After spending a month in Laos to work with our team and students on the ground, I returned home to focus on the growing movement behind PoP. We had recently expanded to a third nation, Guatemala, working in the same region around Lake Atitlán where I had lived with Joel Puac years earlier. We had raised over $1 million in 2010 (more than a tenfold increase from the year before), and were setting ambitious goals to break ground on dozens of new schools by the end of the new year. Nobel Peace Prize–winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu even sent us a surprise video to endorse our efforts. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I watched him say, “Pencils of Promise . . . keep working, keep learning, the world needs you.”
As I saw that video, I thought back to a phrase my friend had scribbled on my apartment whiteboard months earlier: “The most powerful thing in the world is an idea whose time has come.” It felt as if this was our moment. The students of Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business, the most discerning business minds of the next generation, had just chosen us as one of the select charities they would fundraise to support. We were hitting on all cylinders.
When a cool opportunity presented itself in the form of the British Airways “Face of Opportunity” contest, I knew I had to submit an entry. Two hundred fifty small-business owners would receive a free flight anywhere in the world. All that was required was an essay or a video on how you would use the flight to advance your organization.
With so much going on, I hadn’t had time to work on my application—something I realized one night at 11:40 p.m., twenty minutes before the final entry deadline. With little time, but little to lose, I looked into my iPhone camera and recorded a two-minute video on our work building schools in the developing world and how we would use the flight to bring Lanoy to our headquarters in New York so she could receive an in-depth training from our staff.
The video must have resonated with someone because weeks later we learned that we’d made it into the Top 250 and won a flight. I was elated, and then I was shocked to find out that we’d made it to the Top 10. A weeklong social media voting campaign would determine the top three finalists. Social media? That we could do.
We campaigned hard on Facebook and Twitter, determined to get to the finals to snag the ten free business-class flights that would be awarded to the grand prize–winning organization. I was also eager to garner the publicity for Pencils of Promise that would come along with winning the contest. A few weeks later the ten semifinalists were narrowed down to the final three: a sustainable coffee company called Dunn Bros Coffee, the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, and us.
I had no idea what to expect in the finals, an event held at Manhattan’s giant Marriott Marquis hotel, but it turned out to be a lot more like the TV show Shark Tank than the celebratory event I had anticipated. In a room filled with five hundred attendees, I had two minutes to talk about PoP in the “pitch-off.” I used what I had learned at Summit Series about making a quick impression and talked about our story, model, and vision to improve the lives of children in poverty by providing access to education. I had given the pitch countless times before—and it had worked in nearly every instance.
But this time when I was finished, the three “celebrity judges,” Bill Rancic of The Apprentice, Bethenny Frankel of Skinnygirl fame, and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank, tried to tear me apart. I later learned that they had been instructed to find holes in our companies, although that had never been explained to us before we stepped on the stage.
“How much of the money goes into programs versus overhead?” asked Bill.
“Industry standard would say that any organization that directs over seventy percent toward programs is doing a good job. We try to be as lean as possible, so we’ve historically put eighty-three to eighty-six percent of funds into programs,” I said. The crowd clapped, and Bill nodded his approval.
In between the rapid-fire questions aimed at each finalist, lights flashed and music played loudly; I felt as if I were on a bad reality show. Finally they brought us back together onstage to announce the winner. The first of four votes was the audience favorite, and PoP had received 60 percent of the vote. The second vote was Bill Rancic’s, who cast his ballot in our favor. With two out of four total votes, we just needed one more to guarantee we had won. But Bethenny and Barbara both voted for Indiegogo.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever, we have a tie!” boomed the announcer. “We’ll now have a live thirty-second pitch-off, and the audience will decide on the winner.”
I already won the audience once; I hoped I could do it again. Danae, the cofounder of Indiegogo, went first. She immediately appealed to rationality, touting their proven team and sound business model. Then I was on. I knew I had to tell a story that the audience could connect to emotionally. The crowd was all entrepreneurs. We were driven by the same passion, so I went right to our commonalities. “As anyone with a really big dream who started in a really small room knows, you may have poured your heart and soul into your business, but it was the special people who joined you along the way that made the difference. Those are the people I stand up here representing—the men and women who work in the field, educating our children every day, those are the ones I want to use these flights for. They are the real faces of opportunity.”
My thirty seconds were up. The lights started pulsing again, and the clicker votes around the room were counted. This time, I won 85 percent of the audience. Pencils of Promise was announced as the grand-prize winner. Officials from British Airways came out carrying an oversize cardboard check with “10 free business class flights” scribbled in the amount line. Cameras flashed, people I’d never met congratulated me, and interviews commenced. It was an absolute circus, but I was relieved it was over and I couldn’t wait to share the news with the team. Ten free flights would be of great value and we had earned a lot of exposure for the organization.
The next afternoon all 250 of the small-business winners were whisked off on a chartered jet to London, where the CEO of British Airways awaited us for a photo opportunity. At the welcome reception, I peeked down at my phone and saw an email from Noah, who was now responsible for our work in Latin America and doing a terrific job. I opened it, and my heart sank.
Appy and I were robbed at knifepoint last night. . . . They stole my phone and wallet and her BlackBerry and purse. Not sure if we need to file something with PoP.
The night before had been the Super Bowl, and I knew that Noah and Appy (our PoP Guatemala Fellow) had gone to a Peace Corps party in a city several hours away from where we were based hoping to connect with other NGO workers. I had warned the staff to be careful in urban areas. And now this had happened.
I assumed Noah had written because he wanted reimbursement for their stuff. As applause broke out, celebrating PoP’s win, and with little time to focus on this new matter, I dashed an email connecting Noah to Tom in the New York office so he could help. But I was still pissed about the whole thing. How could they let this happen?
Although they’d clearly been through a terrible ordeal, it wasn’t PoP’s fault that they put themselves in a dangerous situation. Connecting to the emotions of the audience had worked onstage, so I figured connecting to the emotions of Noah and Appy could bring about some resolution to this as well. I fired off a reply:
Hey guys,
First off let me say how glad I am that you’re both completely okay and that you weren’t hurt at all given what happened recently.
At this point though it’s clear that there are some inferences being made as to whether PoP will be reimbursing you for the items that were stolen. The truth is that you can make up whatever you want as to what happened. You can describe it or message it however you want, but I’m never going to know. What I do know is that we work extremely hard for every dollar we raise, and that I value every dollar we spend even more. Also, you guys signed contracts that removed PoP of this liability and you had your own option to get insurance that would cover you in case this happened (which Tom can help you follow up on). So as I understand it, the current policy is that PoP shouldn’t reimburse anything.
But you are the ones that make our Guatemala programs happen, you are the ones that took the leap of faith to make PoP your current life’s path. . . . I also hope that you view this organization as your own, since it truly is the creation of all of us together. Given that, I truly believe that you guys can make the better call on how PoP should handle this than I could. Let me know what you think is an ideal outcome for both PoP and you guys on this, and that’s the course we’re going to take.
—Adam
It was not the right response. When I checked my email next, I found this:
Hey Adam,
I believe we’ve had a misunderstanding. When I asked if I should file something with PoP, I was referring to an incident report. I thought it might be necessary to (1) alert PoP of recent events and (2) help shape future policy for personnel living abroad. Neither Appy or I expect any form of reimbursement.
—Noah
The clarification email was followed by another email, which was more personal, honest, and appropriately critical of my note. Noah explained it wasn’t a matter of two guys who came up to them with knives and looted their pockets:
They strangled me, put knives sharply against both of us, threw Appy up against a wall and wouldn’t stop roughing her up until I was finally able to throw myself on top of her. We weren’t just robbed, we were attacked.
As I continued reading, I couldn’t help but think, This happened because I sent them there. Noah explained how incredibly disturbing it was to wake up to an email rejecting a request he hadn’t made and suggesting dishonesty where there was none: One would expect that an organization such as PoP, where everyone is sacrificing something to achieve a common goal, would be more supportive of its staff. As for Appy, he said she was already quite rattled by the incident, but was even further disturbed by the way I handled it and was now thinking about leaving the organization.
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.