My recent post on how social change is hard — and personal change even harder — might just be a textbook example of confirmation bias.
My instant appreciation of a passage and a quote — both with questionable attribution — is a clear example. They were more likely the outcome of creative writing than insights drawn from research or deep experience. I was probably subconsciously looking for anything that would validate my insights based on my experience in the social sector.
Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, writes that our brains tend to favour information that confirms our existing beliefs. On one hand, it's sobering to realize I am not special. On the other, it's comforting to realize that I am simply human.
Another example — staring me in the face — is how I chose to set up my social venture. I registered it as a for-profit company in India even though I was very clear from day one that we will be impact first. While our impact-first approach ensured that we delivered across all the areas we set out to address, we still struggled to raise money — largely because of the type of legal entity we are.
A couple of months ago, I decided to give my venture one last shot to figure a way out. I returned to researching what it takes to build a successful social enterprise. I quickly arrived at a couple of articles on SSIR published by Kevin Starr, the CEO of Mulago Foundation.
I'll admit — I am a fan of Kevin Starr. I think I saw a talk of his first, but it was his writing on the trouble with impact investing that truly resonated with me. It was the first time I read a solid — and much-needed — critique of the world of impact investing. Working in an impact fund myself, but with my feet still connected to the ground, I could never reconcile what I would hear in our meeting rooms and what was happening in the real world. Kevin, through his articles, described exactly the disconnect that I had witnessed. Since then, I've kept up with Kevin's work and usually read everything he publishes.
In the early days of CoolCoach, I remember reading his article Dump the Prizes, which I used to justify not spending time applying for grant competitions. So you can imagine my surprise when in two separate articles, Premature Incorporation (dated December 12, 2012) and Three Buckets of Money (dated September 29, 2016), Kevin explicitly warns against registering a social enterprise as a for-profit company.
I incorporated CoolCoach as a for-profit in October 2016. Kahneman also writes about the tendency to ignore or downplay contradictory evidence. I was so convinced about setting up as a for-profit that I completely overlooked Kevin's relevant advice on how to set my venture up for success.
I acknowledge my bias — but being biased doesn't necessarily mean being wrong. It just means there is a lot more to learn.