S15E01: Creating 100,000 change-makers (Etienne Salborn, SINA)

Richard Medcalf
What if the solution to global poverty wasn’t more aid, but more entrepreneurs? This is what I explore in this episode with Etan Salur, who has created impact at why consider an amazing scale. He started off fairly accidentally getting involved in, in, in Africa, uh, on a individual project and then learning one step at a time.

He realized that the current solutions, uh, were not working, and he’s created a model in Cena, the Social Innovation Academy. That actually breaks through the current paradigm and created a self-replicating, self-multiplying organization that has been raising up social entrepreneurs at the ground level for many years.

He’s now scaled to 19 communities across Africa, and he’s continuing to redefine education in leadership and impact. He’s won awards for his pioneering stance. But what I love about Ian is his humility, his desire to make an impact, and his radically decentralized model so that he creates a movement that grows beyond him rather than something that he personally needs to manage at every stage.

So if you wanna multiply leaders and leave a legacy that lasts. Listen in to Etan Salor of Cena. Welcome to the Impact Multiplier, CEO podcast. I’m Richard Metcalf, founder of X Quadrant, and my mission is to help the world’s top CEOs and entrepreneurs shift from incremental to exponential progress and create a huge positive impact on our world Now that requires you to reinvent yourself and transform your business.

So if you are ready to play a bigger game. Than ever before. I invite you to join us and become an impact multiplier, CEO.

Hi etn and welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. Well, it’s, it’s great to have you here. I find your journey really, really inspiring. You’re, uh, a social entrepreneur. You founded the social innovation, uh, academy, uh, which is a really amazing initiative, empowering disadvantaged youth and refugee communities in Africa.

Uh, to become self-sufficient social entrepreneurs. I know you started this in Uganda in 2 0 0 6 when you initiated an educational sponsorship program for orphans. Uh, you then went ahead and built Cena, uh, the Social Innovation Academy because you saw the need for long-term support and you’ve grown that into 18 different, uh, communities, or even more perhaps now in, uh, over six African countries.

And, um. What I love about this is that you’ve helped people transition from receiving aid to actually, uh, becoming change makers in their local community and making an impact. And I know you have a special term for this, which we can get into, which is called responsibility, which sounds really fascinating.

So welcome. Again, let’s just jump in by saying like, what say you on this journey, right? Um, you’ve been making a massive impact. You know, you’re not, not African by birth. I, I understand. So like how did you end up in Africa launching this, uh, you know, with this big vision?

Etienne Salborn
Yeah. I must say has never been kind of this big vision.

I need to do this and that’s what I’m going, I’m going to do. But it’s been a continuous journey of one challenge, leading a solution, leading to something that, again, had a challenge and. Along the way, we are where we are today, and so like you said, it started in 2006. I originally come from Germany. I’ve been born and raised in Berlin and didn’t want to join the obligatory German military basic service and look for an alternative and saw that there was a possibility to go abroad, and I ended up going to Uganda and lived in a rural orphanage for one year.

With about a 120 kids who I learned after finishing primary school couldn’t continue going to further education, so that was the start of a sponsorship program that allowed them to continue gonna school every year, kept me coming back once in a while and looking after them, and the sponsorship program.

In 2000.

Richard Medcalf
So let me interrupt. So you just went retro to rush over that.

Etienne Salborn
So you set up this sponsorship program, is that right? Exactly. First with about 10 kids, 15 kids. And then every year about 10 to 20 joined. So it started growing every year slowly and the kids would go into different boarding schools and families in Europe, um, would support them with the tuition fees to go to the boarding schools.. Amazing.

Richard Medcalf
So basically you just, when you were there, you saw this need, you said, need to get these children into school. How can I do it? And you..

Etienne Salborn
Exactly. They could continue after primary school because they were 11, 12 years old and had nowhere to go. So that was the starting point. The first problem needed a solution.

And then in 2013, the first generation of these kids that I had lived with as well in the orphanage for a year. Had grown up, they had finished high school, even had fantastic grades, but couldn’t find a job afterwards, or couldn’t go to university because tuition fees compared to the local income are really high.

So the goal that they would be able to self sustain afterwards wasn’t met. And that was a new challenge that needed to be solved. And so we actually sat together in like an open space and discussed what, how can we solve this challenge? And it was clear what is needed is a space that young people would create their own jobs.

By creating social enterprises, so not just any jobs, but also jobs that are good for the environment and good for the society. And that’s what we did in 2014. We created the first CINA community or CINA as an organization and the first community, and. Developed a framework you could say that transforms not just the former orphans, but especially any kind of marginalized, disadvantaged, young people to become social entrepreneurs.

To first of all discover themselves, find their purpose, align to the purpose, and then gain the skills and experiences needed to be able to live out their purpose and then create a social enterprise around that.

Richard Medcalf
So again, it sounds amazing. Um, when you talk about community, it’s like a, like a program. Is that right?

Like, it’s like a. A program for a couple of years where you kind of incubate these budding entrepreneurs, um, and then send them out into the wild? Or is this, is, do you see it slightly differently?

Etienne Salborn
Uh, community, the, the first one we build is actually a piece of land on top of a hill, about an hour outside of the capital.

Quite rural but not too far away. And there today it’s about a hundred people that live there or very close nearby it. And we have today, as you often mentioned, 19 today, actually started another senior community in Nepal. So that’s our 19th and the first also out of Africa. And every of the senior communities have.

Basically a physical space. Sometimes that’s an erum, sometimes that is, um, the land, um, in a rural area or integrated into, for example, a vocational school. And so that’s a community of typically 50 to a hundred people that either live there or come there on a regular basis, daily basis and transform to become social entrepreneurs.

Richard Medcalf
That’s amazing. And so what I know is that from that, those, that first community, you. You’ve got to getting onto towards a hundred at the moment. Not quite, but round numbers. It’s getting to be a about a hundred. Oh, and so over that 10 years period, you’ve, um, you’ve created, um, is that, is that right? A hundred comm No, it’s 19 communities.

A hundred Entrepreneurs. Is that right? I’m gonna get this right.

Etienne Salborn
Yeah. So it’s 19 locations, 19 communities whereby each of the communities is in the end its own. You could say legal entity for the community, for the people on the ground. By the people on the ground, which is important. So people from disadvantaged backgrounds are really in charge of themselves and they’re not working for someone else, but for themselves and create their own solutions.

And all those collectively over the last 10 years have created. A hundred, a couple more over a hundred social enterprises that are currently in existence. Of course, there have been a few more that started but maybe didn’t make it, but a hundred that are currently up and running operational, which have created around 1000 jobs as well.

Richard Medcalf
Right. Okay. So yeah, so it’s really a multiplicative effect, right? You build these communities, get a critical mass of people together. Some of them don’t work, some of them go big. Um, and then that allows you to multiply. And I think what I love about your, your vision Atin as we were speaking, uh, in an earlier conversation as we’re getting to know each other, is that you’ve got this vision to, you know, does the first 10 years right?

Creating perhaps, um, a hundred social enterprises over that first 10 years. And you wanna create a hundred thousand in the next 10 years. I think there’s really two sides to this story, right? Let’s look at these two phases, right? The first is how did you create the first hundred, right? So like, what was, what did you have to, what did you learn on that process? And then the second question we can get to perhaps afterwards is, what’s it gonna take then to scale?

A thousand fold. So let’s start on that first one. What are your learnings? I mean, uh, as you, because you said that you started with no big vision. It wasn’t like you said on day one, I’m gonna transform Africa or something. You said, oh, I’ve got some orphans here. They need schooling. And they’re like, these school, uh, people, you know, kids and now need jobs and they can’t get them.

And so you, you say you took it very, uh, incrementally solving the problem that is in front of you. So how did you then, you know, what were the problems you had to solve? At that point to kind of create what you have now, what were the main obstacles?

Etienne Salborn
Yeah, so I think. One of the main obstacles is myself, you could say.

So I knew that from the beginning and everything we designed and seen out collectively, but also in a way that it is self-organized. Distributed authority is not dependent on me. People. I’m not the boss or I’m not the one that people work for, but they work for themselves. And that’s, that’s key. I, I learned that also in my studies.

I studied peace and development in the master while the sponsorship program was, um, and realized.

I have to first have peace with myself and then I can go out and support maybe others in the same process, but it starts with me. And so the same, same idea for helping young people to become the change they want to see. They have to realize who they are. They have to align to their purpose and then be the change they want to see by implementing, for example, social enterprise.

So with that one learning was that it cannot be also knowing the background that so many people have come to Africa and said, this is wrong. This is right. You should do this in this way. And that almost never really lasted beyond the person telling people what to do. So we have a completely different approach that is really the people for themselves and also holding each other accountable.

So we using. Adopt version of Holacracy that distributes authority to keep the organization running. But it also becomes, over the years, it became kind of the curriculum. So young people come in often from kind of a state of survival feeling maybe they’re a failure in society because society has labeled them as such.

Having gone through traumatic experiences. People even have gone through, um, events like abduction and becoming a child soldier or having traumatic experiences such as rape or sexual violence and others. And many have not gone far in formal education. So. Helping the young people, first of all, to discover themselves.

That was a big learning. To develop the individuals. And we spent about three months in the beginning in the training that helps that people almost transform, like caterpillars become butterflies, meaning the young people might not even realize that they have the potential to transform. ’cause the environment they’re in, it might not happen.

But then when they come to Cena, they realize the difficult, difficult past doesn’t have to define their future. They can redefine their future, they can set new goals, they. Learn the tools, how to work on the goals every day and make them happen, and that then they become like butterflies. They actually literally almost start flying.

‘Cause they know what they want to do in life, but then they don’t have yet the skills to make that happen. And that’s where the self organization comes in, that people take up roles and responsibilities. Aligning to their purpose. Take up roles and finance, if that’s in your interest. Take up roles and training if that’s in your interest.

So every senior community in the end is run by the people. There’s no outsiders that need to come in. I’m not giving any sessions, but it’s people that have gone through the program that become key role fillers and run the organization, which also means there’s almost no staff. People become the staff, the beneficiaries become the staff, and they are then the ones keeping it running, keeping it going.

In the end, living with their own enterprise at some point, and in the meantime, growing personally, professionally, and also keeping the running costs of each of the communities low because you don’t need to pay stuff.

Richard Medcalf
Amazing. So, yeah, I love the way you’ve really taken away the, the friction to growth, right?

Because it’s self sustaining. It’s not a structure you have to impose. So two questions. I suppose the first question is. What’s one of the kind of the most helpful reframes that people have or an exercise that they do like in that three months when you’re helping them discover themselves and get over their kind of traumatic past or their limiting beliefs about what’s possible?

What’s like a moment which tends to kind of really create an aha moment for them? Yeah, there’s several.

Etienne Salborn
Ones that we have inbuilt or, and they’re also a little bit adjusted according to the different needs. We have almost half of the senior communities, for example, in refugee camps or refugee settlements.

So that’s a little bit a different environment than maybe in a city or in an in a rural environment. So people have with a framework the liberty, or they have to adopt it. It’s a little bit more like nature replicates the tree has all the DNA or the seed has all the DNA it needs for growing in a different location, but then it has to locally adopt and the young tree will look different than another tree, but.

It’s the same species, so people have to look at, adapt and have found some of their own sessions that are done, again, informing each other. Maybe this has worked for us. I can also try this here, but some that, for example, are typical is within the first three months that we also call a confusion state.

It can be quite confusing, um, is people come from, again, this often failed educational system where there was a lot of exams and maybe they didn’t do well on them. And then Encina, there’s no exams, there’s no grades or anything like that. But then we have a specific activity that we do, which is a little bit radical, but really transformational and has worked well.

So for the well, so. The facilitator come in the day before I’m doing something more, a little bit like a lecture style, um, session. And then the next day same person comes back and says, very angrily, you didn’t pay attention. Now we’re going to do an exam. And whoever’s going to fail it have to leave, has to leave.

Um, Cino has to leave the organization. So put people and a lot of pressure they know from back from the school system and some people even start crying. Um, and that’s okay ’cause then they do. And we collect it, put it on the ground, and literally set it on fire, burn it in the room, and then other people start crying.

The ones that thought maybe they did well, and like, why are you burning it? It’s so they don’t understand, and that’s leading to a discussion. Why don’t we do exomes in Cena? Why are you not learning for the teacher? And you have to find the right answer, but why are we helping you to discover your own answers or answers that no one has found in the world, like how to solve climate change or other things that have no answers.

So it’s leading to kind of an introduction into the system of CNA and how it’s different. And that, for example, has, has always worked well.

Richard Medcalf
Mm, wow. Yeah. Amazing. Uh, so yeah, I love these, uh. Well, it really shows, right? You’ve been thinking very carefully right, about the experience that you’re taking people through and it’s, there’s a freedom to evolve with that, as you said, and for each community to figure out what its unique, uh, take is going to be.

Which kind of leads me to the second question I had as you were sharing this, which is, what is the structure that you do put in place? Because, you know, you’re saying basically we, you’re not doing it. You, you know, to employ a, a special team to do this. It’s the actual beneficiaries who then become the leaders and who then raise up the next generation, uh, within the system.

And so. Is there some need for some like cent, you know, what is the need for the centralized component or the oversight or the structuring or the creating the common language or vocabulary or maintaining those standards? Yeah. How do you kinda see your role, um, in creating something that’s recognizably seen right.

Versus a bunch of. People meeting other people.

Etienne Salborn
Yeah. That also evolved a little bit over the years. So we started with this one community in 2014, 2016. There was the first group of refugees that found CINA and joined and said, if the goal is for us to create a social enterprise, can we replicate the model of CINA and make that our social enterprise?

And so we supported them and they took it to the ref, and then we realized it is actually scalable and it can be replicated. In, in new locations. And so from there, many more started coming up, organizations, founders or maybe teams or communities, founders, and joined and said, we want to replicate this.

And so 2019, when we had about six, seven, um, uh, communities, we realized it needs a little bit more structuring. It cannot just be mushrooms that come up in any place without kind of. Understanding how and why it works. So we started to more codify the framework, writing it down and make it publicly available, um, but also designing what we call a replication journey, or also refer to it as the change maker, maker.

Because change makers are the entrepreneurs, and we need people that make the change makers. So they’re the changemaker makers. And so they, they are typically from the same background, from disadvantaged backgrounds, having this transformation from butterfly, uh, becoming butterflies. So going through the Cena framework as anyone else, but then also we train them on why understanding deeply why it is in the way it is so they can also adopt it because they have to adopt it locally.

And then key elements like the self organization, but also finance and training. And so they’re really good in all the different elements. And it’s a team, typically three people that come to the main senior community or established senior community, spend there about a year. To really go through and then going back to their own communities and then getting it started.

So that means often it has worked super well because people, it has given themselves so much that they want to pay it forward and that works really well. But also because they have had this own experience, they have been through it, they understand the values, and it’s a lot about values. Um, kind of the, the community system, um, because it’s much more.

The people than it is maybe about writing down how. Makes sense to have. But it’s like when you play football, you don’t want to check the rules in the game. You want to kind of play the game and if there’s a critical situation, maybe then you go back to the rule book and check. So people rather learn by playing and then can play somewhere else as well.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So I love this fact that you have this change maker make it journey. So it does involve giving them of your, some of your concepts and distinctions, um, but then also letting them get back into it fairly quickly by the sound of it. So do you do a thing where they, like, they, they have a go, then they come back and they kind of huddle and reflect on how it’s going and then go back in?

Or was it more that you take them away, you train them up and you set, you, you you put them back out there?

Etienne Salborn
Yeah. That it was kind of more from the beginning crafting almost like the seed that have all the DNA to grow in a different environment, and then I have to grow on their own. Then we realized, okay, there’s more support needed and if it’s close by to many other senior communities.

So for example, in Uganda we have the. It’s easy to have a movement. People can visit each other or can uh, come for specific trainings or support each other. If we have senior communities like now Nepal, that are quite far away, that becomes more challenging. So we do have now a team that we call nomads.

Who can, uh, highly trained, they have experiences in different senior communities in many different roles, or some have even been in many different communities over time. And then if there’s some support needed, we can send them to a community and they spend their longer period of time, maybe up to six months.

And now we are also running. Kind of an experiment that they will go, for example, to Nigeria soon. Um, whereby Nigerians have been in Uganda only for six months to shorten the time of replication, and then they go on the ground and help the team getting started. And then the next evolution will even be that we have a team of skilled, experienced people that can go into altogether a new community.

So again, the time of application is almost Hal, because then they can start from the beginning having beneficiaries who. Also trainers, mentors, coaches become co-owners of the organization or running the organization. And so then the original team that came to start, it slowly goes out and the community keeps on running with kind of a regenerative cycle where again, people, beneficiaries become the owners of the organization and any end transition out with their own enterprises and new ones, keep it running.

Richard Medcalf
I hope you’re enjoying this conversation. This is just a quick interlude to remind you that my book making time for strategy is now available. If you want to be less busy and more successful, I highly recommend that you check it out. Why not head over to making time for strategy.com to find out the details?

Now, back to the conversation. Uh, yeah. Amazing. Uh, so tell me a bit about the, um, the, this kind of key mindset transformation that, it sounds like you’ve had to, you’ve had to bake, bake very much into, uh, into, um, into the program, which is really about, I think it’s about, as I understood from our previous conversation, um, people perhaps often come with a sense that they need to be told what to do by somebody.

And you actually really empower them to say, no, you are a change maker, right? You get to create this journey yourself. Um, and you talk about free responsibility as one of your key parts of your DNA. So just do you wanna talk about how that came about and like how you see that, that distinction or that language helping people to kind of really own their futures?

Etienne Salbor
Yeah, so the starting point was kind of this educational system. In many countries, um, like Uganda, but similar countries in the region as well. It’s often still, I would say, lict of colonial times. People needed to run specific things and only operate them without even understanding them. That was okay, um, back then.

But today that system is still kind of there. Just learn and memorize and regurgitate information. There’s hardly any teamwork. Partner work challenges to overcome new solutions to be found. That’s not really there in the current educational system. So having people from that background now start their own enterprises.

Yes. People in, for example, in Uganda are very entrepreneurial. It’s one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world, but that’s out of necessity to survive. So what people will do is riding a motorcycle, taxi, selling stuff on the streets, agriculture as well. They have their own land. So things that can help them survive and that’s great, but not something that will transform the economy, that will create jobs for others, or at best, maybe for a couple of people.

So we wanted to take them to the next level, how to create a real enterprise, a company that employs tens, hundreds, thousands of people and also helps the economy by really paying taxes and everything. So that was a difficult starting point to overcome and responsibility has been our philosophy. That has made that possible.

So people come into the organizations, into the different senior communities and are given a lot of freedom, um, ’cause they’re co-owning it, co-running it, but it has to come together with the responsibilities. That’s why it’s one word in our senior language that. It’s not, cannot be separated. It has to be together.

The freedom must come with the responsibility. And so the more responsibility people take up by, for example, taking up small roles, the more freedom again they will gain, which is a natural thing. If I, if you lend out some money and someone pays a buck, you might be inclined to lend a little bit more money next time because you’re sure the person’s going to pay it back.

So similar idea, people take up roles in the self-organized system and do them well, even if it’s a very tiny role. They will take up bigger roles and bigger roles and bigger roles, and then be in charge of budgets and be in charge of higher decisions and be already a leader within an element of the community.

And that’s all free responsibility. And people have to also, when it comes to social enterprises, be aware what are the challenges we want to solve. And what are the root causes of the challenges and also the solutions we are creating. Is it really creating a solution or is it creating new challenges? So really always be aware, the freedom I have to do something.

What are, where does it stop and maybe where does it infringe or touch upon the freedom of others and be very conscious about that. And so. That’s also kind of our purpose that we’d love to see in the end. Almost like a free responsible world. If everyone would always consider that, what’s the freedom?

But how’s that also the responsibility that counts it. I think the world would be a much different place. In a much better place.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. So, so look, the philosophy and the way that you’d be able to create this replicate, replicating, um, uh, entity. In fact, it reminds me of. A lot of work I do within, within companies.

Right. Because there’s one thing about having leaders and there’s, but there’s one thing about having leaders who build other leaders, and it’s what you were saying about change maker makers. I think for many, many leaders, they are, of least frank, they’re failing at the responsibility and opportunity to raise up other leaders because what they’ll tend to say is, I just don’t have the right people around me.

You know, like I, you know, I’ve been, I’ve inherited some people or whatever. They’re not operating at the right level, which basically what they’re really saying if they, when you say like that is, it’s like, oh, I just need to import other people who have been properly trained. Right? And, you know, or I’m looking for the magical unicorns, but what you really.

What I love about what you’re doing is you say, no, no. Everyone’s, you know, they might come in with a certain way of thinking, uh, but actually, well, a, we have a journey for them to help them step into new levels of leadership, and then we have a, a journey to help them then. Raise up the next generation and start to multiply the number of leaders within this entity, right?

Because entrepreneurs, they’re leaders, right? But even within a normal enterprise, uh, there’s the same dynamic going on. And so I think what you are sharing here is inspiring for what you’re doing in its own world and relevant to perhaps many other movements, but it’s also relevant for every leader because.

If you can make leaders who can make leaders, then suddenly you are leading a movement of change in whatever industry you’re in. So I do love this, uh, angle. So let’s talk about the next stage, which is, um, at Ian. You said maybe one more thing to, to add there, which.

Etienne Salborn
If you think it through, in the end, what we’re trying to do is always becoming obsolete like myself, within a role, within a community, within an enterprise.

Because for example, if you a social enterprising, you’re really trying to solve a challenge, a problem I. The goal shouldn’t be to sustain forever. It’s not sustainability, but the goal is to actually have the problem solved. And if it’s solved, you’re done. Maybe you move on to different geography or you’re moving on to different field.

But the problem should be solvable. And as well, for me or for other leaders, it’s the goal should be to empower others to take it over and do it better than I can, and then I can of course move to something else, or the growth or scalability of it. Um, but that’s often what I see. People not so much considering they’re doing it well and they’re standing in the way, potentially of others, taking it over, doing it equally well or even better.

And it’s almost like in a forest, always like natural, um, metaphors in the forest. If there’s a giant tree, it, no one around it, no other three around the world really have the chance to grow. But if that tree falls, many other trees will come up and maybe they will do something, um, better than the original tree did, right?

Because they have the space for it, but often we don’t allow for that space.

Richard Medcalf
I love brilliant, beautiful metaphor. I love it. Um, how did you experience that yourself? So were there moments when you were like actually worried about like, am I giving up too much control? Am I like letting this thing, is it gonna survive without.

Or me making this happen? Or was it very natural process for you? Or did you have to kind of get over some of your own fears? About that process of letting go.

Etienne Salborn
Of course sometimes there was always fears involved, is this going to work? Um, but I think I had always this determination that it will work or never the doubt that it will not.

Um, but specific elements maybe. For example, we talked about the confusion stage. So someone is having this role of coordinating it, who is going to give what session, supporting them to do it, that the cycle can actually happen, that people become from beneficiaries, other com trainers. And then, um, the cycles there.

So that role that we call, for example, the confusion stage coordinator is key. And for example, in the first community, that role has changed every 1, 2, 3 years to someone else taking it over. And for the first few years, it always felt like. Or is this going to work? Is everything going to collapse? Because that’s the beginning, and if that’s not working, then everything else later will also not work.

And sometimes in the beginning felt, for me at least, like a miracle that it did work and then now it’s 10 years and it still feels like. It might not work, but I think if the system and, uh, it’s really more about the system. The system has enough people within it that understand it well and that have the values, it’ll kind of self-correct.

Of course it’ll divert, but left and right once in a while. But it comes back in centers and, and we have the inbuilt problem basically in every single community that. There’s maybe about one third people have just come in, they have no idea how this works, and they have this complete different mindset and are going through transformation.

You have maybe one third who understand it well, but they are already transitioning out with their own enterprises or other opportunities. And then you have maybe one third who are somehow in the middle. Only potentially five to 10 people who really get it, who are there, um, to hold it together. And that can be enough for about 50 to a hundred people.

And with that gave, gave me, or many of us more con confidence that that’s enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to have that critical mass to keep it evolving and regenerating.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Amazing. I love these. Um, I mean really practical. Um. Way of understanding how you’ve operationalized this. So let’s talk about the next phase, which is over the next 10 years, you want, say you want to create a hundred thousand social enterprises across the continent, right?

So that’s really a hun a hundred, a thousand times, uh, a change. So at this point, what’s gonna need to shift to make that possible? Is it really nothing? Is it just, I gotta let we have the model, it’s just gonna naturally propagate or others? Or is there something else which you see other moves you might need to start to make?

To realize that vision.

Etienne Salborn
Yeah, so first of all, it has, Cena has the potential, the framework has the potential to almost scale exponentially because. It’s not that we’re scaling an organization to have many branches that will be much more resource intensive and difficult to manage, but we are helping people to create their own organizations based on the framework, and then have this kind of community ecosystem of all the communities and.

It started with just maybe one replication per year. Then it was 2, 3, 5. Now we are about five to seven per year, and that’s currently the bottleneck that one of the main communities can host to. People have to go through it and then take it to another level. So that’s where what we’re changing right now is experimenting with.

How does it work if people come for a shorter timeframe and then going, for example, to Nigeria to support the setup? And then the next level is that a whole team, again, can go to a complete new location and have it started there, and then at the same time. What is starting to happen is that existing senior communities that have replicated are also starting to replicate themselves.

So for example, we are working in one refugee camp with South Sudanese refugees and South Sudan has become much more stable. So many people are thinking of how do we take it back now to South Sudan to create more opportunities as well in South. So they’re going to be the ones that maybe replicated again to a new location and, and.

It’s basically unleashed, right? Because we can have new teams go into new locations, they get it started, can host teams and existing senior communities who almost like sell, split and go somewhere else to create a new um, community. And with that, um, it is really, again, decentralized. But what keeps us all together is the purpose, the values, and this framework.

That also collectively evolves people’s best practices from different communities are brought back into it and it evolves. And so everyone owns it. Everyone can make changes to it. And this way I do believe, of course it’s an ambitious goal, but it can be possible to have a thousand senior communities that have created a hundred thousand um, enterprises by within the next 10 years.

And we already coming to, I would say, tipping point. More traditional institutions are starting to partner with us, and that can later as well change the whole system that, for example, two of the newer senior communities from last year in vocational centers who have potentially challenged that young people pay tuition fees.

Gain skills, gain a certificate, but then don’t find a job. So what’s the point? And now alumni of those professional centers are the ones that are having a senior community in it, or next to it, working with alumni to create their own enterprises to become change makers. Or we are working with a local government in Nigeria for the replication there, which is also, again, kind of a different system.

That they know within their educational system and now seniors coming in. And maybe it will create a change that, not just Nigeria, but in many places where senior communities are present, the local communities, the countries, the regions might see that. Okay. Do we still need, basically one teacher that stands in front tells people what is right and wrong, or can education have a different approach that people become the teachers themselves?

And also for specific purpose, not just to gain knowledge and skills, but to actually in the end create something tangible like a social enterprise can create change.

Richard Medcalf
I love the way that you’ve identified this bottleneck and you know, you’re very clear because at different stages the bottleneck was different, right?

Uh, and, and now you’re saying it’s actually, yeah. Now it’s a replication game. Right. And we need to kind of like track that. Um, there’s plenty more things we can go. I, there’s many more questions coming to mind, but I’m wary of time. So perhaps what I’d like to look at is, uh, just as we start to wrap up here, is.

Your own personal leadership. Obviously this has been an incremental journey for you. As you said, you took one challenge after another and after another, rather than having a 20 year, you know, vision from, from the start. But what, what’s an area where you feel you, you know, what’s your stretch as a leader?

Where’s something you’re gonna need to do differently? Let go of something or start doing something different in order to perhaps create or even exceed the ambitious vision that you have for this, uh, network.

Etienne Salborn
Yeah, so. I think generally I love learning and I’m aware that I know maybe many things, but also many things I don’t know at all, even if I think I know them, there’s people that can do that much better.

So do always listen and collectively drive things forward. And that’s still especially a little bit coupled with a little bit of a perfectionist that I. The approach that I have to let go of that. Not everything needs to be perfect, um, but it needs to be in holocracy there’s a saying. It needs to be good enough for now, safe enough to try and, and from there things will, will evolve and, and develop.

And I think also for my own. Leadership journey. I love, um, anything to do that keeps me in balance from mountain unicycling in Uganda to, um, other things like that. Um, and that’s also something that many approaches, for example, a laughing continent when it comes to things to do with. Finding your own personal wellbeing, maybe they’re not as much or the whole field of psychology developed yet as another parts of the world, and so that’s also something to learn from.

But again, maybe it’s not the right approach that we should copy and say, this is again, what you should do, that you need to do meditation like that, because in India or wherever it works, but finding ways that people can interpret it themselves and develop their own, or finding local strength. And then if it works in one place, they can be the ones suggesting it to another and say, this has worked for us and we can, um, maybe support you to try it out and see if it works for you.

And again, so then my role, role as, as a whole is not so much. Telling people what is right and wrong, what they should do, but rather this kind of facilitation approach that holds it all together, that asks the right questions, that brings the right people in the right room and so on. And of course, that sometimes goes against a little bit the more traditional hierarchical definition of a leader.

And even for myself, sometimes it’s not always easy to then basically shut up and listen and first understand before offering any ideas or solutions.

Richard Medcalf
Hmm. Yeah. Thank you for, for me being open on that. Uh, I guess first my final question then is, um, what fuels this journey, right? Because you said you’re right, you’ve had to like learn to let go, right?

Like not. Be the perfectionist who kind of has control on everything and has actually progressively, you’ve stepped back and you’ve stepped back and you’ve kind of let this thing fly by making yourself obsolete in different ways. So like, what’s been the, what’s the kind of the, what’s the fire in your belly underneath all of this?

Because as you come over, you present at somebody who’s very calm and um. You know, this is just kind of natural, one step after another. Right. But what you’ve created is extraordinary, and this probably wasn’t always an easy journey. There were probably plenty of difficulties along the way. So what’s kept you going on this when you could have perhaps found an easier, less extraordinary, but perhaps, uh, less hard work or, or so forth?

Etienne Salborn
Yeah. First of all, I love what I’m doing. I, I don’t want to do anything else. And what fuels that is, first of all, was. This challenge that needed the solution and, and working on that. But then over the years, just to see what is possible, how people can transform. And what we haven’t maybe touched upon, but I want to give one example that illustrates that is what can come out?

How do those social enterprises look like and what do they do? And that’s really also the driving motivation, inspiration. What else is possible, what else can can be created? So like one example is a young lady that. Went through the whole journey that I’ve already, um, outlined who grew up in the orphanage in 2006, and the orphanage was close to Lake Victoria, which meant a lot of mosquitoes, a lot of malaria, and she suffered a lot from malaria.

And then she joined a sponsorship program and then came to CINA after high school and they aligned it. She’s not the only one suffering and almost dying of malaria because it’s the biggest killer for young people. For children below five in Africa and. She became basically the solution or the change she wanted to see by creating a social enterprise encina that is providing a mosquito, reell and soap and other mosquito repellent products, but mostly mosquito repellent soap that they’re selling.

For example, as a social business model into the tourism sector, hotels need a piece of soap in every room, every day, and that profit is used to subsidize sales into the villages where mothers with young kids. Needed the most, but typically couldn’t afford it. So with the subsidies of the tourism sector, they’re able to sell the soap into the villages at the same price as any other ordinary soap and have, we don’t know how many, but have actually saved lives and has been, um, scientifically proven that there’s a reduction of malaria cases and it works.

And today they have about 60 employees, their on factory and the young lady. I met when she was 11 years old. Today is really a leader that is inspiring thousands of other women across Africa, having spoken on platforms like the World Economic Forum in South Africa and things like that to, um, yeah, be a role model.

And that’s just beyond words. That I could have never imagined that this, this is possible. And again, it gives so much hope and inspiration to others. And sometimes it’s also the indirect impact that we never consider. Sometimes I go somewhere and then I meet someone and says, oh, I know Sena and has inspired me.

We’ve also started to build houses out of plastic bottles, something we’ve done and as an social enterprise as well because of what I saw on cna. And so sometimes, um, it’s just. To fuel what, what next, what’s possible and how can we make the world a better place, which is highly needed. Couldn’t agree more.

Richard Medcalf
This has been a fantastic conversation. Um, a tour de force really of the magic of multiplication, uh, which, uh, my, my business is called X Quadrant. And the reason I put the X in it was because I believe so powerfully in the idea of multiplying, uh, leaders. And you’re a living example. Brilliant example of what’s possible when you really, really go for that.

So thank you for everything that you’re doing, and what I loved as well is really just that final framing of you started with challenge. And you’ve kind of moved into possibility. I think it’s just a really helpful lens actually, to look at life through sometimes, because often we look at, we need to solve challenges, and at some point we can go start to go, oh, what else might be possible?

Right? What do we want to create to this point? What could, what could we do beyond the immediate. Challenges we’re coming up with. And I think, uh, when people start thinking like that, then you get this 10 x vision, a hundred x vision, thousand X vision, such as the one you’re pursuing today. So, um, thank you for this, uh, fascinating conversation.

Look forward to, uh, following along on the journey. Um, thanks so much. Thanks again for having me. And it was a pleasure. Thanks, Fatia. Bye-bye. Well, that’s a wrap. If you received value from this conversation, please do leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We deeply appreciate it. And if you’d like to check out the show notes from this episode, head to x quadrant.com/podcast where you’ll find all the details.

Now finally, when you’re in top leadership who supports and challenges you at a deep level to help you multiply your impact, discover more about the different ways we can support you@xquadrant.com.