Theodora Update - An Awareness Arises

 I have not written about the Theodora Africa Project in a while as we were deep in the transformative and transitional experience in Sicily. Things are progressing at a dynamic pace. You might remember in July we had the significant event of a major donor visiting. They were doing their own investigation to determine how 'real' the program was as concerned their getting more deeply involved. I never followed with a report on the outcome.

Based on what was observed, these donors with another of our major contributors, Theodora received a commitment for funding to help it finish it's second phase - building out necessary business systems required to have a genuine business that could be scaled and testing same. There was caveat with this major contribution (one I totally supported). The donors wanted our group to focus on getting to breakeven. This means making enough income to cover all your expenses. At the time this commitment was made, we were just moving from the test of adding a new group of people, training them, finding out if we could train and integrate them effectively. It required us to pivot and refocus what we were doing.  It forced us to fulfill the promise we've made that this will be a 'real business'.

With that in mind, we have been schooling our team on all it takes to have 'a real business'. We had an interesting couple of sessions this week. I walked them through how we calculate our breakeven point. There was a particular emphasis on two things - the total number of hours we actually bill compared to the total hours we have available for work (utilization rate), and the effective hourly rate we earn on each hour worked. (Note, we used a fixed price billing system not an hourly billing system. Thus as we become more effective and efficient, we spend less time on a job and the effective amount we earn per hour worked goes up.)

Because we added a bunch of new people to prove we could do so before seeking more revenue, our actual utilization rate is very low. So we have a lot of potential hours to bill. Plus we have a lot of opportunity to increase our effective hourly rate. I put a simple spreadsheet up with a projector and we started to run some numbers. Have you had the experience where you are talking and you can really tell the audience gets it? That's what I saw in the team's eyes and heard in their voices. They got it. They understood that if they account for their time and they manage their time better and better, the potential for them to make more money grew. That was a pretty important breakthrough as the effectiveness of their working is the primary variable they have control over. 

As any manager or planner will tell you, it is one thing to understand a concept. It is another to implement it and make it a reality. That is our next step. How do we adjust how we actually do and manage work to control those variables. 

But when you consider the youth of our group and the circumstances they are coming from, this is a huge realization. I can tell you from years of work with American business, there are plenty whose people never get this realization. It's pretty exciting actually.