By David Haskell, Dreams Indeed International


Our weakness proved to be our greatest asset.
In an Egyptian village roasted by the merciless sun, civil engineer Yousry and I sat
 down on shaded bamboo chairs in April 1999. A sniffing and wagging session ensued
 to find out if we could work together.
I'd been asked to found Habitat for Humanity in the Middle East. Perhaps my
 skepticism of its prospects in the Arab world was forgivable, given its American
 profile and Jesus Christ's name in its legal charter. But I agreed to visit its
 only pilot project on Arab soil. 
[more]
 Yousry had turned down a promotion in a premier construction firm in Cairo to join
 Habitat. After days with him in garbage-recycling cities and rural squalor, I began
 to understand why.
Two things struck me. First, Egypt's poverty. Inhuman. Desperate. Staggering.
It got under Yousry's skin, too. "I grew up in Cairo, but I'll never forget my
 first sight of poverty. A family of ten in a two-by-three meter room. They
 couldn't stand upright because they'd built a loft so everybody could sleep at the
 same time. Those in the loft had it better; those below slept in beds on stilts in
 ten centimeters of sewage water. The next thatch-roofed house was six-by-seven
 meters, but I lost track of those living there when my count reached 23 - and the
 father was blind."
And second, Yousry's solution. Risky. Audacious. Compelling.
I asked him why he'd walked away from his big career chance for this. His voice was
 quiet, but steely. "I have a dream. To solve the poverty housing problem of
 Egypt."
I wondered out loud, "How do you propose to do that?"
He asserted, "Over twenty million of Egypt's seventy million people suffer in
 sub-human housing. In my lifetime, I'll help two million volunteers build their own
 homes, and they will show the other 90% how to solve the problem without me."
But with no organization legally registered, I knew he could not hire staff. Nor
 open a bank account. Nor sign a single mortgage.
I did some quick math: "Your target is 400,000 houses in 25 years. Habitat just
 celebrated building 200,000 houses worldwide in 30 years. How will you double that
 impact, in less time?"
His answer pinpointed the paradoxical power of weakness.
"An Egyptian proverb says, 'The basket with two handles is meant to be carried by
 two.' There are over 17,000 nonprofits registered in every corner of Egypt. We'll
 team up. Alone, we're weak. Competing, we'll fail. But together, we'll succeed."
I figured if I could help just this one guy achieve this dream, it'd be worth five
 years. So I signed on. Habitat's traditional organization model was stopped cold
 right out of the starting gate. The bureaucratic legal registration dragged on for
 over four frustrating years.
That headache was a gift in disguise.
Weak, we couldn't go it alone. So we cultivated friends. And explored networks.
 We assessed values alignment. And trusted volunteers. We forged collaboration.
 And empowered allies.
And then we jumped to get out of their way!
The exponential curve of families housed started climbing. What began crawling at
 under 30 homes/year in 1997 gained momentum until 25 strategic alliances and entire
 communities of families together built over 2000 homes/year in 2007. So far, over
 15,000 Egyptian families have moved into decent homes.
Dignity as God intended is now reality for those who never dared to dream.
Fully 99.7% are repaying loans on time, most from two-dollar-a-day incomes. That
 rate held steady in the 2008 global economic meltdown. Egyptian villagers
 faithfully paid back while the world's mightiest banks begged for mortgage crisis
 bailouts.
All this on a shoe-string budget with nine staff.
I'd worked myself out of a job. And by then, I'd bumped into other dreamers like
 Yousry in even harder places. Insiders with the right values. And the right
 dreams.
I pondered how to strengthen them.
An intriguing
 article1) http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn1
 caught my eye as I bid Habitat farewell in 2005, headed to Harvard to research the
 keys to impact in even harder places. On arrival, I phoned Jane Wei-Skillern, a
 business professor researching networks. "Could we meet? I've just lived a story
 that confirms your findings."
Yousry's approach was soon published as a Harvard Business School teaching
 case.
2) http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn2
But Yousry is not an isolated example. Wei-Skillern and Marciano's field research
 demonstrates that "networked nonprofits achieve their mission far more efficiently,
 effectively, and sustainably than they could have by working
 alone.
3)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn3
Among practitioners and academics alike, the insight that networks trump
 organizations is gaining traction.
The findings of Stanford MBA's Brafman and Beckstrom support their striking metaphor
 that likens centralized, top-down organizations to spiders (which die if beheaded) -
 contrasted with adaptive networks that function as starfish (which regenerate when
 cut up).
4)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn4
 
Similarly, social development researchers Taschereau and Bolger affirm that networks
 generate synergies: "In networks, 1 + 1 >2."
5)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn5
But as Yousry and I had learned in the trenches, effective networks are anything but
 haphazard. When mapping network emergence stages, practitioners Krebs and Holley
 spotlight the role of "network weavers", informal and active leaders with "the
 vision, the energy, and the social skills to connect to diverse individuals and
 groups and start information
 flowing."
6)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn6
Networking stems from a growing realization that our problems are far bigger than
 any one organization. Wei-Skillern and Marciano conclude that because "most social
 issues dwarf even the most well-resourced, well-managed nonprofit...it is
 wrongheaded for nonprofit leaders simply to build their organizations. Instead,
 they must build capacity outside of their organizations...focus[ing] on their
 mission, not their organization; on trust, not control; and on being a node, not a
 hub."
7)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn7
The Bridgespan Group in Boston advocates collaboration across organization lines to
 build strong fields for scaled
 impact.
8)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn8
 
Similarly, at Oxford, Hartigan promotes the "critical need to scale to theissues."
 However, this requires "giving up ownership of the issue, which can be difficult
 given the existence of egos, and...the reality that donors and investors drive
 organizations to differentiate themselves from others doing similar work, increasing
 fragmentation."
9)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn9
This preoccupation with ego is decried by Krebs and Holley: "if two or more
 community development organizations start battling over turf and control of the
 community then the result may be two or more competing...networks that ignore the
 larger community need and just focus on the survival of their own
 network."
10)http://dreamsindeed.org/news/
want-impact-networks-trump-organizations/#_edn10
Impact requires servant leaders to set aside ego to serve the common good.
Dreams InDeed is committed to serve as network weavers with visionaries in hard
 places. But talk is cheap. And egos resurgent. So we've learned that we need to
 live our core values - passion, humility, wisdom, faith, and integrity, as modeled
 in the life of Jesus Christ - to effectively embody this role.
Like Yousry, we aim to catalyze change that multiplies far beyond the visionaries
 with whom we have immediate contact. He doesn't aim to become a social
 entrepreneur rock-star. He aims to see the last family on his waiting list move
 into a decent home to live in dignity as God intended.
And he's getting there.
Why? He chooses to put the last, first. And the first, last. That's how the whole
 becomes more than the sum of the parts.