2020: Fortify Health's year in review

2020 has been a strange year for everyone and every organisation. Fortify Health’s own milestones may not be as concrete as in previous years, and instead our lessons from 2020 became our milestones - it was not the year we expected, yet we made the most of it. All things considered, we've learned and grown a lot as an organisation and as a team, and a major highlight has been the strength of our team and what this means for Fortify Health going forward. As travel restrictions ease, we’re hopeful that 2021 will bring further opportunity and growth.

We asked our team to share what some of their most helpful lessons and milestones have been from 2020, both on an organisational level and at a programmatic level. Below is a summary of our 2020 growth based off of all of the team’s inputs. 

Organisational lessons and milestones

1) We've all learned to work collaboratively and empathetically with a completely remote team

• Issue: Before March 2020, we engaged in relatively few team socials, and different departments rarely crossed paths.
• Actions taken: In 2020, we enhanced this by incorporating weekly internal learning presentations in the first lockdown, and we've now incorporated more socials into our working weeks. We've also built a culture of prioritising personal wellbeing in professional decisions, and empathy toward productivity drops (which is bound to happen in a global pandemic!). Thanks to consistent dedication from our Operations team, we also conducted our first team satisfaction survey, and it was promising to learn that our team feel overall well-supported and excited by the organisation.
• Looking forward: In 2021 and further, we aim to continually improve team wellbeing, productivity and team culture, building on team cross-socialising, improving feedback loops, and building out our satisfaction survey further.

2) We've implemented deep work and time boxing for improving productivity

• Issue: Six months ago, we tended to have calls almost every day, and did not set boundaries with our own work time. We learned that this was perhaps not the most conducive method to ensuring everyone is able to work at their most productive level, since deep work requires time boxing from distractions/regular interruptions.
• Actions taken: Since then, we've set aside 2 days per week free of calls and meetings (if desired), and with minimised responsiveness on Slack and emails. This is the case with both internal and external contacts (where possible) and we've seen a marked improvement in productivity on deep work tasks. On non-deep work days, we’ve begun time boxing slots for emails and Slack, rather than checking whenever a notification pops up. We've also become more proactive at setting Slack statuses and internal communication on Slack to indicate updates that might be relevant to the rest of the team. 
• Looking forward: Internal communication is the pillar of our remote working productivity, and we are continually learning and improving on our internal interactions.

3) We've put a strong focus on mentorship and implementation of consistent documentation across the team

• Issue: Documentation can be a tricky task to make consistent when team members come from different sectors and working environments. Learning to document efficiently was a popular learning for most of Fortify Health's team, many of whom shared documentation as one of their biggest personal learnings for 2020. 
• Actions taken: Fortify Health places a high priority on quality documentation from meetings, mill visits, strategy documents, and timelines. It's really improved our ability to learn about the activities of other departments, and improved our team capacity to transfer knowledge between one other, while building organisational slack. Documentation has also proven essential for transitioning partnerships between team members, onboarding new joinees, and preserving institutional memory: this becomes increasingly crucial as our team grows. Our Country Director and CEO have placed a strong emphasis on leading by example in terms of documentation and organisation, and spend time supporting others in their documentation.
• Looking forward: In 2021, organisational slack is something we hope to improve even more, and we can try this by incorporating more cross-training into our work (i.e. training people in different departments in another skill). To learn more about organisational slack and cross-training (see the Knowledge Sharing section), feel free to take a look at the links.

4) We've set up systematised operational processes/systems

• Issue: Setting up systematised operational processes is often foregone in the early stages of a startup, since they don't always feel urgent. Fortify Health is no exception; we (perhaps mistakenly) deprioritised this early on, because a) none of us were operations specialists in the early stages, and b) we were always prioritising program, partnerships and GiveWell work.
• Actions taken: As Fortify Health's team expands, these systems are absolutely essential. Over 2020, we set up a hiring SOP, a vendor management manual, premix management tutorial and manual, an SOP on how to work with mills, we've refined our travel policy, and we've completed our operational manual. We've also set up a performance evaluation system, which is crucial for any organisation looking to continually support its team and growth. A special thank you goes out to our Operations team and Country Director for their dedication to building these operational systems for a fairer, more productive work environment. Since our first operations hire in late 2019, we've seen a rapid improvement on our operational processes.
• Looking forward: Systematised operational systems reduce coordination time and give everyone clarity on what to do, how to plan ahead, how to coordinate better, and how to improve. They also reduce the need for directed attention to things which can be automated. We're still in the early stages of building these systems, and we look forward to seeing how they grow and become more efficient over 2021.​

Programmatic lessons and milestones

1) We've built in-house technical capacity thanks to a stellar program team

• Issue: Prior to 2020 building mill partnerships had required much more coordination and time to reach the stage of a successful partnership. 
• Actions taken: This year, we've truly learned the value of technical milling expertise in our team and have built a team of two strong program specialists. Our program team has been absolutely essential to Fortify Health’s future existence. Their contributions have dramatically improved our capacity and speed to build partnerships with mills and milling institutions for our open market strategy, as well as improved in-house learnings about milling and quality control among other team members. We were also able to work with CFTRI for the first time: the Program team brought both expertise and strong interpersonal skills to the table to confirm an essential association. Because of this association with CFTRI, we're in conversation with some large mills, and we partnered with a new mill within a week - our fastest partnership! We've also been able to sign a mill partner contract despite travel restrictions and the pandemic in India, which was a positively unexpected milestone.
• Looking forward: Once travel restrictions lift and a vaccine is rolled out, we're looking forward to further progress on our mill outreach thanks to our program team.​

2) We're starting to address behaviour change and the most vulnerable communities by increasing team capacity in government and marketing

• Issue: At the beginning of 2020, we hadn't placed a lot of focus on marketing outreach to mills, consumer / industry behaviour change or government programs. We've learnt that in-house expertise and focus on these areas is a very important value-add to our ability to build strong partnerships. 
• Actions taken: In September 2020 we hired a Partnerships Manager and a Business Development Manager, and since then, we've been able to make visible initial progress on these areas, including: 
  1. a) a promising visit to the Secretary of the Tribal Development Department in Mumbai (led strongly by our Partnerships Manager since September), and 
  2. b) the development and implementation of a brand new marketing strategy, and development of new communications materials for mill outreach to support our open market work (strongly headed by our Business Development Manager since October).
• Looking forward: In 2021, we're looking forward to scaling up our engagement with government, potentially furthering our work with the Tribal Development Department and in the other government safety net programs, and strengthening our open market outreach with a strong marketing strategy. If some of these projects progress quickly, we look forward to hiring more team members to further strengthen our marketing and partnerships work.

 

3) We've overcome M&E barriers by procuring the iCheck 

• Issue: Over 2020 and previously, we were struggling to understand where in the quality assurance process mistakes were being made (at the lab-level, premix vendor level, or the mill level, or none), and improving team capacity to measure this has been a big weight lifted.
• Actions taken: Thanks to regular contact with our expert advisor, Laura Rowe, and our M&E team’s diligence and attention to detail, we've been able to successfully procure and train in using the iCheck, allowing us to more accurately and quickly conduct iron testing. 
• Looking forward: In 2021, we're looking forward to having more robust, reliable quality assurance processes in place, and quicker feedback loops on the quality of fortified wheat flour. This will improve efficiency in terms of time and emotional toll. We're also looking forward to expanding the M&E team soon!

 

4) We've started to receive recognition as a legitimate player in the fortification sector thanks to more emphasis on communications

• Issue: Previously, we hadn't prioritised our communications work; it can often seem important but never urgent, which resulted in its consistent deprioritisation among a small team. This year we've learned that communications work is essential for our recognition and that strong branding can be a USP. 
• Actions taken: In the latter half of 2020, we worked on several areas of our communication that led to wider spread engagement and recognition. We:
  1. a) developed a new communications strategy and timeline for 2021 headed by the CEO, which included higher specificity and quantity of output than in previous years. 
  2. b) strengthened our relationship with important fortification players through improved follow-ups on communication, and improved print materials. For example, we applied to and were accepted into the POSHTIK network in December 2020
  3. c) expanded our outreach to effective altruism circles by presenting in 2 conferences: EA Student Summit and EAGxAsia-Pacific
  4. d) increased social media engagement (such as Fortify Health's 3rd birthday)
  5. e) put new print material development into motion to demonstrate our work and mission more effectively with partners (e.g. miller brochure, organisational brochure, organisational brief)
  6. f) began to prioritise sharing our organisational learnings: see our Inside Insights brief for the first in a series
• Looking forward: In 2021, we hope to dramatically increase our portfolio of communications outputs, and stick by the more robust, strategic communications timeline with specific audience targetting. We also hope to build our capacity for communications by hiring a new Communications Officer! Hopefully these combined will result in a much stronger approach to communications from all angles: written content, print design, online campaigns, and comms strategy.

So to summarise, 2020 was a year of building more robust organisational systems, strengthening our team capacity to set us up for a faster-paced 2021, and learning. Our team, despite almost doubling in size over the course of 2020, has even reported being especially busy compared to the previous year, because setting up these systems, incorporating new strategies and coordinating hiring takes significant time, planning, discussion and effort. 
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What next?

In 2021, we have a lot to look forward to! ​We're excited to grow our team capacity (hiring for several new positions!), increase our number of mill partnerships, expand M&E activities, scale up our government and marketing work, build our brand further through improved communications, and potentially conduct another round of fundraising with GiveWell. 2021 will be busy, collaborative, and productive, in the best of ways - and all with the intention of improving lives at-scale!