Episode 114: Yes, Sweat the Small Stuff - Impact of the Little Things

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast for making your non-profit more effective for your community and here is your host the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

It's great to have you back here with me, Randall, on "Around with Randall." In today's conversation as we begin a new year is based on a couple things that I've read and run into and thought about. And it's all coalescing around this idea of the small things. I think in life we look in particular in philanthropy and most particularly for those that are gift officers. And by the way, the numbers that we see from giving USA and the trends in philanthropy indicate a push towards this, that the grand effort, the big input, the big effort overall is something we should all aim for. And I do agree that the numbers indicate when we talk about fundraising and philanthropy that fewer people are making a bigger difference. But that doesn't mean we should forget about the small stuff and the the small things make a world of difference.

For context, let's talk about just a labeling of maybe some small things that make a big difference, and then let's jump into kind of the rationale of why the science and then the practicalities, the tactical of what things you can be doing that you might think is small, but might have big impact.

So a couple of things to think about when we discuss the idea of small things and their value. DNA is as small as you can get but yet it is an enormous effect on criminals and crime and investigations cases. In fact recently it was DNA that brought to light in need of the breakthrough of arresting someone in a major national case.

Routines. Small things in routines, you might think it's small in my routine, which I've talked about. Every day I get up, every day ,and I the first thing I do is to take a shower. I begin my day clean and it's a routine. It may seem small to you maybe small overall but it makes a big effect on me as I begin my day afresh and new. I have a dear friend and client who sends texts constantly about how I'm doing and what's going on in my family in the holidays and things of that nature, very small effort, but huge impact on how I look at her, how I look at our relationship, and how I look at the world as being a place that cares.

In the middle of our family activities I try to, when it's very you know big do the little in particular with my kids, haul them over in the middle of a big family gathering and just say kind of a hug kind of a kiss, or bring my wife flowers when there's no reason to because that has impact. Small gesture, big outcome.

Or I think about when I kind of review the amazing life I've had for a quarter of century with my wife, and three years of dating, and a couple 22 years of marriage ,the simplicity of a touch on the elbow or pat on the knee, and small gesture big impact. When we think about goals in life, weight loss, or health, what you eat, what you do in terms of exercise are small inputs but you create rhythm with them, routines, and they become big impacts.

Or financial planning. The idea of compounding interest and you put in $10 of your paycheck may seem small but in 30, 40 years can have an enormous impact. The small things make big differences. And yet if the question we should be asking ourselves is, why why are these small things so important? Well, let's start with the perspective, so this kind of moves into the of psychology of all of this what we view as small someone else may view as big.

Little things that we can do for our self and we don't see the big impact, or for others, and we think well this is dumb. And simple may be viewed as highly impactfulness from somebody else's perspective.

And I'll talk about a couple of examples in the tactical pieces here in a moment that might be helpful in how we look at our donors, and our board members, and our volunteers, and those that are the most engaged with us.

The the second piece is that, unbeknownst to you, the person who's doing the small your actions might influence others much more so than you realize, or maybe you're the sole impact as a child with older parents. I'm watching them go through a challenge or two, but not much different than anyone else if you love your mom and or dad or both. You're in a situation where they go through ups and downs, and I'm realizing that as a child particularly who lives fairly close to his parents that my little impact, my little inputs, things I do have a large impact on what they're doing.

And if we think about our kids, so I have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, do as I say not as I do. If they watch me behave in a certain way that has an enormous influence, even though I think it's small is enormous. I'm their role model. so I'm using this generationally in two ways going up and down, in terms of age, you might be the major influence on someone else and you don't even know it.

Number three, small things in our own minds don't generate accomplishment. If we're trying to lose weight, I mentioned that earlier exercise should be a part of that equation. But if I go walk and in my world I'm either walking in the complex around my office or at home down to Center Street and back, that's not a big accomplishment. I mean, I can do that in my sleep. But as soon as you do it, you don't realize its impact because it wasn't a big deal, it wasn't maybe on the checklist for that day, or if it's on the list to do it. Wasn't the major things you were trying to accomplish and yet what we know is that if we do enough small things it influences the outcome much greater than if we do one big thing.

Unfortunately our brains, and our minds, and the way we live our lives we tend to remember the big ones or at least we aim for them. I tell stories as a part of my life professionally and personally all the time. What I find interesting, if we go back to the way in which things aren't check marks, there are a couple of great stories which I won't tell here of me growing up where something my parents did had an enormous effect on the way I view life. And yet they were incredibly small to the way in which my parents viewed that moment. So small that they don't remember them, whether it's something my dad said about the way in which he viewed and he wanted me to view the idea of who was in charge, and he wasn't talking about himself, he was talking about Mom. To the way in which I owed a responsibility to myself or to the way in which I view respect for women or a million other examples which you probably can think of, and go gosh that moment really sat with me. They don't view those moments the same because of perspective.

Number two, but number three, because they were small in the moment but they were enormous in the outcome. Number four is that if we let a series of small things not get done or be hindered, they actually create what's thought of as a compounding effect and it increases the challenge or the issue. Think about it. Maybe in this manner if you save a hundred dollars per month, starting at age 20, you'll have X number of dollars, probably close to a million depending on the interest rates. If you save $500 starting at age 40 you won't have the same amount of money because you had 20 years of compounding interest. Financial, those 20 years when you were 20 when you wouldn't have them when you're 40.

The same is true in things to do with relationships and things of that nature. How many of our friendships have diminished over time and have become compounded because we don't have as much interaction? We aren't doing the small things. The human brain is really not built or designed to understand the compounding nature of challenges or trouble. We're built more for the immediacy and so we aim for the big things, and yet the series of little things compound in ways we sometimes don't understand, and thus we put them off or we don't prioritize them or don't even think about them.

Number five, finally, life really isn't about really big moments. It's about a series millions of small ones. Let's take the largest of the 20th century in America and if we go a little bit before and after you know, 1900, and in year 2000 there are certain events that are essential in our knowledge base. When we think about America in that time frame whether it's the assassination of McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt becomes president and that changes the course of our history, to World War I and Woodrow Wilson, to the Great Depression to obviously Pearl Harbor to how we look at the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, to Watergate, to the Challenger explosion. Maybe something dealing with the dot-com bubble, or computers, or technology in the 1900s, and then I'll close it out on September 11th of 2001, which is a little bit after. But a hundred years, you could kind of lay them out in American history in those big moments, but those don't define America. History in the 20th century is defined by a million moments that didn't get that much press, but were quintessential to who we are as a country and what we've become. And yes, those big moments had influences on us but in totality they were minuscule in comparison.

All the million moments that came between and our lives are like that birth of a child, a marriage, a life, a death, a job change, a move, a major snowstorm, and yet those are minuscule moments in the totality of our life that was filled with routine things.

The one that I'll use as the example is just for something to think about is I am militaristic around the idea is that we eat as a family. There are exceptions to when we eat in front of the television. Friday night we do movie night every Friday as a family, but we eat as a family, we talk how was your day what did you do, how did it go. Those are a million nights that really in many cases have no clear Pearl Harbor like memories. But my guess is they'll mean a great deal to my children someday.

Life isn't really more about those million moments, not about the one-time things that occur. So if we take those five things that I just talked about, thats what's smaller. You might be big to someone else that unbeknownst to you your influence could be much greater than you realize. That the small things actually don't drive a sense of accomplishment in our brains, that we let things go, and as a result it compounds into more challenges and difficulties, and that life's really about those million moments.

What does this mean from a practicality standpoint in the non-profit sector? Let me give you a couple of examples and this is all about the concept that is articulated as I've talked about, and I've believed in, but was finally put into words by Nathan Chappelle and Brian Crimens in The Generosity Crisis, this idea of a radical connection.

I work with a client, and we were talking between Christmas and New Year's and she says I've just had the best time and this is an upper level manager, supervisor, leader, who literally, all she's doing is doing outreach to people that they haven't heard from, and not asking for money. How are you doing? We haven't heard from you? Are you doing okay? It's the holidays. What's your family doing? Have you been alone? Are you with other people? She said, I'd forgotten how much I just love doing outreach to ask how people are doing and not even worry about the money. Small in her world, but what she found out was a number of them said, I'm not with family. They couldn't travel here. There was an airline that had a small problem which we've all read about. My family couldn't get here. I was by myself. I can't thank you enough for calling. The genuineness, the small thing of just having all the gift officers just reach out to people was the right thing to do. It made a difference.

Now the other side of it is, they found out well you know I need to make some decisions. I can't thank you enough. You know what, I'm going to write you a check, five, ten times what I've normally written at the end of the year because you didn't even ask me. No I think that's secondary. But we're in the fundraising business. We're nonprofit. We need those kind of people, think about that impact. The idea of handwritten notes and cards, I don't do this very well in part because my handwriting is so bad. I make a joke but there's some truth in it that Mrs. Forsberg in fourth grade failed me for both handwriting and spelling, and I'm the first and only person in the history of Rockbrook Elementary to hold that distinction.

What is the value of a handwritten note? When you get it do you pay more attention to it? Someone took some time. What does that mean to you? Why aren't we doing that more? Small impact, small action, small thing. big impact in terms of donor relations. There was a gentleman I used to work with, he's passed on so I feel more comfortable talking about it, but his name was Mike Harper. He was former CEO of ConAgra and RJR Nabisco. Mike in his later years, I maybe once every 10 days would pick up a cup of soup from Panera. broccoli cheese and some bread and go over to his house and he'd have Diet Pepsi, two of us, I would sit at a table and have lunch. His assistant sometimes would join us, Mary, he his, wife had passed away, kids were around, grandkids were around, some degree, but he just loved the camaraderie. We'd talk about business, we talk about politics, we talk about Omaha. And every once in a while we'd get into conversation about Mike. We'd like you to be involved with this, but there was a genuineness in our relationship. I deeply appreciated who he was and what he was doing for me as a friend, as a mentor, and I told him that as much as I could.

I received a phone call out of the blue sometime during Christmas and New Year's. My wife and I had made a gift and it was the number two at this organization calling me to say I just wanted to call and thank you. I said well what's going on in the background. He goes well I'm actually on vacation with family at the Beach in South Carolina but I saw your gift and I don't have much time but I just was calling to say thank you personally. On vacation with his family. Dropped what he was doing just to tell me he appreciated what I did. Small thing, big impact.

The question that we have to ask ourselves are, is, or should be what is it that we can do that's small that may be big impact? And you just got a whole bunch of tactical examples and they shouldn't be reserved for the end of the year. They should be continuous, constant. How do you create a sense of a genuine relationship, radical connection, that's talked about in the book Generosity Crisis that actually legitimizes the value you have with all of these small actions into someone's else life, and not because they can give money, but because that's who we are in the non-profit sector. Write down, make it a priority to do five, six, eight smalls or ten small things every day to a myriad of people, staff members, donors, leaders, volunteers, and you'll be surprised what happens. You're gonna make someone else's life better, but you know what you're also going to find. You're gonna make your life better. It's a good lesson for me. You and everyone else, not only in the nonprofit sector but in just the idea of how relationships should be, and making a difference for other people, and don't forget what the definition of philanthropy is. It isn't money, it's love of mankind.

Don't forget check out the blogs, two a week, 90 second reads, give you something to think about, play with in your head. Something I see or read that I go wow that's kind of interesting, we should talk more about that. Hallettphilanthropy.com. And if you want to get a hold of me that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Don't forget what you're doing is important. It's making a difference. The more small things you do, the more impact you can have. Don't forget my favorite saying which applies to directly what we're talking about today. Yes you should sweat the small stuff. Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondering what happened. People who make things happen don't have to do big things to help those who are wondering what happened. They just have to do a lot of small things that make a big difference. And if you can do that, you're going to wake up every morning thinking I got the best job in the world. I work in the best profession I could ever imagine, and that's worth something. Appreciate you joining me here today on "Around with Randall". we'll see you next time right back here. Don't forget, make it a great day.