Check Your Sight Lines

Expanding Possibilities

We tend to see things in binary terms: red or blue, black or white, left or right. However, there is a wide range of options between any two points. If I were to say that you have a choice between A and Z, you might not even know that L, M, and N exist. Yet they do, and one of them—or any of the other letters of the alphabet—may be a better choice for your situation.

Choices, however, often present us with a spectrum of options rather than mere binaries. This path, with its increased variables and nuance, will likely be more strenuous, but the effort is worth it when you consider the new, unexplored possibilities that will be presented to you.

I’ll share an example from my work at Nathan Cummings Foundation.

In philanthropy, it’s easy to sustain a mindset of financially supporting who and what you already know. It’s comfortable, convenient, and perhaps even more time-efficient. But the unintended consequence of this practice is to narrow our sightlines for investment opportunities.

My mantra is that a good social impact investor has healthy paranoia about what we don’t know and who we don’t know. Meaning that we must expand our aperture to find opportunity. Does this mean abandoning time-tested ideas or proven winners? No. Rather, it means there is value in exploration, and we must back this up with our own practices.

We chose to create a new grant-making category called “Venture grants,” and this means exactly what it sounds like: Taking a page from successful venture capital businesses, we now provide seed stage resources to start-up social ventures or established organizations with breakthrough ideas. Since we pushed aside status quo practices and changed our rules, we have witnessed an explosion of applications and have invested in quality ideas and people that we likely would have missed. We are busier, but it is time well spent, as it brings us closer to the mission we call a “Justice Journey.”

Changing the Rules of the Game

We humans, can fall into patterns and routines. A task is done a certain way because that is how it’s always been done. Why should we change it? Then those patterns become set in stone and soon become the rules of the game. Changing them is frowned upon—which is exactly why we should.

I tell a story in my book, The Tyranny of False Choices, about Mamadou-Abou Sarr. Born in France to a Senegalese father and a mother from Benin, he was often denied opportunities because of his race. His sports career never panned out, but instead of giving in, he pushed forward with a new goal of moving into investment banking. It took time, but no matter how many people viewed him through their own narrow sight lines, he never stopped moving forward.

His company now handles over $1 billion in accounts, yet he was passed over by many investors because they didn’t broaden their aperture. Those who have believed in Mamadou-Abou have seen their fortunes flourish, all because they weren’t myopic with their vision.

Open Your Eyes

You do not have to succumb to the binary choices presented to you regularly. Instead, consider your options. You ought to be the only one who can define the boundaries of your destiny.

There is more to see and to explore, but it means you must open your mind to what is possible.