Updates from October, 2012

• Storytelling & Four Shifting Forces

  Jocelyn Ling 2:27 pm on October 22, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (21), creativity (7), data (3), design (13), movement creation (4), storytelling (5), technology, Visual Thinking (2)

  Back in New York, I attended one of the best Cre­ative Morn­ings ses­sions, a cap­ti­vat­ing talk deliv­ered by Jonathan Har­ris on the sto­ry­telling. I’ve blogged before on decon­struct­ing the power of sto­ry­telling, and if you’re look­ing to under­stand more about this, Jonathan Har­ris’ projects are absolutely remark­able. They have ranged from doc­u­ment­ing an Eskimo whale hunt to cap­tur­ing human emo­tion on the inter­webs to inter­view­ing Tibetans on hap­pi­ness. Here’s his Cre­ative Morn­ing talk and my visual notes from that day:

  
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  So my notes couldn’t quite cap­ture the tail bit of his talk (I basi­cally ran out of space!), but essen­tially, he high­lights key trends that he is observ­ing in our evolv­ing world of tech and storytelling:

  1) Rise of Social Engi­neers: Never before has there been such a small sub­sec­tion of soci­ety ( aka. soft­ware devel­op­ers in tech star­tups who are hav­ing a big effect of mil­lions of human through design of software.

  2) Urges & Out­comes: All tech extends some pre­ex­ist­ing urge. What is the urge within humans that needs to be enhanced?

  3) The Ethics of Code: How can we reg­u­late soft­ware? Could there be a self-directed eth­nics from the cre­ators of soft­ware? This ties in back to point 1 on the respon­si­bil­i­ties of a social engi­neer, given their wide-spread influence.

  4) Heal­ers & Deal­ers: Star­tups are basi­cally falling into two buck­ets: heal­ers and deal­ers. Heal­ers: mar­ket­place com­pa­nies that con­nect peo­ple. e.g. kick­starter. Deal­ers: Atten­tion economies that take up your finite resource aka. time by con­vinc­ing peo­ple to spend time on their product/sites. e.g. facebook.

  ***

  All in all, I was very struck after the end of his talk with this question(s): what kind of pres­ence do you want to have in this world? Am I a healer or a dealer? As our world’s lan­guage con­tin­ues to trend towards a technology-based one, how do we posi­tion our­selves to become cre­ators once more, instead of just cura­tors of information?

  For now, I sup­pose I am sat­is­fied with being a Healer in the invest­ment world. The big­ger pic­ture of all of this, is won­der­ing, as an investor, what trends in soci­ety do I want to help accelerate…

   

• Goodbye Vancouver, See you later New York, Hello Nairobi!

  Jocelyn Ling 3:58 pm on September 23, 2012 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), inspiration (21), personal (17)

  2012 has been my year of being in between sto­ries.  A process that involves embrac­ing uncer­tainty to explore pos­si­bil­ity, con­stant iter­a­tion in future plans, pack­ing and repack­ing my belong­ings into two lug­gages, mov­ing between con­ti­nents and try­ing to make some sense out the dis­ori­en­tat­ing dance of the famil­iar and unfamiliar.

  In the begin­ning of the year, I left my job with the inten­tion of begin­ning a new adven­ture. It wasn’t an easy deci­sion. It was espe­cially hard as I had grown to deeply respect my com­pany and had men­tors at the firm that I still trea­sure to this day. But there was this nag­ging lit­tle voice inside of me that pushed to me to leap. To be bold and pur­sue my inter­ests: one that thrives in the inter­sec­tion of impact invest­ing, design think­ing and change.

  “Once in a while it really hits peo­ple that they don’t have to expe­ri­ence the world in the way they have been told to.” –Alan Keightley

  There is a myth of con­sis­tency in life sto­ries. Peo­ple tend to expect a famil­iar story, a jour­ney that they have heard before and unsur­pris­ingly, we impose this ‘famil­iar story’ on our­selves. We fail to leap because we believe that our capac­ity to dream is in accor­dance to our inher­ited prej­u­dice of what we have been told/come to expect. When faced with uncer­tainty, peo­ple tend to intu­itively, move to find a solu­tion quickly. They tend to rush down a path, usu­ally towards famil­iar­ity, at the expense of the insight and engage­ment that uncer­tainty can bring. It is in these sit­u­a­tions that I am slowly real­iz­ing that our courage and faith must be addressed to the dreams we have been afraid to dream, either because they are too dif­fi­cult, or because it has been too breath­tak­ing to even com­pre­hend how they could pos­si­bly exist within our cur­rent constraints.

  My jour­ney for 2012, has brought me out of Van­cou­ver, to New York, to Malaysia and now to Nairobi, Kenya where I am work­ing every­day to not only “will­ing to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, but under­stand the world as it is and have the audac­ity and moral courage to build the world that could be” — Jacque­line Novogratz.

  The work of embrac­ing uncer­tainty requires the dis­ci­pline and wis­dom to make trade-offs, the best way we can. It is about know­ing when to pick up your belong­ings and leave. When to fight and when to con­cede. When to lis­ten and when to lead. When to be gen­er­ous and when to be hum­ble. When to hold your breath and when to breathe through it. When to be adven­tur­ous and when to be grounded.

  It is these trade-offs, that forces a shift from uncer­tainty to pos­si­bil­ity, from real­ity to abstract and back again: one of the most fun­da­men­tal processes by which we unlock our imag­i­na­tions and open our hearts to new insights. To under­stand our sto­ries is to embrace uncertainty.

  With that, I bid you farewell Van­cou­ver, see you later New York and jambo Nairobi!

   

• My Week's Discoveries: Malaysia

  Jocelyn Ling 9:17 am on August 31, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), collaboration (21), creativity (7), design (13), designthinking (2), education (12), empowerment (13), impact (23), innovation (13), inspiration (21), movement creation (4), social enterprise (4)

  So, I’ve been in South East Asia for the past three weeks, namely Malaysia and Sin­ga­pore. The trip has been long time com­ing as I haven’t been back to my home coun­try in over five years, and boy — am I ever glad I did. I have never been so inspired, hum­bled and proud of my fel­low coun­try­men for the incred­i­ble work that they are doing in South East Asia. If you have the priv­i­lege to be involved with their orga­ni­za­tions or have a cof­fee with these remark­able indi­vid­u­als, I assure you that it will be time well spent. Also, given that today is Inde­pen­dence day in Malaysia, thought it would be timely to share a few of my dis­cov­er­ies with you.

  1) Malaysia Social Enter­prise Alliance

  This is a Malaysian orga­ni­za­tion for social enter­prises and entre­pre­neurs with solu­tions to some of the most urgent social prob­lems in Malaysia and glob­ally. One of their more notable endeav­ors is Change­Week­end, a 9–10 month pro­gram as a facil­i­ta­tive plat­form that would equip orga­ni­za­tions with design think­ing and devel­op­men­tal skills. Even more incred­i­ble is the dri­ving force behind all of this is a won­der­ful lady, Ellynita Lamin, who has a heart of gold and is trail­blaz­ing her way in this part of the world. Don’t just take my word for it, check out what one of the local news­pa­pers has to say about her work too!

  2) Teach for Malaysia 

  Teach for Malaysia (TFM) enlists Malaysia’s most promis­ing lead­ers to improve edu­ca­tion in Malaysia. It mod­els after Teach for Amer­ica, where it is a two-year, fel­low­ship pro­gram where fel­lows are placed in local schools. Besides the fel­low­ship, the team has not only enlisted an incred­i­ble amount of sup­port from pri­vate and the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion, but clear strat­egy and vision in how fel­lows can trans­form Malaysia’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem from inside out. Change is on the hori­zon. This ini­tia­tive is par­tic­u­larly close to home for me as I went through the pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem in Malaysia (yes, just like the adorable kids in the video!) and to get a glimpse of what TFM is up to, check out the video below.

  3) Week­end: The Week­end Movement 

  This is a com­mu­nity of peo­ple that is cre­at­ing a week­end move­ment where they come together to build projects, cre­ate solu­tions and bring great ideas to life. So far, their week­ends con­sist of Hack Week­end, Make Week­end and Change Week­end, and I’m sure it doesn’t stop there. The week­ends are designed to kick­start inno­va­tion and new projects. If you ever are in Malaysia for a week­end that coin­cides with one of their work­shops, def­i­nitely don’t hes­i­tate to check it out!

  4) Malaysia Design Archive 

  This is a beau­ti­ful project com­bin­ing design, his­tory and preser­va­tion of cul­ture. The project traces, maps and doc­u­ments the devel­op­ment of graphic design in Malaysia to pro­tect our visual his­tory. Malaysia’s his­tor­i­cal design influ­ences are par­tic­u­larly fas­ci­nat­ing as this is a meet­ing point and cul­tural cross­ing of the East and West — from ornate Islamic texts, to Chi­nese cal­lig­ra­phy and Euro­pean engrav­ings. As you browse the site, the graph­ics tell a won­der­ful story of Malaysia’s cul­tural trans­for­ma­tion. I highly rec­om­mend you start here.

  5) Other notable mentions:

  • SOLS 24/7: edu­ca­tion pro­gram in Cam­bo­dia, Laos, East Timor, Malaysia and Thai­land that has edu­cated over 80,000 youth.
  • Gawad Kalinga: Build­ing com­mu­ni­ties through tourism, social enter­prise, dis­as­ter relief, recon­struc­tion and devel­op­ment to end poverty.

  Thanks to Ellyne, Shie Haur, Nicole, Tas­nim and John for inspir­ing this post.

   

• Matters of National Pride: When All is Said and Done

  Jocelyn Ling 8:10 am on August 5, 2012 | 6 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), collaboration (21), education (12), empowerment (13), Government (6), personal (17)

  I have long since desired to write about this topic to some degree, but it was only after a series of recent con­ver­sa­tions and fol­low­ing the Olympics Games that called forth an unex­pected wave of patri­o­tism towards my country.

  I grew up as a Malaysian, through and through. Born and raised in Sarawak, edu­cated in Malaysia’s pub­lic school sys­tem and seen first hand my country’s polit­i­cal and racial stance. The older I became, the more I came to under­stand the indoc­tri­na­tion of nation­al­ism that the coun­try has imposed on its cit­i­zens, the more I con­cluded that we were made to love! From stand­ing in the equa­to­r­ial heat dur­ing assem­bly salut­ing our “Jalur Gemi­lang”, singing the dif­fer­ent anthems: Negaraku and Sarawak, Ibu Per­ti­wiku on a daily basis to mem­o­riz­ing Malaysia’s geog­ra­phy and his­tory every­day in our pub­lic school sys­tem. The older I grew, the more I ques­tioned the under­ly­ing racial intol­er­ance in our coun­try, the more I heard my fel­low com­pa­tri­ots scheme to “study over­seas and stay there”, that if you could obtain a PR from a first world coun­try, “go for it and don’t look back”, the more I saw a brain drain in my country’s top minds as they throw their hands up in frus­tra­tion at Malaysia’s eco­nomic and polit­i­cal situation.

  

  Appar­ently, being made to love some­thing is a flawed strat­egy, and right­fully so. As my gen­er­a­tion grew up, our under­stand­ing of the world expanded and we look back and crit­i­cize the flaws in our own coun­try. We tell peo­ple, “I love Malaysian food, but to go back and be dis­crim­i­nated based on the colour of my skin and last name? Why should I sub­ject myself to such treat­ment?” spo­ken some­times out of dis­ap­point­ment, some­times out of dis­dain. When I saw Dambisa Moyo speak at my uni­ver­sity on Dead Aid and devel­op­ment, some­one from the audi­ence asked her whether she would ever go back to Zam­bia to help her coun­try. She retorted that peo­ple often for­get that every human being at the end of the day craves equal­ity, dig­nity and access to basic needs. If Zam­bia could pro­vide those needs for their cit­i­zens, Zam­bians would go back in a heart­beat. I looked around and saw my friends: South African, Iran­ian, Pak­istani, Chi­nese, all nod­ding silently next to me. Appar­ently, I was not the only one who felt this way.

  Now, work­ing and learn­ing in the social enterprise/development space, I come across many indi­vid­u­als who are pas­sion­ate about chang­ing the lives of oth­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Some take a more econ­o­mist stand­point of help­ing where peo­ple need it the most, other are dri­ven by a cer­tain cause/skillset — be it health, finance or human rights. I see oth­ers have a deep drive to help coun­tries that they never even grew up in, and some­times have never even set foot in that con­ti­nent, let alone coun­try. I ask myself: Why? Then, I look at Malaysia and won­der: What good is it that we are made to love a coun­try when our hearts are filled with complaints/disdain for it? I look around again and I see my friends: who have gone back to Peru to cre­ate change in her home­town, who have dreams to advance South African films in the world and who are wait­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to return to Kenya. Appar­ently, I was miss­ing out on con­nect­ing with my birth­place and identity.

  I can finally say that work­ing in the social enterprise/development space, have meant per­son­ally for me, of under­stand­ing Malaysia bet­ter. For its decay­ing polit­i­cal and admin­is­tra­tive struc­ture, for the incred­i­ble courage of Bersih pro­tes­tors, and for new eco­nomic pro­grams that are aimed to improve the coun­try. More impor­tantly, I think I have finally under­stood what it means to love uncon­di­tion­ally, even if I was made to in the first place. To love any­ways despite all of Malaysia’s flaws, because love keeps no count of wrong. It is this choice — To love, not for a tol­er­ance of cor­rup­tion, crime or racism but to love unfailingly, stubbornly, for a beauty of a nation is not in the laws or the rul­ing party at that time, but in the dig­nity and essence of every cit­i­zen who have con­tributed in one way or another to shape our early views of the world.

  So to all my fel­low com­pa­tri­ots and those who have yet to make the choice to love for your own coun­try, when all is said and done, here is my chal­lenge to you:

  If not us, then who? If not now, then when? — Acu­men Fund

   

  Thanks to Kristina, Nan­jala, Cyn­thia and Robert for inspir­ing this post.

   

• So, what is strategy anyways?

  Jocelyn Ling 1:42 pm on July 18, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (21), creativity (7), learning (6), strategy

  Two week­ends ago, I attended a four hour ses­sion on Strat­egy taught by Mark Pol­lard (who also has a really thought­ful blog). I spent the after­noon learn­ing about dif­fer­ent tools and frame­works and below is the four hour ses­sion dis­tilled into two pages in my notes. Over­all, I thought the class was use­ful in get­ting a peak into the dig­i­tal brand­ing world, and Mark was a par­tic­u­larly great facil­i­ta­tor, a highly under­rated skill! If you’re inter­ested in learn­ing more about adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing, def­i­nitely place this class on your watchlist.

   

  As I thought more about what I took away from the ses­sion, I felt that the focus was pri­mar­ily around the dig­i­tal agency world (which is fair as it is where Mark’s back­ground is in). How­ever, I wanted to share a cou­ple of my per­sonal thoughts on what I think is strat­egy in a gen­eral setting.

  Good strat­egy stems from the ques­tion of: How do you max­i­mize impact given a lim­ited amount of resources? Here’s a cou­ple of guid­ing thoughts:

  1) Ker­nel of Strat­egy: A diag­no­sis, guid­ing pol­icy & coher­ent set of actions

  I recently picked up Good Strat­egy Bad Strat­egy by Richard Rumelt and it has since influ­enced a sub­stan­tial amount of how I think about strat­egy. I came across this book when a good friend asked me “How do you define strat­egy?” As I stam­mered and stum­bled across my dif­fer­ent per­cep­tions of my answer, he promptly handed over the book and had my eyes opened since.

  The basic premise of the book is that strat­egy con­sists of three com­po­nents, a diag­no­sis, guid­ing pol­icy and a coher­ent set of actions. A diag­no­sis is not a descrip­tion of symp­toms, but an analy­sis. A guid­ing pol­icy ensures that you under­stand your con­straints and is an ele­ment of strat­egy. How­ever, the first two need to be trans­lated into spe­cific actions by coor­di­nat­ing poli­cies and actions on crit­i­cal key­stone objectives.

  1) Value Cre­ation: Price is what you pay, value is what you get

  I think a key devel­op­ment point of strat­egy is under­stand­ing what value you are cre­at­ing. The  value of product/service needs to be at the core of what you are devel­op­ing. There is a des­per­ate need to escape the exis­ten­tial ter­rors of bad and inef­fi­cient products/services. You achieve this by tak­ing a close and hard look at prod­uct value.

  Value cre­ation is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant in the world of social change, where the prod­uct devel­op­ment is cri­tiqued less than the sto­ry­telling around it. We have become so accus­tomed to ‘feel good’ exhor­ta­tion in this space that we feel ‘guilty’ ques­tion­ing fur­ther about the real impact and value a non-profit/social enter­prise is creating.

  2) Defin­ing a Chal­lenge: Mak­ing choices and over­com­ing obstacles

  A great strat­egy starts by under­stand­ing the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem at hand.  A great deal of a company/ orga­ni­za­tional task is know­ing how to iden­tify the biggest chal­lenges to keep progress and cre­ate a prac­ti­cal approach to over­come this barrier. Two effec­tive meth­ods to get to the root of a prob­lem is the 5 Whys ques­tion ask­ing tech­nique devel­oped by Toy­ota dur­ing the evo­lu­tion of their man­u­fac­tur­ing method­olo­gies, the other is the Why-because analy­sis. Essen­tially, don’t stop at the obvi­ous answer and deter­mine the cause-effect rela­tions between the factors.

  All in all, good strat­egy is like a hypoth­e­sis. It’s tested and adjusted over time. You pres­sure test it, see what works and you pivot. Oh, and the biggest thing: don’t ever mis­take tac­tics and goals for strategy.

  All men can see these tac­tics whereby I con­quer, but what none can see is the strat­egy out of which vic­tory is evolved.

  - Sun Tzu, The Art of War