Updates from April, 2012

• (De)Constructing the Power of Storytelling

  Jocelyn Ling 2:17 pm on April 5, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (14), design (8), Global Voices (4), inspiration (15), presentation (5)

  “Of all our truest hopes and desires for our work is that, what we find, we our­selves never knew. It came as a shock. It came as a sur­prise. It was new. We could never have known what we were going to do before we did it, and in that sense, we dis­cover too. Here is what I’ve got to say to you: there are things in your life you will see; there are sto­ries you will hear; if you don’t write them down, if you don’t make the pic­ture, they won’t get seen, they won’t get told.” – Emmet Gowin

  Sto­ries have always been essen­tial to the human condition. I’ve writ­ten before  on how sto­ries are a win­dow into how we per­ceive the world around us. Lately, I have spent quite a bit of time reflect­ing on the role of sto­ries and their impor­tance in gen­er­at­ing engagement, empathy and to deliver insights about peo­ple and behav­iour. A great event by Be Social Change on the Power of Nar­ra­tive on Cre­at­ing Impact that I attended recently really helped com­plete some of the reflec­tions that I have been mulling over, and thought I’ll share some of my thoughts:

  Be Social Change Sto­ry­telling event. Pan­elists on the RHS. Photo taken by: Alex Mora from Xelaarom Pho­tog­ra­phy

  1) Prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions: Co-creation of a story

  The are two main cat­e­gories of sto­ries that are told: our own sto­ries and sto­ries on behalf of someone/something. In both cir­cum­stances, ele­ments of a mem­o­rable sto­ries usu­ally starts with Authen­tic­ity, bridged by Nar­ra­tive Trans­port and end­ing with Com­bined Rel­e­vance (a com­po­nent that the audi­ence can relate to). Sto­ries can be prac­ti­cally used by prod­uct sto­ry­tellers, com­mu­nity archi­tects and in vir­tu­ally almost any posi­tion that calls for value con­nec­tion with your audi­ence. The role of a sto­ry­teller is not meant to replace the mar­keter, brand strate­gist or founder. Instead, they dwell in the realm of syn­the­siz­ing the over­all pic­ture, mold the value propo­si­tion and know what entry points in cur­rent con­ver­sa­tions that they can enter into. They are con­nec­tors who look for the puz­zle pieces and bring them together in frame­works that inspire appro­pri­ate solutions.

  To a cer­tain extent, sto­ries are a moral and value com­pass. Our own sto­ries that we tell help us under­stand our own world bet­ter, and the sto­ries we tell on behalf of oth­ers ensure that we have enough insight to an organization/product’s value that we stay on the right path. The rea­son why I believe it to be a com­pass is because if you are not moved (to action/direction or emo­tion­ally) by your own story, why should some­one else be moved by it too?

  2) Fram­ing a narrative

  

  A good story holds so much emo­tional com­plex­ity. A really impor­tance point to dis­tin­guish (and you’ll be sur­prised by how many peo­ple mis­un­der­stand this!) is that sto­ries are NOT an opin­ion, bul­let points, or arti­cles. They are a moment in time, an expe­ri­ence. At the event, Annie Esco­bar, co-founder of  Lis­tenIn Pic­tures, a media com­pany that crafts cin­e­matic sto­ries to inspire action (Their mis­sion is to end bad non-profit video!), shared some of the ways that she uses to (re)frame a nar­ra­tive via the: chal­lenge plot, con­nec­tion plot, cre­ativ­ity plot or empa­thy plot. Non-profit tend to grav­i­tate towards the empathy/sympathy plot (highly over­rated these days) and I would like to (re)frame this approach by say­ing that non-profits should tell sto­ries that come from a place of empa­thy instead of just evok­ing sympathy.

  A great way to decon­struct a nar­ra­tive is to use Simon Sinek’s Start With Why Golden Cir­cle. Simon explains in his book that we need to start look­ing at ideas, sys­tems and in this con­text — sto­ries with a clear and pur­pose­ful out­look: “WHY?”

  “Peo­ple don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. A com­pany needs to say and do only what they believe. If what you do, doesn’t prove what you believe, then no one will know your “why” and you will be forced to com­pete on price, ser­vice, qual­ity, fea­tures and ben­e­fits, the stuff of com­modi­ties…” –Simon Sinek, Start With Why

  3) A Storyteller’s respon­si­bil­i­ties and characteristics

  A great sto­ry­teller can be pow­er­ful influ­encer… and with great power, comes great respon­si­bil­ity (yes, I totally just quoted spi­der­man!). Blair Miller, Acu­men Fund’s Lead­er­ship Man­ager (includ­ing Acumen’s Fel­lows Pro­gram) wrote a great piece a while back empha­siz­ing on a storyteller’s respon­si­bil­i­ties as the next phase of sto­ry­telling. She high­lighted three respon­si­bil­i­ties: sto­ry­tellers must be dynamic, must come from a place of empa­thy and must uncover ways to be replace­able. I would like to build on her piece that on top of those respon­si­bil­i­ties, great sto­ry­tellers should have these two characteristics:

  i) Unre­lent­ingly curi­ous — some­one who is inquis­i­tive, loves to learn about oth­ers and uncover the ‘other side of the story’. He/she should have the humil­ity to con­nect with every­one and any­one and know that the story they are telling is one chap­ter out of tens of dozens.

  ii) Provoca­tively immag­i­na­tive — some­one who has the imag­i­na­tion pow­er­ful enough to see a moment/experience and able to (re)frame it into a com­pelling story. He/She knows when to ask the right ques­tions, when to hold back and when to dig deeper.

   

• Sacred Economics Ramblings

  Jocelyn Ling 3:08 pm on March 22, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (21), debate (6), finance (5), impact (20), world (16)

  Sacred Eco­nom­ics with Charles Eisen­stein — A Short Film from Ian MacKen­zie on Vimeo.

  One of my favorite quotes of all-time is that  “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. Sim­ple yet pow­er­ful. We grow up in a world where pre-existing struc­tures of soci­ety and norms are already in place. We strug­gle with our need to fit into the sys­tem, some­where, some­how. But when I watched this 12 min video, I was reminded of that quote once more. That we don’t have to live in our sin­gle story.

  I love the mes­sage of the video par­tic­u­larly on how it talks about how we’ve mon­e­tized com­mu­nity and turned most things into a com­mod­ity. If you read the book, Eisen­stein touches on themes from negative-interest eco­nom­ics to the story of value. The biggest chord that res­onated with me what that the book was writ­ten to:

  “align the logic of the mind with the know­ing of the heart: to illu­mi­nate not only what is pos­si­ble but also how to get there.”

  Sacred Eco­nom­ics envi­sions a world where peo­ple do things for love, not money. What would you be doing in such an econ­omy? Would you be reclaim­ing a toxic waste dump? Being a “big sis­ter” to trou­bled adolescents?

  Now for my scat­tered thoughts: Although I love the mes­sage, I think the book is pas­sion­ately opti­mistic about human­ity (ha, the skep­tic in me speaks!)… espe­cially in cre­at­ing a world where peo­ple would do things for love, not money. My ques­tion is: how do we then get there? Is this is where the non-profit world comes in…and that comes with a truck­load of guide­lines with the term itself!

  Other ques­tions that comes to mind: Why do peo­ple place so much value on money in the first place? Why do peo­ple asso­ciate iden­tity with their jobs? How do we make place in our soci­ety for a gift econ­omy? And most impor­tantly, how do we work within cur­rent struc­tures in order to do the things we love?

  Credit: Thanks to Mark McCoy for inspir­ing this post.

  P/s: You can read Sacred Eco­nom­ics here.

   

• My Week's Discoveries

  Jocelyn Ling 3:37 pm on March 9, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: debate (6), finance (5), impact (20), social enterprise (3), social finance (8), women (6), world (16)

  1) Amer­i­can Booty — The story of Sara Blakely, the youngest self-made bil­lion­aire as founder of Spanx

  A hugely inspi­ra­tional story on the qual­ity of per­se­ver­ance. Sara only had $5,000 to cre­ate Spanx, and she cre­ated a com­pany, self-wrote her patent and devel­oped a pro­to­typed. She under­stood what women wanted. This is a quick 13min video on her story. Love the fact that she believed in her prod­uct so much that she never took no for an answer.

  2) Why ‘Shared Value’ Can’t Fix Cap­i­tal­ism - Forbes

  Thought-provoking com­men­tary to counter Michael Porter’s and Mark Kramer’s idea of ‘Shared Value’. Worth a read to get you think­ing about what aspects of cap­i­tal­ism needs ‘fix­ing’ and what doesn’t.

  3) Launch of Women INvest­ing in Women INi­tia­tive (WIN-WIN) — Calvert Foun­da­tion 

  A highly encour­ag­ing piece of news that I cel­e­brated for Inter­na­tional Women’s Day. Calvert Foun­da­tion launched WIN-WIN with $20mm to be invested in high impact orga­ni­za­tions and global projects to cre­ate financ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for women.

  4) Where did social enter­prise come from, any­way? - GOOD Magazine

  Use­ful sum­mary of the sec­tor, includ­ing the legal aspects of social enter­prises. Not sure if the found­ing of Ashoka started carv­ing out the space — my per­sonal take is that Dray­ton was one of the first that pop­u­lar­ized the concept/language. Then again, does under­stand­ing of the space come with under­stand­ing of lan­guage. hm…

  5) Tools and Resources for Assess­ing Social Impact - Foun­da­tion Centre

  Toolk­its and reports galore. From BACO by Acu­men Fund to FSG’s Guide to engag­ing stake­hold­ers. Seri­ously great database.

   

• (Re)Defining the Future of Work

  Jocelyn Ling 10:00 am on March 4, 2012 | 4 comments Permalink | Reply
  

  Last week, I had the oppor­tu­nity of attend­ing a con­fer­ence that was slightly dif­fer­ent to my usual social enterprise-impact invest­ing — women empow­er­ment world. It was a con­fer­ence called Re:Working put on by Mutopo and Lovely Day (side­note: I highly sug­gest you check both of them out — highly cre­ative and dri­ven indi­vid­u­als behind the scenes!). The premise of the con­fer­ence was explor­ing the future of work, from ways of inter­ac­tion to moti­va­tion. The con­fer­ence speak­ers ranged from researchers to com­mu­nity archi­tects — you can see the full lineup here. I wanted to share a few key points from the pre­sen­ta­tions that stuck with me as well as some of my per­sonal insights on (re)defining work.

  

  1) Cre­ate mean­ing­ful work by con­nect­ing employ­ees to the end user

  This was by far my favourite ses­sion and biggest take­away point from the con­fer­ence. In this ses­sion, Prof. Adam Grant from Whar­ton shared his research on under­stand­ing what is it that moti­vates employ­ees? How do you cre­ate envi­ron­ments where work­ers take ini­tia­tive and cre­ate change from the bot­tom up as opposed to the top down? What are the dimen­sions of intrin­sic vs. extrin­sic moti­va­tion. In one of his research stud­ies at a call cen­tre, he found that employee’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ties increased by 2x-4x when con­nected to the end meaning/user of their work. His research shows that we have greatly “under­es­ti­mated the preva­lence and potency of proso­cial moti­va­tion” which is the desire to contribute/ help others.

  For exam­ple, [his] stud­ies have shown that proso­cial moti­va­tion strength­ens the rela­tion­ships between intrin­sic moti­va­tion and cre­ativ­ity, core self-evaluations and per­for­mance, and proac­tiv­ity and per­for­mance, and that proso­cial moti­va­tion has stronger rela­tion­ships with per­for­mance when it is accom­pa­nied by intrin­sic moti­va­tion, impres­sion man­age­ment moti­va­tion, and man­ager trust­wor­thi­ness. — Dr. Adam Grant

  The rea­son why his ses­sion res­onated so much with me is due to the fact that in a work­place, the respon­si­bil­ity of the employer to cre­ate mean­ing (I believe) should be more impor­tant than set­ting expec­ta­tions or skill-building ses­sions. Dr. Grant’s research shows that when peo­ple find mean­ing at work — that’s where the real power begins.

  2) Com­mu­nity man­agers are Essential 

  

  There was a con­sis­tent theme of engag­ing employ­ees and com­mu­ni­ties through­out the con­fer­ence. The res­onat­ing con­clu­sion about roles in the work­place is that com­mu­nity man­agers (or enablers/architects) are one of the most impor­tant emerg­ing dis­ci­plines. Com­mu­nity man­age­ment should not be the domain of a junior per­son in the organization/company. It should be a craft engaged by (as one of the pan­elist on the Beyond Full-Time Employ­ees ses­sion puts it) CEOs and regarded as an essen­tial role in build­ing your com­pany right from the start.

  The abil­ity to engage and curate networks/community is an art. When you find a con­nec­tor and com­mu­nity archi­tect — hang on to them. I believe that a good archi­tect is able to not only grow your com­mu­nity, but also has the abil­ity to cre­ate mean­ing within dif­fer­ent tribes in your com­mu­nity while link­ing them back to the over­ar­ch­ing mis­sion of your organization/company. Peter Espersen from LEGO in the open­ing ses­sion of the con­fer­ence illus­trated this trait per­fectly when he explained how LEGO mobi­lizes their com­mu­nity archi­tects — let­ting fans have the cre­ativ­ity to take own­er­ship in their groups by lim­it­ing secrecy and con­straints in LEGO’s com­mu­ni­ties. (Note: LEGO pic is a sculp­ture by Nathan Sawaya — a Brick Artist. Check out his work here!)

  3) The Value Dis­con­nect between employer and employee 

  This point was not addressed directly at the con­fer­ence, but a per­sonal insight of mine that has been brew­ing for a while. I think one of the rea­sons why we see such large employee dis­sat­is­fac­tion in the work­place (besides the lack of mean­ing — see point 1 above) is a dis­con­nect of val­ues and skills. I’m not talk­ing about unem­ploy­ment. What I mean by this is that the value that the employee places on them­selves, and the value that the employer places on them — are not on the same level. How­ever, this issue is just a symp­tom and the root of the prob­lem is twofold: On the employ­ers end, they are con­strained by the mind­set of the past by look­ing for the wrong qual­i­fi­ca­tions — typ­i­cally the well-rounded achiever for most posi­tions when it really should not be that way. On the employ­ees end, a lack of under­stand­ing of what they really want in a job/life and what they have to offer. This symp­tom is so preva­lent in our soci­ety — almost alarm­ing, and since this a thought-in-progress, I’ll leave you with this to pon­der over. Hit me up if you would like to dis­cuss this further!