Complexity is Symphony

Complexity has never been more complex. We live in the age of multi dimensions. Everything comes from various directions -- information, goods, knowledge. Some pay attention and get overwhelmed, some ignore the existence, and a small proportion of the global population embraces complexity. Embracing it is to take advantage of it by creating hubs, connecting dots or even making money off of it.

“The joy that I feel every morning, the enthusiasm for my work, the boundless love which fills my heart for all around me, brings forth a vision of the community: a community in which people of all nations and cultures work and learn in peace, and resonate together in harmony as a symphony; ..." -- Dr. Ibrahim Aboulesh of SEKEM Egypt.  

SEKEM Group is known for its endurance over decades. Since the inception of the first company in the group in 1977, 9 other organizations have been formed -- for-profit companies (including a packaging company and a seedling supplier) and a foundation under which kindergarten, primary and secondary education is provided (mainly for the blue-collar employees' children). 

Dr. Aboulesh began his work by starting an organic farming movement because he saw a destructive pesticide-driven food industry in Egypt. Then he found his way to founding other ventures, and I suspect, these ventures were intended to recreate a brand new, sustainable supply chain with optimal efficiency and prospects for job creation. Creating a community, as he claimed.

This is what brave visionaries do. Start with something small and address opportunities and loopholes in the market incrementally. This kind of movement is what I have learned to admire, admittedly instead of those doing one thing and one thing only (especially without forming partnerships with others).

Dr. Aboulesh spent 21 years in Austria and then he packed his bags and moved his family to Egypt. Though he was not completely a no-one (knowing the former president Anwar Sadat when growing up in Egypt), he knew nothing about farming. His work was joy as he was solving a monstrous puzzle of the economic frailty and inequality in Egypt. 

And as I continue on taking small steps for Sarjana, hunting down prospective partners and cheerleaders of Sarjana, coming up with initiatives .... And on, and on, and on .... And staying cost-efficient, nimble, and really, brave. The complexity of problems around higher education in Indonesia for too many decades has been producing, mostly, the kind of graduates that is not employment-ready, unable to think critically and creatively. The egos, inefficiencies and lack of vision is what makes me get up in the morning to scheme new ways, partnerships and projects for Sarjana, knowing that some will fail. There is not yet a harmony in Sarjana, but it is like what you hear a 2-year-old singing along to songs he hears on the computer -- it can be a viral video on Youtube and people get on board. Nonetheless, the complexity in its growing operations is like a symphony; there is a small orchestra behind it that creates and molds tunes everyday.

Transition and Possibilities

Here I am at a major crossroad again, exploring exciting possibilities for my personal journey. Bootstrapping has been halted for two months, as I made a radical decision leaving a dead-end job and pursued consulting gigs as a DC entrepreneur.

Yes I am surprised that I am still in DC, as a one-year old Social Enterprise scholar/practitioner who struggles to make sense and sells his credentials to continue boostrapping. And DC over time seems more and more bleak -- risk aversion of DC folks seems repulsive to me and there are less and less people I want to connect with.

In times of transition, it is easy to make up and feel the emotions of regrets. Damn! Why did I have to pick this degree and take all those classes? Why didn't I see what I see now? Could have take web dev and programming classes! Could have gone to Boston dadada ... But hey, where I am now, having met my partner in crime for a lifetime, is priceless, indeed!

As I am constantly bothered by the existence of only 2-3 possibilities going forward, I have been looking for a job for two months, while running my venture and hunting down more consulting gigs. It is a dream to enter a new era of my career, having a full time job in the same field as my venture. But the reality is quite a few major changed have to happen to reach it. Now decisions take two.

And two months have passed where I am launching a new portal that opens up a whole world of possibilities for Indonesian graduates. I am exploring opportunities for Sarjana and found quite a few -- a few revenue generating products, a few partners and a few short-term goals. 

I am not the kind of person who can sit back and relax for a prolonged period of time, yet! It is unhealthy half the time because the feeling of uneasiness cripples me. But transitions in the past have helped me make decisions that I am proud of and mistakes that I learned from. As scary and lonely it is being with my own thoughts, I have to tell myself that I have to be OK with my own character, that I have never seen my life as the keep-it-simple kind. My dream is complex and I am sticking to it.

No overnight success

Past the first anniversary of this little venture I have invested my whole life into, Sarjana.co.id, I am scared to death. Scared that it stays little, or that keeping it running would be like feeding a person in a comma with a tube. Sometimes it feels like I am doing everything that I can, but it is still not enough. Some nights, after a full day of "conventional" work, I would stay up re-assessing all the strategies I have implemented and then working on the one that I felt most effective on that night. Waking up the next morning, I knew I had overdone it. 

So all this hard work, that I know will pay off, is really about my too high of expectation for market buy-in. I always thought of Sarjana as a trailblazer that would go out to meet clients where they are and offer services at a very, VERY affordable rates to help them advance in achieving their mission. But of course, my being away from the market for years, with a touch of idealism, has not helped me. Sarjana's good intentions are met with skepticism. 

When I drew a sketch of the business model, I was meeting a huge gap in the market and many unmet needs. These needs as it turns out are not something that the market players realize, and therefore, it has taken us much, much investment in educating the market that the needs exist and that investing in meeting these unrealized needs is crucial not only for themselves, but the future of the market. There are also many reasons why the market gap has persisted for so long; one of them is that it is the education sector, the one sector is that probably the most resistant to change. This sector, in my experience, has always looked back at what has been done and presumably worked.  So buy-in is no child's play!

I found this new journal called Build, 'The Catalog of Ideas', and it's a new fascinating, honest, sharp resource for me. Reality check:

"To achieve even a mere 2 percent market penetration, it typically takes more than five years. .... In Japan, the mean time to takeoff is 5.4 years. In the United States, it's 6.2 years. In China, it's 13.9 years. ..."

Now these figures are for consumer goods. But who am I trying to defy gravity and expect Sarjana to come out on top just in the beginning of year 2?

So the lessons of this reflection are patience (which really means bootstrapping longer) and that "entrepreneurship is not for sissies!". 

Was I ready for this when I started? No way! But this "jadedness" is the fuel for year 2, hopefully through to year 3, during which there will be no overnight success.  

Obama’s College Aid Plan: Trailblazer or Disaster?, Part 1

Obama’s college aid plan has been stalking me for the past week. I don’t know yet whether I feel optimistic about it, though I won’t be affected personally. But behind it there is a great intention, in my opinion. Obama is trying to fix college education from the supply side, that is becoming more and more unaffordable, yet more and more important at the same time. I always said it’s the ticket to taking a few steps up the socioeconomic ladder.

Experiencing U.S. colleges is what brought me to start Sarjana.co.id, as I wanted to go outside of the box and get the best value of education with what I have. Sarjana.co.id is a reflection of both what I wish I had (guidance and critical information for selecting colleges) and what was available for me only because I was looking in the United States where information is abundant. But I realized feeding information to high school dreamers is one thing; talking to them about how they are going to pay for college is another. I also think that passing out information about scholarships is no way near enough, noting that college scholarships are scarce in Indonesia.

There has been a crisis in the UK in the last year in college enrolment. Though poor students benefit from significantly lower tuition fees or full exemption, enrolment this year dropped by 40 percent after tuition fee cap was raised from a little over £3,000 in 2010/11 to £9,000 in 2012/2013.[1][2]

Now, tuition fees at the two colleges where I have been to truly have shown the fact that they work against students. The University of Texas system, in 2013, is budgeted to spend around 21.8% on faculty members, as opposed to only 3% on scholarships and fellowships. American University in DC consistently increases their faculty and staff salaries by 7%, 9%, and 4% per year between 2011 and 2014; with insignificant increases for adjunct faculty and part-time staff. Though increases in financial aid exceed these figures, it is obvious that the increases in financial aid are to cover faculty salary increases that are passed on to students. Plus, in AU’s case, faculty salaries only (excluding adjunct faculty) constitute over 30% of the annual expenditure budget.

Of course, one can say that an organization’s greatest asset is people. But when the increase in their salary is way over the inflation rate and then it is passed on to the students, only universities can get away with that. Tuition hikes are accepted by students and parents because education is perceived as private and public good, which has been easily ‘commoditized’ with the ever increasing demand for it as the majority of the world are moving up into the middle and upper class.

So Obama’s plan is trying to tackle this by holding accountable the suppliers of higher education which have thrived, thanks to financial aid, the involvement of wealthy individuals, foundations and corporations. Higher education is an important building block to bridging the widening social divide in the United States, especially with the peril of primary and secondary education, and elsewhere.

But of course with partisan politics and the objection from the defendants in question, there are criticisms:

1.      Fed just administers aid, hence should not regulate it.[3]

Politicians have lashed out and accuse the plan as unconstitutional. There are also worries around how inexperience will lead to failures.

My comment is simple. Why can’t the administrator of a massive fund like federal aid regulate the distribution?

2.      Hindering universities’ growth and innovation

“This is a slippery slope, and one that ends with the private sector inevitably giving up more of its freedom to innovate and take risks,” said Marco Rubio.[4]

This is, to me, just another elitist comment similar to criticism that higher taxes will hinder growth and innovation in the private sector. Universities will not stop receiving gifts from alumni and generous individuals or corporations who need research capacity. Obama’s plan does not imply the reduction of financial aid overall; it is just redistribution. If a college’s net tuition is not suppressed, that is, the annual increase of a given year is high, a portion of its previous financial aid will go to others. It sounds very sensible to me, because the high increase should finance what the increases in their spending (except of course colleges want increasing net return). And to my knowledge, the academic world is the most risk-averse sector: the most resistant to change.

3.      College ranking will widen gap

I see the devil in the details of ranking universities. The plan so far is very result-oriented.

With graduation rate one of the main factors in the soon-to-be-invented college ranking system as grounds for aid distribution, universities are expected to take less poor students, because their academic capabilities would risk their graduation rate. “Students at top-performing colleges could receive larger federal grants and more affordable student loans.”[5]

This is food for thought for Part 2.

But so far, I do not buy the political criticisms against this plan. It’s attacking the root of the problem: ever-rising tuition fees. Everyday I see user after user signing up on Sarjana.co.id, and I cannot help but imagine where each of them falls into, whether the small box of those who can afford college (less than 25 percent) or the big box of those who will be excluded by tuition fees.

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[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265027/Rise-tuition-fees-leads-40-drop-university-admissions.html

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/may/17/university-guide-2010-tuition-fees

[3] http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/16395-obama-targets-colleges-for-more-federal-control

[4] http://www.nyacknewsandviews.com/2013/08/mcea_obamacollegecosts/

[5] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579028911262193186.html

Motive, in the Eye of the Beholder

This past Wednesday two British girls were attacked with acid in Zanzibar, when they were on their way home from a nursery where they had been working as volunteers. Altruism of these two 18-year-old girls were somehow a threat to a certain group inspired by Sheikh Issa Ponda who recently got arrested by the local police. 'Good intentions' are not enough. Something I had to learn from two years spent at the School of International Service at American University with other do-gooders with global, ambitious goals.

We live in such a complex, political world that involves countless evolving perspectives, including judgments that can be forceful and oppressive. Intention can only be truly valid for the person possessing it, and otherwise, it is fully subject to other perspectives that may validate or invalidate it.

Your entry as a altruistic volunteers, non-profit organization, CSR program or a social enterprise into a community is like meeting with the 'future' in-laws for the first time. As in-laws question the potential new member of the family during a dinner and try to influence their son/daughter, a community meets with you and decides whether you are a blessing or a threat, regardless of your bringing in 'goodness'. The community, like the in-laws, will perceive you based on what is familiar to them--their previous experiences and personal worldviews.

Sarjana.co.id enters the community in Indonesia as a breakthrough internet technology that collects admissions information from universities locally and makes it available to Indonesian youth for free. Plain, simple and no harm done, I thought. Surely, I was proven wrong. When soliciting for data, some universities found us untrustworthy (possibly misusing their data) and forcing undesirable transparency (allowing users to compare one university with others). Some others welcome us with open hands and understand that we offer some service (sincerely) for free. And the rest lost our 'invitation' in their own bureaucracy.

Then, we go to those who benefit from our services but not from our mission directly, and they are potential advertisers. We have very few people, out of almost a hundred that we have contacted, who took a leap of faith in us and sponsored our media. Very few, also, took the effort to praise our mission; the rest just saw us as a regular business.

Explaining a social mission and the impact, in an environment where trust is lacking and motive is always questioned, is often obsolete. "What's in it for you?" and "what's in it for me?" are the questions asked silently. Many say that do-gooders have to always be ready for abundant uncertainties, and I say,  they should not let the blaze of passion rip through the passage into the community but be let the community be participating audience of your work. If some community members refuse to participate, excuse yourself and move on to talk to others, without proactively burning bridges.

Because if we do good for ourselves, it often becomes obvious, like 'parenting' the beneficiaries by forcing ideas on the basis of good intentions or not listening to them to identify the real needs, yet coming up with the silver bullet to social problems.

If our work draws resistance or even violence, like girls in Afghanistan who get harassed for insisting to go to school (inspired by international NGOs), we need to stand back and weigh the collateral damage. Our motive should only go so far, not beyond the will of the beneficiaries. Our good intentions are only as good as perceived by the eye of the beholder.    

Humanize Social Media Marketing!

What the media prefers flashes of things than to go deep. Flash news, flashes of singing and dancing in music videos, and of course 'flash' ads. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, too, offer flashes.

Gaming, that I recently picked up, can be a frustrating experience. Gaming apps that get funded by ads increasingly become annoying when images of products or other games (that I have no interest in) pop up at random moments.

This is also true for online shopping. Being a frugal 26-year-old, I thrive on daily newsletters sent by online merchants selling discount 'anything'. Every day between 10 and 11AM, I get 'flashes' of clothing, furniture, or pet supplies, which a few months ago I finally started to get rid of religiously without unsubscribing, thinking that I will eventually need them again. And when I do, my shopping experience is based on what I see, things that often look better in edited pictures; it's more like taking a leap of faith for spending and saving at the same time (what a paradox!) rather than shopping with confidence. Sometimes browsing these 'flashes' would get so overwhelming that my 'appetite' would fade. No purchase, maybe next time.

Overwhelmed? Yes. Can deal with it again? Sure. Will I pass on the message to others? Most likely not. Is it the only way of marketing? I hope not!

Continuum wrote an article about how “With Technology, Shopping is More Stressful Than Ever.”[1] Retailers are constantly badgering us with 'flashes', discounts, and alerts. The more we are connected on the communications industry, the more doors they can knock.

So reading just the beginning part of Content to Commerce by Avi Savar, I realize I have believed in badgering consumers with information when I create strategies for social media marketing. 4-5 posts a day on both Twitter and Facebook, with eye-catching or funny images. Will this change in the short run? Likely not!

But two things that I want to slowly learn and implement around social media strategies are:
1.Publish content with ’substance’ in the least intrusive way as possible

‘Substance’, in the case of Sarjana.co.id, would be things that empower users to dream about college and use the features on Sarjana’s website. It would also be brief explanation about a social media post or about why users should use the features we offer.

‘Least intrusive’ is a tricky one. The conventional wisdom is that the more we flash our brand to consumers, the more they will remember. But the risk is the more annoyed they get and the more meaningless the ‘flashes’ become. I think product placement has been effectively used in movies or TV shows, where products become part of a story line. A hairdresser once chatted me up about how ads should be made in the form of skits like those of SNL to engage the attention of consumers with increasing level of attention deficit. 

2. Brand advocacy with incentives

How does a good word about a product gets passed on? Content to Commerce talks about brand advocates who are more than willing to promote a brand without any compensation. I would love to experiment on structures that can convert Facebook fans and Twitter followers to be advocates. But in my experience, advocacy does not come consistently (or not at all) without rewards. Does good product quality justify the effort of rating? Not always (at least I don't bother rating apps mostly, unless someone who works on it that I know asks me to).  What if product rating comes with rewards like discounts, prizes or even money? Remember 'multi-level marketing'? What if the reward is multiplied charitable donation or a recognition (not just as a loyal consumer, but as marketer)?

My intention to post this is to challenge myself humanize some consumers like myself who refuse to be treated like spending robots or mindless, impulsive clickers. Of course, there will always be those who respond to ‘flashes’, but retention, I believe, costs more than ‘flashes’.


[1] Brian Gillespie. “Retail Therapy? Not Anymore… With Technology, Shopping is More Stressful Than Ever.” http://bit.ly/1cHZyNi

Ambiguity and Patience

Ambiguity is factual. Patience is a skill.

And practice truly makes a skill perfect.

Sarjana.co.id is an example of an initiative initiated in an environment saturated with ambiguities. In this context, ambiguites take several forms: unreliability, indirectness, confusion, inconsistency, etc. It would be very easy for me to link them with the local culture and pass on the blame, especially when the culture is my own. Being away from this culture for so long has helped me see them more clearly, for better or worse.

For better, I have been so committed to giving back to the land where I was born. Carved in my adolescent mind: nationalism, rebellion, idealism. My life experience keeps me grounded. The most memorable moments I went through as a young adventurous lad which shaped me were being away from home to get educated. The privileges I had, I think, are worth sharing with others. What was missing in those moments, I wish I had, is what I am building to give back. Justifiable, I think.

For worse, I often forget that idealism will be broken again and again. This idealistic initiative with a glamorous title attached to it, 'Sarjana', does not seem to thrive as well as I thought. Not forgetting that it's trying to change a whole industry and stubborn mindsets, it is lacking a firm support system.

Sarjana.co.id faces potential clients that do not return your calls or respond to your email, vendors that do not communicate when they deliver their work, potential hires that don't show up to interviews. Potential partners get confused with our vision and activities, and they are skeptical about our motive. Bookkeeping can never be 100% honest. What we can hold on to, for most of the time, is positive feedback from users, most of whom are not very generous. So it does take a lot of patience for progress (I don't dare to use the word 'success'). 

The reason why I write this post is frustration at myself for not anticipating ambiguities. I do and should feel that these ambiguities are familiar. I am flaky at times, but have had the privilege being trained not to be. Business and leadership books are best sellers when they talk about it. So patience is what I am depending on.

While the song 'Blurred Lines' are at the top of the charts, I need to find ways to take advantage of the 'pleasurable' ambiguities: bargain more, be a visionary that projects certainties, train your management skills, be polite but clever. But I can only hope that the amount of patience required will be ... tolerable.