Happy 1st birthday!, Social Focus Consulting

What better way to celebrate than with a tasty SFC cheesecake and an awkwardly long, grandiose letter…

One twentieth score and seven minutes ago, my inability to find a job and ever present desire to help others brought forth in the marketplace, a new company, conceived in social inequality, and dedicated to the proposition that business strategies could be used to improve nonprofit organizational effectiveness and efficiency.

With a business plan in one hand and uncertainty in the other, I started to build the SFC brand and extol my dreams to anyone who would listen. What started as monologues became conversations. 

Then summer came, and “I” became “we”. Just four months prior, everything was on paper. To see it come to life by having over 20 amazingly talented business students, the “SocialFolks”, join SFC was just as inspiring as it was overwhelming. Although we struggled in creating what I would call an “ideal culture”, we managed to get things done. By the end of the summer, we learned more about the market (and potential markets) which set clear direction for September onwards. We also managed to further build our brand, culminating in SFC’s first annual networking event.

Recognizing the benefits of managed growth, we began to prototype services with a small team at Queen’s. Within a month, we brought on our first client (pro bono), Youth Diversion, and are on track to deliver the project on time January 2013.

Although we have yet to make a single penny, we’ve managed to build a growing community of team members, partners, clients, and general supporters. Within this community, our brand building over the last year has paid off. Clients are starting to approach us for projects. 

Established organizations are sending us proposals for partnerships. Intelligent and ambitious students are continuously inquiring on how they can become involved. Competitors are talking about us in their meetings. We’ve made noise!

And in 2013, we’ll make even more noise. Multiple clients, projects, and strategic partnerships are in the pipeline and we aim to be profitable by the summer. With prototyping complete, we’re increasing the number of consulting teams at Queen’s and expanding into other markets – especially London, Ontario.

As in its first year, SFC’s journey for the coming year will be strife with turbulence. We’ll continue to experience hardships and failures mixed with celebrations and successes. Regardless of what happens, we’re going to have an epically fun time doing it.

YOU are the reason why we’ve made it this far. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone for all your continued love, well wishes, support, and most of all…for walking with me through the fire.

Failures and Learnings: #1

This post is long overdue. As I approach a weekend where I'll be holding a workshop on the importance of failure and its path to innovation, I'm reminded to practice what I preach. Therefore, say hello to the first post in a series of Social Focus Consulting's Failures and Learnings:

Failure #1: Not paying enough attention to building an effective organizational culture

I sorely underestimated the time required to oversee multiple projects (and manage its people) during the summer. This was in addition to time spent on other activities such as the daily marketing and business development required to build SFC's brand and secure future clients.

As a result, our "culture" (if you can call it that) became very project focused and lacked the cohesiveness and camaraderie of a truly effective culture. In turn, engagement in the organization (e.g. dedication to projects and other SFC initiatives) started to decline.

The lack of engagement was exacerbated by other factors such as a fairly large team (25+) for a startup and a geographically-dispersed team with no centralized office.

Learning #1: We need to take a cue from our company name and socialize more

Upon further analysis, the lack of engagement had little to do with there being multiple projects, or the fact that we had a large team or the fact that we were spread out geographically, or even the fact that this was unpaid work. The lack of engagement had to do with people who had no strong ties to the organization it was working for. And how could they? It took us about three months for us all to come together as an organization and socialize. Prior to that, people only knew one another by name or a picture from a website.

Although we could employ initiatives that make "virtual" organizations effective, I realized that this is not something I wanted for SFC. For us to succeed going forward, we'll need to place a greater emphasis on the workplace happiness of our people. And much of that will be nurtured by in-person socializing and more frequent face time.

Changes #1: Incorporating socializing into every facet of SFC

Some of these changes have already been executed, but there are still lots to learn as we prototype services at Queen's.

a) Include "Fun" as a corporate value. Previously, we had four corporate values (excellence, progression, innovation, community) which strongly mirror my own personal values. One thing was missing: "fun"! I'm very much a "work hard, play hard" type of person so I felt for us to build a culture that socializes, we need to explicitly include "fun" in our list of values.

b) Hire a Chief Happiness Officer. After doing some quick research on effective cultures (and later more in-depth study by reading Tony Hseih's "Delivering Happiness"), I realized that we needed to have someone help facilitate the building and monitoring of a healthy company culture.

c) Replace O'Day (Orientation Day) with a fun social outing. This has yet to be initiated, but I foresee future O'Days being far removed from the lecture-style format it has been in the past. For efficiency and convenience purposes, we'll be delivering information about SFC to new hires via YouTube. Their real introduction to the team and organization, however, will be more about socializing with their new teammates at a restaurant or coffee shop, for example.

There are many more initiatives we have planned to facilitate a "happier" workplace culture as we continue to listen to our Social Folks and understand their needs. There are also many more mistakes we've made over the past several months, but not building an effective culture is the one that needs the most attention.

We're forever eager to "fail forward", learn from our mistakes, and become bigger and better as we grow. See you after the next failure (and learning).

As the project wraps up, I would like to thank my team for all the hard work and all the presentations on P'Day was awesome :) Thanks JP for connecting me through the phone.

Going Social

Monday August 13th marked the celebration of months of hard work in planning for #goSocial, SFC's first annual networking event for social-minded professionals. It also marked the 8th month anniversary of the start of Social Focus Consulting!

I arrived super early to ensure that any unforeseen circumstances didn't spoil our chance of holding a great event. Once the rest of the #goSocial team started to arrive, we began to set up. First, was the registration desk which seemed a lot smaller than I remembered on a previous visit to ING Direct Cafe Toronto. I was initially expecting for three to four of our team members to attend the desk, but there was no way they'd all fit there so we only put two people on.

While we were setting up, Filipe Varino from The Next 36 walked up and so he officially became our first guest. I've met Fil previously at other networking events and it was great to see him again. Over the next hour, more and more people came in. Our total attendance was just over 40 people!

Once the crowd built up, I introduced myself and Social Focus Consulting. Rather than focus on what we do, I spoke more about the motivation behind starting the company and how the #goSocial event is a platform for collaborative social change.

One of the highlights of the evening was a great discussion from James Temple, Director of Corporate Responsibility at PwC on how digital media is transforming the conversation about corporate integrity and social responsibility.

Later that night, we awarded our door prize, a book called "How to Change the World." It went to Evan Cook which was a pleasant surprise because Evan wasn't even sure he was going to come that evening. He called me an hour before the event to confirm if he was indeed registered. I told him he was and urged him to come over. I'm glad (and hope he is too) that he dropped by!

As the crowd thinned and the evening moved forward, I suggested we change venues and head to a nearby pub. Our group of about 10 was escorted upstairs to a great lounge overlooking Yonge Street. Trust me, it's more impressive at night. I then bought a round of Polar Bears for the SFC team members in the house (Shirley, Joanna, James, Adit) plus honorary team member Bill Mei. Just after ordering, I realized Jagers would have been better!

Overall, it was a fantastic event made possible by fantastic people. We're all looking forward to the next one!

Want to learn more about what happened at the event?

Check out all the buzz about #goSocial on Twitter. Continue the conversation using #goSocial.

Like our Facebook page for all the pics, courtesy of professional photographer Donna Santos, from the event.

Meet the B2B market research team

This team is surveying B2B organizations to determine whether providing them with leads from our NPO clients is a sustainable income source.

The project is led by John, a Queen's MBA graduate and Founder and Managing Director of Social Focus. His teammates include Shirley (pre-Ivey HBA student), James (Queen's Commerce student), and Catrina (Queen's Commerce student). The team is supported by Andy (Queen's Commerce student) and Peter (Schulich MBA student).

Random facts about the team members:

John

Did you know John started his first business, selling baseball cards, at age 12

Shirley

Did you know Shirley co-founded a youth leadership organization in high school?

James

Did you know James was an assistant swim instructor?

Catrina

Did you know Catrina is completing a dual-degree in Commerce and Economics?

Andy

Did you know Andy plays multiple sports including baseball, basketball, and frisbee?

Peter

Did you know that Peter is an avid snow-boarder?

Project progress:

To date, they've conducted secondary research, developed a survey and are in the process of contacting clients and collecting data.

Meet Shuyi Shi, Market Research Associate

As part of the recruiting team, Shuyi Shi is one of our Market Research Associates. In this role, she's responsible for contacting and motivating potential clients from the recruiting world to complete market research surveys.  Learn more about her...

Why do you care about nonprofits?

Why did you join SFC? 

What are your career aspirations?

Shuyi Shi
SFC Market Research Associate
and Queen's Commerce '15

"I have been a part of many nonprofit organizations. What I love about these organizations is their focus for the benefit of the community around them.

I joined SFC to gain experience and develop important transferable skills in a business environment.  I am also excited to help a start up  grow and become well established.

At this early stage of my education, I don't have a specific job in mind but I would to have a career that is challenging and rewarding on a daily basis."

Learn even more about Shuyi on her LinkedIn page.

Meet Ivan Hui, Market Research Consultant

As part of the NPO market research team, Ivan Hui is one of our Market Research Consultants. In this role, he contributes to an end-to-end project where the team conducts secondary research, develops a survey, contacts and motivates clients to complete the survey, analyzes the results, and develops recommendations.  Learn more about him...

Why did you join SFC? 
Why do you care about nonprofits?

What are your career aspirations?

Ivan Hui
SFC Market Research Consultant
and Ivey HBA '12

"I joined SFC to apply my business knowledge in a way that would make a positive social impact. Many nonprofits have strong goals and values that align with mine. I want to see more of them succeed with their goals and part of that success comes from having the right help - which I believe Social Focus Consulting is positioned to provide.

In terms of my own aspirations, I'd like to continue being able to contribute positively to organizations that are socially minded. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a big impact on an NGO or social enterprise whose cause I strongly support. Until then, I'll continue gaining valuable insight and experience working with SFC!"

Learn even more about Ivan on his LinkedIn page.

The B2B team gets fly like paper

At the end of our last meeting, the B2B team took a little time to get creative. The game was to make a paper airplane, develop a 30 second pitch for why yours is the best and then fly the plane. The winner of the pitch was decided by closed ballot votes. The furthest flown wins the latter challenge with slightly more weight considered for this portion.

Here's what happened:

Round 1: The Pitch

This is essentially a marketing challenge where each team member communicated verbally why his/her plane is better than the others.

First up was James. He emphasized the aerodynamic nature of his plane and how it was even tested in a wind tunnel prior to final production.

Shirley went next. As SFC team members are socially and environmentally responsible, we used recycled paper for this contest. As such, Shirley mentioned the aesthetics of the print on the paper in addition to the aerodynamics. She even pointed out where the little pilot would sit!

Catrina was third. She emphasized the features of the plane that made it less resistant to air drag. And then Catrina got really creative. She talked about the plane's lights for easy identification. Last but not least, she mentioned the plane's ability to write messages in the sky!

I (John) went last. Although I participated, I was not in contention as I've done this exercise before in the Queen's MBA program so I thought it might be unfair. With my pitch, I branded the plane "Air Social Focus Consulting." I mentioned how the plane was made entirely from recyclable materials and how 10% of every ticket sold on the plane goes to charity.

Winner: tie! between Shirley and Catrina although James was close behind. I inadvertently just made James sound creepy. Sorry James!

Round 2: The Flight

Catrina (left) watches as Shirley launches her plane.
James (not pictured) crosses his greasy fingers (inside joke).

furthest to closest: Shirley, James, Catrina, John

Winner: Shirley!

With Shirley tying in the pitch and flying her plane the farthest, she was the clear overall winner! The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that in business, marketing is very important to sell a product successfully, but your product also has to deliver on its promises and perform!

Meet Lily Li, Internal Communications and Engagement Specialist

Although she's one of the newest members of the SFC team, Lily has been doing a wonderful job already. She's helping us to improve our internal communications and engagement. Learn more about her...

Why do you care about nonprofits?

Why did you join SFC? 

What are your career aspirations?

Lily Li
SFC Internal Communications and Engagement Specialist
and Queen's Commerce '15

"The non-profit sector is a tremendous help to society, and I constantly support the non-profits by volunteering. 

When I first heard of Social Focus Consulting (SFC)’s business model, it sounded very innovative and unique to me. I like how SFC caters to the issues that non-profits constantly face: namely the lack of channels to receive funding. I feel that the quality service with affordable prices that SFC offers targets a very specific need of the non-profits at this time. I’ve always been an advocate that money follows those who provide a solution, rather than trying to find a solution that earns money.

The opportunity to work for SFC and make a difference in the consulting and non-profit world would be an absolute phenomenal experience for me as it stands for everything I believe in, both in assisting the non-profits and the problem-solving aspect of the consulting field."

Learn even more about Lily on her LinkedIn page and the SFC team webpage.

Meet the NPO market research team

This team is surveying nonprofit organizations so we can learn how to better serve them.

The project is led by Qasim, a Schulich MBA student. His teammates include Joanna (pre-Ivey HBA student), Amy (Queen's Commerce student), Ivan (Ivey HBA graduate), and Yuki (Queen's Commerce student). The team is supported by Brendan (Ivey HBA student) and Wenhan (Queen's Commerce student).

Random facts about the team members:

Qasim

Did you know Qasim once owned a pizza franchise?

Joanna

Did you know Joanna co-founded a youth leadership organization in high school?

Amy

Did you know Amy performed security guard duties while in school?

Ivan

Did you know Ivan is part of a dragon boat team that won a competition this summer?

Yuki

Did you know Yuki interned at the Royal Ontario Museum?

Brendan

Did you know Brendan was the captain of his ball hockey team?

Wenhan

Did you know that Wenhan is completing a dual-degree in Commerce and Geography?

Project progress:

To date, they've conducted secondary research, developed a survey and are in the process of contacting clients and collecting data.

Cow and forever

The B2B team met again last Thursday to go over our secondary research results and develop a decision framework to narrow down our target organizations. 

Once that was done, we took the last 10 minutes or so to get our creative juices flowing. As a lead-in to brainstorming for an SFC team slogan, we did the "Silly Cow Exercise" as recommended by Osterwalder and Pigneur in Business Model Generation.

On a small piece of paper, we each drew our idea of an innovative and novel business idea involving a cow. These are what we came up with:

From top to bottom:

1. James developed a self-sustaining farm where the cow's poop is used to grow the plants that the cow will eat. Money is made from the poop (fertilizer) and crops.

2. Catrina chose to leverage the cow in a really creative way by using a particularly large cow to motivate people to get healthier and lose excess weight.

3. Shirley had the best drawing and tagline which shows how a cow's dairy has versatile uses in producing food.

4. I (John) clearly had the worst drawing (my cow has shoes!) in the team. The little box on wheels is capturing the energy generated from the constant wagging of the cow's tail.

As you can see, we all came up with different ideas which underlines that we're all bringing different perspectives to the team. Ultimately, this will help us perform at a higher level and develop more effective results.

Big thanks to Adit for conducting a mean and frequency analysis on SPSS! Sneak preview (link below) but we are working to have it uploaded to our SFC Youtube site. Very excited. If the team wants to do more youtube videos. Please let me know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD9zCpjPAE8&list=PLC504640B6A68CF5B&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Meet the "recruitment" team

This team isn't recruiting for Social Focus, but instead looking at how we can use our consulting experience as a way to secure future employment.

The project is led by Anglea, a Schulich MBA student. Her teammates include Adit (Ivey HBA student) and Rose (Rotman Commerce student). More info on Angela and Rose can be found on our team page.

Random facts about the team members:

Angela

Did you know Angela loves golfing and wine? 

Rose

Did you know Rose plays badminton and volleyball?

Adit

Did you know Adit comes from a family of business professionals? In fact, his mom is currently an MBA student.

Project progress:

To date, they've conducted secondary research, developed a survey and are in the process of contacting clients and collecting data.

Currently brainstorming for the sharing of ideas across our SFC teams through a webinar or youtube tutorials. This ranges from teaching different types of programs such as SPSS, DT Search, Raiser's Edge, to  even video editing, or social media tutorials (for non-profit clients). In the works of creating a series of SPSS 20.0 and have already downloaded VideoPad to play around with screen recording. This is going to be a fun experience!

Thank you to the socialites

I can't say it enough. We have a great team working at Social Focus Consulting. They're dedicated and passionate about what they do and the hard work is evident.

I also want to recognize our community supporters. These are the people who have no direct affiliation with Social Focus, but have been very helpful in reaching out and wanting to become involved in any way they can. They've been giving valuable advice that is ultimately aiding Social Focus's mission of helping nonprofits run more efficiently.

This collaborative atmosphere is truly inspiring and a big part of how we've got to this point and how we will continue to improve and grow.

Thank you!

T2: Judgement Day

It's time to do Social Focus Consulting's first ever corporate income tax return. Can you feel my excitement as I type this? No? That's cause there is no excitement! I am notoriously not a numbers person, so I dread doing this, but it comes with the territory of owning a business. Yes, I can pay someone else to do it, but it's too expensive at this point. And perhaps, just perhaps, I'll learn something about numbers and become more analytical. LOL probably not, but it'll be fun trying.

This week, our team is underway with finding leads for our research project. An excellent way to get connected with people is through Linkedin. 

We need to talk to a pool of HR consultants for our project. On Linkedin, I entered in search words such as Human Resource Consultant Toronto, or Recruitment Consultant, Manager, Toronto, and a long list of them came up. I requested to connect, indicated a brief purpose of the study. So far, all of the leads I requested have came back saying they wouldn't mind getting connected. I quickly send them a thank-you note in the message inbox tool and let them know that our survey is underway. Most responded to me within the span of 1-3 days. Hopefully we will get a representative sample going!

Angela

Wrapping up a 2nd round of hiring

By the middle of next week, we'll be done another round of hiring. We welcome our new team members who will be helping us as Market Research Associates, Social Media Manager, and Events Manager.

This round of hiring was an especially fun learning experience because our existing staff was invited to participate in the interview process. At Social Focus Consulting, our team members are first and foremost contributing to meaningful projects. As an added bonus, invitations to become part of the interview process highlights that we provide a great learning experience that few other organizations are able to deliver.

We're looking forward to O'Day 2, where our new team members will be able to learn even more about our organization, what we want to accomplish this summer, network with each other, and network with our existing staff.

Exploring with Google form survey function this week. It provides so much more flexibility as compared to SurveyMonkey and a few other sites we have explored. Thanks to Adit and Rose for the suggestions!

Lesson Learned this week: Talk to as many people you are connected to when you are doing a market research project. Did a phone interview with my organizational behavior professor last week and also with another faculty member this week. Their feedback has been tremendously valuable and even if they are not in the same industry, they might know someone, who knows someone who does. =)

Be social and join us!

Thanks to Angela for her posts thus far. If you're interested in working with talented people like her in the funnest, most innovative, social-purpose start-up around then join the team!


We're now offering some fresh, hot, buttery roles.


Be social and join us!

Before anyone starts a project (internal/external), don't ever forget to ask why of the opportunity we are trying to identify. I've learned you have to ask why five times in order to get to the root of the issue. Same can translate to understanding objectives and opportunities. Without a clear understanding of the objectives, it is difficult to add value to the client.


http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2011/05/some_years_ago.shtml


We are making good strides in the last couple of days in our meetings. I am trying my best to keep everything organized. Discovered that Google Drive (Google Docs downloaded onto the desktop) is very convenient. It works like Dropbox but I like Google Drive as it connects everything to my google account.

I am very excited to be part of Social Folks consultant team as the project manager. During last week's O'Day, was sure great to meet all consultants and I was glad everyone liked my ice-breaker game and got a chance to learn interesting facts about everyone! This is a very diverse group, in terms of culture, background, experience and strengths, so I am sure working together will add great synergies. My general impression is that everyone is pretty passionate about the projects ahead and definitely a lot of variety of skill sets amongst us. I had the opportunity to chat with my group mates and they are all very well-rounded and talented individuals. I very excited to get started on this project and I am sure it will be an amazing experience for me.