I (heart) Strategery

Last week we had some visitors from the UNDP “Growing Sustainable Business” regional headquarters in Bratislava. The regional program coordinator and a consultant are doing the rounds, spending a week with the GSB initiative in each of its locations in the area (Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, and Turkey) to do a strategic review of the program’s model and how it should proceed going forward. This was actually one of the highlights of the internship for me – though I do like doing the operational stuff, it was especially cool to take a step back and think more strategically about the best way to partner with the private sector to attack poverty.

The GSB initiative was started just a few years ago, rolling out to a few countries in an initial pilot program. It’s really interesting to take a look at what the various GSB “Brokers” (one on the ground in each country) have done with this light-touch model that encourages identifying and facilitating innovative ways for the private sector to act in a way that benefits both itself and the poor. The major ways in which they’ve done this have been:

• Developing local supply chains (e.g. our Wool Project, which simultaneously increases incomes for local farmers and saves cash for local yarn producers)
• Helping companies market products/services to the poor (e.g. microinsurance, gas stoves)
• Connecting local producers with foreign purchasers (e.g. our Wine Export Project)
• Facilitating foreign investment (e.g. identifying foreign investors interested in funding a Moldovan bio-ethanol plant that will provide a large buyer for local corn crops – and be great for the environment!)
• Creating jobs (e.g. our Internet Translation Platform project)

As you can see, this “just get out there and try something” approach has really led to an interesting diversity of projects. However, as the program matures and expands, it’s time to rationalize the project portfolio somewhat, or at least think more strategically about the most efficient ways to use the limited GSB resources to select and support high-impact projects.

Luckily, the consultant hired to think about this is great. She’s an MBA with experience both working at McKinsey and working as a GSB Broker in Africa, so she really understands the program’s strengths and limitations. We had several long conversations about what the initiative’s ideal structure would look like (e.g., a stronger regional office role in projects working to attract foreign investors), which really made me think more deeply about the best ways to engage the private sector in supporting development. Ideally, they’d figure this out themselves more often; as you can see with my examples above, it’s in business’s best interest to undertake these types of projects – not just for fuzzy PR-type benefits, but for actual cost savings and revenue generation. However, as all consultants know, sometimes businesses need a little push in figuring out and implementing even the things that are in their best interest. So now I’m doing a lot of thinking about the best ways to give them the push they need. The UNDP GSB program is a great start, but there’s definitely room for a lot more to be done in this area – and it's definitely an exciting field to be in!