Ali Bytes: Bullet-sized strategies for modern living

Despite the sporadic evidence, I love blogging. The analytical and expressive exercise allows me to synthesize thoughts while creating some (maybe minuscule) incremental value. However, there are two things that paralyze the blogger in me: people talking into an echo chamber and human tragedy. So with the SXSW conference this month and a good friend in DC in the hospital, I’ve been out of commission. I can’t justify indulgent reflection when time and mental energy are better spent on someone else.

And then some time passes, something fires me up and I come back to it. This week I had a couple of long conversations with nonprofit organizations - both in India and the U.S. - that have highlighted assumptions that, in my opinion, are flawed and need to be questioned. I’d love to know what you think.

1. Employees need to commit to the cause: I’ve worked for nonprofits in nearly every capacity - as a full time employee, consultant, board member and volunteer - and one of the biggest weaknesses I’ve consistently seen is this idea that people need to live and breath the issue they are working for. Rather than look for someone capable of solving difficult challenges with a willingness to bootstrap or for a specific skill set, it often seems that a demonstration of one’s allegiance to the cause is more important. As a social change generalist, I think nonprofits need to start looking first for the right abilities and then let enthusiasm for the issue be icing on the cake.
2. Voting is a good idea: When online voting became popular about five years ago and significant buzz around crowdsourcing began, voting was different and an innovative way to get mass amounts of people to participate in an effort requiring very little information. However, now that these efforts seems to be launched around everything - two recent ones being the Pepsi Refresh Project and the Unreasonable Marketplace - voting has become a (mostly) irresponsible use of time and energy.  If I email my entire network and encourage people through social sites to vote for my personal idea, then that’s my prerogative.  But when nonprofits have to bring paid employees together to develop a strategy to drive their supporters to vote for them to win something, I wonder if anyone has calculated the value creation. How much time, energy and money is spent trying to get something that isn’t worth even a quarter of that time, energy or money?
3. Consumers are either cause-driven or quality-driven:  There’s a belief that people either buy from their head or from their heart and that the latter is not sustainable. In other words, a quality product will sell in any climate but a product that is branded with a cause will only sell as long as the cause marketing is strong.  This actually may be true in emerging markets, but certainly in the U.S. I think this has changed.  Consumers are not so polar; people can buy for cause impact and because they want the product - like Paul Newman products or Dove’s Real Beauty effort.  I think the notion that products can be both practically and emotionally useful will only continue to expand.
4. Volunteers can’t be counted on: There’s a belief that volunteers, or “most Americans” as one person said to me, are looking for easy answers. They want to come in, do a small amount of work only to wash their hands and walk away feeling better but never thinking again about the organization. In short, volunteering is a short-term, selfish pursuit and therefore volunteers are an unreliable, uncommitted group. On the one hand, this seems to be supported by the existence of these one day clean ups, community improvement projects - or even Race for the Cure and cause-related exercise events - where volunteers just show up and are handed paint brushes. On the contrary, however, I think many nonprofits don’t effectively use volunteers because they are missing a basic point: volunteers are human and want to feel they have made a difference. When visible day to day change isn’t realistic - which it’s not in many cases - it’s up to the organization to help show why they are doing what they are doing. If nonprofits could help individuals see that they are needed and making a difference in the big picture, I know they would find a more committed and helpful free workforce.

This is the first of two posts comparing India and the U.S. starting with what we as humans seem to be more trained to see – differences.  There are of course many more so feel free to add to this list.

A recent book review for Roadrunner: An Indian Quest In America, suggests that the author uses his experience in America to reflect on his own country, India, and that “to reflect is to identify problems, acknowledge failures, and offer other ways of thinking.” While I’m not quite at the IAO (identify, acknowledge, offer) part of this process, I have certainly reflected on the cultural differences between the two countries.

Borrowing from the thesis of Switch, the Heath brother’s new book, it seems that the question for a successful entrepreneur in this century – whether in India, the U.S. or in between - is how to build on what is working to fix what isn’t. Though sometimes it’s hard to know what needs fixing.

1. Spoken versus written language: In both work and socially, the clearest sign that I am not from India is my attachment to the written word. Despite knowing that face-to-face and voice-to-voice are the preferred means of communication, I can’t let go of my desire to make plans over email and present an idea in a document. So I’ve just started to do both – drafting an email that says I will follow-up via phone or verbally flagging for my colleague that I sent them something to look at. In India, a word of mouth recommendation is just that, while in the U.S. it has become “word of link.” 
2. Service versus empowerment: It takes but a moment in this country to learn that India is a service-based culture in every way. As evidenced by the people that follow you around in stores to some of the categories on the GreenMango site (drivers, cooks, etc), there is virtually nothing you need done that you couldn’t hire someone to do, at a relatively low cost.  This is possibly a legacy of the caste system but most certainly a result of India’s two largest commodities: people and time. In the U.S. on the other hand, labor is expensive, time is limited and people want to feel independent. Companies in the U.S. – from Home Depot to the Food Network to Mint.com – are about automation and helping people become more self sufficient.
3. Order versus law: Indians seem to snub almost all road laws including red lights and helmets, and while judges are honored members of society, a land dispute in India can last generations with no resolution. Very much the opposite of the U.S., which relies heavily on the law to settle disputes, India is a not a litigious society and yet, the crime rate in India is significantly lower overall (at least reported) than in the U.S.. People will get angry, but generally the recipient will absorb it and the problem doesn’t escalate. I am learning to take advantage of this in small ways: when I walk into a store and they ask to check my bag, I give an Indian head bobble and keep walking, as I know they don’t want confrontation.
4. Wealthy obesity versus poor obesity: Generally, in India, people who are overweight are wealthy. (These are the same people I see doing the toe touching workouts at the gym, which might also explain their weight problem.) On the contrary, in the U.S. weight problems more skewed towards low-income earners: 22.4% of young people living below the poverty line are overweight or obese versus 9.1% whose families earn at least four times that amount according to TIME in 2008. This certainly has to do with the cost of food, which generally is the opposite here as it is in the U.S. where unhealthy foods are cheaper (of course, a generalization). In India, a box of cereal costs me about $6 (though imported) and a bag of Haldirams snack mix is 70 cents while a bag of seven carrots costs me 18 cents a yogurt costs 33 cents.
5. Fantasy versus emotional marketing: The core of U.S. marketing – whether for a product or a mission – is trying to make something more emotional to “tug at the heart strings” and make you act (or buy). There are studies that compare puppies against kittens and we know that pictures of kids faces (or any faces really) increase response rates.  But in India, some argue that people are consistently surrounded by emotion (or reality) such that escape is more attractive.  One person told me that you only need to look at the movie industry to see this: Slumdog Millionaire was not as acclaimed in India as it was in the U.S., for example, as compared to the dramatic, dancing, singing Bollywood style of film.  I haven’t completely bought into this but there are significant differences about selling to Indians versus Americans if for no other reasons than some of those on this list. 
6. Landmarks versus street signs: In the U.S. you can for the most part get in a cab and say where you’re going and get there. In India you almost always have to know where you are going and that also almost always involves landmarks as few streets are properly labeled.  This may be a bit different in more metropolitan cities like Mumbai or Delhi but in Hyderabad, maps are pretty useless.  Take the directions to get to Hash House Harriers on Sunday.  Something like: “Go past Apollo hospital and when you get to the fork with the temple, stay to the right. Go about 1km and make a right at the VSIP sign.”  Navigating involves all parties in the vehicle and can become quite a bonding experience with the driver.