Leading grassroots change

TRENDS: A number of corporate leaders have crossed over to the development sector to create social wealth.

Last month saw a unique gathering in Mumbai, as Mathew Spacie, Ashish Karamchandani, Ujwal Thakar, S V Sista, Ravi Singh and Kanika Singh met to discuss a phenomenon that has become increasingly common in India"" that of corporate honchos "crossing over" to take up top jobs in the social sector. Indeed, they had themselves done exactly that.

Spacie, chairman of Magic Bus India, had been COO of Cox & Kings; Karamchandani, CEO, Monitor Group India, still heads this consulting firm while devoting part of his time to the NGO that he and his wife have set up for the care of autistic children; Thakar, CEO of Pratham Education Initiative, had been a top banker at BNP Paribas; S V Sista, executive trustee of Population First, was earlier in advertising, as was Kanika Singh, executive director of the Richard Gere Foundation's Heroes Project; and Ravi Singh, secretary-general of the World Wide Fund for Nature India, had been a banker.

Says Pari Jhaveri, head of Third Sector Partners, a search firm that specialises in placements for the social sector and had organised the discussion: "Many people from business consulting and banking have crossed over. They are good leaders, have the skill to make a difference, and are all leading impactful NGOs."

The entry of corporate managers is both the result of change, as well as the cause of it. For one thing, as Jhaveri notes, many NGOs looking for staff to man functions such as IT and HR tell headhunters they want people who have a good track record in these areas. Conversely, corporate executives are not entirely uninterested in the kind of salaries on offer in NGOs.

For another, managers are precipitating culture change. Says Thakar, who joined Pratham Education Initiative five years ago after 28 years in banking, when BNP Paribas closed down its retail operations in India: "We have to introduce systems and controls, but the challenge is to create processes that further the organisation's achievements and performance, not sap energy."

Adds Spacie, who set up Magic Bus (to provide experiential learning to slum children through the medium of sport) in 2002: "I started applying the processes and systems that are normal in the for-profit sector. We have a lot of financial audit, programme audit and quarterly reviews. Our HR policies, job descriptions and appraisals are all modeled on those of a corporate organisation."

Kanika Singh also has introduced at the Heroes Project (which works in the HIV/AIDS sector) some of the management practices which she says she saw being used extensively in her previous job"" 'management by objective' or MBO (which involves the setting of objectives at the start of the year, paving the way for future reviews); the use of search firms in hiring staff; and the use of 'organograms' to determine whether an organisation's structure is appropriate to its vision and goals.

The Richard Gere Foundation, she says, also participated in a compensation study that was done across the HIV/AIDS NGO sector, "to make sure we do not shortchange our employees."

Corporate executives may have long wanted to make a difference to society, but steeply rising compensation levels since the 1990s helped many of them to accumulate the savings that allows them to take the plunge into the social sector, where they must be prepared to make financial sacrifices.

Those crossing over, notes Jhaveri, "are not interested in tokenism, but in an alternate career. They don't just want to sit in an office, but want to get involved at the grassroots level."

Those who have crossed over believe that the trend has just set in and can only grow.