A daunting task and an opportunity to learn
By Colin
It is difficult to consult on an industry you know hardly anything about, doubly so when you know next to nothing about the people or communities involved. What do we expect to accomplish during the project? What do our clients expect of us? Are we even qualified to do this? How do we ensure our assistance doesn’t appear as a savior complex? These are some of the challenges before us as we head to South Africa in a few days.
When I was notified that my application for the South Africa project was accepted I was ecstatic. Mandela, safaris, the Cape of Good Hope, sharks are just some of the things that come to mind when I thought of South Africa. Friends have recently been using Cape Town as a honeymoon spot or cheap vacation due to an excellent exchange rate. Vacation in South Africa would be an unforgettable experience and chance to see a different continent. Telling family members and friends I often heard the same thoughts echoed back.
But is this what I was truly excited for? A trip to sightsee for a week? No. I began to think about the other side of South Africa. A beautiful country with a troubled past. Apartheid, colonization, diamond mining, poverty, illiteracy, crime. South Africa’s turbulent history and growing pains provide valuable lessons for us and our own communities here at home.
It is easy for us to view South Africa as a distant country. It is at the bottom of Africa after all. What does America have in common with a country that 25 years ago held its first democratic elections? There are more commonalities than you may think. How do we deal with past and present racial discrimination? How do we continue to integrate our communities? How do we enable our fellow community members? These questions are applicable for both South Africa as well as the United States.
The fact of it is, there are lessons I expect to learn in South Africa which I can apply here in the States. Acknowledging this is fundamental to how I approach the trip, and hopefully my classmates as well. We are not some hot-shot MBA’s from the United States here to solve South Africa’s problems. This is not a savior complex situation where we come in with all the answers, provide the solution, ask for thanks and leave. I expect to learn more from our client, about their motivation to complete these projects, their experiences in rapidly changing social environments, their challenges working in a non-profit setting with little government assistance, than I can provide to them through a business plan.
The project assigned to my team is vast. It encompasses unemployment, illiteracy, clean energy, drinkable water and the hope for a sustainable, circular solution. The task is daunting, and certainly we are not qualified to address it.
But then again who is? One thing I’ve experienced in my short career is that no matter what room you are in, it’s just full of people. No one has the answer to this project, honestly, there isn’t even one answer. More than likely this will require a multi-level approach.
What they need from us is to try. To not throw our hands up and say “Well that’s impossible are you crazy? You need real consultants”. Until challenges are broken into actionable steps they often seem intimidating. In the end, through perseverance, these challenges are addressed and resolved by people. Maybe we aren’t going to solve this project, actually I can almost guarantee we won’t. That is ok. We are their partner in this, helping them to explore new ideas, try something, and move them closer to the solution they desire.
Inevitably our proposals will fall short initially. Eagerly, I await the opportunity to meet the people committed to these projects, discuss their experiences, learn about the environments they work in and begin to understand the challenges better. You can’t give what you don’t have and it is difficult for us to give the proper assistance without better understanding. Naturally, I am thrilled to explore a new country.
Truly, I am most excited to learn, to carry this experience with me, to have confidence in my ability to tackle an enormous issue, to understand what it means to partner with an organization and be able to apply these lessons to my own community back home.