When Good Ideas are Bad

Downtown Kigali, you are likely to be approached by vendors offering the opportunity to buy various printed material. Among the common items on offer: maps of Kigali. As a new visitor and now resident, I paid the $3,000 RWF (roughly $6) to get my copy, even though I could see it wasn’t going to be as useful as I hoped. Although this is a sizeable city of almost 2 million people, I have yet to find a good map. This is largely because the vendors sell the same map…one that is now outdated. This city has seen such change in recent years, entire neighborhoods (such as the one in which our children attend school) and key landmarks are nowhere to be found. The official language in Rwanda has changed from French to English recently, yet none of these maps are printed in English. And perhaps most frustrating, these maps have no way of showing elevation. In a city consisting of many hills, a 2-dimensional map simply fails to help the reader appreciate the terrain to Point B while sitting in the valley of Point A. As an entrepreneur, one’s mind races to possible solutions, and Greg and I struck upon the following idea: A pop-up map of Kigali! Such a map could be topographical in 3-D, include all landmarks and suburbs to scale, be written in English and hopefully printed at a price that still makes it affordable for the growing number of newcomers coming to this city. Among the army of registered vendors, imagine how popular the one with the new map would be!

Every day, walking in a setting with so much untapped potential, one is struck with such ideas (some better and more serious:). If necessity is truly “the mother of invention”, we should not be surprised to find so many opportunities, given the need is so great on so many levels. Good intention can be spread too thin, as many local NGO’s can attest. Since the amount of time and energy we have is finite, we must not try to do so many things that we fail to do one thing well. It is frustrating having to say “no” so often, yet if we can continue to do so, and pick our focus areas carefully, we increase the likelihood that years from now something truly excellent will have been achieved.

Someday, a vendor will offer us a new map of Kigali, and we’ll be thrilled someone else made a good idea happen.

Onward & Upward,

-Carter

Trust: An Illusive Virtue

Trust is a funny thing. Where trust is present, everything seems easier and better. Where trust is absent, it is difficult to earn or build. Trust is a critical asset that is easily broken and hard to fix. We would all do well to pursue it, but it is possible to have too much of it. It is risky to offer it, but can be very rewarding when returned.

In social settings, from families to nations, there are many benefits attributed to trust. It is often deemed a ‘lubricant’ that makes relationships and transactions run smoother and cheaper. It is also called a ‘glue’ that unites and holds people together. Trust is deteriorated by factions seeking short-term gain, but flourishes where factions subjugate themselves to a unified vision for the long-term.

In post-conflict settings like Rwanda, trust is desperately needed yet hard to build. As foreigners that have just moved here, we can begin to see the want and benefit of trust vis-à-vis settings more familiar to us. Genocide has to be the ultimate destroyer of trust, forgiveness the ultimate healer of what was broken, and a common commitment to a future vision the ultimate road to building something better. In some measure, we can find all these things in Rwanda.

As it relates to Karisimbi Partners, we have already begun to note some of the ways we can build trust and be trusted here in Rwanda:

· Face-to-Face Relationships- very little progress of any substance transpires from a distance, or over phone or e-mail. Getting all relevant parties to meet face-to-face sometimes seems the only way to build trust, albeit business or personal. Less “rich” medium may be valued only insofar as they coordinate in-person meetings. Becoming residents and meeting often has helped immensely.

· Common Motives- most new contacts dedicate some portion our meetings to discerning our deepest motives for being here. Many of those we meet blend social and financial aspirations…. they are clearly interdependent here and now. When they learn we are motivated by faith and social benefit, they smile broadly and say we are “most welcome”. When they learn we seek a practical impact and financially sustainability, they respond as if we’ve said something new or refreshing, and can work with them on what is needed most.

· Commitment- people here want to know you’re “serious”. Good intentions have not been enough in the past. When people hear that we’ve moved here for years and brought our families to empower Rwandans pursuing a better future, they, in turn, take us “seriously”.

On the long road toward building trust, we’ve at least identified some initial steps.

Onward & Upward,

-Carter

Right Place, Right Time (continued)

We continue to receive daily confirmation that we are in the right place at the right time….so you’ll forgive me if I issue a second installment on the same topic as last week.

Additional indicators that Karisimbi Partners is ideally situated:

• A couple months ago, I received a letter from a program director at Harvard Business School. He described to me an MBA ‘immersion’ program that sends some of their top students to Rwanda to work with organizations. He found out about what Karisimbi Partners was up to and contacted me through our website. I’m not sure what I could have done to warrant such interest had I remained an academic in California, yet before we even moved to Rwanda we were known and contacted!

• You can imagine what a pleasant surprise it was to be told we may be able to guide ten Harvard MBA students with an interest in Rwanda. They will be broken into two teams in order to serve our clients in a short-term consulting capacity. The program leader had no idea he had reached scholar that had led business students on an immersion program himself.
  

• There is a popular hotel here in Kigali called the Novatel (or Laico, its new name) where many Westerners and well-placed Rwandans mingle by poolside. Today we shared a drink with an Israeli agronomist that introduced us to an English businessman who owns the largest mineral export company in the country. He has lived in Rwanda 12 years, and upon hearing us explain our plan, he said no less than four times “you guys are absolutely in the right place at the right time”…

• There are now 16 Americans moving to Rwanda as part of our little venture. All have arrived except those attached to the Jukanovich family. We recently learned that the family across the street needed to move suddenly to Nairobi, Kenya. We contacted the owner (who happens to live in Canada!) and reached an agreement last night that will ensure the Crockett’s and Jukanovich families will be very close neighbors!
  

Although our move is looking more ‘reasonable’ by the day, I can’t help but remember many of these emerging points of confirmation only became visible once we took what seemed unreasonable first steps.

For anyone else pondering a vision, I hope this is encouragement to make the initial leap… you may find yourself on firmer ground than you thought! Hindsight is a validating factor.

Onward & Upward,

-Carter

The Joy of Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

I have been a part of organizations that seemed perpetually “behind the times”. I have also worked at organizations that have been so ahead of their time they could not capture a viable market for their products and services. Together, these experiences have instilled in me a great appreciation for being in the right place at the right time.

Karisimbi Partners certainly seems to be ideally situated for the challenges and opportunities facing Rwanda today. Many of the most important validating factors were not visible until we visited and eventually became residents here. The following is a partial list of the indications suggesting we are ideally situated for the present conditions:

· Rwanda has garnered a great deal of international attention, goodwill and resources (partially as a result of the devastating atrocities of 15 years ago; partially due to the subsequent vision and pace of progress since)

· Rwanda is very much “open for business”, as indicated by the following:

o A recent World Bank/IFC report just named Rwanda the developing country that is reforming its business practices and regulations faster than any other in the world (link to report).

o Many consider Rwanda the least corrupt, safest business environment in Africa

o The Rwandan economy is established enough to boast over 70,000 micro-businesses and the services sectors to support them…. yet there are less than 50 ‘large’ companies in the country… offering tremendous untapped potential for small and medium-sized enterprises that hope to grow

· After many group training sessions and short-term management interventions, the Government’s Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has concluded what is needed now are “company-specific interventions” for translating abstract, generalized concepts in ways that offer practical impact for individual companies

· The vast majority of Western business influence in Rwanda has come in the form of investment capital and short-term management interventions… making Karisimbi Partners distinctive for partnering long-term and locally to build up the management capacity of promising Rwandan ventures

…and these are just a sample of the indicators that the timing is right for what we are doing. Other anecdotal signs: I arrived while the national “Code of Business Ethics” was being drafted and was able to co-author the document and receive an appointment to the new “Ethics Committee”at the Private Sector Federation (PSF) managing this initiative…. A new building has been built to support the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises and the owners are now seeking professionals with top credentials to occupy the new offices…. We happened to find a super guard/gardener from a family that happened to be leaving Rwanda the same week the Urquharts arrived…

Indeed, we have daily confirmation we’re in the right place at the right time. Thankfully, a more pressing concern is this: how can I publish a blog regularly when the electricity (and thus internet access at my house) is anything but regular?

Onward & Upward,

-Carter

Custom Solutions for Developing Contexts

You’ve got to admire the ingenuity of people in developing countries. Last summer, while leading a group of college students through rural China to study the growing phenomenon known as ‘social entrepreneurship’, we saw many ingenious solutions to local problems. One clever example of a “new” application used by rural peasants for boiling hot water is depicted below.

Satellite-enhanced solar kettle

In Rwanda, there are also daily reminders that products created in the Western countries can take on an entirely new meaning when placed in such a context.

New luggage... traditional carrying technique

Such images are a good reminder to us at Karisimbi Partners: we should not expect our experiences and understanding to translate here… at least not directly in the manner we may otherwise assume. In the high-tech U.S. corporations where we’ve worked in the past (e.g. Microsoft, AT&T Wireless) we learned that technology changes much faster than human behavior. Such lessons are only magnified in the context of a developing country where the same modern technologies face traditional behaviors that are significantly less modernized than they are in the West. Cynthia Smith has highlighted this challenge in her book “Design for the Other 90%”, stating that the items many of us take for granted are out of reach for the vast majority and the contexts they live in.

In a developing economy like Rwanda, it seems bringing the best of Western business perspectives will be the easy bit… the real challenge is adapting them to the context in the most meaningful fashion for those we aim to serve.

Onward & Upward,

-Carter

The Power of Cultural Values

President Kagame and his administration clearly have an agenda that is more than merely about political and economic power… they have a social and moral agenda as well. Some of the explicit messages that are disseminated attempt to encourage people to be “good” in terms that may surprise Westerners (e.g., When was the last time a politician you knew erected billboards discouraging constituents from being ‘Sugar Daddies’ or ‘Sugar Mamas’?).

In the fight for a better Rwanda, and given the social/moral agendas that are a part of that, the current administration has tapped the ideological power of traditional cultural values. Some of these values are encapsulated in simple words; all are uniquely Rwandan and convey powerful cultural meaning. ‘Gacaca’, is a traditional village forum for resolving conflicts and community healing re-invigorated in Gacaca Courts starting in 2001 in an attempt to deal justly with the influx of cases overwhelming conventional judicial processes in the wake of the genocide. ‘Imihigo’ is an important concept referencing a long-standing cultural practice in Rwanda whereby two parties publicly commit to achieving a particular task toward the greater good. Missing the stated targets leads to dishonor as for each party, as well as the community. Among ambitious Rwandan government and other leaders, Imihigo is now being used and employed again. ‘Umaganda’ references a culturally-embedded ideal suggesting progress and beauty are everyone's responsibility. Thus, the 4^th Saturday of every month has been dubbed ‘Umaganda’, and is something of a national clean-up day when everyone (including the President) attempts to dedicate their morning to picking up trash, filling in potholes, and building up their communities together. Given Umaganda was the Saturday after we arrived, it was also a great way to meet people!

After breakfast, my kids and I collected trash along the dirt road in front of our house, trying to do our small part in the beautification of our neighborhood. Afterward, my son Oliver brought out a soccer ball, and a crowd of boys soon formed and was split into two teams. For the next hour, it seemed many of our differences fell away as we played a wonderful game on our street (interrupted briefly by ‘traffic’ in the form of 2 cars and 11 goats). This opportunity to work and play together with our neighbors has become one of the chief highlights of our first week as Kigali residents.

We already appreciate some of the Rwandan cultural values we are learning…although only once a month, Umaganda encourages us to work together better and more often than we might otherwise do on our own.

Onward & Upward,

-Carter