Abandon ship?

"I might even get a nice reference..."

It's all very well gaining the security of guaranteed donor income. But the stress is astonishing. I hypothesise that the resulting strain is not about personalities but structures, yet because structures are not being addressed, it is manifesting itself in inter-personal ways: being visible, this apparently ‘proves’ to those who won't act that the problem is merely one about personalities – hence justifying their not acting. Now I feel stuck:

• Either our donor needs to historically revert themselves radically (though they have an equally valid perspective in my view); but I know their management won't, and their board whilst disagreeing with management has minimal apparent control over them, tinkering with communication-related discipline rather than tackling incipient mutiny
• Or our organisation needs to reinvent itself in the image of our donor: unlikely to happen more than incrementally given the caution of our management and board (though I have noted some significant changes such as a generally expressed desire to follow 'best practice')
• Or we should take a break from each other's embrace for a season: this is considered by the board on each side to be a bad option, not the more therapeutic ‘still waters’ I would predict if it was done soon
• Or I am 'beating a straw man': my structural hypothesis is wrong; I am the problem - and for what? I don't actually care much about the position I am defending, nor do I particularly desire to preserve the loyalty of staff whom I am afraid are inappropriately reactionary. (I have pointed all of this out to our management, highlighted it in discussions with our donor's management, and discussed it with our donor's chairman.)

Maybe I should hold out just a little while longer? Maybe change is on the cards? I am unsure enough to have begun preparing my exit. I'm too tired to go on fighting, and it detracts us pointlessly from our beneficiaries/participants needs/aspirations. Anyway, if I am the problem and my own management is unable to say so, it would be more honourable for me to quietly bow out. Who knows, I might even get a nice reference?

A merging question…

“…the process could evaporate off their technical staff…”

Is it healthy for us to absorb one of our collaborators/competitors as a simple donor to our projects/partners?

On the one hand:

· it could reduce our cumulative bureaucratic load,

· it is a positive sign in an all-too-often cynical and fragmentary world,

· it could allow them to focus on core skills of fund-raising and us on programme delivery.

On the other hand:

· we have lower field supervision expectations than they presently do; can they accept this as ‘progress’ or will they want us to increase our supervisory intensity?

· will they maintain their technical inputs to projects they support as supernumerary to our overheads, or will they attempt to subtract them from our overheads – in effect removing our leeway to manage as we see fit; who will end up controlling whom?

· the process could evaporate off their technical staff; and if this happens, will we have won or lost?

· will the process also drive away their own current partners, unwilling to partner us now, or unhappy at not having been consulted?

The project 'market' caricature

“Our opaque transactions increase costs by requiring Orwellian
'double think'.”

Our agency agrees to implement and not raise funds. Our funding arms agree not to implement nor to fund others. Our funders don't compete but after expressing their preferences they are simply given projects - supposedly on transparently rational grounds.

To our funders, project cost supposedly has little meaning and is anyway approved in advance by our agency. Nor are the projects officially involved in the funder choices. It is tacitly assumed that the relative value (factoring in both technical quality and the ability to raise funds from direct donors) of our projects is equal (value is related to a fixed overhead portion coming to our agency).

In reality, I perceive that projects are being 'bought' and 'sold'; the price of quality and resale potential is the Relational Intricacy (combining the degree of interference granted to the funders – their 'added value', and the amount of documentation and communication required).

Simplistically speaking:
· Agents with a well funded portfolio squeeze funders to keep documentation and communication (a cynic might quip “and accountability”) minimal.
· Funders counter with humble passivity, agents blaming the victims for non-assertive relationships.
· In opposite circumstances, funders play 'accountability' and 'added value' cards to their maximum, taking control of important areas of project decision making.
· Agents respond by courting alternate internal funders in opaque deals.

What if we had some competition between projects to secure funders and between funders to fund projects?
· Should funders bid overhead percentage offers?
· Should unchosen projects be refused access to agency reserves?
· Will projects compete for 'easy' funds?
· Will funders re-direct funds outside our agency?
· Could our agency compete with internal funders to raise funds directly?

Our opaque transactions increase costs by requiring Orwellian 'double think'. But an unspoken fear exists, that allowing more transparent competition might not improve everyone's practice, but instead cause our fragmentation. I don't know what to prefer.

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.

NOG Spawn

"...I am becoming my own sister..."

.

.

.

I'm in negotiation with one of my own staff and asking her to represent me to herself. Conflict of interest? Probably. Confusing? Certainly.

We've been in one of the countries I supervise for decades under our own name but for various reasons it's time to change. Specifically, I asked the country director to register a new, locally governed non-government organisation (NGO) - a new sister in our global network.

Knowing she will be appointed the new organisation's chief executive officer (CEO) concentrate's one's mind: for a start, I will never be able to sack her. Second, she is the only resource I have in-country to identify, recruit and motivate a group of highly credentialed Board members; but will they hold her accountable or simply approve whatever she asks for? Thirdly, she has implied that she could delay registering the organisation if I don't recognise her 'need' to be our country representative as well as the new organisation's CEO. Apparently she says, not doing so could cause too much loss of 'face' on both sides. (True or not I don't know, but one of my colleagues is deeply cynical.)

Now it's Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) time. I managed to get her to steer the Board to register themselves (and they seem excellent) without sight of an MoA (I know already the main sticking points). Our deadline approaches and I'm biting my nails in anticipation (my boss wanted me to push all the boundaries first and compromise later). At least the Board Chairman is now alongside my country director to negotiate - I've even suggested a conflict of interest if she tries to negotiate terms with me without his consent. But it can feel like I am becoming my own sister.

Have I done enough? I wonder. This is supposed to be a fledging-cum-graduation but might be turning into a failure-to-launch...

"...it's hard trying to save the world."

Sometimes I just need to switch off - do some SCUBA diving maybe; it's hard trying to save the world.

Of course, I know that's not my intent, regardless of misguided family, friends, or random hecklers. But sometimes I wonder... Why exactly do I do what I do? Why not just try and make money somewhere? The thing is, I am somewhat revulsed by the thought even though much of the development work I ultimately supervise is directed towards micro-enterprise. But is that a pathological problem? I was told so once...

Some who believe in God have asked me previously to describe my 'calling'; my parents were Christian missionaries and can describe the 'almost-voice', the 'words-coming-alive' in their Bible readings, which they say pulled them out of their comfort zones and into a mission agency.

Not me. The closest corollary for me would be a sense of being 'driven'. If those same Christians looked up words from one of their own saints: Paul, they'd find an old translation of one of his quotes describing his motivation which says something like, "...love constrains me..." I understand that the Greek word translated 'constrain' is quite a violent one (and the meaning of the English word used 500 years ago has drifted), so it should apparently now mean: "...love compels me..."

Can such a sense of drivenness be positive? I remember one particularly oppressive country where I told myself (and my wife) that two years was the limit that I could be driven by anger: I'd have to escape after that to cool down. But generally, I have not burned out though I am somewhat cooler-headed. I like to think that I am not fleeing some childhood demon - but who knows? Probably not a psychosis (not even organic), though maybe a neurosis? Anyway, it keeps me going…

“...can a strongly assertive leader really authentically empower marginalised people?”

My childhood gave me a deep rooted fear of authority figures, particularly men, but also assertive women. Maybe in reaction, I developed a drive to deliver justice and root out oppression; increasingly channelled into participatory methodologies.

Now I've a quandary: some of my peers appear to control inputs, the outcomes of which I am accountable for.

• Is this just an impression arising from my history, and revealed as paranoia?
• Are they actually just being supportive?
• What good are 'silos' in networks anyway?
• And if I want to empower, what message is read by me circumscribing and defending my own powers and roles?
• According to Belbin I'm a 'resource-investigator'. Aren't I actually cannily, if subconsciously, using my colleagues to take responsibility for aspects of my job, freeing me for other things?

But maybe I really am being treated inappropriately - disrespectfully perhaps?

• Will it help me as a leader if people see that I can't even control my own spheres of responsibility?
• What if I allow my empowering agenda to be undermined by an alternative agenda - one that at times appears to try to centralise control, whilst paying lip service to devolved responsibility?
• I took this job because I thought I could achieve more for the inclusion of socially excluded people if I had some control over policy and strategy in a significant area of interest. Am I in fact abrogating an hypothetical responsibility to use my power to empower, or is that just false reasoning and self-justifying (learning-org has an interesting summarised thread related to this)?

Either way, if I say "no" or "stop it" to colleagues, it will both irritate them and stress me; do I need either? I know I have strong support to lead firmly in my area, but can a strongly assertive leader really authentically empower marginalised people?

"Should I embrace it with open arms or run away screaming, as fast as I can?”

We manage our own projects; we also channel privately raised funds from our network of over-developed country programmes, into our under-developed country programmes. There is also a corporate desire to devolve responsibilities from headquarters out into the regional and country programmes. This is taking multiple forms: the regions are already responsible (since two years ago) to coordinate the links between under-developed country programmes in their area, and over-developed parts of our global network. Last year, country strategy was devolved into the hands of the regions (with the expectation that they would facilitate but not control country strategy development). Now, moves are afoot to devolve the majority of funding decisions to the regional offices.

Should I embrace it with open arms or run away screaming, as fast as I can? In the past, funding decisions were made by a central committee. In future, it'll be up to each region to determine its own funding approval system, but based on central guidelines. But I feel like a fox being asked to guard the farmer's chickens: I value my project management support role most; I preferred the past when the field team included the regional leadership and we all ate humble pie together when a project got rejected by the centre. In future, I could be cast in the role of the judge; how can I simultaneously advocate for and support my own project staff? I will become one of 'they' – the ones who judge and approve/reject. And what of accountability, for I shall no doubt be enormously tempted to approve projects the centre might once have rejected? Or is my perspective so badly distorted that I just can't appreciate the obvious benefits, or am seeing problems which don’t actually exist?

"...our organisation implicitly values misguided effort above well planned achievement..."

We're struggling to finalise our new global project document templates. I've endlessly argued that field staff need useful planning and management tools. In addition, I acknowledge that the organisation needs a usable funding proposal format.

In my opinion, one perpetual problem we endure is having no globally responsible Operations Manager who understands development principles alongside extensive field experience. Instead, we have allowed our financial wizards to control all globally relevant processes.

In practice it means that whilst notional effort has been put into writing a proposal template which simultaneously helps with project planning and management, in fact it improves little on the latter; or at least its marginal improvements pale into insignificance compared to the sea-change I'd prefer.

I'm left feeling that the consultant has not lifted my burden (draft version 5 but still predominantly only tinkering with our old format); now I have the prospect of designing my own project planning and management tools and selling staff the global forms simply as donor application forms: a somewhat distasteful but necessary linctus. (In fact, where we channel funds from a government donor to one of our projects, we're happy for our projects to use the donor-supplied format and simply fill in the Summary section of our own global template; I'll be sorely tempted to do the same for our own projects which utilise our maybe-to-be-designed local planning forms.)

Doubtless I will once again be labelled too pushy by colleagues. Or maybe I really am trying to push to improve too far too fast? But it seems to me that our organisation implicitly values misguided effort above well planned achievement. All rather frustrating, not least because I think our organisation lags significantly behind what COULD quite reasonably be achieved...

"...some of my own country teams are for some reason deliberately side-stepping our own organisational Goal and Objectives..."

I am vexed: What is an NGO's country strategy? I want to devolve decision making to our country teams; I have ensured that my regional strategy does not step on their toes, but supports what they think is necessary. But preview drafts suggest I may have made a basic mistake.

NB: some of our country programmes are independently registered local NGOs with their own governing boards. Others are implementing arms of our global organisation. Up till now, I expected that independent NGOs would exhibit some gaps in their strategy, i.e. my expectations would not exactly overlap their aspirations. But naively I had not expected the same for our own managed country programme teams (apart, perhaps, from programmes which had somehow 'missed the plot' and needed some management 'support').

Back at the main question: some country strategy drafts from some of our own managed teams not only have apparent strategy gaps, but have clearly been well thought through and participatory. In other words, some of my own country teams are for some reason side-stepping our own organisational Goal and Objectives, to some degree. What should I do?

At the moment, it looks like I will have to recognise that devolved decision making can lead to significant autonomy: if I wish to encourage this, I may need to recognise that whether we govern them or not, any country team with sufficient autonomy is liable to gaps in their country strategy. (This perhaps represents their self-referential thinking related to self-assessed measures of capacity and their balance of hope/despair.)

In my regional strategy, I am beginning to think that I must do three things: Firstly, the regional strategy should state how many gaps a particular country team strategy has (in other words I may have to add to a particular country strategy with reference to the country needs assessment and to other potential additional partners who could help fulfil 'my' country strategy). Secondly, I must consider whether my own country team leaders can represent me in designing country strategy, i.e. can they both facilitate their own team's autonomous 'country strategy', and consider the remaining gaps and how to fill them? Thirdly, a country manager (or myself) may have a broader 'shadow strategy' yet with gaps in the visible one. For example local stakeholders may unreasonably resist elements of the shadow strategy if they were made public; I may need to recognise that a sufficient strategy may actually have to have hidden elements.

But are these reasonable conclusions, I am asking myself? They make me slightly uncomfortable!

"...much of my work energy is directed to reducing the potential damage which we...could mete out whilst trying to help people."


Sorry to bore you. The first post to a blog by an absolute beginner must drive regulars crazy. Ah well...

The thing is - as a manager (male, westerner) in a non-government organisation (NGO) involved in international development, it's very hard to be real:

I once told our international marketing department director that much of my work energy is directed to reducing the potential damage we and those we 'partner' with could mete out whilst trying to help people. She was quite shocked! She hadn't visited any field programmes at that stage in her career (having just joined from the business world) and told me she thought most of my energy would be spent creating and monitoring wonderful and exciting ways of helping poor people...

Whenever I visit our donor managers I also warn them, "Don't put me in front of our supporters unless they can handle some reality." After sharing like this with the donor manager for one Western country, he thought hard for a moment and then said, "Well I guess that rules out over 95% of our supporters." It's not that I don't like public speaking - I love facilitating a large group discussion - it feels like I'm performing and I get a little bit high. But don't ask me to be publicly unreal.

At least in my current job I am usually left alone. But the questions remain. And I feel driven to share a few of them with you as they bubble up in coming posts. (Sorry... Not trying to turn you off!)

By the way, I'm reading an intriguing book by William Easterly at the moment called, 'The White Man's Burden'. In it he notes, "...there is much scope for improvement just by having the West follow the rule 'First do no harm'." (Incidentally, I have just discovered upon locating his web site, that he had previously coined the term 'De-velop-Mented' which looks suspiciously similar to my blog title! It's got some fun bits anyway and I swear: I thought mine up before seeing his!)