Thanks Akhila Rajeshwar and Veerendra Mathur for carrying my article in the TiECON Chennai souvenir! I had more people coming up to me and congratulating me on the article than even on my PhD!! :-) Just thought I would post it here : Scale – ‘To be or Not to be’ - a social entrepreneur’s dilemma On a mid-life whim, I decided to do my Phd. To be honest, I have always been a bit of a nerd and the idea of being assessed in a completely linear fashion, quite unlike the challenges of social entrepreneurship, presented a unique prospect for self-actualisation. I began the process in 2008 with a glorious vision of me at the dais, clad in scholar’s robes, humbly bowing to different directions and accepting encomiums on finishing my doctorate in the shortest possible blitzkrieg. It wasn’t until 2011 that I realised this was a case of catching the tiger’s tail (as my father would call it in homely Tamil). Forget ‘shortest possible time’, it became a case of ‘will you ever do it??” The fact that my thesis was on Women’s Workforce Participation in India – a topic that warranted less than a dozen secondary research sources, made it even more difficult. With more effort than I had invested in childbirth and perhaps more (grudging?) support from my husband, I successfully finished the defence of my thesis in January this year. SRM University decided to reward my persistence by giving me an opportunity to be photographed with the then PM potential Mr. Narendra Modi by inviting him as the Chief Guest for the convocation in February 2014. It was an exhilarating moment as I sat in the 3000-seater convocation hall in the second row along with other graduands, waiting to listen to the greatest political speaker India has produced. When he arrived and strode purposefully to the podium, the audience which until then had maintained pin-drop silence erupted into tumultuous applause vociferously indicating the advent of a future PM. Everything about Shri. Modi spelt vision and scale. His first words were about the brilliant future he planned for 1.2 billion people who were part of the India that he adored. Superlatives such as ‘tallest’, ‘fastest’ and ‘strongest’ flowed easily. He spoke passionately about the arduous process of nation development as if it were the business plan of an MNC. He described in delicious detail the step-by-step method of picking up a development idea and scaling it to its largest, most magnificent, absolutely humungous avatar. In short, his yearning for creating lasting sustainable change for his Bharat seemed unlimited. At the end of the convocation, after the customary picture of me receiving the much-coveted PhD from Shri. Narendra Modi, what I experienced was a keen sense of simply not desiring enough for my own organization (leave alone my nation). I felt that as a social entrepreneur, I had not dreamt sufficiently, not wanted enough. Was I consumed with the single minded vision of making my enterprise the biggest, most audacious success story that my audience had ever seen? And if commercial scaling was not a gauge of an enterprise (even if that enterprise was promoting women’s workforce participation by influencing all the participants in the ecosystem), then what was? The Raison d’etre of Social enterprises It’s tough enough as it is to start a successful business, but creating a social enterprise that has to compete in the marketplace while at the same time bring about social impact is the meanest of challenges. Which is why, as I look around, I find very few social enterprises that have been lauded for their commercial success. A few Microfinance institutions, the rare Amul or two and yes, a couple of educational institutions that tread the thin line between a social enterprise and a full blown for-profit. The essential flaw in using the same yardstick for social enterprises as for commercial ones, which is exponential financial growth achieved by one of the 4 typical scaling models such as Organic Growth, Franchising, Acquisitions or Merger, rests on the goals that each model seeks. Commercial enterprises are about profits. While they do face challenges of managing inefficiencies in scale as well as assuring quality, relatively easier access to borrowing typically masks these issues. Outcomes and Impacts Social enterprises are about outcomes. For example the outcome that I seek as a social entrepreneur is a world where a woman can rise up to her best possible avatar without facing impediments in the form of prejudices or biases. Our work involves changing mindsets and the traction is slow. It involves educating the educators, influencing the influencers and waiting to see whether the human capital plan for the next year has changed. It means operating in a market that may not be particularly lucrative. When we began AVTAR I-WIN in 2005, we were arguably the first ever to speak about creating an ecosystem than enables women. We started with a humble network of 150 women. We conducted research to provide the best, lowest-cost solution to our customers who sought Inclusion and this was by investing “sweat equity.” Today, our own network has created thousands of careers for women and the market has grown and the model proven. The transactional costs of market entry have come down. I now see several better funded organizations (who may or may not have the same social objectives) that have cropped up in the same space and I would take pride in having made the journey a little easier for them. The second pertinent point to be kept in mind is that as a social enterprise, you cannot hope to have full-fledged social impact all by yourself. When we started speaking about the inclusion of women in the Indian workplace and the cascading benefit this would have on the woman’s home, the economy and the organization, we could only do so much by ourselves. We needed the talent managers of corporates to create a gender-balanced recruitment plan, we needed (and still do) senior leaders to evangelise the concept of Diversity and we sought support from the family of the Indian Woman Professional to be more sensitive to her needs. We proved in 2008 that in spite of recession, productivity can be enhanced by engaging with second career women who exemplified dedication and focus. When a social enterprise shows that a product or service can deliver the same or better outcome with greater human impact or perhaps with less environmental damage, it drives the audience to expect new standards in the marketplace. For this you need an entire ecosystem, you can’t do it alone. Which means that the same commercial models are NOT necessarily the answer. Of course, some social enterprises are easier to scale where typically they offer simple products or packaged services. But for those with complex human factor programmes like ours it is not so up-front. There are significant organisational hitches in scaling through traditional models. You can face dire challenges in the form of difficulty in attracting the right kind of investment, lacuna in available skills, lack of infrastructure, heavy dependence on the founder, et al. It is scaling the outcome, not the company While I believe that true social enterprises create and prove financially viable models of change, I also realise that the end-goal is about scaling the outcomes. So, it occurs to me that the social enterprise’s model of creating sustainable change must therefore be seen as separately scalable from the organisation itself. So, for the new calendar year ahead, exciting financial incentives for team mates and a stronger, healthier top-line with incremental revenue streams apart, we have planned a series of initiatives that involve scaling the level of influence. Working with the government and influencing policy is a major priority. Creating a large network of WINSIGHT advisors (trained interventionists who assist corporates in managing engagements with women) which even NSDC would be proud of is another. Developing a transferable model of evangelising Inclusion in workplaces is a sure third. Creating microfranchising opportunities for second-career women to actually contribute to retaining women in the workplace is a definite next. Lastly, we plan to leverage the AVTAR I-WIN network which has over 36000 registered members to collaborate and plan for continual improvement. Would I, as a social enterprise like to be a major player in the mainstream economy by directly creating millions of jobs for women? Yes of course. Would I like to be known as the largest and most profitable D&I consulting firm in India? For sure. But if I used the same energy to influence the large behemoths of Indian industry to collectively increase women’s workforce participation to 50% from the current 26%, leading to a GDP jump of over Rs. 500 billion, then I would surely make Shri Narendra Modi proud. And that would be a feat worthy of a social entrepreneur.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 13:13:06 +0000
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