Last year, I was hired by a nonprofit that serves their neighbors in times of need. They’re good at what they do, beloved by their community – and they needed help with their strategic plan.

During our conversations, I learned that the employees who handle intake at their facility – greeting clients and connecting them with services – are warm and welcoming. This behavior essential, given their role. At the same time, their record-keeping and administrative skills are less than perfect, which creates bottlenecks and additional work for others.

Despite significant coaching and training, their productivity (using the traditional, cost-per-task definition of the word) hasn’t improved much. Nonetheless, they are highly valued (and in many ways, highly effective) staff members. The organization’s leadership is committed to keeping them in their current roles.

Hiring for culture rather than skills

Upon hearing this story, I asked a question. “Are you prioritizing organizational culture over specific job skills?”

“Absolutely,” said the executive director. “When people walk in the door, they’re greeted with warmth and respect – and their stress level goes down. That makes everything easier for everyone. If staff struggle with paperwork or their desks are cluttered, we can live with that.”

I’ll be honest: this blew my mind.

Most job announcements and job descriptions tend to focus on specific, tangible skills. To the degree that they mention organizational culture, the language sounds like this: “Must manage multiple tasks simultaneously” or “Must be comfortable in a fast-paced environment.”

Very few of these documents emphasize kindness, empathy, humility, or deep listening. Why?

Avoiding a false binary

To be clear: compassion and competence are – or at least should be – complementary values. One can (and often must) handle the logistics of one’s job while being empathetic and generous with others. Nonetheless, people are imperfect and organizations become overwhelmed. Things fall apart.

As the story above illustrates, sometimes we need to choose. If you had to prioritize among these values, where would you land?

At the peak of my business life, I was traveling across North America and working with about 50 organizations per year. While juggling all these client relationships, I had a modest epiphany (which, these days, I’m a little ashamed to admit): If I have to choose between competent jerks or nice, well-meaning, less-than-competent clients, give me the jerks.

Thankfully, I’ve seldom been confronted by that choice. Nonprofit-World is filled with an infinite number of kind, effective, skillful, powerful people.

However, as I’ve grown older, my epiphany is gradually flipping: If forced to choose, I would choose those who lead with kindness but may not have their act completely together.

When culture means something else

It’s worth noting that, for generations, “organizational culture” has also been used as an opportunity for exclusion and oppression.

Many people – often women and/or people of color – have been denied jobs or promotions because they were perceived as not fitting into the (white male) culture of their nonprofit or for-profit organization. Because culture is hard to measure, it’s a flexible tool for discrimination.

Indeed, an entire cadre of trainers, facilitators, consultants, and thought leaders have been working – for decades! – to help us make our workplaces more inclusive and less oppressive.

I believe that elevating compassion and empathy is one aspect of that work.

Yes, we’re talking about capitalism

As noted earlier, very few job descriptions emphasize kindness, empathy, humility, or deep listening. Here’s why: In a capitalist system like ours, productivity (again, using the economist’s definition) has the highest value. The goal is to generate more work product – goods, services, whatever – for lower cost and fewer hours of labor.

The assumptions behind this model are flawed in many ways, but I want to focus on one that creates a dilemma for nonprofits. How do you place a monetary value on dignity, respect, and human connection? What’s the economic value of long-term, mutually beneficial relationships?

Long live inefficiency!

Building and maintaining human connection can be highly “inefficient.”

When someone walks in the door and needs help – recovery services, housing, health care, food, childcare, legal services, eldercare, disaster response, etc. – how do you place a cash value on that initial conversation? How do you measure the efficiency of love?

With that question in mind, it’s encouraging to discover a nonprofit – frankly, one of many nonprofits – that prioritizes compassion without worrying too much about efficiency.

This is a subversive act. Let’s honor that.