Gather at the Well: S2E5 Creating Human Centered Systems + Policies (Lindsey Fuller + Marisol Pineda Conde)

7:48PM May 5, 2025

Speakers:

Lindsey Fuller

Marisol Pineda Conde

Keywords:

Human-centered policies

policy creation

organizational impact

policy void

policy communication

policy feedback

policy implementation

policy training

policy audits

policy risks

policy design

policy compliance

policy sustainability

policy revision

policy alignment.

You made it episode four of gather at the well, so grateful that you're here. And as I mentioned in our last episode, we love to sprinkle in some guests. I can never get enough of Marisol. I definitely have a positive bias, but I wanted to bring her back in truth, because this session is one we have been scheming up for a long time, we are going to be dialing into the power of human centered policies. We're going to lift the bail, we're going to get specific, we're going to give you examples. So lock in. We're here for the ride. Policies likely aren't the thing that you regard as sexy, fun or joyful. You may think of them as a chore, or you might not think of them at all, especially if you're a startup or a turnaround organization, that's alright. Everyone has to start somewhere, and that's what we're going to do today, just in case you are in the latter group and you're already feeling some somatic resistance a tight chest. You start in the sweat, you're rolling your eyes, or you're reaching to turn off this episode and avoid maybe stay with us, an invitation to just take a moment to stretch, get back into your body. You might reach up to the sky, out to the sides, and then finally, push down on your thighs. You're here with us. Stay in your body. Marisol, you're back in the building. Yes, excited to be back today. I wonder if you wouldn't mind just even lifting our definition of human centered as it pertains to policies. Yes,

when we think about human centered, it's almost exactly what the words say. It's really thinking about the humans first. And though that may seem so simple, it often runs contrary to how we approach policy creation. We often think about the legal risk, or we think about the financial impact. And so what this is inviting us to do is really to be mindful, to reflect on the impact that this may have, on the humans first, and then layering on those other lenses, the pragmatic, the job duties, the impact, the ripple, and it's, it's not that we don't do both. It's just the order in which we do them. Yeah,

and I think of policies, and I said this in our first episode of this season, as kind of the skeletal system of the organizational body. It holds us down. It keeps us standing strong, it wraps around and protects our vital organs, which, again, in this metaphor, are our teammates, and in your day to day operations, policies don't always feel visible, but they're at play. And so certainly, if you don't have policies in your organization, you're experiencing gaps, it may look like, oh, play with me here. Marisol, what might it look like when you are in a policy void organization? It might look like redundant, recurring questions to supervisors, to organizational leadership, especially at inopportune times or when you're trying to center other work, because folks aren't clear on what's expected or how they access a particular benefit. What else might it look like? I

think it also looks like absence of safety net in moments of crisis, and in particular I'm thinking about, you know, in pandemic moments, there were certain safety nets that were necessary and that were experienced collectively as well as individually.

Yeah, I think about our wellness cabinets that we're running with districts across the country to really interrogate well being, programs, benefits and policies that will lessen attrition and encourage retention for educators, and one of the things that we're finding is a gross underutilization of benefits many organizations and school districts nonprofits have The EAP system, and so if you are observing teammates, regularly having mental health challenges, emotional outbursts or sobbing in meetings, experiencing challenging life seasons where they are in grief. They're experiencing loss, they have an ill partner, they're going through financial or legal challenges, we want them accessing the benefits we've already invested in as an organization. And that would be another yellow flag or red flag, indicating that your policies, whether they exist or not, have not been clearly communicated or internalized by your staff. So. I wonder, when you think about some of the policy systems, because the tea that we have here, about our arrival at the teaching well is that there was not a robust set of policies, and they certainly weren't human centered. They were stock and that's because, as new leaders coming in, we had to force rank our priorities. And while policies were definitely at the top of the list, we also were onboarding teammates, building job descriptions, codifying services and pricing, overhauling financial systems, getting to know our board right. Marisol and I came in a couple months apart, and there were so many things to tackle. So if you in any way, are experiencing overwhelm in this moment, it's okay to go at the pace that you are, but policies are a place that often are de prioritized. So for us, we needed a stop gap, we needed a band aid. We purchased a stock set of policies, and that didn't even really live. So what? What do you recollect happen?

Yeah, I remember coming in and we had a handbook. And I was coming in from another organization where handbook was, where you went to find information on all things. And when I discovered was that, in practice, we had a Google Doc that had the policies that folks most often had questions about, that listed certain things like PTO, listed things like, what FTE do you qualify for health coverage, those things that folks cared about most, but nobody was actually looking At our handbook, and actually, our handbook policies did not match this document, and so we had a gap in both practice and policy.

Big eye emoji, if you know anything about Marisol and I, we hate everything about this. We literally hate it. But we're telling you all because we don't ever want to position ourselves as holier than thou. We have arrived. We've made it, and we're perfect. That is so far from the truth, and that sucks. I don't have a more eloquent way of saying it. When your written policies don't even match across documents, then you know your verbal presentation and your implementation behind closed doors in one to one meetings is going to be scattered, and that's where inequities arise, and it's where preventable burnouts or attrition or complaints, even HR matters could be interrupted, could be caught before it turns into something much bigger, right? So I think it's really important to name, kind of our history as an org with that. And I'd say that we have a big dreaming team. We call it dropping into a channel, teaching all teams shout out, you know, what's up? But we are happy to vision and manifest into really expansive ways of being, living, working, etc. So our team could tell you the many millions of dollars we should be spending on benefits and programs and policies, and we love that. For us, we're not there yet, but I just want to name that a common pitfall is also that there aren't clear mechanisms for your staff to provide feedback on what's most needed, right? And so how do you even begin to create human centered policies, or to shift your current policies that feel robotic and disconnected towards more human first lens, I wonder, if you think about that soul, what comes up? Yeah,

when I think about sort of where we were in that context, and start to think about, like, what were some of those first steps, I do think that what was true of that system is that we knew what folks really wanted to know more about, and that came in the form of, like, often getting questions on things enough to put it in a separate document. And so to me, that was a source of feedback for us to understand where to begin. These were the policies that folks most needed in that moment. And so we started in that place. What were the policies that were most needed? And I think often, when we think about policies, many times we think about the bare minimums, like, what are those safety, those guarantees? And one thing that was true is that even in that space, there was just a little opportunity to dream into, what are those policies that in an ideal world, when the millions come, when we have money, what might it look like to start shifting towards some of. Those policies. And so we were doing this toggle between what's the bare minimum, but also creating space with intention to think about what could be in the future. And so that may be a place to start.

Yeah, we had a launching place right? There was already an existing document that let us know what was top of mind for our teammates. But you may also think about using a structure like a two by two inside of supervision, where you're getting feedback as the supervisor, and also asking for feedback on the org while giving feedback to your teammate. You might think of sustainable short surveys annually or each semester, asking about whether and to what extent folks are utilizing current benefits, which ones are most important to them, what feels like a gap in supports for them to truly thrive in the organization, there are a ton of different ways you can solicit that input. You could even do a close read for the teachers out there, or for the school leaders do do a little literacy exercise with your teachers. Have them do a close read of the handbook and kind of code, maybe even green, yellow, red, which is basic, but that's my business, where you ask them to say, like, what's showing up in our everyday work experience, which are ones that seem inconsistent or invisible or problematic, and which ones do we not see at all or do we want to stop? Aren't serving us right? So there's got to be some way for folks to lean towards so I am thinking back to a recent experience Marisol and I had where we were in the room with leadership teams from about 40 nonprofits. So the number one seat and the number two seat, if that existed, some orgs only had one employee, so they maybe brought a board member or a fiscal sponsor, but there were these small teams in a giant room, and all of us were thinking about a human centered policy. What happened somatically during that experience, though Marisol and I were in two different rooms, we had a breakout session. So all the EDS and CEOs went in one room, all the deputy directors went into another. We were evidently having these same somatic experience in those two rooms. So do you remember a little bit of what you were experiencing.

Yes, it was this moment of disbelief and also just like empathy for some of the folks that were in the space who shared about some of the challenges that they were anticipating as we implemented or planned for implementation of policy. And those challenges really varied from really complex entanglements, I would say, of finances or practices, all the way to just like an absence of systems and protocols that I, I think, really contribute to us, to a sense of safety and stability in an org that were evident in that space, I

think you said it beautifully, both a place of compassion and also a place of I'm sweating and clutching my pearls that makes me so incredibly anxious and concerned. And if you're in that we see you, you can climb out of it. It's going to take some strategic planning, consistent, diligent work and discipline to come back to your policies and a lot of feedback and teamwork and collaboration.

So when thinking about what we heard from folks, there were certainly opportunities for folks to tighten, for folks to codify, or hope folks to design. And these policies really fell into three buckets. The first that comes to mind is the idea of, like risk mitigation, whether that's employment law or whether that's other policies that might be supportive there. The other that comes to mind, the other sort of bucket of opportunity, was around segregation of duties, and this idea that, you know, in in a previous conversation, we were talking about the overlap when folks are doing the same thing, and what that does, the impact that that can have across the team, whether it's confusion or just not effectively leveraging our resources of time and energy. And so this idea of segregation of duties also as a risk mitigation strategy of like, who's doing what, and how do we make sure we have checks and balances in our org to ensure that we are creating conditions for folks to be able to operate safely.

Yeah, sorry, man. So I just want to add that I think with segregation of duty, if we were to pull that financial line through, that would an example in a school or in a nonprofit would be. Be you receive the mail. There are checks in the mail. You sign those checks, you deposit the checks, you fill out the form that says you put the check where it was supposed to go, right. There should be multiple different people holding elements of anything that's linked to risk. Can you speak to one more Marisol that we saw?

Yeah, I think the last piece is almost that reflective element, and sometimes it can come through a really formal process. I know within the org, we started doing audits a couple of years in just because of where we were financially, the numbers required a third set of eyes that was external to the org, so that's a more formal process. But in the absence of that, there were also audits that we would run internally. So this idea that just because we've made it to the end of the fiscal year doesn't mean we're done, but that we have an opportunity to look back and say, how did we do on this practice or this policy, or how do we do in relation to these goals that we set, or the execution of certain policies? And so that was another place where there was opportunity for further codification, creation or design of policy.

Yeah, and I want to double click here, because if you are having any somatic resistance, it may be to the unspoken truth that we're kind of dancing around, that we can say directly, which is, policies do hold you accountable. As a leader, they should hold you accountable. They do hold you accountable. You can get caught up, period. And we believe that strong leaders provide and are willing to receive the mirror of high support and high accountability that integrity and ethics and morals matter. They show up in your everyday speech, behavior and decisions, and so that can come up for folks like everything y'all are talking about, you're airing these other orgs tea. It was in our org too. We have cleared it on out. We get big audits every year where all of our laundry is aired, none of it dirty, fortunately. And that's only because I mighty souls here, not on my watch, not on my watch. Okay, look, you know, it's a whole hot mess, but it can get better. Let's pause for a moment as we

dabbled in that discussion of accountability and of storytelling, it may have brought up some feelings we want to be with. Those feelings. We want to embrace them. Hashtag, adult SEL, also, my team hates that I say hashtag, but that's my business. So I might invite you towards Three breaths here to just take a moment for grounding in through the nose,

out through the mouth. I uh, two more like that.

And as you resume a steady cadence for your breath, I want you to begin noticing where the first parts of our conversation may have activated, some emotions or feelings you might have felt, overwhelm, doubt, insecurity, frustration with the policies inside of your organization, sourcing into the body. Is it ruminating in your mind? Are you experiencing a tight chest? Are your hands fidgeting, or does it feel like your belly dropped, it might even feel like wobbly legs. Seeing if you can pinpoint a location in your body where that feeling is residing and when, and if you're able to isolate a space, you might take three fingers on your dominant hand and begin to tap in that location. You might say to yourself, I honor that feeling. I know it will pass. I honor my overwhelm. This moment can pass. I honor my self. Doubt This feeling will pass, taking in a. Deep breath, noisy out breath. We've got this stay in it. So we wanted to share a little bit a road map, if you will, to human centered policy creation. Is this the only way to do it? No, if you Google it, will you find it? Maybe in our blog, see what I did there. So we have a five step process that Marisol and I co created by accident on purpose, I guess. And so we'll kind of tag team sharing. First step is we're actually trying to vision towards a policy. It could be an aspirational or liberatory pursuit. For example, we and the team wanted to have sabbaticals available to all teammates. We also, when we arrived at the teaching Well, there was no 401 K policy that felt basic, but also financially liberating for our staff. Sometimes, though, it's not just a big goal or a powerful inspiring vision, it's a real time pain point or direct request for support for us that looked like for new parents, or parents who had a new child finding some sustainability in their first year during that huge transition, or due to several losses in family systems of our staff in Our first year together, we realized we wanted to add some kinship preferences to our bereavement policy, to include bereavement leave for godparents, for cousins, for aunts and uncles, right? Just to honor the global majority family systems that we have on our team. So that's step one. Figure it out. What do you need? Pinpoint one area, Marisol, what's next?

Yeah, and I'll layer that often. That involves conversation, right? This is not happening in a silo. Lindsay and I sitting in a room and being like, what's needed, right? It really involves conversation with team gathers their insight, and then we draft. We draft to the best of our ability, what would the dream be? Who would qualify? What would it look like? How might we implement it? And as we're drafting, we're also holding a lens to operations, because sometimes we might draft something that is not sustainable for other teammates, and so keeping that in mind as we're drafting, not as a limiting factor, but a consideration that we're layering on. We start with that place where we draft this policy. From there, I think there's an immediate next step, because I often draft these beautiful things that I think are excellent, and then we run it by other folks, we vet it, and they're like, No, see, no, it doesn't work this way. Or, hey, actually, this is not standard practice. And often what we're trying to do in our org is not standard practice. We know it, and that's why we want to do it. Okay, that's actually precisely why,

because we're building organizations we don't have to heal from so I love that you name that you might have it vetted by other directors. You might have it vetted by your board. You might have it vetted if you're a school leader or a district leader by other district staff personnel or other principals, right? Like, get some folks eyes on this. But always, always, always your key player here that you can never overlook is that an employment attorney should be taking a look at this, and that's where we get to step four, which is connected to our CO leadership values that we shared in episode three, but brokering the middle path so undoubtedly bless our attorney, she is so patient with us. She's always like, Y'all are cute. I see what you were trying to do here. Very compassionate. And here's all the problems. Okay, that's her job. It's her training. It's her expertise. We're grateful we didn't go to law school. Okay? So not only is she receiving annual updates on law that are relevant to nonprofits, and I know schools and districts have that as well. That's really helpful to understand and to integrate. But she often is also giving us varied feedback, and we like to think of it in two buckets. There's the feedback that is connected to legal risk. And then there's the feedback around standard practice. And to be very clear, when she gives us feedback and says, this actually puts the organization at risk, we adhere to it. We're not arguing with her. There's no brokering the. So if I'm really telling on myself, I do try. Sometimes I do, I do try. And Marisol is always like, Absolutely not. Yeah. I'm like, But what about and

then what if we said it, like, no, and

then they just entertain me for a little bit. But typically we just go ahead and fold, because she's right, period. And that's not where we want to spend a ton of our time, but where we do want to kind of dial in is the piece around it's not standard practice, or you're going to incur expenses on this that are avoidable, which is her job. That's her job to tell us, and our job as human centered, liberatory leaders, is to push past comfort and find another way to paradigm shift and to allocate resources in accordance with our values, right? And so we have to decide, and we usually take some calculated risks. We are we hear you, it's going to be expensive, and now we need to figure out how we would make it possible. So some of that right, as Marisol said, was thinking about the feasibility for sustaining this in our budget, because we never want to cut a benefit that we award. That type of giving and taking can really disrupt the nervous system and the psychological safety and the trust and effort and morale of your staff. But I also think about our ops team so and I wonder if you just could shed any light. Marisol leads our ops team. They're phenomenal. Shout out to Emily, and there are certain policies or practices that are just a heavier lift for ops. So if you are in here and you're in OPS role, we see you. You make the world go round. If you're a business manager or an office manager at a school, we know you really run things. Thank you for your service. But so what comes to mind when you think about some of the ops considerations when we're designing new policy? Yeah,

I can think of one example that comes to mind, which was a policy that we created pretty early on when we noticed that there were discrepancies in the experience for our teammates, depending on where folks lived. And so we create at that time, we didn't have any policies around mileage, and so we created this policy around mileage. And the policy was pretty straightforward, if after a certain range of distance, there was some sort of reimbursement for that. And so that was quite clear, but there was an added layer of on the operations team of processing those. And there were two things that sort of emerge in that process. Number one, for folks that are traveling often, that's a lot of individual transactions that have to be verified, so we need systems and procedures to do that, and that also then need to be processed. So folks actually need to get this reimbursement as well as accounted for, right? There's the accounting side of it, but then there's the additional layer of the auditing. How are we then creating structures and systems that create verification processes that then our audit team, when they come and have no context for why there is this reimbursement, can also verify the validity of that. So this is where it becomes really critical to have that lens towards operation. Everybody was in agreement that this policy was needed. Everybody was in agreement to how we approached it, and we were calibrated, but we had not necessarily consider the lift that it would require on the operations team at scale, right? And this scale then grows depending on the size of your team, so that's a really important thing to consider, when implementing policy, how it might impact the load that your operations team carries on the back end, the part that nobody sees,

yeah, and, and I do think that there's always opportunity to pause and renegotiate with your staff, not whether the policy will exist, but how we gather the information. And a conversation we've been having is like to balance self and collective responsibility. Should the teammate be inputting in a form? Does ops need to go check their calendar? Can they upload an image or screenshot, like, who's actually holding the work and how do we share the load? Right? So that's step four. Step five. Well, it's our favorite. We always talk about change management and communication cascade, right? But you're then socializing the policy with your team to get their feedback. Of course, we're all hoping, as leaders, that they're like, Yeah, you nailed it. You heard us. You're responsive. And also sometimes they're like, ooh, that's not how we envisioned it or like, but practically, what does it look like? How often would we be able to write so there's going to be discussion again on the back end, you may make revisions. We also really emphasize training for your supervisory team, because often or. Leaders established policies, but aren't the ones navigating them real time with your staff. It's your supervisory team, it's your people managers. So how do we train them? And then across the next year, after we introduce a policy, we typically calibrate in a system we call soup sync, which is a monthly meeting with all supervisors in our org to ensure fidelity, consistency and equity and implementation, so that the teammate experience is aligning with our vision for the policy right. So one pro tip Marisol and I had recommended was keep a later list you are not going to want to or be able to work on policies all year round. From our vantage point, maybe you have a sustainable way in your organ, it's working for you, and we love that. But for us, we need to have a couple of times during the year that we deep dive, but we have inspiration, ideas and recommendations that occur across the year, and so we call keep what's called a later list where we just jot down some thoughts, and when we come to policy work births, we're able to return to that list. So anything you would add around how folks might think about the time of year, if they're trying to do that a couple of times,

yes, I would really consider when it is that you have, like hiring or onboarding cycles, often you want to make any shifts prior to that so that folks are onboarded to the new systems already being ready for implementation, even if you haven't launched, but that they're ready to go, that the policy has been codified so that you can have this sustainable cadence that the team also aligns to the rhythm of the team's operating year.

Yeah, exactly. Beautiful, beautiful. And you're also going to want to bundle them, because shout out to the attorneys, but they're expensive. So another way to manage your finances and steward them responsibly is to bundle and have kind of an annual expense line connected to policy review and feedback. Shout out to the lawyers. May we all be paid just like them? If you've been with us since episode one of this season two, you would know that the homework I assigned was an invitation to identify or isolate a policy that you would like to create or that currently exists and isn't working for your team, it may even be working against you. All this is the time to cross check that policy with the five step process that Marisol and I just outlined. We'll be highlighting it in our blog, and we really encourage you to map across the steps and think about either creating or revamping that policy pain point as a couple of affirmations or duality declarations. I just want to speak some love towards all of you, because this is this is hard. This is hard work, and it's our responsibility. But I've had to find a way to fall in love with policy creation, because I know that it's a way for my team to experience our values every day. So here we go. I am an attuned listener and a responsive leader. When we know better, we do better. Even if I feel overwhelmed to tackle policy creation, I can take the first step by noticing what's needed and asking for help. I'm not alone. I don't have to do this on my own. So to close with our critical hope this may be a little bit of a controversial reality sidebar, we should probably come and do a whole episode on this. But HR has a dual mission of protecting the organization and the people as a leader. Your human centered policies are the scale that keeps that dual protection in balance. We can create policies that outlive us inside of our organizations. You won't be here forever. You'll transition at some point. So set your team and the future generations of staff inside of your school or philanthropic foundation or non profit up for success. These policies will make our time inside the org more expansive, more joyful, more sustainable and more healthy, heal out loud, but also codify your values. Marisol, it's been such a gift to lead and learn and love every day with you and also to spotlight you in these two season episodes. So thank you so much for coming. True. This was fun. Thanks for having me. Wishing you all well that you have a beautiful day and that you come back for the next episode. Talk to you soon you.