Jumping 3 Levels: Little SMIDO and the Big Gold Company

Florin is an EWB volunteer in Ghana. He’s working with SMIDO, trying to inject business development and management skills to increase the organization’s revenues, profitability and size.

He recently posted about SMIDO’s emerging work with a massive gold company. His chaotic local magazine, filling orders for a massive multinational. This is just about the most inspiring thing I’ve read today. He writes about cold-calling the executive, showing them the workshop, pitching SMIDO, and improving their capacity to deliver. He writes about how his chaotic collection of welders, engineers and artisans is verging on a million dollar contract to produce parts for large scale mining equipment. Read it.

But here’s what I love about this story: it’s about readjusting his frame of reference and taking a shot. We often work, without knowing it, within limiting levels. We don’t think to look for much higher levels, never mind aim for them. I don’t mean incrementally higher here, many of us do that. But we don’t look to take level-skipping jumps.

A few years ago, fresh back from Senegal (and out of school), a couple friends and I decided to pitch EWB to the executive at AMEC, a very large engineering consultancy. Paul and Jac worked there and had gained a little credibility, but we were all still pretty young. We were used to university level levels of funding (say, a few thousand), and the relatively low level of professional communication required to get it. We had to take a big jump to begin to consider and speak to AMEC’s senior people, on their level, using language and number they understood. We pitched increasing levels of engagement, starting from Vancouver but ultimately building to a showcase sponsorship of EWB. In the end, they agreed to a $ 30,000 commitment over 5 years, becoming one of EWB’s first sustaining partners. Although it was little to them, it was a much bigger number than we ever would have considered a year before. We had to look at the situation from their level, and not be intimidated by the situation. We had to look up a level and jump.

Florin has done this, but much more impressively. He has seen far beyond his immediate surroundings at SMIDO, envisioning instead what it could become. Then he has convinced a multi-billion (?) dollar corporation that they can work together, potentially leading to a million-dollar contract. If he completes the cycle, he’ll deliver. Florin, like many true EWB leaders I know, has shown some pretty incredible vision, and is backing it up with execution. He looked up three levels from where SMIDO is now, and is making the jump. Africa is rife with potential like this, to connect previously disparate levels and alter the existing structure. All of our lives are filled with potential to connect the levels. All it takes are a few more people like Florin to help show us what is possible.

B

(shot from our own little workshop here in Addis: Samu and Abreham rebuild the structure after it was taken down. But the shot reflects SMIDO’s progress perfectly.)

       

Tagged as: ghana, jumping levels, smido