Transcript of Interview with Scot McCarthy
Hugh Ballou: It’s Hugh Ballou. It’s another great version of The Nonprofit Exchange. We are four years into this, Russell. What do you think of that?
Russell Dennis: I think the next six we are going to blow the lid off of this thing.
Hugh: You blow the lid off every week.
Russell: And grow and grow and grow.
Hugh: We have a mild-mannered man here in Lynchburg. He has got a lot under the hood. He’s got a little hair there. He hasn’t quite reached your perfect head status yet. Scot McCarthy is a man I met at the business alliance here. We have some mutual friends here. He has referred me to folks, and I’ve referred him to folks. I’ve determined that he has some really unique expertise that is applicable for these nonprofits that we’re talking to. We try to give them really good sound business principles because we are actually operating a tax-exempt business with a lot of rules for the IRS. Welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange, Scot.
Scot McCarthy: Thank you. Good to be here.
Hugh: Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background, and what is it that you say that you do.
Scot: My son doesn’t believe me, but years ago I had a full head of hair. He looks at this today and says, “No, that’s my future.” It’s kind of funny. I found a couple pictures of myself in high school where he is today. I had a nice, big, thick head of hair just like he has today, and it was sad that I kind of saw the soul sucked right out of his body. I’m trying to help my son recover.
But in the meantime, what I have been doing with my life is working in the corporate world, the nonprofit world, and everywhere in between for the last 20 years or so on organizational development and organizational effectiveness roles.  I have a lot of time with individual teams and leadership development programs. I find that there is a nice translation between what we try to do in the for-profit world with our human resources to deliver for our customers and in reality we do the same thing in the nonprofit world. In fact, what I’ve found is that it’s even more important on the human development side in the nonprofit world because we tend not to have a whole lot of headcount to work with to get the job done for our customers and our client base.
I’ve had a great career about 20-25 years in organizational development work. I have had my own company, Stylewise Partners, for the last three years, and I work with for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Hugh: You work regionally, or you work nationally?
Scot: I work nationally. I do a lot of work for Stylewise Partners regionally, but because I have had such a fortunate network with General Electric and GE Capital and a number of different organizations over my career, I get called by other companies out of Richmond, out of Boston, out of Colorado, and other locations to come help them with organizational development work as well. My work takes me domestically, and in the past, internationally as well.
Hugh: Awesome. And you and I have similar work, but you do it a little differently in a different segment. We have a passion for enabling and empowering and encouraging nonprofit leaders. One of our guests a few weeks ago, Romal Tune, said we have a for-profit business, but this one is a for-purpose business. I really liked it.
What are we going to talk about today?
Scot: Today, what I thought we’d touch on is seeing the fact that nonprofits have to really get the most out of their human resources, I wanted to talk a little bit about engagement. How do you help folks in what can sometimes be a stressful or resource-restricted environment to still come in with their passion on fire and get the most out of everybody on a daily basis in the nonprofit world? I think employee engagement is the topic that is on my mind today.
Hugh: We have purposeful organizations, and it’s important to have purposeful people do purposeful work. That is a good continuity piece. HR. Talk a li