@izzygrandic and I are working to tackle postpartum haemorrhage in Nigeria by scaling scaling Misoprostol, a uterotinc in low resource areas

We're a group of teenage girls from North America working with a team on ground in

Context + Learnings below

/CONTEXT/

Misoprostol sells for $3-6 in the state we're looking at (Jigawa, which has one of the highest MMRs in the area). It's expensive and inaccessible.
Buy-in from local religious/traditional leaders is a MUST. Nothing will move until *all* stakeholders are on board.

/ On: People, culture & team /

Early culture matters. Are you people-driven, results-driven, or some mix of both?

People-driven individuals optimize for team harmony and making sure everyone *feels* good. Extremely result-driven people can still be aware of team dynamics but generally seem to care less.

When you're starting off a project that requires you to be agile and scrappy, people-based individuals are extremely useful for interfacing with others in an empathetic way. Having intuition around human nature is a superpower and harder to train than most other skills.

HOWEVER, things can quickly become a shitshow if there isn't an alignment on culture

Probably the two biggest things to align on:
- General work expectations
- Feedback styles

Our team had regular culture syncs where we'd rate ourselves 1-7 across a dedicated culture doc.

People need to be let-go based on their personality type.

If you need someone to leave your team, your best case scenario might just be letting them come to that same decision on their own. This is a more time (& maybe energy) intensive route but it avoids burning bridges.

I like "pulling the band-aid off." @izzygrandic likes "pulling the band-aid off" more than me.

You know what we didn't do this time?

PULL THE BAND AID OFF.

Our conversations with the team member who wasn't a good fit centred around:
- How have you been feeling recently? We noticed you've been off? Is everything okay?

After that: LISTEN Let people feel heard first. Then say what you have to say.

Keep your stuff organized.

The highlight of my year was having @navidnathoo tell us that our Notion pages were better than some of the other companies he'd seen.

There's two approaches that we took depending on what made sense at the time:
- First Principles
- Iteration

Our team started off by listing what we'd want in a team @NotionHQ and building it out.

When it was time to move on, we'd bring it up in our standups, and set some time to revisit.

The first thing we'd ask:
- Do we want to add/remove or scrap and build from scratch?

Use your intuition for this one. Our team just *knew* when it was time to either iterate or scrap and rebuild.

Organization sounds like low priority, but DO IT. It's such a quick value-add that spares you *SO* much trouble later.

/ On: Technology and Impact /

What's your "Why"?

I know you want to make an impact. WHY do you want to make an impact?

Is it a visceral itch to solve the problem? Is it the team that you get to work with? Does the problem existing just not make sense to you?

Why are you doing what you're doing?

There's obviously no right answers. The only important part is that you're *aware*.

Especially when it comes to low-resource projects, it's especially easy (being from NA) to have a subconscious saviour bias as your why.

This!! hurts!! at-risk!! communities!!

How are you addressing whatever bias you may have? What are your systems of feedback? WHO re you getting feedback from? Who are the key decision makers? Do they all look and sound and act like you?

One of the things we did was build an advisory board of over 95%+ Nigerians.

This also means admitting to yourself that you don't know a lot. There are things that you will likely never know.

If you are *truly* in it to solve the problem, you'll be okay with that. Not just on the surface level, but also in allowing diverse voices to make key decisions.

Some villages have more phones than toilets. Leverage tech meaningfully.

A common mistake teams make is overlooking any tech solution in low-resource settings because "the infrastructure is not there."

Okay, but what exactly do you mean?

Is the tech *truly* inaccessible or is a solution just out of your circle of competence/experience?

High-tech solutions for low resource environments are dumb.

BUT is the tech "truly not there" or are you just:
a) unaware of it
b) not sure what to do with it

Tech doesn't have to be your core solution in these settings. In fact, it likely won't be.

But can you use it in interesting, novel ways to support your core solution? What datapoints do you have to suggest yes/no?

Just talk to more people than you think you need to talk to.

/ On: Misc Best Practices /

- Have quick daily standups. Don't let these run over 10 minutes. Have dedicated work sessions/strategy meetings instead.

- Build a centralized culture doc. Include values, roles/expectations, preferred feedback styles, etc. Revisit this to see how well your team is doing often.

- Build an advisory board early. Doesn't have to be fancy. Get people who are excited in you + what you're doing, willing to grill you, and willing to connect you. Send bi-weekly email updates.

- If possible, talk to your mentors + advisors often. Keep communication asynchro wherever you can. People are busy.

- Set up weekly feedback syncs. What went well this week, what didn't, what are we doing differently next week, what are we being intentional about?

- End all meetings (except standups, generally) with action items.

- When making + acting on a new task, have a one-liner that describes either the intention behind the task or the ideal outcome. It's a quick thing that helps with visibility & alignment.

- TALK TO PEOPLE. Getting grilled by people who know more than you is good as long as you've been relatively thoughtful and respectful of their time.

- Always be 1-2 minutes early to standup. Just do it. It makes people feel good. Our team is always early to standups. Being on-time is being late now.

- Be intentionally empathetic. Listen more. Talk slower. Write nicer emails. Express your appreciation for people who help out when they really don't need to.