Why do you hate SCALE so much?
I don’t.
I want to clarify. My piece in Beyond Profit called “Much Ado About Scale” was intended to be anti-scale. If we can scale a quality solution: fabulous! It was intended to encourage other ways of looking at reaching more people with our ideas, rather than just trying to encourage organizations to “scale up” when their might be more successful options. Here are my comments/thoughts to clarify:
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“Scalability” is a great quality of a project, don’t get me wrong! Of course we should aim to get more quality solutions out to more people. What I am talking about are the cases where quality and quantity are mutually exclusive in a way that makes “scaling” dilute the efficacy of a solution.
All too often I think we jump to the conclusion that the way to get ABC successful solution to more people is to get ABC organization to “scale up”. This blog post http://ow.ly/1Fg0e highlights some of the other solutions I think we need to consider more quickly when we find a quality project, such as getting that organization to train what others might view as “competitors”. We shouldn’t look to these options as exceptions to the “always try to scale-up” rule, but rather look at how to preserve quality while maximizing our scope and then pick the appropriate solution. Why are we not aiming more often for scaling a process rather than scaling a solution, when we know from years of NGO lessons learned that the thought processes are what can be spread from place to place, not the solution housed within an organizational framework which was designed for success in a smaller scale project formed from local knowledge?
I used the examples of Skoll and Unreasonable Institute, two organizations I respect, not to say they are picking the wrong people and ideas to invest in, but to say that I think they, and perhaps our whole sector, should alter the writing on our doors. Both organizations, one a well-respected industry leader and the other a new support mechanism for our field, have funded groups which are not profitable (ones which rely on grants to sustain themselves) and solutions which were not “scalable” to the degree they claim to be looking for. Why? Probably because they too, get that quality should be the trump card which clears scale and profit when all three aren’t in one hand. Yes, you are more likely to win the game if you have all three, but if your solution is only going to get dealt one, I’d bet on quality any day.
So, when our top supporters are making many “exceptions to the rules” my question is, why do we all keep trying to push scalability as a requirement for entry into the social entrepreneurship circles? People talking to me about our educational programs ask me all the time how we are going to “scale up our impact” as if focusing on quality in one area is not a high enough goal. For the educational program side of our work, as the founder, I would be disappointed if we were aiming to be in every province in Cambodia, in every school, or in every neighboring country. Why? Because I know that the solutions with which we have found success are the ones based most strongly in local knowledge, leadership, and collaboration, and that to scale to the levels others would define as success would not be possible in my lifetime given the quality I would like us to aim for. Rather, I want us to “scale” outside of our current shell by spreading our lessons to others rather than spreading our organization around the world: do trainings for other organizations, make all of our ideas and solutions open source, and give away our ideas for free to anyone out there who wants to repeat the processes we have used. That is counter to OUR ORGANIZATION reaching “scale and higher profits”, but in my opinion that is the only way to help more people have quality solutions in this specific field.
Here in Cambodia, I was just approached by a social investment fund looking to invest in one of our profit generating ideas. They wanted to fund our project but said they needed to sell this to their board and management team as something we were aiming to do in 10 cities all around South East Asia in order to get them on-board. They approached us, eager to invest… why? Because they, like so many other social investment funds, are struggling to find these “profitable and scalable” models. The local-based team wanted to push to invest in us, knowing full-well that we had no intention of being the biggest and most profitable solution, but they were going to need to adjust our story to get the board on-board. Isn’t that silly! Why do we keep profit-driven and scale as our gatekeepers, when so many of us are investing in “exceptions to the rules”?
We turned down the money from the investment fund, largely because I’d rather have us focus on quality in one place, until we get it right than be judged through the lens of scale as our finish-line. If and when we do create a successful model, if we can “scale up” and keep our quality, then we might look to do that. If we can’t, then I’m happy to kick scalable and profit-driven off of our cards and teach others how we reached the quality we were aiming for in the first place because for me, that’s the one gatekeeper I’m looking to please.