What keeps you awake at night?

[ This original post can be found on We Move Media ]

Dear team,

What keeps you awake at night?

While at Deloitte, we’d often ask our clients this question in hopes of identifying the company’s most critical problems as well their biggest aspirations. Similarly, this question can also be asked on a personal level. From time to time, thoughts regarding decisions and aspirations have inhibited me from a regular sleeping pattern. The restlessness of ideas such as “Social Consultants” (circa April 2009),decisions such as moving to Tanzania and the excitement of heartwork are all thoughts that kept me awake at night.

This past month, despite my eyelids being heavy from working through my time zone and EST, I haven’t been able to sleep at night due to the following thoughts:

I just launched a national program. It better work.
Oct 17 marked the launch date of the eVoucher program and while the nights leading up to the launch were sleepless due to the preparations, the following nights were sleepless because I realized that this program is mission critical. There’s no room for power outages, network failures, system crashes or functionality errors which we were encountering. For the first 2 weeks, the program was going wonderfully. We met our monthly targets with 4 days to spare and the feeling of watching users use a program which you built was so wonderful. Over 80% of women are redeeming their vouchers for mosquito nets on the same day that they receive the voucher and that’s a great testament to the goals of the project. However, just when I was getting comfortable and satisfied with the system performance, we experienced some major setbacks today. And so continues the loop of celebrating victories and fighting fires. Soon, I hope to translate that loop into one stable, positively sloped line.

If I had a penny for every mHealth pilot, I’d be rich.
It’s well-known that pilotitis is the biggest disease in mHealth. I’ve attended a number of mHealth working group meetings and this month, I attended the mHealth in Tanzania working group meeting where members shared the projects they were working on and almost every “new” project generated a response as “Oh…this [organization, person] is working on something [related, same].” Almost every single project. The lack of communication, duplication of efforts and pilotitis are the plagues of mHealth. These are the realities. Realities that undoubtedly have to be worked at. After working in the micro-level, this month was a reality check at the macro-level of m4d. Through iniatives like Failfaire and through the trend of transparency, these realities are quickly becoming identified but now require work, especially from the top-down. Currently, I’m working with the Tanzania mHealth Community of Practice on the priority of “Transitioning pilots to scale”. Change has to start somewhere.

I’ve found my heartwork. What next?
This question is the one I think about the most which means I will probably write about it the least as I don’t have any answers. In the spirit of transparency, I do see myself living in Toronto in the long-term so I’m hestitant to consider a career in international development. Undoubtedly, there are organizations who do this well (based in a Western city but work internationally), but Toronto also boasts itself of great companies and organizations affecting local change. In addition to the question of finding the intersection between what you do well, what you’re passionate about and what you can be paid to do, I’m now adding a layer of how you can be most efficient and effective to influence a positive impact. Because life is not complex enough as it is.

I am surrounded by people who love me.
I’ve so pleased to have three rounds of visitors willing and wanting to come visit. I lie awake at night thinking about our itineraries: showing my heartwork, eating at my favourite local places, and catching up in Dar’s most beautiful beaches. I’m too spoiled and extremely blessed.

So team, I’ll throw it back to you. What keeps you awake at night? What are the uncertainties, dreams and aspirations that consume your mind?

Peach and love / kris