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31 January, 2014: Created
This note was created as an early draft to articulate the temperament, intention and approach of Social Synergy Foundation, an idea that Abhishek Kadam was trying to crystallize. He happened to come across the note that I had written for Tapas India Foundation (accessible here). He saw similarities in the thought process and reached out to see if I could participate in the idea and the realization of Social Synergy Foundation. I met him in early December 2013 and the note evolved to formally put down the tone of Social Synergy Foundation.
We were hesitant to share it in this raw form as our assumption was that most readers will not have the patience, and more importantly, the felt need to understand why this kind of approach to working with organizations should be a central theme of one's work. It is shared here for the purposes of archival and referencing.
Our Temperament
We address ourselves to decision-makers across different types of organizations: be it informal groups, NGOs, social enterprises, section 25 companies (section 8 under the new Companies Act, 2013), foundations, those in corporates, and even individuals. You could be the promoter of an organization, a member of the senior leadership team, or a project leader. You could even be an individual with a demonstrated idea, and an accompanying conviction that the idea needs to evolve further.
Whoever you may be it is important that a) you must have experienced first-hand (and not simply thought) that there is a deeper or different meaning to the work that you do; b) you want to genuinely explore this meaning and not simply because it has currently caught popular imagination; c) that you do command a minimum set of financial and human resources; and d) that you have a keen desire to give some kind of an organizational form to your passion.
But the moment you think of acting upon your convictions, do you find yourself caught up in labels, categories and perceptions floating out there? Do you feel that the more you chase your idea the more you are losing touch with the ground reality, and thus, the very meaning that you wanted to explore in the first place? Are you caught up making business plans, investor presentations, strategy documents, doing the conference circuit? Does it make you restless that you are force-fitting your ideas into someone else's mould? Fundamentally, are you agitated that someone else is defining (and thus constricting) the meaning of your work, your thoughts, and identity? Wouldn't you rather that while the wolrd talks in generalities, you really want to immerse yourself in your own particular experiences and build upon that step-by-step?
We believe that all the labels, categories, and perceptions have their relevance; but in strictly right doses and at the right time. We would not want any decision-maker to trip themselves over highly analytical frameworks, flowcharts, excel models, and highly pleasing presentations. They are all necessary to communicate with others. But beyond a point, they can get very addictive. It is a very thin line when you soon become the myth that you sell to others.
Rather, we would want you to make decisions based on your intuition, constantly mindful of the experiences of different individuals within your organization, and your own personal values. We would want you to build your own organizational vocabulary & dictionary, and work within that. We certainly would wish you to add words but not subtract or substitute. Neither would we wish you to be instictive and impulsive. We would even encourage you to follow the crowd but only when it makes sense to (and for) you. At the same time, we would want you to constantly reflect on your own ideas and circumstances; structure & re-structure them; keep a watchful eye on the books of accounts; be very disciplined about how the money is spent; how much you really need today; and realistically face up to your limitations.
Above all, we would wish for you to patiently build an organization that you would be proud of. It may not be scalable, replicable, or a model that everyone is willing to talk about and adopt, but it is the one that satisfies you and your team.
In our experience, terms like entrepreneurship, sustainability, and impact are potent terms but they need to understood and applied with care. Creating impact is not an outcome or an activity but a very strenuous and a naggingly frustrating process if it has to be done the right way. It can also be a thankless job after a point. Intelligence and commercial capital are necessary but temperament and values matter far more when one finds oneself within the midst of such a process.
If you believe this temperament of ours is compatible with yours, we encourage you to explore how we could be partners in this "institutional investment" with you, or even better, you could simply write to us. Why procrastinate when you think you have found a suitable match?
At the end of the day, the idea is yours, the people are yours, and we can only make you deepen your commitment to what you believed in. Hiring a highly paid full-time "expert and experienced executive" from outside is no substitute for your own daily investment in operations, finances, and people.
Even if you do not write to us, we thank you for reading through this letter. We know, not many would do it. We sincerely wish you success in your future endeavours. If this indeed touched a chord with you, it would be great to hear from you some day when you feel a sense of satisfaction at your achievement, however humble you may deem it to be.
Our Approach
Read the following as you would a dialogue between yourself and us wherein we try to answer a set of questions which you may have at the back of your mind.
1. What is your role?
It would be best not to think of us as a consultant who would either help you make strategy or program manage the implementation. Instead, you may think of us as investors who help you build what we call organizational capital. Very much as a right-intentioned financial investor would associate with you over an extended duration and support you with necessary financial and other related aspects, we also typically look at associating over a minimum of 2 to 3 year time period to help you with the process of organization development.
2. What is your "investment philosophy"?
In our experience, there are different types of assets that any organization consciously or unconsciously has to manage on a daily basis:
2.1. Commercial assets: This would include the brand, positioning, technology, operations, systems and processes, marketability of your idea, potential to attract outside funding --- the so-called hardware of any organization.
2.2. Organizational assets: This would include your financial management practices, governance, value systems, organizational structures, people and how they engage with the organization and among themselves.
2.3. Last-mile assets: This is that part and people of the organization that actually determines and is really responsible for creating impact in the real sense of the term. So, for example, this could include the ability to engage with a community, build linkages with local government officials, households, vendors, et cetera. This is really the part where a small mistake of any kind (financial, relational, operational) may mean losing credibility with the stakeholders that really matter.
Today, there is disproportionate emphasis on cultivating commercial assets. However, we feel that for an organization that is really serious about impact, the process needs to be upside-down. It is the last-mile that shapes what can be done today. A lot of planning, strategy, and for that matter, even good intentions ignore this ground reality leading eventually to frustration. Words such as growth and innovation have to be finally interpreted in the context of the limitations and strengths of the last-mile.
And that means that to make fruitful decisions it is required to get into lot of intricate details and do things sequentially and may be slowly, but in a consistent and disciplined manner. Thus, the investment value we really bring in is about making the organization act in a certain way and staying the course instead of over-reacting to external or internal disturbances, getting carried away by expectations of investors, consultants, or, for that matter, even us.
3. Does that mean you do implementation and not strategy?
In our opinion, this distinction is artificial and at most times not necessary, especially for a small organization. Strategy, many times is more rationalization than reason. Our fundamental and only assumption is that strategy is really created and realized at the last-mile. Rest of the organization has to listen carefully to whispers in this last-mile and then act in line with those. You can say that we do neither strategy, nor implementation, but simply ensure that most parts of the organization are sensitive to these last-mile details.
4. All of this still feels vague. Tell me, how will you concretely engage with my organization and team?
Based on our work with organizations in the past we have found out that the following model of engagement serves the interest of all concerned:
4.1. A face-time component: This could include a certain fixed number of days every month or two months where in we would a) review progress across finance, operations and business development; b) spend time individually with as many members of the team (on the field and in the head-office) as needed to help their individual capacity building; c) spend time with the senior leadership (one-on-one) to help the leadership draw lessons, re-structure its broader ideas, address intra-personal issues that they may be struggling with and any other aspects that they may see fit; d) plan in detail for the next period.
4.2. An off-line formal support mechanism wherein we spend time reviewing the tasks or actions as per plan with the concerned individual/individuals in the team. This would be mostly over phone or internet. Ideally, at the beginning of an engagement usually 1 or 2 calls per week are adequate. As the engagement stabilizes and our understanding of the organization evolves we usually find bi-weekly calls also work well. We only enforce one condition for these formal review calls: that is, there should be an MIS sent a day before the call for us to review. We will work with the team to develop such a MIS, or in case the organization already has one, one work with that. This MIS should cover at least two areas: business development and financials.
4.3. Over and above this, there is a third mode which we actively encourage our clients to use but with discretion. As a rule, we wish to maintain a very informal equation with all our clients and all members of their team. This means, that any member can call us at any point in time and is free to discuss the issues at hand (personal or organizational). We have intentionally kept this kind of informal mentoring channel open. It gives us a firmer understanding of the pyschology of the organization, and more importantly, allows us to channel this to senior leadership in a discerning manner at an appropriate point in time.
5. Beyond engaging with us in this way, what else can you do?
Helping you in the organization development process is our key role. However, as part of this process if we jointly identify that there is need for specific research, or an impact assessment that needs to be done, we are happy to solicit individuals within our network for these tasks and program manage them if need be. However, we would treat these as separate and stand-alone projects that are outside the scope of our core engagement.
6. Will you raise funds for me?
We put this question in because today this is a common expectation from a lot of organizations. So we would be very candid. We would not raise funds for you. We would prepare you to raise funds. And that may mean helping you develop a business plan or a specific business development proposal.
Please note that to do a thorough business plan, or write a proposal within a short time is a very demanding job, and often a separate project in itself. Thus, our suggestions to all our clients would be this. To get maximum leverage out of us for fund-raising allow us to first engage with you. Based on our engagement we would develop a more realistic understanding of your organization. You can then actively seek us out to help you, or your team with its fund-raising mandate. You could also ask us to develop the whole plan, or we would work with any professional entity which you may appoint for the purpose.
7. What will be your fees?
Very much like an investment trust, we operate on a bare-bones partnership model. Further, we are particuarly conscious to not have fixed costs in our set-up except maybe the bare minimum of junior resources. In absence of a worry to meet a high monthly fixed resource cost-base, we have the discretion to choose assignments, and more importantly, from our client's perspective, to price assignments in line with our clients' capacities. This is a conscious choice on our part so that we can engage in assignments that really are of interest to us rather than taking on work largely for commercial considerations alone, and for reasons of building a perception in the 'market'.
Thus, we do not have a fixed 'market rate'. As far as our fees are concerned, our method is a) we first build a level of comfort with you; b) scope out the engagement with you; and c) ask you to fix a price that fits comfortably in your budget and that is fair AS DEEMED BY YOU. If this price would not work for us we would be candid in saying no to a formal engagement but look at alternative ways of engaging.
8. How will you take these fees? Do you take equity or variable-linked compensation in a social enterprise?
Our fee model is one that of a monthly fixed retainer as per the fees decided by you, and our invoicing would also be on a monthly basis. As of date, we do not take equity or any performance-linked compensation.
9. How will your charge for travel, etc.?
Please note that out-of-pocket expenses will be billable at actuals. We will try to adhere, as far as possible, to the travel policy of your organization. We are also particular about our travel spends. This may mean that where possible we take trains for short-distance journeys, try to schedule our work so that we do not have to book tickets in a hurry, and use client provided accomodation available or other-wise look at a cost-efficient accomodation option nearest to your office.
10. Finally, what do you expect from me?
It is a fact that in small to medium-sized organizations, the organization is a mirror-image of its leadership. The characteristics of the leadership (individual or team) are at times constraints of the organization. This is a human fact. In all our engagements we have found that, after a point, it is the leadership which is the critical enabler as well as the critical bottleneck to realizing the real potential of an idea. For us to be effective, we ask from you to be granted a space where can have very open and frank conversations, and to look at us as "partners" and not consultants. We do not wish to be relegated to that part of your mind where it is "that is the consultant's job and this is my job". We would rather that you believe that "it is our job".
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