This week I had the pleasure to sit in on a panel of Acumen Fellows speak at CBS.
An Acumen Fellow is a young-ish, highly educated and motivated person who enters into an intense education and full-immersion program in the social enterprise sector for a year or so working with an Acumen company, initiative or project anywhere around the globe.
From Nairobi to Tanzania to different regions of remote India, the Fellows on this panel collectively represented a highly diverse set of experiences during their tenure as Fellows. Their skills and backgrounds before the program are equally as impressive from engineer to financier to product and operations managers.
They are the “fresh from the field, tell it like it is, shatter any dreams of this being ‘glamorous’ work, we do this because we care not because it is easy” type of people. Well done, Acumen, well done. Quite an impressive group.
A Zen Koan is a symbolic story designed to map a path to Enlightenment that has both a component of wisdom and compassion; what we have always been and what we can possibly be. They are designed for brevity but contain many layers of complex meaning.
The lessons from these panelists are similar to Zen Koans. At first, their message and takeaways seem rather simple and obvious:
- Collect and analyze data
- Find out who your ultimate customer is
- Find out how to distribute your product
- Build trust among your customer base
- Setup HR and Finance Processes for the company’s long term success
And yet, each point, comes wrapped in layers of meaning, experience, and insight into the complex challenges that companies face in emerging markets as the most passionate and brightest move to change what has always been to create what can possibly be.
Perhaps the most translatable piece of advice stems from this koan:
Where you sweep, there is a lot of flying around, so you sweep. The more you sweep, the more there is, to the point where you throw your whole life into sweeping
What does this mean? Perhaps you can go to a forest, sit next to a stream and ponder it for 12 hours, and then it might come to you…
Or….just consider a more modern version of this phrase (in one of its simpler meanings):
Just do it.
The biggest piece of advice is that social enterprise is a roll up your sleeves, go into the field, travel to the remotest parts of the world type of industry. Excessive philosophizing or even worse–being another person with a “big idea” but little to no action–is not what’s going to be successful in this field.
There is no pretty answer, no excel spreadsheet to type away at in a high rise, air-conditioned building with all the comforts of home. For doing so is like lighting a torch in the darkness:
Light a torch for the darkness outside, blow it out. In darkness, you are now enlightened.
Social enterprise and emerging markets are a fascinating area for me, and one I’m passionately curious about. In a sense, it is because of the near endless inputs to this puzzle that continues to expand my awareness and prevents me from making any conclusions. The dreaded “need more information” answer is one I must rely on in this situation, and it is one I recommend taking because:
Whatever thoughts and ideas you project on something are the limitation you yourself impose on your own mind
There is no one answer, and the solutions that have worked, as demonstrated by the Acumen Fellows and others whom I’ve talked to in this space, are ones not necessarily fitting into a neat bucket or a tidy solution. They are creative, sometimes improvised, but they work–and work because of the people on the ground making them so.
So I’ll leave it at that.
Lessons from Zen Koans & Social Enterprise are one and the same.
Carry on.