Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference.
Lean Startup techniques have been
taking off in the social-mission sector, helping people solve
problems more effectively, and earning the name Lean Impact. To explore what’s
working on the ground, we’re hosting a webcast, Lean Impact: Implementing Lean Startup in Mission-driven Organizations, next Tuesday, November 5 at
10a PT. It will feature a conversation that gets into the details of how non-profit
and mission-driven organizations are making use of Lean Startup methods to get
closer to their goals, faster. This webcast is free with registration, and our
speakers will answer questions live from attendees. One other note—we’re introducing
a special scholarship program to bring non-profit organizations’ staff and
volunteers to the conference in December. More details on that at the end of
this post.
Few people are
better positioned to talk about bringing Lean Startup techniques to
mission-driven organizations than Akash Trivedi and Christie George, both
speakers at The Lean Startup Conference in December. Akash is a business lead
for Kiva’s pilot program Kiva Zip, which seeks to make microlending even more
direct—for example, by facilitating payment via mobile. Christie is director of
New Media Ventures, the first national network of angel
investors supporting media and tech startups that disrupt politics and catalyze
progressive change.
We asked Christie to give a sense of how she sees the
relationship between Lean Impact and Lean Startup.
LSC: Do you see Lean Impact as a direct application of Lean
Startup ideas in non-profit and mission-driven organizations, or is there
another element to it that's not so obvious?
Christie: There are huge opportunities to build better
mission-driven organizations using Lean Startup principles. And "Lean Impact"
offers a reference point for people to start that conversation—there is real
power in naming. I think of Lean Impact more generally as the conversation
about the challenges in addition to
the opportunities of applying Lean
Startup ideas in mission-driven organizations and businesses.
There are some specific challenges that I’m looking forward to
discussing, both with Akash and at the conference:
1) Measuring Impact: For
organizations that are in the "business" of social change, questions
of measurement are notoriously tricky. How do you measure a movement for social
justice? How do you measure that it's actually your work that's moving the needle on an issue? The clear
focus on users and revenue is hugely useful for
measurement, but for organizations serving a population and not
building a 'product', the language and culture of Lean Startup is still finding its
focus.
2) Vanity Metrics: Especially for
those working to increase awareness, social change groups often
report member numbers, Facebook likes, and news hits as proxies for
impact (which may in turn generate further
revenue). Metrics around petition signatures or Facebook likes are
relatively easy to track, but of course, they don't tell you whether
you're winning. How can we come up with impact metrics that go
further than vanity and get to the core outcomes we're working to achieve?
3) Customer Development: In the
social change space, the customer who "pays" (e.g. a foundation) is
often not the beneficiary of the service. In some cases, this is a standard
three-sided market problem, but it often goes deeper than
this. Mission-driven entrepreneurs are disrupting more than markets, and
are therefore choosing to address issues of power and culture that may not fit
neatly into the customer framework.
4) Failing Real People: Entrepreneurs
in the social sector are solving big, gnarly, complicated problems. The costs
of experimentation (and failure) can be high. I've been reminded by social
entrepreneurs, "When we fail, we fail real people." That is humbling,
even daunting. But it’s important to remember that it is a privilege to be able
to run experiments in order to fail fast.
The most exciting thing for me is that
a community of practice is starting to develop around Lean
Impact, with best practices and actual case studies, to guide
entrepreneurs navigating these issues. And we've got some great examples of
people and organizations doing it well—from the data-driven culture of online
advocacy groups to the relentless testing that Kiva Zip has
done, something that Akash will speak to directly. [Editors’ note: The Ultimate Glossary of Lean for Social Good, from the folks at LeanImpact.org,
has some great examples (PDF).]
LSC: One key element of Lean Startup is the idea of organizing a
startup around multifunctional teams. In mission-driven organizations, how do
you see teams reorganizing to apply Lean Impact ideas?
There is a pretty wide variety of organizations that fit into
the social sector—from large, traditional non-profit organizations to
nimble technology enterprises. Some of these organizations are just
beginning to be exposed to Lean Startup thinking, while others have deep
experience with experimentation.
The space that I work in—online advocacy—has a long history
of running controlled experiments and using A/B testing to
measure and optimize campaigns. I've also observed that these groups—everyone
from MoveOn.org, Change.org, UltraViolet, Upworthy—have comparatively flat
structures.
But even more than reorganizing teams, the work of Lean Impact
seems to be one of making a change in the organizational culture. Social entrepreneurs are working to get institutions to
understand the value of taking risks. I see digital teams gaining influence
within larger organizations, as well as a generation of entrepreneurs building
new types of social businesses and organizations
that are embedding Lean Startup principals from the start.
--
For a deeper dive into the challenges and opportunities facing
Lean Impact organizations, register for our webcast on November 5 at 10a PT. And
join us at the Lean Startup Conference, December 9 – 11 in San Francisco. If
you’re part of a non-profit organization and are interested in Lean Impact
ideas, we strongly encourage you to apply for our scholarship program. We are
offering a dedicated group of scholarships specifically for non-profit
organizations, their staff and volunteers. We are particularly interested in smaller
organizations that otherwise would find the conference financially out of
reach. So, the smaller your org and the tighter your budget, the more we want
to hear from you. Just fill out an application, and we’ll follow up with you asap.
