Sandeep Sharma
Founder, Indiadonates
The contribution of the civil society in India’s growth story cannot be undermined. The development discourse of India will remain incomplete without acknowledging and attributing the substantial contribution made by Civil Society Organizations interchangeably referred to as Voluntary Sector. In the journey of the civil society so far, what worked is a flurry of individuals working together, formulating strategies for development, implementing them, delivering essential services and working hard to reach the last mile. However, strictly speaking of the development needs of today, we have a steep climb ahead of us.
Today, India ranks 132 out of 191 countries in the Human Development Report released by UNDP, 177 out of 180 on the Environmental Performance Index (according to a biennial report by Yale and Columbia Universities along with the WEF), and 108 on the Global Gender Gap Index (WEF). It definitely looks to be a daunting task to ensure equitable human development and climate justice in the face of widening resource-gap. Perhaps, the only way to ensure holistic and sustainable development across the board is collaboration and effective partnership between the government, business and civil society. Cross sectoral collaboration and synergies are the only way forward to bring in long term positive change. Civil Society Organizations have a pivotal role to play in ensuring last mile delivery. Hence, it is equally imperative to build the CSOs’ internal capacities and focus our attentions to ensuring their sustainability.
One particular threat to sustainability of a thriving voluntary sector, and thereby the future trajectory of development itself, is the growing leadership vacuum within the voluntary sector.
There is a general lack of investment in the overall development of civil society organizations and the people who make up these organizations. For the longest time, the civil society in India has worked with the principles of self-sacrifice and altruism and the idea of ‘dedicating one’s life for the people’ taking the centre stage. As noble a pursuit as it is, this has opened the door for ignoring or sidestepping the need of developing human capital in the large section of the civil society.
The civil society in India has been blessed with many stalwart leaders who have dedicated their lives and expertise in their quest to bring positive change in the society. The strides made by the civil society so far would, indeed, not have been possible without a spate of able leaders who wanted to find solutions to the complex problems. However, the development needs of the country, along with the entire world, has been through an evolution, not to mention there are new opportunities to be leveraged. In this critical juncture, there is a absence of demonstrated second-line leadership and succession plan which is plaguing a majority of CSOs in the country.Leadership in the civil society organizations is still largely constricted to erstwhile leaders who continue to be the flag bearers of the civil society space. A survey conducted in 2017 by the Bridgespan Group revealed that more than 50% of the surveyed CSOs did not have the confidence that someone could lead the organization in the absence of their founder/current leader, nor did they have any leadership succession plans in place. Ultimately, lack of leadership building puts a question mark on the sustainability of the organization and its work, it also means lack of new and ‘youth’ perspective, losing out on opportunities and not planning for contingencies.
More than 50% of the surveyed CSOs did not have the confidence that someone could lead the organization in the absence of their founder/current leader, nor did they have any leadership succession plans in place.
Inadequate investment in human capital, organizational talent and leadership gap has been working as deterrent to the vast voluntary sector to realize its full potential of impact at scale. The question, however, is what does leadership building look like within the voluntary or development sector. We believe, to ensure that the good work of the sector does not fizzle out, it is important to envision leadership beyond charismatic individual leaders. An interesting perspective to keep in mind here is promoting leadership as a culture within organizations. When we talk about leadership, the discussion often revolves around individual leaders and their skills and attributes, however, leadership should be further conceptualized as a culture that goes beyond individuals and rather creates an environment that encourages every employee to take ownership of the organization’s growth. In such an environment, the role of a leader is another role to play and are not solely dependent on the skills and characteristics of a particular individual. Second line leadership is also in-built in such an environment.
The goal of leadership development should then go beyond nurturing individual talents to ultimately empower employees at different levels of the organization to ‘lead’ within their spheres of influence. Building a culture of leadership within the organization is essential in ultimately raising what can be called the ‘Net Leadership Value’ of an organization.
Especially in the development sector, it is important that we picture leadership as part of culture as opposed to individual attributes of employees. What this does is promote ‘collective leadership’ that ultimately depends on group wisdom to ensure growth.
Now, when we talk about a culture of leadership, the question arises, what should such a culture entail. Within the nuanced context of the development sector, leadership is intrinsically linked to the complex and multifaceted challenges being addressed by the sector as well as the pressure on the sector to deliver development within a perpetual resource crunch and rapidly changing socio-economic scenario. It goes without saying that leaders need to be able to constantly innovate and rediscover the organizations’ strategies. Agility to adapt to unfavorable situations become vital to leadership within the development sector. Equally vital are collaborations and networking. Partnership building is an innate part of achieving impact at scale.
Effective leaders are successful multipliers of social development, and working in collaboration with other players within the development sector is emerging as the essential way forward in this regard. It is important for CSO leaders to remember that they are not in competition with each other and are ultimately working with the shared goal of human development. Leadership development has to be connected to recognizing the high value in creating partnerships and linkages to create a greater momentum and influence systematic change.
Further, when it comes to the effectiveness of leadership, more often than not, we measure it via objective results achieved. While being outcome oriented is an absolutely essential aspect of leadership in the development sector, thinking with leadership lens also requires that one keeps the big picture in mind. The basic tenet of the work of the development sector are people. If human development is the larger goal, perpetuating the values of inclusivity, justice and human dignity also have to receive equal weightage and cannot be sacrificed at the altar of objective results. This is where leadership development differs in the development sector from, say, the private sector. While being ethical, just and inclusive are goals that even commercial entities do pursue, for the development sector these form the cornerstone around which the entire organization’s ethos has been built. Further at an organizational level more often than not a CSO is unlikely to have a dedicated team for inclusivity, for promoting diversity, climate justice and for human relations in general, areas that have proved to be intrinsic to growth for private corporations in recent years. So it’ll be up to the leaders at every level to take care of these concerns. Hence it is absolutely imperative that such values are part and parcel of leadership building efforts within the organization.
So what methods do we apply to build a leadership culture within an organization? There is no denying that training a new generation of leaders by adequately investing in human resources development has become increasingly difficult without much room in institutional funds available to CSOs. The philanthropic landscape has shifted significantly in the last two decades to focus more on ‘return on investment (RoI)’ in terms of impact created through funds. As more funding agencies are eager to move into project based funding and are looking to measure the fruitfulness of the projects through the number of beneficiaries helped and numeric results achieved, it is extremely difficult for CSOs to account for operational cost that makes the projects possible. Project funding is increasingly looking like ‘contracts’, with CSOs having to take up the role of ‘social contractors’. However, CSOs do not have a ‘profit margin’ and success of development projects are highly dependent on the people responsible for their execution. So without investment in the people or the institution, this model is not sustainable.
To develop a culture of leadership in the organization, it is important that we leverage this zeal within the people. It is important that employees feel a sense of ownership over the organization’s work. This can only happen when employees have a ‘buy-in’, so to speak.
While these problems are not to be solved overnight, what is that we play to our strengths.The strength of the civil society is in its commitment to do ‘good’ and it is the strength of the people who make up the civil society as well. These are People who have chosen to spend their professional life within the development sector and wish to do ‘good’. To develop a culture of leadership in the organization, it is important that we leverage this zeal within the people.
It is important that employees feel a sense of ownership over the organization’s work. This can only happen when employees have a ‘buy-in’, so to speak.
We are familiar with the culture of providing employees with stock options in a ‘start-up’ so they can literally own a part of the organization and are open to go that extra mile. For a civil society organization, an equivalent would be for employees to believe in the mission of the organization whole heartedly. It is important that the organizations’ ethos, its raison d'etre (reason for being) is felt at every level. This has the capacity for promoting a culture ‘leadership’ as described earlier. Further, interdisciplinary growth, access to cross-organizational peer network, providing the right mentorship are some of the major factors in ensuring future capable leadership within an organization, especially in the context of the development sector.
Lastly, leadership in the development sector has always been a nuanced conversation. Leadership is tied to growth and objective results across industries, especially when the conversation is around business. In the development sector, on the other hand, leadership has been defined by self-sacrifice and commitment for the longest time. However, our experiences are telling us that the individual centric ‘heroic’ model of leadership is becoming more and more limited in its ability to mitigate the challenges that have become typical within the current context. We need to depend on alternative frameworks of leadership to find alternative solutions that are unique and aimed at not only responding to a specific pain points but also address the challenges of the future. Leadership that employs different perspectives and is willing to take risks even in the midst of adversity is the requirement for the non-profit sector.Ultimately, leadership in the development sector should also be tied to growth. Here, however, growth can be in finding unique solutions towards scaling up impact while addressing the funding gaps and at the same time upholding the core, people-first values of the sector.
