When the Tool is the Problem, Not You
Newsletter #10
Sometimes IT IS THE TOOLS.
As the saying goes, "A bad workman blames his tools." But what if the tools were never designed for how you think, feel or move through the world?
A few years ago, I stopped planning in the constraints of Dolly's 9-5 world and the months and quarters that went with it. Since my children had entered the UK school system with its shorter school days and six breaks a year, traditional business timeframes had just stopped working for me.
Those conventional timings showed no respect for school pickups at 4pm or the natural pauses of half-terms and holidays that now kept showing up in my life. I mean just when you’ve had one half-term break there’s another!
So now I plan my work in school terms and half-terms and surprise, surprise (anyone else hear Cilla singing that - just me?) it works so much better, because it's aligned with the reality of my day-to-day life.
Before I was trying to squeeze into someone else's reality.
Planning and productivity systems have been just one of many tools from traditional business that never truly worked for me, especially after becoming a mother. The issue runs deep; it's about recognising that motherhood fundamentally reshaped who I was and the relational ties that anchor my life.
Traditional business frameworks often treat these ties as limitations to work around, rather than strengths to build upon.
I kept trying to separate my professional self from my maternal reality, until I realised that that I was entangled and so is the world, you can’t severe one part from another1.
AND that was OK.
This is why I was so struck when I came across the Barefoot College recently. They’re an organisation that didn't just accommodate reality, they strategically built upon it.
Founded in 1972 by Sanjit Roy in Rajasthan, India, Barefoot College2 initially trained men in rural villages to become solar engineers, so they could install and maintain solar electricity in their local communities. But he quickly hit a barrier: once trained, these men frequently left for well paid jobs, taking their new skills away from the communities that needed them.
When they shifted to training mothers and grandmothers, ‘Solar Mamas’, instead, the opposite happened. These women consistently returned to their villages after training, their skills remaining exactly where they were needed most. The very relational ties that might be seen as "constraints" in traditional frameworks; commitments to children, grandchildren and community, ensured the women returned and so became the foundation for sustainable change.
Barefoot College didn't succeed despite working with women who had deep family commitments; they succeeded because of it. They built a model that leveraged the actual shape of these women's lives, rather than asking them to set it aside.
They have now trained over 1700 ‘Solar Mamas’ from 96 countries. With that in mind let’s move to …
This week's question:
Why this question?
Barefoot College is really disruptive and innovative, and amazingly it still feels that way, some 50 years after they began.
They disrupted to build something genuinely different, something that aligned with the people they served, not the traditional systems they were supposed to fit into.
This perspective shows exactly how I feel about business tools and frameworks and how we need them to be built upon the reality of who we are now, not who we might be if we shed our most meaningful connections and commitments.
How to use this week's question:
I’ve pulled out three principles from the Barefoot College’s ethos to inspire us. This week, for the first time, I’ve shared my own thinking about this question further down too.
Find your real partners, not just your "ideal clients"
Barefoot College approach: they identified local women who had deep community ties through their children and grandchildren as the best fit for supporting the villages new solar systems.
How you might apply this: Consider who will partner with you and help build your impact, not just those who might buy from you.
2. Design the journey around your partners
Barefoot College approach: They recognised that conventional engineering education wouldn't work for their partners who had very little formal education and were often illiterate. Instead of forcing women to learn reading first, they created visual teaching systems using colour coding for the circuit boards, oral teaching and even local puppetry traditions to make complex concepts accessible.
How you might apply this: Meet people where they are, not where it would be convenient for them to be.
3. Build scaffolding that allows people to achieve and transform
Barefoot College approach: They provided stipends so families could manage while the ‘Solar Mamas’ were away training, offered eye tests to ensure physical barriers weren't limiting learning and gave families phones to stay connected during the six months apart.
How you might apply this: Consider the practical barriers that might be preventing your partners from engaging fully with you and your work, and how you might remove them with intentional support.
My thoughts on this week’s question:
1. I see my partners as people who:
care deeply about the ripples their business decisions create.
feel that familiar discomfort with traditional business frameworks - like that uncomfortable and often icky feeling of wearing someone else’s well worn shoes.
hold positions of influence (obvious or quiet) within their workplaces and communities.
want to create meaningful change rather than just optimise existing systems.
2. This newsletter exists to encourage slow and reflective thinking about impact possible in the midst of busy, demanding lives. I intentionally:
focus on one question rather than overwhelming lists.
share stories that connect abstract principles to lived experience.
keep sections brief enough to digest during natural pauses in your day.
send it on a Monday so you have all week to come back to it or practice using the latest question.
3. I'm in the midst of creating new scaffolding and supports that I hope will make it even easier for you to carry this work into your everyday.
If you have ideas or requests for what that could look like, I'd love to hear them.
There's a poll (with limited options and text count) below, or just hit reply or drop me a direct message.
Thanks for being here, till next week.
Keep questioning,
P.S. And remember - you don’t have to change who you are. You just need tools that match how you already think.
Inspiration & Credits:
I hope giving some distance between sources and their links frees you from ending up in an unintended rabbit hole! If you’re interested though - click away!