The elea Way - Preview

elea’s FOUNDATION AND OPER ATING MODEL 7 7

flexibility and resilience when things go differently than planned. It also means enjoying those moments where new perspectives are created and where an intervention makes a real difference in people’s lives. Mastering the challenge of achieving impact requires active engage- ment . To be actively engaged means identifying and pursuing appropriate ambitions and seeing them to fruition, and it involves setting appropriate goals and priorities and being disciplined about their implementation. It is also about leveraging opportunities based on one’s capabilities, motivations, and contextual factors. The term “engagement” is closely related to the term commitment. Founding and building elea and continuously supporting its development was a possible way of engagement for its founders to meet a high responsibility threshold commensurate with the available resources. Finally, there is partnership , in the sense of peer-level relationships both within our organization as well as with external partners that are rooted in mutual understanding, respect, and trust. Both official develop- ment aid and paternalistic philanthropy often suffer from asymmetrical, hierarchical relationships between donors (who play the active, powerful role) and receivers (who are more on the passive side of things). At elea, we actively practice partnership principles in our daily work and occa- sionally reflect among ourselves, or together with investees, on how we are living up to our promises in reality (see Chapter Five for a discussion of these principles in more detail). Fostering partnership principles and behaviors is an uphill battle given a history of hierarchy in society that goes back several thousand years. Take the example of Confucian philos- ophy, according to which hierarchy between superiors and subordinates (men and women, old and young alike) shaped relationships and domi- nated thinking and acting. Despite the fact that large parts of our “new” world across various sectors still adhere to a hierarchical mindset, we nevertheless believe that there is no alternative to a horizontal partnership approach and that this form of collaboration is gaining ground and will eventually become the dominant pattern of how humans work together. 3 .1. 4 Key design decisions In addition to defining elea’s purpose and ethical framework, there were other important decisions that needed to be made during its design phase and thereafter. One was whether to build a new organization or