What if the strategic plan everyone's been waiting on is the very thing keeping your organization stuck? In this episode of The Ground Floor podcast, Christina Greenberg sits down with Lia Izenberg — executive coach, former nonprofit leader, and writer of the Leadership Material newsletter — for an honest conversation about why traditional strategic planning so often fails the leaders it's supposed to serve, and what to build in its place.

Christina and Lia unpack the difference between strategic planning (eight months, hundreds of stakeholders, a 30-page document on a shelf) and strategic clarity (a tight, leader-driven set of choices the whole team can actually rally around). They get into why the wide-funnel input process can leave staff feeling disenfranchised, where boards belong in the conversation, and how the absence of a real plan shows up in the search room — including how it shapes who you should hire and how long a new leader needs in seat before driving their own strategy work.

What you'll hear:

• Why "we did a plan, it's around here somewhere" is a leadership red flag
• How to tell the difference between gathering input and abdicating decision-making
• The questions that produce strategic clarity in weeks, not quarters
• What boards owe their leaders on goals, evaluation, and on-track conversations
• Lia's checklist for whether you actually have strategic clarity — or just think you do

If you've ever finished a strategic planning process and wondered why nothing changed, this one's for you.

Connect with Lia: liaizenberg.com | LinkedIn | Leadership Material on Substack 

Connect with Christina: edgilitysearch.com | LinkedIn | Forbes Business Council

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Ground Floor wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more nonprofit leaders find the show. Follow Christina on LinkedIn for more on leadership, hiring, and building stronger organizations.

What happens to the leaders of tomorrow if AI is quietly eliminating the entry-level jobs that used to build them? In this inaugural episode of The Ground Floor, Christina Greenberg sits down with Ellen Weinreb — founder of Weinreb Group Sustainability Consulting and one of the foremost recruiters in the corporate sustainability space — for an honest, wide-ranging conversation about purpose-driven careers, leadership development, and the forces reshaping the workforce. From greenhouse gas accounting to the disappearing junior role, they dig into what organizations are actually doing to build talent pipelines — and what they're getting wrong.

They also get personal. As two recruiters with over 20 years in the field — and as parents of college-aged kids — Christina and Ellen wrestle with the AI paradox facing today's graduates: universities are restricting AI use in classrooms while employers expect fluency on day one. Their conversation covers how mid-career professionals can make meaningful pivots into purpose-driven work, what skills are actually growing in the sustainability sector, and why networking — old school, in-person, relationship-first — remains the one constant in a rapidly changing landscape.

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Ground Floor wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more nonprofit leaders find the show. Follow Christina on LinkedIn for more on leadership, hiring, and building stronger organizations.