How Social Entrepreneurs Make Change Happen
Roger Martin is a professor at and former dean of the Rotman School of Management. He is the coauthor of Getting Beyond Better (Harvard Business Review Press, forthcoming) and Playing to Win (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).
Who drives transformation in our society and how do they do it? Roger Martin and Sally Osberg argue in their new book, Getting Beyond Better, that the answer is social entrepreneurs, who target unjust and unsustainable systems — or “equilibria” — and transform them into entirely new, superior, and sustainable equilibria. In this excerpt, they tell a story illustrating how vision is the key to successful transformation.
To serious motorcycle racers like Andrea and Barry Coleman, flat-track racing is the most primal, authentic, and thrilling form of competition, harkening back to the origins of the sport at the turn of the twentieth century. The track itself is dirt and configured in the classic oval shape. Motorcycles make 20 or so counterclockwise laps during the course of a race, at speeds of over 100 miles an hour. As the bikes roar around the track, they gradually wear a groove where you’d expect to find it—near the center, just hugging the inside. Along the outside, the kicked-up dirt and dust forms what’s known as the cushion. Throughout the race, riders tend to stay in the groove, avoiding the cushion, where the ride is riskier because the dirt is soft and traction is uncertain.
But sometimes a rider will venture out into the cushion to overtake the competition. Taking to the cushion doesn’t require the rider to be a daredevil. It doesn’t take unnatural bravado. Rather, it requires the rider to have confidence in his experience and skill, and most of all, in the condition of his motorcycle. The bike must be impeccably maintained — oil, gas, gears, engine — and the rider must know it intimately, down to the depth of the tire treads to the millimeter. Taking to the cushion signals a rider’s determination to break out from the pack, to risk failure, and to win.
Social entrepreneurs, Barry Coleman explains, consistently ride in that cushion, where there is plenty of potential to get ahead and just as much to slide out of control. It is a place where guts and determination are required, and where skill and expertise can pay off. Barry should know. He and his wife aren’t just race enthusiasts, they are social entrepreneurs: founders of Riders for Health, an organization that manages transportation systems for the delivery of health care in seven countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
The Colemans and Riders for Health are not interested in buying trucks to replace the ones that have broken down. They want to fix the system that lets such vehicles fall into disrepair, and that puts the wrong vehicles in the wrong place for the wrong tasks. For the Colemans, the changed system is vested in the discipline of fleet management. Riders for Health partners with African health ministries, contracting to manage their vehicles, “whether the vehicles are used to mobilize outreach health workers on motorcycles, transport samples and supplies to health centers, or are ambulances for emergency referrals.”
In this approach, Riders for Health takes over management of a partner’s fleet, providing preventive maintenance and driver training. First, it provides regular scheduled maintenance on health-care delivery vehicles, keeping fleets running over a much longer lifespan, and replacing parts before they wear out to avoid unexpected breakdowns. This maintenance can be carried out on an outreach basis, which means vehicles can be regularly serviced where they are used rather than at a central location—keeping off-road time to a minimum. Second, Riders for Health trains health workers on how to operate their vehicles effectively and to conduct daily maintenance on them, including checks on oil levels, tires, brakes, lights, and other basics. Along with other services, including planning and budgeting for ongoing operating costs like fuel, this Transport Resource Management (TRM) model aims to produce fleets of vehicles that operate with 100 percent reliability at the lowest possible cost for the longest possible time, regardless of tough conditions. It is a model aimed at transforming one specific part of Africa’s health-care infrastructure, and in doing so, to make the entire system more effective.