Guria India: Authentic Leadership for Societal Grand Challenges

Ajeet Singh was an example of an authentic leader, devoting himself to tackling the societal grand challenge of sex trafficking and child prostitution in India. Singh was the founder and leader of Guria India (Guria), a non-governmental organization with a holistic approach to improving the lives of sex workers and trafficked women and children. Through trial and error learning as well as years of immersion in and working with the community in one of India’s red-light districts, Guria had developed an end-to-end approach attacking the challenge at its systemic roots in poverty, corruption, and the failure of social institutions. However, Guria still struggled with an insecure funding base, low salaries for staff, and an insufficient leadership pipeline; Singh could identify no successor to take up his work. Singh wondered how he could extend Guria’s reach across all of India: Should Guria establish new locations in other cities, and if so, how would these be staffed, and what kind of leaders would be needed? How could Singh find and groom a cohort of successors to follow and replace him once he was no longer capable of providing his current level of proactive leadership?

This case is intended to build an understanding of the complexities of societal grand challenges and the need for a holistic, systemic approach to dismantling the barriers to change. It illustrates the dimensions of authentic leadership and shows how a leader's long-term commitment to their purpose allows for the building of a deep understanding of a challenging context. Such organizational learning is essential to intervening effectively in holistic ways that dismantle the systemic dynamics that exploit vulnerable populations. The case challenges students to develop potential solutions to the challenge of growing Guria to replicate its best practices across a larger population and geographic area. After working through the case and assignment questions, student will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Understand the complexities of societal grand challenges and the need for a holistic, systemic approach to dismantling the barriers to change.</li><li>Understand the dimensions of authentic leadership and how these support organizational learning in the face of substantial challenges.</li><li>Analyze and develop potential solutions to the challenge of growing an effective organization to replicate its best practices across a larger population/geographic area.</li><li>Analyze and develop potential solutions to the (common) problem of transitioning a leader-centric organization to a more sustainable model that is not wholly dependent on an individual leader.</li></ul>

• authentic leadership
• societal grand challenges