I promise I'm not angry ALL the time...

...just an endless pontificator.  Today's tirade: the radicalism vacuum.


The questions started when I signed up to be a straight ally coordinator for my b school's LGBT club, and have exploded since I became its co-president: why the gay rights movement, Joanne?  Why do you care so much?


I got it when I spoke up in the first term of school during an ethics case, too.  Taking a strong stand on the need for black and white ethics in the workplace, the obligation of employees to stand up to their bosses when they're doing something wrong?  You're living outside of reality, little girl.  Ah, it must be your 'social sector background' - let me teach you how the business world really works.


To be clear, I'm not trying to get all high and mighty here - I'm no saint.  I certainly haven't consistently stood up for things I believe in.  But these experiences are starting to get me thinking... a dangerous path to go down, to be sure.


At the risk of mass stereotyping, I'm coming to the conclusion that we, middle class Americans, live in this world where we don't think we have to stick up for anything anymore.  We glorify the people who rocked the boat, idolize them and quote them, but when push comes to shove we'd rather do exactly the opposite - sit back, go with the flow, maybe chime in on the whining about the burgeoise and the conservatives a little, and at the end of the day take the path of least resistance.  In fact, we're constantly encouraged NOT to rock the boat.  And those who do are brushed aside as radicals, ungrounded, argumentative, naive.  (Well, at least the ones who haven't made a name for themselves yet.)  What happened to visionary, strong-willed, relentless, and outspoken being good things?  When did those get bundled as 'contrarian', and conformatism get propped up as the path to success?


You say it isn't so, but look around you.  How often do you thank a picketer for standing up for her beliefs?  How often do you back up the outraged customer throwing a tantrum in the store?  How often do you correct a stranger when they say fag, or nigger, or chink, or slut? (Think about how sexist that word is - what's the equivalent for men?)  How often do you, yourself, call out your friend, family member, coworker or boss, tell them they're wrong, and defend why?  It's much easier, and more socially acceptable, to just roll your eyes and change the subject.


Why are we so rarely proud of the people around us who refuse to let these things go, and so often embarrassed by them?


Maybe the real revolutionaries would laugh at me and say 'duh, that's what being a leader means - we all had to push against the current and annoy our friends to get to where we are.'  Maybe it's just part of my learning process.  But then why does it feel so strange, that all the ideals we wax poetic about as a society never get implemented in our everyday lives and conversations?

On defending your beliefs vs defending your employer

As usual, Bill Easterly's got me thinking today.  It's the 10th anniversary of the FT article that got him fired from the World Bank:

bill_easterly William Easterly 

Ten years ago today, the piece that got me fired by the World Bank. Didn't expect it; No regrets http://bit.ly/lHRyCj

Not to make grandiose comparisons between esteemed professors and myself, but this reminded me of the time I got in a bit of a pickle with my employer for writing a negative blog post.  Mine was a much less drastic scenario - the blog simply poked fun at the manner in which my organization was moving to a new office (rather than criticizing the organization's core operations), and got me nothing more than a slap on the wrist.  But that kind of experience gets you wondering - to what extent is an employee's responsibility to cheerlead for the organization, versus to point out the mistakes it is making, in a public manner if necessary, in an effort to make it better?

No one knows better than the employees how effective an organization is, so no one is better positioned to provide constructive criticism.  But at the same time, if the people who work for an organization can't even support it, what chance does it have to build a supportive constituency outside its walls?  Sure, it's more politically correct to share reservations and concerns with your managers internally than on a public forum. But what happens when you've banged your head against your bosses' office doors so many times that it seems the only way to get through to them is to name and shame?

Do employees have more responsibility to make their concerns public when they have a social cause, or are funded by public money?  What about when the issues are systemic and core to the organization, versus small but potentially personally problematic to the employees?  (Easterly's gripe was the wastage of billions of dollars of public funds and the lack of social outcomes to dire issues of livelihood... Mine was moving in to an incomplete office space where women were encouraged not to walk to work alone from the bus stop because of safety concerns.  You be the judge of what's more important... my money's on Easterly.)

Personally, I think an organization's willingness to accept public criticism, even from employees, is pretty key to making it better.  That said, I've never run an organization and experienced my employees ragging on me in a public forum.  And at the end of the day, I removed my blog post: better to work to change the organization from the inside than simply picket it from the outside, right?  Easterly disagreed and has no regrets... I wonder how I'll feel 10 years from now.

A good day for human rights in America

I teared up a lil bit reading this article today.

In 2008, I watched the numbers come in for Obama at 7am from a consulate gathering in India.  After swelling with pride for my country for the first time in my voting-age life and taking a few euphoric calls from Kenya, I called home to express my excitement.

The tone of my mother's voice when she picked up the phone took the wind completely out of my sails: she said she couldn't be truly happy about the victory because California's Prop 8 had passed the same day.  Coming from a woman brought up in the '50s in a Catholic household in Westchester, not her California-raised hippie liberal daughter, this sentiment reminded me how little the Obama victory actually symbolized a nation moving forward, and how much work there was to be done.

Two and a half years later, mom should be damn proud of her home state.  NY has done what CA couldn't do: nurtured a champion of the cause (Andrew Cuomo), organized a coalition of disconnected lobbying organizations, garnered support and muscle across party lines and overpowered the formidable force of the Catholic Church.  All this sure seems like it would be harder in an east coast state that contains Wall Street than a west coast state that contains the Castro*... so basically what I'm trying to say is, nice work, New York.  California, get your shit together.

Also, a shout-out to my father's employer of 35 years, Xerox, which made a significant contribution to winning the first Republican vote by endorsing the bill.  My school's LGBT club does a lot of work to promote and collaborate with companies that support equality for all their employees, and it's nice to see corporations standing up for what they believe in. (Hint hint, Exxon Mobil.)


*Obviously I know it's a bit more complex than this.  But it's still embarrassing to be a Californian when it comes to this issue.

And now, to Nicaragua

Oh, hey there blog.  It's been a while.  A year and a half, to be precise.  Sorry about that - business school turned out to be a little busier than expected.  But now that I'm back in developing country land, it seems only reasonable to start you up again for the moment.

The 5-second update is that I've been in my first year of the MBA program at Duke's Fuqua School of Business for the past 9 months.  I'm concentrating in Social Entrepreneurship and Finance, participating in way too many extracurriculars, and taking advantage of every possible opportunity to go abroad.  That has manifested itself in a two-week consulting trip to Brazil over spring break, and now my internship at an impact investing firm in Nicaragua called Agora Partnerships.

I'll save the long detailed update on Agora and my work for later, and for now will suffice with periodic random musings about life in Managua.  Up first: the fascinating life stories of taxi drivers.

It seems that there are two types of cab drivers in Managua: super sketchy and super overqualified.  The other interns and I have been warned over and over about the dangers of taking unknown cabs from the street in Managua (which we do anyway), so it's safe to say that there are a lot of bad cabs out there.  At the same time, the economic situation here has worsened so steadily over the past few years that unemployment has taken its toll, particularly on the higher educated sector of the workforce.

Unemployment in Nicaragua

http://www.indexmundi.com/nicaragua/unemployment_rate.html

The result: people with PhDs driving taxis to make a living.  In the past week I've met an agricultural engineer, a doctor, and a dance instructor who spent three years in San Francisco.  Fascinating, vibrant people with amazing life stories, but rough times.

I'll pontificate more later on what this overqualification issue means for entrepreneurship and innovation in the Central American economy, since that's what I'm working on every day.

New fiesty blog post

What do sleeping bags, neon green laptops, nipples and tricycles have in common?  Hint: they're not going to collectively eliminate poverty.


http://www.indiadevelopmentblog.com/2010/02/another-innovation-really.html


Kind of reminds me of the brilliant lists of accessory items and luxury goods that are going to solve the world's human rights problems over at Wronging Rights.

The informed giving minefield

Today my brother decided he wanted to start doing some charitable giving, and made the mistake of asking me for advice. 


He opened up something of a minefield. A couple potential work projects have gotten me interested in thinking about informed/strategic giving and trying to work out the best ways to help philanthropists give better. This deviates significantly from my "the market will solve everything" social entrepreneurship approach to development, but maybe that's a good thing.


My off-the-cuff, unresearched response is below - I'd be interested in other perspectives on how to advise people on giving now, as the social sector struggles to get up to speed on creating a process for giving effectively.


Dude, big question.  The development sector is still very much working out how to help people sift through the mass of organizations asking for money to find the ones that will give the most bang for their buck.  There are two main categories of issues here - accountability (whether or not an org is corrupt) and effectiveness (how well the money you donated gets spent).


For now, I'd probably suggest going one (or both) of a couple ways. For bigger organizations, there are a few groups that evaluate and rate charitable groups to help individual donors give. One that has a good rep (and their methodology looks pretty solid) is Charity Navigator. They don't actually enable you to donate on their site, which other charity aggregators do, but frankly you're better off finding charities you're interested in and donating directly, rather than allowing some of your money to go into the aggregator's operating costs.  This site will help you donate to big organizations ($1M+) that depend a lot on individual donations ($500k+ per year).  One Indian counterpart to this is GiveIndia, which focuses heavily on the accountability and transparency aspects (since those are arguably a bigger deal in the Indian social sector than the US one).


The other way is to donate to smaller organizations, which are less often rated on sites like this and have lower impact, but your money goes further and they often need it more.  I tend to donate to friends' causes during their fundraising drives (assuming accountability based on my personal knowledge of the person), or occasionally to Kiva (I find their gift certificate program to be a particularly appealing donation slash awareness building mechanism for friends who don't give).  The Causes app on Facebook is also interesting (mostly because we all love a good social media gimmick, and I have a friend who works for them), but I don't know how much gets ciphoned off for their operating costs (see above note).


One other piece of advice I feel compelled to drive home as an organizational development consultant is that uninformed givers often go for organizations that list lower overheads, thinking that more of their money will go directly to programs instead of to salaries and office clipboards. This sounds great but really just keeps organizations from developing the proper infrastructure and talent to be able to do their jobs better, so they end up being much less effective in their work.


Can't you imagine how much my brother must have enjoyed getting that response after asking the simple question "hey bleeding heart sister, what kind of stuff should I be looking for when I want to donate?"

CSR in India has a lot of catching up to do

The first ever Asian CSR Congress, hosted by the Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership in Mumbai, has proven to be a bit of a disappointment.  Maybe I was just coming off my high from the Khemka Forum for Social Entrepreneurship (which also looked to be disappointing until a couple of dynamically interactive late sessions), or maybe I’m noticing a starker difference between the social innovation crowd and the corporate crowd than I used to… but I have a feeling it’s more because in India, corporate social responsibility is still in a very early stage with a lot of catching up to do.

The event started by getting my hopes up with two of its pieces of distributed literature – the first CSR rating of Indian corporates, by Karmayog, which boosts companies’ rankings if CSR embedded in their business operations; and an announcement of the upcoming global tour (including India) by the purported father of CSR 2.0, Dr. Wayne Visser of CSR International.

However, it then proceeded to dash those hopes with a painfully prepubescent viewpoint of CSR expressed by many of the delegates.  Case studies by the corporate foundations that dominated the conference were embarrassingly blatant in valuing brand building over strategic CSR (really, you’re building another set of schools and hospitals to slap your name on?  That’s, like, so last decade).  The peanut gallery of CSR heads of major corporations made a field day of bashing efforts to improve profits through sustainable business strategy – when one speaker tried to discuss the difference between “CSR” and “sustainability” in his company’s efforts, an audience member termed them something like “doing good for good's sake, vs. making money off of doing good.”  As if the second option was some slimy, underhanded workaround, rather than just good business.  For real?

Even my excitement about the 25 case studies on CSR in Indian companies in CSRL’s publication “CSR Excellence,” was destroyed when I heard a rumor (unconfirmed)* that the cases aren't picked from independent research - companies PAY to write their own case studies and have them published.  To the tune of $1000 a pop.

I don’t want to rub salt in the wound by blasting the facilitation of the conference, but…  people cutting each other off, speakers refusing to let delegates finish their questions and telling them they “are free to not listen to what I’m saying,” sessions lasting an hour into the lunch break – is this really what happens when you let the corporates play in the social sandbox, or vice versa?  I thought this fusion of the two sectors was supposed to be the new age, not the way to back track to petty, last-generation arguments?

I’m still holding out hope that this is just a small, biased crowd among a larger movement towards strategic CSR that will keep up with the global tidal wave.  But in my first foray into the Indian CSR community, it’s not the promising scene I had imagined.


*Please note that this has been modified from its original posting - I originally claimed that I had learned this as a fact.  Rather, it is a rumor I heard from a delegate at the conference, and I am still in the process of verifying.