Tim - "Oi Collo, can I just chuck this shelf up here and nail it to me wall?"
Josh - "Maybe Bennett, let me have a quick look and see what we can do. Few things I would double check before you start destroying the wall."
The mission - to install a new shelf from Bunnings above my desk in an attempt to create more real estate and also to portray an image of success and knowledge by displaying books on a shelf.
Problem - I have never put up a free hanging shelf and to be honest I am a little scared by it.
Solution - Collo.
Now the above exert of conversation may not be an exact and accurate transcript, but the point is there. What Collo proceeded to do was go outside the house and start tapping the outer side of the wall to identify if we could indeed nail a shelf to it and not bring down the south side of the beautiful Victorian home we find ourselves residing in.
Collo identifies some internal beams through a series of knocks and taps and returns to mark several points in the wall which would be safe to drive a nail into. After realising the marked space he has to work with is going to be too small to fit the finest and most expensive (no sarcasm at all) shelf money can buy, he then choses to take to the shelf with a saw and shave off about 20mm. After a few more taps and a bit more cutting I have a fully functioning shelf and the rest of my housemates still have four walls around them! Success! High fives are now in surplus.
If you have stayed with this wild goose chase of a blog thus far, no doubt you are saying, "Tim you honeybadger, I don't care about your Bunnings shelf and Collo's processes of installing it...much." Well that is fair enough. However, I am getting to the point where you will say "oh now I see where he is going with all this BS (not an acronym for behavioral science)."
The point I want to make here is one that I see well reflected in Collo's way of doing what he does best - problem solving. He doesn't rush into something that he is not familiar with nor does he chose to become arrogant on what is something he knows so very well (what with being a qualified carpenter.) His logic is that he wants to firstly understand the problem before he even attempts to work out a possible solution. And it is this concept and process which has become very applicable to some of the work we have done with this unit on Social Responsibility.
Picture it like this - imagine if a class at an overseas academic institution was given my shelf problem and asked to find a solution. They could do some research, see that I had room above the desk and could simply nail a shelf to it! Bang! Done. But wait... how would they know about the internal beams that are not visible? How would they know where to start swinging the hammer? That kind of expertise can only come from really being there and getting a grasp and handle on the problem.
Perhaps in some ways the whole notion of helping out and doing some good isn't so different at all, at least in my own experience anyway.
And how can I possibly relate this Edz? Well here I go with an example from my own persoanl experience.
I was lucky enough to spend my 21st birthday last year in Papua New Guinea with my father walking (or struggling?) along the Kokoda Trail. PNG's capital, Port Moresby, is one of the most dangerous cities in the world and corruption runs rampant throughout this country which is not so far away from Australia. It was here that I, much like my work in Kenya and north Tanzania in 2008, was exposed to what is considered to be people living in poverty.
The 10 days that followed were tough and grueling to say the absolute least, but maybe the most amazing aspect was getting to know around 15 local Papua New Guinean guys who were leading our group of roughly 20 Australians. What I discovered over this period through campfire chats, long conversations that sprawled over hours whilst trudging and slipping through mud, climbing up slippery rocks and sweating more than I do in a sauna was that these men and boys were breaking a mould.
The market for taking Australians and New Zealanders along the Kokoda trail is dominated by Kokoda Spirit and Kokoda Treks - businesses owned and run by Australians and an Irish guy I saw halfway along the trail, who I might just add was someone my dad would label 'a sir who has seemingly left his brains at home.' These companies employed local guys as guides and porters, but from the word along the trail, didn't really treat nor pay the locals very well at all.
The group who took us, named Kakapetta Tours, was on its first ever tour, and even though most of the 'boys' had walked the track before (a guy named 'Puksy' said he had done it well over 100 times) there was an air of both the Australians and the PNG guys doing something new and for the first time.
I found out that the guys all lived together, in a housing estate named Kakapetta, and by going into business for themselves, they were taking a risk in competing with the dominant Australian run companies with the hope that they could have better conditions and be working hard for themselves.
This was inspiring in itself and for me was a really different aspect of what I guess I try to study in Entrepreneurship.
Being all locals, the guys from Kakapetta didn't have the rapport with travel agents in Australia or many connections with to get ongoing work, and he is the point of this blog. I was able to really grasp and understand their positions, in trying to break away and work for themselves and not for Kokoda Spirit and to create a better life for themselves and their families. (Just so we are clear when I say 'better life' I am meaning things such as one of the guys, 'Dicksy,' saw a better life putting a corrugated iron roof on his home which was about 10 hours away from Kokoda; which is considered luxury.)
It was through my understanding that I was able to then see ways I could assist them. For example I could connect them here in Australia, and get the word out that some PNG guys were running tours for much less with an even more amazing experience that encapsulated bonding with locals guys - something the other providers could not do. Through word of mouth and exposure on facebook I could help these guys to get a good name and ideally get some business from my story. In this case, I was firstly understanding how people were living and what they were trying to do before I could even begin to think of a way that I could help.
So I guess something we know here at Edz is that we accept that we don't know loads of things, but that is what makes this whole process all the more necessary in the mission to be entrepreneurs with a socially responsible edge.
Just the same as Collo would do with your standard shelf installation; try and understand the problem you are dealing with and them maybe a solution that is actually needed may just emerge!!!
Love from Tim @ Edz
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