Post on 07-May-2015
description
PATRI Framework for Scaling Social Business
Rizwan TayabaliSupported by Ashoka Globalizer
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Adapted from
The PATRI Framework for Scaling Social Impact
© Rizwan Tayabali, 2014
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Pre-Conditions1. You are a social business i.e. Your purpose is to create
impact, ideally through the use of business models.
2. You are structured either commercially or as a non-profit with revenue streams.
3. You have a proven business model that creates impact on a localised level, and that impact is tested and proven.
4. You have grown the business model to some degree already and understand what it takes to replicate it.
5. You want to know if your social business model is scalable, and whether or not it makes sense to invest in scaling.
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Caveats1. There is no magic one-size-fits-all process that will
apply across the board. This framework covers the most important considerations but you may have to pick and choose what applies to you.
2. Scaling is rarely a linear process. While the framework is necessarily laid out step-by-step, you can work through the different pieces in parallel or separately as needed.
3. This framework is focused on scaling rather than growth. If you are looking to incrementally set up operations in another location or enter another market, then this framework will still offer you value, but some aspects of it may only be applicable a bit further down the line.
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Scaling vs. Growth
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While scaling is often used as an interchangeable term for growth, there is
in fact an important distinction ...
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Growth refers to an incremental increase in impact or revenue with a directly correlated
(incremental) increase in resources
Scaling however, refers to an exponential increase in impact or revenue but with only an
incremental increase in resources
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Given the size of need related to many social issues, combined with the fact that there are
limited resources for addressing those needs, it is often more practical to think in terms of
scaling rather than growth.
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Unless your model was designed for scaling right from the start, separating the scale of impact or revenue from being limited by the size of your operations typically requires a
degree of redesign.
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Growth therefore has primarily operational implications, while scaling has both design
and operational implications.
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Understanding This Guide
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This guide adapts the PATRI Framework for scaling social businesses in particular.
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It will take you step by step through a series of key questions that will help you
decide whether or not scaling is feasible for you and if so, to produce an effective scaling plan
that you can follow during implementation.
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The level of robustness with which you review each question will strongly influence
your ability to scale without necessarily suffering the growing pains, financial stresses
and impact losses that organisations can experience when scaling.
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The 5 major risks to successful scaling are
1. Unclear purpose2. Inapplicable design
3. Non-transferable processes4. Unprepared teams
5. Poor implementation planning
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Each stage of the framework addresses these different pitfalls in scaling, and is split into
a series of key factors that will help you manage both risks and outcomes.
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At it’s core, the Framework asks 5 questions
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1
Is your purpose clear and well defined?
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2
Is your solution applicable at scale?
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3
Is your model systematised and transferable?
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4
Is your organisation ready to scale?
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5
Is your implementation planning robust?
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PATRI Framework
IPurpose
IIApplicability
(Viability)
IIITransferability
IVReadiness
VImplementation
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IPurpose
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The 1st step of the Framework is to define purpose and targets, without which you have
no sensible basis for planning or design.
Purpose
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Scaling social businesses can become a highly operational and financially focused
activity that can cause focus to shift towards operational growth and away from
outcomes when scaling.
Purpose
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To mitigate against mission drift, it iscritical to ensure that you have clarity of
purpose and direction before embarking on your scaling endeavour.
Purpose
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Key Factors
Primary Goal
Problem Definition
SelectionVision
Targets
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Purpose
As a social business, is your primary goal to increase impact or drive business growth?
Purpose
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Primary Goal
Do you understand the true scale of the problem you are trying to address?
Purpose
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Problem Definition
Do you have an initial selection of areas or demographics for scaling
based on urgency of need?
Purpose
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Selection
Do you have a clear vision of what the problem will look like
when it’s fixed on a larger scale?
Purpose
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Vision
Do you have outcome based targets for scaling?
Purpose
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Targets
Clarifying your purpose will play a key role in ensuring that you have a strong basis for
decision-making, not only when reviewing design but also in situations where financial
survival threatens quality of impact.
Purpose
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If you need further help with addressing purpose, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Defining Purpose: A Guide To Scaling Social Business”
Purpose
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IIApplicability
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The 2nd step of the Framework is to understand whether or not your solution is capable of achieving your chosen targets
i.e. if it will still be applicable and viable at the scale you are aiming for.
Applicability (Viability)
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Operating practices and models that apply on a local level do not necessarily apply on a
larger scale.
Depending on your model and how it is designed and delivered, scaling can either bring
economies or a series of additional costs.
Applicability (Viability)
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In the case of social businesses, whether or not a solution will be applicable at scale hinges
primarily around whether or not it will be financially viable at scale.
Applicability (Viability)
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The main aim of assessing viability is thus to check whether or not your model is likely to
1. Scale as is2. Need some tweaking,
3. Require significant rework, or 4. Not be scalable at all
Applicability (Viability)
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Key Factors
Demand
Market Variances
Cost Effectiveness
CompetitionFeasibilityof Organic
Growth
Efficiencies& Scale
Economies
Financing
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Applicability (Viability)
Is there a demand for your impact-oriented product or service?
Applicability (Viability)
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Demand
Are there significant variations in market dynamics at scale?
Applicability (Viability)
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Market Variances
Will your business model be cost effective at scale?
Applicability (Viability)
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Cost Effectiveness
Does your model have competitors in the environments you have chosen for scaling?
1. Non-profit providers2. Equivalent social businesses
3. Purely commercial competitors
Applicability (Viability)
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Competition
Could you realistically grow your business model organically to meet
the size of need or demand?
Applicability (Viability)
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Feasibilityof Organic
Growth
Will scaling generate economies that could improve viability?
Applicability (Viability)
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Efficiencies& Scale
Economies
Will you need significant external financing, and will that finance be affordable?
Applicability (Viability)
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Financing
By this stage you should have a good sense of whether or not your business model is likely to
be financially viable when scaling.
Applicability (Viability)
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If your business model appears viable, then it is worth testing the waters externally
to see if you can raise interest in terms of support or finance.
For this you will need:1. A high-level business plan
2. A summary pitch for raising money
Applicability (Viability)
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If it doesn’t seem to be viable, then you could loop back through the process and reconsider
1. Your chosen areas or demographics2. The pathways you have chosen for scaling
Applicability (Viability)
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If you do however find that it isn’t feasible to scale at all, then you could still consider
increasing the reach of your impact indirectly, by making your business model open and
available for others to copy and improve upon.
Applicability (Viability)
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If you need further help with addressing applicability, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Applicability at Scale: A Guide To Scaling Social Business”
Applicability (Viability)
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IIITransferability
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The 3rd step of the Framework is to enable your model to be replicated
or delivered by others
i.e. to ensure that it is systematic and transferable for use in scaling, either by your
own teams or by external partners.
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IIITransferability
Transferability essentially refers to having systematic ways of working that allow you to
grow, develop, evolve or replicate methodologies and processes in a quality
controlled fashion.
Applicability
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IIITransferability
It is a critical foundation for the replicability needed in scaling, and for ensuring a
standardised quality of output and impact..
Applicability
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IIITransferability
Finally, systematising your processes will also improve efficiency and effectiveness in delivery.
Applicability
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IIITransferability
Key Factors
Core Components
Critical Programmes
Chronological Priority
Impact Monitoring
Quality Control
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IIITransferability
Do you have a good understanding of how the components of your model fit together in order
to create both impact and financial viability?
Applicability
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IIITransferability
Core Components
Do you have a good understanding of which programs are critical for each component?
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Do you have systematic guidelines, processes and operating standards for each of these
critical programs?
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IIITransferability
Critical Programmes
Do you have a good understanding of the chronological operational priority for setting up
the delivery of these programs in the order needed to ensure impact and financial viability?
Applicability
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IIITransferability
Chronological Priority
Do you have a systematic impact monitoring methodology?
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IIITransferability
Impact Monitoring
Do you have a formal quality control mechanism?
IIITransferability
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Quality Control
At this stage, you should ideally aim for a practical level of documentation that is
enough to ensure that your model is at least consistently replicable by within the boundaries
of your own organisation.
ApplicabilityIIITransferability
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If and when you do get to the stage of working with partners, you can then formalise
this documentation for external use.
ApplicabilityIIITransferability
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If you need further help with addressing transferability, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Transferability for Scale: A Guide To Scaling Social Business”
IIITransferability
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IVReadiness
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The 4th step of the Framework is to establish whether or not your organisation and people
are ready for scaling, and if not, what you can do about it.
IVReadiness
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Once you know exactly what it is you plan to scale, you can begin to evaluate if scaling
will in fact be something you can feasibly follow through without putting your impact or
organisation at serious risk.
IVReadiness
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It is worth evaluating organisational readiness prior to implementation because the costs involved are typically significant, not just in
terms of hardware, but also in terms of time and effort required to embed new working
practices.
IVReadiness
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Once you go past this stage, you will also begin to commit significant resources to scaling,and it will get harder and more painful to
back out or change direction if things don’t work out as planned.
IVReadiness
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As the costs and implications aggregate, this therefore is the final stage at which you can safely decide whether or not to proceed with
scaling in the way you expect.
IVReadiness
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Key Factors
Organisational Design
Optimal Size
Decision Making
Resistance to ChangeKnowledge
Technology
Infrastructure
IVReadiness
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Does your organisational design aid scaling?
IVReadiness
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Organisational Design
Do you understand the optimal size and structure needed for achieving your
chosen impact and scaling targets?
1. Skills2. Capacity3. Teams
IVReadiness
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Optimal Size
Is your organisation dependent on a single/primary decision maker for operations
and management?
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If so, do they have spare capacity to manage the design and implementation needed for scaling?
IVReadiness
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Decision Making
Are you and your teams/staff aware of, and bought into, the changes and challenges
that scaling will bring?
IVReadiness
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Resistance to Change
Does your organisation have a strong knowledge sharing and learning culture?
IVReadiness
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Knowledge
Do you have a capable and scalable technology infrastructure?
IVReadiness
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Technology
Is your current physical infrastructure capable of supporting the organisational growth that is
likely to result from scaling?
IVReadiness
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Infrastructure
If the costs of organisational readiness seem too high, you could consider sharing and re-use
strategies, or limit your scale ambitions to prevent overloading your physical
and logistical resources.
IVReadiness
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You could also adjust your design to increase independence and autonomy of partners or
local units to reduce the load on your organisation, or simply decide to let others
scale your impact for you by making your model replicable and openly available for them to
independently use and apply.
IVReadiness
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If you need further help with addressing readiness, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Readiness to Scale: A Guide To Scaling Social Business”
IVReadiness
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VImplementation
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The 5th and final step of the Framework is to plan the journey and manage implementation
when scaling.
VImplementation
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Everything up to this point falls under the category of due diligence, not only to help you adjust your design to work on a larger scale,
but also to decide whether or not to scale at all.
From here on however, your primary challenges will relate to the practicalities of
execution (implementation).
VImplementation
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A robust scaling plan will be essential if you are to be successful in raising
the support needed to scale.
It will also be critical in helping you scale without all the usual growing pains that
organisations typically suffer from.
VImplementation
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For this you will need an implementation roadmap
VImplementation
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A roadmap is an outline of all the different activities that comprise implementation, laid
out in dependency order, over whatever timeframe you believe is sensible for execution.
It is a useful visual aid for planning, and if converted into a Gantt chart, should become
your primary implementation management tool.
VImplementation
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The process of scaling can be broken into five phases ...
VImplementation
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Key Phases
1 Planning
2 Resourcing
3Set-up
4Execution
5 Impact
Monitoring & Quality Control
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VImplementation
While these phases have a chronological order of dependency, in practice various aspects
can and do happen in parallel.
For clarity however, it is worth starting with a plan that clearly shows dependencies and
delineates between the phases.
VImplementation
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This is the first stage of implementation, primarily involving diligence around purpose,
applicability, transferability and organisational readiness.
If you've worked your way through the previous sections of this framework, you should already
have most of the planning phase covered.
VImplementation
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1 Planning
Once you’ve got your planning done, the next phase is to find the necessary resources
1. Financial2. Human
3. Technological4. Infrastructural
VImplementation
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2 Resourcing
Set-up is where you get your operations ready and make them scalable.
VImplementation
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3Set-up
Execution involves delivering and rolling out impact and revenues on your chosen scale.
VImplementation
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4Execution
Once you’ve scaled up, and your new operations are reaching need and servicing demand, you
will reach the final stage, which essentially involves maintaining quality and supporting
your planned rate of expansion.
VImplementation
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5 Impact
Monitoring & Quality Control
When planning implementation, you may need to break your activities into a series of
work-streams that reflect different operational aspects ...
VImplementation
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CoreImplementation
Streams
Strategy & Planning
Finance and Fund-raising
Human Resources
Infrastructure
TechnologyInternal & External
Communications
Partner Management
Handover Materials
(as necessary)
Training / Advisory
(as necessary)
Impact Monitoring &
Quality Control
VImplementation
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You can then visualise the phases and work-streams as a roadmap
to support both communication and time planning ...
VImplementation
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Sample Implementation Roadmap
Implementation
Source – PATRI Framework for Scaling Social Impact © Rizwan Tayabali, 2014
Once you have the roadmap visualised, you can convert it into a formal Gantt Chart for managing implementation, and combine it with
your business plans or funding proposals for added robustness.
VImplementation
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If you need further help with addressing implementation, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Implementation at Scale: A Guide To Scaling Social Business”
VImplementation
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To summarise, many of the pitfalls in scaling can be overcome simply by considering the
factors involved. However, it isn’t necessary to address them all to prohibitive levels of detail.
If done reasonably well, in combination with a good roadmap, you should be able to inspire confidence both within your organisation and also amongst the supporters that you need to
back your scaling endeavours.
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PATRI Framework
©Rizwan Tayabali, 2014
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