The Social Business

Social Impact Camp

I'm on the train home after a productive and enjoyable afternoon and evening in London.

I'd spent the morning in Leeds working with people with whom I'll soon be setting up a social business (yes me, the second Earl of Pointing Out That Other People Aren't Running Their Social Enterprises Quite As Well As They Could Be, setting up a social business.  It'd best be good.)

I spent the afternoon at RSA House making the most of their library facilities.  It's nice to feel that there's a little bit of London that's "mine".  On a day spent thinking about social impact, it was interesting to be reminded of the RSA's goal - to remove barriers to social progress.  A neat mission.  

This evening I went to the first Social Impact Camp, organised by Bright One Communications at UnLtd.  The idea was to bring together a load of social entrepreneurs who are interested in looking at ways that they can measure and prove the impact that their business has.

It's a crucial issue - and one that I've written about before.  My interest - and the reason I went down today - is in trying to develop ways to measure impact which are do-able by your average small business - social or otherwise.  I've had a fair bit of experience of most of the social accounting methods that are used within our sector, and let's just say I have an open mind as to whether they are appropriate and useful for the majority of people with whom I work. 

The thinking behind them is sound, and the methodology rigorous.  But I'm not wholly sure they are an appropriate use of time and resources for many small organisations.  Traidcraft, yes.  The Guardian, yes.  Fifteen Foundation, yes.  But most people I work with - and me?  No.

My impression from chatting with people tonight is that there are plenty of other people who feel the same.  A number of people hinted at feeling that their attempts to measure their impact were a bit inadequate.  A number of people had started to do something which was quite involved, and then, understandably, gave up.

Others have tried more DIY ways - Ben Matthews, who hosted tonight's event, talked us through the work he's done - focusing on the impacts that his communications work has with his clients.

One of "my" big ideas - which I hope we can develop at the Social Impact Camp - is to develop social impact circles.  I took the idea from the lending circles used by people like Grameen - where groups of people borrow together, support eachother, and, I suppose, keep eachother honest.  I think we could do something similar to help us to keep an eye on our social impact.  We could collaborate to clarify what we're trying to achieve (it's usually easier for someone else to see it - and they don't need to be an "expert"), and then remain accountable to each other as we report back on what we've done.  Instead of Social Audit Panels you'd have the wisdom of circles.

This stuff really matters.  Times are going to be tough for the next 5 or 10 years.  We'll need to learn to achieve a lot more good with a lot less money.  So we need ways of proving to ourselves that what we're doing is worthwhile -  whilst also proving to others that its worthy of investment. 

Some final thoughts from Bangladesh

Here are some final thoughts from Liam, before he begins his journey home from Bangladesh.

All alone in the hotel restaurant. Feels very weird after being so close to 22 people for the last week. All our Inside Grameen Delegates are speeding away from me at 30,000 feet to the four corners. 

Left behind to work on the film about social business.  I’ve spent the day crouched in front of monitors, in sound studios, listening to music which might work on the film, making lists of the people we must thank. Would love to go home but this has to be done. So much excellent footage. Interview with Yunus (who yesterday was speaking to the Indian parliament about his social business vision). So many shots of the gorgeous lush countryside and the horrible mess that is Dhaka. Interviews with the Grameen ladies in the villages, bank staff, yoghurt makers, French MBA’s working in Bogra, eye doctors,  rickshaw drivers, beggars, wide eyed kids, quite stunningly beautiful women. How we are going to get it down to ten minutes or so is a problem I have left with the talent at Drik. They are up all night to get me a good rough cut tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing that.

Wrap up session with the delegates was fab. I wont bore you with the litany of praise we got for taking the risk of putting this event on. I was very touched by people’s passion and honesty and the commitments they made about what they will now do as result of all we’ve seen. Again I am struck by the power of bringing together people from different sectors to share an experience and learn through it together.

In no particular order here are my round up thoughts:

1. Social Enterprise in the UK needs a great big kick up the arse. The obsession with what the government or the Eton Rifles think or want is farcical. Here in a place where there is no effective state, people like the Grameen folk must learn not to become dependent  on anyone for anything.  I just don’t trust free money Yunus told me.  I will probably punch the first whinging social enterprise type I run into back home who starts complaining about cuts. Just build a fucking business that can make money and help people. If you can’t do that go and work for the council or a bloody RDA. 
2. Big scale change must involve private sector business and multi nationals. The haphazard incremental growth of local social enterprises is nice but marginal. The world needs social innovation that can get to a big scale quickly. It does not need more cafes for disabled people or pretend work schemes for unemployed people which fall apart when the grant money dries up. The winners of the recent social enterprise awards are great little organisations but if I’m honest did I see any real social innovation – ideas that could change things big time? No I didn’t.  The social enterprise sector must open itself to the world of business or it will be increasingly marginal and stagnate forever going round and round the petty debates about definitions, who is and who isn’t, and kissing the bum of whoever sits at the top of the Cabinet Office.
3. Social innovation is messy, chaotic and not linear. Get in there. Learn by doing it. Yunus has semi divine status. But he is just a man (albeit a pretty extraordinary one) and has made numerous mistakes in his time. But get the right partners, each do what you do well, stay focussed on the core purpose at all times and amazing things can be achieved even in places as messed up and chaotic as Bangladesh.

This is my third visit to Bangladesh this year. I’ve fallen in love with it. I have met so many lovely people and there is here – in the rural areas at least – a sense of social solidarity which we have lost. And a society that gave birth to Grameen and BRAC must have a lot right with it.

But the place scares me too. It is an entire society living on the edge of a precipice. Rural poor people  can be wiped out by a cyclone or bad harvest (and they are all in the fields now hand picking a good crop). Slum dwellers live hand to mouth every day. And horrible Dhaka slides over the cliff under the sheer weight of numbers and a political elite who don’t give a monkey’s .

The roads are a handy metaphor for this place. Huge numbers of people trying to get somewhere in a chaotic reckless mass. Death or serious injury close to you all the time and no-one to help you if you crash. 

But let me end on an up note. A regional manager at a Grameen branch gave a farewell speech to me in very halting English. It was one of the most moving things I’ve heard for some time. He spoke about the need for global solidarity and the joining of hands of all those who want to be on the side of the poor. He spoke about the stupidity of racism and that so much more binds the people of the world than divides them.

So, in the spirit of global solidarity, much love to anyone who is reading this and good bye from the land of the Bangla speakers.

Liamxxx

Grameen - The Dignity Engine

The experience is nearly over.  Here's Liam's latest post from Bangladesh.

Back in the bus. Big crash had blocked main road to Dhaka so we take side road. Mistake. We get stuck in the middle of a gridlocked village surrounded by people. Sham – our Grameen guide – jumps out and disappears into the melee. Feels like our dad has gone. Half an hour passes. Nothing. And then trucks start reversing, cars are pulling off the road. And there’s our Sham directing the traffic, shouting at the crowds to stay back! He gets back in the bus to huge applause, whistles and cheering. He asks if we want to stop at the Grameen branch up the road for tea and a toilet break (in this country not an offer to be sniffed at!). Suddenly we are moving and soon we are back on the main road happy to be taking our chances again in the murderously reckless traffic thundering towards the capital.

Sham tells me later that when he was a boy scout he did a module on unblocking traffic jams. All I did as a scout was smoke Rothmans and try and get off with the guides. 

So, only a few hours to go and people will start dispersing. We had another jaw droppingly inspirational day in and around Bogra yesterday hosted by Isabelle and her team from Danone Communities. This social  business partnership with Grameen manufactures and distributes a high nutrition yoghurt (called Shokti Doi) to poor kids. We saw the factory, met the ladies who sell door to door, sat in on a village education session to about 200 hundred villagers gaping and laughing at the man dressed as the Shokti Doi lion. Genius. At the end of the day we had three hours with the Grameen Danone team during which the group all gave them one piece of advice, support, insight about how they could make the business better.

The business is not perfect, it is not in profit yet and they are still too reliant on the brains and resources of Paris. But what is so impressive about Danone is that they learn by doing. They haven’t waited for the perfect business plan. They know social business innovation is messy and not linear. They know the outcome they want but are happy to travel with an incomplete map. And talk about generosity of spirit and transparency. Marie used a great phrase last night when Miriam from Unilever remarked how open and honest they were being. “ We want to be known, understood and copied”, she said. They also have a line in their budget called Shit Happens – making provision for the inevitable wrong turns, unexpected bumps in the road and cock ups.

Went to bed with my head buzzing.

This morning we had a quick trip to the Grameen Eye Hospital. Built two years ago this two floor highly professional facility has treated 82,000 people and has a success rate about what the World Health Organisation average. It uses a cross subsidy model – those who can pay are charged a bit more to enable the poor access. Seeing an elderly village lady being led tenderly into the operating theatre to get her cataracts removed was very moving for us all.

And again the unbelievable go-the-extra-mile hospitality and openness. Returning to the f-you culture of London will be a stretch.

I’m weary, sleep deprived and so wishing this bus trip was over. But I am also full of admiration for this bloody amazing Grameen organism. Paul of IDEO said they’re not a business they are a dignity engine. It ain't perfect. It feels a bit rickety in places as well as state of the art in others. It is over reliant on the founder Yunus. It won’t solve poverty in Bangladesh. BUT its network of various businesses are living symbols of what it looks like to put the poor first and not last. To not just talk about practical solutions but to make them and keep making them.  

Meet the Grameen Borrowers

Here's Liam's latest post from the back of a bus in Bangladesh.

I’m in the back of a minibus hurtling along the road to Bogra. Beside me our film director Sumeru. Film equipment is piled around me. Outside people teem in their thousands. Lorries loaded to tipping point belch out diesel smoke. Buses full (and I mean full) of people hammer along, horns blowing, lights flashing, overtaking and missing other ancient radically unroadworthy vehicles by inches. I ask Sumeru if the government’s attempts to bring some sort of order to the country’s roads will have any effect. He smiles. No, for Bangladeshis, bad driving is a genetic disorder. If there’s one thing that might make me start praying again to a supernatural intervener it’s the Bogra to Dhaka road!

I went to a village called Rajenbrapur this morning to meet Grameen borrowers. It's the Hindu festival Rasyatra. The place is bedecked in amazing colours and there are orange clad musicians who are playing for four days non-stop in praise of Vishnu. Food being cooked everywhere and people, people, people. Small kids throw flower petals over me, laughing their heads off at this white giant who towers over everyone and can’t speak bangla. 

We enter a wooden hut where are sitting about 40 women, the back bone savers and borrowers of Grameen. They tell us how Grameen credit has helped them build houses, start micro businesses, send kids to school and university. It’s quite formal as they first salute and then tell their stories to these five strangers. It starts loosening up when it comes to questions and they ask us all if we are married and have kids. I look at our gay member and wonder if he’ll talk about his partner. That might be to much intercultural sharing! 

They take a particular interest in Jessie who is not married but is young and pretty.  Bemusement as to why she in not hitched. Walking around the village and inside people's Grameen funded homes, Jessie is surrounded by women, offering her their kids to hold, having their photos taken. Great fun. We talk to three women who are Struggling Members, former beggars who have been helped up by small interest free loans. 

Later at Vawal Razabari Sreepur Branch (Gazipur Zone) - which had a 100% loan repayment last month, has 96 beggar members, 45 kids at Uni, and has funded the building of 1,639 homes - we meet eight really impressive young people who are at University on Grameen loans. One young woman is doing her masters in maths. I tell her I was rubbish at that at school. One young guy is doing English and loves Shakespeare. Reaching back to my A Levels I recite some Hamlet. "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all..."One guy is there with his mother, an illiterate borrower from the village. Right in front of us is the impact of Grameen, cascading its impact down the generations. He is asked is your mother proud of you. He says “I am proud of my mother”. 

With hugs and handshakes we say goodbye to our most excellent guides Harun and Sham and point the vehicles north to Bogra.

The other night Shahidul Alam said he was glad we had come to his country because we would see for ourselves that Bangladeshis are not the “icons of poverty,” which the western media paints them. The scale and depth of poverty is sobering no doubt about that. The infrastructure is ragged and make do. Illness and early deaths are endemic. The politics is as rotten as a three-month-old mango. But the people I saw this morning are not victims. We saw today amazingly resilient people struggling yes, but joyful and full of pride.

Grameen Bank is in the total scheme of things here pretty small beer. There are after all more than 150,000,000 people in this country. But what it stands for: equality, self reliance, solidarity, partnership is a powerful sign to a world too often jaded and cynical about the possibility of change and the power of ordinary people getting together.

Meeting Muhammad Yunus

Liam Black is in Bangladesh visiting a number of social businesses run by Grameen.  I've handed the blog over to him for a week to tell us what he's up to.  Here's his latest post....

Not every day you get to meet the world's best known social entrepreneur and Nobel prize winner and have dinner at a British High Commission. Well, that's what I did today. 

Amazing three hours with Yunus at Grameen HQ. He gave short talk about where his 25 (I think) businesses are up to and the rest of the time was Q and A. Questions ranged across his leadership style and the dependence of Grameen on his power and charisma, the challenges of scaling and internationalising social innovation, how to make effective partnerships with multinational companies and what will happen after he goes.

The numbers are amazing (and remember Grameen is not the biggest microfinance lender in Bangladesh): 8 million borrowers, 27,000 staff, $100 million dollars lent a month, 60% of loans are drawn from cash deposits. Grameen Phone is the biggest tax-paying company in Bangladesh with 54% of the huge mobile phone market with 50 million (that's 50 million) customers. His relationship with the Norwegian telecoms company Telenor is troubled though but I couldn't get to the bottom of that.

The group was united in its admiration of his achievements and the scale and simplicity of his vision. Can’t help but agree with his analysis that the current economic orthodoxy - business is about profit only - is a one-eyed and pathetically inadequate expression of the human. The one-dimensional nature of free-market capitalism condemning people to be "money-making robots" only has conditioned us to see the world that way. See it differently, he argues. That's all. Can business not also be structured around the innate selflessness of people, as well their selfishness? Social business, he asserts, does just that.

Paul, from IDEO, nailed it by saying that Grameen is not a financial brand but an equality brand and his message is bigger than the obvious holes and failings of some of his social business empire. Rick from Rubicon said he was a "performance artist", his businesses the artwork expressing his vision of equality. He has already achieved his goal by putting equality and the rights of the poor on the world's agenda.

And yet, and yet. Despite his protestations that Grameen would survive his departure, I'm not convinced. He is the sun around which it all revolves. From the salons of the rich in London and Washington to the villages in rural Bangladesh, Grameen is Yunus.  Ask a question of any Grameen employee and the answer always comes back to him. He resolves all big disputes, steps in when there is a problem, fronts all new ventures. Would the likes of Danone, Adidas, Veolia et al queue up to joint venture with Grameen if Yunus was not out the front?  He is all over the world all the time. Advising Japan about how to deal with their epidemic of suicide. In Colombia. In Albania. In India. His energy at 69 is breathtaking. But is he spreading himself too thinly?

A genuine one-off and he left us with much to mull over as we headed off to the British High Commission for dinner -  to meet the diplomats and local dignitaries and some Grameeners. Very nice gaff and good food. Good speech too from the High Commissioner Stephen who seemed genuinely pleased to see us.  A delayed bus back meant I could have an extra whisky. As a Brit taxpayer I felt like I deserved it.

Tomorrow we are off to the villages to see the bank in operation at the frontline. And then we travel north to Bogra to get inside the joint venture with Danone where we will be joined by Isabel, Marie and Brice from Paris. So, much more ground to cover and social business things to ponder.

A side discussion is going on in the group about Social Return on Investment - can you out a financial number against social impact? The consensus is no you can’t and you will waste much time trying to.

The group is gelling fantastically well and no major balls-ups so far. Fingers crossed and inshallah (a word I so now understand having been here!) that this will continue. 

Tired but feeling good. And Chelsea lost. Maybe there is a God and the muezzin who keeps waking me up at the crack of dawn is on to something ...

Getting ready for Grameen

Liam Black, from Wavelength, is taking a group of 25 people to visit Grameen - perhaps the world's most inspiring social business.  Technology permitting, he'll blog here about the experience over the next few days.  He arrived in Dhaka a few hours ago - here are his thoughts so far.  

I was lucky enough to have the winner and runner up of the All Asia Crying and Whinging Baby Awards mewling and snotting beside me all the way from London to Dhaka so arrived totally sleep deprived (and behind me was the Bangladesh Olympic non-stop farting champion!) 

But despite not having slept for 26 hours (and trying to stay awake until at least 9pm local time), we had a series of great meetings today in Dhaka with various parts of Grameen to finalise the event. They have some requests for us.  Yunus has to speak to both houses of the Indian parliament on 9th and needs time to prep so would we mind moving his session with us to Sunday? Oh, okay I suppose.  

As always the Grameen people are unbelievably accommodating and helpful and their good ideas are matched only by the copious amounts of tea which is brought to the tables (I've rarely had so much hospitality pass through me!). They love the delegate handbook we have created and seem genuinely as keen as I am to see our delegates descend from the cloudless sky into the madness of Dhaka. All the way along I have wanted this visit to be a real and mutually beneficial collaboration and not an exercise in poverty tourism. And I'm made up that it is.

The traffic here is a little less suicidally chaotic than usual since many people are still on their Eid holidays. But I'm promised by Suraya,  our superb fixer from the High Commission, that come Sunday the journey across town to Grameen HQ which today took half an hour will probably take an hour and a half. 

The streets of Dhaka are a riot of colour, throngs of people moving helter skelter alongside, between, sometimes over, the traffic. Packed buses with people clinging for dear life to the roofs, cars doing u-turns into oncoming dual carriage way traffic. Rickshaw drivers seemingly obilvious to the death which lurks in the darkness above the huge lorry wheels which miss them by inches, millimetres. Children everywhere. Drop dead beautiful women in the most gorgeously and richly coloured clothes walk by men lying unconscious on the pavement. Traffic cops waving their little sticks and absolutely no-one taking any notice at roundabouts which might as well have a sign that reads : Right of Way to Everyone Simultaneously (And Go As Fast As You Can). Old women who look about 160 begging at the car window. Limbless kids. Young mothers holding up consumptive looking babies. A city of millions living on the edge, somehow getting by from day to day. It astonishes me.

Grameen's swish 21 story HQ is never what anyone expects. It looks, well, it looks like a real business!  Inside, once you pass the exhibition celebrating Yunus's Nobel Prize, the feeling is more like a civil service with floor after floor of people beavering away administering the some two dozen enterprises which make up the Grameen Group. 

Okay got to go now Rob. We are making up the Toilet Packs for our guests - bog roll, wet wipes, Immodium and a postcard decsribing the variety of shits it is possible to get if you drink the wrong thing here. It's not all glamour this social business stuff you know.

PS I love Emirates. Shiny new planes. Lots of leg room. Almost edible food. Helpful staff. But what sealed it for me was that they so nailed the Bowie, Led Zep and 10cc playlists on their amazing entertainment system (with 200 films by the way). You can take the boy out of the seventies ...

From Dubai to Bangladesh

Liam Black from  Wavelength is in Bangladesh, to take a group of 25 people to visit Grameen - perhaps the world's most inspiring social business.  I've asked Liam - technology permitting - to tell us how it goes. Here's his first posting from the tarmac at Dubai airport.

Sitting on nearly missed plane for final leg to Dhaka.  Landed in Dubai late. Congestion at Heathrow, surprise surprise. First time on one of these Airbuses from London. Bloody huge. Really, how do they get off the ground? Cameras on nose and tail so you can watch landing and take off. Appeals to the boy in me who wanted to be a pilot. Red Devils to be precise. Bad eyes, since you ask. 

After nearly a year in the planning the reality of what lies ahead is a bit daunting!   25 people from diverse sectors and places- from Astra Zeneca to Eden Project and from Sydney to Sunderland - coming to Bangladesh to get inside Grameen with Wavelength. 

Sessions with Muhammad Yunus and his leadership team, extended visits to the villages to see microfinance in operation and, if you don't mind, a fancy reception at the British High Commission (who have been brilliantly helpful in pulling it all together).

Danone team Isabelle, Marie and Brice arrive from Paris on Monday to host us in Bogra where they have their joint venture with Yunus getting nutrition into poor kids. 

The logistics of the trip are complicated and there's so much that could go wrong. But I'm excited. We had this dream last year and here it is in all its risky, thrilling and multinational reality! Oh and we're filmming it all and producing a dvd with a virgin producer. Moi! 

Gotta go. The Emirates stewardess is giving me evils. Four hours to go. Tired. Dislocated. Hungry. Full of anxiety-tinged anticipation.