Bridging the Participation Divide – A Cloud & Rain Approach

Everyday we read in the newspaper that the rich philanthropists around the world are adding a few more billions for social upliftment in the developing countries. It’s wonderful. Yet the cynic in me keeps shouting out, “But if there is so much money, why am I not seeing a change in the lives around me? For instance, the slum near the place I live, is still the same, 18 years after I came to Bangalore, and so many years since Government and Philanthropists have been pumping in money into various activities of development – not sure where, but not definitely here.

I often have the privilege of meeting elite groups of philanthropists, almost always backed up by the ‘Desis’ who boldly proclaim in a heavy American accent that their ‘Dils’ (hearts) are still ‘Hindustani’ (Indian) and want to do something for their beloved country, who have yet another idea of investing multi million dollars into the development sector in India. I play to them my tune of “Bridging the Participation Divide”, which I with two good friends of mine in the social sector, have been passionately discussing and putting new flesh every time we meet or talk about it. These philanthropists listen with interest, over cups of beer in some of the premium clubs and hotels of Bangalore. They even appreciate, my passion, and my decision to leave corporate life for this bold dream. Yet to my surprise, they always share with me that they were not quite worried about having a couple of millions (and dollars, I mean), wasted, for the sake of an idea. After all, unless you take risks, where are the rewards? I humbly remind them that similar experiments have failed earlier and there may be some learnings from those. But in all these conversations, I realize that my definition of failure was coming from my middle class upbringing where every rupee was considered important, and that did not connect to these great people whose level of charity was in millions of dollars, and their wastage margin far outweighed my savings target!

Nevertheless, I am still convinced that unless I see change in the lives of the people around me, be it in the slums, or be it in the rural villages around Karnataka, or even in the lives of the children in some of the schools in Bangalore itself, these millions do not mean anything to me. To a beggar on MG Road, what difference does the Metro make unless he gets better prospects of revenue? To a child on the street, what difference does any development agenda make unless there is better prospects of filling his hungry stomach everyday? To a child in the rural village of Karnataka, what difference does technology make unless it takes him and his friends to new levels of knowledge and dreams about the future?

It is in this context that the passion about ‘Bridging the Participation Divide’ makes a lot of sense. What good is technology, if it is to be worshipped from a distance? What good is a computer in a village, if it only further increases the awe about computers? What good is high bandwidth or higher processing power if it only increases the ‘digital divide’?

Unless we make technology a friend to these people who we try to ‘improve’, unless we take the pains to go through the long route of building companionship with technology, the body will reject it like a thorn in the flesh. Those who love the patronizing approach of introducing technology will soon lament how these ‘poor Indians’ do not want to learn and compete in the ‘global marketplace’. A few years later, another philanthropist will come into the scene, repeat the same mistakes, waste a few more millions of dollars, and by then one more Manjunath, who grew up in the slum would be struggling to get his daughter married and would be pleading desperately with the local money lender.

With the advent of cloud in the market place, bridging the participation divide is an important theme to explore. Any technology company or philanthropist who wants to invest money in the social sector or in the Bottom of the Pyramid market will do good to invest a very small portion of this money into doing this grassroot research. This will involve introducing technology and solutions in an absolutely non-intrusive way, monitoring it in a zero-overhead fashion, gathering data to be put into an observation model which gets iterated week over week of the experiment, new shows get added to the yatra of participation, and the model enriches. The data gathered will also be experimented on the various cloud mechanisms available, be it IaaS or PaaS or SaaS, and will also try out very optimal communication mechanisms and protocols, some of which may even be a combination of machines and humans, in line with leading edge work getting done on lightweight data representation methods, and see one after the other, cloud solutions coming to be of relevance for this rural crowd. The cloud stays meaningless to the villager unless it rains on them – rains opportunities, rains connections, rains wealth.

As this train moves on, technology will become a friend, a friend who is helpful, a friend who also tells your good things to others in the rest of the world. The technology will make the rural teacher of Karnataka now a global resource to teach physics in a very unique way. This technology will make certain practices in that small village in Karnataka known to another corner in America or Africa, to that unknown child whom the ‘development millions’ has not touched yet.

The scenarios applied will vary from sector to sector, be it education or be it telemedicine. The fundamental approach will be a mindset which looks at the target population as the customer, and will be treated like a true customer anywhere in the world. The philosophy will be one of respect to the customer in that rural village, respect to his friends, respects to his community, respect to the various practices which are time honoured in his place, and then introducing technology as a friend to power the strengths they already have, to broadbase the best practices, to lead to evolution of new practices. Technology will be another manure to their fertile land, fertile in their own indigenous ways.

A little more patience, a little more humility, and we can truly impact that neighbour of ours, that slum around us, that village around us. The learning models which come out of that will be rich and reusable. The spread of the impact will be viral. In that mela, the person who sowed the seed will be forgotten. The reapers rejoice. The harvesters revel. The sower moves on, quietly, to the next global village.

This is what ‘Bridging the Participation Divide’ is all about, and what PrismTree is trying to evangelize with the corporate sector and philanthropists. Contact me at jacobcv@prismtree.com if you think this unique value proposition of ‘diligent focus on the strategic value of building a sustainable community using technology as an effective support and optimization resource’, makes sense to you as a philanthropist, as a corporation. You can fund the initiative for a sector relevant to you, and with a few more players who can fund, we can make this yatra very exciting – cloud on top, and rain on your back.

Shine on, diamond

Rubbishing great people, by citing rules, is a familiar pattern in this world. The rule and legality may be right and hence courts and administrative bodies may have to uphold such things. But what gets missed out in the process is much grace and gratitude for these people, who themselves built the institution which has now gone against them. But looking at it differently, maybe it is a sign of their greatness which is getting displayed, when they themselves get taken for granted in their own organizations. A true example of servant leadership.

This is what Dr. Yunus is facing now in Bangladesh. Varghese Kurian of Amul in India had similar experience. He built the great organization called Amul, and brought in levelness in the society of Gujarat, and subsequently the whole social fabric of India. More about his story is in the book written by him titled "I too had a dream". But finally he had to step down.

If our leaders had the wisdom of saints like Sri Buddha or Jesus Christ, then things would have been indeed different. Someone said to Buddha, “The things you teach, sir, are not to be found in Scripture”. “Then put them there”, said Buddha. After an embarassed pause, the man went on to say, “May I dare to suggest, sir, that some of the things you teach actually contradict the Scriptures?” Buddha smiled and replied, “Then the Scriptures need amending”. Jesus once said, “Sabbath is made for man, not man for Sabbath”. But of course, these are great people who lived on the earth, and not even their followers in the religions practice these principles. Then why do we expect better things from administrative leaders of the country!

I think, the experience of being rubbished by an organization you built only enhances your greatness. You only enhance the lustre of the diamond by rubbing it harder.

Setting up the Asia Center of a Social Organization

Excerpts from a seminar I led recently on setting up an Asia center of a Social Organization

Introduction

Someone said to Buddha, “The things you teach, sir, are not to be found in Scripture”.

“Then put them there”, said Buddha.

After an embarassed pause, the man went on to say, “May I dare to suggest, sir, that some of the things you teach actually contradict the Scriptures?”

Buddha smiled and replied, “Then the Scriptures need amending”

Birth of a new organization from a well established legacy. This can bring in an interesting mix of advantages as well as potential pitfalls. If we carefully define the right mix of the legacy and the present, we will get an exciting new organization. It should very clearly take the strengths of the legacy and beauty of the region. Then you get a beautiful baby.

I list down 7 fundamental principles which will be helpful while the new organization is being carved out.

1. Reusable Patterns from the legacy of experience

An identification and enumeration of the reusable patterns of success and failures has to be done from the history of the organization. This can be extracted from the archives and the invariants have to be drawn out of that as a pattern. The important thing of course is whether it is all well documented, and if not, how much of that can be re-created by talking to some of the existing leaders.

The pattern can be of establishing new relationships. There may be an observable pattern of how the parent organization established new relationships with the local contexts. It may have been community relationships, political relationships, relationship with religious groups. The way in which this is re-applied will definitely be according to the 21^st century Asia's parlance and context. However, the pattern stays.

The pattern can be of methodologies. There may be documented methodologies which need to be studied, on how community projects were implemented. These methodologies can be looked at for re-application.

2. New Blend of Resources

There has to be a new blend defined for Resources in the organization. Resources are always one of the most critical assets of the organization. Resources fall under the categories of a) Human Resources, b) Technology and c) Tools. From the identified reusable patterns of Resources, we need to have clarity on how to contextualize it to the new organization.

For instance, there would have been a pattern of effective communication to the partner organizations using travel or newsletters. The reusable pattern here is not the travel or the newsletters, but that of effective mass communication. For re-implementation of the successful pattern of communication, the paradigms of the age like Facebook, Twitter etc needs to be used effectively.

There are many state of the art tools in place in the world now. There are many companies which focus on technology solutions purely for the non-profit sector. There should be an active thought towards taking the Asia organization's formation as an opportunity to bring in some of these trends, and then that ultimately influencing the Global organization to follow the leadership in these Resource Areas. Asia is the hotbed of Highly educated human resources, leading edge technology research and development as well as state-of-the-art tools & concepts. What better place hence to learn from than Asia.

There is a small research activity happening within PrismTree Consulting towards having a light-weight social project management tool, which draw in the best from the technology sector, and make it is easy to use in the social sector. Technology has evolved much, and many of them will come in future to aid the whole field of project management and metrics. Data mining and related data analysis research has advanced tremendously, and the social sector is one of the best places where the results will be phenomenal.

These are just examples. The highlight of this point is that we should use the birth of the Asia organization as an opportunity to bring in certain world-class practices in resource usage, and try them out, and reapply the same globally.

3. New Blend of Processes & Policies

Processes are another critical asset of any organization. The reusable patterns of processes have to be analyzed and re-applied. Process is the area where there will be maximum temptation of sticking to legacy. Processes of status reports, processes of management meetings, processes of status meetings, work flow, finance, Human Resources, policies. This area needs maximum care in definition, or else this is exactly the area where the legacy can be debilitating.

There is always a temptation to reapply a certain process, regardless of whether it fits in well in a new context. If a process does not make sense to the new context, we should have the ability to throw it away. A blanket is no longer a blanket if it does not keep you warm. Care should be taken not to cut the person to fit the coat.

Emphasis should be on light weight processes and track-able metrics which can be mapped into the goals and objectives of the organization.

4. New Blend of Values

Values of the organization should be reapplied in spirit and not in letter. While the fundamental values of integrity, stewardship etc. remain the same, the visible values have to be redefined for Asia, based on the cultural context. For instance, the West may have a culture of top-down decision making, while the eastern culture may have a practice of consensus. The values typically should also include Partnership Interaction, Trust, Mutual Respect etc. While these aspects are invariant across geographies and across time, the implementation of these values have to be well defined in the local context. The way in which Trust is manifested will be totally different from a western context as that of an eastern context.

Many times, the passion for the organization will prevent us from redefining the Values with the new context in mind. We may argue that this has worked over the decades, and so it should work. We may argue that anything else will be a dilution. The way out in such situations is to question ourselves again on what is our Vision, and what are the Values we can define in the new context which makes internal and external sense.

5. Newness in Localization

Localization with the culture in terms of expressions is one aspect which differentiates success and failure of many organizations.

Take the example of the introduction of baby milk powder by a company who was very successful in the west, and took the product to the Middle East. p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }Unfortunately, they overlooked the simple fact that in the Middle East, people read things from right to left. So the bottle which was meant to be a way to make a sad baby a happy baby, turned out to be exactly the opposite, and the product a disaster !! While this may sound like a very far fetched example, there are many subtle things we do in organizations, in the same manner or worse, causing phenomenal damage.

Hence, it is very important that the organizational definition takes this into account, and has a leader also who can understand the Asia context.

There are some companies who have extremely well localized in India that they are household names in India. They bring in the new flavors, the new packaging, the new advertisements, all of which apply to the local context. They have done excellent cultural contextualizations. Our generation in India grew up thinking, and perhaps many still think, that Surf Detergent Powder is Indian. The advertisements are Indian, the faces are Indian, the pricing also was Indian. There was an easy penetration into the society, and that helped the success of Surf in India. If you ask an average Indian where Bata Shoes is headquartered, they will say it is in India. There are many who know that Bata has international presence, and they even take pride sometimes in thinking how an Indian company like Bata has spread worldwide! That is the level in which Bata is visible in the streets and homes of India, because of their very interesting ways of branding and reaching the masses, despite being foreign.

6. Organization Structure with Empowered Management

One of the main areas where many multinationals fail in India is in their inability to give up control to the local region. Even the ones who claim success will agree that they are not able to extract the full potential from the region, as much as they do in the West. Then they write crazy books to justify certain pet theories that Indians do not have the ability to conceptualize, architect and develop leading edge products. However, where they have failed is in not being able to let go. Endless meetings at off hours do not make executives in the local region more efficient. They make them zombies.

The organizational structure should reflect the empowerment, and the roles should be optimally defined, and filled with people who have the calibre to create and expand the vision of Asia organization, and lead it with a hands-on approach.

7. Empowered Innovation

Last but not least is the concept of Empowered Innovation, which has to be practiced in a very strong fashion. I have seen corporates failing in empowered innovation in the region. Every new innovation gets reviewed by the “Headquarters”. This is all because of the tight hold that the parent body holds.

An organization without a locally empowered innovation culture will perish, or even worse, live an apology of life. There has to be some investment made in having a research wing in the organization or funded by the organization, to breed innovations in the social sector. This should result in some interesting concepts and solutions that come out which marry the best of available resources in the world with the social context in Asia. Unless you set apart money and resources for these, innovation does not happen. Asia organization can hence be a good reason to pilot this initiative, if it is not already there. The business world is increasingly focusing on making Asia as the breeding ground of innovation because of the opportunties for fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. A social organization does not have to work hard at being in that sector, since the primary mission itself is in the massess of Asia. What better opportunity will we get for innovating than this?

Conclusion

Let me conclude with a story. When a man whose marriage was in trouble sought his advice, the Master said. “You must learn to listen to your wife”. The man took this advice to heart and returned after a month to say that he had learnt to listen to every word his wife was saying. Said the Master with a smile. “Now go home and listen to every word she isn't saying”.

With an openness to listen to every word that is being said and unsaid in the local context of Asia, with an openness to draw from the rich legacy of the organization over the last many years, I see the Asia organization as a very exciting opportunity to try out a very relevant organization, with learnings of decades, but not having to carry the weight of those years behind. Fresh in spirit, rich in legacy, the organization has all the opportunities to become a role model example of creating a locally relevant organization in Asia, and that leading over time to transformations in the global organization. This needs a great level of empowerment by the global leadership, an attitude of open eyes and ears to see and hear things that are seen and unseen, said and unsaid.

A homeless Billionaire

Nicolas Berggruen is founder and President of Berggruen Holdings, a private investment company. Forbes magazine estimated Berggruen's net worth at $2.2 billion as of 2010. Having given up most of his material possessions Berggruen owns neither a home nor a car and prefers to live out of hotels. He said: “...for me, possessing things is not that interesting. Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal. Whatever I own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time. It’s what we do and produce; it’s our actions that will last forever. That’s real value". More at http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/05/19/the-homeless-billionaire/

In this Christmas season, we remember another homeless multi-billionaire - Jesus Christ. God, who had everything, came down to earth, to live as a homeless man. Rich Mullins' song is wonderful to remember at this time. While we read the beautiful lyrics below and probably sing along, let's remember, where are the homeless around us? What has homeless to do with Christmas? We only hear of multi-crore churches being built and multi-crore parish halls being built. Are lives around getting touched? Or is it only for the club members? I mean, the church members?

Sing along with Rich Mullins.

Oh, You did not have a home,
There were places You visited frequently
You took off Your shoes and scratched Your feet
'Cause you knew that the whole world belongs to the meek
But You did not have a home
No, You did not have a home

And You did not take a wife
There were pretty maids all in a row
Who lined up to touch the hem of Your robe
But You had no place to take them, so
You did not take a wife
No, You did not take a wife

Birds have nests, foxes have dens
But the hope of the whole world rests
On the shoulders of a homeless man
You had the shoulders of a homeless man
No, You did not have a home

Well you had no stones to throw
You came without an ax to grind
You did not tow the party line
No wonder sight came to the blind
You had no stones to throw
You had no stones to throw

And You rode and ass' foal
They spread their coats and cut down palms
For You and Your donkey to walk upon
But the world won't find what it thinks it wants
On the back of an ass' foal
So I guess You had to get sold
'Cause the world can't stand what it can't own
And it can't own You
'Cause You did not have a home

Being a slave is a good thing, after-all

Moses, the great liberator and great leader of ancient days, faced major problems with the people he liberated, where they felt that they were better-off in Egypt. The years, decades of slavery made them feel that slavery after-all was what was best for them. Even if it limits you, you are still getting taken care of.

Life outside is too risky. There is too much at stake. When I have someone who I can touch and feel, providing for my needs and even well-being and security, why take a chance getting out of that?

The child who never wants to grow up.

The slave who never wants to be free.

The prisoner who does not now want to leave the prison, so he finds ways and means to get back!

The Predictable and the Limited taste much better than the Uncertain yet Opportune. These limited beliefs will end up being our conviction. These convictions become cozy. They become our cocoon, warming us up always. The shelter, the protection. Let me be a worm. Why break the cocoon to be a butterfly, only to be eaten by the bird! A worm's funeral is no worse!

Individuals live like this. Organizations live like this. They don't live. They exist. Their cocoons get revamped every now and then. But good care is taken by them that even by accident they do not become the butterfly. They do not want to listen to someone who says, Man, your organization can be a butterfly garden instead of a worm farm. Your life can fly freely smelling flowers in the garden.

No, I am proud to be a worm. I am happy to be a worm. Come-on, are you crazy? There may be some fools in my organization who want to be a butterfly. But if they break out of the cocoons, thanks to your mis-guiding them, then what about me? My cocoon? My life? My retirement? My post-retirement benefits?

Go away! You don't understand. Being a slave is a good thing, after-all.

The Economics of Morality

There is a lot of discussion in the media, mainly by the un-involved, as the chicken in the ham-and-bacon-restaurant story, about the morality of microfinancing variants and social entrepreneurship.

Morality is a consequence of economic forces by and large, whether we like it or not. Let us take the example of microfinancing.

Microfinancing is a concept of small loans, higher interests, more frequent re-payments and higher tolerance to delinquency in repayments because of genuine reasons of being unable to repay sometimes.

Who benefits in this game?

The financier defintely benefits because the interest rates are higher. The financier indeed should benefit because he needs increasing capital to invest further, and to grow his business of micro financing, and thereby cover larger cross-sections of the poor. Over time, the financier's target population spreads out further to a slightly higher economic level and hence larger coverage. This is plain law of physics anyway, since the water spreads equally across the lowest lying regions in its coverage, before the level of the water rises, and goes to wider areas.

Who else benefits?

The poor definitely benefit. The poor would not have otherwise got loans, since the larger banks cannot take such risks as giving loans to the poor, since the fundamental premise of larger banks is that of collaterals, and the poor do not have collaterals. The poor hence with the help of the microfinancing group get the money and many times expertise too, invest the money in small enterprises, and grow the money. So over time, the poor become richer than what they originally were, despite the higher rates of interest they had to pay in the process.

Now let us look fairly at the concept of IPO of microfinancing.

The microfinancier sees the benefit of the business of microfinancing, not just to himself, but to the poor at large, and he feels the economic pressures to grow this business, so he can benefit more and thereby many more poor can benefit more. So he decides to involve more people who have capital to invest in microfinancing, which is his business. And he says, what better way than an IPO to involve a large set of rich people - lock stock and barrel. The rich look at it again as an investment of their money, and of course with a desirable side effect of each of them getting a brighter halo for their indirect benevolence to the poor. Nothing wrong with that too.

Now when the rich invest in an IPO, they expect competitive returns. Hence the pressure on the business, here the microfinancing company, comes now from the market. As long as the economics of the interest rate with the available large capital, spread out across a now possible large market works, everything is fine. The problem happens when the investors' greed increases and that thereby forces the microfinancing company to charge a higher interest rate on its target population, and the pressures on the poor for repayment corresponsingly increases, thereby lesser tolerance to delinquency in repayment, thereby having to employ recovery agents, who again need to get paid. Then this goes against the original fundamentals in which the company started, and also goes outside the original economic environment, thereby the poor start committing suicides again. The government then is forced to intervene, not again out of love for the poor and because of a higher moral standing, but for their own economics of vote banks. The government thereby offers protection to the poor, introduces new schemes for the poor, and the poor withdraw from the original microfinancing company who now went IPO and shift now to government schemes, the IPO returns diminish, the microfinancier becomes a failure, the government becomes popular, they get re-elected by the poor, then get under the influence of the lobby which had still financed the large part of the campaign, starts investing in other pro-rich areas, and hence the money and generosity to the poor has to be withdrawn. The poor then suffer again, then another well meaning microfinancier comes, sees benefit to the poor, then feels why not raise larger capital to serve larger masses of poor and also grow his business, thinks of an IPO and launches an IPO. A new generation starts debating on the morality of the IPO, while the economics of morality continues to turn in its sensible pace.

The Simple Truth

Jesus said to the Pharisees, "You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men" (Mark 7:8). This very effectively summarizes the problems now almost all religions are facing. The teachings of God are simple and straight. However, we complicate and make them confusing, since the simple commands affect us, and will cost us. Once we complicate the matters, we can live life the way we want and exploit and confuse the simpleminded.

We all desire to live according to God's will. However God's will has been clearly written in many places in the Bible. For instance, in Micah 6:8 it is written, "He has shown thee O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with Thy God?". It's simple. Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This does not need any major interpretation. If we touch every action of ours with these commands, we are living according to God's will. It's simple. Yet so tough to live out. Hence we complicate.

Or, we always want to know whether our job is according to God's will, or whether it is only the job of a priest which is "full-time" for God. What is job? Job is something we do to earn a living. For our needs. What does the Bible say? "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you". What is kingdom of God? Isaiah 65:17-25 describes beautifully God's kingdom. 1. "The voice of weeping shall be no more heard, nor the voice of crying". No more tears. For any reason. No hungry child. No crying orphan. No crying because of injustice. 2. "There won't be an infant who lives but a few days" - no more infant deaths. No under-nourished children, "or an old man who does not live out his years" - death will be only due to old age. Not because of sickness. Not because due to non availability of insurance someone is not able to afford a treatment! 3. "They will build houses and dwell in them, they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat". People working and they enjoying the fruit of their labour. Not for their hardwork to result in mis-proportionate wealth for individuals or corporates. They themselves will enjoy the work of their hands. 4. "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox". The age of peace and harmony. No wars under the pretext of anything. No greed for another person's wealth. No avarice for another country's resources.

Now let's look at the question. Is my job "seeking God's kingdom" as described above? Let's analyse. First, list down the direct result/fruit of your job. Is this helping accumulate wealth in the wrong hands? Is it helping a cause that is enabling justice, or satisfying the basic needs of the world, for wiping tears? Second, list down the secondary impact of your job. Is it indirectly funding good activities, which otherwise could not have been done? Is the tax benefit going to a government who is in turn using it for the good of the world? Or are they using it for suppression, looting and conquering the world for greedy gains? Now, after listing down the primary and secondary impact of the job, classify these into two categories. A) Are these impacts helping establishment of God's kingdom? or B) Are these working against God's kingdom?

It's simple. Let's not complicate it.