Ode to Alan

After we sat down in a restaurant in Singapore our beautiful host asked us: "so, how did you meet each other?" We looked at each other, lost for words and because the tone in her voice suggested that we were the strangest of combinations, it felt like bringing a date to your parents for the first time.

"..looking for a job in China... friends in common..." I tried. "Had a coffee together and was hired on the spot..." That was the cue for Alan to chip in. "She was the tallest woman I had ever seen. I had no idea what I should talk about. So I hired her."

Alan being 1.70m and Chinese with the build of an amateur basketball player, and me being 1.85m with the build of a Dutch woman (wide hips, flat behind, flat chest, legs that betray 10,000 kms of cycling, don't we all look the same?) I guess our host was right in her surprise. I have always admired Alan for his wild guess of hiring me, a wild card, someone so different from the rest of the team that it would either work, or not at all.

Alan is from the generation that only just remembers the Cultural Revolution. Being from a smaller
city it didn't impact him as much, he says. But it took his parents away to spend their lifetime teaching in the West, leaving him to grow up with his grandmother in a courtyard full of family but no one to really care for him. From age 12 he looked after himself, with three big half brothers and sisters to teach him accidental life lessons.

Whilst foreign books were still unavailable in China, people were stencilling them illegally and Alan read every bit of English literature and poetry he could lay his hands on during his university days. In the early days of the Tiananmen square protests he joined the masses in Beijing, experienced the self organising mechanisms of the students but also their weaknesses in expressing their cause, and left to see a friend in another city before the government decided to intervene.

After marriage and a corporate career in marketing in Singapore, Alan switched to research on education and later philanthropy. Alan sometimes describes his life as having 'lost a chance to get rich three times' first by not buying property, second by not buying stocks, third by not pursuing a corporate career. Most of Alan's classmates and childhood friends have made it big and occasionally we run into one of them, leaning out of their SUV to great him warmheartedly. Something about wealth and rich people makes Alan shrug every time he talks about it, as if deep down he despises it.

I came to learn that I was very fortunate to work for a boss who has an MBA, but who is also PhD candidate in educational philosophy, has an extensive corporate, government ánd philanthropy network, loves teaching himself, and has a pretty good understanding of what is happening outside China. This is a rare combination of traits in the Chinese NGO world. He is a famous for those who know him kind-of-guy.

Alan is weary of big visions and strong statements. Rather he is proud that after building his organisation for 5 years people are starting to pay attention to this little but steady force that is delivering consistent results. And hardly can we say that his baby is still small. With over 35 staff, and more than 500,000 (direct and indirect) beneficiaries in 5 years Be Better is starting to reach scale. It is only through his good relations everywhere, his pragmatic way of operating and his business smart to settle for financial education that has brought him so far.

If you ask him about his real passion, it is basketbal. He plays every Saturday morning, before his family wakes up. But being short one has to be realistic. There are many different stories I have heard him say in forums and conferences around the world about 'why Be Better'. Only one that I believe to be really true is his wish to establish a family in China, a community of people who relate as equals, with laughter and hugs, and who create a safe place to teach their children life skills. He experienced this 'family' during an Aflatoun conference in Cairo and I think it is this dream that keeps him at Be Better beyond his usual start up years. So strong is the dream that he is even willing to keep transforming himself and his leadership.

I feel much gratitude and respect, which can never be expressed enough in gift boxes of nuts, English literature, gifts for his children or Chinese tea - although I keep trying. Being the kind of people we are, we express it by getting the work done. Even now that I have resigned, I am still there, and do my part.

An inspiring afternoon

As part of my class on Social Entrepreneurship I had invited Andreas Heinecke to come and share his two decades of experience with Dialogue in the Dark with us. It was a wild guess, I had never met him, heard him, or seen him, and so I was even surprised to see one of the students make a poster with his face on it. But the odds were good, and I want to share in a few words what I learned from listening to him.

"I define succes as making something simple, reducing complexity" that is when it can spread to other countries, people, organisations.

Andreas started his first dialogue in the dark in his garage after having an encounter with a blind person who opened his eyes to all the prejudice that lived inside him. Upon starting his social enterprise, people blamed him for things as bad as "being in the dark is anti-humanity" which eventually led him to believe that "when everyone says it cannot work, that's the first guarantee that it can work."

But also, "only one out of a million people make their innovation work", so "stick with your idea, and never give up." Now, after 20 years, there are 100,000 copycats of dine in the dark, and other 'in the dark' experiences. After his initial bad feeling about that, he is now happy that more people are working towards a bigger social impact.

To become successful, he had to find people complimentary to himself, one of them being his wife who has been his left and right hand for all this time. In other words "it's about followership, forget leadership".

On finances, Andreas had a few radical ideas to share. He calls his company a "full profit company" meaning that all the profit will remain in the company. If franchises are not losing money, he tells them congratulations.  He as the CEO never gets more than 3 times the lowest income in the team. Dialogue in the Dark has had to stay very lean in order to survive.

Even after so much success, Andreas is still very humble. He reminds us "after every award, after every increase in numbers, we have to think if we are really doing the right thing". At any point we need prove of our work, show evidence of the impact, and be very self-critical. So far we have been growing the elephant, but we're at a point where we have to find another way to increase our impact.

And even if sometimes Andreas has thought about leaving DiD and enjoy a quiet time with his wife and family, he says that "being a social entrepreneur is a one-way thing. People have invested their belief and time in you, and I cannot leave. If I leave... It's just not possible."

"Our currency is people, not money"

"We change pain into laughter"

And at the end, in a beside: "do you think I confused them enough? I enjoy most when they're confused, that's when they learn"

On Man and Fish

"Give a man a fish, you have fed him for the day. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime."

In my course on Social Entrepreneurship quite a few students used this quote to liven up their papers or presentations. Something in me starts itching when I read it. Already a few years back at Ashoka the phrase had transformed to 'transforming the entire fish industry', making the task into a much bigger one than before. 

I want to take our challenge even further, and would like to ask you, what is the purpose of knowing how to fish, or having a whole fish industry when the fish are polluted, the fish are unaffordable, the lake has run empty because of overfishing, or the species are extinct? 

If at all we believe we can help other people, we should include creating awareness about the ecosystem as a whole. The big question is: how can we find a way that everyone has enough to eat, everyone has work, everyone has a full filling life, while at the same time the lake is full of healthy fish. 

It is moving to see the students' ideas for the social enterprises they are starting. Yet I challenge them. Think big! Expand your responsibility. Increase your awareness. Plan ahead. Don't stop feeding hungry people fish. Don't stop teaching incapable people to fish. Start teaching everyone to love the earth.