Today we are launching our January #ProjectEmpowerment campaign around the need, better put, requirement to be “client outcomes-focused” in our work. This is our fourth core value. As our followers know, in September we were excited to launch #ProjectEmpowerment, a social media campaign that highlights the core values that inspire our work at Social Entrepreneur Corps. Our core values shape the way that we approach empowerment in all aspects of our work. They guide everything from our internal team dynamics to how we engage with our collaborators to how we co-create social innovations with our community friends and partners. So, let’s get going today and share what being “client outcomes-focused” means to us and why it is so critical to our view of social entrepreneurial success.
In the most basic sense, we engage in our social entrepreneurial work because we see an opportunity play a positive role in helping our community clients (and in turn our Social Entrepreneur Corps clients –read more) to get from A to B or D or J or P. This work is about change. It’s all about change. Change through empowerment. A client or beneficiary or constituent or customer, whatever word catches your fancy, is in a certain aspect of their lives starting at a point (A) that THEY view, not I view, to be suboptimal, and we are helping them get to a place that they view to be more optimal (J?). And hopefully, the way in which we helped them move the dial was catalyzing whereby once we are no longer working together they are empowered to get to an even more optimal place (Getting to “Z” would be wonderful but I am not too sure “Z” exists until you do the big “Zzzzzzzzz”). Therefore, it stands to reason that if our work is all about helping our clients get to a more optimal place through empowerment, the most empowering and optimal way to get there is by being as “client outcomes-focused” as humanly possible. To the extent we lose this focus there is “leakage”, misalignment, we become transactional, input driven, activity minded, “me centered”….you get the picture. None of these tendencies work and they all take us down the wrong road and lead to unintended consequences that result in either failure at best or negative impacts at worst.
AC and host mom Jovah explains to Rollins interns in the DR her experience using and promoting water filters. Regional Coordinator Darbin Novas lead the conversation about products and how ACs interact with clients.
In our social entrepreneurial work there are three ways that the core value “client outcomes-focused” guides our work that I would like to highlight. First, we work diligently to keep in mind that it doesn’t really matter what we think someone’s priority challenge is. This is what we would call the “real need” and is simply the starting place for a conversation with a community or individual. Just because we know that a family doesn’t have access to clean water doesn’t mean we march in and tell them they need to buy a water filter. That is neither dignified nor effective. It is our job to help create awareness about problems and potential solutions related to water contamination/purification, for example, and then help our clients to make their own assessment of whether purified water is of priority importance for them at a certain point in time. Do they have their own perceived and felt need for purified water and a desire to do something about it? If this is the case, then and only then we offer access (typically through purchasing from one of our “Community Advisor” entrepreneurs) to a water filter. Of course we work to influence change. Again, that is our job. But we don’t and can’t “make change”. Insufficient analogy here, but we aren’t cooks, we’re waiters. We place our clients at the center of the decision making process and provide informed opportunities for solutions in response. The outcomes that they hope to achieve for themselves is the focus, not what we hope to achieve for them. We ask them what they want to eat for dinner. We don’t try to make them eat what we think tastes good because we think it should taste good.
UConn Winter Break interns engage students in educational activities. Playing is a great way to learn, and education about topics such as Water Health is the first step to solving many water-related problems.
A second way in which being client outcomes-focus guides our work is in how we measure. Keeping with our example, no one actually buys a water filter because they want to have a water filter. What they want is positive outcomes for their family. They want their children to be healthier. The filter is simply a means to an ends. Consequently, this is a key thing that we must measure. In business this is called being focused on customer experience. For myriad reasons which I won’t get into here, organizations fail (and we are certainly guilty at times) in this work because they stop their measurement at the moment someone has acquired a solution such as a water filter. The filter is an output not an outcome and measuring outcomes is critical to success. Although there are many more, let me highlight three benefits of measuring outcomes post- purchase to drive home my point. First, we obviously want to know as an organization if we are helping and how or how not so that we can know how we are performing and can find ways to perform better. Second, many of the solutions we offer require a change in habits. Habit change requires recognition of the positive outcomes of the new behavior. Through asking our clients about the positive outcomes (fingers crossed) of the solution we helped them acquire, it helps them recognize the positive impacts and, as such, ideally encourages the continued practice of the new habit. In our example, it means they see the benefits of the water filter and so they keep using it. And finally, understanding how we are impacting people’s lives is incredibly motivating for our team and helps us get up in the morning and hop on “chicken buses” for three hours, sardine can rides to remote communities to try to help more good people. Our inspiration comes from the relationships we create through the outcomes we help to achieve, not simply through the success of the transactions that are a step in the process of this achievement.
Rollins University students practice for the vision campaigns they will be performing in the Dominican Republic. Practice makes perfect, and we always strive to provide the best service and product possible!
The final way in which being client outcomes-focused guides our work is related to what we actually offer. Being client outcomes-focused 100% informs how we decide what solutions/responses to offer in our “menu” (sticking with the waiter thing here). Think Maslow’s Rule of Instruments. “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” At times an organization will design an amazing new hammer that drives home nails in an innovative new way. The tendency can then be to fall in love with that hammer, become known for that hammer, and then inadvertently start seeing everything as nails. When we are client outcomes-focused we make observations and ask questions with an open mind. This empowers our team to respond by sometimes using a hammer but other times offering a screwdriver, saw etc. When we are client outcomes-focused it helps us to see the world through our clients’ eyes, avoid being myopic (pun intended), and build a toolbox of social innovations that best serves them.
Nan Zhang leads a far eye exam at a vision campaign in Guatemala. Our clients have different needs and they come in all sizes!
In our leadership role with Social Entrepreneur Corps participants we would seemingly be presented with somewhat of a conundrum. There is at times a belief that “volunteering” is “wrong” (go read Ivan Illich to see what I mean). The thinking is that “volunteering” is too much about the volunteer. We shouldn’t be interfering. We come in, think we are doing good, feel really proud of ourselves and then leave. And we leave things worse than when we got there. Etc, etc, etc. You get the picture. Well, does this happen? Is there validity here? Most certainly. But here’s the thing. There are two main reasons why we immodestly believe Social Entrepreneur Corps is unique and why we do not view this as a conundrum. First, we are working in the communities where participants work year round. Through Community Empowerment Solutions (www.cesolutions.org), we are working in the field supporting our clients on a continuous basis. Social Entrepreneur Corps participants provide us with additional support and enhance/augment our team during certain times of the year. This is why we prefer to refer to participants as interns. This is a classic intern role. We are social entrepreneurs who work with interns to achieve what our community partners are telling us is important, not a volunteering organization that looks for things for people to do. And second, and of critical importance, we firmly believe that the best way to serve our Social Entrepreneur Corps participants is to focus on serving community members. Somewhat counterintuitively, we best serve participants when we don’t focus on them but rather when we ALL focus on empowering change for the people we all hope to serve. In other words, through serving others we serve ourselves. By making it not about you, it can actually also be about you. It is because of these reasons that Social Entrepreneur Corps ensures that we are all offering the right tools in the right ways serve our clients and, well, that
we don’t act like tools!
A client is anyone we engage with, be it through a sale or an educational activity. Here, some very cute clients at a school in Ecuador proudly display a home-made innovation-looks like a solar lamp to me!
