085 – A Service Mentality

[00:00:00] Lucie: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. My name is Lucie Hazelgrove Planel. I’m a Social Impact Scientist and anthropologist, and I’m here today with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS. Hi David.

[00:00:17] David: Hi Lucie, looking forward to another discussion. What’s our topic for today?

[00:00:23] Lucie: Being a service provider, I think.

[00:00:26] David: Being a service provider or having a service mentality? Which I suppose are two related but different things.

[00:00:34] Lucie: Yeah what is the difference then there?

[00:00:37] David: I’d argue many people are service providers, but they may not have a service mentality. And many people who have a service mentality may not explicitly be service providers, they just have a service mentality. I think there’s a fundamental difference there that in some sense service provision is a business model, so to speak. Whereas the service mentality is a way of life.

[00:00:59] Lucie: Exactly. So that comes in terms of, I think, when we’ve had previous discussions about how IDEMS collaborates, that the idea is not just to do perhaps what we have been asked to do, but to think through actually, is this going to be the best thing for the other organisation or whoever the partner is in that case?

[00:01:16] David: Yeah, exactly, and I think there would be a distinction between a service provider where somebody employs you to do a service and you provide that service, or having a service mentality where, whether or not you’ve been asked, actually that role of serving others in some sense and actually providing service is deeply engraved.

And this has come from me, this service mentality thinking, I only explicitly recognized it through discussions with Beth Medvecky who of course, you know, and, was a professor at Cornell and now works with us very closely on the agroecology work. She’s leading the Agroecology Hub work in Kenya.

[00:02:00] Lucie: Yep.

[00:02:01] David: And really this sort of explicit idea of recognising a service mentality, both in people and in interactions, is something which I gained from my interactions with her.

[00:02:13] Lucie: I’ve got to admit, I’m wondering how that came about, or how in her work it came about, how she was thinking about it.

[00:02:21] David: In some sense, it’s a language which she used to describe what brought us together. Because we were involved in a number of different things. I was involved in the Research Method Support for the East African region. At that point, she was the Liaison Scientist. But, in some sense, we then bonded much more about the sort of capacity building and actually finding ways to build capacity locally and integrating with people internationally.

And the thing which she was able to articulate is that part of what differentiated us, which sort of drew us together on that work, was that we had this sort of service mentality, that we were really trying to understand in that sort of context how we could serve the community we were building, in different ways, without actually thinking about it necessarily from what we were asked to be doing, what we were told we should do, what we had an explicit role to do. But just there was a need and we were trying to find ways to serve the communities we were trying to support.

And in that particular case, it was very much related to capacity building of, if you want, research assistants, who were then on the ground working with local communities. And part of what we were looking to instil in those research assistants was this element of having a service mentality, that their research wasn’t just done to help them get a degree or to help them, progress themselves. It was, they were looking to see how their work was really in service of others.

[00:04:08] Lucie: Okay. That’s making me think of one of IDEMS’ principles of holistic interventions. Is that sort of part of, if you’re being a research assistant, exactly as you said, and not only going and doing what you’re meant to do, if it’s like data collection or something, but also seeing what other needs are there which might be affecting this or which we might be able to support on.

[00:04:29] David: Yeah. And I guess this is something where, I suppose a little bit of this is the sort of more observational skills of actually just trying to understand the nature of what you’re doing and your influence in it and your role in whatever it may be that you’re doing.

So yes, I think it is related to the idea of thinking holistically about going in. Most scientists are very narrowly focused.

[00:04:53] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:04:54] David: And what that means is that actually, very often, especially in environments like Western Kenya, where there have been lots and lots of studies and development interventions. And a lot of those studies, they come in and say we’re here to study this.

[00:05:11] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:05:11] David: No matter what your problems are, what you need, you’re working with us to study this so the rest of it doesn’t matter. And that’s very different to the approach that Beth has always taken, the approach I’ve always tried to take, which is to say yes, there’s things that we believe that we’re bringing, that we have expertise in and that we can support on, but we’re also willing to engage in what the actual need is. One of the things that I think, and I keep on going about Beth’s role in this, but that’s really where this sort of thinking has been made explicit for me.

But one of the things that I would argue demonstrates that service mentality that she has and how she has it, is that, over the last few years with the Agroecology Hub, the area she’s working in has totally evolved beyond her academic expertise, and out of her academic expertise. A few years ago, you know, she’d been spending a long time on legume crops and lablab was really very promising in terms of the impact it was having on reducing striga in the region, which is a pest, a weed, if you want, which is damaging to maize crops and others.

[00:06:20] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:06:21] David: And lablab is a legume which is multi purpose and serves many different functions, but one of the things that it does for various reasons is it does actually suppress striga in that region and restore elements of soil fertility. And so that was very much aligned with the work that she’d been doing over 20, 30 years in the region, understanding the needs.

And over the last few years, she’s got dragged into internal and external chicken parasites. She’s been working on mole rats, because they were the fundamental problem in another region. Because what she’s been building is this idea of the farmer research network. And so the idea that actually, the research should determine what should be researched, it’s not the approach that she takes. The needs are emerging from the communities that are saying, this is what we want to study together and this is why.

[00:07:20] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:07:21] David: And mole rats do not really align at all with her traditional academic expertise, but arguably that’s one of the most effective groups she’s collaborated with and worked with because it was devastating. And now they have ways, they’ve retrained in more traditional methods of catching them, and it’s really had a really big impact on certain societies where this became a huge problem.

And that idea that as a researcher, as somebody who brings in this expertise, our role shouldn’t just be limited to what we know, but what we can contribute. That’s part of what I would argue is that service mentality. And watching Beth on this with something like the mole rats, she knew nothing about mole rats. And now I’d argue she’s not a word expert, but she’s a good amateur. She’s read almost everything out there that you can find. She’s really understood both the local context on this, as well as the international literature.

And that’s what she has. She has that capability as a researcher to investigate in ways that others couldn’t. And she brings that to bear on the problem. And so she can contribute, even though it’s not her domain expertise. And that approach is, I think, really related to me to this service mentality. It’s recognizing that you can bring something to the community based on who you are, what you bring. Which is not just what you would think about as your expertise as a researcher.

We’ve got slightly sidetracked from your original point, but I’ve really gone down the service mentality route.

[00:09:00] Lucie: Exactly. No, no, it helps understand what a service mentality is in context also. So it’s using the skills that you have.

[00:09:06] David: I would argue that this is something where I, without knowing that’s what I was acquiring, this is what I gained when I really moved to Kenya as a local lecturer, where my first semester there, within a few weeks of arriving, I was teaching postgraduate algebraic geometry, homological algebra, and an undergraduate course in algebraic geometry. And my head of department sat down next to me and said, it’s very sad. And I said, what’s sad? He said we’re going to have to send our applied statistics students home. I’m sure I’ve told this on another episode sometime, but never mind. And I said why is that? We don’t have enough people to teach them. My father’s an applied statistician, if I took a course in applied statistics, would that help? Yes, that means they can stay. Great.

Of course, I found out later they’ve actually been sent home and were brought back. That’s a whole different story. But the key point there, again, it was this element that I might not have been the best applied statistician in the world, and certainly this was not my domain expertise, but I had access to knowledge in that and I had awareness of it that I could contribute. So me accepting that additional course and getting engaged in that way, that was coming from this idea of well, I’m there, I may as well be useful. If I can help, I may as well be useful.

And that service mentality, the thing that it does is I was enriched by this, at least as much as anyone else. And you know James Kaleli Musyoka who was one of those students who was sent back and came back again. I do believe quite strongly that, he benefited from that and actually being able to do his master’s then, as he did, and so on. But I benefited immensely as well because, actually that became the domain where I excelled, I would argue. I’m not known for my teaching of algebraic geometry and homological algebra, but I am known internationally for my teaching of applied statistics and data science.

[00:11:03] Lucie: And this follows on with what you were just saying about Beth, that you’re going for impact, that you’re interested in how you can best support people, best have an impact, a positive impact.

[00:11:11] David: And I think that’s the key thing that actually a lot of my success in that domain, yes, I put my mind to it. I hope I became quite good at it. But the work that I did on this, I was able to somehow immerse myself in it because it was coming from a need, not from a desire. And that I think is a really difficult one for me, because there’s lots of things I want to do.

But I have to admit, maybe in my most successful bits are the bits where I’ve identified the need and done it not because I want to, but because I see it’s needed. Which is really frustrating because I’d much rather be working on the things I want to do. But that’s the service mentality. I’d argue most of my career has been defined by working on things where I’ve observed the need and then just put the energies into that need. Whether or not it’s where my passion lies, I’ve put passion and energy into it because I understand why it’s important, why it’s needed.

And I guess that’s part of the service mentality, being able to go beyond that. And I think it is something which I know my actions have been misconstrued and misunderstood by many others who don’t have that same service mentality necessarily in the same way, and are assuming that I am pursuing my wants rather than trying to push to solve these observed needs.

[00:12:30] Lucie: Which is what we see more often, I think .

[00:12:32] David: Yeah, exactly. That most people pursue, no, it’s not necessarily their wants, but it is their direction. There are things where, when I first went in to Kenya, and this is over 15 years ago, as a local lecturer, I wanted to see whether I could get homological algebra as a way to get people from Kenya into advanced mathematics. And this would have been something where I’d have been very interested, and that’s something I wanted to do. I failed miserably at that. And I still think that it could have legs as an idea, but it was not something I was successful at.

But I succeeded at the things where I found the observed need and I served the need that I found.

[00:13:12] Lucie: I’m wondering here, you said that you and Beth, as individuals, you shared this approach. How does that translate to a company?

[00:13:22] David: We, I wish I knew, because if I knew I would embed it in much more. What I would argue we’re doing, and this is where the principles have a role in this, the principles are trying to embed some of these ideas more explicitly. Service mentality is not one of our principles because I think it’s…

[00:13:41] Lucie: But it comes under some of the others, like the collaboration.

[00:13:44] David: It’s related, Collaborative by Nature, I would argue this is almost a prerequisite to having a service mentality. And so I would hope that it is a consequence of our principles, that actually if people do embed and gain our principles, then they will get this service mentality. I know there’s others in the team who have that very deeply and who have this service mentality orientation, and that culture is one that we therefore try to nurture and try to build.

We also have members of our team who are not naturally, it doesn’t come natural to them. So it is a culture which needs to be valued, which needs to be built, which needs to be nurtured is I think the right word. But I don’t have a clear answer as to how to institutionalise it. We’re still quite a small organisation, so it is still relatively personal interactions. But as we grow, this is something where understanding how to nurture that service mentality is…

I will give a few examples. So a member of the team recently, there was a piece of work where it wasn’t paid work, but it was working with our partners. They saw the value, they saw the interest, they were personally interested in it. And so just saying, yeah, great, you can prioritise that, you’ve got your key things that you have to deliver. So you can’t prioritise it over everything, but you can make it a very high priority. So encouraging people who have the opportunity to pursue their service mentality in something where they understand the need, they understand why this has emerged. It isn’t something where there’s a paid contract which leads to it. But being able to have that flexibility to enable people to pursue that is something which is part of, I think, how we nurture it within the organisation, and we need to make sure that there’s the capability to do that.

Within the Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellowships, and we’ve discussed this in other episodes, there’s this idea of this 60 40 split.

[00:15:51] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:15:51] David: Where 60 percent of your time you spend on your core task, and 40 percent of time you have flexibility. And so what I would often be doing is when there is an opportunity for somebody which would fit into what I would see as the service mentality to fit into that 40%, I would be encouraging it and pushing that as part of that fellowship approach.

But it’s not explicit, it’s nurtured, it’s how that mentorship happens, of allowing people to identify the needs themselves and then giving them the support and encouragement and space to pursue that. I’m not claiming we get it right all the time.

[00:16:25] Lucie: And then I’ve also got written down here service leadership. I’m not sure how this fits in. Is this, again, connected to how IDEMS tries to have the service mentality within the organisation?

[00:16:36] David: I guess the point is that actually leadership can take many forms. And the form of leadership that I value the most is the thought that as a leader you are serving those you are leading. And so, fundamentally, leadership is servitude in a sense that if you are leading others, then you need, and you should, a good leader, should be doing their best to serve the needs of those that they’re leading.

And so it’s not that those you are leading are serving you. It is that by leading others, you are serving them. And this is the same as we’ve discussed, I believe, in other episodes, the idea of the inverted pyramid and this sort of thing.

[00:17:23] Lucie: But also, IDEMS, I was thinking it was the service mentality, I’ve been thinking of that much more as external at first, but we’re coming closer into it within the company.

[00:17:32] David: Yeah.

[00:17:34] Lucie: Which is interesting, yeah.

[00:17:36] David: So thinking of this idea of this inverted pyramid, where you actually have, and it doesn’t work in all contexts, there’s been some interesting research on this, but I think in context where you have, I’m going to mention sort of strong academic minds if you want, people who have good independent thought, you don’t lead them by telling them what to do. You lead them by enabling them to take responsibility and to pursue what they think needs to be done and to trust in that. Your role then to lead such people is to serve them and to enable them and to create their success.

[00:18:07] Lucie: But that’s true of many situations, too.

[00:18:09] David: Absolutely, but as an inverted pyramid, there’s been some very interesting cases where I think, it hasn’t worked as well, and the example that I would have, and we’ve had this even within IDEMS in different ways, is that when people are less experienced and have less clarity on what they should do, they don’t want responsibility.

Giving responsibility to people who aren’t ready for responsibility, who don’t want it, actually isn’t doing them a service. It’s when people are in the stage where they are ready to take responsibility, then the inverted pyramid can serve them very well. Whereas there’s many other people who actually, at that stage in their life, or at this stage in their professional development, they don’t want that level of responsibility.

So it’s all about where responsibility should lie, where, as a leader, should others be serving you to take responsibility, or should you be enabling them to take responsibility? And that depends on the people, it depends on the relationship, it depends on the task.

[00:19:08] Lucie: Yep.

[00:19:09] David: And so there’s no, in my mind, there’s no single right or wrong on this. It’s just, there’s times at which as a leader, the best thing you can do is serve others and enable them to step up and take responsibility. And there’s other times where as a leader, you need to step in and take responsibility and not have that passed to others.

I make no claims here to having answers on this, but I do hope that part of thinking about this service mentality in leadership is not just thinking of a hierarchical leadership where those below the leader serve the leader, but an inverted pyramid where the leader serves and enables those that they’re supporting.

[00:19:57] Lucie: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:58] David: And I think there’s time for both. And I certainly struggle to navigate and get it right as to when you should be pushing one or when you should be pushing the other.

[00:20:07] Lucie: Which is, I’m sure healthy. You know, there’s often not a clear line, so I think it’s probably very healthy that you feel that you struggle with it.

[00:20:15] David: Yeah. Going too far one way or the other would probably be it would be healthier for me if I wasn’t struggling with these things. But anyway, that’s again, I think part of leadership as a sort of servitude, that the service mentality is not about finding what’s best for me as a leader or in general.

[00:20:38] Lucie: That’s great. Thanks, David, for the discussion, it’s been an interesting one.

[00:20:41] David: Thanks for bringing this up. It’s a really challenging topic. I suppose I really should talk to Beth about this and actually get her on a podcast. Actually, what you should do is you should convince Beth, maybe even send her this episode, and then use this to say really, you should have been discussing this with David. We should get Beth into an episode soon on this.

[00:21:00] Lucie: Definitely, yeah, that’s a good idea. Thanks.

[00:21:04] David: Cheers.