This post is one in a series of 5<5 posts that document pilot/prototype projects with the format 5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started in <5% of the time spent on the project.   

Cereal conversations was a 5 week pilot project to convene legal practitioners and strategy consultants at the intersection of law and business in the social enterprise sector.   

Background

In March 2011, I ran a HubLab on "For Profit or Not-for-Profit" with Inder Comer, Esq. at HubSOMA.  Intended for social entrepreneurs, the HubLab was also attended by lawyers, who often advised clients through this decision nexus.  Intrigued by this "unexpected" participant group, I kickstarted a "pilot" of breakfast conversations.  "Cereal conversations" gave legal practitioners at this nexus of law and enterprise for social impact a forum to discuss practice experiences and concerns.  Social enterprise law is largely unchartered legal terrain- full of "open" legal issues, which means that a court has not yet 'ruled' to decide the "law" on many issues that are emerging from social innovation.  Legal questions about liability and tax implications in the sharing economy, regulation of food production for microenterprise, employment status and compensation for passion equity, etc.  Typically, good legal advice steers a client away from uncertainty in favor of what is known, what is certain, and what is "settled" in the law.  Uncertainty is risky and potentially very expensive.  However, until people- clients and lawyers- push the edges of "certainty" into these open, untested areas- the status quo in business will not change.  

Cereal conversations brought practitioners together for peer learning and aimed to build a community of legal practitioners who want to push the edges of the law.  Drawing on a model from clinical medicine where clinicians make decisions even amidst uncertain outcomes based upon a bioethical, principled justification, I opined that perhaps a similar values-driven approach to decision making could govern and guide legal practitioners, provided that the involved parties gave fully informed consent to the risks.  My assumption was that if we built a community and developed a shared knowledge base, it would be sufficient to support legal practitioners ready to take this risky step to shift the status quo in how business operates.  My hope was to identify the key 'ingredients' necessary to seed a local legal community pf practice, to design a DIY 'cookbook' that other communities could use to kickstart local chapters globally, and to build a 'recipe' braintrust to which local practice groups could contribute that would inspire innovation in legal practices at the intersection of business for social impact. 

5 Things I Wish I Knew About Community Building Before I Started:

• 8am is too early for a meeting in San Francisco
• Building a community takes time.  5 times just gets things started.
• Meetings need to take place regularly.  To get work done- weekly is effective, to build community- monthly is sufficient. 
• Get a small group to share the organizing responsibility (2-3 is enough)
• For niche communities, keep the audience focused in order to maximize value to early participants. Here, it was more productive to have a majority of lawyers with only legally savvy strategy consultants, rather than a meeting with social entrepreneurs who seek information for their specific venture. 

Ultimately, cereal conversations was a prototype of a potential model.  It was a pilot test of assumptions.  The Bay Area group was the inaugural "Lucky Charms" group who pioneered the (ad)venture.  We learned a lot and we hope that the fruits of that learning shared here will strengthen the global community of legal practitioners active in this area. 

Why did we do it?

• To develop a community of practice to strengthen practice in the legal grey areas of this sector.
• To develop a format that provided value to satisfy the depth needed by legal eagles and practicality for social entrepreneurs
  
• To strengthen the social enterprise community's access to new paradigm approaches by engaging the legal community in conversations with social entrepreneurs, impact investors and business consultants.
• To kickstart a grassroots community generated knowledge commons on these emerging legal issues.
• To create a forum for collaboration and knowledge sharing among legal practitioners

Methods

What did we do?
A breakfast club to "Map the Terrain" and build an initial community of legal practitioners. In this 5 week pilot, we met over cereal for conversations to map the legal landscape at the intersection of business and social impact.  The topics that we covered included: the business judgment rule, new CA corporate forms, mapping issues, social enterprise partnerships, and alternative dispute resolution and conflict management in the socent sector.

Our short term aim was to have one concrete, practical project from each pilot.  Proposed projects included:  

• a model "founders/partnership agreement" for social entrepreneurs 
• a map/quick guide to identify how/when social impact focus may generate new/different legal issues
• a tactical considerations guide for the varying corporate forms
  
• an article on the role of ADR in social enterprise

Our long term aim was two-fold:
1. To develop a cookbook "how to start a SocEntStrategy community of practice in __(your area)__" 
2. To develop a grassroots, knowledge commons on these issues at the intersection of law, business and social impact

Our core commitment that all resources developed will be provided open access under a creative commons: attribution/non-commercial/share alike.  Any revenue generated from this initiative would be reinvested in the initiative's educational mission.

Who participated?
An open invitation was made to colleagues in this sector. We were generously hosted by HubSOMA. The SocEntStrategy Founding Alliance included:
Kate Michi Ettinger, Chef Converger of Cereal Conversations
Natalia Thurston, Social Venture Law Group 
Tony Lai, Law Gives
Inder Comar, Comar Law
Lina Constantinovici, President, Biomimicry Incubator


How? 
Doors open 7:45 (security can take awhile)
8 - 9 Legal Eagles Hour
30 min: in depth on legal topic + case presentation
20 min: discussion
10 min: map discussion and networking

9 - 9:30 Law for SocEnts
15 min: legal topic presented for Social Entrepreneurs
15 min: discussion

Results

• Of open invitation to 10 people directly and 10 people indirectly, we had a founding group of 5 people.  
  
• We met consistently for 5 weeks.  
  
• We shared knowledge, practice experience and developed a shared understanding of open issues within the sector.
  
• We identified opportunities for collaboration within the group; those collaborations continue to manifest.
  
• We experimented with and learned about technology that could support the group's work.  
• For details: Weekly Posts: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5  (currently in publication)

Learnings & Opportunities

1. There is a need for a community of practice among legal practitioners in this area.
2. The social enterprise ecosystem will benefit from having the legal community that serves it strengthened.
3. Building a community of practice takes time. Consistency is critical.  
4. Critical mass generates movement.  Self organization may be overrated. 
5. Engage one community at a time.  Clarity of purpose helps to respond to the diverse needs of why people show up.  If targeting lawyers, stick with lawyers to keep the focus on issues that yield value to attendees. 
6. Use the work products of the primary community to engage secondary communities.  
7. Choose technology that you can manage or have access to tech resources to administer the technology you want. 
8. 8am is too early for many people and does not accomodate the geographic diversity of SF Bay Area, where traffic prohibits participation by practitioners not in the specific location. 
9. Ideas take awhile to seed: People are ready now for an idea from 2 years ago that was prototyped 1 year ago.  
10. Business law and corporate structures are domestic/state law issues.  This invites a creative glocal solution to building this grassroots community. 
11. The effort to bring Cereal Conversations to Berlin resulted in identifying of a different doorway into the legal issues: case studies of pioneering social enterprises.  These case studies provide a simple framework through which to identify the open issues and to respond with how each could be addressed within one's jurisdiction.  These "Cases" become a common ground of understanding between geographic regions governed by different laws.  We are working to inspire the passion of the university students in law to explore social enterprise and business for social impact. 
12. The effort to bring Cereal Conversations to London/UK resulted in the idea of a legal "briefhack," by the brilliant Polina Hristova. The IDEA: One weekend at Hubs around the world. Gather local law students, attorneys and social entrepreneurs.  Have students interview social entrepreneurs to identify legal issues at the edges.  Students confer with social enterprise attorneys who review the cases collectively in a panel format.  The law students then "brief" the legal issues raised by the social enterprises.  The net result is law students have the "brief" as a work product to show future employers.  The social entrepreneurs have an understanding of the issues they need to address.  The attorneys deepen their practice around these open issues and contribute to building a the glocal knowledge base.   

Long Term Outcomes 

• Impact Law Forum, co-founded by Natalia Thurston of Social Venture Law Group and Zoe Hunton of Hunton Law, hosts a monthly meeting with speakers to strengthen the community of legal practitioners who work at the intersection of law and social enterprise. ILF rotates around the Bay Area.  

This post is one in a series of 5<5 posts that document pilot/prototype projects with the format 5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started in <5% of the time spent on the project.   

Background

Mission-driven and double/triple bottom lines demands accountability to multiple stakeholders.  Even with the best intentions and planning, most situations that one encounters in business cannot be predicted.  Doing "business" at the intersection of money and meaning requires navigating uncertainty and making tough decisions in complex conditions. 

SocEntEthics provides a framework to navigate these kinds of decisions by adopting an analogous approach to clinical medicine.  In medicine, physicians and clinical teams often face difficult decisions that require balancing benefits and harms, reconciling patient preferences and clinical options, and determining how best to proceed amidst uncertain outcomes.  Bioethical frameworks guide clinicians in navigating these difficult situations.  SocEntEthics empowers social entrepreneurs to create values-based frameworks and strategies to navigate uncertainties, to take effective action in complex situations and to negotiate values conflicts. 

Key Learnings

1. Finding leaders who have insight that good intentions may not be sufficient to navigate the uncertainty and value-laden decisions at the nexus of money and meaning is rare.  
2. It is JUICY when you meet someone who has the courage to build a vision of robust principled decision making into the operations of the enterprise/product from the outset! 
3. Selling "certifications" makes it easy for enterprises to justify budget allocation for this kind of capacity building and peer/social pressure may drive adoption that creates a viable market for the "certification" product.  Duly noted that the viable business here may not transform how decisions are made and/or cultivate the capacity to make deliberate decisions-- so buyers and sellers should be aware whether they are opting for an approach that satisfies "compliance" and "checklist" needs or whether they are baking change into the core of their operations.  
4. Waiting until integration of an ethics-driven framework is recognized as "necessary" may be too late.  A social mission enterprise that adopts a principled approach after things go wrong and/or after well into operations will have to fully integrate this approach throughout its operations and will need both bottom up engagement and top down commitment.  The effort and investment to rebuild trust and reformulate culture may be challenging and significant at this stage.
5. Open source methods and strategies provide a template and idea source, but every enterprise is unique with its own culture and benefits from building its own values-driven framework that suits its operations. 
6. At some point, when working through the "values" that underpin a socially-driven enterprise, there is a murky phase in the process.  It feels uncomfortable and nebulous.  People who like to "execute" get antsy.  This is a good time to take a break.  Normalize the inclination for "action" and "outcomes" and underscore the importance for the group to sit in the messiness of this uncertainty.  Go out for dinner, have drinks, take a walk, go on an outing to a museum. Tell people that it's normal to feel unresolved. Actually, it's essential. 

SocEntEthics Applied:

• Operations: Policy Advisory Board

A social enterprise recognized the importance of this issue for its pioneering venture from prior to launch.  A policy advisory board was formed to support the team navigate these "tough" decisions.  The policy advisory board included multi-disciplinary professionals who represented the diverse stakeholders and constituents of the enterprise.  All policy advisory board reports and methods will be shared with open source/cc license. (currently in publication)

• Operations: Conflict Management for Coworking Space

A social enterprise encountered challenging at a growth stage.  The enterprise chose to build a principled approach to conflict management into its operations. The team developed a set of principles to govern community engagement and invested in capacity building for staff and interns.  The methods and training resources will be shared under creative commons license. (currently in publication)


Original posts from Posterous at www.socentethics.com when this idea was initially launched can be found consolidated here. 

While I was traveling in Southern Africa in February,  I experienced ubuntu ... a beautiful ethic/humanist concept of people coming together to help each other out... Read more about ubuntu philosophy (Wikipedia). 

Recently, I experienced ubuntu personally while preparing for my first TEDx talk for TEDxBarcelonaChange: Positive Disruption in Global Health, part of TEDxChange sponsored by the Gates Foundation.  

I received incredible insight, wisdom, and tips from from my community.  Under the attentive eye of the magnificent event organizer and social innovation catalyst Aurelie Salvarie among other dedicated readers, 20 drafts of the script and many practice sessions later, I had a masters-level crash course in storytelling and public speaking.  

People shared their talent and time to assist in crafting an effective message.   From TED worth presentation guru Brooke Estin on visuals to Florian Mueck of the 7 Minute Talk as speaker coach, I was immersed in awesomeness with one single aim: to make a message that would touch and inspire people.  Less than 36 hours before, I had a raging fever and no voice.  Ironically, it was April Fools Day (April 1) and I thought if I call Aurelie to tell her, she will think it is a mean joke. It  was the participation of so many people in getting to that moment that buoyed my recovery.  When it was game time, I gave it my all. 

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept about perfection in imperfection.  This TEDx is raw rather than polished. I barely had my voice back and was desperately trying not to cough.  Wabi-sabi also underpins the idea.  Sometimes we have to step out, before we are fully prepared with all of the rehearsals that we need.  We have to experiment and improvise.  We go forward before perhaps things are perfect. Perhaps we don't feel ''ready.'  Yet we step out into life anyway, imperfect, unpolished. We are open to learning.  We are vulnerable and honest. it's that authenticity that makes the beauty that is wabi-sabi.  

I spent time today with Nanny, my grandmother- Faye Berkelhammer, on the occasion of her 98th birthday. As we talked, she told me that she started the day in an unusual way.

"You know what I did for myself for my birthday? I called Molly Blank."  Nanny has talked about Molly Blank, an old friend from New York.  They were a group of 5 wives of pharmacists, who became friends sharing recipes, books, life transitions of children growing up, and their own life transitions of moves, divorces and retirement.  Nanny moved to Florida in the 80s with Meyer Berklehammer, her great love and second husband. In 2006, Nanny and Meyer moved to Northern California, near their children.  Along the way, Nanny had lost touch with Molly.  

"We haven't talked in 40 years, I guess.  But I just wanted to see if she's still alive.  You know, here there are people, but there isn't anyone to talk to about the past.  You know, there isn't anyone who knows you, who knows your people, who knows... so for my birthday, I just decided to try and see, see if she would remember me.... and remember with me."

About a year ago, I tried to track down an old friend, Sylvia, to no avail.  At 98, I imagined that this call might lead to news of another person who had passed away or perhaps at a stage of dementia that would make conversation impossible.  

"And?" I asked biting my lip with anticipation worried that this day of celebration- her first alone in over 30 years as Meyer, her husband who would have been 99 in March just passed away in November- might have begun with more loss... Nanny, an artful storyteller reveled in the dramatic tension...

"Someone, maybe a caregiver, answered the phone."  Phew, Molly's alive, relief! "I introduced myself and explained that I had known her a long time ago. The caregiver left to relay the message to her. And then she came on the phone, I could recognize from her voice that it was her.  She said, 'Hello, it's Molly.'  I said, "Molly, it's Faye!" and she said, "Yes, yes, Faye. This isn't a good time, can you call me at 11am tomorrow?" So, I will call her tomorrow at 11, but she remembered me, I think.  Well, we'll see.  Anyway, honey, this is "Az me redt zich arop fun hartsen, vert gringer."  It's talk that's good for the heart. 

Recently work brought me to Africa for the first time, I took the opportunity for a short trip into the bush in Botswana and Zimbabwe.  Nature is my refuge and the bush in Botswana was deep nature. Magnificent and humbling to be in one's (vulnerable) place in nature's hierarchy.... and exquisite to see these beautiful animals in their element "on their turf."  It was a brilliant place to experience the reminder of how powerful it can be to unplug from all devices for a week and just be where you are.

I feel fortunate to have seen black rhinos that are endangered and risk extinction from brutal poachers who tear their horns off brutally and just leave them to die.  It's horrid.  The rhinos in these pictures had their horns cut deliberately to protect them from poachers and yet they still risk being poached for the small horns that is left.  The International Anti-Poaching Foundation is based in the reserve where I saw these and they are doing great work both to train locals to face poachers and to build sustainable economic opportunities for local people so that the high yield of poaching is not the only option for income. Check out www.iapf.org to learn more about this issue. 

I made this short video with some of the animals that I saw for a friend's 7th birthday... Enjoy!  
(Apologies for the wobble-- still learning how to use the video camera!)