The Business of Doing Good

If you embrace the idea that one of the most important things we can do as leaders it to enhance the sense of worth for others (in ways large or small), then I believe you can have lasting impact. But as I described in a previous post, that requires you to give generously, create inclusion and clarify your purpose.

Let me describe what I mean by taking you to West Africa – to the country where I grew up, the sovereign state of Togo.

Togo is only 22,000 square miles, and it is one of the smallest countries in Africa with only 8 million people.

It is also, like other West African countries, producing tens of thousands of tons of raw cashew nuts, shells and all every year. Until recently, it was exporting 100% of these raw cashews to Asia for processing before being sold on to retailers or food companies in Europe or the U.S.

The tragedy here was that the processing of cashews could in fact be done locally with some investment and basic technical training and create hundreds of jobs for a country that desperately needed them, essentially cutting out a very expensive middle-man.

So, 14 years ago I joined up with a friend of mine who lives in Togo and shares my values for social enterprise and a love of complexity.

We decided to build the first cashew processing factories in Togo.

We called the company “Cajou Espoir” – which translated from French, means “Cashews of Hope.”

We now employ 800 people, mainly women in the rural north of the country, and on average, our employees make $3 to $5 per day. For the most part, before enrolling in our factories, they were living on less than $1 per day either collecting fire wood in the bush or by subsistence farming. 

I visit the factories every 6 months – and as time went by, I realized that the most sought-after leaders in the factories were not necessarily the managers with formal authority, but instead the men and women who were most generous of their time and counsel. Who naturally knew how to give and how to enhance the worth of others.

One of my favorite examples is Akwameba. She is a sheller – which means her job is to break the nuts open.

In the short time she has been with us, she has become one of the best shellers, breaking twice as many kilos per day as the average sheller, who are mostly men! But that isn’t the most striking part of her story.

Akwameba lived about 60 miles from our factory – and it took her 18 months to save $10 to travel to the factory just to apply for the job.

Once she arrived, she had to contend with a physical limitation - she was born with poor vision and would not do the work typically designated for women – which was peeling. By not being perceived as capable, her worth collided with a lack of financial support and bias.

She insisted however on working for Cajou Espoir as a sheller, work typically done by men. When she was given the opportunity - something amazing happened. Her work ethic, her talents and naturally giving nature began to over-ride the perceptions that followed her. Her worth began to shine.

In less than 2 years, she has become the most sought after leader on the factory floor. She takes the time to coach others, she listens, she advises, she is wise. This summer, she told me her greatest satisfaction of the year was that several of the women she had helped had received awards for best performance.

Akwameba exemplifies what it means to “give as a leader.”

And in a rural, factory setting, the second stage, to “create inclusion,” meant we needed to create an environment at Cajou Espoir that made it possible for more women to work. 

We put in place a nursery at the factory to allow young mothers to join; we changed the working hours to finish at 4 p.m., so that women would not have to walk alone in the dark to go home; we enhanced the lighting in the factories so that older women with reduced vision could effectively peel.

As more women of all ages joined, we saw not only the quality of our kernels improve – but I saw evidence of how they regained their sense of worth through their work.

When I am in Togo I am always curious to understand what our employees do with the money – when they go from living on $10 per month to living on $60 or $80 per month.

Speaking with the women – I found out that many of them take 50% of their income and share it with their extended families who have no means to earn money.

Though many in the West would say they live in poverty, they feel prosperous! And their first desire is to help others.

This to me is a beautiful example of inclusion. I think about it all the time.

But the more we could see Cajou Espoir improve the lives of the workers, the more obvious it became that we could extend our purpose outside the factory walls.

We wanted our business to stand for more than being a factory – to truly become an engine of economic development and poverty reduction in the communities in which we operate.

We surveyed our employees to determine which projects would be most valuable to the community. They were initially skeptical because they felt if there was any money available it should go to raising their salaries.

But, we spent time with them clarifying our purpose. And ultimately, they bought in because they felt immensely proud that the profits from their work, could go to improving the lives of people in their communities.

Based on their choices, we first financed some benches at a school so that fewer pupils would have to sit on the floor in during classes. We then built a medical facility in the town, so that people would no longer have to walk several miles to see a doctor.

And more recently, we brought electricity to a nearby village so that these young boys and girls could read and do their homework after dark. I have never seen our employees as proud as when we first turned on the lights in this village.

They talk about these feats with pride; they talk about Cajou Espoir as a special place. A place where they are seen, where they are valued, where their work matters.

Because this is about more than corporate responsibility. Nor is it about race, religion or shareholders. The “business of doing good” is fundamentally human. 

I often hear from our teams or from other leaders that the societal problems we face today – for instance, in our communities grappling with Black Lives Matter, or in our companies contending with #MeToo, that these are issues way too big for a single organization.

I disagree. A world of change can happen in a single organization. I believe we can all relate to and respond to the worth of the individual.

Because it is fundamentally personal.