I'mpotent?

"...my biggest barriers are probably my staff..."

My 'field' experience involved the development of Participatory Learning & Action (PLA) approaches to extreme forms of social exclusion, sometimes in dangerous places, and usually with almost overwhelming despair. I still recall entering a third floor brothel in New Delhi during one initiative: perhaps projecting intense anguish onto the girl child trying to provide me 'services' as I accompanied the project team. Or the photos of drug users in Manipur with huge padlocks clipped into their ears as insurgent punishments, as I accompanied a staff learning visit there. Or prisoners with AIDS in another part of Asia facing death and no support aside from what each other could provide, locked up as they were, eight to a cage.

Now I'm in management, trying to bring authentic participation into our large regional programme. I used to do it - pioneered some techniques and venues. And sure, I've got high level support. But I struggle to find and implement a tool which can lead to the huge transformation of mind-sets needed to make it a reality. How can I say this without being disparaging, but my biggest barriers are probably my staff (or maybe it's just me), not high level policy 'wonks'.

Even Robert Chambers took three years to recover from what he called a 'seminal' power-relations workshop run by ActionAid in which he partook (Ideas for Development page 113); can I afford the fall-out of trying something similar with my own management team - I suspect my Board would not look kindly on dramatic disruption. So how to deliver? I just feel impotent.

Quality? Why?

"If it's worth doing, it's worth mediocrity!"

As a religious objective, quality has a certain beauty (Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance; Round the bend). But what is it doing creeping into the world of Non-Government Organisations? And why does it appear to me only to be championed there by those working for Government Organisations or in academia or earning above $50,000 a year? If it was aimed at preventing fraud or other crimes then fine - but it is much more than that, indeed its proponents are sometimes adamant that it is not related to crime at all. Like I intimidated, quality looks like a metaphysical objective in disguise:

"What big indicators you have!"

"All the better to trip you with."

"What big millennium goals you have!"

"All the better to divert you with."

"What big plans you have!"

"All the better to belittle you with."

etc

Time I think, to join (or start) an anti-quality, anti-excellence, anti-best practice movement. Our slogans:

"If it's worth doing, it's worth mediocrity!"

"The excellence pestilence..."

"Best practice? When we all get your salary and choices."

Sharing, a surreal nightmare

"I'm not a cynic, let alone a hypocrite."

My Board was asking me recently about our business model. These notes are from the minutes:

TREASURER: Let’s say one of our individual donors gives us $10. What have they done? Have they bought $10 worth of our services?

ME: They are not consuming the services, and they don’t collect and pass on the benefits they have just ‘bought’ from us; they could even disappear from the scene and nothing less would happen in the field. How can they be considered to be our customer?

VICE-CHAIR: Let’s say instead that they are selling us something then. What is it exactly? And what are we paying with?

ME: Difficult.

FUND RAISING PORTFOLIO: Let’s take a look from the other end: the service receiver. Are they our customers? They receive something from us. But what do they pay with?

ME: It is hard to say exactly what they pay with in a tangible sense. (I wrote a note to myself but didn’t speak it: “Sometimes, they pay with their souls –as they become dependant on us or confer sufficient gratitude to make our staff feel good about themselves.”)

PURCHASING PORTFOLIO: Could they be our suppliers then? They certainly supply us with opportunities to intervene – and plenty of them.

BENEFICIARY REPRESENTATIVE (No voting power- a token presence only): Maybe I could contribute and see if it takes us forwards: The individual private donor has sold their soul already by allowing themself to perpetuate a globally unjust set of systems that benefit them at the expense of others. (I wrote myself another unspoken note: “perhaps they have sold their soul to development NGOs since we do encourage them to remain blind – or pretending to be so; we pay with the distaste of our misrepresenting encouragement.”)

PRESIDENT (No voting power and we try to ignore him – he’s only on board because he used to be eminent): Yes I see it! They try to buy forgiveness (mediated by guilt or other masked motives leading them to make a ‘gift’ or even a more explicit ‘pay-off’) through us and we act as a broker to buy up forgiveness in communities of globally excluded people (mediated by projects and programmes).

CHAIRMAN (Above the ensuing clamor): But we all have a vested interest in not seeing it like this. Donors have a legitimate right to their ascendancy; they really are simply purchasing a service (again I wrote a private note to myself: “Never mind the patronization which goes with buying services on someone else’s behalf unless they are intimately involved in the negotiations”); the excluded are poor through no one’s fault (except sometimes their own) and should be grateful for ‘help’ proffered.

Of course, there had a to be a second ‘Board’ meeting afterwards – as some of us adjourned to the pub. A couple of hours later, I recall the following said:

PRESIDENT: And government ‘donors’? They can hardly be said to be contracted on behalf of poor country governments to purchase development services on behalf of their respective communities – though un-tied sectoral payments into ‘good governing’ department budgets can provide a cunning façade. It looks more like they are mandated to demonstrate at a large scale the same set of guilt-removing principles and processes that operate at the individual level amongst private donors. No wonder they want to regulate us. They have to be accountable to maximize the guilt reduction by so-called ‘quality services’ and need to legitimate their actions by appearing to suggest they are better than NGOs who are suddenly required to somehow ‘match up’.

ME: But it’s all we deserve if we insist on perpetuating the idea that we are ‘helping’. And they have every right on behalf of society to prevent us actually stealing.

BENEFICIARY REPRESENTATIVE: Never mind that ‘donations’ by the rich to the poor do nothing to bring about equity let alone equality. If individual donors or governments actually started ‘sharing’ instead of ‘giving’, it could be an entirely different story.

(I’m not sure what state we were in by then but the crazy talk suggests we were getting drunk. What a surreal nightmare! I’m gad it makes no sense in the real world or I might have had to resign! I know for a fact that I’m not a cynic, let alone a hypocrite.)

Blame each other

"…perfection can wait till next year."

Dear X

I am sorry on behalf of my team for the misunderstandings which have messed up your programme this year. Introducing the new systems has indeed been a trial - and not merely for yourselves.

Almost everything we do in development work involves compromise - I am sure you find that. You remain right in principle that a gentle roll out is needed but unfortunately I am being asked to move quickly. And whilst it is admirable that you have asked your managers to finalise plans for next year in early May, we had not expected such zeal, aiming as we had mentioned last year, for July. Indeed, I understand that not all your programmes will have to convert to the new systems this year (despite earlier pressure on us to make everyone do so this year.)

Of course, I also recognise everyone's immense frustration; but you have said little that was not said by one or other programme manager the last time we changed the documentation. It is annoying enough to want to pull one's hair out at times, I know. And suffice to say that I'm sure my colleagues here are as frustrated trying to introduce changes as you are in swallowing them. We are all frustrated in fact. And we all feel like blaming each other.

Of course, you are the programme director and you must decide what is and what is not possible. If you are telling me that you are unwilling to attempt to manage the new project planning system this year, then I will have to accept that. As you suggest, there will then be more time to prepare. However, I would much rather that we start the transition now and look at this year as a first attempt rather than a final maximal quality production; perfection can wait till next year.

Yours patiently

Me

Demotivation

“I take comfort in junk mail…”

Call me a cynic but I take deep pleasure in reading demotivational posters, e.g. "Quality: the race for quality has no finish line – so technically it’s more like a death march." But for me, it's real. And I've been depressed - multiple times as a teenager and young adult and this isn't it.

I couldn't write this yesterday. I had 'school refusal': a tightening abdomen, mild nausea, butterflies in the stomach, slight anxiety, creeping dread, excessive sighing, blanking out introspection; not enough to stay in bed (anyway, after three weeks traveling and lieu time that would only increase the work backlog). But enough to know that I don't often enjoy my job anymore; I take comfort in junk mail - it's a way to tell me I have less e-mails per day than it would otherwise seem (though I was lucky yesterday just to get through reading all the real ones backed up over three working days and respond to some of the easy ones).

I call it 'school refusal' because I'm not depressed and not burned out and it reminds me of my childhood (and my children!) Demotivated yes, but fully functional - better today than yesterday anyway. Often overwhelmed by work to the point of major compromise (don't talk to me about quality - please!) But still going after several years and no worse - in some ways better - than much of the last four.

Do other development workers feel something similar? Or is it just me?

Gender Debate

"I also believe in workshops."

THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT GENDER ISSUES CAN NOT CURRENTLY BE PRIORITISED IN OUR ORGANISATION'S FIELD WORK.

We have competing major priorities: we are trying to reach a critical mass awareness of the value of 'rights' and 'participation' per se amongst our staff and field partners; later we can break it down to specifics like gender.

You are quite simply a misogynist; you hate women.

Donor partners feel obliged to move themselves (and their partners by default, i.e. us) fast down this track to maintain credibility in their own fund-raising environment, but the pace is too fast for our operating context and is damaging our programme cohesion as diverse elements (not merely gender) are expected to be fast-tracked.

You are a closet saboteur of gender-related rights; you have some hidden vested interests in trying to muddy clear waters with your stirring, detours and questions.

Our staff and field partner cohorts contain significant and not easily remediable reactionary elements; we are not prepared to stop or slow our programmes in order to root them out rapidly since beneficiaries will be hurt and structures (even assets) damaged.

I am amazed that you were appointed to your job or allowed through your probation period; you are just a sign of your organisation's structurally entrenched biases. Just look at the gender composition of your organisation's senior management team for evidence: prejudice there is inevitable. I suspect your organisation has a hidden agenda; you are just their front.

Projects aided by donors with a more advanced emphasis are welcome to channel the requisite additional resources required to get 'their' projects over the gender hump, but these will be 'ring-fenced' special cases and subject to agreement by implementing teams without management coercion.

You are making excuses for your own poor management; your organisation could easily enough progress as quickly as gender-related rights (i.e. we) demand.

Our strategy will eventually get us to gender, so relax; there is much more distance to catch up than you assumed.

You are not taking this seriously; this is not a theoretical debate; you should be acting, not talking.

We are entitled to determine our own rate of progress, since we are the ones making the sacrifices needed to do the implementation in the first place; if you don't like it then leave your comfort zone and work out there yourself.

Your assessments about your context are mistaken; in fact staff and partners in your field areas could easily and readily absorb gender-related analyses without any disruption.

It looks to me like you might have been co-opted by your own government's political agenda since they are your most significant source of funds: they insist on gender as a priority; you say gender prioritisation is your own idea, but I think you are in denial, or maybe your politics are reflected by your government, in which case stop blaming them for so much else.

You have framed this all wrong: it's not about the dichotomy you appear to describe; it's not either/or but both; you're in a process, a journey; you have the capacity to weave it all together.

You are devaluing my genuinely held beliefs; I am not a worse 'person' than you; you are a hypocrite regarding human rights if you disallow my world view.

You only have the impression of external pressure but in fact we recognise your desire to progress and accept it; we are just contributing clarity to your strivings; you are slightly paranoid; we welcome your partnership and celebrate your commitment, and we stand alongside in solidarity ready to offer the capacity building inputs you need.

Stuff you, I'm resigning; I don't need this harassment.

It's so hard recruiting committed people for secondment to work in difficult places, or to find local partners who have overcome the shallowness of their own cultures and risen above the vagaries of their own environments. Let's increase our money supply by dependancy on a single donor source.

Hi, I used to work for a reactionary organisation but I resigned and was jobless so I got myself reconstructed; I also believe in workshops. And no – the ‘international development industry’ is just an illusion.

The Evolution of Evangelicalisticism

"I believe in evolution. Are you prepared to reject me for it?"

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I used to be a Christian creationist. It began as a teenager in what I would now characterise as a fundamentalist church scene; back then I would just have said we were right.

Simultaneously my Biology classes took me down into the technical details of evolutionary theory. I reveled in the contrasts: reading about natural selection from one book in one hand, and about the 'evolutionarily impossible' Lewis overthrust from another. I stopped resisting evolutionary theory at University - I'm not sure when. It wasn't so painful then.

But increasingly, the world is polarising around the issue (see Economist). I have myself been challenged to accept that creationism is an essential Christian creed. My response had been to be meek and mild and hide behind my development work. But recently, I told a strident pastor, "I believe in evolution. Are you prepared to reject me for it?" He admitted the answer was no.

It is what I call 'evangelicalisticism' (the religion OF being an evangelical) - or 'folk evangelicalism' - which I believe gives passion to some of the growing problem. Not carefully considered Theology. In fact, creationism is not a fundamental tenet of Christian belief. I want to start saying so more and more loudly (though to be honest, I'm afraid to). And no, I won't try to argue the case for evolution. I will simply resist the aggressive sycophancy which is making this issue more and more problematic. (See Christianarchy by Dave Andrews.)

Why the rant here? Because oppressive, facipulative motives for 'doing development' make me sick, and I can smell them from some of my kin. Go ahead and accuse me of conspiracy-related delusions; but I know, because at times I've not resisted: even helped launch some on such endeavours.

Dalliance with Divorce

"To divorce them seems tempting but isn't it better to work at resolving
things?"

I'm nervous. It should be nurturing; meeting one of the donor partner agencies in our global network. But in reality, both parties seem extremely wary of each other now: I know I am and one of their staff recently wrote of his fear that every time he met my staff he was, "walking on egg shells."

The two of us have a strange working relationship: he is notionally seconded to me one day a week to supervise one of my project managers - a project his organisation seized control of last year in a temporary 'coup' because our management was not meeting their expectations. The solution: the project now bypasses our country management structure who's leader, having been slighted, doesn't buy my statement that our newly seconded staff can be easily treated as part of the team. (I'm trying to do so myself as hard as I can but hey - I don't live anywhere near there so it's hard to disagree that I'm just blowing hot air...)

Bizarre? I'm trying to address it positively. But it isn't half confusing and won't solve the sense amongst some staff that the donor is interfering rather than 'adding value'; in some lights it can also look like I've been disloyal to my own staff - betrayed them even. But what else can I do? Standing in the donor's shoes, I too might have been tempted to do what they did: they thought the project was going down the toilet and didn't want the fallout to damage them.

We don't want to break relations with them; we helped set them up and we're part of each other. To divorce them seems tempting but isn't it better to work at resolving things? My leadership thinks so, but I'm still nervous.