Paz-Cedillos: We can’t change the world without changing how we lead

Last week, I sat in a Stanford classroom with nonprofit leaders from Brazil, Australia, Canada, Morocco and the U.S. Sixty of us gathered from around the world, each facing different realities but asking the same questions: How do we lead through dysfunction? How do we design for lasting change? And, most critically, how do we keep going when the systems we work within are breaking beneath us?

Stanford’s Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders offered us a simple but sobering truth: If we want to change the world, we must first change how we lead our organizations.

That may sound obvious, but in the nonprofit sector, we often skip this step. We focus on solving society’s most entrenched problems — homelessness, violence, climate collapse — while neglecting to invest in our own internal capacity. We’re asked to scale quickly, innovate flawlessly and deliver outcomes on tight budgets — often while navigating staff burnout, bureaucracy and outdated infrastructure. The result? Organizations stretched to their limits and missions diluted by exhaustion.

To move forward, we need more than passion and purpose. We need a different kind of leadership.

The friction we fix — and the friction we need

One of the most powerful insights we explored came from The Friction Project, a framework that urges leaders to distinguish between the friction that slows us down and the friction that sharpens our work.

The first kind is familiar: unnecessary meetings, siloed communication, misaligned incentives. But there’s also productive friction — the kind that builds clarity, safety, equity and quality. Effective leaders know how to eliminate the noise while preserving the tension that leads to better outcomes.

I see this firsthand at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in East San Jose, where I lead a growing organization focused on arts, culture and community development. It’s tempting to rush, to move at the speed of funders or political timelines. But we’ve learned speed without intentionality leads to mistakes, especially when serving historically marginalized communities.

When we embedded feasibility studies, multilingual outreach and diverse voices into our program design, it slowed us down. It also made our work stronger. We didn’t just reach more people — we built trust, deepened impact and avoided costly missteps. That’s friction worth keeping.

Strategy without design is just a document

Another lesson that resonated deeply: Strategy without intentional design is a broken promise. Many nonprofits create bold strategic plans — complete with vision statements, outcomes and KPIs — but fail to redesign the day-to-day operations required to bring those plans to life.

The Stanford faculty used a metaphor I won’t forget: Most organizations plan the wedding, not the marriage. In our sector, that’s like setting a goal to improve youth mental health without rethinking your after-school curriculum, parent engagement or referral systems. The vision is there, but the scaffolding is missing.

At my organization, we’ve been learning to align vision with execution — translating our new strategic goals into concrete systems that support staff, clarify roles and sustain momentum. This behind-the-scenes design work may not grab headlines, but it’s what allows mission-driven organizations to scale without fracturing. Strategy sets the direction. Design makes it possible.

We say we value innovation — until it fails

Perhaps the most urgent contradiction we unpacked at Stanford was this: We say we want innovation in the nonprofit sector, but we rarely allow for the failure that makes it possible.

In the private sector, failure is a badge of experimentation. In our world, it’s often a scarlet letter.

During the height of the pandemic, we partnered with Gardner Health Services to support vaccine distribution in East San Jose. The official system relied on online appointments — an approach that excluded thousands of our neighbors, many of whom lacked internet access, spoke limited English or worked inflexible jobs.

So we did something different. We launched a drop-in clinic model, rooted in community trust and cultural relevance. It was untested and risky, but it worked. We reached those who had been left behind, and that model became a template for other providers.

Had it failed, would we have been afforded a second chance?

The real work starts within

The week at Stanford gave me new tools and frameworks. But more importantly, it affirmed something I’ve long felt: We can’t change the world if we don’t change how we lead.

That means making space for friction that serves a purpose. That means designing internal systems with the same rigor we apply to community-facing programs. That means giving ourselves and our teams the permission — and support — to fail forward.

To funders, I say, invest in people and process, not just outcomes. To boards, reward the courage to adapt, not just the ability to deliver. To nonprofit leaders, let’s stop pretending we have all the answers. Let’s start building the kind of organizations worthy of the futures we’re fighting for.

San José Spotlight columnist Jessica Paz-Cedillos is the co-executive director at the Mexican Heritage Plaza. Her columns appear every first Monday of the month. Contact Jessica at [email protected] or follow her on LinkedIn.