Week 22.41 One Acre Fund

I attended The One Acre Fund gala in Chicago last Thursday. Five years ago, I met Harry Kraemer Jr., former CEO, a professor at Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, and now one of our 100 Coaches. He recounts the story about how each year he challenges his MBA students to become "one of those people" who change the world because, if not them, who else will? One evening after this famous lecture, one student named Andrew Youn approached Harry and expressed his belief that  he was "one of those people." He shared that rather than using his MBA to go corporate and make lots of money, he felt he was called to improve the lives of family farmers in Africa. He assembled a team, and together they designed, developed, and implemented the technology to allow African farmers to sustain their families and make a profit from one acre of land. Today The One Acre Fund serves 1.5 million farmers, enabling 6 million children to wake up without hunger and with the time and means to go to school. 

Too often, well-intentioned NGOs have come up with solutions that appear to work on paper, which ultimately fails because they are uninformed of the reality and complexity of life on the ground. In humanitarian work, as well as in most industries, good intentions alone are not enough. To have the intended impact, it is crucial to understand the people we serve, and this deep understanding can only be found by building relationships. The One Acre Fund is an example of the power of the relationship-first approach. Their founder, Andrew, recognized from the beginning that to serve the needs of rural farmers, he needed to live with them and see through their eyes. Andrew moved to Rwanda, listened to the local farmers' problems and opportunities, and built his team there. And 16 years later, he still lives in Rwanda, partnering with farmers and adapting to their needs. 

Relationships are the building blocks of the enterprise. Their vision is firmly grounded in their observation: "When farmers improve their harvests, they pull themselves out of poverty. They also start producing surplus food for their neighbors. When farmers prosper, they eradicate poverty and hunger in their communities.” One Acre Fund is growing quickly and will soon represent Africa's largest network of smallholder farmers. Today, they serve over 1.5 million farm families - representing millions of men, women, and children. And the farmers they partner with will produce enough surplus food to feed another 5 million of their neighbors. This is only the tip of the iceberg. When millions of farmers speak with one voice, they can more effectively pursue collaboration with their governments and the private sector to reach greater levels of prosperity. 

They are also relationship-first when it comes to leadership. In 2021, The One Acre Fund assessed and redesigned its 18-person Leadership Council, which aligns the organization on broad strategic goals and high-level vision to better represent its multicultural team and critical organizational functions. Today, half of the Leadership Council seats are held by nationals of African countries and half by women. And this relationship-first approach is deeply embedded in the organization's culture at all levels. They believe that context and stories directly from farmers is fundamental for decision-making, and they have systems to ensure that this information flows upward to country and global directors.

The gala was simple and powerful. It was as if it was designed around the same relationship-first principles on which the organization is built. They did not divide people by setting tables; we met and mingled with passed hors d’ourves and drinks. It was clear that Northwestern University is incredibly proud of this exceptional organization and shared the university's relationships to continue raising donations, engaging students, and inspiring leaders. Northwestern’s outgoing president, Morton Shapiro, praised The One Acre Fund as an example of the best result of a Northwestern education. An auction raised almost $1 million to support the investment in more farmers (once invested in, the farmers are self-sustaining.) I encourage you to check out the website www.oneacrefund.com and if you feel called, to make a donation. I know you will be, as I am,  inspired by their work and touched by the beautifully relational way they do it. Relationships nourish our souls; The One Acre Fund shows us that a relationship-first approach can also produce sustainable partnerships that nourish millions. 

How to Help an Employee Figure Out Their Career Goals HBR article by Dorie Clark

The best leaders want to help their employees develop and reach their career goals. But what if your employee doesn’t actually know what they want? These days, career paths at many companies aren’t clear-cut, so chances are some of your employees are looking to you for direction. Should they try to move into management, or stay as an individual contributor? Angle for an overseas opportunity? Move into a different functional area that might better fit their interests? It’s not always possible to help the people we supervise identify and work toward their career goals. But having a sense of purpose and a feeling of momentum in achieving our career goals is powerful — so when we can assist our employees in getting there, it’s a meaningful way we can make a difference in their lives and their professional success. Dorie's article gives you some ideas on how to help them identify career goals that feel both meaningful and motivational.

Your Unique Niche Is Probably Narrower Than You Think by Bruce Kasanoff

I love Bruce's insights. Check this one out: I recently rewatched the John Cusack movie Say Anything, and was reminded how Cusack's character, Lloyd, eventually decides that the one thing he can do better than anyone on the planet is to be a loving partner to Diane, "an unattainable high-school beauty and straight-A student." In the film, people are always wanting Lloyd to tell them he aspires to be a doctor or attorney or some other respectable career position. But this is not what Lloyd feels inside, and he is honest enough to admit this. In the career space, experts often encourage us to identify the one thing we can do better than anyone else, and this advice has often baffled me. "Anyone else" means nearly eight billion people; am I really better at anything than someone else? Then there are those who offer guidance such as "just be the best you." That feels like a cop out, I have to admit. The correct answer, I suspect, is to narrow your niche until it feels right. In business in general, I have seen that people often resist focusing on a narrow niche, but once they do, their career success increases. To offer a personal example, I aspire to be the best [social media] [ghostwriter] who talks to [entrepreneurs] [weekly] about [what matters most] to them. See? That's five specific elements I am using to define my niche.

The Practice of Vulnerability + How to Build Your Resilience - Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal

Resilience is the essence of what it means to be human. When we get to take that power of resilience back and say, this is something that fundamentally exists within me as an essence of what it means to be human, then we start to have a different conversation because the conversation then begins from a place of abundance. It begins from a place of wholeness. It begins from a place of having, rather than from a place of scarcity, where we have to go out and get something or cultivate it. The bigger the gap between the inside self and the outside self, the more energy we're going to burn. Because we're essentially running two versions of ourselves. We're running two operating systems simultaneously. We have this belief that if we get vulnerable with people, if we allow our inside self to match the outside self that we share with the world, that somehow that's going to be a turnoff for people or somehow that's going to discredit us.

With love and gratitude, Scott