Mastering the daily return to the bottom of the learning curve

One of my favourite podcasts is Night Science, in which Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher explore the creative side of scientific research, which often resonates with how we think at inthallo. In episode 74, joined by Martin Schwartz, they discuss embracing stupidity in scientific research, which struck a chord, because working in philanthropy makes me feel stupid every day. Here, 'stupidity' is not a label of capability but a momentary posture - the willingness to feel lost, curious, and humble in the face of complexity.

The feeling of 'not knowing'

Philanthropy is as multifaceted as the people and causes within it. At inthallo, we see this because we try to utilise philanthropic capital to invigorate growth on a sector agnostic basis. This means I learn about different complex issues daily, and am reminded how little I know about any of them. To deepen my knowledge and to make educated decisions, I consult experts in their respective fields. Strangely, they often don’t have definitive answers either.

Perhaps this means that nobody has the answer. Perhaps there isn’t just one answer. Isn’t that the nature of complex problems: uncertainty, unintended consequences, interdependence and conflicting solutions. In that case, the acknowledgement of our stupidity may be the most liberating act. As Schwartz put it: “If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can”. What a relief!

But how does one muddle well?

Know thyself, and…

When we get stuck in our research it is usually because our perspective is wrong. Therefore, to become better researchers, we need to understand ourselves, how our mind works, and the types of research we are naturally drawn to.

At inthallo, we give light touch guidance, but we strongly encourage self-discovery, letting colleagues pursue charities, sectors and methods that ignite their curiosity. We want everyone to discover why they might be more comfortable in one type of grant making than another. Someone who is a place-based grant maker at heart, driven to solve context specific problems, will feel some dissonance in trying to build a portfolio geared to scale regardless of location.

Is it possible to hold tension between knowing oneself, having passion for the research and remaining indifferent to the outcome?

…let thy true self be known

Schwartz argues that passion and indifference come from two different places. Passion comes from our own innate curiosity and indifference from our conscious effort to remove our ego from the situation.

I believe that we cultivate passionate indifference through relationships. We are part of an ecosystem of mentors, peers and partners, who we aim to work with symbiotically. We are in regular exchange with other funders, sharing our research on sectors and charities. We also find that our charity partners often have the best ideas, especially when they collaborate. We simply provide space and encouragement.

Of course, no one can keep your ego in check like your team does when they know you well. We deeply value our team culture and the experience everyone brings. The inthallo team is multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and interdisciplinary. This gives us an edge in shifting perspective. We always hold the knowledge that there is more than one answer to a question.

We ask for feedback on our thinking and findings early. We like messy, incomplete notes, because they create the space for left-field questions and “I don’t know” moments. These moments could be the chance to defend your initial thesis OR they can become a collaborative opportunity to wade further into the unknown and refocus on the process from a different angle.

Finding the joy in this aesthetic process of research is fundamental in grant making. In

Committing to the Craft

The sector is often pushed to emulate the business and investment world – number crunching, tough nosed leadership, lean business models. However, we rarely consider the softer areas of their work, such as the ever-present role of luck, uncertainty and failure. Foundations and philanthropy professionals spend entire workshops, conferences and years criticising their strategies and grant making processes, in an attempt to control the uncontrollable. We’re asked to measure outcomes, grant locally and fund moonshot philanthropy all at the same time. In the end, we rarely embrace smaller failures, and we don’t allow ourselves to tinker around the edges.

At inthallo, we share space and discussions with our investment team who fully embrace luck, uncertainty and failure. And it has helped us to understand our grant making process to be a blend of art and science, balancing subjectivity and objectivity, facts and data with the blue-sky potential.

About three years ago, we started our grant making journey with a problem question: ‘Can this process help us identify charities with the potential to scale’? Currently, the answer is yes. But have any of our partners increased their impact drastically? Some. Have we made mistakes along the way? Absolutely. And have any of our partners scaled in a magnificent way? Not yet. But we are very hopeful.

Our process has changed gradually over this time. The front-end of our process is quant driven, recently automated, and it opens the door for deeper qualitative analysis. I think Sennett would approve of technology enabling our craftsmanship, giving us more time for the qualitative work.

We hope to further improve through technology, intersectoral mentorship and collaboration, while embracing ambiguity and imperfection as part of the creative research process. As Sennett says, craftsmanship embodies an ethical stance: doing good work for its intrinsic value fosters integrity and responsibility. We often don’t know the answer. Let’s embrace that, be generous and improve our craft alongside each other.