Pioneers Post spoke to leading social entrepreneurs from around the world who shared some hard-won pearls of wisdom on how to sustain your work and grow your impact in tough times. The article is by Erin Worsham and Kimberly Langsam, executive director and senior programme director respectively at CASE at Duke University; and Ellen Martin, an independent consultant and features our very own Lebo Nke – Chief Culture Officer at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator.

In response to Covid-19, CASE at Duke University developed a video series, Scaling Through Mass Disruption, as part of the Scaling Pathways project to capture lessons learned by social enterprise leaders. To wrap up each interview, we asked them to share one key piece of advice with their peers on navigating crises. Here is Lebo’s pearl of wisdom. (you can read the full article here)

Keep your staff engaged and connected so they can pivot with you.

“Keep your people engaged and connected. That is so critical in times of crisis because when you’re out of this, you won’t have to start all over again because you’ve been moving along with your people. So keep your people informed, be transparent, keep them engaged and loving the work. We talk about not falling in love with the solution but staying in love with the problem and I think we’re keeping everyone engaged so that they can keep loving the problem and not be so attached to the solution – because who knows what that is going to look like in the future.”

Lebo Nke, chief culture officer, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator

Read more about Harambee’s work in Halting human contact: how social enterprises are rethinking their business models during Covid-19

We’re keeping everyone engaged so that they can keep loving the problem and not be so attached to the solution – because who knows what that is going to look like in the future