Review: Good to great and the social sectors

Jim Collin’s monograph ‘Good to Great and the Social Sectors’ is a response to social sectors trying to imitate business and follow business metrics many a times without understanding whether or not they fit the venture. Collins proclaims that business thinking is not the answer for social sectors to transform from good to great. Instead he outlines the points mentioned is his earlier book ‘Good to Great’ for businesses and transforms them to be applicable to social ventures.

One major difference between a business and social ventures is the output/input relationship. In a business, the output and input are both money. So it’s easier to come up with a metric for the business sector. In social ventures, the input is money, but the output is social benefit which is far more difficult to quantify. Many social ventures do not quantify the output and instead focus on input parameters to determine how they are doing for example, the amount of funds raised, the number of schools to whom the funds were allocated etc. This gives an inaccurate picture of how the social venture is doing. The first step in good to great transition for social ventures is to be clear about the outputs to be achieved and have a metric for evaluating them.

When talking about the level-5 leadership, Collins mentions that social sector leaders more so than business leaders need to have the ability to navigate the diffuse power structures of a social organization. In businesses the power structure is clearly defined and executives can use money to hire people. In social sectors where collaboration is the norm rather than subordination, leaders have to negotiate interests while keeping sight of the vision and values of the organization – a tougher balancing act.

The third point that Collins makes is to be rigorous about selecting people to work with. This is the same as the ‘first who, then what’ concept that he explained in “Good to Great’ and it doesn’t seem to vary as much across business or social ventures.

Collins also modifies the Hedgehog Concept to suit the social sectors. While the passion and giftedness dimensions remain the same, he changes the economic engine dimension to a resource engine dimension. This according to me is the most crucial point in the monograph. A number of times, social ventures tend to neglect the social resources or organizational resources that are part of their operation; they just factor financial resources when considering self-sustainability. Self-sustainability does not have to mean just financial self-sustainability for a social organization. A number of times, it also involves other factors like trust built with the community in which it operates or networks built in the organizational field in which the venture operates. Nurturing these resources is as important as they are directly affected by the social outputs of the venture and provide a link between the outputs and the inputs for the venture.

Overall, Collins mentions some of the points that people generally carry forward from business in social ventures and suggests that we look deeper behind these principles. Ultimately, the core thinking is not very different when it comes to running a business or a social venture. It is only that in business the lines of operation are clearly defined, while in a social venture one has to ask questions specific to the venture in terms of inputs and outputs and vision and values before one could come up with standard metrics and operating procedures. It is this question-asking process and the implementation of the answers that result from it that enables a social organization to be effective and efficient.

Dissecting ambiguity

Ambiguity seems too ambiguous a term to understand immediately. What is ambiguity actually? What does it have to do with designing? These thoughts were nurtured by a constant reference to ambiguity in design discussions here in CDR (Center for Design Research) and were triggered by a conversation with Bill. Bill talking about his recent trip to India mentioned that Indians are used to ambiguity and he gave the example of the totally ambiguous traffic conditions in the country. I wasn’t so sure and I mentioned that maybe it’s more like uncertainty. No replied Bill with a certainty and a kind of sharpness that really hit me and set me upon writing this article. Enough was enough. I had to dissect ambiguity and lay all ambiguity regarding the meaning of ambiguity to rest.

Let’s see what others have said regarding ambiguity. Bill mentioned that ‘ambiguity is uncertainty that cannot be quantified’. If you want to travel from A to B in India, there is no knowing what you are going to encounter on the road …it can be anything from a lazy bullock to a disgruntled teacher’s union. What it means is that there are an infinite number of possibilities for an action and they cannot be quantified. Micah gives an example of distinguishing between ambiguity and uncertainty. What’s in my pocket? Well, there can be anything in Micah’s pocket! That’s ambiguity he says. Then he jingles something in his pocket and asks again …now what’s in my pocket? The jingling sound has reduced the set of possibilities from infinite to finite …maybe keys, coins, poker chips or silverware from the faculty club. That’s uncertainty. This seems to mesh well with Bill’s definition. But what does this difference between the ability to quantify and the inability to do so imply? One implication is that we cannot use mathematical models of probability or decision making to reduce ambiguity. That restricts the tools we can use to deal with ambiguity.

Another characteristic of ambiguity that comes out through organizational studies literature is that ambiguous situations are situations open to various interpretations. There is no one right interpretation; each one could be equally valid. This means that for an ambiguous problem, there is no one right solution …there could be infinite solutions that could all be valid. This goes against the example mentioned above. Though there could be infinite possibilities as to what we could find in Micah’s pocket, there is only one right answer. The ambiguity then is in our not knowing what’s in the pocket. Whatever alternatives we provide in our not knowing are equally valid until we actually come to know what’s in the pocket. Similarly in the case of interpretations the ambiguity is in our not knowing which interpretation of a situation is in sync with a particular actor’s intentions. Ambiguity then is essentially a factor of ignorance that actually enables us the space to generate infinite interpretations and alternatives each of which could be equally valid. If the alternatives to be generated were finite and known, ambiguity would turn into uncertainty about which of the alternatives is certain or true.

Ok, so far from our thinking, we can define ambiguity as the affordance of our ignorance that allows us the freedom to generate infinite equally valid alternatives. When the number of alternatives becomes finite, ambiguity crystallizes into uncertainty. In designing, we deal with ambiguity because at the beginning we are ignorant of what we are creating. If I am designing a device to help senior citizens lead better lives, I am ignorant of what kind of device it will be. I do needfinding which allows me to define the design space further, but I am still ignorant of what I’ll be designing. This ignorance gives me the affordance to generate ideas. Ambiguity is the enabler for idea generation. Once I have my ideas I might go ahead and prototype a few which I am excited about. Now I am gradually moving in the realm of uncertainty. Once I test each of the concepts I’ll replace the uncertainty with certainty, with knowledge of whether of not this concept is suitable. However at the same time, I have left the details of the concept ambiguous, there is still scope for generating alternatives based on what I learn from my first cycle of prototyping. At each cycle of prototyping, I move gradually from ignorance into knowledge and finally I have a concept fully detailed and prototyped.

Designers must preserve ambiguity is one of Larry’s three axioms of design. What it implies is that at every step in the process of designing, there is a potential for generating alternatives. We start with ignorance and we take advantage of the ambiguity it affords, we prolong it and gradually convert it into knowledge and produce an artifact. If we rush too soon towards a product, we lose opportunities to generate alternatives because we kill ambiguity. Without the possibility to generate alternatives, designing becomes a chore to meet the client’s requirements. The end product and the knowledge generated through such a process are weak.

Tamaso Mam Jyotir Gamaya.

Lead me from darkness to light.

Designing is as much about generating knowledge as it is about generating an artifact. We go from ignorance to knowledge through making use of ambiguity, prolonging it, exploring it and at the same time converting it into knowledge that manifests into an artifact.