[Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]
The Covid-19 virus has battered India’s economy. India’s GDP reduced by 24% in Q1 2021, the largest drop amongst all countries. India also has the largest number of young people in the world. They are expected to provide a ‘demographic dividend’ to India’s economic growth—provided they are educated and employed. Education and employment in the country has been shaken by the pandemic. What will their future be? Meanwhile, millions who were employed have lost their jobs and incomes and are suffering great hardships.
Covid-19 also revealed the abundance of human spirit and energy in India’s youth. They took initiatives to provide relief. Many had been working before in a variety of social enterprises, to improve health, education, and livelihoods around the country.
India has around 4 million social enterprises registered as NGOs. There would be many more informal ones, not counted. Social enterprises were hit very hard by the economic crisis. CSR funds have dried up because donors’ businesses were hard hit too.
Airlines instruct passengers to make sure they have oxygen before they help others. How will social enterprises, on whom so many are depending, survive?
Place mats on tables in a New York coffee shop offer good advice. The message is, “As you go on through life, brother, keep your eyes on the doughnut and not on the hole.”
Many young people in India are on a mission to make the world better for everyone. The numbers of people who have set out to make a difference in the way India is developing gives me great hope. All these people with an urge to have a big impact have the same challenge. Often it seems that the only resource they can count on is their own passion. Financial resources are becoming harder to come by. Therefore, what they need are innovations in their models of organisation that can produce the outcomes they want with less financial support.
Some of these young people turn to me for advice about their strategy and the design of their organisations. They expect I can guide them because I have worked for 20 years in international consulting companies, even leading strategy and organisation consulting practices in them. Also, I have served on many boards—of business corporations, NGOs, and educational institutions too. Besides, when I served as a member of India’s Planning Commission, I listened to scores of leaders of civil society organisations who, while placing their needs before me, also consulted me about their strategies.
My first piece of advice to social change-makers: “Don’t scale up!”
When young change-makers set out to change the world, their aspiration often is to have ‘impact on scale’. They believe that to have impact on scale they must have a large organisation. They take the conventional approach, for which they can hardly be blamed, because that is how it has always been done so far, and which is what their management consultants also advise them.
They design an organisation structure—much like a conventional pyramid, with a board of eminent persons on top. They may even imagine a smart building in which they will house their staff. They feel compelled to do this because it is the usual thing to do, and also because their potential funders want a plan in a conventional form. Thus, their energy gets diverted from their passion for their work (the doughnut) to the building of their own organisation and to scurrying for funds to support it (filling the hole). When funds are hard to come by as they generally are, they become disheartened.
Some of the largest entrepreneurial organisations in the ‘for profit’ sector began with a couple of young people in a university dorm, or in a garage, who had an idea they hoped would grow into a big enterprise.
The entrepreneurs then gathered a few people around them with the knowledge and capabilities required to give substance to their idea. When the idea developed further, they began to increase their organisation’s size, and to look out for investors to support them.
Initially, the small organisation was held together by a shared vision and minimal critical rules. It had creativity and flexibility. As it scaled up it became formally organised. While adopting conventional methods of organising to scale, it began to lose its creativity and flexibility. Some of the original creators, missing the earlier spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity, left. Those who remained were bound together by expectations of a large financial award. Outside investors were attracted. They had expectations which were often not in alignment with the founders. Clashes of values ensued, and governance suffered.
A tragic example of this was the flaming out of SKS Microfinance, which brought down the entire Indian micro-finance industry ten years ago. It was the rising star, which tapped successfully into venture funds and stock markets for resources to scale up its operations. The management cultures, and values, of the world for profit and the world of social change were not compatible.
A fundamental difference between creative enterprises ‘for profit’ and creative enterprises ‘not for profit’ is the purpose of the enterprise. A business enterprise must provide products and services that people want to buy. Otherwise it will not be able to earn revenues and make a profit. However, the purpose of entrepreneurs who go into business is not an altruistic one: it is to make profits. They hope the business will be highly valued by the stock market when it is listed. Before they get there, they need support from investors, most of whom hope for an early ‘exit’ with big financial gains.
Social entrepreneurs need financial support too. However, their purpose in life is to help others, not financial gains for themselves.
Both, business entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs, provide services to the community. Both have need for money. Business entrepreneurs want to make more money: it is a marker of their success.
Social entrepreneurs need money too, but only to support a public cause. Their financial size, if large, may be a warning sign that they are slipping into the form of a conventional organisation. They have put on too much weight and are spending too much energy (and money) to manage their internal processes and not serving the community as much as they could.
The lesson for not-for-profit social impact enterprises is this. Do not be obsessed with the scale and brand of your own enterprise. Stay focused on its purpose.
The scale of the outcomes you stimulate matters: not the scale of your organisation. Learn to be a catalyst. Catalysts play critical roles in chemical processes, though the quantity of catalyst required is not even included in the chemical equation.
My second piece of advice to social change-makers: “Don’t focus narrowly: Think systems”
The novel coronavirus has created global panic. It spread very easily and fast. There was no effective cure for people infected. The only solution that medical experts could recommend, until a vaccine is developed, is ‘social distancing’—i.e. physical separation of people.
The strong medicine of social distancing was prescribed without thorough drug testing. Very soon people everywhere began to suffer from its side-effects, some even dying. The disruptions by social distancing to supply chains stopped the supply of essential goods for people’s well-being. It prevented the treatment of people with other medical ailments. Many suffered greatly, some dying prematurely for lack of care they usually would have. Education of children was disrupted and alarm bells are ringing about the impact of lockdowns on the future of children.
Strong actions focused on only one part of an interconnected system can have large unintended consequences on other parts of the system. Therefore, experts in any part of a complex system that needs fixing, must understand how all parts of the system are inter- connected.
Indeed, this is a lesson that medical practitioners should never lose sight of. A specialist in ailments of the heart may cause damage to other parts of the body if he does not understand the connections between the cardiac system and other vital systems that keep a human being healthy.
Specialisation within the sciences has enabled great advances in many fields. However, the largest breakthroughs often create the greatest hazards in other areas because the impacts of narrow solutions on the whole system are not understood. The use of fertilizers has undoubtedly contributed to the increase of food production. Damage to soils which is reducing their ability to sustain food production has become a problem. Advances in digital technologies have provided means of communication that have benefited people everywhere. Now humanity must find solutions to prevent breakdowns in social harmony they are causing.
Humanity is confronted with many inter-connected problems for which solutions must be found urgently. These problems are listed in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that all countries have adopted. They are systemic problems: climate change, gender inequality, depleting water sources, persistent social and economic inequality, inadequate public health and education, etc.
The 17th goal prescribes the solution for all the other goals; viz. partnerships. All stakeholders—governments, civil society actors, and businesses—must collaborate to meet any of the goals. Also, there must be collaboration among the teams working on all the goals because they are interconnected: solutions for faster economic growth and for creation of jobs must not harm the environment; solutions for clean energy must support creation of more jobs, etc.
The SDGs conceptually break apart a complex, interconnected system into smaller parts so that relevant expertise can be focused on each part. This is the ‘scientific’ way to solve problems. It conforms with how all large organisations are designed—whether a large company, a government, or the UN. Create verticals and divisions to focus on the parts. The problem that follows is that the focused divisions become silos, competing for resources and recognition.
The conventional way of organising to manage complexity is to break Humpty Dumpty apart. And then, as the 17th goal says, Humpty Dumpty must be put together again. Which, as the children’s nursery rhyme says, is very difficult and requires all the King’s horses and all the King’s men too.
Local systems solutions
The science of complex system suggests a better way to solve complex problems. It says local systems solutions are required to solve large systemic problems.
The various problems listed in the SDGs are visible in many parts of the world. They combine with each other in different ways in different contexts. For example, problems of environmental degradation and water resources take different forms in the grasslands of Kutch in India and in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. The problem of livelihoods and incomes of people, which combines with these problems, has different challenges in Kutch and in Himachal Pradesh. In every locality, the solution must be a systems solution because it must address all problems simultaneously, otherwise the solution of one may make others worse.
Experts in the headquarters of the UN, or in national and state capitals, cannot find locally apt solutions for everyone—even if they were to collaborate with each other better at their high levels, which they should. Stakeholders must come together locally to design solutions for their own systems problem. They must find locally apt solutions. And they must implement the solutions collaboratively on the ground.
The people at the top have expertise no doubt, and financial resources, as well as authority to change the rules. A fundamental change in orientation is required in all large-scale organisations that have the resources the change-makers on the ground need to support them. All of them—in governments, development agencies, the corporate sector, and even the philanthropic sector—operate in a similar manner, as expert problem solvers and top-down controllers. Their role must change. They must learn to be coaches and supporters of change-makers on the ground, to help make the world better for everyone.
I tell my young friends who are worrying about the hole in their doughnut that, no doubt they will need support. Since support will be harder to come by, they must be very firmly focused on their purpose of building the capacity of local communities. They must not yield to the temptation of accepting much needed financial support if the provider of the support is not aligned with their purpose.
As the hole in their doughnut grows larger, the doughnut itself becomes thinner.
Their funds provider may expect them to focus only on his preferred cause and not the rest of the system—say only education in the local community. The provider would also expect accurate reports of outcomes achieved in education. Therefore, my young friends will be compelled to bite too much into only one side of the doughnut. It will break up their mission. Their work will no longer be systemic.
Movements of change
The numbers of young people who have set out to change conditions on the ground in India gives me great hope. They include thousands of women running self-help groups, increasing numbers of social entrepreneurs, and even government officials who are bringing about change through their support of local communities.
None of them is the boss of a large organisation. They are lit up by an internal passion to make a difference. They have few resources. They are like fireflies who have an internal light. When many fireflies arise together, they can lift human spirits with their sparkles.
Millions of change-makers are required, catalysing millions of local movements, to improve the world for everyone. The scale must be in the movement of change, and the outcomes it produces, and not in the sizes of the organisations that make the change.
As Robert Kennedy said in a speech in South Africa, at the height of tensions in that country:
“It is from numberless acts of courage and belief that the human story is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an idea or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep aside the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Still curious?
- Watch: Using platform thinking to drive large-scale societal change
- Read: FF Recommends | Giving: The causes that need your support now
- Read: Masterclass on Transforming Systems with Arun Maira: A series of columns on local systems solutions; designing purpose-driven networks, and building ethical leaders of tomorrow
