Good Follow-ship

During a recent call, a colleague lamented that employee engagement was at an all time low, with 70% not engaged at work (Gallup), and yet there are over 60,000 books on leadership (she Googled Amazon).  She went on to say, if so few employees are engaged then we are failing at leadership (and not learning from all these books).   Are managers getting bad advice? Probably not, but as we discussed, the lack of soft skills, modeling behaviors, that encourage connections between people is the culprit.

I learned early as an adult the hard way, and often the best way, of failing at communication.  I found that communication has two parts, a message and a reception, and without both, there is no communication.  I’ve spent half my professional life working on problems of digital communications across far flung organizations, especially helping bridge the digital divide in emerging countries.   When two people make a connection, it’s a beautiful thing to witness the budding conversation.  But getting connected is no guarantee that communication can occur. 

Why is that?  While a message and a connection are required, there can be no person-to-person communication without listening, understanding and empathizing.  And that’s not a one-way street; it’s about both listening more deeply, both seeking to understand the other, and putting yourselves in each other’s shoes.  That’s where the most engaging conversations, what David Whyte calls the courageous conversations, can begin.

This person-to-person communication is not just something that leaders in an organization can do, it is also for the followers, who make up most of the organization, must do.  It means being a better follower, and practicing what I call good follow-ship. 

A brief story may help...

A few summers ago my wife and I traveled to Cairo to be a judge in the Imagine Cup student competition. While we were there, we made plans to meet with a colleague who offered to show us his home country, the "real" Egypt he said. Farouk was one of our long-term Field Office Regional Tech's. He reported up through my US headquarters IT group.

As is the custom of his country, Farouk extended a hospitality that is rare in my part of the world. He took us on a tour of the old city in Cairo, we visited the Egyptian Museum, and we traveled to Alexandria. He made all the arrangements and would take no more than our thanks in return. It was humbling.

The traffic in Cairo is, by western standards, insane. There are few traffic lights in the city, and no one pays any attention to them. The painted lines on the street and highways are at best guidelines; if four cars can fit in three lanes, they do. One evening in Cairo we parked near the edge of the old city and walked to dinner. At the first main street, we experienced the drivers of Egypt, up close and personal. How were we ever going to cross this street? My New York instincts were to look for a gap in the traffic, and run for it. But there were no gaps.

Though I was the boss, Farouk took charge. "Hold my hands," he said, "follow my lead, and don't look!" It was a strange experience, a throw-back to early childhood, grabbing Dad's hand before crossing the street; depending on him to get us safely across. "Go now," he said, taking five steps forward and stopping, then five more. Cars were swerving around us like a river around three rocks. "Hold on," he admonished, "do what I say; now go." In a dance I did not understand, he guided across the sea of chaos, to the other side.

When we caught our breath, and heart rates slowed down, I asked him how he got us across. In New York, we would have been killed. But these were Cairo rules. "When you step out," he said, "the drivers must take responsibility not to hit you." "...but you need to know when to step out," he added.

This story was a lesson I'll never forget, precisely because I needed to forget. I had to put aside my experience and preconceived notions of how to cross a busy street, and trust someone else to guide me through their country's rules. Letting others lead you and teach you is part of becoming a good leader. It is especially true of learning about other cultures--we will never get it as well as those who have it in their blood. This also applies to our areas of expertise. Sometimes we need to practice good follow-ship.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

The Three Landing Strips

“[Many] organizations have great landings, but at the wrong airport.”  --Dave Aron, Gartner Group

  

In the past few weeks, I attended three meetings on Humanitarian innovation. The first posed the question of where do good ideas land? The second, where do proven ideas go to grow up and scale. And the third, how do successfully scaled pilots go mainstream.

This is a common set of questions and ready solutions exist in the for-profit world. Venture capital funds startups, and capital markets take them to scale[1]. But where do the means exist in the non-profit world?

There are some new models of nonprofit funding including social capital,[2] social entrepreneurs,[3] innovation contests[4] and a handful of innovation funds[5]. But the success stories are few.

An innovation center creates a place for good ideas and prototypes to land, and a runway for these to take-off and grow.

Following the above diagram, consider three inflection points: 

1. Landing Good Ideas - What's needed is a receptive audience, a friendly landing place inside the organization that will protect and nurture experiments.
   
2. Landing Pilots - Once ideas have proven themselves, there is a need for the second landing strip: where successful pilots go to take-off. This is about long term sustainability and growth that requires the next level of nurturing and funding. It also may mean handing off the innovation to the mainstream department or organization whose business it is to manage and apply this newly proven capability. For digital innovation it may mean a hand-off to a software company.
   
3. Landing in the Mainstream - To truly have impact, our good ideas need to move from successful pilots, to going to scale, and finally to replacing old ways with new, as the production systems (process, program and tech) of our organization. 

Each of these landing strips requires advice, coordination and funding. But more importantly they require senior level commitment and protection.

The Nespresso case is an interesting example[6].  The Nespresso coffee making system was invented in 1976 by Eric Favre at Nestle.  However, it was not until 12 years later that it became a success and another 12 years until it became a high-growth product for Nestle.[7] A new product idea and prototype could not survive 24 years of development unless it was protected and championed, which is what John Paul Gaillard did. [8]

Avenues of Innovation Development

Development of a marketing-funnel approach to innovation—as illustrated in the figure above—provides a framework for growing innovation.  Consider the following means for “feeding” the funnel:

a)      Avenues for idea feeds

1)      Gathering problems to be solved and needs to be addressed, from the field

2)      Propose a variety solutions to be piloted

b)      Avenues for pilots

1)      Internally run experiments; internal venture fund

2)      Crowd-sourced to volunteer and technical communities (V&TC's) with best prototype awards

3)      An innovation lab to incubate pilots

c)       Avenues for scaling

1)      Partner with an internal “champion” department

2)      Internal venture fund II for next stage, larger initiatives

d)      Avenues for mainstreaming

1)      Transfers to production units; adoption: incremental or replacement

2)      Budget to operate

The point to this multi-stage approach, is that to get to a few mainstream innovations, you need to nurture the life-cycle of ideas-to-products. 

---

[1] For example, see the Wikipedia entry on Venture Capital, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital

[2] Olivia Khalili, “15 Social Venture Capital Firms That You Should Know About”, Cause Capitalism, April, 2010  http://causecapitalism.com/15-social-venture-capital-firms-that-you-should-know-about/

[3] “What is a Social Entrepreneur?, Ashoka, https://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur

[4] Microsoft Imagine Cup student competition, https://www.imaginecup.com/competition/17193

[5] Global Innovation Fund, http://www.globalinnovation.fund/apply-to-gif and the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, http://www.elrha.org/hif/home/

[6] For a brief history of Nespresso, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso

[7] “In August 2010, it was reported that Nespresso sales have been growing at an average of 30 percent per year over the past 10 years and more than 20 billion capsules have been sold since 2000…”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso

[8] Also see the interesting Case Study on Nespresso, here http://www.ecommerce-digest.com/nespresso-case-study.html.  The case notes that developing Nespresso in a separate subsidiary also had a large role in its success.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Making New Connections

One of the things we do well at NetHope is making connections. Whether it's connecting first responders in Nepal, or connecting technology people with each other, "wiring" people together is in our founding DNA.

As I walked the showcase at this year's Imagine Cup I was looking for opportunities to match-up ideas and people. Two teams had alert apps to report threats of violence: UAE and Germany. Each had some good designs that the other team lacked. I encouraged each to spend time with the other team and share ideas. When the goal is  helping people, projects need to be an "and" rather than an "or."

The Japanese innovation team had a virtual air interface that reminded me of Tim Prentice, an award winning sculptor in Connecticut who builds mobiles that change appearance with wind. I showed the students the video. They were hooked. So I connected them. Artists and technology designers may be strange bedfellows. But creativity knows no such boundaries. Can-do students are open to learn from anywhere.

The UK innovation team had a cool Microsoft Band app to exchange contact info by shaking hands at events rather than handing out business cards.  Their app reminded me of a Social Network Analysis study for mapping the hidden gurus in an organization, an app near to my interest in Expertise Management. The students' eyes widened as he began to think about this other possibility for their technology. So I recommended looking up the research paper.

Making connections is something I enjoy. I've written about it before, here. It's cool to find some new examples. But that's what happens when you bring people together. The connections flourish among ideas, projects and people. One of our mottos is to "share and do". Make something happen together. 

The Tech at Hand

I've had the honor of being a Microsoft Imagine Cup Judge since 2008 --I'm officailly an old-timer trading stories with the elders of this august event.  Sitting together in the judges lounge yesterday, I remarked to a fellow judge how each Imagine Cup seems to feature projects with at least one new technology.  In Cairo it was the Windows phone, in New York it was the Kinect box, and here in Redmond this year it was the Microsoft Wristband.  Why was that?

Some investigation yielded the answer: the software development kit (SDK) that the students received at the start of competition last fall included the new Wristband.  Of course the students wanted to write apps for it!  Smart.

Everyone is talking about wearables.  Even those of us in the humanitarian sector are talking about wearable technologies.  In the World Citizenship category, 4 of the 12 teams incorporated the Band.  All were health applications.  Motion and heart-rate sensing were the basic inputs for Parkinsons, Cardio-arithmia, asthma and seizure detection apps.

The interesting aspect of this is how the expectation has grown that the students will create new apps around the new tech.  I've written about the five things students don't have. The most important is they have no sense of limitation. There is no "that won't work here"; there is only "let's do it!"

What if we had similar expectations for the emerging country communities in which we work as humanitarians?  That putting the technology and some basic training and support into the hands of local entrepreneurs just may yield some new ideas that we hadn't thought of.  Imagine that.

Obstacles, Failures and Winning

We saw a dozen teams at the 13th Microsoft Imagine Cup on the Microsoft campus in Redmond.  Our judging category was World Citizenship. 

During the hands-on session, I asked some of the teams what was their most difficult moment, the set-backs and obstacles they had to overcome.

One team said it was their first software versions crashing on the phone. Another said it was getting the sensors to stick and re-stick. One team said it was getting the basic parts into their country to build the prototype. 

In the world of innovation, failure is a milestone. Each of these teams overcame the setback and were among the teams invited to the world championships.  They learned, they adjusted, they found a way. The drive to succeed just may be the straight line on a crooked path. 

Can Your Describe your Business in a Tweet?

Today we wrapped up another exciting Imagine Cup student competition in Seattle.  I had the honor of being a judge in the World Citizenship category, where teams from 13 countries competed.  I've written about past competitions where I saw that most technology teams had great difficulty telling us  succinctly what their project was.  As technology people, we love the details (and so do many others). So I began to ask teams to summarize their project in a tweet.  Here's what this year's contestants said:

1. Team Access Earth from Ireland : "Access Earth is the Tripadvisor for the mobility impaired."
2. Team The Dians from Portugal: "Super glove helps support hand recovery."
3. Team Eyeanemia from Australia: "Take a selfie; check for anemia."
4. Team Power of Vision from Poland: "Face controller allows you to control your computer without your hands."
5. Team Amplifiers from Pakistan: "An affordable hearing aid solution for the population."
6. Team Imagine the World from China: "Improve the efficiency of response teams...all can benefit."
7. Team I Copy You from Qatar: "Come and have fun, no matter who you are and where you are."
8. Team AfriGal Tech from Uganda: "Phone-based sickle-cell anemia test"
9. Team Grant Fellow from the USA: "Grant Fellow redefines research #grantfellow #give-me-an-A"
10. Team Barfoo from Serbia: "Sonochrome enables me to share photos with my blind friends."
11. Team SMART Crew from Taiwan: "Recreating rehab for the world."
12. Team High Rise from Nigeria: "High Rise dramatically increases cataract treatment."
13. Team SMT from Romania: "Smile-face is an application focused on speech recovery."

Can you guess which team had a robot? Which was about a health test? Which was about a hearing impairment solution.  You get the picture. 

After the first half-dozen times I asked this question, my fellow judges tittered (sic) if not rolled their eyes.  Yet one said afterwards, the next time someone makes a presentation in my organization, I'm going to ask this question.  "Ask for a tweet; get the bottom line."  Smart :-)

By the way, the team from Australia won in their category and took home the Imagine Cup.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Net-Hope

Last week I saw a news story about Ray Ozzie.  He is one of my technology heroes, an engineer's engineer. I met Ray at the Imagine Cup in Cairo in 2009 when we sat on a panel together. Before we went on stage I had a chance to reminisce with him about the era before the Internet, when collaboration on-line was a new concept.  Ray was one of the pioneers who saw the potential before others did. 

Having been a long-time Lotus Notes user and one-time developer, I asked Ray about the architecture of Notes with its replication engine and servers dialing servers again and again, handling dropped connections with panache.  "You know," I said, "Notes was built for the sometimes-connected world, and that's the world I live in."  In the Internet age, not many systems are built that way. "Yes," he said, "and we've built that into Azure so it works the same way."  

Today we take broadband, always-on connectivity for granted in the north and west.  But that's not the way much of the world works.  In our IFRC World Disasters report for 2013, we note that in some countries, less than 10% of the population has Internet access. [1]  For those of us who work with vulnerable people, this is the very real digital divide.  And with rapid growth of technology, there is the ever looming risk that many will be left behind.

However, this is not a reason for pessimism.  It would be easy to conclude that technology is not relevant, that the glass is half full.  When I wrote my first strategy paper at Save the Children, over a decade ago, I said "Don't bet against the network; before you can build around it, it will be where you need it to be."  In many places where we work, that is now true.  But it's taking longer than I thought it would, and there is much more work that we need to do.  Nevertheless, those who have seen the changes information and technology has brought over the past decades since the dawn of the computer have the hope that it will be universal in our generation.  

It is this hope that Ray wrote about in his 2010 "farewell" memo at Microsoft.  This is also the hope on which NetHope was based, that technology can and will make a difference in the world.  And things as basic as access to information, will become a human right as basic as education.

I cannot say it better than Ray did:

"When I look forward, I can't help but see the potential for a much brighter future:  Even beyond the first billion, so many more people using technology to improve their lives, businesses and societies, in so many ways.  New apps, services & scenarios in communications, collaboration & productivity, commerce, education, health care, emergency management, human services, transportation, the environment, security - the list goes on, and on, and on." [2]

Thanks Ray, for rekindling that hope in me anew.

__________________

[1] See the "World Disasters Report," available Oct. 17, 2013, here: http://www.ifrc.org/WDR2013

[2] See "Dawn of a New Day," here: http://ozzie.net/docs/dawn-of-a-new-day/

Innovation and the Global Youth Conference

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." ~Albert Einstein

"Act as if it is impossible to fail" --Joy Jamal Eddine, Special Olympics


I am at the Red Cross and Red Crescent Global Youth Conference hosted by the Austrian Red Cross in Vienna this week. As in the Imagine Cup student competition where I volunteer each year, I am continually impressed with the energy and passion that students and graduates bring to world and local problems.

One of the sessions was about Youth as Innovators. Here are some thoughts I prepared for this session.

I would like to tell a story I told at a meeting with the Saudi Red Crescent earlier this year.

I recall a young student in a mixed age classroom. It was the time to make oral presentations. Everyone was nervous.

The teacher asked who wanted to go next. A small hand wheMn up in the back corner of the room. "I'll try" the young voice said. Some laughed as he shuffled to the front of the class. He was smaller than the rest and spoke with a very soft voice. The rest of the class had difficulty hearing him.

One of the older and taller students stood up, walked to the front of the class and standing by his side, (here is the technology part...) gave him an old fashioned megaphone so he could be heard by all.

It was a good presentation. When he finished everyone applauded and agreed he had some of the best ideas they had heard yet.


Now what did you hear about innovation in this story?

I hear three things. First the younger student had the courage to try it. He took the risk of failing and made it a success. For the past six years, I have been a judge for the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition. It's the largest software competition in the world for students from most countries. I see more innovation in one week than all year. Why is that? Imagine Cup students have...

1) No business experience
2) No marketing experience
3) No time
4) No money
5) No sense of limitation

and it's this last one that makes all the difference. These students just try it and refine it. Notice the order: Try it and refine it.

Second, what the taller student did was give voice to the whispering. When we stand up for those who are weaker in our organizations and communities, that's what we are doing. We are becoming Chief Amplifiers. And it is this role that is so important to leadership and innovation.

Third, The new ideas came from the back of the room. Often the ideas from the far corners of our organizations that have the possibility of becoming the really big ideas for the future. Innovation can come from where we least expect it. Be open to surprise.

Here are some discussion questions:

1. What if your organization were to give greater voice to the small ideas?
2. What are you doing to become a "Chief Amplifier"?
3. What can you do to discover the good ideas in the far reaches of your organization and harvest for the good of all?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Linzer Straße,Vienna,Austria

Futures

Today was departure day. All the students packing up, checking out, heading to the buses for the airport.



Many of the students included a "future" slide in their presentations. They spoke about their plans for their product, next steps for their business aspirations, and where they wanted to take their ideas. All were full of hope and optimism.

The question is how many teams will be around next year? We heard from a number of former contestants who had turned their project into a viable business over the past ten years. No doubt there are more. And many could benefit humanitarian work and help change the world. Yet it was clear that great ideas take incredible persistence to become great businesses.

We learned through Steve Jobs that insanely great products are all important. It was something our business schools overlooked. But the adage that great products without marketing and sales are great shelf-ware is also true, as is under-funding will kill the product. The smart teams had a marketing person on their team, and the best ones were high-energy sales people. And they had done their homework on the financials.

One of the signs about Imagine Cup posted in the conference center said "No DREAM too BIG".



One of the hallmarks of Microsoft is to think big. Passing this on to students is a natural. I heard a quip once that set "all things come to he who waits... as long as you work like hell in the meantime." As others have said, the competition is the beginning of a journey, not the end. I look forward to seeing what next year brings. See you in St. Petersburg!




"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Teamwork

Today we saw the final six teams compete for the software design awards at Imagine Cup. These were the best of the best, cool technology and well rehearsed presentations. Today, all of the demo's worked.

During one presentation, the speaker blanked on one of the slides. It was an awkward moment of silence. Then something special happened. One of his teammates asked him a leading question. The speaker replied and was back on track.

This was a simple and brilliant move. It's a variation on improv theatre, where one actor plays on another's line and extends it in a way that appears seamless.

It's also a great example of teamwork. No member of a team has a solo part. We are all completing each other's sentences.


"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Juggling the Demo

During a break between demos at Imagine Cup, I stepped outside for some fresh air. On the promenade, a crowd had gathered around a juggler. I stepped up to the circle and watched him toss an assortment of knives and one-liners. At one point he dropped a knife, and immediately shifted to some on-the-ground "juggling", which he did slowly, knives on the pavement, so we would not miss a turn. "I don't need your pity," he barked with a cheshire grin!

Of the nine teams I saw at the Imagine Cup, the demo's for more than half failed at some point. The angle of the Kinect box was off for one, a battery pack had drained for another, a laptop failed, an Internet connection was painfully slow, a slide did not build with its image, and so on.

There are a few lessons from our juggler that apply to the software demo. To start, practice, practice, practice. The juggler made sure we knew he had been at his craft for twenty years. He had obviously tossed these knives a few times before.

Plan on something failing. As Murphy's Law states "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." A knife will fall. How will you handle that? (Pun intended :-)

Have a "b-plan". When your first plan fails, what will you do instead? Do you have an on-the-ground demo you can substitute?

Last but not least, use some humor! Nothing cuts the stress of the moment like some levity.

I received an update flag on my iPad today for the Yelp app I have installed. The explanation was priceless: "Fixed a bug causing the iPad app to crash for Italian users. No bosons were harmed during this collision." No less a software design judge, instead of being annoyed, I was entertained.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Anticipation

Anticipation, [an-tis-uh-pey-sh uh n], noun
2. realisation in advance; foretaste.
3. expectation or hope.

Sitting in Starbucks sipping a reminder from the US, I watch the contestants walking by on the harbour promenade. They are on their way from the hotel to the convention center. The first round of the Imagine Cup competition begins soon and will run into the evening.  There is an urgency in their stride.

I see the Italian team in the coffee shop and say hello. They are nervous, and eye my badge. I ask about their universities.  They are from three cities, scattered across Italy.  I won't be seeing them today.  They are relieved.

We were told yesterday that the teams have been preparing for weeks, getting their presentations down to a rhythm, anticipating the questions we will ask.  Anticipating has a double edge.  As Pasteur reminded us, "chance favours the prepared mind".  Like the athletes in the summer games soon to start in London, there are months of conditioning and rehearsal.  A colleague challenges leaders to imagine the end of the movie, how this will play out.   Anticipating the ending, is rattled by the anticipation in the stomach for it to begin. Many of the teams take a deep breath then start.

The imagination that began the idea that got them here, is also needed for imagining what the audience will hear.  That is beyond the judges to the customers and users of their solutions and products.   Can they imagine the satisfaction, the "ah hah" of their audience.  

This is often an unnatural act for technology wizards, for whom the solution is "obvious". They know the end of the story.  But it is those who can tell the story in the words of their listeners, who will bring their audience along.  They will win the day.   

Tonight we selected 20 students from 72 amazing entries for software design, that in turn beat out almost 400,000 ideas from an equal number of applicants who registered on the site a year ago. The teams in the Sydney auditorium were aching with anticipation. Those that told the good stories of why, how and for how much, anticiapated what their audience needed to hear. Their solutions were, by and large, the best.


"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

The Ultimate Mash-up

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the tenth annual Microsoft Imagine Cup, the world's largest student competition for software. Here is an article I sent to Microsoft Europe.

The Ultimate Mash-up

The prospects for Europe's youth were never bleaker; the prospects were never brighter. You cannot pick up a local paper or magazine without reading about the staggering unemployment and growing frustration among youth in European countries.  Even the best educated have had to ratchet down their expectations to find work, and even then there a few guarantees.  We could stop the story here and allow pessimism to win the day.

But the lessons of the Imagine Cup tell another story.  Team after team with project after project defy the odds with innovation.  I have often counted off the "no's" of Imagine Cup students:

1) No business experience
2) No marketing experience
3) No money
4) No time
5) No sense of limitation

It is that last one that makes all the difference. The contestants I have listened to over the past five years as a software design  judge are not limited by statements like "that will never work here".  They just "do" with whatever means they have within their reach, and then some. And their enthusiasm for their solutions is contagious.

This results in some interesting discoveries that are what I call the "three mash-ups". The first is mashing-up common components in new ways. For example, the team from Jordan, a winner in 2011, duct-taped a WII box to a monitor, pulled the diode from a TV remote and mounted it on a baseball cap, and wrote software so that a young paraplegic woman could simulate a mouse and operate a cursor on a PC by tilting her head and pausing to click.   Watching the team's video is a moving experience (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHP67hrhEWs).  In her words, the OaSys System gave her back her life. Notice the technology pieces that were used; nothing new or extraordinary; but the connection of the parts is brilliant.  The innovation is in the mash-up of the everyday tech.

The second mash-up is in the opportunity for one team to join up with another at the Imagine Cup finals and talk about combining their projects.  At the 2009 competition, I saw an amazing application from the team from Poland that translated music to braille and back again.  The software and use of a Windows phone was extraordinary.  But the braille reader component they used was expensive. The team from China, on the other hand, had invented a braille reader from off-the-shelf components for a tenth of the cost.  At the showcase, I introduced the China team to the Poland team and asked them to do a demo for each other.  The conversation began for how they may combine efforts, mashing up their solutions, if you will, for something that could reach more people.  The key is to find each other and work together.

The third mash-up is combining the inventor-entrepreneur with humanitarian work. The Imagine Cup has encouraged students to write solutions that address the UN Millennium Development Goals.  Each team must demonstrate how their application addresses one of the MDGs.  Most teams focus on improving health or the environment. And the solutions are creative indeed, as shown by the examples above.  Going forward, there is an opportunity for Imagine Cup finalists to take their ideas to scale at humanitarian organizations like the International Red Cross and Red Crescent.  Perhaps as volunteers, or interns or employees of the future.  That is my wish, and something for which I continue to advocate.  I believe this will be the ultimate mash-up of talent and need for the greater good in the world.

What are the three most important words in this article? Find, mash-up, and together.  I can think of nothing more optimistic in my conversations with students at the Imagine cup finals in Sydney this week.




"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Ten Ways Small NGOs Can Collaborate

I made a presentation last week on NetHope and Collaboration to one of the 2012 MBA classes at Tuck/Dartmouth (For a copy of the slide deck, see the Presentation and Articles link on my web site at http://www.eghapp.com/). During the Q&A, someone asked "what can a small nonprofit do to benefit from collaboration?"  It's a a question I often get asked.  Here's an excerpt from my current book project, with the working title "Collaborate or Perish."  I welcome your comments.

* * * * *

I often get the comment during a leadership seminar I teach that goes something like, "Well this is all well and good for large organizations, but what about my twelve-person NGO?" What can small nonprofits do to benefit from collaboration?  Here are ten practical things you can do, starting tomorrow:

1)      Join a list-serve or social media group.  Pick one that fits your size and mission, and addresses technology.  NTEN and TechSoup list a few[1].  The MobileActive listserv is a good one for phone-based app’s.[2]  You can also join Interaction or the CIO4Good forums[3]. Search LinkedIn and Google groups[4]. Social Butterfly has an interesting list of helpful list-servs.  Try one.

Now here's the rub: for this to work for you and the community, plan to answer twice as many questions as you ask. The benefit?  First, the help you receive is proportional to what you give.  Second, it helps build a community of trust and collaboration: the "I know I will get three or more good ideas" as well as, "I had that experience!"  Can't answer what you don't know?  Share your technology experiences and frustrations. These will resonate with the audience.

2)      Partner in Learning. Training on a hoard of ICT topics is available on-line and in the classroom.  Some are free.  For example, LINGOs has a free nonprofit learning catalog.  And the IFRC, my prior organization, has a Learning Network with many free courses for volunteers.

However, many of the in-depth classes cost a bundle and take a week or more of your time.  Even the one-day seminars can be pricey.  What to do? Larger corporations have training departments and a multi-prong syllabus.  The GE Crotonville Center is the legendary example[5]. There are even corporate universities.[6] An easy “ask” for your local corporations is: can I get a donated seat in your classroom?  And while you’re at it, invite the seminar graduates to help implement what you learned.

3)      Partner with colleges and universities.  Students are among the most technology savvy people I know. I volunteer as an Imagine Cup judge each year, and I can tell you first hand that their caliber of technology resourcefulness is extraordinary[7].  These are among the most mission-driven, idealistic people on the planet. And increasingly this includes High School students down the street.  Call your local school and sign 'em up! 

4)      Share an application with an organization in your sector.  Has one of your volunteers, interns or tech-oriented employee developed a cool app?  Donate it! At NetHope we have a project underway to create a technology catalogue of useful apps.  Like old book exchange, give one, take one.  TechSoup has a variation on this called App It Up.  The idea is, the more we share applications, the more likely we will find really useful ones for our specific work.[8]

5)      Share some services with an organization in your sector and split the costs; start by sharing a person.[9] While I was on sabbatical at Tuck/Dartmouth, one of the things I heard from small NGOs in the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire, is that they couldn't afford a staff position to manage their donor data and systems.    But they were open to sharing a person. We recommended creating a support consortium. Sometimes this can be informally done, especially with volunteers, but you'll likely need an MOU that covers what each participant commits to and someone to coordinate it.

The After-hours Help consortium is a case in point.  It began with five NGOs in the UK, including four NetHope members, who shared a need to provide service coverage for employees working after hours at home or travelling.  They decided to share a remote help desk service for hours outside UK business hours. The group has an informal oversight Board run by one of the member CIOs.  They contracted with Microland in Bangalore.  IFRC joined in early 2011. For us the value proposition was clear: increase our service desk to 24x7 for less than $2 per hour.  That’s affordable for even the smallest nonprofits.

6)      Sign-up for donated software from TechSoup and Idealware.[10]  TechSoup began by offering sales demo copies of WordPerfect to non-profits. They now offer hundreds of titles from nearly 50 technology-related companies in more 35 countries, primarily serving smaller NGOs.  They also support a community of practice, noted above.  The members support each other with advice and experience. No nonprofit should be going it alone and buying software and hardware retail.

7)      Partner with a corporation to get their laptops and other equipment coming off lease. Many corporations lease their PCs and laptops, often over two years with a $1 buy-out.  These are perfectly good machines for most NGOs and should last another three years. And the donating company may also be eligible for a tax write-off at fair market value.  That's a win-win. Ask for them.

8)      Rent your software on-line.  Non-profits need to get out of the business of managing infrastructure. Technology companies are much better at this, and the incremental costs for NGOs to do this themselves becomes less attractive as the use of technology grows. And it will!  The cost of renting applications is falling and many technology companies will provide these at cost for non-profits.

9)      Develop a partnered IT strategy.  Plan with other local NGOs and create an informal board of IT advisors.  Every NGO needs an IT plan, as much to avoid costs as to invest in the gains technology makes possible. This presupposes a strategic direction for where you want to go.  As the Cheshire Cat remarked, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”[11]

Going in any direction with technology may result in a downstream cost. This may especially be true for donated hardware, software, and even consulting services.  What is free today may be a cost you can't afford tomorrow.  If you think through a plan and to total cost of ownership (TCO) you can avoid this common mistake.[12]

Take the opportunity to plan together.  This may be counter intuitive for any organization.  Why would nonprofit want to collaborate on IT Strategy?  Because many of the services IT provides are commodity functions that offer no competitive advantage for doing it on your own.  See the shared after-hours help desk, above, as a case in point.  Shared donor management databases may not make sense, but sharing other applications and tech services may be a way to afford the technologies that one small organization cannot. 

10)  Form a cooperative for experiments like I4D.  Most NGOs cannot afford to experiment. Donors want us to implement the "tried and true." This can be the kiss of death for innovation.  Joining a group is one way to mitigate the risk, much as buying shares in a mutual fund reduces the risks of betting on individual stocks.  NetHope has run Information Technology for Development (I4D) pilot programs in half a dozen areas, including mHealth, mEducation and Microfinance.[13]  Once the proof of concept is established, members can adapt the application to their organization and take the successes to scale.  The cost of failed experiments is a sunk cost in the membership fee.  That’s a lower risk way of experimenting your way toward innovation.  Can’t find an organization like this that you can afford to join?  Band together with some other nonprofits and create one.  That’s what we did at NetHope.

That’s my list of ten practical things you can get started on tomorrow, … if you are willing to collaborate and share.  The question I’ll leave you with is why not do this; what’s standing in your way?

---

[1] See NTEN’s networking opportunities and Techsoup’s community forums.

[2] See http://mobileactive.org/ and join their mailing list.  With nearly 6 billion cell phones sold to-date, it is the technology of choice to connect not only with your donors, but more importantly to your beneficiaries.

[3] See Interaction’s Working Groups.  For the CIO4Good listserv, send a note to Dave Simon at Sierra Club (dave.simon AT sierraclub DOT org and convert the caps).

[4] A Google search for “nonprofit listservs” has over 830,000 results as of February 2012. 

[5] See the GE Leadership Programs for example

[6] See Mahboob Mahmood and Gurpreet Minhas, “Corporate Universities and Learning Centers: A Primer,” April, 2011 

[7] I’ve written at length about my Imagine Cup experiences in my Blog.  For example, see: http://eghapp.blogspot.com/2011/07/imagine-cup-day-one.html

[8] This is the iPhones or Android App’s store model applied to NGO applications.  See https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/  

[9] This is exactly what two US-based NGOs did to afford an IT Leader; they split his costs and share his time.

[10] See the Stock arm of Techsoup at https://www.techsoup.org/joining-techsoup/how-to-join-techsoup and the software advisory services of Idealware at http://www.idealware.org/

[11] As the Cheshire Cat said in Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.

[12] For a good review of TCO, see the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_cost_of_ownership

[13] See NetHope’s Solution Center 

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Why is the Digital Divide so important, and what can you do about it?

Last week I had the honor of speaking at the Youth Action and Volunteering Development meeting on the day before the opening of the 18th biennial session of the IFRC General Assembly in Geneva.  My topic was "Why is the Digital Divide so important, and what can you do about it?"  Here is an expanded version of my brief remarks:

We are all aware of the digital divide in our world: those who have free access to information and the tools to make it useful for us, and those who do not.  In a recent study, we found that this divide exists in our Red Cross Red Crescent Movement.  We have an internal divide that makes it difficult for us "have equal status and share equal responsibilities" –from our very principle of universality that we so value.

Why is the digital divide so important?  I think there are three reasons.  First, information through the Internet is the great leveller; it allows all of us to learn and discover in the same school, so to speak.   Second, we have seen how with the access to technologies, the last can become first, and the first can become last.  This is the other side of levelling the field.   But the third is perhaps the most important: it is about the opportunity to lead.

Why work on the digital divide?  Because you have the opportunity to lead and to help others to lead, and be a part of this great conversation we call the Internet. This is perhaps the greatest volunteer work we can do in the digital age as digital citizens.

What can you do about it?  How can you help bridge the digital divide?  Rather than give you a specific assignment or recipe, I want to challenge you with five broad principles. Think of these as the three D's, an O and an M.

1)   Dream big 

2)   Do the homework 

3)   Dare to remove obstacles

 4)   Seek and stand on Others' work 

5)   Mash-up pieces in new ways

First, dare to dream big.  I have found that the successful efforts come from the many tries and the audacious attempts.  Take for example the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition story.  College students from over 200 countries compete each year.  I’ve been a software design judge for three of the past four years. I view this as part of my giveback to the community of IT workers in nonprofits (and beyond).  The Imagine Cup is about the IT workers of the future who focus on software that can have an impact on achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, the context for the competition.

These are big dreams.  This year, 400,000 students registered for the competition; 3,000 made it to the country competitions, and 400 of the best went to New York to compete in the finals for 27 awards.  These are the best of the best ideas.

In one week I saw more innovation than in years before.  Why is that?  These students have no business knowledge, no marketing experience, no money, and little time.  But they also have no sense of limitation.  And it is this last one that makes all the difference in world.  They dare to dream about what technology can do.  These are your peers.  Your dreams can be every bit as big.

Second, do the homework.  Think about how to make solutions sustainable, to cover their costs and deliver a valuable service to customers.  Mohamed Yunus talks about services for the poor that are economically sustainable, and which produce social good as their profit^[1].  This means thinking through the basic business case for your idea.  Interestingly, only one team in the twenty I saw in New York at Imagine Cup this year did this homework. 

Third, dare to remove obstacles.  The story of the frogs illustrates this in an interesting way.

Story of the Frogs^[2]

"Once upon a time there was a bunch of tiny frogs who decided to stage a climbing competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants.

The race began...

Honestly, No one in crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. The crowd yelled statements such as:

"Oh, WAY too difficult!!!”

"'They will NEVER make it to the top.”

"Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!”

The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one. Except for those, who in a fresh tempo, were climbing higher and higher.

The crowd continued to yell, “It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!”

More tiny frogs got tired and gave up. But ONE continued higher and higher and higher. This one wouldn’t give up!

At the end everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog who, after a big effort, was the only one who reached the top! THEN all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it?

A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal? It turned out that the winner was DEAF!"

The moral of the story?  Turn a deaf ear to the “nay-sayers,” those who say it can’t be done,   those who point to all the obstacles.   Just do it.

Fourth, seek Others' work. This is just plain old good engineering. Find those who have solved some of the problems and stand on their shoulders. Don’t fall victim to the “not invented here” syndrome. Seek out the good work and build on it. Your mantra should be “no solos.”

Our new Technology Catalogue is built on this premise. We believe there is more to gain in discovering others’ technology successes in the Movement than in building our own. We have discovered over 850 applications the process. This requires what I call “headquarters humility.” It also means being open to “good enough” solutions.

Fifth, mash-up pieces in new ways. One of the top three contestants in Imagine Cup was the team from Jordan. They took a WII receiver and duck-taped it to a PC monitor. Then they took apart a TV remote control and mounted the diode on a baseball cap. Finally, they developed a program so the WII tracked the motions of the baseball cap and caused the cursor to move on the screen. With a pause, the cursor clicked and selected an item.

No big deal, right? Except the paraplegic women who had lost the use of her arms and legs told us in a video how she had gained her life back[3]. This system allowed her to create Facebook entries and keep in touch with friends, and dial cell phone numbers in her address book to communicate with family. She had her life back. That’s the power of software.

The interesting footnote is that they didn’t create anything new. They took existing pieces off-the-shelf and put them together in a new way. The creative may be in the combinations of the existing. That’s a powerful principle in technology.

So I challenge you today to think about how you can dare to dream big, do the homework to make it sustainable, dare to remove obstacles, seek and stand on others' work and mash-up pieces in new ways. If you lead by doing this, you just may change the world!

__________________________________

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

---

[1] Muhammad Yunus, “Social Business,” December 25, 2007,   http://www.muhammadyunus.org/Social-Business/social-business/

[2]See http://mylifemantras.blogspot.com/2009/12/be-deaf-to-negativity-lovely.htm

[3] See the video of this woman’s testimony on YouTube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGmmzXHheWE

A Tale of Two Dreams

Here is a paraphrase of the remarks I made at the NetHope Tenth Anniversary celebration in Dublin, Ireland.[1]

I’d like to tell two stories.

The first is about my generation.  Ten years ago, seven NGO IT leaders got together in San Jose.  Some of my colleagues around the table tonight were there at the Cisco Campus and Dipak Basu’s dining room table in September 2001.  We all faced a common problem about how to take technology out the last mile to where our organizations work in the field.  We had a shared need.  More importantly, we believed that technology could make a difference in the work our organizations were doing in the far reaches of our programs.  We could see it working. We had connected the dots in our imaginations.  And we dared to trust each other to do something about it together; because none of us was going to succeed going it alone.  This was how NetHope got started.

Our dream was that we could bring technology to where it was most needed faster, better and cheaper if we did it together.  And we believed that as a group we could be a stronger partner with the technology companies with whom we needed to work.  Both of these goals have proven to more true than we ever imagined ten years ago.  There are more than 200 professionals here tonight, and all of you are passionate about what we are doing to bring IT where it can do the most good in the world.  But this would not have come to be if we did not dare to dream around that modest table in San Jose.

The second story is about a new generation, the college students who each year compete in the Imagine Cup Competition.  I’ve been a software design judge for three of the past four years. I view this as part of my giveback to the community of IT workers in nonprofits (and beyond).  The Imagine Cup is about the IT workers of the future who focus on software that can have an impact on the Millennium Development Goals, the context for the competition. 

These are big dreams.  This year, 400,000 students registered for the competition; 3,000 made it to the country competitions, and 400 of the best went to New York to compete in the finals for 27 awards.  These are the best of the best ideas.

In one week I will see more innovation than in years before.  Why is that?  These students have no business knowledge, no marketing experience, no money, and little time.  But they also have no sense of limitation.  And it is this last one that makes all the difference in world.  They dare to dream about what technology can do.

During the NetHope Summit this week, we took a tour of the Intel fabrication plant in Kildare.  It was truly an awesome experience—a geek’s heaven, if you will.  During the tour, our guide mentioned that at Intel they talk about the big numbers, and the small numbers.  The enormous and incredibly expensive tools that create the inexpensive, tiniest circuits we know.  I think this speaks to what we know: that big dreams with small groups can change the world.

So I have a great hope here tonight: that if we dare to dream big, like we did as a small group ten years ago, as a much larger, stronger community today, we will create the greatest use of technology for good in the next ten years.  Thank you.

____________________

[1] The slide deck for my "NetHope Chairman's Report," NetHope Summit and Tenth Anniversary at Intel's Campus, Kildare, Ireland, November 10, 2011, is on my web page, here.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."