Social Enterprise toolbelt

I have seen this before but it bears sharing: SE toolbelt looks to be an outstanding resource for those interested in social enterprise. It offers a wide range of educational and practical resources that will be beneficial to anyone ranging from newly interested to experienced practitioners. Hat tip to Social Edge.

Check it out!

http://www.setoolbelt.org/

Orientation recap, plus what makes work meaningful?

Last week, first year Fuqua students completed our orientation, a rambunctious, energy-intensive three-day marathon that served to introduce us to the curious world of the Daytime MBA. It was performed in the playful guise of an extended pep rally. Our 2013 Class of 444 students, having been split into six sections, donned color-coded t-shirts and threw ourselves into rowdy cheers, equipped with horns, vuvuzelas and cow bells. It was interesting observing how rapidly the class transformed from a group of nervous strangers into a wild, thunderous mass of competing tribes. My own, Section 2, chose to remain (relatively) quiet amidst the cheers of the other groups while in the auditorium, but sprang to life during the 'Section Olympics' (see pictures, courtesy of Enlin Jin), sweeping almost all of the events.

Breaking the group into sections makes sense of course, given the overwhelming size of the entire class, but over the course of orientation, I found myself somewhat torn at my natural tendency to gravitate towards only those in my own section. With so many remarkable, amazing new people to meet and befriend and gain 'strategic networks' with, why did we have to limit ourselves to the random one sixth that we were assigned together with? I heard from several second year students that socializing with those outside our section happens quite organically over the course of the degree. I certainly hope so.

--

Today, in our Leadership, Ethics and Organization class, we discussed motivations and incentives. We discussed five intrinsic motivating factors that compel many people at work: (here's a different but related article on the subject)

Meaningfulness
1. Skill variety - using different skills in work
2. Task identity - seeing the whole process and final product
3. Task significance - making a useful contribution to others

Responsibility
4. Autonomy

Knowledge of results
5. Feedback

This resonated strongly with me. When I was younger, I used to focus heavily on the sense of task significance--making a useful contribution to others--and neglected to consider the importance of other aspects. As such, I naively believed that working in the social sector would somehow be inherently more satisfying than working in the private sector, that the non-profiteer serving a noble cause would by default be more fulfilled than the corporate 'soulless drone.'

While it took me a while to realize, I began to see that work satisfaction is far more complex than that. Indeed, serving a noble cause with the NGOs that I worked for did provide a certain level of satisfaction. But it didn't necessarily make up for any of the other elements mentioned above. It reminds me of a conversation I had with an investment banker friend in Hong Kong, who described how much he loved his job, despite the lengthy hours.

"I get to fly around the world and have in-depth conversations with incredibly smart people," he explained. "What's not to like about that?"

I had to agree with him. It sounded far more intellectually stimulating than my previous positions. Conversations with folks such as him thankfully opened my mind to the many facets of a satisfying, varied career, helping me to consider my possibilities with a more open mind.

Moreover, a noble cause is not limited to the social sector. There are few companies these days who would not lay claim to having a mission of some significance. And while their employees might view such claims with varying levels of belief or cynicism, the private sector's contribution to society is unequivocally clear.

HSM Bootcamp plus the Fuqua's CASE Center

This week I'm participating in Fuqua's Health Sector Management (HSM) 'Bootcamp', an intensive one-week primer on the healthcare industry. It's a broad-ranging, concentrated event, filled with all-star speakers, hundreds of pages of reading and my first case study group assignment (surely the first of many!). Fuqua offers a certificate in Health Sector Management, described as one of the best in the country, and so for someone like myself--coming in from the social sector with little private sector experience--it struck me as a great way to develop more specific industry knowledge.

Sadly my HSM involves far less singing

That it certainly will, but in the mean time, I'm playing catch-up with a group of classmates with years of experience in the field. While they analyze high-end healthcare reform details, I'm taking note of acronyms and phrases and trying to establish a foundational knowledge while keeping up with current debates. I'm lucky to have had good health to date, and been spared the pain of (and subsequent familiarity with) loved ones with chronic illness. Thus, my prior personal exposure to the healthcare industry has been minimal. My evenings, in between scanning endless reports, have subsequently involved googling terms like "catastrophic care" and, embarrassingly enough, even basic terms like "Rx."

My experience with healthcare comes from past experience in the advocacy field during my college years, campaigning for greater global HIV/AIDS funding and supporting youth rights. Through a passion for such causes, I acquired a rights-based perspective on the industry, lobbying for access to generic AIDS drugs and sharing in the emotion and passion of HIV-positive activists. Now, sitting in an auditorium listening to the Chief Global Strategy Officer for the world's leading generic manufacturer, I find myself studying the concerns from the other side of the table. As you might guess, it feels entirely different. Like two different languages. There is a notable absence of the emotion and 'fuzziness' I had previously been used to, replaced instead by graphs and data and talk of acquisitions and entry strategies.

But it's not all coldblooded profitability and market strategy. Following that talk is one on healthcare quality improvement by a Duke cardiologist. Similarly, his talk is filled with charts and numbers, from a dizzying array of medical studies. But at the same time, he infuses his talk with a passion for making sick people healthy and helping to solve America's complex healthcare problems.

Activists from the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa

Activists are by nature very focused on action, but in my experience it was actions targeting media coverage and pressuring politicians. The activists that I admired most tended to be those who were doctors (or medical students) who combined the rhetoric with the technical skills to actually provide help.
Sadly, a longstanding aversion to blood swayed me away from medicine from a young age (perhaps to my father's chagrin). But seeing the sort of impact that these practitioner/academics/teachers before me make on a daily basis is truly inspiring. I hope one day to be capable of making a similar difference in the lives of the needy, balancing the analytical rigor of a McKinsey consultant with the passionate humanism of the AIDS activist.

--

On another note, one of the main reasons I chose Fuqua was CASE - the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. One of our professors, Cathy Clark, was just at a White House conference on the 'impact economy' ('impact' presumably referring to the social and environmental) and wrote an exciting post about it. (related Social Edge discussion) While a healthy skepticism about the latest flavor of do-gooder concepts is critical, I am buoyed by the increasingly mainstream trend of people focused on social development.