Rules of the Road For Social Entrepreneurs: Avoiding the Trap of Selling Certainty to Your Donors

One of the biggest risks that social entrepreneurs face is selling certainty to their donors, board members and other key stakeholders. 

This is a bigger challenge than ever as the world gets more and more uncertain.  Everyone involved in a social enterprise tends to look to the leader to be a steady hand in the face of chaos.  It's an understandable impulse, and it's very tempting for social entrepreneurs to respond by trying to create a sense of certainty and security for their funders, their board members, their team and all fo their stakeholders. 

But overselling certainty creates a lot of challenges for you as a social entrepreneur.  The most complex social challenges need a strategy that is emergent, not predetermined.  The more you sell certainty, the harder you make it to shift course as circumstances change.  Protecting the space  to operate in an adaptive way is vital for success if you are going after complex social challenges.   The video for this post unpacks this challenge and suggests a path forward for all those with a calling to make the world a better place in these heightened times.