Marc Pitman: Welcome to the Concord Leaders Podcast. My name is Marc Pitman. I’m the CEO of the Concord Leadership Group. Today, our guest is Linda Tantawi. She’s the CEO of Susan G. Komen Greater New York City. Linda, great to have you on the line.

Linda Tantawi: I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Marc Pitman: Well, I really appreciate it. We’ve been interacting a lot over the years, but it hasn’t been so much by audio. So I really appreciate you taking some time out today for this.

Linda Tantawi: Sure, of course.

Marc Pitman: As we’re preparing for this, one of the questions I asked you is, what do you like about leading? And so we’ll start there. What is, as a CEO or in different other leadership positions you’ve had in your career, what do you enjoy about leading?

Linda Tantawi: To me, it’s all about thinking of an organization like an organism. How to grow it, how to feed it, how to nurture it. If you see the organism is not growing, how do you pivot an organization? And to me it’s also about the people within the organization and how do you grow and nurture the people in the organization. So that’s what to me has been the most fun. And all of the organizations I’ve worked with have all needed to be, they’ve grown, they’ve changed, we need to pivot. And that to me is what’s most exciting.

Marc Pitman: That’s really, really cool. As you’re growing people and growing organizations, I know there must be times when it doesn’t work. When was the time that it was something you tried didn’t work and how did you fix it?

Linda Tantawi: The biggest disaster I’ve ever faced was here at Komen New York.

Marc Pitman: I love that you went to disaster. That’s so different.

Linda Tantawi: It didn’t work. Thank you. That’s great. This was a disaster. When I tried to take our Race for the Cure off of a software system onto a system that we built ourselves. And of course, I think all of us — this would have been about five years ago — I think all of us now would say, Linda, that was really stupid. And after we’ve seen the disaster, of course, in Iowa with the Democratic caucus, we know that these things just never work out. The reason why — I had a lot of reasons for wanting to change the system, and I won’t mention the system we wanted to take off of. The reason why the system didn’t work is that we didn’t do our homework and didn’t realize that the corporations who have big teams for the Komen Race for the Cure were still operating systems that were Microsoft, like six and seven, and we believed they were not — and we built the platform in ten. So between that and, between so many of these corporations having so many firewalls, particularly the large banks, it was a debacle. And luckily I had a person who was working with us who, believe it or not, stayed up and didn’t sleep for about four days putting all of the data back into our old system. So, yeah.

Marc Pitman: That’s mind-wrenching. Oh my goodness.

Linda Tantawi: It was a near debacle, and luckily had the services of this person who actually is now permanently in my employ, because I’m smart like that. It would have been a debacle. The board members kept wanting to ask, “What are the key learnings? What are the key learnings?” Some of the key learnings were to really do your homework and not make assumptions, particularly with regard to technology, and then not to try to build your own software. That was just terrible.

Marc Pitman: That seems like such a good idea at the time, especially if you’re excited. How did the race go? I know everybody’s going to want to know.

Linda Tantawi: That year it was terrific, and the corporation we were working with — we ended up registering a thousand participants. So it did work. There were definitely some hiccups, but it did work. Any of your listeners who run legacy peer-to-peer events know the trials and tribulations of these types of events.

Marc Pitman: Absolutely. Well, I find it really interesting about your thinking, going back to the beginning, when you say think about the organization as an organism — I think that’s a really interesting shift, because most of the time we work up through an organization. And so we see it as maybe like the three people describing the elephant. We see the part of the organization that we’re in as opposed to the whole thing. And we definitely tend to not see it as an organism. Were there any milestones along the way, or any ways that you realized, “Oh, I’m starting to see this differently”? Or was it just that the view from the captain’s chair is different — so when you were in the leadership position, it became obvious that you needed to see it that way?

Linda Tantawi: I think it was really once I got to Komen in particular, because of the fact that we are a relatively small organization with a small staff, but we occupy a very big space, so to speak. And so the organization’s capacity to lead within the breast cancer community in New York is a role that not many organizations would have. So that’s why “organism” was such an important way to think about us — because every single staff person is so important in terms of what they’re taking on, what they’re contributing, and then how they are interacting with the larger community. So no one in the Komen office can hibernate. We all have to work together in order for us to move the community forward. So I think that’s why my thinking about how to run an organization has changed a little bit. At my previous organization, I could run the organization, I could do everything, and there wasn’t so much dependency on a greater community. Here it’s very different.

Marc Pitman: Interesting. Was there any pushback from board members? Because so often in many nonprofits — and I don’t know if it’s because of our onboarding or not — the CEO seems like the chief… executioner, that’s not quite right, but executing the plan as well as everything else. It just seems like they get all the to-dos. But it sounds, the way you’re talking about it — I’m sure you get your own fair amount of to-dos, but it sounds like you’ve got a different perspective of growing people, which is not something people typically pick up at first. They usually see “we’ve got to get stuff done” as opposed to feeding and growing the people that we have.

Linda Tantawi: So my philosophy in terms of people really is groom, grow, and release. I am so proud of the so many people who have worked for me over the years who have gone on to bigger and better jobs. I feel like that’s part of my role. So my role is to grow this organism, this Komen NYC, but then also to ensure that everyone who works here is getting what they need so they can take what they’ve learned and then move on to their next position. I don’t expect people here to stay very long. We keep a very tight cap on salaries in order to make sure that we’re really managing our budgets, and we recognize that people need to be paid, and we’re happy to groom and grow and then hopefully in your next position you’ll take everything that you’ve learned here and grow in your career. But it’s interesting what you were saying about the board — I think the board here at Komen was so relieved after the Planned Parenthood fiasco, so relieved to have someone who could get past that fiasco and really work within the organization and the greater community to move the organization forward and away from that fiasco, so that it could be in the rearview mirror and not something we had to continually perseverate on.

Marc Pitman: Interesting. And so growing people would be part of that, because you had to start changing the stories and changing the narrative — creating a bigger story that people are talking about rather than the one in the rearview mirror, I’d imagine.

Linda Tantawi: Right — and really understanding who we needed to be, and then who needed to be here to get us there. And certainly any leader who goes into a new organization can tell you that not everyone who’s there is someone who should be there. Eventually, those people will need to hopefully find their own way out the door, which is my primary way of working, unless there’s some kind of malfeasance — which of course is not what I found here. It just was getting together a team who wanted to move forward together, and with me.

Marc Pitman: That’s a really good point. I can’t believe we’ve already gone through our time already. Is there anything that you’d recommend CEOs and executive directors listening to this podcast that they do right away as soon as they finish this episode?

Linda Tantawi: Yes. We talked about problems and that disaster that I spoke about. I like to think of the three S’s, which is solution, seek support, and then steward the implementation.

Marc Pitman: So if they’re looking at a problem, determine what the solution or solutions might be, seek that support, and then steward the implementation.

Linda Tantawi: That’s great. And take time to think. Everyone needs time to think — even if you’re trolling on Twitter, just give yourself five minutes to think. Not trolling, I mean —

Marc Pitman: No, yeah, thank you. I didn’t take it as that. I just — I meant scrolling. I heard scrolling, not trolling. Don’t be a troll.

Linda Tantawi: It’s a good way to kind of have your — ’cause my mind is always working in the background, and you don’t need to always rush. Things will come. Take time to think.

Marc Pitman: That is excellent advice that I think we need to hear every day. Thank you so much for your time here. Where can people find out more about you and your work at Komen New York?

Linda Tantawi: I missed part of that, I’m sorry.

Marc Pitman: Where can people find out more about you and your work at Komen New York City?

Linda Tantawi: So the Komen website is komennyc.org, and people can easily find me on LinkedIn as well, Linda Tantawi.

Marc Pitman: Great, thank you so much. I know people are going to want to listen to this one over and over, especially with — I love your groom, grow, and release; solution, seek, steward; take time to think. There’s so much richness in here. Thank you for that, and until next time — remember that healthy leaders, healthy organizations start with healthy leaders. This podcast and all the other episodes of the Concord Leaders Podcast are available at concordleadershipgroup.com. Bye now.