Changes
“Wow, you’re really going through a lot of changes at the moment,” Rolf said as my very first consulting interview (with the Monitor Group in Joburg) came to a close. Having noted the recent focus on Africa on my resume, the attempted career transition from the nonprofit to the for-profit world, as well as the upcoming move from Joburg, Rolf had hit the nail on the head. Even during my interview, I had struggled to compress the hurricane of rationale that has caused so many swift changes recently into a succinct forecast for the future. But in flying from South Africa back to the States, I can’t help but note the glaring metaphor of the storm’s eye, resolving to harness this opportunity to reflect before the worst of the natural disaster is upon us.
One of the most formative episodes of my newfound trajectory occurred only a few months into my experience living in SA:
It was one of my first times in downtown Joburg. A heavy sun brightened the sky, as dozens of steel towers peered over us – mere portraits in the gridlocked traffic below. We had been frozen for a good ten minutes, and the grandiose angle provided by our tiny four-door and the delivery truck in front gave us very little perspective on our immobility. As we waited for the unknown obstruction to find its way off the road, a halting screech, musically resolved by a subsequent crash, caught our attention. I looked through my window, as the shiny BMW to my right eased away from a small Mazda, revealing a tiny dent in its rear bumper. Before I could refocus my attention on our lethargic progression, my gaze was captured* by the nearly two dozen men who swarmed the miniscule accident scene. Very quickly, hands and cheers shot in the direction of the cars, each offering its own take on what had occurred. When my mind had registered the snapshot of these same able-bodies lounging on the sidewalk a moment before, I hadn’t anticipated their immediate absorption into the role of unsolicited legal advisors. But what better did they have to occupy their time? A handful of them had been holding signs requesting work, and it was mid-morning, mid-week, in the middle of one of Africa’s largest, wealthiest cities.
From that moment, the centrality of wealth and opportunity to so many conflicts became undeniable. My perspective as a Political Science major had narrowed my view to the social, cultural, and political causes of conflict – often with the economics factoring in as a peripheral insightful at best. However, the ability to evade acknowledgment of the perils of stalled economic viscosity crumbled in front of my very eyes. A few months before, I had watched Paul Collier’s TED talk on the potential of economic negotiations and immediate employment to help prevent relapses to internal conflict, and it was as if seeing the idle minds, able bodies, inequalities that day had imbued his framework with meaning.
As I began to understand high-level political progress devoid of tangible changes in people’s daily lives as better recipes for relapse than for reconciliation, my immediate career interests began to shift. Having lived in a developed world, dismissing those desiring to pursue lucrative work opportunities as purely self-interested and indifferent to the world around them was effortless (especially given the unfathomable number of stories of corporate greed that substantiated this belief). Coupled with the frequent news updates about the staggering unemployment rate in the U.S. in the wake of the recession, the fiscal realities of living in SA became less and less maneuverable, laying bare the major role in job-creation that enterprises play in a society.
Hence, consulting. My perspective on the work itself is that, in developing countries at least, it can be an opportunity to augment a company’s economic impact on a society through job creation, increased retained earnings that can spread across the economy, or simply the injection of revenue into governing budgets (thus potentially increasing the provision of social services). And beyond traditional corporate consulting, for those firms that also provide services to the social and public sectors, there is an incredible opportunity to deepen the impact of these organizations, resulting in measurable changes on the ground. There are also a handful of companies doing great work at the “bottom of the pyramid,” leveraging the resources and expertise of for-profit entities to hone in on the needs of the poor and provide goods and services that also improve their quality of life. (Think Mohammad Yunus’ idea of a “social business” in Creating a World Without Poverty.) “Sustainability” has also become a recurring theme in international development work these days, and it would be delusional to believe that good intentions alone – without deliberate thought regarding financial sustainability – will suffice to carry great initiatives from “idea” to “implementation” or further even to long term impact. At least two of the firms I’ve applied to have clients working in this space (across both the social and public sectors), and I can only imagine how much value that work could have brought to them. Now, is this a highly idealized view of the type of projects consultants can work on? Of course. But anyone reading this knows that I have rarely been anything short of an idealist.
Now some of you may ask, “If you’re so interested in social businesses, development, and economics at the moment, why not work for the World Bank or some other research institute?” The unabashed answer is that my preferences and natural skills lay elsewhere, and I think Yale made that clear. While I certainly could research and write in near exclusivity, my inner drive for measurable results would only ferment frustrations about the lack of practicality for the work. On the other hand, the intensity of prior academic experiences as well as the research experience from curriculum development at ALA would similarly ignite irritation if my work lacks grounding in research or intellectual stimulation. That’s why, I think, consulting will be a good hedge, especially as the constant focus on the analysis, synthesis, and communication of information play to my natural strengths.
Others of you may wonder, “Has Ngozi (or Joel) sold his soul?” My response is, “not quite.” At the end of the day, though I certainly continue to heed my good friend Joe’s advice to “Do good. Don’t just do well,” one of the lessons ALA has imparted to me (the hard way) is that you need to save yourself before you can save the world. And though upon a first glance, that last sentence may suggest that my understanding of salvation is restricted to the realm of salaries, I actually think of it to include the acquisition of transferrable skills and the broadening of horizons, perspectives, and opportunities. (Now in full disclosure, any of you who’ve heard my frustrations with ALA will correctly note that part of this newfound realization is also a retaliatory response to consistently patronizing comments about the value of the work we did at ALA by people who were far less intelligent and were much better paid in the organization solely due to their prior for-profit work experiences.)
While the past few paragraphs may seem to have glorified the potential of management consulting and the private sector, I certainly don’t intend to neglect to ponder some of its notoriously soulless objectives. If left to its own devices and incentives, conventional capitalism will never resolve the world’s most pressing issues; one only need look at the rapid development in Singapore and Qatar to see the underbelly of a one-dimensional approach. But in an increasingly globalized world with an abundance of research on the potential of deliberate efforts to bridge the gap between rich and poor, the ease of following the path of least resistance for the entirety of one’s career appears evermore guilt-ridden. For me, I’ve embraced a path of greater resistance in part because minding the gap between rich and poor has become less and less about developing an awareness of the issue of poverty. (Awareness alone is akin to television ads guilting us to save poor African children – the emotion fleets just as quickly as the toll-free number fades off the screen.) In my case, developing an understanding of how organizations, agencies, and companies strategize and operate effectively and sustainably will hopefully lead to greater insight into the types of social enterprises or CSR initiatives I hope to support or launch in the future.
After two years of grueling reflection, the first half of the hurricane has passed, and these remarks stem from its eye, just before the difficulty inherent in the second-half’s winds prepare to take me head on. But in navigating your own future paths and steps, I do implore you ask yourself, “Which similarly disorienting storms of rationale have I fought with recently?”
Looking forward to reconnecting with many of you Stateside, and looking forward to keeping in touch with all of you who’ve now been added to my annual reflections on life e-mails.
NJNious
