Building a Values-Driven organization for Social Change
“Why do I do What I do?” this is the one question that I ask myself on a regular basis in leading the great IgniterSpace team.
When I co-founded IgniterSpace with my partners Hasith & Buddika, we took a very unorthodox approach for an organization that was just starting up. We decided to build an organization that would impact the lives of every single child in the world in making them creative. We decided to keep IMPACT as the center point in our focus. As successful professionals in our fields, we knew that financial incentive will always follow if you are doing social good. On this unorthodox note we founded IgniterSpace.
Almost two years later I stand here asking myself the same question. How many lives of kids have we impacted so far? Because of what we do, how many kids have developed themselves to be better in some way? Is it enough? How do we grow Impact?
As entrepreneurs, this is what I believe we should put our focus on. Because of what we do, how do we make the lives of others better, easier & happy. In whatever domain you may launch your venture on, if you can focus on the people who are impacted with what you do, success will follow.
Here are few philosophies that I keep in mind in the process of building an organization which is driven by values towards creating a Social Change.
- Find the most driven, most mission aligned people
In order to achieve high social impact, it is absolutely important that you get the right people surrounding you as your team. When I say right people, what i mean is the people who really believe in what you do; People who are passionate about your cause. Recruitment can be one of the toughest things for Startups. You cannot afford the best financially, but you cannot afford to have the worst too.
This is why I directly get involved in recruitment proceedings. When recruiting, I spend a good 30 minutes in casual conversation with the candidate on the concept of our business, & hear their thoughts as well. How ever they may possess the highest skill set, if they are not passionate about the cause, I stay away from inviting them to join our team. Bottom line, hire people who believe in what you do.
2. Purpose matters more than anything
Here, the question that I ask myself is put into contrast : “Why do i do What I do?”. This has gotten me to devote few hours every week to sit down, and think about why I co-founded IgniterSpace.
Every startup will have a main form of revenue generation. Seldom does this source be one that you had initially planned. Your product may have pivoted many times before it reached a point where a stable source of revenue was produced. However, this should not make you focus directly & mainly on this avenue in your business. I know this does sound quite controversial (Don’t get me wrong)
If you are at the inception of starting a new venture, this would be a great time for you to do some thinking. As a Social Entrepreneur, I never work for myself — I work for the people. As an entrepreneur, make sure never to lose the sense of Purpose. Why are you doing, what you are doing? Who are the people affected by what you are doing, or going to do? If you are an entrepreneur with progress in your venture, try to sit down & spend some time to think about the purpose of what you are doing. As long as you have a good focus on this, you will impact the lives of people with what you do.
3. Make work a personal journey
This involves creating a working culture where your employees work to develop their lives while bringing value to your organization at the same time. To make work a personal journey for you team, there are four things: Inspiration, Learning, Support & Contribution.
Your team has to love what they do. You should create a working environment where your team members can be their own selves and not to pretend to be someone else. I know the norm is such that in Startups you follow a flat hierarchy & blah blah. This is just great & amazing. But the side effect is that if not properly executed, this may lead in to mismanagement of people. Creating a working culture where your team members are motivated to do their job is the goal of every Startup leader. Support plays a huge role in this. Show to your employees how much you support them. And don’t just show, do it!
Show them that the work they do does a big contribution to what you are trying to achieve as a Startup. Try to motivate your employees to create a plan to develop their own careers & help them to outline the work that they do to achieve these objectives..
4. Care about people & listen
Caring & compassion is key to building a team of honest & loyal members. When you do care, you should Really Care. Don’t just care about people because of the role they play in your team. Showing empathy, and understanding the needs of your team members is key to making them happy.
Think about it. Why do employees leave? : They are not satisfied with the pay, They are not satisfied with the work they do, They are unhappy about the workplace?
But what if you do sit down, & have a friendly discussion with them. Listen to what they have to say. Talk to them as their friend & not their boss (I hate that word). Showing real care for people will solve many many problems in your workplace. Sometimes leaders often show care because of the strategic role their fellow colleagues play in the organization. This is the sign of a fake leader. Trust me when I do say, it gets hard sometimes. It takes some time for you to be ready to sit, listen & care about your team members deeply and truly.
5. Are we authentic to our vision?
In building a social enterprise, do we actually build something true to our vision, or do we identify to what works and cling on to it? By “it” I mean the products & services offered by your organization.
Do not get me wrong — Pivoting is crucial for any startup. You do need to identify what works, what doesn’t & build an optimum product. But in the journey of building an optimal product or a service offering, if you do lose your core vision, your core belief, what you build ultimately will not be authentic. You may not be able to create an impact to as many people as possible. This goes back to point 2 discussed above. Realise how authentic you are to your vision in what you want to create.
6. Think about Scale differently
In this final point, I want to share my thoughts on Depth Vs Scale. In order to maximize impact in what you do, depth & scale is very important. Scale talks about how many people can your project impact. Depth talks about how deeply can you impact people from what you do, In order for you to have maximum impact, you need to achieve a fine balance of depth and scale.
As per my observation, it is always much more helpful for you to focus on depth at your early stages where you create a product/service offering which brings out deep impact to the people which it is targeted for. Once you have understood the depth in the impact, you can then reach out to Scale bigger & bigger to impact more & more people.
All the above are just ideas, observations and experiences. As per my observations as an entrepreneur, it is always much more pleasing & self fulfilling to launch & run a social enterprise. So dear founders & future founders, think about the concept of Social Entrepreneurship before you enter into a business venture. Hope this helps.
