Scaling Global Change

7People Management: Changing the World Is a Team Sport

Culture is the fabric that bonds people in an organization together. The shared values, solidarity to a cause, comradery, and repeated jokes make the long days working together more meaningful. Even in the most difficult circumstances, humorous moments are sometimes what you remember most.

Erin recalls being in Sri Lanka a few months after the December 2004 tsunami hit. She was visiting some of the first communities we were partnering with to rebuild schools. It was a challenging time as Erin and the Room to Read country director of Sri Lanka witnessed firsthand the devastation and ongoing suffering. Reconstruction efforts were slow. In one small, predominantly Muslim community on the eastern coast of the island, we held a groundbreaking ceremony to lay the foundation of a preschool we were rebuilding with the community.

In the speeches being spoken in Tamil, Erin heard Room to Read being referred to as “Room to Breed.” The community thought our mission was to encourage families to have more children. In Erin’s speech, she had to correct the name to Room to Read and clarify that Room to Read’s mission was about ensuring all children were educated and developing a lifelong habit and joy of reading. This experience turned into a shared joke among the staff for years that rippled throughout the worldwide team of different names for Room to Read: Room to Work, Room to Travel, Room to Eat, Room to Party, and so on. Room to Read’s ...