ICCO CAD news

Networks here & there…. networks everywhere!

2011-09-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

A few more years and NGO’s working on individual development projects might have become obsolete. Just take a quick look in any NGO’s strategic plan and you will notice that ‘Networks’ and ‘Strategic Alliances’ and ‘Linking and Learning’ are presented as today’s development answers. Although it would be interesting to scrutinize this assumption, also I have come to accept that networks are an appropriate way to tackle societal issues in a rapidly changing world. Currently I am supporting the NGO where I work in setting up a network on land rights and in our most recent round of discussion I asked my Junior Expert colleagues around the globe for some tips & tricks.

Considering that most of us in the discussion deals in one way or another with networks, confirmed it is in fact a current development fashion. But as one of us rightly pointed out ’In general I think the word 'network' in the context of development projects is a container concept that is easily used and often not understood…. there is a limitless amount of varieties in the range of formal - informal, size, type of members, goals’. Even in our small group the diversity in the forms and objectives of the networks we deal with was large, varying from group of 'community journalists' to a global network of actors dedicated to the Christian mission of ‘doing good’. But despite differences from our discussion it is possible to pinpoint several factors that any kind of network requires for effective and sustainable functioning. Now please let me present, in the name of ‘sharing and learning’, my impressions of the virtual discussions I had with my colleague 'development advisors'.

Core elements & conditions to start a network

First remarkable thing in the discussion was that the main question itself created counter questions. As some of us suggested it is better ‘not to talk about setting up a network’ as networks should ideally evolve naturally when several people feel the urge to link up and cooperate around an issue. It is therefore preferable to take existing relations as a starting point and to expand slowly to other stakeholders and different levels. But what if these relations do not yet exists while you see the added value of exchange and cooperation? In such situation people could be brought together through events and joint actions to examine the potential to evolve as a network. When doing so the facilitator plays a key role to link and ’to create opportunities for a joint discovery path’ before getting people on board. This implies that she or he must study the people, their institutions, their interests and power relations, to plan and prepare the joint events carefully and to give follow up to the outcomes of these events. Once people are on board it is time to define focused objectives, to discuss different contributions and to align expectations. At this initial stage it is crucial that the facilitator ensures there is time and space to answer questions like; what kind of network do we want to become; formal or informal? To what extent do we want to cooperate? Do we consider for instance exchange of knowledge as sufficient or should we take a step further by joining forces in research, lobby and advocacy? If so, which topics and through which activities? What institutional rules and regulations are needed for proper functioning? How do we fund network activities and what financial mechanisms? While coordinating the dialogue on these questions, the facilitator should ensure progress and prevent that members end up in endless discussions. Especially the importance of starting to undertake actions, both at the initial phase as afterwards, can not be overstated because ‘for every network’s sustainability it is crucial to combine learning with action to have continuous results and the added value….People are only willing to invest time and resources if they see visible results.

It has been concluded many times before, hence it is not surprising that also in our experience proper coordination and leadership proves to be indispensable. Everyone will be interested, but nothing happens if no one takes the lead. Leadership could be either in the form of an institutionalized secretary, a project unit, steering committee, working group or simply an assigned person….. to take initiative, coordinate and to connect to existing larger initiatives and potential funds.

Above all, we all clearly agreed that at the core of any successful network lie passion, chemistry and openness . In general what I notice here is that a network (and any kind of cooperation) really functions around personal relationships, instead of institutional common interest. Beyond the curtain of organizations and institutional interests lie the people, who can make it or break it. In a way you could say that the passion people share to fight for a common cause is the heart, and cordial relations the heartbeat of a network. Without a heart and heartbeat your network will not sustain life.

Author: Leyla Ozay, e-mail. l.ozay@hotmail.com

Young Professional about virtual exchange

2011-07-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

Since 2006, ICCOenKerkinActie and Togetthere enable Young Professionals (YPs) working on development to exchange experiences about their work. The YPs work for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as capacity development advisor. Most of them work in isolation and have limited possibility to meet colleagues face-to-face to share experiences.

Each year two discussion rounds, taking five weeks each, are organised virtually where the YPs share experiences about how to strengthen the operations of their partner organisations. The group is using a peer-to-peer coachingsmodel. Most YPs participate two rounds. Just before starting a discussion round, the YPs are asked by an online survey to share the topics which keep them awake at night or have a high degree of urgency for them. Some of the selected topics deal with: "How to make my work sustainable?" "How to create local ownership for what I am contributing?", or "How to position myself as professional in a different cultural context?"

After this survey, key individuals, who are willing to take a leadership role in the exchange of topics related to their work, meet via Skype with the online facilitator to elaborate the objectives and facilitation process. The role of the online facilitator is to design the online process based on the wishes and needs of the group as expressed in the survey. So far, D-groups and Skype have been used as the most effective and popular social media for exchange.

A discussion round takes average around 5 weeks. Case studies or key questions, introduced by the YPs, are mostly used as a basis for discussion. At the end of each discussion, one of the participants writes a note which is published at this blogpost 'Everything you always wanted to know about capacity development'. Literature is collected by asking people for links to interesting websited or publications. These references and benchmarks are documented at a virtual platform at ICCO-Cad wiki. In this way, the group builds a share memory.

Recently one of the Young Professionals shared her experiences by a video interview. View the video:

Music on video:

Song: Una Mañana: Musicians: Omar Meza & Fernando Rey, for more information contact: e-mail. yoshihatsukatana@gmail.com

Some comments which were shared by other YPs in evaluations last year:

"The way you experience the discussions and what you get out of it is of course different for each.....When I think back of the discussion I am not able to reproduce all the contents directly, but the first thing I recall is that feeling that the (pre)discussions were good moments to take a step back, to reflect and to share experiences."

"Just being able to share is valuable in itself. It helped me to concretely formulate my questions and issues I encounter."

Energy levels at work

2011-06-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

Recently our discussion group of Young Professional capacity development advisors discussed the topic: How do you deal with the situation if you and your collegues have a low energy level at work?

The case was brought up because I am working for an organisation that has been going through a few months of uncertainty and restructuring. A relatively long period for me, as I am only working for this organisation for six months in total. In this period of uncertainty and management change there was not much room for new initiatives. Furthermore, many of my colleagues had and still have difficulties to motivate themselves for their work. An exception is the new director who is doing his best to transform the organisation into a successful and profitable organisation. This situation had quite a big impact on my own energy level.

This case raised the question how to deal with a situation of uncertainty at work and an absence of collective energy to go for it and build a successful organisation? The main question was how to turn this around to increase your own energy and the energy of others. This article does not provide the answer, as that is probably nonexistent, but will give some suggestions and insights into the topic.

A local market in Africa.

The group came up with the following suggestions:

· A crisis could be an opportunity to change something, a time when you can start developing and implementing new things. Dare to take the initiative.

· Try to discuss the passive atmosphere with other people in the organisation to see what can be done to overcome it.

· Do creative things to get new energy, for example to make a video that benefits the organisation in some way.

· Show people where you are working on, instead of just talking about it. If you want people to start acting and implementing new policies or events, you have to start organising. If not, nothing will happen by itself.

· Accept the situation as it is if you are not in the position to change the culture of the organisation. Enjoy, try to do other things that give you energy and accept that your work activities might be different from your initial plans.

· Sometimes it is better to focus on the things you can do, in the time you are still working there.

Young Professionals work with local organisations in challenging circumstances

Since the Discussion Group meeting on the topic the energy level in the organisation as well as my own motivation started to improve slightly. There are two important reasons for this:

The beginning of a turnaround

The motto of the new director is very clear. Everyone gets a chance to learn and adapt to the new line of management. He is prepared to help everyone and listen to everyone's questions and suggestions. However, those who are not willing to change and work hard to reach a successful organisation risk losing their job. He achieves this by rewarding those who achieve good results and clearly communicating the way he would like to see things happening. The positive effect is that performance goes up. The side effect is that there is some feeling of fear against him.

A mental change

Personally, I started to realise I should focus on the things I can do and accept, although it is very unfortunate, that there were two months in which I could not move forward as quickly as I had hoped for. Since we have overcome the ‘crisis’ now the moment seems to be there to implement new things and this seems to work quite well and gives energy! The new director is very open to any initiative to improve current processes and activities.

Maintaining your own energy levels

Before starting my job here in Africa I thought I was mentally prepared for a different working atmosphere. I had never imagined that it would hit me as hard as it did. I do believe the organisational struggles made that it hit me harder than it would have done otherwise, but still, apparently I was not prepared well enough for it.

Besides the points already mentioned, I think the following is important to keep in mind to keep yourself motivated and obtain energy from your work:

· Start by working with some people who seem to be interested. From here others might also realise your added value and start to open up.

· Show people in what way you can make a difference and make people’s work easier by not waiting too long to start implementing your ideas and projects. Often it takes too long to wait for a decision, if a start has already been made the decision is likely to follow automatically.

· Be patient and do not worry too much you will not be successful, eventually things will start happening in most cases.

A story from a Young Professional working in Africa

The way to interdependence and open communication

2011-03-01T03:53:00.000-08:00

or
Are we a burden to our local colleagues instead of a support?

During the last virtual meeting between several Young Professionals working abroad, a new interesting topic came up, addressing the fear of overburdening our local colleagues, that all of us seem to recognize somehow.

Where does that feeling come from?
We tend to feel very responsible for the progress and results of our labour, taking initiative where we can – always keeping in mind the need for sustainability. We are not here to create dependence, in fact, we want the contrary – we would like the local people to do their work on their own, maybe inspired by us.

At the same time we might see lack of structure, of communication, of financial possibilities – so we take an observing, analysing, suggesting, interfering and sometimes resolving role.
Maybe this gets to a point when we feel guilty of repeating the needs for regular meetings, a more structural approach of activities, better communication between the organization members and so on. When our advices are not taken into account, we might feel that we have crossed the line of being an inspiration to being an irritation; overburdening our colleagues.
How do I find out if this really happens – or is it just in my head? How can I handle the situation if a colleague really feels that I'm a burden?

Be connected, young people in Honduras

Some ideas of my junior colleagues all over the world were the following:

* Make things explicit: Ask what people expect from you and even ask whether they feel as if you are a burden to them. You might find out that it is only your feeling, yet others don't really see it that way.
* Do not give up on being an inspiration: Keep on observing and asking questions openly, instead of giving advice directly – try to connect to the priorities of the organization and contribute explicitly.
* It is useful to do an evaluation and ask people what they remembered most during a certain period of time, for example in the last year. How do they look back on your contributions?

Time for reflection and evaluation

* Let go, if asking questions does not work. You've tried and shown your initiative.
* Trust your own observations and analysis to see what your main contributions can be. When you find these, and people see its value, the feeling of being a burden might get less.
* It is not necessarily bad to play the “policeman” and to keep reminding your colleagues about agreements you made. They might even appreciate it, especially on a long term scale.
* Make a point of working in the weekend: Even just stating the importance of having some personal time for relaxation or private activities, might eventually lead to a reflection of your colleagues.

I personally would aggregate the question to ourselves, if we ever feel that someone is a burden to us – and under which circumstances. If it is that way, we should address this feeling and talk about it openly with our colleagues. Maybe this could clarify any mutual feelings or assumptions and generally relax the working atmosphere, especially because in most of the cases I think that the feelings would be based on assumptions and personal preoccupations instead of real conflicts.
In my time here in Honduras, I sometimes had the idea of being a burden to my colleagues with all the activities I wanted to evolve around, through and with them – while they had hardly time to settle down at night, with all the work they had to deal with.

In the end, not all the activities written in my plan could be carried out as they were proposed, but I showed my intentions repeatedly, which seemed to be very appreciated by the direction and members of Arte Acción. While first I was the one apologizing for asking over and over again for attention, now they apologize for not having dedicated all the time and space needed in order to accomplish with all the established goals in our plan.

I have come to the end of my time here and I feel that all people who have taken active part in my intervention, including myself, did the best they can. In the end, everyone realizes that the idea is to work together – in a constant “interdepence” - being conscious that through open communication and relying on each other, we can create a small change within this society.

Johanna Pohlman
Young Professional Togetthere

Lasting change or passing fancy?

2011-01-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

On how to make your work more sustainable

Working as a temporary advisor at a local organization can turn you into a manic depressive in a way. You will have your high highs and very low lows. Sometimes you feel elated because you see people have changed their way of working after you gave a training. But expect to also be disappointed when two months later they seem to have slipped back into old patterns.

Most local organizations are overloaded with work. At the Indonesian human rights organization I work for, more than seventy percent of the work (that's my guess) happens ad hoc. The Minister of Law and Justice says something about a law he would like to have revised, my colleagues immideatly respond. A video comes out of military officers torturing a group of Papuan prisoners, the office phones will not stop ringing for hours. Journalists, other organizations and international NGO's will all want to know what KontraS' opinion is.

My colleagues feel that they don't have time for monitoring and evaluation. Even though I know that it's an investment in the future, I can often relate to them. American management guru Stephen Covey speaks of the difference between urgent and important work. Important being the bigger projects, the in-depth analysis, and self-reflection, while the urgent comprises emails and telephone calls. In my case the challenge is to ensure the important is not always swallowed up by the urgent. How do make the lessons you taught stick? How do you make sure that the change will last?

A group of capacity builders working all over the world, came up with the following eleven tips for making your work sustainable. Very importantly: be realistic and don't let it get you down if big change doesn't happen right away. Instead, celebrate the small successes. They are more important than you may realize!

1. Give positive feedback to your colleagues, so that they gain confidence - in themselves but also in you. This is also a way of building trust. You let them know that you are not here to change everything, you are here to help improve things based on what's are already going smoothly.

2. Break the lessons you want to teach up into small bite-size bits. Do exercises during trainings which people will easily remember or refer to. For example, I use the happy horse analogy for discussing the chain of results in planning, monitoring and evaluation. Now in meetings, my colleagues will refer to “the horse is happy” when we discuss our overall goals.

3. Work with motivated people and those who are open to learn. Help the people that come to you for advise and involve them in your trainings or work. Let them for instance pick methods and share ownership of the work you're trying to do.

4. Don't forget that making your work sustainable takes time. Try to see it as an investment and give yourself time to build trust. Also, plan ample time to go from knowledge sharing to other's actually doing their work differently than before.

5. Convince people of the benefit of your intervention. Make it clear why you are there. First you have to show things and then make people part of the experience.

6. Build in a monitoring system together with your colleagues, to monitor the change process and have a learning process together.

7. Focus on the people, not the systems. Even when your goal is to strengthen the organizational capacity of an organization, start by working with some people you see are interested. By helping them develop the skills, on the long term organisational changes will occur.

8. Work with a counterpart in your work, so that that person is able to adapt new ways of working in the organisation.

9. Try to check if the right conditions are there (such as funds for printing the handbook you wrote), and include these conditions into your plans.

10. Plan for a return visit, several months or years after you have completed your placement. It gives you the opportunity to review the work you have done and give suggestions for improving it.

11. Plan a meeting (at least 6 months before your placement ends) where you remind your colleagues and supervisors that you are leaving. Ask them what they want to have in place or accomplished as a sustainable result before you leave.

A unique challenge: how to position yourself as a Young Professional in a different cultural context?

2011-01-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

When I left to Latin America, I did not really consider the challenges that I might face by working in another country. Instead, I focused on obtaining new knowledge and skills. Thus, I read books and materials on international lobby & advocacy and talked to experts. However, during the first weeks at my new employment, I found out that not only the content of the work would be challenging: colleagues were postponing deadlines; everyone was supposing to attend all social events after work -even if one was deadly sick - ; relations were more hierarchic.

Challenges as a Young Professional in a different cultural context
In this period the following question was popping up in my mind regularly: how can I as a person, who has been brought up with Latin American and other cultural influences, have problems with this new cultural context? Or even worse: how could I sometimes miss things I was used to in my previous work such as the many meetings I once disliked? At the same time, I was enjoying being surrounded by my colleagues, who are very spontaneous Latina’s and Latino´s. When I was working in the government in The Hague some people would not say good morning in the elevators and just stare at the floor like zombies. Currently, I am welcomed every day, and several times a day, in a friendly way by my colleagues. Also, they have a lot of knowledge on the practice of children´s rights and they can give their opinions beautifully. Nevertheless, I felt sometimes as if I was in a ´clash of cultures ´rollercoaster that was not going to stop any time soon.

Also, I experienced difficulties in positioning myself as a Young Professional by being in a different cultural context: is this young European girl not just going to be one of those volunteers who will show up a few times and then leave to backpack? I therefore had to demonstrate that I had good professional capacities and that I was willing to adapt to the Latin American work culture. It took me a lot of energy, but eventually I felt that I had positioned myself as a member of the team.

Sharing experiences and solutions
Together with colleague Young Professionals working all over the world we shared experiences with each other. When I spoke to other YP´s in the field, I found out we were experiencing similar difficulties in positioning themselves in a different cultural context. Most YP´s experienced that relations between colleagues are even more important, besides they are often based on gaining respect and power. Here some conclusions from YP´s around the world on how to position yourself as a Young Professional in another cultural context:

1. Start implementing from the beginning. Try to gain trust by accomplishing short term results in the beginning. Gradually go towards the role of facilitator, co-operant or advisor (depending on the context).
2. Give yourself the right title in order to prevent confusion with your Partner Organisation. In case you call yourself advisor, it might be misintrepretated and nothing might happen. If you call yourself 'volunteer', people might have different expectations from you. So give yourself the right title when you begin, in order to prevent misinterpretation and to gain respect.
3. Gain respect by accomplishing short term results or by listening or building close relations and trust with your colleagues.
4. Try to get (moral) support from the regional office from ICCO. This also creates status and respect in the Partner Organization. This has been helpful to various Young Professionals.

Be flexible
Luckily, I found out that things become easier when time goes by: just give yourself some time to adjust to it and don´t forget to enjoy all the good things to keep a good balance. However, I do still struggle with some issues: how to position yourself as Young Professional when sometimes you feel you are crossing certain boundaries? Should you completely adapt to the cultural context for you positioning or should you also sometimes set your boundaries as you are living in other circumstances than your colleagues, namely you are on your own? Should you communicate about your positioning and problems related to it in a direct way or rather in an indirect way as they are used to in the new context you are working in? Just to name a few!

To end, I believe when you are able to position yourself as a Junior Professional in a different cultural context you have proven to be very flexible as a person. By achieving this, you will be able to work in any complicated setting in the future. Most definitely something to be proud of.

Alice Kooij Martinez
Junior professional lobby&advocacy at DCI

Too busy to plan: Is PME capacity building at a human rights organization possible?

2010-09-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

Life at an Indonesian human rights NGO is hectic. Every day there are new cases or new political developments to respond to. I'm calling it 'life at an Indonesian NGO' instead of 'work', because working here actually means living here. Practically, this means that most of my colleagues spend lots of time at work and little time at home. It means that they don't take the holidays they're entitled to or that if they do, people sometimes regard them as being not that committed.

And there I came: THE advisor on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (in short, PME). I was going to change this workaholic mentality (or diminish the workload) and help KontraS plan better. They would learn to work even more effectively and report about the outcomes in more detail. Starting in November 2009, I had the assumption that it would take me a few months to understand the way of working and that I would be able to implement a large body of PME changes fairly easily. Within two months, I analyzed the situation, wrote recommendations and a work plan to go with it. This was going to be an easy ride! Not only I myself had high expectations of my stay here, the staff also seemed to think my presence would miraculously bring beneficial change.

Amis Boersma, explaining a PME game.....

Work one on one with the ones who want to learn more
It was around my fourth month that reality began to kick in: change doesn't happen overnight and it certainly doesn't happen miraculously. Of course, I had read the articles on the topic, even took a course in change management. But it hadn't hit me yet that the theories actually made sense. People are reluctant to change. They are too busy with doing the important work they do to try new things. It's like the parable about the man chopping trees down in the wood with a saw. He doesn't want to stop to sharpen his saw, because he's too busy chopping...

Doing workshops together

So, there was a challenge. Even though I am a very open and outgoing person, I have a fervent dislike for anything that has a potential for conflict. So my initital tendency was not to push or insist. Instead I focused on other areas where I could be helpful – which luckily are many. However, this technique didn't help improve PME very much.

When people feel there are big changes ahead, which they cannot oversee, they tend to hold back. What to do when dealing with resistance? Mostly due to many discussions with my coach and my fellow capacity builders around the world, we came up with a set of recommendations which I am implementing now. One is to not come with a big set of changes, but with small changes, one at a time. Give many short workshops on a wide array of topics. Teach people how to write a proposal or analyze the organization together from different perspectives.

Work one on one with people that are interested to learn more. Help them writing proposals or reports. Not only this, but work on anything else that people need help with as long as it's not too far from the scope of your task. Setting an example or showing different ways of working is also a form of capacity building, I believe.

Make it fun!
As I teach English every Wednesday, I have created 'free' time with some of my colleagues (the class is open to all staff). I use the classes sometimes to discuss issues related to PME, such as cultural differences when it comes to experiencing time and planning. We've talked about leadership, learning and working towards a goal. The class gives a platform to talk about PME without having to call it that.

Gaming is fun.......

Make it fun! Over the past months, I have done a quiz on PME, where the winners got a prize (Dutch cookies). We wrote a 'recipe' for cooking the KontraS way - trying to find out what are the ingredients for successful work and what preparations make them so typical for KontraS. Also, I am working with a creative artist to make a PME manual that explains in a more accessible way what it is about. The price winners!

Very important is not to expect too much from your own intervention. Create small goals and take small steps. And most of all, cherish the small successes you achieve.

Amis Boersma
Young Professional ICCO - Togetthere

CAPITALISATION DES EXPERIENCE EN MATIERE D'EDUCATION, SECURITE ALIMENTAIRE, DECENTRALISATION (RPL MALI)

2010-08-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

DU 17 AU 19 AOUT 2010 A L'HOTEL INDEPENDANCE SEGOU

Contexte et justification

L’évaluation du programme 2005-2008 du RPL a révélé la nécessité de mettre l’accent sur la documentation et la capitalisation des expériences des membres du réseau en vue de donner plus de visibilité et de lisibilité aux actions de plaidoyer et lobbying réalisées. C’est dans ce contexte que le programme 2008-2010 a prévue une série d’activités devant permettre d’arriver à la documentation d’au moins quatre (4) expériences de plaidoyer et lobbying des membres dans les secteurs de l’éducation, de la sécurité alimentaire et de la décentralisation.

Les stratégies opérationnelles préconisées à cet effet mettent l’accent sur
• La documentation et la diffusion des cas de succès dans les supports de communication existants au sein du réseau (RPL-Info, Araignée Info, Info CR-ONG, etc..)
• L’organisation d’ateliers/ rencontres d’échanges et de dissémination,
• L’animation de conférences électroniques avec un point focal pour solliciter le feedback des membres du réseau.

Objectifs de la capitalisation :
- Accroître la visibilité et la lisibilité des interventions du RPL et de ses membres en matière d’influence des politiques et programmes de développement au Mali
- Amener les acteurs de la société civile à s’approprier les outils de plaidoyer / lobbying développés par le RPL et ses membres dans la planification et la mise en œuvre de leurs trajectoires de plaidoyer/lobbying
- Vulgariser les cas de succès en matière d’éducation, de sécurité alimentaire et de décentralisation

Méthodologie :
Le processus qui sera réalisé en trois étapes prévoit les phases essentielles suivantes :
• l'identification des expériences en atelier
• l'appui et l'accompagnement des porteurs d'initiatives dans la rédaction des études de cas
• la publication et la diffusion des études de cas à l'occasion des évènements d'envergure nationale ou internationales (journée internationale de l'alphabétisation et semaine mondiale du droit à l'alimentation) et à travers les supports de communication du RPL (site web, bulletin, agenda, etc.)

Démarche de capitalisation

1. Mise à disposition des participants et clarification du contenu de la fiche de renseignement des expériences
2. Remplissage de la fiche de renseignement par les responsables des structures membres du RPL et envoie à la coordination nationale
3. Atelier de partage des expériences de plaidoyer lobbying (avis et observations sur les expériences présentées)
4. Elaboration et envoi du canevas de rédaction des études de cas à capitaliser
5. Recherche d’information complémentaire, et rédaction de la première version du document de capitalisation
6. Lecture critique, avis et commentaires sur les rapports de capitalisation d’expérience par un comité de lecture
7. Enrichissement des documents d’études de cas

La diffusion / dissémination :
La diffusion / dissémination des études de cas sera faite à travers les activités suivantes :
a. Atelier de restitution des études de cas plaidoyer lobbying
b. Mise en ligne sur le Site web du RPL
c. Partage des produits sur le Wiki du Réseau Plaidoyer et Lobbying
d. Insertion dans le Bulletin Araignée Info

Oudou Bengaly 28 août 2010

How to deal with an absence of time management among your local colleagues?

2010-08-17T01:23:00.000-07:00

You have been preparing your class or workshop thoroughly and even yesterday your colleagues said they were looking forward to come. But at the agreed time and place, no one turns up. The director and his secretary are in another meeting, one of your colleagues went to his wife and kids who live in his home village, two others stayed at home without further notice and the only colleague you can find is very surprised to hear that you actually planned a session: “Oh, I thought you would give it tomorrow…”

This situation, largely drawn from my own experience of working as a Young Professional in Indonesia, will likely be similar to many Young Professionals’ experiences. Probably, differences in time management will be one of the most apparent and irritating parts of working in a different cultural context. And it seems almost impossible to overcome, as the difference of time management and time awareness emerges from a equally different worldview, that may be understood by the Young Professional, but can not be changed. In other words, getting mad or frustrated about it, will bring you nowhere.

Cultural differences about time
The biggest difference between time awareness in the Netherlands and Indonesia, is the ‘worth’ of time. Dutch often see time as something precious, because we often have many activities (job, hobbies, family and friends) that have to be fit into a limited time frame, so that it is essential to plan our daily lives as much as possible. Basic time management, whether learned at school and work or by having a busy social life, is a necessary precondition to be able to function in the Netherlands and people who can ‘make the most out of their time’ are envied and respected.
This basic sense of time management is completely absent in Indonesia. Time is viewed as something fluid, something abundantly at one’s disposal. Wasting time is not a crime. There is often no clear distinction between office time and private time, resulting in all kinds of flexible working arrangements. So, colleagues don’t show up for work, leave at any given moment without prior notice, meetings are filled with informal chit-chat and much time in the office is spent by just resting, smoking and drinking coffee. Is adjustment to this time frame the only possible solution not to become insane? How to deal with a different time management perspective?
Adjustment to the fact that your colleagues will pursue a very flexible time management, will be necessary. However, by trying to be very communicative yourself about where you are and what you are doing (for instance by text message or email), you might be able to convince some of your colleagues to do the same. But make sure you don’t expect too much from your colleagues, especially when you don’t know them well enough what to expect from them. To avoid frustration by the absence or lack of productivity by your colleagues, you can make sure that at least your own (work) plans are clear and adjusted to sudden changes and flexibility by others.

As an example, you can stick to certain office hours yourself, thereby structuring your own activities.
You could bring a book to an appointment, so that you can at least entertain yourself just in case you’ll have to wait longer than expected.
Bring your laptop to a meeting, so you can try to work a bit while the meeting drags on for hours without making sense to you.
Try to think of small tasks you could perform every time you’ll have to wait for someone else.
Try to invest in yourself and your personal skills, even while others around you lazy around.
Make sure you can at least feel good about yourself and your own achievements, it will help you to feel useful and accept someone else’s flaws.

The best thing to do is to accept and adapt. Be aware that your local colleagues will have another view towards time and therefore don’t expect them to behave as you would expect from a Dutch colleague. Also, don’t blame yourself or feel guilty for not being able to reach your own goals as a result of local conditions. When you are in the right state of mind and aware of your own tasks and your local possibilities to perform them realistically, you can avoid frustration, maybe even enjoy the flexibility of more relaxed working arrangements and make the most of ‘your time’ in the field.

Anton Quist

How to involve colleagues more in my work and my capacity development intervention?"

2010-01-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

Young Professionals discuss experiences and challenges in an online Discussion Group.

Young Professionals are sent all over the world to work with ICCO partners. Although our job descriptions may be different, we all have in common that we are supposed to work on ‘capacity building’. We are supposed to bring knowledge and skills to the organisations we work with, and make sure that the people in the organisation take over your knowledge and are able to use it on their own as soon as we leave. The golden rule is: “When you leave they should be able to do it themselves”. But how to involve your colleagues in what you are doing, and to make sure that you are not working alone, is a challenge for many. Therefore, this theme was chosen in the latest D-group discussion round for Young Professionals. Seven Young Professionals, who are working and living in different parts of the world, exchanged their experiences and discussed the challenges they are facing. Many Young Professionals find it a challenge to directly involve their colleagues in their work. Some feel they are working on their own little ‘island’, others have the feeling that their capacity is just seen as a “cheap pair of extra hands” by the organisation they are working for. Often this goes hand in hand with an unclear demand for capacity building from the partner organisation. As a Young Professional you have to dig and dig further to find out what the actual need for capacity development is. As a result, young professionals experience that they have to define their own roles and tasks, instead of being able to answer directly to a task formulated by the partner organisation. Often, a partner organisation is not clearly communicating to a young professional what they expect from him/her. Therefore, young professional have to take the initiative to get things done, with little involvement from colleagues.

Different expectations from a capacity development intervention
From my own experience as a starter in Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation in Zimbabwe, I can truly relate to these challenges. Before I left, I found my job description very clear, and I thought it was obvious what the partner organisation was expecting from my capacity building intervention. But short after my arrival I found out that my job description might be very clear on paper, but that in practise the demand from the partner organisation, and from the colleagues is am working with in particular, was not very well defined. On the question “what do you want me to do in the coming six months and what are your expectations?” I did not get a clear answer. In the day to day work, I often felt that I was creating my own job, based on what I think was important, instead of working with involved colleagues on fulfilling their needs for capacity building.
During the D-Group discussion wit fellow Young Professionals, we found that prior to this situation/challenge is often the process in which the initial proposal for capacity building by a young professional is written. You find that often a proposal is written by a director or manager, without direct participation of all staff within the organisation. This may lead to little support base for the posting. A conclusion of the D-Group discussion is that most of the time, the parties involved (partner organisation, Togetthere, staff inside the PO, other stakeholders) have different expectations of the capacity development intervention. It takes a lot of effort and time for a young professional to find out what the exact expectations are and to find a balance between all these different expectations. It takes an average of 4 to 6 months to get to know the partner organisation, and your role and tasks in the organisation. It takes time to build trust with your colleagues. In the beginning they might be very much focussed on their own work, and it takes time for them to make time for you as a young professional.

Ways to involve your colleagues
During the discussion round, many ideas where shared on how to involve your colleagues. Most importantly, it is to build a good trust relationship with them. Approach your colleagues in an informal way (during tea breaks, in an informal setting), get to know them, find out about their needs and expectation and start building from there. Moreover, you have to build a good relationship with your supervisor, and get clear about his/her expectations and your expectations from the start. Plan moments of reflections and evaluation with him/her, so that you will keep on the right track and prevent losing sight of what is expected of you. In some cases you have to be very assertive to ensure that your supervisor, as well as other staff, make time for you and take you seriously. From my own experience I think it is very important to be this assertive, and take initiative from the beginning. If you don’t, you get lost, and it is too late to get back on track with the people you are working with.

Adjust ambitions to the situation
Personally, I think the most important conclusion and advice coming out the four week discussion round, is a very obvious and common shared one. Most of the time young professionals have very high ambitions and goals they would like to accomplish with the partner organisation. In all cases it is relevant to lower you ambitions and work with the situation that is there. Even when you think you have already lowered your ambitions and expectations, take it one step further. Especially is you are working for a short period of time (6 months), you can only succeed if your ambitions are in line with the situation on the ground. And usually, you can accomplish a lot less than what you intended in the first place, before you get on a plane to a tropic destination. But nevertheless, your work is always appreciated, and you have to keep in mind that a significant part of your intervention is your own learning experience, which brings a further in future jobs and/or capacity building interventions.

Lara van Kouterik

Young Professional Capacity development - Zimbabwe

Junior Experts Latin America meet in Honduras, 13 - 16 April, 2009

2009-04-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sharing on the beach
From April 14th until 16th, five ICCO junior advisors come together in Honduras to exchange experiences about their work in Latin America. All of us are working with different partner organizations of ICCO in Honduras, Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia. It is the first time such exchange is being organized.

The objectives of the meeting are to learn, share and exchange so we can improve our work and ICCO’s Young Professional program in the future. Two of us have just started their work at their organization, two are almost at the end of their contract and one is just in the middle of it: a good moment to reflect and learn.

The different views from the ‘fresh’ beginners and the ‘more experienced ones’ on the shared issues were complementing and helping to challenge each other. This gave us some interesting results we will use when we get back to our organizations.

The first day just came to an end. Taking a step back from work helped to look at it from a distance. Being together here, all with our western background and sharing our learning processes gave us a special feeling of connection. And, last but not least, being on the beach in a tropical country surely helps to relax and reload our batteries for continuing our work!

Challenge and Success
Today, at the first official day of the meeting we have exchanged successes and challenges in our work and lives in Latin America. It was incredible to see that although we are working for different organizations, on different themes and in different countries, the challenges we face are so very similar.
Cultural issues are often mixed in our work and lives here. Often it is about finding a balance – between the expectations from outside as well as the ones you have created yourself. What do you do when a trustful Latino friend asks you if you can lend him money? What, if your colleagues do not communicate with you and they don’t react on your direct approach? How to keep good connections with ICCO and our families and friends in the Netherlands? And how to improve learning from other (ex) junior advisors? What do you do when your contract finishes and you are sent back to the Netherlands after two years of Southern tranquilidad?
There are a lot of questions, but fortunately many answers, too. Thanks to six actively thinking female heads in the South.

Getting to know the other by getting to know yourself
Today’s afternoon was a positive one. First we started with analyzing some of our success stories. What did you do that made you feel very good (not only about yourself, but more so about the capacity building process you started)? Various cases were shared with some very common ‘success factors’ like: patience, good planning and preparation, creating awareness on the importance of the process you are starting, support from the management and sensitivity to the local hierarchy and culture.
After that, the creative therapist amongst us, showed us some interesting insights, not only on ‘ what is creative therapy’, but also in ourselves and our ways of working. After the necessary creativity, cutting and sticking, we were asked to analyze how we cut, why we cut like that, how we placed the papers, and how this reflects who we are. It may sound silly, but it definitely opened our eyes. These types of creative workshops can be used to generate ‘self reflection’ or to organize team-building activities. Since it does not only reflect who we are, but also how we feel comfortable in a team.

Safety first
An unexpected, not so pleasant incident in Honduras was one of the main reasons for us, junior experts, to have this meeting in Roatan. All six of us have had our own experiences in safety issues. It’s interesting to see how we all adopt to the situation. Although sometimes still wondering and finding us in difficult circumstances, safety is always an issue and being in unsafe situation sometimes seems to be part of our daily life.
Exchanging our experiences helps us to reflect on what already seems normal to you and makes us wonder whether our situation really is that normal and what to do in extreme circumstances. Hearing stories of others makes us realize we are not the only ones finding ourselves in weird situations, where our safety and that of colleagues, friends, and acquaintances are at stake. When media cannot be trusted, and gossip is everywhere how can you make sure you are well informed about what’s going on? How can you define whether a situation is truly dangerous? And how can your attitude towards others influence their behavior towards you?
Through Skype we were able to talk directly to Sicko Pijpker to discuss our doubts and keep informed on ICCOs policy on safety matters. Although ICCO uses several tools to prepare juniors for their experience abroad, things can still be improved by including a gender aspect in safety issues and more information on local forms of violence and dangers. The decentralization of ICCO offers possibilities on keeping advisors abroad even better informed about the safety situation in the local area.
The local offices established in the south come with several changes, including for the people sent abroad. Whereas the regional safety program is still not clearly defined, the changes already show possibilities to improve the work and impact of the junior expert program. Advisors find themselves in a complicated situation with loyalty issues to both ICCO and their partner organization. Will PROCODE also be an opportunity for them to define (new) roles in their relationship with ICCO and their counterpart? Or would an external coach be the outcome? Or both?
Sharing our experiences makes us stronger. It enforces our feeling that we are not alone, but all in a quite similar situation. Face to face meetings like these enable us to share our stories, them being good or bad. It bonds us and renews our energy for taking our work one step further. But walking this path, we know whatever happens, always: safety first.

We should be proud of ourselves!
Yesterday was the last day of the three day junior expert meeting. And what a day it was! We worked all day and continued working late into the night. This time the activities were less centered on the sharing of experiences and more on formulating recommendations for ICCO.A big part of the day was spent on talking about the factors that support and limit a positive impact of the junior expert in the capacity building process. We formulated factors on the personal, organizational and environmental level (the organizations context). Especially the list of personal characteristics that support capacity building processes became quite long: flexibility, patience, knowing your limits, motivation, empathy, open attitude, ability to adapt, positivity, creativity, etc. We were amazed by the number of characteristics a junior expert should (in theory) possess. Of course some of these character traits you will learn along the way. We concluded that being a junior expert is not always easy and that we should be proud of ourselves.As the central theme of this meeting was learning, we also talked about the different learning instruments that ICCO provides for the junior experts. There are quite many; not all of them equally well known by us. We evaluated them all and formulated recommendations for ICCO afterwards. Of course the face-to-face meeting was one of the learning instruments that we evaluated. Our opinion of this meeting was unanimously positive. It is an excellent way to get to know other junior experts, exchange experiences, learn from others, and help ICCO to improve its junior expert program. For me, having just started with my work, the meeting was extremely valuable. Just hearing that others have experienced the same issues already makes a difference. And of course it was also just fun!

Anouk van Hoof - Junior Advisor Community Tourism, Peru
Ester Prins - Junior Advisor Sistematisation, Communication and Advocacy, Bolivia
Dirkje Jansen - Junior Advisor Documentation, Learning and Communication, Honduras
Marleen Willemsen, Junior Advisor Quality Management and Marketing, Guatemala
Johanna Pohlmann, Junior Advisor Creative Therapy, Honduras

Happy Capacity Building - 2008

2009-01-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Three advisors from the ICCO Capacity Assessment & Development group, Dirkje Jansen, Marleen Willemsen and Simon Koolwijk share their successes on capacity development in 2008.

Capacity development in Honduras

Empowered girls in Guatemala

This article has been compiled and written by Dirkje Jansen and can be found at the ICCO-cad wiki site (case studies) or you can read the article by double clicking at Happy Capacity Building 2008.

Transact analysis in Macedonia

Sustainable development in times of crisis: coaching and/or advising?

2008-11-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

Introduction
The time that work in the international development sector could rely on merely ‘good intentions’ is far in the past already. What we want today is professional, result-oriented support. And, highly important: support needs to be sustainable.

Young Professionals supported by ICCO are working all over the world, trying to build up sustainable changes with ICCO counterparts within a period of 1,5 to 2 years. This task is not always easy. The organisations we work with often have problems that need to be solved urgently and there’s always a lot of work to do. Short-term tasks, being a stand-in for a colleague and crisis management are daily business. Being an advisor within such an organisation, it is sometimes difficult to escape from this daily business and to dedicate time and energy to long-term planning and capacity development. Several advisors feel the tension caused by this situation. You want to help, and therefore feel you can’t refuse assistance in reaching short-term objectives. But at the same time you know that you might be able to contribute more when working to serve more strategic goals. All are wondering what we could do to turn our work into a more sustainable support. How could we lift our support to a higher level of capacity development?

To find out more about this question, we analysed a case of one of the advisors.

Case
This case concerns a company that exports products of small-scale farmers in a developing country in Latin America. The company works with a local ngo, a partner of ICCO. The ngo gives the farmers seed credit, trains them to comply with quality and safety regulations for international markets, etc. The company links the farmers to supermarkets in Europe and the US.

Mini-squash, one of the export products

This concept worked well from the start in 1999 until the year 2005. The company was unique (first exporting vegetables), the market position was positive and the company was collaborating well with the ngo, which was doing very well at the time. In 2005, hurricane Stan and the strong rainfall afterwards destroyed the production of many farmers. Around the same time, a US client of the company only paid half the prices that were agreed upon. Because the company reacted slowly, the working capital was ‘eaten’ quickly. As a result, the company plunged into a crisis, without working capital and with many debts.

Snow peas, another export product

To solve problems, the director of the company reduced the fixed team to a very small team. He arranged small amounts of credit with several organizations and suppliers to be able to restart business. He changed marketing strategies. Since a convincing restart was not made, a junior advisor quality management and marketing was contracted through ICCO. In practice she was expected to save the company, in all areas, all departments. Until now, she reached several objectives; for example certifying farmers and the packing plant according to an international trading standard. Many things have been learned so far and colleagues are open for changes. Still, she feels that on a daily basis, she spends a lot of time on crisis management where she might in fact spend time more strategically working on long-term goals.
Learning questions: How can we, in a crisis situation, come to a higher level of capacity development?How can we make a sustainable difference that will stay when we leave?

Case Analysis
The advisor has tried several times to organize sessions on longer term planning, but it was cancelled each time: a sign that it apparently wasn’t a priority, or that the company and management team was not (yet) receptive for this level of planning.

Yellow summer squash, a popular export article

When looking a bit closer at the case we identified main problems that inhibit sustainable development.

1. Lack of money and working capital, which makes it very difficult to restart business.
2. There are many factors in the process that seem to be difficult to control and that come up unexpectedly. That’s why everybody is always working under high pressure.
3. Quick rotation of personnel. Therefore tacit knowledge is lost every once in a while.
Two necessities were identified in this case.
A: Help the business to survive (related to problem 1 and 2) and
B: Sustainable capacity building (related to problem 2 and 3).
The advisor is revising and controlling processes and communication very much, most of her time serving necessity A. Her help is often requested in this area. But, being busy with that, she doesn’t come to work at necessity B, which she thinks would be more important.
In the D-group this was recognised. Also, ICCO advises not to get trapped in a situation in which you are executing too much yourself, instead of being an advisor. Some advisors feel pressured by this.

Theoretical analysis: 3 coaching techniques
In this section, 3 theories are presented that could help advisors to get insight about the situation of the organization and to come to a higher level of capacity building.
1) Demoralisation or distortion of resilience
The company seems to have come in a phase of demoralisation[1]. Demoralisation is a situation of not being able to oversee the real problem and to make strategies to overcome this problem or to find ways to live with it. It’s thinking in terms of obstacles rather than in terms of goals. Demoralisation often occurs when there’s a misbalance between the carrying capacity and the burden. When the burden is heavier than the carrying capacity, the resilience of the company will come in danger like an elastic band that is overstretched.

The article warns coaches not to get trapped in the flow of the organization. Amongst others: advisors often tend to take over the problem, find solutions for the problem owner and execute things themselves.

What can we do about this? Define and limit the problem together. In this way we can make the burden clearer and so, lighter. At the same time the organisation must be coached to strengthen the carrying capacity. In this way a new balance can be found and the resilience healed.

2) Transactional analysis
Another theory that could be used to analyse a problem situation is the transactional analysis[2], a theory that could help to heal what went wrong in the past. It analyses relationships between people and identifies different roles that a person or organization can take. All fall back on the parent-ego position, the adult-ego position and the child-ego position, which are commonly present in any person, all at the same time. The theory can show insight in how a person behaves and could help to change problematic behaviour.

3) How to get the right person in the driver’s seat?
We discussed another theory: the ‘driver seat’ concept. It can be wondered who is in the drivers seat in this case. Who is finally taking charge? Coaching techniques using this model could help to guide colleagues to get them to take responsibility and avoid creating a dependency relation.

What elements of these theories are relevant for this case?
Demoralisation
In the case of the advisor, there is an opportunity to analyse the company situation with her colleagues using the demoralization theory as an example. What is the current burden and what is the carrying capacity? How are these related to each other? Is it quite an equal balance, or did it lose its resilience already?

This could show insight in the situation of the company and make a good start to find strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats that play a role in getting the organization in balance again. From this SWOT the advisor could start making strategies. Resulting in an action plan where the advisor could give her colleagues back responsibilities.

Processing

Transactional analysis
TA is developed by the Canadian Psychiatrist Eric Berne, MD (1910 – 1970). The transactional analysis theory might be applied on organizations as well. The company acts like it is still too much in its impulsive child-phase while it should already be more in an adult phase. Analyzing behaviour of the organization and identifying its patterns and positions could help the advisor to show it to the organization and to reflect on its own attitude. Which position is dominant and which one do we want it to be?

The article explains several tools that can be used to help a person to change behaviour. These tools might help the advisor to analyse and help the company to change it practices.

Driver’s seat theory
The advisor does not feel she is too much in the driver’s seat, but maybe spending too much time supervising the driver being next to her. Instead of that, she feels that she could improve the vehicle itself on the long run. What could she change within herself to….
- get her colleagues more in the drivers seat / letting them drive alone
- dedicate more time to sustainable long-term development?
One of the advisors referred to the problem of quick rotation of personnel, which she experienced herself as well. It is a risk that other driving people might leave the organization. She experienced that to avoid that the knowledge gained in the process is lost when personnel changes, an advisor can do a lot in writing. Writing manuals about themes related to work could be a concrete solution.

Transport of the vegetables

One of the advisors coaches advised not to worry too much about this theme: there are many ways too learn and teach. By doing things yourself and showing it to colleagues, or doing things together with colleagues, you can set an example. You can learn together and when you’ll leave, people can do it without you. This is also capacity development. So driving together can help the organisation to make people drive for themselves when you leave.
Furthermore, the writer of this article notices that we should not forget that there's a difference between coaching and advising. Where a coach takes distance, makes the ‘client’ reflect on his situation and guides him to change behaviour without doing things and picking up responsibilities, an advisor can be a person internal to the organization who collaborates in the daily work and can set an example. We should not forget that we are probably more advisors than coaches.

Conclusion: How to get to sustainable development?
In many organisations we can see people working hard and everything seems to be important and urgent. Things might work out differently (or better) if there would be some long-term structural changes, but sometimes, although everybody seems to see the need of it, in the end there is a lack of time and everybody just keeps on working the way they do, especially on short-term basis. But making this change isn't always easy, 1) because of this lack of time and 2) because you as an advisor have fit into and become adapted to the same system in which everything is urgent and important.

Taking some distance, letting things go and starting to wonder who is actually in the drivers seat can help the advisor to get a clearer picture of the situation.

Letting the people drive themselves, while you are close to the driver or work on the improvement of the vehicle, are important basics for sustainable development that stays when you leave.

Several tools from demoralisation theory and transactional analysis are available to analyse an organization and to start working on change on a higher level. Letting the organization reflect on its behaviour, identifying parent-ego, adult-ego and child-ego positions could help advisors to create self-awareness in the organization in the first place. Making the balance of the organizations’ burden and its carrying capacity could be a start to work on strategic change using the existing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Finally, there's a difference between coaching and advising. We should be aware that we are more advisors than coaches and therefore shouldn’t regret too much that we also participate in the execution of daily work. Also through giving an example in the daily processes we can work on capacity development.

[1] Nederlandse Academie voor psychotherapie (2006) Demoralisatie en weerstand en het draaglast/kracht model

Capacity building versus dominant donors

2008-06-17T01:22:00.000-07:00

The practice of development cooperation is to a great extent shaped by the relationships between Western donors and their local counterparts. Many donors use concepts of partnership and ownership to establish and define these relations. What’s more, they advocate that these relationships should be based on the needs of the local organization. However, in practice many relationships between donors and the organizations that they support are characterized by dependency. And this dependency is often enforced by the attitudes and perceptions of the donor, the local organization, or both.

But what happens to capacity building efforts in an organization, if the organization is inclined to ‘bend’ towards donor’s ideas over their own? And if the donor is presenting its ideas in a top-down manner, linked to funding? When this relates to the subject of capacity building efforts undertaken in a certain organization, this may affect the sustainability of these efforts. Local organizations may almost automatically follow the donor’s approaches and ideas instead of their own, even if they have built capacity on these specific approaches and ideas.

This article is based on a discussion about this question between several ICCO capacity builders working in different places of the world. The discussion revolved around a real-life case that was presented by one of the capacity building advisors.

‘Bending’ attitudes of local organizations
The case that started off the discussion and this article involves a medium sized local organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In this organization capacity building efforts are taken place on mainly monitoring and evaluation systems, by an ICCO advisor.

The organization in general has a ‘bending’ or submissive attitude towards donors. This is first of all caused by a deeply felt dependency on donors for survival. Also, cultural elements play a role in this attitude towards donors. There exists a general submissive attitude towards foreigners, and foreigners often represent Western donors. In the organization described in this specific case it is furthermore not seen as respectful to disagree with donors, or to discuss critical notions with the donors.

With the ‘bending’ attitude of the organization, there arises a growing tension between the organization’s own ideas and the ideas of the donors. This means that sometimes the organization is pressed towards going a certain direction, which not necessarily reflects its own priorities or ideas.

Dominant donor styles
The advisory style of the ICCO advisor working in this organization focuses on the implementation of ideas from the organization’s staff themselves. Also, the ICCO advisor consciously makes efforts not to be perceived as an advisor working for ICCO. As ICCO is one of the donors of the organization, this might affect the relationship.

Related to this specific case is another expatriate advisor that joined one of the projects of the organization. This advisor has a different, more dominant advisory style from the ICCO advisor, showing strong opinions about how certain things should be in the organization, and presenting herself as a representative of the donor.

The advisory style of the new expatriate advisor has affected the ICCO capacity building advisor directly in several ways. At the outset, the new advisor strongly advocated the adoption of the monitoring and evaluation system of the donor she represents. This caused stress with the organization’s staff, who had been developing their own monitoring and evaluation system as part of the capacity building efforts of the ICCO advisor.

Also, the staff approached the ICCO advisor to express their uneasiness with some other ideas of the new advisor. Despite this uneasiness, they intended to follow and implement most of the ideas of the advisor, even if they did not necessarily agree with them, because of the more general cultural reasons as mentioned earlier in this article.

Lessons and Experiences
How can, or should, a capacity building advisor get involved, in case the organization where the intervention takes place feels pressured into a certain direction? What to do about a submissive attitude towards donors, or a dominant attitude of the donors towards the local organization?

Internal and informal learning
Coaching could be an important tool that the capacity building advisor could use to encourage new understanding and reflection in the local organization. Through coaching, the staff may come to new insights on their expectations and needs with regard to their relationship with the donor, and how to shape this relationship. Also, it is a good way for the staff to reflect on how the organization perceives the expectations and needs of the donor, as these perceptions may not always be based on reality.

It is important to realize that coaching is only a good tool to be used by the capacity building advisor, if there exists trust between the advisor and the organization’s staff. This ensures the openness needed for successful coaching. One coaching model that can be used is the GROW model, but whatever model is used, effective listening by the coach is key.

One step further to encourage learning and reflection could be to organize an internal learning session in the local organization. This session could involve all relevant staff in discussing and reflecting on relationships with donors. This way they feel encouraged to think about their own needs, and the donor’s needs, as well as expectations, and attitudes towards each other.

Internal learning is an excellent opportunity to further discuss on how to relate to donors

In a culturally sensitive environment, like the case in Cambodia, it can difficult to talk openly, and perhaps critically about donors. It could be considered to be not respectful, and ungrateful towards donors – even inside the organization. In this case, one possibility would be to expand the topic to all stakeholders of the organization, of which donors are one, or to have a more general session on partnerships. Also, creating a more informal learning environment to have this session, for example during lunch or dinner, might help of overcome sensitivities that a more formal setting would intensify.

A more informal learning environment makes it more easier to discuss cultural sensitive issues

Learning between the organization and the donor
If representation of the donor is nearby, it could be helpful to create opportunities for informal communication between the donor and the organization, to create mutual understanding. In the above described case, the ICCO advisor had an informal meeting over coffee with the other advisor representing the donor. During this meeting the ICCO advisor had the chance to talk about her approaches to capacity building, and the other advisor had a chance to reflect on these approaches. This led to better mutual understanding and has also led to a slight shift in approach by the other advisor.

A more formal way to encourage dialogue on donor communication and relationships with the local organization is to arrange a donor meeting. In this meeting donors are encouraged to discuss and reflect together on their relationships with the local organization, and to solve contradictory approaches. In this meeting the local organization has a chance to include difficult or pressing issues related to the relationships with their donors. On their turn, the donors have the opportunity to reflect on these issues with each other, and with the local organization. Experiences with donor meetings in Sudan and Bolivia show that these kinds of meetings are greatly appreciated by both the local organization and the donors involved.

However, before organizing a donor meeting it is important to have internal agreement in the local organization on expectations and approaches towards communication and relationships with donors. This helps them to be a more equal partner in this discussion with donors. Also, it is important to have a good external facilitator in this process to encourage an open, safe and equal environment for discussion.

Involvement of Capacity Builders
It can be very tempting for expat capacity building advisors who work closely with local organizations to get actively involved when they perceive unequal relationships with donors. However, it can also be important for learning when the organization is exposed to new situations, approaches and forms of relationships and communication. If advisors become too protective, this may actually hamper possible learning and growth of the organization through exposure to different cultural beliefs and values. It is thus important to find a balance to optimally facilitate growth and learning.

Also, over the longer term it is important to realize that capacity building strengthens the organization. By doing so, it increases understanding on certain topics between organizations and their donors. And this understanding is an important condition for more equal and open relationships and communication.

How to create a dynamic learning environment for a capacity building intervention in an isolated situation?

2008-06-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

Capacity building (CB) interventions increasingly involve more than one partner organization. Whereas such multi-partner interventions potentially have many advantages, such as providing training, coaching and advise to an increased number of people, the possibility of mutual organizational learning, and creating sufficient critical mass to bring about institutional changes, they also present some risks. A particular risk is that the distance, both physical and psychological, between the advisor and partner organizations may obstruct the creation of a dynamic learning environment. A lack of engagement of the management of partner organizations could further isolate the advisor.

Some ICCO advisors are challenged to work from isolation in building capacities of local partners

This article discusses a particular situation in which the relatively isolated position of an advisor risks to affect the sustainability of the CB intervention. While it only involves two partner organizations, it presents elements that may be felt equally – or perhaps more strongly – in situations where a development worker advises a network of local partner organizations. It presents the symptoms and possible ways out of isolation. This article summarizes an e-mail discussion among several development advisors around the globe, so that the potential solutions proposed may be of interest to anyone experiencing similar challenges.

Introducing the isolated setting
The case concerns the placement of a technical advisor to an agricultural research institute in an African country. The objective of this CB intervention is to enlarge the impact of the research conducted by the institute. This is to be achieved by enhancing the skills of research staff by training and coaching and, more importantly, by strengthening the link between farmers, extension and research (this link is virtually absent). For this purpose, the CB intervention is linked to an NGO with ongoing development projects. Four counterparts, two researchers from the institute and two extension workers from the NGO, have been assigned to work intensively together with the advisor. As the research institute is located a one-hour drive out of the capital, travel restrictions apply to foreigners for travel outside the capital, and for other practical reasons, the technical advisor was offered an office at the NGO’s headquarters in the capital. However, none of the counterparts works here: one is based at the institute’s head-office, the other three at two different field offices.

The isolated setting consists of two elements:
Practical problems of distance and communication; the advisor works at an office close to his home, but far from his counterparts and employer. Distances, travel costs for counterparts and required travel permits for the advisor pose important hindrances to the advisor’s work. Moreover, the distance between the different counterparts also causes a lack of opportunity for mutual exchange between them.
Little attention to process and lack of participation of the management;
the management of the partner organisations seems to be more interested in results than in the process of the advisor’s work. Unless he asks he gets very little information about what’s going on in the organisations. The culture is very formal: everything goes according to strict rules (some of which remain unknown, others may change anytime). It is like a silent: "Your task has been given, here are four people to work with and everything else is none of your business".

The isolated setting has led the advisor to question how a dynamic learning environment can be created for the four counterparts, and what he can do to increase chances that the CB intervention will lead to sustainable changes (besides hoping that enhanced skills and attitude of the counterparts will trickle down into their respective organizations)?

Analyzing the isolated setting
The development workers participating in the e-discussion first raised questions in order to better understand the isolation. In this analysis, two basic characteristics of the isolated setting were distinguished, relating to practical and organizational problems respectively. This distinction will be followed below.

About the practical problems
The choice of being based in the capital is by all standards the preferred option. Communication by mobile phone can bridge the physical distance between advisor and counterparts. The counterparts, however, lack organisational support for communication and travel. This is partly due to a generally deteriorating economic situation. The counterparts suggested group training as a solution to the lack of contact with the advisor and eachother. In the advisor’s opinion formal training can only be a relatively small part of time, as time is needed for preparation and follow-up. Next to plenary planning meetings and training, the counterparts proposed telephone calls and field visits. Additionally, they indicated the possibility of providing materials for self-study.

Training was suggested as one of the solutions

The working environment at the NGO headquarters is not very social. NGO colleagues contact each other only if they work together on the same subject. There is generally not much talking going on and there are no general tea breaks. An informal chat lasting more than 1 minute is rare. The advisor misses moments of informal contact.

About the organizational problems
The initial proposal for the CB intervention stated organizational issues as an explicit objective. However, this lies sensitive in a country proud of achieving things independent of int'l support. Thus, there is a difference of perception regarding CB between the advisor and partner organizations. The advisor’s interference in organisational and institutional matters is not appreciated. The four counterparts assigned by their respective directors to work with the advisor are young people in junior positions. While the advisor had expected to work with division heads of the institute, they are completely bypassed. Both counterparts and advisor report directly to the director.

The discrepancy between the initial CB proposal and the apparent wishes of the partner organizations triggered a lot of questions among the expert group. One issue is ownership of the proposal. It was developed jointly by a program that was dissolved before arrival of the advisor and the research institute. Many other changes in the context occurred between the moment of developing the proposal and posting of the advisor. The institute may not have been familiar with the concept of a CB intervention tackling organizational as well as technical (HRD training) goals. There might have been a donor influence in developing the CB dimension in that the format of the application proposal requires such issues to be addressed in order to be acceptable. If it would have been clear that the institute was only interested in a CB intervention limited to working with 4 staff members without results expected on organizational level or in terms of sustainability, the donor organization could have chosen not to support the intervention. If however, the donor decided to support the intervention anyway, then the advisor should have known in advance that only a limited impact can be expected, and no pressure should come from the donor (directly or indirectly through its reporting formats) to achieve a larger and more long-term impact. Additionally, as it took a long time between initial idea and implementation of the project, the donor organization should perhaps have re-assessed whether an adequate working environment was in place (including resources for e.g. payment of a local salary to the advisor, organizing meetings and communication) before giving its green light.

The lack of organizational commitment to process experienced by the advisor led to further inquiries in the d-group. The entree point to this discussion was that a CB advisor can only function if the commitment of the partner organisation is guaranteed and if there are clear ideas about what the CB should be about. Although in this particular case contextual changes were huge, the first three months of a CB intervention (the workplan phase) can be used to analyse such changes and allow insights from discussions to influence the final plan.

Summarizing, a CB intervention is arguably frequently situated in a ‘less-than-ideal’ situation (the very reason of the intervention may be a contribution towards improving that situation). However thorough the assessment of donor organizations may be, the advisor will (always?) have to solve multiple issues not directly related to CB ‘sec’, and perhaps indeed often relating to improving the environment in which he/she is supposed to work. Talent for improvisation is definitely a required skill for a CB advisor.

There is always a light in the darkness of the isolation

Suggestions for breaking the isolation....

After analyzing the isolated setting of the case study, the expert group launched suggestions for breaking the isolation.

The first suggestion is not to become frustrated by practical limitations, but to regard them as challenges to be overcome. This may be a cyclical process, in which ideally perceiving challenges should gradually replace frustration, turning the cycle into an upward spiral.

An advisor needs appreciation and certain support from the side of the partner organization to feel comfortable at work and sometimes to be able to work at all. If these are absent when the advisor arrives, he/she will need time and patience to gain them. Advice of close colleagues to change the situation is important because they know their culture and working ambience probably better. Gaining trust can help to get more involvement of management, but also more freedom in working on the more difficult issues. The advisor should look what is going on and show that he/she is a good listener. Once people see what you want to do and that you can be trusted, you may have won the first battle.

The advisor should also lower his ambitions/expectations. The advisor’s desire to create a flying start by stuffing the workplan with multiple activities in the starting phase to create a dynamic environment needs relaxation. It is not possible to force a breakthrough if there is no momentum on which to embark.

A good start to overcome the difficulties in distance and communication is to use moments arising from existing systems and procedures for discussion and reflection. Workplans, interventions, reporting system, etc. provide excellent moments and tools for reflection and careful discussion. Training can be used (both the formal and the informal moments) not only for knowledge transfer and skills development, but also for communication and reflection on other issues. Training should not be perceived too narrowly, but could include the development of a M&E system and regular sessions in which progress is discussed. In doing this, the advisor may delegate responsibilities to counterparts, in a way that increases their ownership (and hopefully: initiative – which is not so strong given the hierarchical society). It would probably be helpful to create some kind of spirit/soul around training or M&E sessions – perhaps a little joint retreat or some direct link with, or involvement of, the eventual beneficiaries.

Use moments arising from existing systems or scheduled events for discussion and reflection

Individual situations vary a lot. Insight, flexibility and improvising are important. The question is perhaps whether some collective approaches such as this discussion group may offer a tool valuable enough to include in the support package of every CB advisor?

…and for creating momentum

Breaking the isolation may be an ongoing challenge, in which the advisor probably needs to keep on initiating moments for exchange and communication; existing processes, training, field visits, etc. can be used to achieve this. Creating some regularly returning evaluation moments may reduce the isolated feel. The next move towards creating a dynamic learning environment is to make the CB intervention a shared responsibility. By investing in good relations with counterparts, there is a team spirit. A next step is embedding M&E in the group and delegating responsibility to counterparts. The group should subsequently concentrate on achieving a small, but concrete, success. This will further enhance the team spirit. A small PR campaign should be organized around the success, showing partner organizations that something really interesting is going on.

After that the advisor and his team can wait for a reaction of the management and/or work towards a second tangible result. By now, the respective organizations should recognize the potential added value of the CB intervention. Recognition could take the form of positive feedback, or of requests for wider organizational CB. This would allow the advisor to scale up his activities to the organizational level.
Central to the creation of momentum is the development of a M&E system involving the counterparts. This could lead to a feeling of having developed a collective tool and as a consequence, to more responsibility of the team members. The characteristics of such a M&E system was the topic of an in-depth discussion of the expert group. The advisor could start to brainstorm with counterparts what items they will have to monitor collectively. If too many ideas are generated, the different aspects could be ranked to facilitate the choice of which to use. The next issue is to think on how to monitor those aspects. Here, the choice of potential tools depends among others on the aspects to be monitored: 'hard' aspects like concrete numbers and results of field tests or 'soft' aspects like how people feel about the collaboration in the team, time management, etc... Further discussion focused on soft aspects, which, implicitly, were found to be of major importance.

Two specific simple M&E tools suited for a participatory approach were discussed:
The first is known as ‘evaluation wheel’ or ‘amoeba’ (because of its appearance) (see http://portals.wi.wur.nl/msp/?page=1222 for a short explanation). Every participant can fill in his/her own outcomes on a transparent. When putting all the "transparent wheels" on top of each other, you can quite easily see the 'general' score for each aspect, which aspects have very high and low scores, etc. You can easily compare the scores of a monitoring session to a former session and follow your process that way.
The second is the Action Learning Cycle. It is based on learning from experience: action, describing what happened, reviewing what happened, what can be improved next time and then plan for future projects/activities. This tool allows people to understand the process better and especially the reason for doing it.
Further reflections led to the conclusion that while developing an M&E system in itself may not create commitment and ownership, it is essential that people understand the process and why they do it to share responsibility. This needs time, and the advisor should consciously allow counterparts to experiment and not fill in gaps and doing things for them. Once the M&E system is up and running, counterparts could be asked to help facilitating the monitoring sessions, offering a second level of increasing responsibility.

Epilogue: what if the intervention fails to materialize beyond small-scale HRD?
The steps presented up to now can be taken by the advisor. The question what the advisor can do to create a broader and higher-level organizational involvement in the CB process was not addressed in the expert discussion. It seems that there is a general consensus that scaling up the CB intervention to the organizational/institutional level depends on commitment and facilitation by the management. But what if this fails to materialize? Will the CB intervention still be worth the effort? This question provoked lively debate. In absence of organizational commitment, one advisor told how she kept on initiating, lobbying, and coordinating a lot of activities, almost abandoning her role as an advisor in its strict sense of the word. Initially often wondering why she was insisting, she is now noticing that roles are shifting. She had gained trust and commitment by investing in relations and patiently explaining her objectives and its benefits to the participating organizations time and again. She kept on systematically making new proposals, disseminating information, etc., in fact: showing people how you work and setting a good example. If setting this example and giving tools has enabled a few motivated people standing alone in their struggles to make a difference, it is definitely worth it: human resources are a limiting factor to development, and failure to explicitly address organizational/institutional issues during the CB intervention does not mean no seed of change has been sown. Even little personal change may catalyze more substantial and broader organizational or institutional change – perhaps after 5 or 10 years.

A critical note to this optimistic perspective is that available resources (from Dutch tax payers in this case) should be spent optimally. There is a high demand for CB support, and the interest and effort from the side of partner organizations should be a factor in prioritization of CB interventions. Such a prioritization assessment prior to assignment of the advisor plays an important role. Once an advisor is at the ground and with all natural changes in circumstances occurring, it becomes more complicated to negotiate these aspects, and probably in most cases advisor and donor organization would decide to complete the assignment with the best effort and result possible. However, let us not forget that circumstances can also change for the better and there is certainly a big chance that the efforts of the advisor provide an impulse and energy to the organization that makes a lot possible. It is further important to be realistic as to the time factor needed to establish a basis of trust between the advisor and organization. An evaluation after 6 months to 1 year of service to assess whether the match between advisor and organization is right and has the potential to deliver some fundamental change in the long run may be desirable.

On authentic behavior in conflict situations

2008-01-28T12:02:00.000-08:00

This is a brief article on the conclusions from a small E-mail-group discussion that Kristel Maassen, Marieke Veeger and Peter Oomen had during the last three weeks of December 2007.

-------------------------------------------

First of all we did agree that in our role as capacity building advisors in many cases we are expected or assigned to make a change in modes of conduct or ways of doing the work. If habits are changed, resistance is often felt. Especially because in many non western cultures 'change' more often is a scary, undesirable thing, while in our own culture it mostly is a positive thing. For that very reason we will often face situations that bear potential conflict.

A conflict should not be a goal in itself, but if we take our work seriously we should be prepared to deal with implicit or explicit conflict behavior and if necessary make a conflict in views, priorities or interests more explicit to help us deal with it more effectively. Sometimes this is needed to make a change that is in line with our assignment.

Before we can manage that kind of situations however, we should have a meaningful and respected position to do so. In most cultures, and especially non western cultures, one should be a respected and valued contributor to the organizations cause and group as such to be allowed to make a change. Engaging in a conflict of opinions, priorities and interests and bring about a desired solution also requires that valued membership of the group..

In order to build up a position that allows us to change habits, views, perceptions or modes of conduct, we try to be culturally sensitive, devoted, strongly committed to the beneficiary and the organization that send us over. We also make sure that an intervention that is or could be perceived as generating conflict is referable to the capacity building goals and serves 'their' process and ownership.
Once we have done all that, we still face the difficulty of the fact that we will leave after one or two years.
This makes very clear why we really need some personal credit to enter the conflict zone effectively.
Now we feel that 'authentic behavior' is an important quality of an advisor to enable him or her to do so.

Authentic behavior, meaning behavior that is:
- based on deeply felt impulses,
- connected to personal values'',
- strongly aware of situational factors,
- loyal to ones intuition, not manipulative like a means to an end.

Authentic behavior is a risky but also powerful and sometimes necessary intervention in the change processes we facilitate. It is an opportunity to enter a clarifying dialogue with the client and create stronger solidarity in achieving ownership and the projected capacity building goals.
This clarifying dialogue might even free us from the donor <-> beneficiary character that underlies so much of our work (like inequalities, blurred responsibilities etc.), or as one of us had so beautifully pointed out:

'Perhaps conflict situations could be a turn-around situation in some cases. Perhaps here, authenticity can help us. If what we say and do represents not our personal interests but our deep beliefs (at the same time leaving the decision to the people that are hosting us) andif these beliefs come to be perceived by colleagues as authentic, it will be the start of a process of change. Then conflict could lead tomutual recognition of striving for the same goal and generate energy for change'.
But then it is followed by:
"But this kind of transformative conflict probably only happens rarely and I don't think it's something that could or should purposely be created".

However, the purpose should not be to create conflict, but to expose authentic behavior. Conflict situations will then come up automatically (if implicit they can be made explicit).
Some other thoughts and positions we exchanged were:

An assignment without conflicts probably missed a few opportunities for sustainable change and sometimes an implicit conflict needs to be solved by making it explicit or even escalating it a bit, professionally though.

While usually there are several conflict situations in an assignment not all of them have a transformative or change character.

Authenticity will never be fully present, it is always mixed with professional or personalinterests, or is not immediately recognised by others as authentic behavior, but manipulative.

Exposing authentic behavior is impossible to attain 100% of time and requires lots of courage and life long cultivation

We wish the reader lots of authentic behavior and lots of good timing (paradox)

Peter Oomen, (e-mail. poomen48@gmail.com)
Marieke Veeger (e-mail. mariekeveeger@gmail.com)
&
Kristel Maasen (e-mail. kristel.maasen@gmail.com)

Communities of Practice (CoP) as a strategy for knowledge management in ICCO?

2008-01-13T04:59:00.000-08:00

Electronic means as a tool in creating a communities of practise
During 2007 ICCO provided resources to organize two E-Conferences; one on ‘capacity development & assessment’ and one on ‘value chain development’. Both events took around 7 weeks, where participants shared their views and questions through e-mail discussions groups (called d-groups www.dgroups.org) in combination with skype teleconferences. These electronic exchange events provided a platform for the ICCO development & business advisors to share experiences on their field of expertise. Before the events were initiated needs assessments were conducted under the advisors. Main motive for organizing such an event, is that many ICCO-advisors work in isolated areas and very much appreciate the fact that they can dialogue with colleagues who are in the same situation.

Out of the first E-Conference a core group of advisors was formed who provide each other advise and assistance on issues on capacity development. This group is what we call a ‘community of practice’. It is a key group of people who have a common domain (in this case capacity development) on which they share knowledge and through which they are encouraged to apply their lessons for their work practice. Each two months the advisors share key questions & case studies and facilitate themselves this peer-to-peer learning process.

Lessons on capacity development & benefits – human resource development dimension
The discussions between the capacity & assessment advisors generated a diverse number of case studies, which encouraged the group to discuss issues for continued exploration. Topics were related to “how to deal with authoritative leadership?”; “how to create conditions for ownership and what exit-strategy to apply as advisor?”; “how to improve the effectiveness of juniors towards their partner organizations?”; “how to strengthen partner organizations to do more effective fundraising and taking more ownership?”; “how to balance your own ambitions with the goals of your partner organization?”. Each of the members were encouraged to apply lessons at their work which helped their partners to strengthening their capacities and improved service delivery. Some members commented that they were encouraged to read books and publications, which were recommended by their colleagues. For example the “six thinking hats of Eduard de Bono”, publications about leadership from Intrac or toolboxes for strategic planning from Civicus and Tear Fund.

Individual advisors improved their knowledge and skills

The E-Conference on ‘value chain development’ provided more in-depth information about product & market development in five different countries (Philippines, Ghana, Ethiopia, Honduras, Burkina Faso) where ICCO is working. The variety of cases provided insight on the different roles ICCO business advisors are playing in the capacity development of partner organizations in and outside the value chain. The conference helped three advisors to redefine their roles and their capacity development interventions.

Summarized the two communities that were formed during the e-exchange events generated an ‘important spin-off’ which helped a number of participants to redefine their roles and strengthen their individual capacities.

Lessons for ICCO – Organizational development dimension
The e-events generated a lot of new and useful information which supports ICCO HQ to look critically at and redefine their strategies. The Value-Chain conference showed that ICCO’s programme on value chain development as a strategy for poverty alleviation is still in its early days. The case studies showed that ICCO is accomplishing considerable results in economic development, but there is still room for progress. Thinking on chain design, role of actors, the role of the business advisor, and evidence of impact is still under development.

The cases on capacity development provided insight that the ‘problem owner’ of the capacity building intervention is not always clear. Continuous dialogue & building trust in the partner relationships show to be the best ways to capacity development of the partner organizations and ICCO. Capacity development is a two-way process which strengthens both sides.

Input from advisors provided some important lessons for ICCO as a learning organization

The variety of case studies has also provided a lot of expertise and knowledge which can be shared with new advisors who join the ICCO-cad community of practice. It supports ICCO and its advisors to have a critical look at their capacity development interventions on how to assess and strengthen partner organizations. It also gives insight in the ‘best practices’ and ‘failures’ of interventions in the past and provides a rich resource centre for the ICCO Alliance to improve their quality of support and programmes. Communities of practice are not only a tool for continuous learning, they also provide a platform for developing new and creative ideas and building institutional memory.

Infrastructure for knowledge sharing
During this conference many resources were posted at the Del.icio.us site of ICCO at: http://del.icio.us/icco.alliance/ . All the documentation on value chain development was re-ordered and stored at the Chaincapacity wiki site at: http://ia-econo.pbwiki.com/ChainCapacity and articles were published at
http://ia-econo.blogspot.com/

All resources (publications, books, toolboxes and case studies) on capacity development were compiled at http://iccocad.pbwiki.com/ and outcomes from the ICCO-cad group discussions were published at: http://www.icco-cad.blogspot.com/

ICCO’s main challenge is now to build on the social capital (the people) and technological infrastructure to keep the knowledge and experience sharing alive. Each department within ICCO has a learning facilitator who will play an important role into this process.

The 6 roles of a community of practice
The Capacity Assessment and Development group initiated a core group of people who make the group move and get together regularly. This co-ordination group fullfills both internal and external roles to sustain the community;

Internal roles
To motivate and stimulate people in discussions (facilitation & moderation);
To identify the issues
Technical support to organize the exchange (d-group discussions and skype meetings)

External roles
External links with sponsors (financial support, but also knowledge/ expertise input for discussions);
Linking with others and public relations
To identify, find and store information (at wiki’s, del.icio.us, blogposts) and link with other networks.

Challenges: How to create and maintain ownership for keeping up a communities of practise
Sofar the e-exchange events have generated a lot of interest and response from the ICCO advisors in the field. However, the challenge is to keep the process of continuous learning going.

Most important conditions for success in sustaining a communities of practise are:

Keep and maintain the interest from the group members in continuous learning by regularly identifying their needs and involving them in the process;
Have a co-ordination group who is responsible for the community
Provide sufficient resources and involve sponsors who support the community. Sponsors should allocate time & money to fullfill key roles of the co-ordination group & provide input of new knowledge & expertise. Sponsors should see their role as an investment which can strengthen and build their area of expertise on a specific knowledge area or domain.
Build in a component of a face-to-face meeting somewhere in the process of e-exchange so that relationships between the group members can be strengthened;
Regularly recruit and add new members to the group who bring new perspectives and ideas to the group.

Finally, for an organization who is supporting or initiating a community of practice it is important to analyse whether it is an important strategy for capacity development of its staff, itself and its partner organizations. When it has decided to support such a CoP it should nurture and feed the ‘plant’ regularly so that everybody can enjoy the smell and the colours of the beautiful flowers for a long time! The experiments that were launched by ICCO in 2007 show that ‘communities of practice’ can be an investment worthwhile.

Simon Koolwijk
e-mail. faccom@xs4all.nl

Capacity Building for Networks – How can result-oriented attitudes be stimulated? How can a network be effectively strengthened?

2008-01-13T04:41:00.000-08:00

Networking for development and capacity building programs for national and international networks have become common practice. Specific challenges occur when working with networks consisting of organizations and individuals. Especially networks that are based upon voluntary action are often less structured than professional organizations.

In this article one specific case study on capacity building for networks is being dealt with. The input is collected from discussions between advisors working in the area of capacity development in different countries in the world. This discussion group of professionals was established in order to learn from each other’s experiences and to generate best practices. Their cases are published on the web in order to share their knowledge and experiences with others.

Background and challenges of the case study
The specific network discussed in this article is an international network with coordinating offices per continent. The coordination office in Africa developed a capacity building project for the country network in Mozambique. This network consists of nine organizations and some individual members. They are all participating voluntarily, meaning that the network does not provide direct financial incentives. The goals of the capacity building project are strengthening the national network and improving the organizational capacity of the member organizations in Mozambique. An organizational development advisor was assigned to the country network.

When the project started the network was low profile and little activity took place concerning the network. During the first year of the project, activities of the advisor were focused on re-energizing the network and improving coordination between its members. Despite of efforts no real impact has been achieved. For example, even though the members of the network did agree on the need of a joint program, it has not yet been documented and formalized. During meetings responsibilities are assumed but the members hardly do what they promise. Others seem to accept this behaviour; no critical remarks are made towards each other. Now, after little more than a year, a small part of the group of members is motivated and active, some members are contributing if taken by hand, and some members are falling behind. The group has come to a point that the active ones want to move on, even when the less active are not on board.

Advocay meeting

In collaboration with one of the member NGOs, the capacity building adviser has been the one initiating and coordinating most of the activities, for example by calling and preparing meetings and drafting documents. At this point the adviser is withdrawing her coordination activities and will focus in the second and last year of her assignment on organizational capacity building of the individual member organizations. The international coordinating office is in the process of recruiting a country coordinator to support the country network, mainly in terms of fundraising. However, since this assignment will only last for one more year, questions are raised about how the network will continue. Will the coordination tasks be taken over by this country coordinator, or will the network take over itself?

The main questions to be answered in this case are: How to stimulate a result-oriented attitude within the network? How can be ensured that the capacity building program has long lasting effects?

Discussions and conclusions
A large part of the discussion between the advisers was about how to stimulate the network towards more result-oriented attitudes. Is it common to criticize each other? How about emphasising the “Who does What, How and When”? Can we change this culture of not complying with appointments and promises? The group did not answer these questions, but came to an interesting conclusion by tackling the problem from another side, based on experiences with a network in the Netherlands. This network of individuals fundraising for projects in Africa had a similar experience with volunteers that were contributing well and ones that were less active. This case showed that focusing efforts on people that were motivated and keeping the less active ones informed, instead of constantly criticizing their lack of commitment, increased the performance of the entire network, meaning that more funds were raised. By emphasising the positive and not the negative aspects the working atmosphere improved and more people became motivated.

Community leader meeting

Two other projects for network development in Africa show us very different approaches to capacity building. The philosophy for capacity building of the first network was very strict: all the initiative was left to the members. Full ownership and responsibility was in the hand of the members, but the network remained ‘low profile’ and the network was not really dynamic. In the other project the donor invested quite a lot of money to start up a secretariat and paid for a coordinator. This network was built top-down and initially there was no ownership amongst its members. Through doing activities, having a lot of dynamic meetings and enthusiasm, the network became valuable for the members and a critical mass was achieved. The challenge was to maintain the momentum and interest of the members, so that they were willing to continue the network even when the initial donor withdrew. In this case the members were willing to pay a membership fee and other donors were willing to invest in the network. The biggest hurdle for this network was to ensure that it was really based upon the needs and interests of its members.

These two approaches for capacity building raised quite some discussion. Appointing a coordinator and/or a secretariat is accompanied with the serious risk that the members become less active, expecting the coordinator to take care of everything. Another risk is that the coordination office grows into an independent organisation with its own agenda and priorities, undermining the needs of the network members and creating distance between the coordination office and the members. Therefore if it is decided to work with a coordinator and secretariat it is very important to pay attention to the ownership of the network by its members. It should also be closely monitored whether the network is operating regarding the members’ needs. Choosing a person with good facilitating skills for the role of coordinator is essential. And having the coordinator at the office of one of the members can prevent experiencing distance between the coordination office and members. Circulating the hosting of meetings amongst the members is also a way to involve everyone.

To get and keep the network going it is important to make sure the “owner(s)” of the network feels responsible for it and is willing to invest time and effort. Therefore questions should be asked like: Who started the network and why? Who are the stakeholders and what are their interests? In the case study the international coordination office is an important player, having created this network top-down. They might want the country network to function independently, but what do they do to make the network proceed?

Recommendations
It is difficult to generate general conclusions and recommendations from only one particular case study, but from the discussions the group of advisors came up with the following ideas:
- Build upon the energy and capacity that is already present amongst the members of the network in order to create a result-oriented and positive attitude. In other words focus on strengths, achievements, and the motivated and active ones instead of on weaknesses, failures, and the ones falling behind.
- Identify who are the actual ‘owners’ of the problem and make them responsible. Who initiated the network and who is really interested in having a network?
- Find a balance in capacity building activities. Creating momentum and quick results by a coordination office or an external advisor can be helpful, but has serious risks in terms of ownership and sustainability of the network. Continuously involving the members in defining the agenda of the network is necessary to create and maintain ownership amongst its members.

Petra Hofman

e-mail. hofmanpetra@hotmail.com

How to develop fundraising capacity?

2007-12-10T02:56:00.001-08:00

"You want to build the fundraising capacity of by helping people to write proposals and documents and build donor contacts, but in practice people want you to write the proposals for them. Time constraints put you in that position too. Yet how will they deal with fundraising after I'm gone? What to do?"

Is there enough quality in the organisation to write proposals and build donor contacts? In some cases the organizations are be capable to write good quality proposals (maybe with some English editing) but have a lot of work to do and deadlines are announced or discovered only shortly before. The definition of the challenge for the advisor is how to best do capacity building, and at the same time making sure there is a good proposal to submit on time.

What exactly is the fundraising capacity that needs improvement? In most cases, organizations can improve on following donors formats, knowing and using the concepts that donors use, or being in synch with the donor's ideas. Innovation levels may be low, and proposals may be (partly) copied.

Which approach to choose? How bad is it to choose for a implementing approach (writing proposals) versus a capacity building approach? Some consideration that an advisor can make to choose between one or the other approach are is to look at the positive and negative aspects of each approach:

What are the negative aspects of writing project proposals for them?

There's less capacity building
It will take longer before they will (or will be able to) write the documents themselves.
It will put your colleagues in a dependent position
You might not be aware of any important issues that should beincluded

What are the positive aspects of writing project proposals for them?-

Larger chances for timely submission
Less working hours put into the process
Better use of the English language ;-)-

What are the negative aspects of denying to write documents for them and stick to a capacity building approach?

There might not be the desired output
Thus e.g. your organization might miss the opportunity forfinding funding

What are the positive aspects of denying to write documents for them and stick to a capacity building approach?

More capacity building?
Raise of awareness on responsibility
They might blame you for it?/ Feel it's inconsiderate?

On another level, the advisor may prepare document on donor-information needs, a planning for proposal writing, and also a donor-list, with donors possibly interested in funding.Working on improvement in the planning, monitoring and evaluation system may lead to more efficient planning of fundraising activities.

When a group of organizations have the same need you may organize a participatory training in fundraising. Participants exchange methodologies used in proposal development and facilitators make modifications to befit comtemporary approach.

An assumption at play within the organization may be that 'what capacity advisors write will be accepted by the donor'. Since the assumption may be that he/she has contacts or knowledge of the language in use. One strategy being used is to allow the organizations to work along themes as advanced by ICCO. This approach will hopefully consolidate the fragmented proposals into programs that may have larger impact.

We can view capacity building from a systems-thinking perspective, in which the different levels of capacity (institutional/contextual;organisational; individual) are interacting in a dynamic and complex way. To give an example of proposal writing, when a partner needs (wants) to develop a proposal, the success will depend on many questions and factors, eg How much information on the context is available?, Are there any partnerships/networks that we engage with that cansupport us? , What is our overall organisational strategy and how does this proposal fits in?

Following this systems-thinking approach as a capacity builder, you conduct an inquiry of the system-factors active in each case. Proposal writing is not simply the development of a group of activities with a budget. It is supposed to be part of thestrategic programming framework of an organisation. Sometimes it is not a bad idea to invest more time in ‘writing’ a proposal when this also leads to a more strategic approach to proposal development (for instance by building on best practices, aligning it to strategic framework, engaging with new partners).

Proposal writing should be in relation to a strategic plan, based upon a profound context analysis. Some advisors have reservations, as strategic plans may be donor-driven and organizations may be more opportunistic in reality while looking for resources. Organizations must learn that they can also say 'no' to a donor. In one case, an organization said no, and the donor returned with a proposal that fit the organization's priorities better.

A gradual approach may be a strategy to facilitate a process of creating awareness about sustainability in proposal writing:

The first time you do the whole proposal writing process together, making sure there is substantive input from your colleague (and recognition for that).
The next time, you start up together, so that it becomes very concrete and clear what needs to be done for this particular assignment. Brainstorm together, but don't write full texts. When it's finished you discuss it together.
The next time, your colleagues brainstorm and you discuss the results afterwards, as well as the final text when that has been written.
And finally, you will only discuss the final steps.

And finally, the advisor may need to let go, the advisor is not responsible!

(for another blogpost on fundraising go here).

How to redefine capacity building goals in a small organization?

2007-12-10T01:33:00.000-08:00

'As junior advisor I work fulltime for a small African NGO to build the capacity of the organization. The organization is led by its founder and employs one secretary and two local interns. Various development organizations from the US, Germany and the Netherlands support the organization financially. I have a good relationship with the staff and I have many opportunities to strengthen the organization. Unfortunately the director seems less interested in some of the initiatives. Should I continue to improve the skills of the staff in their daily administrative tasks - which is a little frustrating- or should I renegotiate my tasks to include more capacity development activities?'

Originally the placement was intended to build capacity in the area of finances, human resources and IT. The director however, felt that it is too much involvement in management issues, and prefered that the advisor assisted the secretarial staff in daily tasks. The director had different expectations of the placement. The advisor lowered his goals, but still sees opportunities that he'd love to work on.

First of all, it is important to search for openings to introduce capacity building directions. The director appreciates the assistance in writing proposals, and administrative tasks. Is it possible to acknowledge and use these kind of openings to be involved in further capacity building of the organization? It might be good to gruadually propose other activities or ideas, activities that contribute more towards structural capacity development of the organization. Take your time to build the relationship and create a 'safe' atmosphere. Gain respect and influence without positional power, but as an advisor. Build a constructive advisory relationship.

Secondly, an understaffed office doesn't have much time to discuss basic development question, preoccupied with problems and activities as it is. So you have to create time and be creative in proposing ideas to management. Find a time that is convenient for an exchange. Then share what you see as more important than urgent challenges to work on. Don't assume there is no time, but ask for it. Furthermore a director may be quite lonely and might appreciate a person to talk to about professional decisions.

How to make sure that your ideas are accepted? Ask difficult or nasty questions if need be. Risking confrontations with management is tricky and depends on your own advisory style. But if something is very important to discuss, it might be worth it. Continue building the relationship and trust with the director as that may change his attitude in the long run. It is a matter of trial and error to see what works. One school of management theory is the 'normative decision model'. This theories states that management styles may be stable, but you can take decisions to choose another style when the situation calls for such a style. You can stimulate the director to see situations in a certain way, point out the real situations and adapt the management style accordingly. It is important not to see it as a change in leadership style. Direct feedback on leadership (which may be the only style he knows) may cause resistence. Furthermore organizations have the right to develop in 'their own way'.

Some concrete strategies to successfully introduce ideas:

Try to enter the 'gossip' circuit and listen carefully to the frustrations. Try to link capacity building interventions to these frustrations.
Try to incorporate 'hobbies' in the proposals. For instance, if a manager is very interested in ICT, include an ICT component in a capacity building intervention.
Use informal talks, eg. in the car driving back from an even, on Friday afternoon, walking home together, etc. to introduce ideas and build a personal relationship.
Use formal staff meetings to inform everyone of your opinion and your work. In the end, you may be able to change the meeting culture a litte.
Use the room to manouvre that you have as an external advisor.

A danger of developing capacity building proposals for the organization, is that the proposal may be adopted, but without any critical reflection or ownership. To prevent this, it is good to try and let others in the organization take the lead and responsibility and remain in the advisor's position. Now what to do when a deadline is nearby and nobody takes enough responsibility?

Regarding the placement procedure: it is important that the advisory placement has a good start with clarity on the capacity development goals. And it is worthwhile to work fulltime with a small NGO as an advisor? It might be better for keeping the right advisory distance to work with a small group of 3-5 organizations.

Finally: capacity building is a slow process and you have to set your expectations accordingly, you can't change an organization entirely with a year or two. You have to go for small steps and be satisfied with small improvements.

What professional support do junior advisors need to be effective?

2007-12-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

Several junior advisors have organizational problems within their local organization from the start of their contract. Is the advice and coaching of a local senior the solution to these problems?

There are 4 options for junior advisors to receive professional support:

Mentor- often another advisor who knows the country and culture of work. Can help the junior in personal and social issues. May also give advice when there are professional difficulties. Not a paid function.
Supervisor - a person within the local organization who accompanies the junior in his/her work. Usually this a supervisor who holds regular work meetings with the junior and ideally also gives him/her feedback.
Contactperson ('relatiebeheerder') - ICCO contact person who accompanies the junior in his/her work. Mainly monitoring of workplans and feedback on reports.
There is an additional option to receive e-coaching from a PSO consultant paid from the training budget.

This is the theoretical support set for a junior advisor. In practice something is missing though. Even when all 4 categories of support are provided, at times, contracts end prematurely. Quite some juniors think about ending their contract prematurely. What's missing is a senior in the field of work of the junior with whom work experiences can be discussed and a learning process is catalyzed.

Some ideas:

The cases indicate the need for intensified face-to-face exchange between the senior and junior advisors. Once or twice a year, seniors and juniors can interact, listen to each other's stories and suggest intervention strategies for each other.

The term 'junior' may be problematic in combination with an advisory task. Juniors are not always taken serious in societies with higher power distances. That may delay the start of a productive advisory relation.

The need for a formal working relationship with someone who can provide technical support in capacity building, from outside the organization.

There needs to be a budget for capacity building efforts. When a budget is not secured, it is harder to take initiatives.

Juniors in consultancies companies in the Netherlands may also be "thrown into the deep". However, in the Netherlands you often have backup from your company or organisation, and start with few, small assignments. In the ICCO assignments you are on your own and assignments are long term and mostly complicated. Furthermore, there are the intercultural differences to cope with which needs new and innovative repertoires.

The intake by ICCO could be improved. The management of expectations of the junior is vital and starts by the definition of the placement and the job description. After the intake the placement should be monitored closely. ICCO should check whether a capacity builder is relevant and needed.

Did an evaluation take place? How satisfied are partner organizations with junior advisors? What went wel, what did not go well?

Be clear about the difference between coaching, supervision and peer learning systems. A good coach helps to distinguish in a question between different layers (technical, is the situation interpreted correctly, why this problem definition?). All the totally new experiences make the advisors fascinated, inspired, puzzled and frustrated. It will therefore be wonderful and useful to have a coach, simply to help understand what is happening. Without a coach it is logical that someone gets lost. The risk is running around in circles or not delivering quality work.

There are certain conditions to a successful coaching process, for instance there should not be a colleagial working relationship. It would hinder the necessary trust and independance.

Where can I find online tools for organizational analysis?

2007-12-06T13:47:00.001-08:00

There are various toolkits for organizational analyis/capacity assessment available online.

MDF has developed The Integrated Organizational Model and the TANGO toolkit. You can request for the toolkit on the MDF site here.

Tearfund has developed the CASA tool for Capacity Self Assessment.

DFID has published a sourcebook of tools and techniques with about 20 tools.

The participatory Capacity Building Toolkit consist of a list of 100 statements, and using the POET method (Participatory Organisation and Evaluation Tool).

PSO has various report and resource on their site in their resource section about capacity building.

IC-Consult has developed the IC-scan. There is a short scan and an elaborate scan.

USAID developed Discussion-Oriented Organizational Self-Assessment (DOSA) as a tool to measure and build organisational capacity.

A list of 75(!) tools for organisational analysis can be found at Reflect and Learn.

CARE has a developed the PCA tool

How can I design capacity building activities to improve the fundraising capacity?

2007-12-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

An organization requests the capacity development advisor to start fundraising, or to ask an external expert to do it for the organization. If the fundraising does not succeed, the organization may collapse. The staff have limited time to work on fundraising. How to design a capacity building activity that improves the fundraising capacity of this organization?

These are the challenges:

How to widen the donor base and attract 2-3 major donors to replace the withdrawing donors?
How to build the capacity of the organization while important staff will be leaving over the next year or so?
How to create time and make fundraising a priority?

Hiring an external fundraiser versus fundraising by yourself. You have to be careful in hiring an external fundraiser. Eventually the director and/or the management team of an organization has to sell and promote the organization to donors. A fundraiser from outside does not show the 'passion' and 'commitment' of the organization and it is best that the organization itself builds the donor relationships. Yet, it might be efficient to hire a fundraiser to do a desk research (eg. to identify donors, key persons that fit the objectives of the organization) and to assist in the process of proposal writing. The director, however, has to make contacts and build relationships. The Management Centre in the UK, works in the same way. It is an organization that does a lot of fundraising training and advisory. But in the end, the organization has to do the fundraising by itself.

How to find new donor agencies? It can easily take more than a year. It might be hard work to contact a lot of new donors, whereas fruit may be harvested much later. Some practical suggestions:

Contact current donors that withdraw whether they know other donors. Current donors may have an interest in helping the organization with new donor contacts.
Hire an expert to do a research into potential donors. Develop proposals only after contacts have been established.
Attend key meetings where donors and partners meet, this can help in trust building and knowing key persons.
Contact people who have experience with EU tenders.
Organize a training on fundraising by an expert of 1 or 2 days. The training can bring people up to date with latest developments, key donors and effective fundraising.

How to translate the abstract issues of capacity assessment and development?

2007-12-06T13:06:00.001-08:00

After a participatory assessment of the network advisors at times experience that organizations have difficulties to understand terminologies such as mission, vision, strategy, etc. Notwithstanding this low understanding of capacity building elements, can I create ownership or the process? Are there ways of 'simplifying' the issues without the organizations losing ownership of the process?

It is important do the following:

to invest in the relationship
to keep the capacity assessment simple - meeting their needs and understand their language
to clarify what you can and want to offer to the organizations
continuously ask feedback from colleagues

Example of a process in a small organization with little experience with capacity development: "In one case, I went on a few field trips with various staff. By means of informal talks about their 'difficulties' and 'pain points' but also their ambitions, I formulated a capacity building question and some possible interventions. I went back to them with this formulation to check whether this captured their main concerns. It was appreciated because I formulated the questions in a different manner as they had, but in a way that they felt: Yes, that's exactly what we meant".

How to measure the impact of capacity development intervention at the level of the beneficiaries?

2007-12-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

An advisor has been struggling with impact measurement of capacity development intervention, in particular on the quality of service delivery of his partners. What is the impact of capacity development of an organization on its beneficiairies? How to measure this? And how to do this systematically? Furthermore, it would be nice if this method for measurement does not result in a document alone, but in an increased learning capacity of partner organizations, beneficiaries and donors alike. Smaller organizations may do good work with beneficiaries, bu

Measuring the output of capacity development interventions is easy: number of trainings, number of workshops etc. but measuring outcome is more difficult because it is about measuring behavioural change. It is not only about qualitative data, but about qualitative data.

It might be an idea to learn from other sectors how they measure impact, in order to find innovative ways forward. For instance the Dutch 'rekenkamer' the Governmental Accountant Control Institution has worked with the African Accountant Control Institutions and have developed a methodology.

Within the communities of practice theory, there is a suggestion to measure intangible outcomes by collecting 'systematic anecdotal evidence'. What can we learn from these fields of measurement?