Marc Pitman: Welcome to the Concord Leaders Podcast. I’m Marc Pitman, the CEO of the Concord Leadership Group, where we’re helping leaders focus and try to keep moving forward through these trying times. So a friend of mine recently just said — Shannon Doolittle said, “These are tough times, but they are times.” So we get to move forward through them. Today our guest is Cindee Rood. She’s the founder and executive director of an amazingly named nonprofit. Cindee, I’m so jealous of the name, Formidable Joy. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Cindee Rood: Thank you so, so much for having me. It is truly an honor, and I would love to get a little bit of your energy and your infectious joy that you have.

Marc Pitman: Well, it’s nice to hear “infectious” used positively, because in a time of pandemic, I’ve tried to remove all the viral imagery from my website — I don’t like to infect people with joy anymore at all. But I am honored that you would use that, thank you.

Cindee Rood: Yeah, let’s reframe the word infectious as a positive. That’s cool, I’m into reframing.

Marc Pitman: Well, before I always ask what you love about leadership, but I think people will want to know — how did you get the name Formidable Joy for your nonprofit? What inspired you to call it that, and what do you do through your nonprofit?

Cindee Rood: Yeah, so the name of the organization is Formidable Joy. Our mission is to provide access to clean water in Malawi, Africa. The name Formidable Joy comes from the people of Malawi. Malawi is known as the warm heart of Africa — they are some of the loveliest people you’ll ever have the joy of meeting. So back to the word infectious, I always say their joy is so infectious. These are people who have absolutely nothing but are so full of joy. And, you know, how many people do we know here who have everything and are miserable? So that’s where the name came from.

Marc Pitman: Yeah, it’s so fitting of the people of Malawi.

Cindee Rood: Well, I know, it inspires me.

Marc Pitman: I get joy reading the name — when I came across it the first time, when we were starting to get to know each other, that’s really, really cool. Well, as you know from the podcast, what I love to ask leaders is, “What do you love about leadership?” I’m wondering for you, as a founder of a nonprofit and someone who’s probably experienced leadership roles in other areas of her life, what do you enjoy most about leading?

Cindee Rood: Yeah, so here’s an interesting answer — I don’t know how many people have said this to you, but I don’t consider myself a leader. I do not wake up in the morning and put my leader pants on. If anything, I consider myself an educator, an advocate, or a fundraiser. I think I’m a bridge builder, I’m a relationship builder, I’m kind of a head cheerleader for Malawi. And all of those things I just said — educating, advocating, and fundraising — that’s something anybody can do. You don’t have to be the leader of a nonprofit — whatever cause pulls at your heart, all of those things anybody can do. But obviously I do have the title of founder and executive director of a nonprofit, so what I do love about that is kind of being a visionary. And I love the piece of being a bridge builder, because what I always say is, while our mission is to provide access to clean water to Malawi, the vision is to be a bridge between here and there — to show you that here you are, 10,000 miles away from Malawi, and yet you can make a difference in somebody else’s life. And so to me, that’s the greatest honor I have, to be a part of this organization, to have founded this organization. The organization was actually founded on the principle of “if only” — if we can only impact one village, one school, one community, then it was by all means a success. So, nothing in my background suggests I would ever be running an organization in Malawi. I grew up in Florida — not a lot of opportunity to learn about drilling boreholes in Florida. But I think I just have this pull towards this country that is truly unexplainable, and maybe that’s how any founder of a nonprofit — and again, I’m speaking to the smaller nonprofits, not the big giant organizations — but any founder of a small organization, I think you, one, are obsessed. You have this obsession with the cause, or with the country you’re working in, and you just have an unexplainable pull, because like I said before, I’m not a hydrologist, I’m not a geologist, I am not a trust fund baby — although I would be a really good one. So, yeah, nothing suggests this was ever going to be my path in life. And being a founder, I think, is a lot like being an entrepreneur. And while our customers aren’t paying customers — more importantly, our customers are the beneficiaries of our projects — and in many cases, lives are on the line for some of these nonprofits that we’re running. So I do believe relationships are also key in running a nonprofit — you have to have relationships with donors, you have to have relationships with the beneficiaries. So to me, another thing I like about, quote-unquote, “being a leader,” is the relationship building. I think that’s still important.

Marc Pitman: How do you manage that as a small, kind of entrepreneurial nonprofit? Are there things you’ve found that have helped you — I find a lot of people get into it to help the people in Malawi, or whatever their cause is, and they forget about all the other people they have to have relationships with, like their board, and the donors, and other people.

Cindee Rood: Yeah, I think you’re kind of a juggler — you really are, because, like you just pointed out, all those different people — you can’t succeed unless you have relationships with all of them. And especially the donors, because I’ve been to Malawi 16 times, and I am never ever going to understand what their day-to-day life is like, to live in Malawi and to live in extreme poverty, where you either have to walk miles to get water, or maybe you have to wait in line to get water, or you have to miss school because you’re responsible for getting water for your family. No matter how many times I go to Malawi, I’m never going to understand what that life is like, nor am I ever going to pretend to. But I have to have a relationship with donors, and I have to be a storyteller for these people, so that somebody like you can understand, just for a moment, what it’s like to live their life — you can make a difference. And the other thing I always like to do is talk about how little it takes to make such a big difference in somebody’s life, especially in these low-income countries. It’s unbelievable what a small amount can change in a life. And when it comes to clean water, it’s truly transformative. I think we take for granted our 20-minute showers, or having a tap at the ready — your dog’s bowl has fresh water, we have fresh water at our fingertips. And a lot of the communities we work in are getting their water from rivers, from lakes — sometimes they have to dig holes in the ground to get their water. So I also think one of the things I should put in my cap is storyteller — to let people know what it’s like. If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, well, I really like to do a good job of uploading a lot of pictures and content and videos to let people see what a day in the life looks like.

Marc Pitman: That is great, wow, there’s so much — you just dropped a lot of knowledge right there, that’s really good. I was thinking about the awareness — it was on the border of guilt when I turned on the tap this morning and I was filling up a rice cooker bowl. But it was interesting, because I let it run and went off and did something and came back, and it was an awareness of, that’s a rarity on the planet — not everybody’s able to do that. So that’s really fascinating. Well, as we know in leadership, not everything goes the way we intended. So was there a time you tried something and it just kind of bombed entirely?

Cindee Rood: So you want me to pick my favorite failure?

Marc Pitman: Oh, do you have more to choose from? You don’t have just one?

Cindee Rood: Oh no, we have to stop the recording now.

Marc Pitman: Exactly.

Cindee Rood: Well, you know, who doesn’t have more than one failure, in this world we live in now of social media, where all we do is talk about our highlight reel of our life — it’s hard to admit failures, right? So rather than the f-word of “failure,” I refer to them as formidable frustrations. And we have a lot of formidable frustrations. And again, to me, the only time a project is truly a failure is when we are not able to provide access to clean water — whether it means we drilled and failed, or we drilled and there was only contaminated water — to me, that’s the only time it’s a true failure. Otherwise, there’s almost always a Plan B we can turn to. But just to give you an idea — again, we’re working in a low-income country, 10,000 miles away, and our formidable frustrations are very different than a Fortune 500 company’s. Sometimes our trucks crash — one time our truck crashed because it was trying to outrun an elephant. We run out of gas. One time a truck went off a bridge — everybody was fine. Sometimes, like I said, we drill and don’t find water. Sometimes we don’t find enough water. Sometimes we promise a project will be done in two weeks, and it’s not done for two months. So there are always things that go wrong, but we always find a Plan B. And one of my mottos for working in Malawi is: nothing ever goes to plan, but it always works out. And I have to remind myself of that motto every time I’m in country, because it is frustrating. But to give you one example — a perfect example — we were working at a hospital. It was to be our biggest, most impactful project ever. We drilled not one, but two boreholes — beautiful boreholes. A borehole is when you drill into the aquifer, and that’s where the water comes out — sorry, for the easiest description, it’s a well. So we had drilled these beautiful boreholes, not one but two, and we found out they were both highly contaminated. Well, we’re delivering water to a hospital, so the last thing I want to do is supply them with contaminated water. So while many people could see that as a failure — and it was supposed to be the perfect job, because it was going to be a solar project, and it was going to be beautiful — what we did is we pivoted. And by pivoting, we instead came up with a backup system for them. So it turned out to be a really, really good project — it just wasn’t a perfect project. So while you could look at it as a failure, to me, it was a pivot to Plan B. Plan B was great.

Marc Pitman: I love the idea of everything has a Plan B. One thing I got from you saying the only true failure is not being able to deliver clean water is that you’ve lasered in — you have this clarity of focus that I think a lot of nonprofits are being forced to have in the pandemic, when employees are at home, and then in the office, and then back at home, and you can’t do things in groups the way you used to. I think it’s really forcing people who’ve had a lot of mission creep to pare down — what is it we’re really here about, again? And for you, you already have that — you know everything else is in service to delivering clean water. I love that. Is that something you started with, or did you have to refine it? There must have been pressures to do other things in addition to water.

Cindee Rood: Yeah, so no, we really do stay laser-focused on water. And I will say, when you are in country, your head could spin with all the different needs there are — there are so many needs in Malawi, as well as so many other countries, obviously. But I really do try to put blinders on and stay with water — I can’t be everything to everyone. But what I will say is we’re trying to do extensions of our water projects now. So rather than drilling a borehole and “thank you, see you later,” given the pandemic, we’ve pivoted even more — now we’re providing soap to communities. We’ve supplied 6,000 bars of soap to people. We’ve created educational materials for people to understand how to properly wash their hands. We’ve done extensive training on hand washing. We’re getting ready to teach people how to take the excess wastewater from their boreholes and turn that into permaculture. So we are trying to do extensions of our water projects, but again, everything must stay laser-focused on water.

Marc Pitman: And the way, if I remember correctly, you do this is you’re not flying people over to do the work — you’re working with people in Malawi.

Cindee Rood: Right, exactly, yeah. The key to our success is our in-country partners. Again, being 10,000 miles away, I don’t want anyone there to even know who I am, I don’t want any of the accolades, I don’t want anything. I want to come in, assess projects, and come back to review the projects, but when it’s time to give credit as to who these projects are from, I always give credit to the in-country partners. They’re the ones who work with communities day in and day out, and they know exactly the needs — they know exactly which schools, which communities, which hospitals are in need. So when communities are saying thank you, I say, “No, no, no, don’t thank me — yes, thank you to so many donors in the US who have helped, but thank you to these partners,” because if it wasn’t for these partners, I would never even know about them. That kind of goes back to the beginning of our conversation, where I think relationships are so key in aligning yourself with the right people in country.

Marc Pitman: Wow. Well, I can’t believe we’ve come to the end of another episode of the Concord Leaders Podcast, but I am thrilled — I know people are going to want to listen to this again, because, in the reframed version of viral terminology, your joy is infectious, your energy is infectious, and it’s communicating so well. If there were one thing about relationships, or just about leading, that you’d suggest or challenge leaders to try doing today when they’re finished listening to this, what would it be?

Cindee Rood: Well, I don’t have one thing, but I have three things. And this is kind of what I’ve been living by, given this new normal we’re in: pause, pivot, and partner. So I just think right now, everybody needs to pause. We don’t know how much money is going to be coming in soon. I had a project that was going to be very expensive, and I was like, wait, I still want to give you water, but instead of giving you the solar system, you’re going to get a simpler system right now. So I’m pausing projects and pivoting to other areas of Malawi. And then when it comes to partner, there’s a lot of my partners in country right now who are not able to go out into the villages, so I have paused, pivoted, and partnered with those people who are still in country and still able to go out into the villages to see the projects. And that’s what’s really working for us. And like I was saying before, with pivot, we’re doing soap now, and graphics, and hand sanitizer. And when it comes to pausing, I just think, forget outside of Malawi, just the whole world right now, we need to kind of pause and listen — let’s all listen. There’s so much that can be learned by listening.

Marc Pitman: Awesome, wow, such great — thank you, thanks for being here. Where can people find out more about Formidable Joy and the work you do?

Cindee Rood: Yes, so we are at Formidable Joy on social media — you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and our website is formidablejoy.org. If you reach out to me directly, I get back to everybody I can. I just want to leave this with — it’s a crazy world right now, but now is not the time to do less, it’s actually the time to do more.

Marc Pitman: Thank you so, so much for your time. That is an awesome way to sign off, thank you so much. I know people wanting to listen to this want to listen again, so subscribe in your favorite podcasting tool, whether it’s Stitcher or Google Podcasts or whatever you listen to, or you can just go to concordleadershipgroup.com/podcasts to find this and all the other episodes of the Concord Leaders Podcast. Please also be sure to rate and review us and tell friends about this, so more leaders can be inspired and encouraged during this trying time. Until next time, remember, healthy organizations start with healthy leaders.