Ms. Swati Vasudevan, former Deputy Director of Strategy Planning and Management Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation addresses the GPODS fellows
Ms. Swati Vasudevan was the former Deputy Director of Strategy Planning and Management Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has experience from diverse backgrounds in profit and non-profit organizations, B2B and B2C organizations, service and product companies, large and small matrix organizations, startups, American, European and Indian organizations
The topic for the session was “Managing Not-for-profits” where she spoke about the tricks, tips and themes that can be useful in not-for-profit management that she had gained from her experiences from all over including organizations outside of the not-for-profit space.
The first tip that she shared was “Rigor — In decision-making” The first important question that was discussed was “Are we maximizing the Returns on Investment” the word that she had for herself was “Impact on Investment” where she talked about few drivers like where to invest resources (time, energy and money), how to utilize and improve the effectiveness of existing resources vs. adding new agendas, how to look for synergies and the last driver that a participant added was the multiplier effect. She answered these questions by quoting various examples that we experience in our day-to-day life. She also shared that we should be able to objectivize the decision and sometimes can be dispassionate (rational) while we invest or spend money on but we should be able to follow the points that we listed out initially as a guide to make our decisions. The goal that we should focus should be on maximizing the ROI through our decision.
The second tip which was shared by her was “Strategy and prioritization — the ‘What’ ”. The discussion was centered on what drivers we choose to focus on which is leverage (POC + focus on advocacy) or self-implementation, technological disruption, R&D, market making and financial incentives. She used examples like fringe beneficiaries, subsidizing vaccine development, development of decentralized sewage processor, loan guarantees for energy efficiency project, technical support for carbon trading or payment banking structures in a country and many more. The participants of the session also contributed a lot by adding insightful points in the discussion.
“Strategy and prioritization — the ‘Where’ ” Where do we slice and focus our efforts should we focus:
- vertically — deep in a program like safe water network’s to focus on drinking water,
- 2) Horizontal slice — integrated delivery in a geography like Hope project, UP Bihar work on BMGF
- 3) At the intersection of programs like WSH + STH (Sol Transmitted Helminths), energy access + air pollution.
“Strategy and prioritization — the ‘How’ ” Some questions that stayed for long where as to how do we uniquely position to add value in the area of our work? What do we bring to the table? The drivers which were discussed here were, should it be:
- Patient capital? Like communicating campaigns eg: Swacch Bharat with no direct/ clear/ immediate ROI
- 2) Access to Global network? Like Experience of working on program across the world/Multiple geographies
- 3) Technical Expertise? Like Access to subject matter expertise on staff/within network (rare)
- 4) Low need for visible credit (Softer interventions) like training/mentoring nurses vs. building clinics and hospitals
- 5) Non populist but necessary measures like private sector in health, education.
The last next tip that was discussed during the session was about the “Precision vs. Efficiency — The balance” How fast do we want to move? What learning can we glean from the private sector that too is accountable for the multi-million Dollars it invests? She explained this point by telling about the ‘Real Option theory’ based on stage-gate approach. The tools which she mentioned that can be used from for-profit sector were Dipstick surveys, in-market testing, focus groups, 80/20 rule etc.
The session ended with a questionnaire and was an extremely interactive one, with comments and reflections from the young fellows and the speaker.
About the GPODS fellowship:
The Global Policy, Diplomacy and Sustainability (GPODS) is a program for public policy practitioners, business professionals, energy and climate change experts, entrepreneurs, Academicians, scholars and strategic analysts to act as a Launchpad for their careers. Currently we have fellows from five different countries namely USA, France, UK, Israel, Italy and 40+ world leaders as mentors from 15 different countries.
About the speaker:
Ms. Swati Vasudevan is currently a board member of the American Embassy School of New Delhi. Highly skilled and recognized professional in strategy, project management and Business development, she is a graduate of IIT Delhi and the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. With over 20 years of experience in Strategy, she has served as a director of strategic planning and best practices of number of global organizations like Schneider Electric, Sleep Number Corporation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ms. Swati was the Chief Executive Officer of the Indian school of public policy in its early stages she led the startup and worked towards building the brand. She is also currently an angel investor and advisor to tech startups.