The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

by Braun, Adam

  One of my closest friends and best leaders was taken aback by something I did, and one of our best people was thinking about quitting. Noah and Appy had gone through something traumatic, and it happened under my leadership. To that point everything had been so positive. We were building schools and changing the world. Nothing worse than my motorbike accident had occurred. Now, two people had had their lives threatened working on our vision.

  I never thought starting PoP could lead to someone’s life being truly endangered, but suddenly I saw that as a real possibility. Failing to immediately recognize the seriousness of what could have happened made me see my flaws as a leader. I had to acknowledge that we were no longer just kids traveling the world and helping people; real risks were associated with our work.

  I had wrongly responded as a CEO by addressing financial concerns without truly focusing on my employees’ well-being. I was trying to protect the organization, but in doing so I neglected the very people who were the organization. It was a massive failure. I had alienated two of our best people. They’d wanted compassion and I’d focused on covering costs.

  Leadership isn’t just about telling people what to do. It’s about doing the right thing even when it’s not written in the rulebook. The first thing I did was to tell them how sorry I was for my behavior. I had to own it fully. We all make mistakes; it’s the weak who make excuses too.

  But my work would have to go beyond patching things up with Appy and Noah. The incident highlighted just how little we’d prepared for those types of incidents. We immediately established organization-wide contingency plans to help us prepare for, and when necessary deal with, the unexpected. We created a policy and guidelines handbook specifically for international staff to complement the general one we had for all staff. We began taking certain precautions before team members could go in-country (obtaining insurance, registering phone numbers with the national phone company, signing vehicle waiver documents, etc.). We codified a list of best practices for in-country staff and built an incident report form so that we could track, address, and reduce future occurrences. A rule was even put in place that mandated a Skype call within forty-eight hours of any emergency so that it would be resolved via face-to-face communication rather than email.

  From my awful mishandling of that one situation, we emerged a stronger whole. PoP seemed to mature by several years almost overnight. By recognizing the deficiencies we were previously unable to see, we tightened up every area across the organization and our team became closer than ever. Errors force you to pause, evaluate, and iterate. As much as we dread them, they are veiled blessings that turn mirrors of reflection into windows of insight.

  I personally learned that failure is a necessary step toward achievement. In fact, it often accelerates it. The British Airways contest gave me confidence that we were on the right track, yet it took an international stumble to demonstrate that the biggest opportunities for growth are not found in the midst of success, but in the methods through which we address failure.

  Mantra 23

  LEARN TO CLOSE THE LOOP

  Now in our own space, blaring music, learning over lunch, we started to focus even more on our company culture. While traveling back and forth to visit our schools, I thought a lot about what kind of organization we wanted to become. I wanted people to love working at PoP. To succeed in this work, which none of us had ever before done, we needed fierce commitment. But how could we inspire that?

  I defined five key elements that our culture had to exude to draw and retain top talent: happiness, friendship, reward, improvement, and fun. I tried to come up with ways to deliver on those values, so we added practices like a monthly meditation, with the whole team sitting in silence for fifteen minutes and focusing on being in the present. We also started a “daily jukebox,” wherein every day one person would pick a song to listen to and we’d all stop during lunch to hear the story behind the selection before absorbing the beats. It was not only a blast, it brought the team together as friends and individuals. We couldn’t compensate people well financially, but we could provide them with fulfillment and passion.

  Music and meditation aside, what really brought us joy was working for something beyond ourselves. We recognized that we weren’t working alone, and the people who helped us along the way made everything feel deeper and more connected. When I looked at social media, people gained engaged Twitter followers not just by broadcasting their own accomplishments, but by replying to the tweets of others so they furthered the conversation. Being inclusive was an effective approach—and it felt a lot better too. As we grew, our internal culture focused more and more on the celebration of others, especially through connecting individuals to our work on the ground.

  In an effort to become better at acknowledging the people who helped us make an impact, I mandated a handwritten thank-you note policy. Everyone had to write two thank-you notes a month, one personal and one professional. Twice a month, at noon, we would stop whatever we were working on, distribute Pencils of Promise stationery (having forgone this before, we ordered it now specifically for this reason), and give everyone fifteen minutes to write a letter, address an envelope, and seal it. We collected them, added postage, and put them in the mail.

  I had been remiss on writing thank-you notes myself and was two years behind on one letter in particular. When Pencils of Promise was only six months old and completing its first school, I received a check from someone I’d never met—and someone I’d never thanked. We referred to the communication that explained to someone where his or her money went as “closing the loop.” And while many organizations were simply content to take a donor’s money and mail out a receipt at year’s end, it became paramount within PoP to “close the loop” by showing people the change they’d created in the lives of others by sending them the exact GPS location of their school along with photos, videos, and stories from the ground.

  My friend Claire had helped us plan one of our early events to fundraise for our first school. I had snapped pictures of our progress with the build—bricks being laid, surrounded by bamboo scaffolding, and emailed them to the forty people who had been so helpful in getting the school off the ground. In one photo, the building looked like a skeleton, but it was still amazing to me, and I hoped others would feel the same way.

  I soon received an email back from Claire:

  As you may know, I currently work at a construction company. I forwarded your email to my boss because I know he is interested in international development. 20 minutes later he came to my desk with a check to Pencils of Promise in the amount of $1,000. I can’t believe it. I thought you’d want to know!

  What? I thought I read it wrong. No one outside of close friends had ever given us a donation that reached $100, and here we got $1,000 from someone we didn’t know? I forwarded the email to Mimi and the others. We were all in awe.

  Now, more than two years later, I thought back to the massive impact this stranger had on our organization. He believed in us far before anyone else had, and I had to let him know how grateful I was for his early support.

  I emailed Claire, who was now living in London, and asked her for her boss’s name and address. It was long overdue, but she sent me his name, Larry Petretti, and I wrote him a heartfelt note:

  You don’t know me, but two years ago you took a leap of faith to support Pencils of Promise. You gave us $1,000 and the confidence to keep working on a big dream. You were the first major donor we had and helped build one of the first Pencils of Promise schools. Now we’ve opened up more than fifteen schools and have plans to break ground on our 50th before the end of the year. I’ll never be able to properly articulate how much you changed my life, but I hope the enclosed picture demonstrates how much you’ve changed someone else’s life as well. Best wishes, Adam Braun.

  On recent visits I’d been leaving colored pencils and hundreds of sheets of paper with the teachers in our schools. When I’d return to that village several days later, the students would
hand me hundreds of drawings, which I then mailed to supporters. I included one of these hand-drawn pictures in the note to Larry and placed a Post-it on it explaining its origin.

  Soon, I got an email back:

  Dear Adam,

  Thank you for your wonderful letter. I feel humbled that I could have made such an impact on your organization. I love what you have done. I have been involved with fundraising for more charities than I can remember and your organization is just so pure, so grassroots. You are making such a difference in a place and with people that would never have a chance otherwise. Education is the greatest gift one can give. It makes you realize how simple it would be to solve so many problems that plague our world if we could just focus on educating the masses instead of building bigger tanks and warplanes.

  I pray that you continue your good work and keep me posted on your progress.

  Kind regards,

  Larry

  Larry and I corresponded some more and I invited him to the office to meet in person and speak as part of our Lunch and Learn series. I actually started the program as a way to spend my days more efficiently by getting people to come to me rather than going to them. Esteemed people with significant authority usually expect you to come to their office, but by inviting those same people to “speak to our staff at a Lunch and Learn,” they often felt honored to be asked to more than just a standard meeting and usually made the trek to our little Lower East Side office.

  Not only was I able to double the number of meetings I could take in a day by never leaving the office, but the team got so much out of it too. After sharing his or her own story, we’d then have each speaker ask one question that every staff member answered aloud. Heads of marketing agencies asked questions like “What’s your favorite font?” and “If you were a brand, who would you be?” while nonprofit CEOs asked, “What inspired you to join Pencils of Promise?” and “Why are you passionate about education in particular?”

  These group discussions created a profound connection between the speakers and our team, while also enabling our young staff to hone their public-speaking skills. This practice became such an important part of our culture that we would even require candidates we were interviewing to participate.

  I was pretty surprised one afternoon when Larry, whom I had imagined as a burly guy running a construction company, showed up in a pin-striped power suit. The rest of us, in T-shirts and sneakers, packed into the main room to meet our first major donor and hear what wisdom he had to impart to us. Larry told us his story of building his company from nothing to now doing all subcontracting work for the build-out of the offices for IBM and Bank of America. When we got to the question segment, I was blown away because his question was so different from any that we had heard before. “How can I help each of you best accomplish your goals with Pencils of Promise?” he asked with sincerity. All twenty people in the room took their time thoughtfully answering the question. When it was my turn, I looked around the crammed space and said the first thing that came to mind.

  “If we ever get a new office, you can help us find a good architect,” I joked.

  “I’ll do better,” he said. “I’ll find you an architect and then have my subcontractors build out the entire thing for free.”

  With that promise, as we were squeezed together in a small room, I knew we wouldn’t be there for long. What really knit us together—a commitment to improving ourselves and the world—was going to keep us just as tightly bound. A simple handwritten thank-you letter facilitated our getting our future office built for free, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  * * *

  Later that month, I received a frantic email from Brad. You’re not going to believe this, but the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi (the largest advertising agency in the world) wrote his daily blog post about Pencils of Promise. People in the advertising industry are blowing up my email about it! Brad sent me a link, and when I clicked into the blog of Kevin Roberts, I read his impassioned post about the merits of our work and approach. The power of simply following up, or “closing the loop,” was so evident from the experience with Larry, I decided I had to use this as an opportunity to reach out.

  I searched online for any way to get in touch with him and finally was able to get a note through. I got an email back from his assistant, with a PDF of my email printed out and Kevin’s response written by hand on the right side of the paper.

  Adam, good to hear from you. I’m on the road for the next few weeks and not really in NY much at all I’m afraid. My assistant will set up a call when I’m back. . . . I’d love to hear your plans. Best, KR

  The call itself was a whirlwind. Kevin didn’t waste any time or words. He was a model of passion and efficiency. I frantically tried to scribble down notes during our thirty-minute chat, but the pen could barely keep up with all of his brilliant insights and advice. As our time came to a close, I asked him if we could speak again in the near future. His response was quick and dead serious: “We’ll speak again when you reach your hundredth school.”

  I almost laughed out loud. We were two and a half years in and had built a little more than twenty-five schools. I believed that we would get there many years into the future, but I’d never even considered that we would reach a hundred schools anytime soon. But perhaps it wasn’t all that unrealistic? I think he heard my hesitation on the other end of the line, and he offered a final few words of assurance: “Here’s my best advice: make the little decisions with your head and the big ones with your heart. Do that, and you’ll be just fine.”

  He was right. Kevin had illuminated a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) to drive toward, and if I stuck to my gut, we might get there. I’d never considered it before the call, but I decided to set our sights on building our hundredth school by the end of the following year. Relentlessly following up on every lead had paid off. PoP was built on the underdog mentality, so only a goal that big would seem right to motivate the hell out of us and serve as our rallying cry over the next twenty months.

  Mantra 24

  CHANGE YOUR WORDS TO CHANGE YOUR WORTH

  On a warm summer evening, I found myself on a stunning rooftop terrace in midtown Manhattan, attending a launch party for a large media company. Partygoers in expensive suits and tight cocktail dresses milled about, sipping fine champagne and admiring the city skyline. The Empire State Building was just a few blocks away, towering over us in a reddish glow. Prominent venture capitalists, journalists, investors, and business executives mingled, exchanging summer plans and their latest business ideas. Although I’d just returned from a trip to Guatemala where I’d spent my days with children more interested in markers than markets, the conversations that night were enlightening, and I didn’t feel all that dissimilar to most people in attendance.

  I began talking with a guy in his midforties who ran an investment fund and told me about his latest capital raise. We hit it off while discussing the differences between start-ups on the East and West Coasts, and I enjoyed learning about how he evaluated new investment opportunities. Although I’d left that space a while ago, I still knew it well enough to carry a solid conversation and felt as if we were speaking the same language. Then he asked what I did.

  “I run a nonprofit organization called Pencils of Promise.”

  “Oh,” he replied, somewhat taken aback. “And you do that full-time?”

  More than full-time, I thought, feeling a bit judged. “Yeah, I do. I used to work at Bain, but left to work on the organization full-time.”

  “Wow, good for you,” he said in the same tone you’d use to address a small child, then immediately looked over my shoulder for someone new to approach. He soon waved at someone across the terrace and feigned interest in me with one last question:

  “Tell me the name of your project again?”

  Project? It wasn’t the first time someone had referred to PoP with that dismissive term. “Pencils of Promise,” I said. He then gave me his card, another way of saying, This conversatio
n is now over, and walked away.

  In the awkward and electrically charged pause that followed, I couldn’t help but feel less than equal. Worse, the feeling was becoming all too familiar.

  On my subway ride home that night I began to reflect on the many times that this scenario had happened since I’d started Pencils of Promise. Conversations began on an equal footing, but the word nonprofit could stop a discussion in its tracks and strip our work of its value and true meaning. That one word could shift the conversational dynamic so that the other person was suddenly speaking down to me. As mad as I was at this guy, it suddenly hit me. I was to blame for his lackluster response. With one word, nonprofit, I had described my company as something that stood in stark opposition to the one metric that his company was being most evaluated by. I had used a negative word, non, to detail our work when that inaccurately described what we did. Our primary driver was not the avoidance of profits, but the abundance of social impact.

  Non is defined as “of little or no consequence: unimportant: worthless.” Worthless? Clearly, something needed to change. Why were we the only industry that introduced itself with a negative when we existed not to reduce profits, but to foster a profusion of purpose? Instead of introducing ourselves by touting what we didn’t do, shouldn’t we share what we did do? Shouldn’t we boldly proclaim that we work to produce social good in the largest measurable form possible? It was time to remove the stigma that vastly separates nonprofits from their for-profit counterparts. Even though PoP would always remain a 501(c)(3), not-for-profit organization, couldn’t we at least adopt the mind-set of a for-profit company that focused on structure, results, and adherence to long-term strategic impact?