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.