The Collective Power of Selfishness
By Jack Sim, Founder l BoP HUB l World Toilet Organization
Introduction
In a world where nearly half of the population struggles to survive, on less than USD 6.85 a day traditional charity is insufficient to combat poverty. To create lasting change, a shift is needed to engage with those marginalized and empower them to uplift themselves. This shift from dependence to empowerment is at the heart of the World Toilet Organisation’s (WTO) approach, where mutual benefit and strategic collaboration allow us to tackle global challenges. By harnessing the collective power of selfishness — where each stakeholder pursues their own interests while contributing to the greater good — we can unlock new opportunities for systems change and prosperity for all.
About the World Toilet Organisation
Since its founding in 2001, the World Toilet Organisation (WTO) has broken the taboo on sanitation and brought it on the global stage by creating the UN World Toilet Day on 19 November. This initiative was unanimously approved by 193 countries at the UN General Assembly in 2013.
Over the last 24 years, this global movement has achieved significant milestones: providing proper sanitation to 2.5 billion people and hosting 19 World Toilet Summits. The organisation helped transform China by offering public toilets with clean facilities in major cities and assisted India in building 110 million toilets.
Additionally, the World Toilet Organization successfully lobbied for a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) bill in Brazil, attracting USD 14 billion in investments for government-owned sewage treatment plants. It also played a key role in changing building codes in Singapore, China, and Hong Kong to increase the number of ladies’ cubicles, compensating for the urinals in men’s restrooms. This change ended long lines at ladies’ facilities and created ‘potty parity’.
The leverage model of mutual exploitation
We are often encouraged to celebrate heroes and aspire to become heroes ourselves. However, when faced with challenges beyond our own capacity to solve, it is essential to shift our focus from being heroes to becoming catalysts who empower others to be collaborative heroes.
The World Toilet Organization has developed a twelve-step Leverage Model that collaborates with key stakeholders to shift the system. By fostering mutually beneficial initiatives, you can ensure the success of your business model. To truly benefit someone, allow them to take full advantage of the opportunity you create.
- Media is our #1 partner. By offering powerful storytelling, we help the media increase circulation, readership, and advertising revenue. In return, they offer us the massive influence needed to attract other stakeholders.
- Media legitimises our mission and status. The media legitimises our mission and status by reaching billions of people and providing advertising value worth billions of dollars. This symbiotic relationship between the WTO and the media is enduring and mutually beneficial.
- Driving Political Will. Crafting powerful narratives that attract politicians to partner with WTO, enhancing their popularity and votes. Politicians sponsor our World Toilet Summits, which are national-scale events that elevate our agenda, resulting in lasting policy and system changes. They pay us a fee of USD 50,000 for the rights to host the Summit.
- The politicians have power, but lack time. Politicians hold power but often lack the time to execute the plans. Once they trust your organization and delegate the work to the bureaucrats, it is important to facilitate effective policy implementation. Navigating the maze of the civil service requires an understanding of the key motivated actors. To prevent the bureaucratic “work avoidance syndrome,” knowing you are empowered by the politicians and in regular contact with superiors, creates a positive incentive to perform well. Many bureaucrats feel secure maintaining the status quo, so designing incentives to encourage action is essential.
- Involve academics. Once you have secured a cooperative bureaucrat, involve academia to provide evidence-based support for policy planning, including cost-benefit analysis. The professors appreciate having their research used and increasing their academic standing where publishing is critical. You integrate media, politicians, civil service, and academia in a five-way mutual ‘exploitation’ aka beneficial ecosystem.
- Engaging the United Nations. Engaging in the UN can be beneficial, though their processes are typically very slow and bureaucratic. To work efficiently, operate outside their system and involve them when ready. They like it this way as it speeds up the process, while they bless our common mission with their legitimacy. Similarly, maintain a high profile at global events like the World Economic Forum and Clinton Global Initiatives, among others.
- Making it sexy for influencers. Celebrities add the icing on the cake and make the mission of your organisation sexy, attracting their fans and new followers, while enhancing their image of generosity. While usually not paid, still account for the costs of mobilization and logistics.
- Corporations to support your mission. Corporations may support your mission to fulfill their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Shared Values (CSV), and Environment/Social/Governance (ESG) sustainability goals. These practices enhance their competitiveness while simultaneously improving the economic and social conditions in the communities they operate in. However, corporations need to increase product sales. Editorial media value is three times more credible than paid advertising for public relations.
- For-profit social businesses. Many companies are recognising the trillion dollar potential of the Base of the Pyramid marketplace (London, 2016). For example, Lixil launched for-profit companies producing low-cost sanitation systems with affordable terms to the poor. EssilorLuxottica is operating a profitable business selling prescription glasses at USD 8 per pair to low income customers. D.Light and Solarun, both part of our network, are selling solar energy products. Our network of 5,000 social entrepreneurs’ can serve as ready distribution centers for a new supermarket of BOP products.
- Engaging NGO partners. There are millions of NGOs on the ground who are trusted by local communities but often struggle financially. These NGOs can become effective distribution centers if they are also able to generate profit.
- Educate Foreign Aid agencies. We need to educate foreign aid agencies to invest their Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds into policy influence for system change, capital injections, and capacity building for cross-sector and cross-geographical collaboration. These approaches differ from the instant-gratification model of current ODA. Funders need to become co-pilots of such projects, extending their involvement beyond mere monitoring and evaluation.
- Engaging donors. Engaging philanthropists and donors can be transformed into different types of funding, e.g. patient capital investors, blended-capital funders, and first-loss risk underwriters. This transformation requires educating philanthropists, who are often hard to reach.
Building an effective ecosystem for future development
Catalyst 2030, with its global network of more than 3400 member organisations, has been instrumental in fostering collaboration to advance toward the SDGs. By capturing and codifying the methodologies and social business models employed by these organisations, we have the potential to replicate and scale impact across sectors, geographies, and solutions.
The key to this ecosystem’s success, therefore, lies in collaboration among these fellows, turning individual interests into collective benefits. Each stakeholder who joins the ecosystem gains what they seek, yet their collective self-interest transforms into collective selflessness. By continuously nurturing these catalysts and building trust across sectors and geographies, the ecosystem can grow and evolve organically, leading to more mutually beneficial interactions and a more integrated approach to problem solving.
This approach aligns with Lao Tzu’s philosophy:
“The job is successfully done when everyone said they did it themselves.”
We cannot eliminate the ego, but we can channel it. Collective selfishness becomes selflessness when the orchestrator steps back from being the hero and empowers others to become the exponential heroes they never imagined they could be.
Author:
Peer-reviewed & Edited by:
Sources
Kramer, W. J., Katz, R. S., Tran, J. T., & Hammond, A. L. (1 January, 2007). The next 4 billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid. Retrieved (30 August 2020) https://documents.banquemondiale.org/curated/fr/779321468175731439/The-next-4-billion-market-size-and-business-strategy-at-the-base-of-the-pyramid
Half of the global population lives on less than US$6.85 per person per day. World Bank Blogs. (30 August 2020) https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/developmenttalk/half-global-population-lives-less-us685-person-day
London, T., (2016). The Base of the Pyramid Promise: Building Businesses with Impact and Scale, Redwood City: Stanford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804797337
Explore the work
Visit Jack Sim’s website to learn about WTO.
Read his book: The Gumption of Mr. Toilet
Cite this Article APA
Sim, J. (30 August, 2024). The Collective Power of Selfishness. Retrieved (month date year) from [https://catalyst2030.medium.com/the-collective-power-of-selfishness-98c6e94379be]
