"...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!)