After spending ten years building or helping build a number of organizations that are committed to social change through public service, charity, or the things that institutions do, I now spend my time on a for-profit social enterprise trying to find a solution to rural drinking water quality in India (www.sarvajal.com).  

My journey to the most trendy form of social enterprise has cast a wide net:  it started with helping start a charter school in Boston, then to setting up the service mission of Indicorps in India, to starting a foundation with a mandate to recruit young people that want to innovate for public good, to helping structure a large new private university.   Throughout, there is one thing I have learned that trumps everything else:  the most critical components to delivering on a social mission are the people that make up your team.

I know - "of course" - everyone knows how important people are to any organization.   However, it is different this time.   The mission of every other organization I have helped build has made sense, particularly to the people who helped build it.   There was little left to interpretation, no matter how new the concept.   Yet, ten years later, I feel more confused (and more challenged) by the basics than ever. 

For the beginning of this blogging excursion, I hope to clearly articulate some of the day-to-day struggles of making my social enterprise work - particularly the basics - because I think they are core to the philosphical underpinnings of trying to make a difference.   Today, we start with people.

The first problem I face with people is actually in the definition of "social enterprise."   I find that no one really knows what it means.   Neither do I.   That gets really complicated really fast.   There are many definitions, and many justifications for the "sustainable" notion of for-profit initiatives.    The most clear articulations are by people who spend their days discussing such things, however, those people are often far away from where I work.  This presents a second problem:  the people that best understand what we are trying to do are largely not the people that I need to recruit.   In fact, they are in completely different countries that have wildly different concepts of social impact.   I feel like I'm walking a tightrope in trying to keep ourselves relevant to both the world of social enterprise and the world I operate within.

Let me try to explain how this plays out in my context.   I have found it remarkably easy to find people who understand the social mission of our enterprise, that is, that increasing access to clean drinking water will have the single greatest influence on reducing the burden of disease.  I find it really easy to find people that understand the business mission of our enterprise, that is, building a robust franchise model that is able to grow exponentially and is effective at delivering and generating revenue for a service.   It is remarkably hard to find people who have clarity on the interplay.

The intersection of these two poses a cultural problem within the organization particularly on philosophical questions:  Should we be going to the poorest villages first / start at the very bottom of the pyramid?  Should we fix our water prices at a level that all can afford even if it means we lose lots of money?  Should we pick franchisees who need to earn a living the most even if it means they may be notoriously difficult to collect from?   The problem is, the answers to these are critical to the initial success and long-term ability to have impact through our business (and that is largely what my job is about).  Different people get involved for different reasons, and many often get frustrated because the expectations of impact are unmet at a pace that is satisfying.

Many of the oft-discussed exciting for-profit social enterprises bypass this conundrum by becoming extremely product-oriented.   If it is about creating something that is engineered to be ultra-low-cost and serves a need that presents all kinds of earning or other potential for the poor, the enterprise is focused inward. To some extent, even micro-lending is such a product.  So are we.  We get really excited about the innovations in technology that we are developing - but they skirt the questions about impact and are misleading because they leave disproportionately powerful impressions on investors and the social enterprise crowd.

The equation changes significantly when your impact is about delivering a service, especially within the heart of those who would like that service reach those who need it most from the start.  Unfortunately, much needs to change to make that possible (in a future post).  When you have to figure out to make it work sustainably enough first to have the freedom to experiment with social parameters, you need to find people who understand the long-term mechanics of systemic social impact.   Perhaps the sector is growing enough opportunities for us to begin to educate such people?