Getting to Clarity: Unpacking the role of culture and identity in strategy with Cathy Cha

Getting to Clarity with Cathy Cha: Unpacking the role of culture and identity in strategy with Cathy Cha

November 8, 2021

As we support clients on their strategy development journeys, we often refer to the quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” (inspired by Peter Drucker, an influential figure in business management). One year after our engagement with Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund came to an end, we received a note from their leader, Cathy Cha, who went even further to say, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

We recently sat down with Cathy to dive deeper into the relationship between culture and strategy. As we reflected on Haas Jr.’s journey, we observed that a strong organizational culture begins with clarity in organizational identity - and that the value of having that clarity cannot be underestimated. So what does it look like to get to a clear identity? What does it take? What impact does it have? We talk about these questions and more in our conversation below.

Screenshot image of Zoom video screen with Lisa, Tony and Aya. — Above: Zoom call with Cathy (left) and TGP

Thank you, Cathy, for taking your time to share your perspective with us.

Can you provide insight into Haas, Jr.’s strategy development process and approving it as the pandemic was hitting? What was that like?

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What was most challenging for your team?

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It sounds like there were two core components to the strategy development process: organizational culture and impact. Can you speak more to that and how you connected the two?

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Cathy: One of my priorities going into this (based on other strategic planning efforts that I had been involved in) was to figure out who we are first - what we’re good at, what we’re not good at - and then look at the waterfront of incredible needs out in the world and see where we could move the needle. We are not a funder that wants to be transactional. We don’t want to measure our success by the number of grants or amount of money we put out. We want to see people’s lives changed. And we want to be able to have a lasting impact, but we also know we’re not good at everything, and that we have limited dollars. And so the first task at hand was to think about who we are as a family foundation. What really makes our family board tick. And then look out to the world. And that’s a little different from your traditional strategic planning process, but it is actually one of the things I would highly recommend to other foundations because it is too hard to be in that room with 60 or more possible needs that you could do something about and try to whittle that down in some other way. When you have a sense of identity, you can look at the needs with clarity and say “you know, we care about that deeply and actually we can do something about that.”

Let’s dive deeper into organizational identity. How would you define identity and what does getting to clarity of identity look like?

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Cathy: I would define identity as “the essence of us.” I had a wise person put it this way: “What are we about at Haas, Jr. even if none of us are in this room?” And I think what that means is, no matter who’s on staff, who’s at the helm, and who’s on the board, we have a clear sense of the values that will guide our grantmaking. Apple, for example, is always going to be about beautiful design. To me that’s one of the essences of Apple. Something that is enduring and has nothing to do with the names on the website. I feel very fortunate that the Haas’ have a strong identity, and what this strategic planning process allowed us to do was unpack the pieces of the Haas Jr. identity and name those pieces more clearly. For example, we haven’t limited ourselves geographically, but we got clarity that as a proud San Francisco family, our work is inspired by local San Francisco values. And we continue to fully lean into that local heritage. Being early on the curve had been another big piece of our identity, and in the process of naming that we had some rich conversations about risk, because early on the curve means you could be alone, and it can be controversial. Like when we entered the field of gay rights and gay marriage 21 years ago, or 10 years ago when we were standing up for undocumented young people and Dreamers. We got some criticism for the early work that we did because it was controversial. And in the planning process we were able to unpack questions like, “are we okay with that?” To which the answer was absolutely an affirmative yes when it’s something we believe in. We’ve always been kind of an edgy funder, but we had never unpacked it with that clarity and connected identity to our culture, our history and our program strategy.

As you were exploring identity, how did you navigate generational differences across the family?

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Cathy: Melding different generations of the board and aligning them around the same mission, values and vision is one of the challenges of board governance, and this strategic planning process was incredibly helpful to bring in new board members into the conversation fully as equals. And I’m happy to say that as a family there are fundamental things that bring them together. I could line up all six board members in front of three people - an agency head in San Francisco, a wealthy philanthropist and a bus driver - and six out of six would treat all three of those people in the same way. And that’s who they are. We were trying to put words to that and we ended up calling it dignity, which is kind of an old fashioned word in some ways but is also really radical at the same time. So the challenge we went through was: how do we take 68 years of history and make it contemporary? Make it alive for today? Because 68 years ago, Walter and Evelyn did not experience atmospheric rivers and the kind of fires we have today. The world is so different, but what’s enduring over incredible spans of time? And we landed on dignity. Today it is not dignified that we have shanty towns all over the Bay Area where homeless people live. It is not dignified that some people are more vulnerable to the pandemic because of the work they have to do - they can’t sit here on Zoom like I do all day. Black children shouldn’t experience racism - that’s not dignity. So we discovered these modern definitions of old values to string people together across generations and across the family.

What were some specific exercises or aspects of the process that helped lift these values and definitions up?

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Cathy: One thing that I think was admittedly hard for the Haas Jr. staff was that in a lot of ways they wanted the clarity of a roadmap and steps. And what I appreciated about the TGP team was the course correction along the way, based on what you were sensing and learning about our team. And what became really clear during the process was that we needed a better way to let people contribute to the process in a more comfortable and safe way. Not just listen to the presentation at an all-staff meeting where it’s one-way communication, but design spaces where every staff person could genuinely participate, add their voice, add value and figure out where we were going to go. So TGP recommended, part-way through, to break folks up into smaller workgroups based on very specific tasks. This is one of the things that is still going on today and has been pivotal in having an entire staff team that shares the mission and values of this organization, and I’m really proud of that as we approach the end of 2021. Another exercise that helped was that nine months before we put out our RFP, we reflected on a set of core questions: Do we really need a strategic planning process? And if so, what are the burning questions we want to answer? These questions helped position us for a more productive session with you all, and then there’s been a long tail of that afterwards. Our work didn’t end when TGP left. We are still going strong, and we’re trying some new things - some of which we learned from the strategy process. And I think that’s the arc of culture change and of true adoption and implementation. After the board vote we could have easily said, okay we’re done, we’re tired. Let’s not think about this. But I just knew deep in my gut that if we didn’t keep going and take advantage of this opportunity that we would slide. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Towards the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned how one of the values that emerged from the strategy process, "test and learn," became central to Haas, Jr.'s work. Can you talk more about this?

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Cathy: Philanthropy historically has taken a “plan and implement” approach. You’re in your office alone or maybe with a couple of other funder colleagues and you start with research by commissioning a study from a university or a think tank on some issue. A year and a half to two years later, you release that study and start to develop some ideas about what can be done. And I just want to note that I used to take this approach too, but I think what the last two years have shown us is that we can’t work like that anymore. Philanthropy needs to be more agile, and sometimes what I say is, “imagine yourself as a soccer goalie.” Trying to imagine where the ball is going to come is the reality of the world we’re living in. Just this week in California, we went from drought to atmospheric river and flooding. In any given week, we don’t know what’s around the corner. So one of our culture priorities has become to take a “test and learn” approach instead, which TGP introduced us to and I have fully embraced it. Within this approach, we bring community leaders in as early as we can to shape strategies and initiatives with us - and in fact I often say, “there’s no such thing as bringing in community partners too early.” And that's also very much one of our values - that those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions. In response to the riots in Oakland and trying to figure out what to do after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, for example, we and a few Black leaders co-designed an initiative called the California Black Freedom Fund to give Black communities voice, agency and resources to build Black power across the state. We also jump started a movement-building initiative for Asian American Pacific Islanders that emerged out of the Atlanta shootings. Neither of these were on anybody’s plan, and it’s a great example of the importance of being a soccer goalie. And it’s a big change to get to a place where we’re going to try some things, learn and have the right people around the table as we try. We’re going to fail fast and we’re going to be a lot more agile as we try to meet our goals.

What are the mindsets, approaches, and habits of mind and action that you need as a leader to be a good tester and learner, and what do you think stands in the way? What's the gravitational force of “planning and implementing” that you have to be mindful of and manage in doing that?