According to the Newton's
third law of physic, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Can the same be said of thought patterns? Could thinking opposite solve some of
the planet’s greatest challenges?
An opposite mindset is at
the heart of Muhammad Yunus’ business, the Grameen Bank (GB), and his
pioneering work in the field of microcredit. The economist won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2006 for proving that lending money to the poor to run their own
micro-businesses can transform lives. Yunus proposes a worldwide shakeup: solve
problems by creating self-sustaining social responsible businesses.
Yunus’ own awakening came
in 1974 when, as an economist at Chittagong University (Bangladesh), he took
his students on a field trip to a remote village. When he met a bamboo-stool
seller who was forced to pay back lenders at an interest rate as high as 10%
each week, leaving her with pitiful profits, he realised that the kind of
economics he taught was fundamentally wrong.
Against the advice of
banks and government, Yunus arranged microloans at market interest rates and in
1983 formed the GB – “village bank” – founded on principles of trust instead of
so-called collateral.
Yunus’ first battle was
with other banks. Bankers told him that lending to the poor was absurd. They
said, ‘Banking is a process in which you lend money to people who need it’. But
Yonus replied, ‘You lend money to people who already have lots of money but you
don’t lend money to people who have nothing’.”
Yunus learnt how
conventional banks went about their business – and then he did the opposite. “I
created a bank that was almost the mirror image of the traditional bank. They
go to the rich, we go to the poor. They choose cities, we choose remote
villages. They focus on men, we focus on women.”
And it worked. By 2015 in
Bangladesh, GB had 2,568 branches with 21,751 staff serving 8.81 million
borrowers in 81,392 villages. Of the borrowers today, 97% are women. The loans
are paid back at a higher recovery rate (97%) than any other banking system.
Yunus’ work in some of
the poorest villages highlighted difficulties ranging from healthcare to
education. Again, he tackled each issue in a radically opposite way. “Every
time I solved a problem, I did so with a business engine behind it. I wanted to
avoid the charity route. Charity money has one life. Social business money has
an endless life.”
Anna Johnston, from the London
Business School, says that wrapped up in the
characteristics of a social business is a think opposite mindset. Are you able
to close the loop on your product cycles? Should profit always be your first
motive? Could you fund a social business instead of offering conventional aid? Even further, can
the opposite-thinking mindset help to tackle some of the organizations' biggest
challenges?
