Decisive Leadership: How To Unlock Employee Retention For Nonprofits In 2025

Created By: Jessica Shatzel
November 26, 2024

Is employee retention top of mind for your organization headed into 2025? Culture Amp’s recent analysis of employee engagement data from 200+ U.S. nonprofit organizations revealed that 24% of employees are “thinking of or actually seeking jobs elsewhere.”  

According to the analysis, responses to these two employee engagement survey questions are most indicative of employees’ decisions to remain with their organization or look elsewhere:  

1. “Day-to-day decisions here demonstrate that quality and improvement are top priorities.” 

2. “The leaders at [Company] have communicated a vision that motivates me.” 

With an average of just 65% of respondents agreeing with these statements, overall scores for organizational decision-making and driving action were much lower for U.S. nonprofits than other industries. Why, and at what cost?  

Decisive Leadership: The “Analysis Paralysis” Problem 

Nonprofits are often faced with complex decision-making challenges that require consideration of competing priorities, limited resources, and varying internal and external stakeholder dynamics. In an effort to promote inclusivity and secure buy-in of organizational decisions, many organizational leaders have adopted a consensus-driven or deliberative approach to decision making which has resulted in “analysis paralysis,” the inability to make a decision due to overthinking or an abundance of choice. While adding multiple voices and perspectives to the dialogue has benefits, it can also slow progress and dilute accountability. Action is often stalled in a continuous cycle of overthinking, discussing, and debating. Meanwhile, opportunities may even pass by while leadership teams try to coalesce around an agreed-upon approach.  

“Analysis paralysis” also plagues organizations with an over-reliance on meetings. Research indicates that meetings are the “#1 barrier to productivity.” 75% of respondents to a recent Atlassian survey indicated that meetings are ineffective for “making decisions with others,” while 72% stated they are ineffective for “creating goal clarity.” Despite this data, workers have tripled the amount of time spent in meetings since 2020. There is one decision that is frequently made in all of these meetings: the decision to meet again. Additional insight from survey respondents revealed about 77% of meetings end in scheduling a follow-up meeting. Not only does this perpetuate inefficiency in decision-making, it is also costly to organizations; roughly $25,000 per employee per year is lost in time and resources due to ineffective meetings.  

Decisive Leadership: Leaning Into Risk 

Limited ability to make decisions that are timely and effective may also stem from more risk-averse cultures of nonprofit organizations. 61% of nonprofits describe themselves as “risk averse” or “strongly risk averse.” However, not all risk is bad. Innovation and entrepreneurship inherently come with a degree of risk that nonprofit organizations should embrace rather than fear. Once a leader can accept that there is no such thing as a perfect decision, the vicious cycle of “analysis paralysis” can be broken. Moving forward with an acceptable degree of calculated risk, the organization can begin to embody a culture of growth in which experimentation and failure fuel creativity and foster opportunity.  

Decisive Leadership: How to Lead with Confidence in 2025 

At a time when leaders are overwhelmingly citing growth via transformation as their top priority for 2025, employees are seeking clear direction, alignment, strategy, communication, and inspiration from the top down. This demands more effective decision-making and action orientation from organizational leaders. Committing to decisiveness and action can help ensure your staff remain engaged – and employed with you – to be a part of realizing your organization’s vision.  

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Here are a few strategies to help leaders make good decisions with confidence: 

1. Align decisions with organizational objectives and values. Lean on your organizational mission, vision, and values to ensure sound decision-making. Anchoring here can alleviate overthinking with a clear commitment to action in the organization’s best interests. 

2. Determine when others need to be involved in the decision-making process, and who that truly is. A good rule of thumb to consider: those with proximity to the problem have proximity to the solution. Your entire leadership team may not need to come to consensus, or this decision may not be up for debate. Working with a smaller group of key collaborators can add efficiency in reaching a final decision. Maintain levels of inclusion and transparency with thoughtful roll outs of decisions across the organization and consider reading leadership into final decisions ahead of all staff communications for alignment and upholding.  

3. Make your meetings more effective. Set agendas, convey meeting objectives, share pre-reads, and maintain focus to make the most of valuable time spent together – whether in person or virtually. Schedule meetings only with a clear purpose. Summarize key takeaways and action items with identified accountability and timeframes for consistent forward movement, even asynchronously.  

4. Implement a decision-making framework. From RAPID to SPADE to DACI or RICE – the acronyms are endless and so are the options. Identify a framework that will work well for your organization and leverage it consistently to shape your decision-making process. Share the selected framework with your teams and add a level of transparency to how organizational decisions are made for greater buy-in to them.  

5. Establish and adhere to timelines. Hold yourself and others accountable to reasonable timelines by which to make decisions. With realistic deadlines, you can avoid spiraling into “analysis paralysis” and prioritize a final decision with lasting impact. 

When it comes to the big decisions – organizational design, succession planning, change management, etc. – Orr Group’s Talent Management team recognizes you may need a partner for additional support or perspective and stands ready to work alongside you and your team to choose the best path forward. Contact us to learn more about our work in leadership training, culture building, employee engagement, and more! 

Jessica Shatzel is a Senior Director and Head of Talent Management at Orr Group. Jessica specializes in executive search, recruitment, and DEI strategy, and provides a variety of human resources support for our clients.