Muhammad Yunus: How Success Really Looks Like

Last week one of my dreams came true: I met Muhammad Yunus, my biggest inspiration and a social business guru, who travels the world, preaching social business to some of the most powerful people in the world (i.e. Obama, Clintons + corporate heads) and anybody else who would listen (people who actually start social businesses later on). This is how he reached a land far, far away, a city that for some still lays behind the iron curtain. I am talking about Moscow, of course, the capital of The Tsardom of Russia.

Anyways, sorry for the overflowing irony. The fact, however, remains that I am deeply thankful to Professor Yunus for visiting my country, where - let's face it - social business is not widely known. Ok, let's really face it - there's maybe 1000 people in Russia who know about social business and what exactly it is. Nevertheless, he comes to Moscow, advises our economic development minister, gives our famous TV hostess a "social business contest for youngsters" idea, patiently explains our journalists and financial heads what exactly social business is and why would it ever make sense for an entrepreneur to create a social business and for investors to fund it. Just to make it absolutely clear: Social Business Forum in Moscow does NOT look like any social business forum in US or Europe, there were maybe 100 people tops at the main, plenary session when Professor gave his speech.

So, let's cut through the chase and get to the point. When it comes to Q&A session, I raise my hand and ask a question about... You guessed it! Failure! I really think that all development peeps should be proud of me. Because, clearly, there are very few (if any) people in Russia who knows about the whole admitting failure idea. Actually, there are no such thing as development or foreign aid peeps there, except for those who work in the Ministry of Defense or Russian Diplomatic sector.

That is why Professor Yunus unfortunately did not give a detailed in-depth gazillion-hour long lecture on failure and how to deal with it, which he would totally be able to do, by the way. He created a huge number of social businesses both in Bangladesh and abroad. Clearly, it could not have been all success stories? I know of at least one real failure story that Professor Yunus could have shared with the audience: Grameen Phone, which was supposed to be owned by the poor - as in one of the two social business models described by Professor himself - but is now owned by the Norwegian company Telenor. According to Muhammad Yunus, Telenor heads didn't not want to satisfy their genteleman's agreement to transfer owndership rights to the poor. Failure with no happy ending so far, but a very important lesson-learnt:

Trust, but verify. Always.

Nevertheless, Grameen's latest venture is with Adidas, whose geniuses are working on a sneakers model that will cost only 1 Euro. Isn't that something?

What Professor shared with the audience was sort of obvious, but no less valuable because of it: his path to success was not an easy one, there were many mistakes made, many times one or the other venture was not working as it should have been, frustration was definitely a part of the process. Professor Yunus said:

"You can never start with a perfect social business model, you have to start with a tentative model and then build on it."

Words of wisdom and experience, of course. But how will a social investor feel about it? I am not sure, but most likely he won't be too thrilled, especially if you are not Muhammad Yunus. Another thing Professor Yunus noted:

"I was working on a couple of projects at a time. It helped me: when I had problems with one project and felt frustrated, things were going well with the other one, and it kept me going."

I am actually discovering that working on many projects at once really helps me in the same way. Of course, we all know that sometimes life presents us with bad news on all fronts...But you still have to keep going. That was the main message:

No giving up if you want to change the world.

By the way, he also mentioned that he never wanted to change the world. He wanted to change a woman's life, then a village, then a country, and only then the world. In other words:

Start small, grow big.

Finally, Professor tried to explain how his path to success looked like, zigzagging his hands. Yes, his path to success looked like this too:



I don't know about you, but it seems to me that I am somewhere in the beginning of the middle. Not a terribly nice thing to find out, but knowing that Professor Yunus' path had the same trajectory definitely makes it easier to handle.

How does your path to success look (or looked) like? Do you have some failure stories or lessons-learnt to share?

Gaddafi's Death & Human Nature

When they killed Osama Bin Laden, I celebrated the death of terrorism he symbolized and was joyous as many others, because this man was the ultimate evil, at least for most Americans of my generation. Back then @penelopeinparis raised an important issue of morality and justice of Bin Laden's killing in her post Bin Laden’s Death: A Reason To Rejoice? and our opinions on the subject were different...

When yesterday they killed Gaddafi I celebrated Libya's freedom from a ruthless dictator, BUT the circulating video of his death and graphic pictures of his body ( I am not even going to link to those), this time made me think about human nature, justice, and morality. To me, there is no question that the guy deserved to die. Because of him thousands of Libyans died this year alone and were killed during his 42 years (can you believe this guy?!) reign. Even though, again, as in Bin Laden's case and any other one, trial would have been a better option. There are political reasons for his killing, of course, and Libyan rebels were very likely following NATO's or European directives. If Gaddaffi was trialed he could have said too many unflattering things about European leaders, as Sarzozy and Berlusconi (does anyone need to hear more unflattering things about Berlusconi?!).

But, to me, the worst part of this whole thing is the way "The King of Kings" was killed, these horrible images & video circulating all over Internet, TV channels playing it and showing them over and over. When I saw the video on Russian channel, I was like "ok, they never cared too much about feelings of the viewers anyways." But, American TV channels, usually so careful and considerate, when it comes to the "axis of evil" personalities, really don't give a damn. Now, I understand why photos of dead Osama Bin Laden were not made public.

In my opinion, the way colonel was killed really shows the true human nature: we can be both kind and cruel, there are no good and bad people, it's always a mix. Only in blockbuster movies good guys are generous and merciful, while bad guys are utterly vicious and ugly on top if things. Real life is very different and rarely follows a perfect scenario.

Update: Unfortunately in real life it all ends in a very inhumane way: Muammar Gaddafi's 'trophy' body on show in Misrata meat store


I would like to end with a quote by Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress:

Libyans are safer now after Gaddafi's death and the Arab world is breaking free. But never celebrate death of anyone, even bad people.

How do YOU feel about Gaddafi's death and Libya's liberation? Share with me, it's amazing to see history unfold in front of us this year, and we definitely need to analyze it and draw some lessons from it, don't you think?

Clinton Foundation: Celebrity Brainstorm (Funny!)

Luckily enough I noticed @abmakulec's tweet in my overflowing feed.

The following video cheered me up in no time and made me wonder about brainstorming sessions in a typical nonprofit.

Would any nonprofit want its brainstorming sessions recorded, the painful process of "getting things done" revealed to the public? Probably not, because it's all just work and business, right? It might be true, but isn't it nice to see a human, smiling face behind all those reports, numbers, and fundraising appeals?

Aid, Nonprofit, Public: Who Defines the Rules of the Game?

I am a big supporter of the view that nonprofits should be run like businesses. Because aid has to be sustainable. In every sense of the word. However, through my experience in the field I have started to notice that some practices of many aid and international development organizations remind me of the corporate world. But not in a good way.

When nonprofit leaders are striving to streamline day-to-day communications and management within their organizations - it is excellent. When CEOs promote transparency and accountability within their companies, it is great. When nonprofits look for social investors instead of grant-makers to find their way to financial sustainability, it is superb! However, when nonprofits start paying more attention to their PR campaigns and fundraising, forgetting their original goals in the process, it is not aid anymore. A nonprofit is a business with mission. When mission is lost, nonprofit turns into a traditional business with a donate button on its homepage.

One of the articles that really inspired this post was tweeted by the mysterious @TalesFromthHood. AlertNews Can aid agencies afford to be honest? is talking about nonprofits' fundraising & PR practices that too often take general public (a.k.a. potential donors) for simplistic and narrow-minded people, pushing simple messages such as "a starving child" and forgetting to tell the not-so-pretty truth from the ground.

The article quotes OCHA's Mark Turner: "I still get the impression that the simple tale of 'give a pound save a life, here's a child with a begging bowl' is still by far and away the most effective fundraising exercise and I'd be interested see if there's any research to be done in terms of complicated messages and fundraising -- whether this public that supposedly wants a greater, more complex understanding of the situation gives money when you present it in that complicated way."

The question I want to ask is: Who started this myth that the public does not want the "messy truth"? Who defined the rules of the game that the nonprofit world is running by?

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the most educated people - traditionally the biggest donors? Then why do nonprofits need to simplify their messages so much? Why can't they afford to be honest? Since when fundraising and PR are more important than work on the ground? Since when is it acceptable for aid agencies to claim to "do good" without knowing their original mission or end results?

Is it because admitting failure is so hard in practice? Is it because we venerate success so much, but prefer to omit the "dirty details"? Or is it because monitoring & evaluation are legging behind, while PR machine is always on its high horse? When did nonprofit industry switched gears from need-based solutions to corporate-like, huge but unaccountable programs?

Now, I am not saying that fundraising and PR are not important. Many big nonprofits are able to receive grants namely because of the successes of their PR and fundraising departments. Working for more than 2 years for a nonprofit run by volunteers, I KNOW how important they are. However, I take comfort in that my organization is mission-driven, that it exists simply because it truly helps the people in need. THEY are our main focus, their needs is the base of our existence. Because aid is about helping others, not about my professional success, a CEO's self-promotion, or organization's ratings. Aid is about doing good, honestly, effectively, selflessly. A very idealistic view, I agree. But aid itself is by definition idealistic.

I look forward to your comments! Do you agree with me or not? Can nonprofits really combine idealistic and altruistic motives with business operations? Can aid agencies be grassroots-oriented and still financially sustainable?

What I Learnt from Steve Jobs: How to Handle Failure

Today I woke to a very typical morning in Moscow, but as soon as I opened my Facebook feed I realized that while I was sleeping something huge has happened: the world lost one of its biggest and the most fearless visionary, Steve Jobs.

Every single blogger in the world has probably written something about Steve Jobs today. Mostly good things, of course, because the man, no doubt, was a genius. I particularly liked an obituary by David Pogue on New York Times Opinionator: Steve Jobs: Imitated, Never Duplicated First of all, Pogue had a privilege of personally knowing Mr. Jobs - we all know about Mr. Jobs' peculiar yet admirable habit of calling Apple's reviewers and answering emails from customers. But most importantly, Pogue in his post concentrates not simply on praising Jobs, but on what made Steve Jobs so different, what made him a genius who we now compare to Leonardo Da Vinci (has anyone ever been compared to Da Vinci?), Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.

However, what interests me the most is not the story of Mr. Jobs' success, but the way he handled his failure. We all know that at some point, precisely in May 1985, Jobs was fired from Apple. It sounds incredulous to us right now, yet this indeed happened. For most of us that would be the end of it. But not for Steve Jobs. Later on, already mega-successful Jobs said that "getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him."

"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." (Life Lessons from Jobs)

In my opinion, the way a person handles failure truly defines who he/she is. It's not without a reason many MBA essays include "3 setbacks" question. Only true leaders are able to push through and not give up. It is the most dreadful part in everyone's life. Yet Steve Jobs was facing even a more difficult task: it is always harder to fail when one has already known success. If failure is handled right it is a step towards great new beginnings, but if it is handled badly it is the beginning of the end.

If Mr. Jobs couldn't handle his failure, the world would have never seen an iPod, iPhone, iPad, or iMac; a visionary would have never been born. “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple,” Mr Jobs said in 2005 (The Economist). If not for his failure, Mr. Jobs' words of wisdom shared with Stanford graduates wouldn't be supported by the life story of continuous, unparalleled, and always daring innovation:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

*Also, check out Fareed Zakaria's blog post on the very same topic: Steve Jobs' special capacity to learn from failure

*And, please, do watch the full video of Steve Jobs' Standford Commencement speech. It's remarkable, yet simple. Like an iPhone :)

Russia and Putin: Do the two deserve each other?

Living in the US and in the periphery of your mind being aware of Russia's political tribulations via Twitter and other (mostly liberal) websites is one thing. But to live in Russia and to have main political news announced to you on state's channels is a whole new, happily forgotten experience for me. And it's not a good one.

If you think that Fox News and CNN are non objective, think twice. Because you don't know how a truly biased TV looks or sounds like! And it looks like that: United Russia convention gets 10 minutes air time in a news block, while the two main runner ups, Just Russia and The Communist Party of the Russian Federation get 2 minutes each. Another episode is the coverage of the public argument between President Medvedev and then Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin that on a state's channel was turned into a 5 minutes monologue by Medvedev, interrupted by one word from Kudrin. (I wish I were exaggerating.)

It is simply sickening. But the most offensive of all to a thinking mind is the realization that Putin and Medvedev must really despise the very people they are ruling. Would they so blatantly and fearlessly lie on public television if they were not sure that Russians were nothing but a herd of brainless sheep?

Just two days ago, in an interview to the heads of Russia's main TV channels, Dmitry Medvedev addressed the rumors about the predetermination of the upcoming presidential elections with these words:

“Any politician can lose an election, along with his or her political party. In our country’s history, as well as other countries’, that’s what happened more than once. Anything may happen. There’s no predetermination.” 

Any politician whose name is NOT Vladimir Putin  and who is NOT backed up by the all mighty United Russia. That's more like it. Nevertheless, Medvedev continued, traditionally insisting that only Russian people could decide who was to become the next president...

Are we, Russians, really nothing but a herd of brainless sheep ready to swallow any story fed to us from the top, ready to see our freedoms taken, our ideals crushed, our future predetermined?

I can't help, but wonder...

There is also this famous saying:

"Every nation has a government it deserves."

Hard to argue, of course, but I simply don't want to believe this. All I know is the feeling of helplessness. Helplessness, mixed with fear of speaking up against the powerful, historically living deep inside the Russian psyche. Do the two together make an excellent herd? You tell me.

Does Africa really need no more foreign aid?

Don't get me wrong. I am FOR sustainability, long-term solutions vs. short-term and do realize that foreign aid most of the time falls under the latter category... But hear me out here.

Not long ago I read a great article on Huffington Post Impact, where the author quotes Idris Bello, "a self-proclaimed 'Afropreneur'", who says that

"Africa does not need aid anymore."

Right when I was about to share the article on Twitter along with my own "Amen to this" I found myself thinking: "But what about thousands of Africans that are in desperate need of immediate help, right now, at this moment?" Will the meager needs of people who live in the Horn of Africa - that is experiencing yet another sever drought - be met or will hundreds die abandoned? Will women all around rural Africa have to see their kids die from water borne diseases, because their villages have no source of clean drinking water? Will an African child have to sleep without a malaria net tonight? Because simply giving a net/bottle of water/bag of grain to people in need is not sustainable. Yet this does save lives.

To begin with, let's just say not all aid programs are created equal. Compare TOMS shoes - check out Saundra Schimmelpfennig's article on why it is bad aid - and Water Credit that I consider an example of smart aid. Another thing we shouldn't forget is that Africa is not a country, but a continent of 53 very different countries.

For example, the home country of Mr. Bello, Nigeria, thanks to its rich oil reserves is doing much better economically than some other African states. With all the oil money coming into the country (even though most of them do settle in the pockets of corrupt government officials) standard of living in Nigeria has risen significantly. However, what is even more important for Nigeria is that the country has just had its first truly democratic presidential election. That will ensure even a better investment environment in the country. However, not all the countries in Africa are blessed with oil or a somehow stable political situation. On the other end of spectrum are Somalia, DRC, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi and such. These are some of the poorest states in the world, with a very extensive list of development problems, where populations live in truly despicable conditions. The truth is that governments of these countries are not even just not up for the task, but the bureaucrats there genuinely don't care about their people. From Mobutu Sese Seko and Idi Amin to Omar Al-Bashir and Robert Mugabe, this pattern seems to be unbreakable.

The question is: who will provide all these resources and help people in dire need if not foreign aid agencies?

Three Cups of Tea: Another Wake Up Call for the Nonprofit World?

I have been following closely the developments around Three Cups of Tea and accusations against its author, Greg Mortensen in the lastest "60 Minutes" episode. The documentary as well as the ebook Three Cups of Deceit (downloadable for free until April 20th) written by Jon Krakauer accuses Greg Mortensen seemingly of all the worst sins: falsification of the story of how he came to the idea of building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, lying about being taken hostage by Taliban, mismanaging CAI funds (Central Asia Institute, the nonprofit Mortensen founded to fund building schools), and worst of the worst lying about how many schools CAI has built and how many of them are functioning.

I have to admit that I haven't read Three Cups of Tea (and probably never will), even though I did get a copy of it for inspirational and enlightening reading. Ha, little did I know... Nevertheless, I have been introduced to Mortensen's work through Half The Sky, a truly wonderful book by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as well as reading and hearing about Three Cups of Tea on the TV and online. Just last month I was absolutely thrilled to learn that Mortensen was scheduled for a speaking engagement at my university. However, I learnt about it too late and the event was all booked as all his events are. So, you see, as many of you, I was his fan even without reading the book.

Then I hear about the upcoming documentary (couldn't watch it-no cable) and then I read the ebook that the documentary was probably based on, as Brett Keller suggests in his post The Tea Test. It felt as if I could see Mortensen falling off his "hero throne", truly saddening and devastating, not for him, but for me and for the whole nonprofit world. Because if he really did lie and did mismanage donors' money, and didn't build the schools he said he would, I can't imagine such a person being touched or upset by the situation he currently finds himself in. I would imagine he is scared for his reputation and money, but not upset. One question that really bothers me is WHY? Why did Mortensen do all this? If he really didn't give a damn about kids in rural Pakistan, why did he promise to build a school there? Even if the promise was given "in the heat of the moment", like sort of a revelation, why did he actually followed up on it? Surely the men from rural Pakistan were not going to follow Mortensen all the way to America and demand him to fulfill his promise?!

But enough about Mortensen: his personal motives and repercussions are not that important. For me, there is a bigger lesson to learn from this scandal:

If even the best of us, fall so low, if even the most renown and admired nonprofits turn out to be so poorly managed and do so little good (in comparison with what they claim), what about the rest of us? How does an average nonprofit worker perform his/her duties, how does an average nonprofit CEO manage donors' or taxpayers' money, how much good does an average nonprofit actually do?

These are the questions we, as a nonprofit community, have to think about and try to find answers for.

Please, check out the following wonderful and really insightful posts on the subject from my fellow aid bloggers:
What Mortensen Got Wrong by Peter Hessler
Three Cups of BS by Alanna Shaikh
Lessons learned from ‘Three Cups of Tea by Akhila Kolisetty
Three Cups of … by Penelope M.C.
Three Cups of Lies? by Tom Murphy
A great compilation of posts and articles on the subject on Good Intentions Are Not Enough by Saundra S.

Tunisia and Egypt, Foreign Policy and Wikileaks

Didn't know how to start my blog, but went to CNN's page to check up on Egypt's current situation and voilà: "Should the West take sides in the Egypt crisis?"- asks Quickvote.

At first I thought that the West shouldn't get involved in neither of the crisises, because we all knew how tricky foreign politics can get. Every word counts! Take for example the instance when French President, Nicholas Sarzkozy, was asked whether his government would have accepted Algerian president (Abdelaziz Bouteflika), if something similar to Tunisian situation happened there. Did Sarkozy answer? Of course not!

Why didn't Sarzkozy answer? Because everybody (who is at least a little bit familiar with international relations) knows the rules of the game: everyone (i.e. every country) is on his/her own. Well, maybe not Canada...

The truth is that (even I, an idealist, recognize that!) we live in a realist world. Every head of state represents only and only his/her country's interests and that's it. Unless they are Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter.

Do you think Biden doesn't think that Mubarak is a dictator? Of course he does, he just cannot say it, because he is the Vice-President of the United States! If Biden had called Hosni Mubarak a dictator and Mubarak didn't get ousted, the US would have lost one of their main allies in the Middle East. Have you seen the size of the foreign aid package US sends to Egypt?! Some argue that it's close to $1,5 billion, second only to Israel's "support."

The Middle Eastern question is also closely connected to the issue of Islamic extremism and terrorism, which is of course the biggest concern of the US foreign policy. If Mubarak is indeed ousted, there is a big chance that Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood will take a wrong turn and produce something similar to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who drives the whole world crazy with the claims of Iran's nuclear potential. Ina nutshell, as with any revolution, there is always a chance that everything will get worse rather than better. That is what the US is scared of and that is why Biden and Obama have been so disappointingly cautious talking about the situation in Egypt. I totally understood them!..

Until I remembered that the US was also the flagship of democracy, that promoting democracy is in fact the second objective of US foreign policy (once upon a time it used to be the first.) Until I remembered that it's the US that encourages people around the world to fight for their rights and freedom and pursue their dreams...Unless this "pursuit of happiness" somehow counteracts the US' foreign interests. Us prefers to protect its international interests rather than support people of Egypt in their fight for freedom. There is a chance in Egypt that something might go wrong and the US doesn't want to risk it. The happiness of Egyptian people is of course a secondary issue to the US foreign policy...

This double-facedness of foreign politics is exactly what Wikileaks have shown us. This and nothing else, nothing but the truth. The truth that explains why Biden so eagerly labeled Julian Assange a "high-tech terrorist" and was so reluctant to call Mubarak a "dictator."

And you, what do you make of all these surprising, exciting, and at some instances sad and tragic, but truly historic developments?