their nonprofits.
So I started a consultancy called Nonprofit Productive, and it’s dedicated just to nonprofit leaders. We invited you to be a speaker at this event called the Nonprofit Productivity Summit, which is happening. And it’s brought some of the greatest minds and thinkers from the productivity space software specifically, as well as some really incredibly talented nonprofit leaders. And we just thought, let’s get them together and look at different things such as taskbased communication, automation, fundraising, remote teams, virtual work etc.
Michael Sliwinski
Thanks for inviting me to participate. And also, like some of my really close friends and other productivity geeks out there. And of course, with our guru, David Allen is also there. So where can people go and see it?
Mike St. Pierre
They can still sign up over at NonprofitProductive.com. It’s completely free. It’s virtual, and it’s just a wonderful opportunity to learn and kick back on an afternoon, watch a couple of videos, take some notes. Our interview with you is one of my favorites because you just have such incredible energy. And I think people can do well to learn a little bit more about asynchronous communication and task-based communication.
Michael Sliwinski
Thanks. So I really invite everyone to just check it out, especially that in Nozbe, we preach mighty Fridays. So on a Friday, you should do a weekly review and then spend time on your personal development. And why not watch all the videos from the Nonprofit Productive Productivity Summit? This is what I’m going to do this Friday. This is the best way to just remind everyone that there’s always time to improve and to work on your personal development. And even if you are a productivity geek like both of us, we still keep on improving. We still keep on finding new ideas and new ways to improve.
Mike St. Pierre
I think too, it’s a good way to model for our teams and our direct reports that we’re still learning. I think we always look for people on our team who have a growth mindset. And I’ve said before that the people who get fired are not usually the ones who are incompetent. They’re the ones who can’t grow anymore.
I picked up my daughter from dance class last night and I was listening and watching on YouTube one of the interviews and she said: Are you watching your own videos? And I said, I am, because I love the guests and I want to learn from them. And I’m not going to sit down for 9 hours straight and listen to all of them. So I take them in little bits and pieces. It’s really fun. There’s so much to learn and we got to keep growing.
Michael Sliwinski
Yeah, I’ve had that several times like my daughter seeing me watch me talk. It was me talking to you or some other people and some of my customers (I also record interviews with customers just for our internal use). Because when you’re in the conversation, you’re not capturing everything. You’re just focused on making the conversation, right? But then you can just take a step back and just relax and just watch yourself not being as brilliant as you thought, but then listen to the other one.
Mike St. Pierre
I’m always critiquing things I say or, oh, why didn’t I ask a more pithy question or something like that…
Michael Sliwinski
Mike again, thanks so much for doing this. I want to conclude this conversation just to confirm that you are a Nozbe Teams user. Actually, you are not user, not just because you like me, but because your team consciously chose our application.
Mike St. Pierre
When I was younger working in a school, I made the mistake of letting different reports choose their project manager because I just thought, well, that would make sense. They would then buy into it. And it’s all good. Right. The problem was then I had to learn three or four different project management tools, which was fun but got tiring after a while. So I’m older and wiser now. And so we tried different project management tools for the first couple of years. When I was with the organization, I currently am CCMA, and then we realized that we just need really one place where we can communicate, where we can share projects, where we can think in written form, where we can give each other feedback.
So we tested a couple of different things and eventually we settled with Nozbe Teams, and it’s been really fun to see the software mature and just get better and better. I think you guys shipped. I don’t know, 30 or 40 different iterations of it last year. It’s really impressive. Who does that? That’s really impressive. And I know you. I know you and the company and I trust the data security. I know the company is totally committed to improving the product. For us it’s simple. We have some members of our team who are very tech-savvy and some who aren’t as tech-savvy.
So to find one tool that actually is usable for all those is not easy. We did dabble in a couple of competitors, and they were just too much, too complicated. Too many features. What our team needed was something simple, reliable, trustworthy, something that was fun and attractive and enjoyable to use. And so Nozbe Teams is really fit for us. It’s met that sweet spot. It’s reasonable. We’re a nonprofit, and so the price is right. It’s easy to add members. I just added somebody yesterday. It was no big deal.
I think I went to the five person plan to six. It was not a big deal. So that’s nice because it’s flexible for us. My favorite feature is probably the incoming tab because that’s just where I go. And so if somebody is tagging me, if somebody’s delegating something to me, that’s where I go. I don’t usually look at the Activity because I think when I looked this morning there are 180 different things happening, but I’m excited to test out the new filters. I’m excited to use the search more.
I haven’t used that as much, but I should and I want to test that out more. It just gives us a place to park everything and it works for us. So we don’t want to be emailing within our team. We’re not perfect at that, but we want to cut down on that. We want to cut down on interruptions during the day. And so I’ll try anything that will help accomplish those two things. So for us, Nozbe Teams really fits that need that we have as a small team.
Michael Sliwinski
Thank you. That’s fantastic testimonial. I’m so happy because as you know, when you do something a certain way, sometimes it’s hard for people to explain to people that this is the way that you want things to do. But the moment that they capture that they understand that this is the way and they start doing your way, it’s glorious. It’s fantastic.
Mike St. Pierre
And sometimes you have to maybe redirect a team member if they’re messaging you or emailing, you say, you know what? Why don’t you just put this into Nozbe Teams. And that way we’ll have kind of a nice little track record of it. We can look back and it’s just easier. And it lets people focus on their work. And it’s a common language. It’s a common place. I know I have some dear friends and relatives who they don’t have any project manager software. And I can’t imagine working that way because to me, that would seem very frenetic and disjointed.
Whereas for us, Nozbe Teams just gives us one place, one source of truth where we can pull all of our work together and at the end of the day, get our job done, which is really the thing. I mean, Nozbe Teams is a good tool, a really good tool that we enjoy using. But if it doesn’t help us get our work done, then it’s not a good tool. But for us, it does. So no worries.
