20 – The Inherently Inclusive Principles Set

[00:00:00] David: Hi, and welcome to The IDEMS Principle. I’m David Stern, and I’m here with my co founder, Danny Parsons. Hi Danny.

[00:00:14] Danny: Hi David, looking forward to our next principle discussion.

[00:00:18] David: Yes, Inherently Inclusive is our topic for the day, which of course has three other sub principles: Collaborative by Nature, Enabling Opportunity, Consciously Ethical, and of course those come together in this Inherently Inclusive set.

[00:00:35] Danny: Yeah, I feel this is a bit different to the other sets that we’ve already discussed, the three previous ones, which are really maybe focused more on how we work in terms of practically, maybe, whereas this is maybe more what people would think of as principles. I don’t know.

[00:00:55] David: Ethics. It’s the ethics side of it, really, isn’t it?

[00:00:58] Danny: Yeah. And I think it’s, yeah, it’s an important set to have. It’s what I guess many charities and community interest companies and social enterprises might also aspire to and think towards. But again, as always, I think we have a different spin on things as well, or our own unique twist.

[00:01:18] David: It’s interesting that the word spin jarred with me, but a twist I quite like. But it is this aspect that each of the ones we’ve got in here are very carefully non standard.

[00:01:32] Danny: Yes, I think Enabling Opportunity is the one that I think of as most non standard.

[00:01:38] David: Yeah.

[00:01:38] Danny: Because people talk about things like equal opportunity and stuff like that and I like how we phrase this Enabling Opportunity as something where it’s requiring us to be more proactive in opportunity, not just saying, let’s just try and make everything equal, but actually try and provide. And we actually make efforts to make opportunities for people that work for us and with us who would otherwise not have the opportunity to.

[00:02:10] David: Exactly. And it’s something where within our team, we’ve had people who have worked within UN systems, who had a real distaste for how equal opportunity has been badly implemented in other contexts.

And that was something which we were aware of, but I don’t think I was prepared for how strongly they felt. And actually getting to something where this represents what we feel as a collective, this was some of the big discussions we had in our first full team meeting.

[00:02:45] Danny: Yeah, I think it was yeah, a really useful kind of discussion to have openly with everyone and get those inputs on different views. I think everyone broadly agrees on the concepts, but implementation and details are quite interesting.

[00:02:59] David: And let’s be absolutely clear on this. There are real valuable criticisms of how equal opportunity has been badly implemented in other contexts. Even in the U. S. with some of the laws which have now been challenging some of what has come out of the equal opportunity elements now. There’s all sorts of things which are coming in because some of the equal opportunity implementations have led to other challenges in different ways.

[00:03:38] Danny: Yeah, I like, I think, the way we discussed the sort of approach that we might take, and we have taken to this in different projects. If we get practical is doing things like building in internships and, additional roles into projects and into teams to enable those opportunities for people who we want to engage with, but maybe wouldn’t have been as competitive for a specific role that we were looking for or something like this.

[00:04:08] David: Exactly.

[00:04:09] Danny: And that’s what I see as the Enabling Opportunities, actually thinking, okay, what can we actively do? And we could actually build in these internships and the capacity building into projects without diminishing or taking away from other aspects of the project or compromising the quality of the project or anything like that.

[00:04:26] David: And I think you phrased that really importantly. It’s the capacity building aspect. This ties in with our Capacity Building. And thinking about aiming towards equal opportunity through capacity building. And one of the things where, you know, one of our colleagues who is very ethically minded and very sound, his experience led to the fact that he had seen people from diverse backgrounds being set up to fail because of being offered roles they weren’t ready for and they didn’t have the support to succeed in.

So actually giving an opportunity to someone who is not yet qualified for that role, actually is worse for them. That was one of the sort of examples that I was aware of, I’ve seen this in the past, but not in this context.

[00:05:11] Danny: Yeah, and then it gives to those people who maybe, would be against it or have other issues with it, then it just, obviously it gives them the firepower to attack it based on one person, which is very unfair.

[00:05:22] David: And it’s all about the fact that really aiming for Enabling Opportunities as we see it, it’s very much taking this long term vision of equal opportunities. It’s actually saying that it is possible that if we have a set of candidates and we have a skill set that we need, that people from certain backgrounds, certain contexts, may not have the skills that we need. And we know this from our work in Kenya and elsewhere, where we’ve had to take people who want to have those roles, but we can’t give them the roles because they don’t have the skills yet.

So we create internships, we create processes. I’m not saying we’re always successful, but we have people who have then come through that and are able to reach the level that’s required. And when they reach that level, now they can compete. And now it really is an opportunity.

[00:06:15] Danny: Yeah. And I feel that’s what we’re trying to get towards as our role, to actually try and promote these and make an advancement in these areas and not just say well, you know, that’s not our problem, we just have to get the best person. And there are things we can do if we think in this creative way, which is not easy, but it’s something we’ve done, we’ve started, we can always do more, and we can certainly do better, but…

[00:06:41] David: We’re small. The point is, if big organisations took this approach, it would be transformative. And the key difference is this idea of actually, you should not be compromising quality, but what you can be doing is have flexibility in how you recruit and who you recruit. Part of the problem with the equal opportunity approach within very rigid structures is that your recruitment process is very rigid, and therefore if someone fits in who doesn’t quite fit in with the skill sets you want but has other elements who could become good in the role if you gave them a different pathway, you don’t have that flexibility.

So for us this Enabling Opportunity is also about having and creating those flexible pathways for people who are not coming in on a standard path.

[00:07:30] Danny: Yeah, I think this then extends beyond if we, I think about the inclusivity. I see that in also in how we work for the staff we already have. We have a lot of flexibility in how people work and where they work, and when they work at times like this which allows that, but I think there’s more than that as well. I think what we maybe have done well is trying to get the best out of people by allowing them to work to their strengths and not requiring them to fit in necessarily with how everyone else works or how we work or how we want to work. But not asking people to fit in to one way, but trying to be more inclusive, and that’s beneficial for everyone, because it’s beneficial for us because we get the best out of people. And we’ve had people who have had done very well in other places, but also struggled in other places for different reasons just because of their own, unique situation.

[00:08:21] David: And this is the word, so within, with inclusive to me, it’s the inherently, which is so important here. And we mentioned this in the podcast about Inherently Inclusive, that somehow if we’re doing things specifically to be inclusive, we’re getting it wrong. It has to be inherited from everything else that we do. That if we find that we’re not being inclusive, for some reason, we actually find that, I don’t know parents of young children are discriminated against by the structures we’re building, then it’s not that we have to make processes which help parents and young children to be included. It’s that we have to go back deeper and look at why is it that the structures that we’ve put in place aren’t appropriate for that diversity, for people to make it work for them.

And there’s always this sense of compromise. You mentioned this idea that we can be flexible and we aim to be flexible to different people’s needs in different contexts. And that helps us get the best out of them. But if you work at your best by never interacting with anyone else, that’s not getting the best out of you. So it’s always about creating that compromise.

[00:09:34] Danny: Yeah, and it’s never easy. How much, where do you need people to fit in and work together, which is obviously needed, and where do you allow people to do what they do best? Yeah, I don’t think anyone ever gets it perfect and gets it right all the time.

Then the Collaborative by Nature jumps out to me because I feel the difference there is that, this is about how we work with others out externally as well.

[00:09:56] David: As well as internally. So it’s that element of collaboration internally. We’re not wanting people to feel they’re in competition with one another internally. We’re getting the best out of everyone. But also we don’t want a them and us with our partners, with our collaborators outside. We really want that element of collaboration.

[00:10:14] Danny: Yeah. I really like this principle because maybe like Open by Default, it’s something I feel a lot of people feel that sounds, yes, that’s great collaboration is really good and they agree with, but it is very, unusual, business is not collaborative, it’s competitive and you have competitors and then we have competitors and so being Collaborative by Nature is not natural for…

[00:10:40] David: Even for our staff. It’s something where, you know, actually this is one like Open by Default, which is we often pick up, as people have joined, they’re not thinking like this.

[00:10:52] Danny: Yeah, I think people need to understand what it implies.

[00:10:55] David: Yeah.

[00:10:55] Danny: Not just agree with it on the surface. We have, by being collaborative, disadvantaged ourselves in certain ways by doing what we think is best for a project, which maybe is not in our best interests. And being Collaborative by Nature, this could be helping and same with Open by Default, having things open means other people can also take things on, and they could do better jobs than us at certain things.

[00:11:21] David: I mean, very explicitly, you put those two together with our Local Innovation. We have partners who are in lower resource environments, who can undercut us on price, who we are trying to build their skills so they can out compete us. And we’re collaborating with them to enable them to do that. The group in Kenya, INNODEMS, in Ghana, GHAIDEMS, in Cogent Labs in Pakistan, we are actively working with them so that they can do the work that we currently have cheaper and better than we can currently offer it at this point in time.

[00:11:56] Danny: Yeah. I feel this is a really important principle because, as it says, thinking beyond yourself, and it’s very easy, and I think maybe especially as we’re getting bigger to think about, we want IDEMS to succeed and IDEMS to do this and that. Which we do, but we need to, remember why we want IDEMS to succeed is because of the work that we can do and the impact we can have and the support we can give. And if there’s a way to do that better, then we should be collaborating with those who can do that better, even if it doesn’t serve, the internal company’s whatever it is, growth or profits.

[00:12:33] David: And that’s the key point. We couldn’t do this one if we were pure for profit, because we can’t do this and maximise profit. And we discussed this in the Collaborative by Nature discussion. This is one where this is only possible because we don’t have growth or profit as our only indicators of success. If we found that in some areas of work we did ourselves out of a job because we actually built the tools and we then collaborated with others so that we were no longer really needed or our role shrunk into something much smaller. We can still see that as a success.

[00:13:13] Danny: Yeah. And I think it shows a sort of long term aspect. Even I think about companies that you feel do well, they don’t just try to hoard all the work for themselves, because I think they’re good enough to get other work.

If you’re not good enough to get other work, you need to be very protective and say no, I’m not going to show you how to do this bit of work to the client or whatever, so that you get it every year.

[00:13:35] David: Yes.

[00:13:35] Danny: But you can say, okay , we can offer trainings then and they can do it themselves, that’s fine. We’ll train more people. And I guess we also have this kind of diversity in the work that we do, which helps this, that if there was work that went down for whatever reason we’re able to pick up other areas and be innovative in that way.

[00:13:53] David: Exactly. It’s that ability. And this is, you put it, we’re a sort of high skilled company. Our average skill level is higher than most. And so the whole point, that’s one of the reasons we can afford to try and do this Collaborative by Nature and make it work for us as a business. And it means that we’re a great business partner, because our partners can win and can gain and they can grow from us. And we found that in so many different ways. This is why we have these long term partnerships.

[00:14:22] Danny: Yeah, and I think, we’ve then built the trust with them, that they trust us, that we are trying to do what’s in the best interests of their goals, or our joint goals, and not just thinking about ourselves. And it’s very hard not to do that.

[00:14:35] David: It is. From a traditional company perspective, I don’t believe you could take this principle and make it work. Whereas it’s one of the ones, as you say, for me as well, it’s the one that I feel so deeply. This is part of what differentiates us, but also without this, I wouldn’t want to be doing what we’re doing. It really defines us.

[00:14:58] Danny: Yeah. The Consciously Ethical, I think, similarly, a lot of that is outward looking as well in terms of the impact that we have on people through our work, which, impact can be positive or negative. And I guess Consciously Ethical sounds obvious, I guess for a social type company. But it is also, I feel very easy to do things that are unethical, unintentionally as well, and to have negative impacts on people’s lives, even with the best intentions.

[00:15:31] David: The point which is made when we discuss this in more detail is that the ethical part, as you say, that could almost be taken for granted because of the nature of the business and so on, as being a principle we need to have. So what’s the choice here? The choice isn’t between being ethical and unethical. That’s not what we’re choosing between.

What we’re choosing here is the conscious element, rather than inherently ethical or, subconsciously ethical. I really quite like this sort of juxtaposition between inherently inclusive where we don’t want to be consciously inclusive. We don’t believe that’s right for us. We want to be inherently inclusive, but we want to be consciously ethical. That’s, I feel that is really important.

[00:16:17] Danny: Yeah. Can you explain then, I think that would be good to clarify, consciously. So why, how does that then play out of being consciously ethical?

[00:16:26] David: The key point is if we were to say we were inherently ethical, that would be a good alternative. And I think there are others who could do that. You have a very simple mission statement where we set up around what you’re trying to achieve, which is clearly defined along ethical purposes. And then you have inherently ethical as a principle. And if ever you find you’re doing something unethical, you dig into it, you understand why, and you try and fix the root causes as we’ve got for inclusivity.

But that’s not how we take ethical. Anything about ethical, we don’t take for granted. Even if it’s implicit, we try to make it explicit. We try to be conscious about it. We don’t want it to be happening unconsciously.

[00:17:10] Danny: Yeah, I feel that’s needed, partly the complexity of our work. But I think even otherwise, it’s very easy to have unintended consequences and things where, you know, if you’re not thinking carefully, things can happen that you didn’t intend, but then you didn’t, you weren’t consciously thinking about and really being careful over the decisions.

When I think about this, I think about our work supporting farmers with the climate information, and providing climate information which is inaccurate, can be very unethical. And I think our partners, who are agriculture experts are really good at this and are really also thinking about this that, they would rather provide no information than inaccurate and wrong information which could then…

[00:17:54] David: Let’s be very clear about what you’re saying because I know what you’re saying because I know that work. We have a big problem of scale with some of our work in terms of the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture, this collaboration with Reading University. And there’s a lot of pressure to use, for example, satellite data instead of station data, because it’s more widely available. However, the question there of whether satellite data can answer the specific questions farmer has is different from the question of whether the satellite data has value.

And a lot of people confuse those two that they assume because it has value it will answer the questions that the farmers have. And so this consciously ethical in this context is this idea that we often do ourselves out of a lot of work, in this particular case, because it would be so easy for us to just provide that information.

[00:18:59] Danny: Yeah, and I think even, not even just, I think even more simply, when there’s data available, it would be natural to say, okay, we’re going to really try and get the best out of this data, and try and get the best product we can that can go to people to give them information to make decisions, but, at that point you may say, actually, this is the best we can do, but it’s not good enough.

[00:19:20] David: Exactly. And that’s where we do ourselves out of a lot of work, because we are maybe over cautious on that. There’s opportunities we could have, where if we went out and we just said, we can do this, we can provide this service at scale, a lot of people would be interested. But we are very cautious in how we do that in certain cases.

[00:19:39] Danny: Yeah, I think that’s a good example of the conscious, because you say, okay, we’re just going to try and do our best.

[00:19:45] David: This is the best we can do with what’s available.

[00:19:47] Danny: Yeah.

[00:19:47] David: So surely something is better than nothing. And that we know in this particular case may not be the case. We’ve thought through why actually giving a false information could have worse consequences, even if that’s the best that’s available, I would rather that it’s not available. Because actually what you’re giving is false information. Anyway, that’s a, that was a difficult one to finish up in a sense. I suppose ethics is always a challenging subject.

[00:20:16] Danny: But I think that, I like that as, yeah, this sort of difference, the conscious and inherit. I think that gives a nice example of it, and a nice explanation of why we’ve got that in there.

[00:20:26] David: Yeah. And it’s challenging. I would argue that this set of principles, with the subtleties of each of them, we couldn’t do this if we weren’t a social enterprise, as a pure for profit business, we couldn’t maximise profit and do all these.

However, I do believe this is also one of our greatest strengths. I do believe none of this goes against us being profitable. None of this actually undermines us as an organisation trying to get work, do things. On the contrary, it allows us to do so in ways which are sustainable, which build these long term collaborations, and which build a sense of community.

[00:21:11] Danny: Yeah. And build up our team. We have a very strong team and that’s partly through this.

[00:21:16] David: Exactly. These principles are what enabling that team to become the organisation we want to become. It’s a challenging set, but yeah, it’s the ones we, in some ways, as you put it at the start, these are the ones that people would expect principles to touch on these.

[00:21:35] Danny: Yeah.

[00:21:35] David: And we care about them deeply.

[00:21:37] Danny: Yeah. And they’re also difficult to live up to.

[00:21:39] David: Yes. We’ve not done bad so far. I think, six years in, almost, I think we’ve lived up to these pretty well.

[00:21:48] Danny: Yeah, I think we’re doing well. We can, yeah, we can keep trying.

[00:21:52] David: Exactly.

[00:21:53] Danny: Trying to do better.

[00:21:55] David: Yes, absolutely. Thank you, and I look forward to our next discussion, which is going to be on Informed Decision Making, and the last set, we’re getting through them.

[00:22:06] Danny: Yeah, looking forward to that.

[00:22:07] David: Great, thanks.