The biggest challenge for a high-performing social enterprise during its growth spurt is retaining the DNA of its culture: preserving the heart of what made the organization tick while evolving its systems and processes to meet the new realities of the expanded organizational scope and complexity
Much like with children, the growth of social enterprises – in fact, of any enterprise – is often not linear. There are periods of stability, interspersed with ‘growth spurts’ – for instance, when the enterprise begins work in new geography, builds a new product/service line, or wins a new contract. And as with growing children, the enterprise often looks a little different after each spurt of growth.
The biggest challenge for a high-performing social enterprise during its growth spurt is retaining the DNA of its culture: preserving the heart of what made the organization tick while evolving its systems and processes to meet the new realities of the expanded organizational scope and complexity.
Cloning the organizational DNA
Peepul is a social enterprise that works to enable every child to live up to their potential: working closely with governments to design and deliver programs that improve learning in the public school system.
Nurturing exceptional talent has been the cornerstone of Peepul’s success as an organization. It has been our constant endeavor to create an unrivaled environment for learning, challenge, and growth at Peepul – a culture of trust and high expectations, that brings out the best in every employee. (While the name Peepul head-nods to the tree of wisdom, it also serves as a reminder that our ‘people’ are at the heart of what we do.)
Peepul has been in a phase of non-linear growth over the last year. The first wave of COVID in 2020 brought with it unexpected growth opportunities, with us scaling our work to support the Government of Madhya Pradesh on a flagship state-wide government program, CM Rise, and going even deeper in our work in Delhi.
However, as the pace of organizational growth accelerated, we also heard the early signals of the need for strengthening our HR systems: something we had anticipated and were looking out for. Tenured team members requesting for salary revisions and seeking clarity on growth paths; new managers facing difficulty managing larger team spans; disparate job titles causing internal stress on comparison.
As we realized we were poised at an inflection point, about to grow the organization and team rapidly, we set out to review and formalize HR processes, structures, and policies. Our objective: institutionalize the entrepreneurial DNA that pervades our organization, and also provide a structured and growth path for all its employees, with a clear, fair and transparent appraisal process and supportive Learning and Development plan.
The core exercise took us many months to get right – and a year later, the structure seems to be working as we stabilize in our next orbit of growth.
Guiderails for The Growth Spurt
Below, we share some of the structures and practices we built, as we grew the organization twice in size – from 40 members to nearly 90 today, in the hope that this may offer inspiration and guiderails for any other social enterprise that is navigating a similar growth spurt:
1. Defining dimensions of individuals’ growth: The first order of business was defining various pathways for supporting every individual’s growth and development. It was important for us that the definition of growth not be straitjacketed into a unidimensional “up or out”, but provided space for our employees to contribute to our mission, explore their interests and find meaning in their work every day. For instance, a senior teacher in one of our exemplary schools did not want to give up her joy of being in the classroom to take on school management responsibilities, which was the ‘obvious next step’ for her.
Today, at Peepul, you can grow in three dimensions: deepen your expertise in your track (e.g. Teacher track, Project Coordination track), take on greater responsibility through the levels, and engage in enrichment opportunities to realize the most fulfilled version of your career at Peepul. The senior teacher mentioned above did grow without leaving her classroom: today she is a Mentor Teacher, in a growth path where she continues to take on classroom responsibilities, but also builds her technical expertise in academics to support and grow other teachers.
2. Defining the expected competencies of every role: We built the Peepul Competency Map, laying out in detail the various competencies that define “what great looks like” for every role in the organization. Reflecting on what makes our employees unique, we defined five competencies that the people at Peepul bring to work every day. This exercise also required us to reflect on and define our organization values – Impact, Excellence, and Leadership – from which the competencies are born.
3. Defining salary bands: With defined levels for roles across tracks, we were able to also then define salary bands that were fair and equitable, across all the employees, and form a standard basis for future recruitment as well.
4. Investing in learning and growth: With the fast-paced rhythm of daily work, it is often very hard for growing organizations to have the discipline and space to step back for formal training of the team – but in our experience, this pays off disproportionately over a longer period of time.
In our case, we have significant diversity of the team at Peepul – with employees coming from backgrounds ranging from management consulting to teaching to school leadership to data science to government relationships. Over the last year, we ramped up our efforts of capability building, deploying a suite of trainings across the organization – some internal and external facilitators. The areas of focus include project management (process and time management), team management for first-time managers and functional expertise and exposure (fundraising, academics).
5. Build forums for connectivity: Culture, ultimately, spreads from person-to-person interaction. And so, we built small and large forums to bring the organization together, create a common identity and ensure cross-flow of news and ideas from different parts of the organization: from daily team standups to virtual team celebrations. These have kept evolving over the months, as we experimented with different modalities and forms, appropriate to the stage of the team.
Growth is good for a social enterprise – it expands the scope and reach of the organization, taking it closer to shaping society the way it envisioned. Yet, growth at the cost of culture is often a pyrrhic victory.
The people of Peepul are the secret sauce of the organization’s success, and the leadership team is committed to supporting them every step of the way, as we journey on to transform lives through education. We hope these reflections of our last growth spurt serve as helpful points of reflection in your own journey of social impact.
Source: Business World
