BLOG #4: “No Night Should Go Without Light”
Read about our last mentorship call here!
Hi, I’m Yusi Turell, PhD Student at the University of New Hampshire, and Student Research Fellow following Pollinate. It’s been incredible to visit India and see Pollinate in action! I began my research trip in Bangalore in order to speak with Pollinate’s headquarters staff and visit some of its longest-served slum communities. Madhavi was a consummate host, balancing a productive schedule of interviews with a warm welcome to Bangalore, ‘the Silicon Valley of India.
Over the course of my interviews, I learned more about the nuances of Pollinate’s two recent major changes to staff structure, i.e., shifting Pollinators to employees through a new LLP and re-configuring the hierarchy and incentives of Sales Managers. Murli Padmanabhan (Executive Vice President, Sales) and Alexie Seller, CEO told me that it has taken time for Pollinate to hone its hiring profile for city leadership. Previously, they had filled their Sales and Operations managerial roles hired with senior staff experienced in selling financial or consumer durable products. They found, however, that these white-collar salespeople came with baggage that hampered their ability to adapt to Pollinate’s context. Some lacked the “attitude and discipline to go every day into the community and do something good for those people.” Others overcompensated and “took the easy route, saying, ‘I’m impacting so many lives by speaking with community members, so maybe the organization will not mind so much if I’m not meeting my business goals.” However, as Alexie emphasized, Pollinate’s theory of change depends on the sales and use of life-changing products; without sales, there is no social impact! Now, Pollinate seeks earlier-stage professionals who have some translatable experience but whom Pollinate can “develop up.”
Likewise, nearly everyone I interviewed told me that effective Sales Managers need to walk a delicate line in managing Pollinators. The following leadership skills are useful in all organizations, but are more pronounced for Pollinate (and other social enterprises) that intentionally hire lower-skilled staff as salespeople and place them in challenging market settings:
· Check in regularly. “Call them, ask them how are they going to sell, which product they are going to sell…” This not only keeps Pollinators accountable, but also helps them envision and become excited about their sales and collection plans.
· Communicate sales targets, but not too aggressively. “You have to be strict with them but at the same time soft with them. If you are just strict with them, they leave and go.” When a Pollinator is struggling, “if you are only pushing numbers, it demotivates them more.”
· Motivate and model. “Every 20 to 25 days, Pollinators get demotivated. That motivation process is very difficult. It takes three or four days; you have to be with them and show them. If you’re able to open a sale, then you have a good example — ‘just try your best, try harder, things will work out.’” Sales Managers should actively know the products inside out and be able to explain them to other people. This is “a role where you have the power to show people how it’s done.”
· Understand Pollinators’ personal challenges and make allowances. This characteristic was especially appreciated by the Pollinators I interviewed.
Beyond the interviews, the Pollinator model really came to life for me during my field visits to Pollinate’s communities. One of Pollinate’s most experienced Pollinators, Amreen, took me to three communities on my fifth day in Bangalore. I’ve documented this powerful experience in a separate blog posting. Amreen personified Pollinate’s inspiring tagline, “No night should go without light.”
Moving Up in UP
After sampling dosa, idli, and other delicious south Indian cuisine, I travelled to Lucknow, home of Pollinate’s operations in the northern region of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Tim Lloyd-Smith, a Pollinate City Leader, was a wonderful host and Hive suitemate. (As City Leader, Tim coordinates Pollinate’s Fellows, volunteers from Australia and elsewhere who work on special projects for four weeks. The fundraising they do for their trip comprises Pollinate’s fourth largest revenue stream.) Siddhartha Mishra, Operations Manager, radiates optimism and competence; he oversaw the smooth logistics of my visit. As in Bangalore, I began with office interviews. I was intrigued that Satyendra Yadaw, Lucknow’s Sales Manager, has been quite successful translating his experience selling products (e.g., heavy-duty Canon printers) into a social enterprise community setting, when other senior salespeople had failed to adjust to the requirements of a Pollinate Sales Manager. Satyendra explained that a formative personal experience had developed his empathic abilities: when he was young, he would visit his grandmother in a village outside of the city and saw firsthand what life was like without electricity. Villagers relied on solar power and kerosene for light. Of customers and Pollinators, he said, “I can understand what they are going to think, how they are going to react.” Lucknow’s sales have continued to increase, and the city is on track to financial self-sufficiency.
Siddhartha took me to visit Lucknow’s Baluadda community — a well-established community, with approximately 100 homes, wide main lanes, and a revolving mix of Indians, Bangladeshi, Assamese and other immigrants (documented and undocumented). At the entrance are two larger three-sided shacks that serve as warehouses for recyclable products: cardboard, hard plastic, plastic bags, metals, and more. Residents of Baluadda are rag-pickers, which means they pick up trash from the city, bring it back to sort into categories, and sell it to the wholesaler. The wholesaler in turn stores the product in his warehouses until he sells it to larger recycling companies. (See “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Katherine Boo, for a detailed and evocative description of Indian rag-pickers.) Despite this organized industry and what Siddhartha assures me is the relative wealth of the community, the homes have hard dirt floors and many of the tarp walls have holes. When dusk comes, there are open rubbish fires reeking of plastic smoke across the entire grounds.
Maiku Lal, the Pollinator, has sold solar lamps to 70 customers in Baluadda. This high penetration surprised me, because most of the homes have access to electricity through illegal connections to electric wires. However, I learned (and experienced personally) that Lucknow’s power regularly fails for hours at a time. When the government cuts illegal connections, it can take a bribe and several days for power to be restored.
Maiku Lal made no new sales on Wednesday. However, he collected several payments and, importantly, cultivated the relationships that he will rely on to cross-sell clean cookstoves in the future. Darkness is a more visible problem than poisonous air, so Pollinate will lead with solar lamps before strongly promoting cookstoves.
On Tuesday, Tim and I traveled to Kanpur, Pollinate’s newest city. The new Kanpur office is on the top floor of a four-story building, with tremendous natural light. Coincidentally, the floors below belong to a lighting showroom, so the stairwell is decorated with all types of electric lights, before one reaches the Pollinate office and solar display! Kanpur’s joint Sales & Operations Manager, Ridhima Modi, is leaving Pollinate to accompany her husband to the U.S. on a fellowship to support his own social enterprise — a real loss to Pollinate, since Ridhima embodies both the strategic thinking and empathy required in an effective Sales Manager.
Akrati, Pollinator for the Barra7 community of Kanpur, introduced me to Mamta, a flashy woman with three children and one of the nicer homes in Barra7 who had been one of her initial customers five weeks ago. It’s common for a community leader like Mamta to serve as a first customer, whom neighbors then emulate. Akrati is Pollinate’s youngest Pollinator, a recent high school graduate with infectious excitement for the job. She has sold lamps to 4 of Barra’s 35 families and has high hopes of growing her customer base here and in her other four communities.
From Kanpur and Lucknow, I said goodbye to my new Pollinate friends and traveled to Agra and New Delhi for a bit of tourism before returning to New Hampshire’s -7*F degree weather. As I visited the magical Taj Mahal, the Dilli Haat market, and other tourist locations, I couldn’t help but think of the deeper and more genuine glimpse of India’s ‘undercities’ that I had been privileged to receive through the University of New Hampshire, UNH’s Center for Social Innovation and Enterprise, and my Pollinate partners. India is, in the words of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, “a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads.” The country’s overlays and collisions of socioeconomic groups are as unique and remarkable as its fertile mix of smells, tastes, sights, and sounds. As India continues to develop and modernize, it will take top-down government commitment as well as bottom-up efforts like Pollinate’s to shape India into a place of basic living conditions and opportunity for all.
Read the spotlight on Pollinator Amreen here!
