The Solution is Already in the Room with John Harper

Featuring John Harper, CEO of FSG

Most of us identify a problem, do some sort of analysis, and then say, "Great, I developed my strategy, I'm going to go execute." What this says is, you identified a problem, did some analysis, and maybe you have a hypothesis on what you might want to do. But the next step after that is not execution. The next step is community building and relationship building. What it does is both strengthen the quality of whatever you're going to ultimately go after, help you rethink aspects of the strategy you've put forward, and in a very clear system change way, it actually strengthens the very connections and relationships that you're going to need in order to actually drive towards long-term system change.

Jeff: We can't fix the world alone. But collaborating isn't easy, and systems are allergic to change. So how do we do it without losing our damn minds?

English: That's what we're here to find out.

Jeff: I'm Jeff Walker.

English: I'm English Sall. Welcome to System Catalysts, the podcast that cracks the code for making the world a better place.

[Music]

Welcome to another season of System Catalysts! The reason why English and I started this show was to spread the gospel of systems change. When dealing with incredibly complex problems, it's hard to put a dent when you go at it alone. We truly believe that if you're working on a problem, and I'm working on a problem, we can find better solutions if we join forces and work together. Sadly, we often see quite the opposite in the world of philanthropy. So it's always exciting when we get to talk to someone who feels the same way.

John Harper is the CEO of FSG, a global nonprofit consulting firm that works with organizations to create equitable systems change. In our conversation, John talks about the importance of collaborating with the people on the ground when looking for solutions. We like to call this "being proximate," and as you'll hear, it's an integral part of systems change. Because no one understands the failures of our systems better than those experiencing them. So if you want to put equity at the center of your work, listen up!

[Music]

John and I began by discussing our shared interest in music and its surprising parallels to systems change work.

John: I am a classically trained opera singer. Much to my mother's chagrin, I'm not on someone's opera stage at this very moment.

Jeff: Wow. But do you like opera? You still go to opera?

John: Oh my god, I adore it. Actually, when I first moved to New York, in an incredible small world scenario, I was 23 years old, my first boss's sister was the stage manager at The Met, and her partner was the house manager at The Met, which meant I got added to their friends and family, we got extra tickets. Which meant at 23, I had box seats to see Trovatore and the opera about the life of Gandhi and Tales of Hoffman, like multiple operas for free.

Jeff: Well, we'll have to go somewhere to hear you sing as well.

John: That could happen. What's your favorite opera, Jeff?

Jeff: I don't have great opera background. I'm more of a jazz person. I was on the board of Berkeley College of Music for 10 years and on Quincy Jones's board and a whole bunch of other things. To me, it's just that feeling of connecting with others and something that you couldn't have done by yourself. And it sounds to me like that's what you got going at FSG too, is a bit of an orchestration going on. I call it more of a jazz experience. Because very few people are really the boss. You're really trying to keep them together in some kind of organized form.

John: I think there are aspects of that analogy that resonate. Interestingly, what folks often will say is, how did you get to sort of where you are right now? It feels so different, right? Like, to say you're on an opera stage, you did fundraising, and now you're doing consulting. Like, how do these things connect?

And what I often say is, if you can think of my life as an opera singer, I am on a stage, typically singing in a language that typically the audience doesn't even understand. And yet I'm expected to take them on a journey, help them feel something, and perhaps motivate them to do something about it. And that's my responsibility, that flavor of translation. How do you understand the audience, capture them, move them to take action. I would argue the same thing is true in fundraising. You are trying to understand an audience, captivate them, move them to take action. I would actually argue the same thing is true to facilitating a large board or some other decision-making body to align on a topic. How do you capture an audience, understand what they're struggling with, and then motivate them to take action. So in some ways, some of those core skills that I think I developed as an opera singer actually are quite transferable to what we do today. There's certainly the organized chaos that I think you're describing that's true in any jam session or true in any sort of opera stage. And there's that way that even in the midst of the organized chaos, we stay mindful of our audience. What is their entry point into this and what are we trying to move them towards at the end? So it feels at its core perhaps disconnected, but when you think about it a bit more, I think a lot of what I learned as a performer definitely shows up in the work today.

John spent many years in the education sector, working hard to improve public school systems across the country. Then, a profound experience led him to think... bigger.

John: I had to come to terms with what I care most about the communities that birthed me, the black and brown, often marginalized, low-income communities that created me, was about much more than just what happened sort of inside four school walls for eight hours a day.

There was much more happening there, right, that I had this positive experience inside DeKalb County Public Schools was much more than just what happened inside DeKalb County Public Schools. And so I think there's the hit of, all right, you've been kind of narrow here. Is it just the classroom environment? What else are you paying attention to? Actually in real talk, we were visiting a school in DC. And we were talking about all their measures of progress, state test scores had gone up, attendance had gone up, and the principal, I think, pulled me to the side, I'm not sure if she said it publicly or not, but she was like, yeah, I mean, we're seeing progress in all those things. And last week, someone got shot directly in front of the school building. Right? Like, it will change our measures of emotional readiness for school. And it just hit me for all the things that we were doing inside of that classroom. What's happening externally, it matters, and we gotta think about that. So that was one. Sort of these narrowed approaches. As Audre Lorde says, there's no single issue struggle, because we don't live single issue lives. I think that experience helped me realize, like, yo, this, I'm only education, or I'm only health. I don't think that's it. We're missing something. We need some space where folks can come together.

And God only knows where it comes from. And we're going to still need this funding on the back end. So I'm going to figure out how to position it. Right? And it just felt off. Something's missing here. Who's actually providing this input in this engagement? So I wanted to better understand what was influencing big philanthropy, and if it was possible to make those dollars move more effectively into communities.

So I would say those three things probably happened simultaneously, a bit of a, it's not just your theory of change, a bit of a, it's not just one issue area, came to the fore that says, what might it look like to help influence that? We're leaving a lot of impact on the table. We're also causing a bit of harm along the way. What would it look like to shift those elements?

Jeff: I love that. I'll go into maybe more of that about how to handle ego-filled musicians at times. So to me, you guys have done a really great job of FSG over the years and known and worked with many of your team, you know, the original Mark Kramer, Michael Porter partnership and the articles that came out from it, you know, really have helped mold the system change world and kind of what we're thinking. But I still see there's a pivot going on. Seems to me, you know, as you've come on, in more place-based philanthropy and more equity orientation, you know, how did, I mean, it's not like you just showed up and everybody goes, oh, great, let's just do that. So, you know, how did it, how'd you, you know, when you joined and then how did it evolve and kind of where are you guys going these days at FSG?

John: That's interesting. So I joined FSG back in 2019. So we've been about five years at this point. And I think why I joined FSG speaks to a bit of what you said. I remember the CEO at the time, as I was looking at the system change framework, I said, Oh, my God, I've been saying this for years. I didn't know there was a fun framework for it. Like, this is exactly what we should be talking about. And so deep, I think, philosophical alignment with the ideas that were being put forward at FSG. I think I also appreciated the learning and growth aspect of the work you went back to system change, but I would go all the way back to creating shared value, some of the collective impact concepts and the ways in which an ideal like collective impact looked like something in 2010. We updated it in 2021. And that was intentional. Right? That ability to continue to be in this search for what have we missed in the search for driving meaningful impact? And how do we capture those learnings and continue to enhance and evolve our practice at its core? I think it's true to who FSG is, and it's been, I think, an amazing journey to be in this leadership seat to help guide the organization.

For those who don't know, "collective impact" is a term similar to systems change. It's when people and organizations working on one issue come together to solve it. FSG coined the term nearly 15 years ago. When John joined, he brought a new focus on equity to that type of work.

John: I think the pivot that you're describing would probably come for me on the, who are we looking to for the big ideas and for the examples and for the inspiration? A lot of those ideas at FSG were indeed the brainchild of Mark and John and Michael and other folks that I consider giants in the field and grateful for their contributions. And I'm not sure that we always lifted up the examples of folks that were doing this on the ground had similar insights were making meaning of those things. And I don't say this to speak ill of John or Mark or any of those folks individually. I think this is true across the board. Right. And so it's about how do we pay attention to both of those dynamics? What are the opportunities to lift up the folks who've been figuring this out on their own the whole time? How does it, how do we position ourselves to not say we're the leading edge offering the idea, but rather how are folks struggling? How can we help? How can we lift up more of this grounded? I often say that the pivot that you're experiencing is FSG moving from the learned professor here to bestow knowledge upon to the coach, what are you struggling with and how can we help changing that orientation I call it sort of the humble learner is the effective teacher, if we can bring more of that humility into our work. Recognizing that the solution is often already in the room, we have a responsibility to help bring that out of folks, bring that out of a group, help highlight that inside of a community. I think that's a bit of the transition that we're making. So it's certainly respecting the legacy and the brilliance that was captured in our history, as well as being on that continuous learning journey that I started out with. What are the ways that we can continue to evolve and enhance our approach to driving meaningful long-term change?

Jeff: And I keep hearing that as well, a little bit in your equity orientation and your place-based. Can you give us some examples about what you've seen, you know, that kind of related to that? I mean, we've done interviews with Giving Tuesday with a hundred countries kind of doing their own thing and Teach for All with Wendy, about 65 countries doing their own thing. And then they operating as this network support, you know, can you talk about what you've seen out there that kind of leads you to believe we're on a decent path. And how do we add more momentum, more energy into that space?

John: So a concrete example of this is we just helped a family foundation in St. Louis reset its strategy, from they were going at global neuroscience and basic science research to now wanting to get at inclusive shared prosperity in their hometown. In the greater St. Louis region, so an ambitious vision, and you want to sort of explore what does shared prosperity look like. So in the course of our work with the family, we dove deep into the research. What do researchers say inclusive prosperity actually means? What are the components of that? What might we pay attention to? We also then said, you know, this foundation isn't the first ones in the world who ever thought about cracking this nut. Where can we look to see other examples, other frameworks, other things that we might pay attention to? Now, maybe 20 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, that would have probably been almost sufficient for FSG to say, great, now here's where we should go.

But this actually looked quite different. In this situation, we were doing this project alongside and in deep, close relationship with a local black-led, woman-led firm who also was deeply engaged in social impact. She had run some of the collaborative work that happened in the region, and she knows many of the local players. So while we're, my team from FSG is doing this deep dive into the research. What do academics say that we should be doing? What do other funders say that we should be doing? Her team went to the streets of St. Louis. So they met with folks in public housing projects. They actually did focus groups with groups of teachers and others. If these are the folks who are not currently included in our region's prosperity, then we should hear from them what's actually most helpful in terms of how we move this work forward. So what the foundation received at the end when we're at decision-making time for framework is not just what are the trends, what does the research say, but really a really clear sense of what's happening here on the ground in St. Louis. Where's our already momentum and energy where if we add this foundation's energy behind it. It's going to be off to the races that became a key core component of our research and our approach. And I think that's true across the board now. Now again, I don't mean to say that we weren't doing that before. I think we were, I think it becomes a much more intentional set of questions, a much more intentional way of saying, if we're going to go out and interview 50 folks, who should those 50 folks represent? And how do we share that information back? How do we ensure that what's captured isn't ultimately just a document or a gift back to the foundation, but could perhaps be something that strengthens connections and ties locally in that community as well?

Jeff: And how did it change kind of what they might have done under the old traditional model? What did they hear from the streets that caused them to be better?

John: Multiple questions here, multiple elements here. In this instance, I would say that there was excitement and I think an energy to go at what would be those discrete services. Let's make sure that we are going at kindergarten reading inside of schools, or let's make sure that folks have the internships or skill-based programs necessary to get jobs if we're going to go after something like economic mobility. See, it makes sense, right? You would imagine that if someone doesn't have a skill, that's the key barrier for them accessing a job.

But what we actually started to learn as we engage deeper with community, it wasn't that these programs didn't exist. They did. They didn't always have jobs at the end, right? So you're giving me a skill, but no connection to actually get an employment on the back end. Or perhaps it was skill development, but if I have no way of getting there, because I live in North City, and the skill development opportunities are somewhere deep in the county, how am I actually supposed to access those opportunities? Or, if the trainings are during the exact times where I also have to care for my children, what are these nature of wraparound supports and connectivity in a system that might actually be holding this problem in place at much more rate than there aren't any skill-building programs or folks need K-2 reading, right?

Again, not suggesting that those things aren't true. They are. But in many cases, at least in this environment, they are. There was already work happening there where there was a gap or where folks were saying they needed more was about the connectivity in the system and some of these wraparound supports.

And so I don't know that we would have landed in that space to say, let's actually solve for some of the connectivity in the system. Let's solve for some of the wraparound that needs to happen. In addition to the core services, I'm not sure we would have gotten there. Had we not engaged with that local community that doesn't always show up as sort of top priority as you think about what it means to advance economic mobility,

Jeff: And it sounds like it brought out a lot of the potential blockers that you would have run into early before you hit them head on.

John: I think so. In some ways, this nature of engagement is both a means to an end and an end in and of itself. We have a fun framework that we often put up that's called equity-centered problem solving. And what it does is highlight.

John: Some great insights here. To recap: tackling all of the obvious causes of a problem like a game of whack-a-mole isn't going to work in the long term. You also need to go beneath the surface and find out why those moles were popping up in the first place. The best way to do that is by getting proximate and going on the street and talking to those who are actually affected.

Jeff: Don't you think we don't have one single bullet, silver bullet solutions. You know, I gotta ask you, you talk a lot about equity and an equity focus. And I was one of the original funders of Just Capital on the board there for a long time, and you guys have gotten together there and we were focused on ESG. And then lots of issues the last year or two around wokeism, around too much liberal focus on this kind of thing, you shouldn't have DEI anymore. How are you handling that, as a black man running an organization? How are you thinking about that, particularly as you're consulting, and it's an important strategy for you as well? How should we think about this going forward?

John: There are layered questions there. There are lots of thoughts, lots of reflections before I even add on the fact that I'm a young black gay man in my seat. So, I appreciate the reflections. Where to start? One, I would say that despite what's present across the media, what we are finding in the vast majority of our clients is that folks are staying the course. Their general counsels are more engaged in the conversation. They might have shifted their language a bit. But at the core, when you look at the actual strategies, when you look at the actual organizations who are receiving funding, nothing of substance has changed. Now I say overwhelming majority because that's not true for everyone.

Everyone that falls into that category are the folks where they were actually quite intentional about their why. They understood its connection to business practices. They understood sort of why they were showing up in this space and what it worked towards. They even have a bit of flexibility in the way they describe that why: here's the social imperative, here's the business imperative, here's what it might mean for this local community. All those things they had in their toolkit already and have been able to withstand the challenge.

On the other end, we've had clients. We had someone who called us in 2021 and said, "We made a commitment towards racial equity. We want to put a hundred million dollars out. We are now about 80 million out and we want you to come in and measure our progress." I'm sorry. You deployed 80 million without a clear sense of what good looked like for what it would do? In what alternate universe would we have allowed that in any other investment? There's an aspect of this that I think, if there's a silver lining here, that silver lining is some places became sloppy in some of this equity work. They just said, let's put 80 million in the street with no goal in mind except ending systemic racism, which, you know, 80 million is good money, but I don't think it's enough to end systemic racism.

So we might've wanted to come up with a clearer output measure than just this long-term objective. I am eager, excited for folks to bring a bit more of that rigor into their analysis. It seems critical. Rigor is not anti-equity. Discipline is not anti-equity. It's actually necessary in order for these things to have their long-term staying power.

Jeff: I want to draw back a little bit, if you don't mind personally. You know, you've grown up the way you grew up and evolved through Oberlin and music, and then came through Turnaround for Children and a lot of NGOs and then over to consulting space. What personally drives you? What from way back kind of connected with you that continues to be with you and kind of pushes you to what you want to achieve?

John: There are lots of ways I could answer this question. I think the few that come to mind most for me are a clear sense of my black identity and black heritage. Two would be some good old-fashioned black church, sort of "you are the head, not the tail," "you are a conqueror," "you are a leader." And then I think there's a sort of additional component of that that's specific to my family, some of the legacy. So we can unpack all three of those.

On a sort of legacy perspective, I had grandparents on both sides of my family in my life. I've never actually spent a day of my life in daycare because my grandmother kept all of her grandchildren. There are probably about 13, 15 of us total. I was able to sit on my grandfather's lap. I actually am blessed that my grandfather wrote his memoirs. And so I have the story of this black man who did everything from the great migration to fighting in World War Two, to having to testify when his best friend was shot by a white cop. All of those things are stories that I can name off the top of my head. And I feel incredibly blessed for that. And so there's this element of you are descended from greatness, not necessarily wealth or power, but greatness. And you have a responsibility to carry that work forward.

So that's one, two would be sort of the church element that you just named. And then I think sort of a richness in black culture. I'm from Atlanta, and like proper Atlanta, both sides of my family are from downtown Atlanta. And I think seeing what it was to have a thriving and growing black middle class during the time that I was being raised, black mayors, folks throughout the city that look like me, who were succeeding, I never had a question that I couldn't be something because I think it was both what was in front of me presented regularly and frankly, what our mom chose to put in front of us via education materials and others made it quite clear. You can do low-key anything. And here's an example of someone that looks like you that's done it.

So all three of those are critical. Last one I'll say is my mom's a teacher. I think I always knew that I wanted to do something related to education and this idea of learning and learning theory has always been fascinating for me. And so I think all of those elements probably contribute most to why I show up the way I do. The sort of place-based perspective, what that meant, how much that shaped me. The church component, the family component, and this education piece.

Maybe the last thing I'll say is, it was clear to me, particularly as a kid, let me say this differently. I had an amazingly positive public school experience prior to Oberlin. I have only gone to public schools. The sad part is I am an incredible exception to the rule, right? A young black man in a not well-funded school district is not supposed to say at the end of it that he had an amazing K-12 experience. Now I would say that's because definitely some luck, some grace. I also had a mom who knew how to work this system and worked it well to ensure that her kids could get access. I realize I'm the exception to the rule and I wanted to make sure that I no longer am the exception to the rule. Most kids should be able to say they had the positive experience that I had. And I think that's what brought me into the work initially.

Jeff: To wrap things up, I handed John a figurative magic wand and asked him: if he could transform the world of philanthropy and social impact in any way he liked, what would it look like?

John: That's a good question. You know, that's a big magic wand. Maybe you have three wishes. One that comes to mind is actually a bit of what we've been talking about here.

I don't think there are enough spaces where folks are able to come together across various lines of difference and start to see and understand both shared values and shared destiny. If we had more spaces that did that effectively, if those spaces were actually well-resourced, as opposed to the often resource-starved environment that most collective impact initiatives find themselves in, we'd be in much better shape.

So collective impact is this idea of how does one come together across lines of difference across sectors to create a bit of shared vision, to create coordinated services and opportunities across. And it's a sort of formalized approach. We host the collective impact forum along with the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions. Folks can go to collective impact for all the resources, big fans of the work. What we often find is rarely are those things well funded. It's an acknowledgement that this collaboration, this coming together doesn't happen by osmosis. It's intentional. It requires special leadership skills, and it requires effective resourcing.

I would argue that if I'm trying to go at something like high school graduation rates, or child asthma, or any of the horrible things that are out there, if we're not also thinking about building some flavor of collaborative table that also moves that work forward, we are unlikely to see, or at minimum sustain, whatever gains that we hope to see.

And so it's an invitation that many more folks will be funding that. Not to the detriment of the services, that's not my point earlier. Folks still need those services. And I would argue there's some space for many more of us to show up in the collaborative space. What does it actually look like when we build and invest there?

What's possible? I invite, and I think I would be energized for more folks to be showing up there, providing real resources for folks to come together across lines of difference. Great examples of what this looks like in San Antonio, in Memphis, in Atlanta, and elsewhere. I'd want that to not be seen as a fringe activity, but actually a core element of the types of strategies that actually get us towards long-term change.

So that's one. Maybe two would be I think there's something I've alluded to, but hasn't quite said explicitly yet. I'd love us to stop demonizing either of these approaches. So to the same extent of I'm a bridger, I want to make sure that anyone on the bridging space actually appreciates that somebody should be over here breaking, right? Like we need a bit of both. There's the sort of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. The world needed both. We actually didn't need to posit these as two different things that were warring. We needed both in order to get us to where we are. I would argue today, we still need both.

And the infighting that we allow to take shape, the conversations there, they're a distraction. Yes. Keep doing that work over there. Keep me posted on what y'all doing. And I will keep you posted on what we're doing. And let's be in relationship together, but not trying to force each other, right? There's a system change is also about understanding where you fall in the system and staying in your lane. What are the specific assets, capabilities, networks, and relationships that you can leverage to advance this work and enabling somebody else to do the exact same? And they might arrive at a different conclusion and that too is welcomed. And so I think having a bit of that flexibility, sort of keeping our eye on what matters most would probably be my second wish.

I said three wishes. I'm not sure what the third one is. Oh, I got a third one. We also said this mindset shifts. I think when folks think about mindset shift, they often think about large-scale strategic communications campaigns. And there is so much more of what's possible in the one-to-one human interactions that if we were intentional about the way that you describe your theory of change. How does your mission statement read? Do you name your target community as the hero of the story or the victim waiting to be saved? Each of these are what actually get us at mindset shift.

Even if you don't have all the dollars to make sure that this new commercial comes out or that new writers are talking about your topic. Yes, those are important. We want the movies that do it. That's all there. And there's a lot of potential on mindsets and mental models within our own realms of control, inside of our own organizations, buried in our own individual language. How are we as intentional about thinking about that?

So, one, more folks are funding collaboration. Two, we're not warring over some of the different approaches to it, realizing we need a bunch of different approaches. And then three, we're not sort of letting mindset shift just be this thing off in the ether, but it's a way that each of us can be making progress in our day-to-day work.

Jeff: That's it for today's show. Please don't forget to subscribe to System Catalysts so you don't miss out on new episodes. Also do us a huge favor by rating our podcast and leaving us a review.

Thank you so much for joining us and we'll catch you all in the next episode!

[POST ROLL]

Before we go, we'd like to thank our producers at Hueman Group Media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission: the Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute, Echoing Green, DRK Foundation, Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, Boldly Go Philanthropy, Sin-ergos, Forward Global, NEXUS, and New Profit.

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