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Beyond Diversity Training – What Works (Part Two)

Leave a Comment / Organizational culture, Organizational effectiveness, Uncategorized

Diversity Training: Maintaining Local Nuance when Addressing a Global Challenge

This is Part Two of a guest blog post by Richard Eastmond. Richard is the former Senior Director for People, Operations, and Corporate Services at Amnesty International. He currently serves as an independent consultant. For Part One, see above. Richard is solely responsible for the views expressed in this post.

In Part 1 of this two-part guest blog on diversity training, we address how often-maligned “mandatory diversity training” for an entire organization can actually play a vital role in a much longer journey by providing quick wins early on. A related phenomenon INGOs must address when tackling the need for greater diversity and inclusion is how to maintain local nuance while applying a global strategy to address the problem.

Any one action reverberates across the entire organization

On the one hand, there is a challenge, in an era of acute sensitivity to ethics and accountability in INGOs, where the impact of one individual within a single part of a federated organisation—which, in many respects, acts an independent entity—can cause a reputational tsunami for the global brand. On the other hand, the question when endeavouring to make a change such as increasing diversity, therefore, is how to best balance the need for a global, standardised approach with the reality of implementing such a complex change across a global network of entities of very different scales, resource levels, and leadership maturity. (And this is all without even mentioning the local cultural differences and understandings of what “diversity and inclusion” mean that deeply affect the people on the ground.)

Allowing for local nuance in implementing diversity training

Due to these myriad factors, INGOs need to carefully think through them and their nuances before adopting a “levelling up” or standardised approach to implementing diversity training. For instance, an approach that may be wholly appropriate for a European context might totally miss the zeitgeist in North America and have little relevance in countries in Asia and Africa. What is deployed needs to be adaptive, flexible, and localised, and must recognise how perspectives differ from country to country due to social norms, legacy factors, and the political and cultural context.

When developing an approach to diversity training within your organization, it is therefore necessary to use the following question as a guide:

  • How do you account for different ways of thinking and the need for local nuance when approaching diversity awareness at a global level?

I look forward to hearing your perspective: please reach out to me on LinkedIn with your responses.

Richard Eastmond, January 2021


DiverseTeamFacingBoard

Diversity training does not work. So what does?

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Diversity training does not work. So what does?

For good reasons, there is lots of attention going to efforts to make our organizations more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive. Diversity and unconscious bias related discussion and training abound in our international social sector. Clearly, NGOs are following the lead of many corporations and government entities that have installed such training and awareness-raising initiatives. 

There’s only one problem

There is one problem with this. What’s the evidence that these initiatives actually are helpful? Not much, when you look at it closely. The research is clear and consistent: diversity training does not work, and cognitive awareness-raising has limited utility (see here for just one example of a sum-up of the research). 

So what does work?

So what does work? A focus on creating and encouraging practical, widely shared organizational habits and behaviors, such as on recruitment, induction, mentoring, task allocation, talent management, and performance management,  backed up by organizational systems. And backed up by publically transparent metrics and benchmarking. During a recent presentation to the Global Perspectives gathering of the International Civil Society Center, I offered some practical handles. Please see my presentation here.

Instead of talking, let’s focus on our organizational habits and behaviors

I know we love to discuss our values and principles, including when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But let’s instead focus on some specific organizational habits and behaviors. Talk to me if this makes you curious, or you want more help!

Photo happy face, attached to arrow, made up of lights against dark background

The Future of Transnational NGOs: From Anxiety to Strategy

Leave a Comment / Change Management, Miscellaneous, Organizational culture, Organizational effectiveness, Uncategorized

The Future of Transnational NGOs: From Anxiety to Strategy

In this blog post, George Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz, co-authors, provide a synopsis of one of the main arguments in our brand new book ‘Between Power and Irrelevance: the Future of Transnational NGOs’. You can read more about our book here, including where you can buy it — for a limited time period with a 30% discount.

Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been creating a more challenging environment for Northern-based transnational nongovernmental organizations (TNGOs). In addition to changes in TNGOs’ external environment, TNGOs’ own ambitions have increased. Many TNGOs today have adopted a greater focus on addressing the root causes of societal problems, often complementing direct service provision with longer-term strategies for sustainably improving environmental, social, and political conditions. Prominent TNGOs have expanded their strategic repertoires to include new forms of activism, including rights-based approaches to development and supporter-led digital campaigning. Over time, TNGO interventions generally have become more complex, requiring more resources and greater collaboration within and across sectors.

Why all the existential angst?

But TNGOs find themselves today at a point where their rhetoric of creating sustainable impact and social transformation has far outpaced the reality of their more limited abilities to deliver on these promises. Many individual TNGOs have moved to address this gap through organizational reforms, but these efforts have not yet addressed the larger challenges that exist at the systemic level. Meanwhile, there is continuing and sometimes growing criticism of TNGOs along several fronts, including charges of ineffectiveness, limited efforts to hand over control to local partners, and failures to live internally the values that TNGOs promote externally.

What is at the heart of the challenges confronting TNGOs? Many observers have argued that TNGOs have become too large and too focused on their own survival instead of their missions. Others have blamed the overall aid system and its inability to fundamentally change the economic conditions of millions of people living in poverty. And some have blamed increased competition and professionalization, perceived to be inimical to the sector’s ethos. These criticisms identify important issues, but they all miss a fundamental problem faced by virtually all TNGOs: TNGOs are constituted as nonprofits and therefore operate within a specific institutional and normative architecture that constrains their ability to embrace new strategies and roles essential for their future effectiveness, legitimacy, and survival.

How the sector’s architecture is failing TNGOs

In our new book, Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs, we consider how the underlying normative and institutional conditions of TNGOs—what we refer to as the sector’s architecture—are expressed in restrictive legal regimes, societal expectations, and cultural beliefs that make it hard for TNGOs to pursue their expanded missions. The difficulties are not simply due to the magnitude and complexity of global problems or the failures of individual organizations. Instead, key stakeholders of the sector, including individual and institutional donors, the general public, and governments, have been too slow in shifting their outdated expectations about the appropriate roles of TNGOs. The gap between TNGO rhetoric and their ability to deliver on their promises is growing because TNGOs’ new strategies focused on sustainable impact are not matched by the required capabilities for executing such strategies effectively.

The modern institution of the nonprofit facilitates and carries forward centuries-old traditions of charity in which social value is consummated in the act of giving itself and in the virtuous intentions and actions of staff and volunteers. Although recent decades have seen the term impact become a ubiquitous buzzword throughout the sector, underlying societal expectations about how nonprofits should raise funds and operate have failed to change in step. Today, more and more TNGOs have adopted the rhetoric of impact and have staked their reputations on claims of not just being good stewards of donor resources, but of also making a demonstrable difference in the lives of those they claim to serve. Philanthropy is becoming more data-driven and outcome-oriented, stakeholders are demanding new forms of accountability and participation, and more sophisticated operational strategies are requiring longer-term time horizons and significant new investments in organizational capacities. However, the organizational forms and norms of the sector’s architecture are preventing TNGOs from fully embracing the kinds of changes needed to successfully adapt and evolve, and above all else, to reach their potential in serving their missions. We show, for example, how the architecture provides a permissive environment for ‘successful irrelevance’ (survival based on fiscal propriety, regardless of impact), how it binds TNGOs to a Northern donor-focused accountability model, and how it inhibits specific organizational investments in areas such as digital technology, measurement and evaluation, governance reform, leadership development, and collaboration necessary for long-term mission success

The need for collective action in addition to individual reforms

To make TNGOs fit for the future, individual actions and limited organizational change initiatives will only go so far. The sector must move beyond the false comfort of the status quo and confront the architecture with collective action. TNGOs have already decided what kinds of organizations they want to be, now they must work together to create an institutional and normative environment in which those kinds of organizations can flourish.

Order ‘Between Power and Irrelevance’ online at www.oup.com/academic with promo code ASFLYQ6 to save 30%!

Northern-founded NGOs: the time has come to face existential funding challenges

Leave a Comment / Change Management, Organizational effectiveness, Organizational structure, Uncategorized

Northern-founded NGOs: the time has come to face existential funding challenges

Guest blog written by Barney Tallack, a long-time collaborator of Five Oaks Consulting and former Director of Strategy at Oxfam International with 29 years of experience in the INGO sector. The views expressed are Barney’s. He is an independent consultant and specialist in INGO strategy, transformation, and governance, with a focus on European-founded NGOs. This post is based on his recent paper ‘The Existential Funding Challenge for Northern NGOs’. Barney can be reached at barneytallack[at]gmail.com

How the pandemic may work out for NGOs is uncertain

It would be folly to attempt to forecast with certitude the impacts on Northern INGOs of the COVID-19 crisis. Their ability to achieve the mission will change for sure   – in both positive and negative ways. On the positive side, for example, we might see a shift in normative thinking by citizens, politicians and investment funds on the need to address climate change, inequality and other global issues because the pandemic has once again highlighted our global interdependencies. On the negative side, we could enter an even more isolationist, nativist way of thinking that exacerbates rather than addresses our global challenges.

But what is certain is that the pandemic further accentuates longer term downward financial trends

I would argue that northern-founded NGOs’ sustainability (and that of their national members for those who have those) had already been a problem for some years. By sustainability I mean both financially and in terms of relevance. The current pandemic-induced crisis merely accelerates this.

In studying the long term income trends of seven of the larger INGO families, several challenges are apparent:

  • INGO income grew at a steady rate between 2003-2009, followed by a more rapid growth until 2015/6, followed by a plateauing and then decline
  • The growth has come primarily from significant increases in institutional donor aid to the point where this is now more than half of their income for many
  • All the NGO ‘families’ of (con)federated NGOs are dependent for a significant amount of their income (as much as 2/3 at times) on the largest member of their federation/confederation. This means that a decline in that member’s income disproportionately affects all of them
  • There are five markets – for both public and institutional funding (US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia) which these INGO ‘families’ are dependent on. They are also competing for the second-tier markets (in terms of volume of income) – Scandinavian, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy.

Northern INGOs were already facing pre-existing headwinds — political and public attention to international development has declined since the 2005 ‘Make Poverty History’ moment. The rise of nativism and the political environment since then means that ruling political parties have less of a mandate or are not as interested in the issues. Only 5 donors now give 0.7% or more for development co-operation and humanitarian issues. The public fundraising markets have been saturated in these same countries and the “cost of acquisition” of new individual donors grinds down the returns on fundraising investments. Humanitarian crises have increased but are frequently slow onset, protracted, and are frequently seen as political issues, making it hard to get media and public awareness.  

The economic crisis caused by COVID-19, and the need to service hugely expanded government debt will put further pressure on development co-operation budgets – in the near and medium-term. The endowment funds of the major Foundations have taken varying degrees of hit. Recruiting new individual donors at a faster rate than the rate with which existing ones are ‘lapsing’ will get harder. Nativism and hostile media have driven trust in INGOs down over the last years and these trends do not seem to let up.

Growing new markets or new (global South) members requires major investment over very significant periods and hasn’t led yet to the kinds of growth in income that would significanty improve funding source diversity.    

Alongside this, leaders of many northern-founded NGOs have been wrestling with the “relevance” challenge – in a world where most countries are or were about to become middle-income countries, where Southern civil society is (rightfully) claiming its space from Northern INGOs and where the ability to get big advocacy led impact is dependent on local rootedness for legitimacy and accountability.

Consequently, Northern-founded NGOs may be able to weather the immediate storm – but the underlying fundamentals which were a challenge for their financial sustainability before the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated.

Therefore, now is the time to say: nothing’s off the table

Now is the time for Boards and Executive Leadership teams to make the tough decisions that have been looming for the last five years (or more). Four areas to explore are:

  1. How do we ensure we are relevant, what is our unique niche and the best role we can play – in the wider movement – to achieve the shared social justice mission?
  2. Where do we focus, to deliver at scale and with quality in our niche – and where should we be more robust (should we cut our presence in countries, or drop (sub) themes? Let’s be honest with ourselves!
  3. Do we really need to grow global South members – what is our rationale and how does this fit with our response to the increasingly vocal call for localisation?  Should we at least, in parallel mode, consider mergers between smaller global North members for greater resilience and cost-effectiveness?
  4. Be realistic about financial growth.  Question whether equating financial growth with more impact is the right approach. Set flat or lower-income targets.

Global north-founded NGOs do have options

There are options for the future of northern INGOs and their respective members. Three might be:

a) to transform: through a more focused role, niche, programming approach, geography and consolidated members – based on a role and ‘theory of change’ that can be articulated to all stakeholders

b) to ‘die well’: transitioning expertise, power, connections and other assets to other global North or South-founded civil society organisations (merge, spin-off or close)

c) to ‘die badly’ – through financial collapse, without securing an appropriate legacy and handover of partners, resources, and programs.

The world needs Northern-founded NGOs, even if in a different role, niche, form or size

Just as the high street retailers who were most challenged by the move of consumers to online shopping were the first to collapse in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis – those members of INGO families with pre-existing challenges will need to address these soonest.

The good news is that some INGO families and/or some of their members had already begun to do this, for instance through a much tighter focus on theme, target group, expertise, or geography.

A world with global challenges needs a global civil society – working in solidarity and based on complementary strengths –  alongside other actors if we are to overcome the negative impacts of the pandemic, and deal with climate change, inequality, barriers to citizens exercising their human rights and the other global challenges of our time. Realism now about the existential funding issues gives global North-founded NGOs the chance to continue and to address those global challenges.

Nine tips for virtual NGO team leadership from a pro

7 Comments / Team leadership, Uncategorized, Virtual team leadership

Nine tips for virtual NGO team leadership from a pro

Guest post by Amanda Briggs-Hastie, Head of Fundraising Support, Oxfam International. Amanda also spent several years in INGO leadership roles at Greenpeace.  This guest post is a bit longer than usual because it is so chock-full of practical lessons.

I have spent six years building and managing virtual (global) teams. I’ve stumbled many times in figuring out how to make virtual team leadership work, so here are my top 9 practical suggestions: 

1. Embrace the challenge of being the best possible virtual leader you can be — or don’t bother trying. 

This requires leading and managing in a different way.  You need to see yourself as the virtual team-working architect, consciously planning and designing how you will lead and develop a team in a remote working context. For example: How you will have a shared strategy, owned by everyone? How will you make sure your team feel bonded to each other even when apart? How will you build those critical one-on-one relationships with each of your line reports? I see many virtual teams failing because their managers continue to manage their teams in pretty much the same way they did their in-office team and wonder why their teams are but a group of isolated and demotivated workers.  

2. Consciously design your culture and way of working together – and revisit it often! 

Discuss which sort of team you want to be and what rules and ways of working you need to get there – including those specific to a virtual team. Then choose a small number of rules you will all live by (and can remember).  

Our team’s WOW (ways of working) are: 

  • We say Hi! – We check in and support each other professionally.  
  • We speak our truth – We tell the truth with integrity and sensitivity, also when it’s difficult.  
  • Appreciate differences and create space for individual styles.  
  • We are all on the same page – We take a united approach. We support each other’s views. 

Here is a lovely presentation and screensaver so our team can look at it all the time. We also do a session on WOW at every meeting to make sure it’s current, understood by any newbies and represents the heart and soul of our team

3. Have basic but good virtual working software tools 

It’s best to stick with the basic stuff people are already familiar with. Ask yourself, what is the software the least tech savvy team member can easily master? In my experience the following are the best tools and uses: 

Skype chat groups –for day to day team chat and all the instant questions you might ask your colleagues if you were in an office e.g. “Morning everyone! – What did you get up to over the weekend?” (we share photos and stories) or “Hey anyone know where that 5-year strategy file is saved?” or “Wow, Thembisa, that was an incredible workshop you just ran – well done!” 

WhatsApp – same as above. Useful for when the team are travelling and for after hours when people are away from their computer screens. Our WhatsApp group is filled with pictures of our kids, cats and holiday snaps! 

Zoom – A fantastic video conferencing tool. Use this for all your team meetings, for one-on-ones with your team and with a bit of planning Zoom can even be used for large meetings. We used it for a global skill-share with up to 300 participants. It has lots of clever functionality such as break-out rooms and instant polls and is very easy to use (plus affordable). 

Google docs and spreadsheets – Use for working collaboratively on documents e.g. writing a strategy document together, a shared travel calendar, a joint workplan. This way everyone has easy access, can edit together, see who has written what, see each other’s comments etc.

4.  Facilitation, facilitation, facilitation 

Let’s face it there are a lot of issues with having meetings virtually: 

  • People are less likely to turn up 
  • It’s harder to get full understanding with less body language to aid interpretation 
  • It’s much harder to maintain concentration 
  • People tend to be less likely to speak up or take the initiative/lead 

So good virtual facilitation is essential. Whoever is leading the meeting needs to understand these challenges and how to overcome. These skills can be trained (our team even have a virtual meeting facilitation workshop we run) but don’t under-estimate how much confidence, preparation and skill it takes to do virtual facilitation well. 

Some practical ways we facilitate meetings are: 

House-keeping rules always apply (and are reiterated at the start of meetings):

  • Be visible: Cameras on and use a headset to avoid noise disruption 
  • Be present: Absolutely no emailing or other distractions 
  • Be engaged: speak up and participate (you can use the chat function if you don’t want to disrupt the current flow of conversation). 
  • Keep meetings to 45 mins max before a break. 
  • A clear agenda, objectives and good time management 
  • Have an icebreaker at the beginning of each meeting, even if it’s just your usual team telling you what they did at the weekend or what excites them about the meeting topic. 
  • Use visual stimuli: presentations on screen with engaging charts, tables, animated gifs, cute cat pictures etc.  
  • Use quizzes, polls and break-out rooms to make your session more fun, and interactive. 
  • Experiment with creative facilitation techniques e.g. each person has 2 mins to say everything that comes to mind on the topic; ‘fishbowl ‘ exercise with a couple of people discussing an issue and others allowed to ask questions or ask to join the ‘hot seat’. Or pretend to do a radio interview where the facilitator gets in interviewees and asks them their thoughts on an issue whilst others watch (or they can pretend-dial in as listeners with questions)

5. Be present with your team  

Managers often have to attend meetings, which their own teams are not involved in directly or have other tasks that take them away from the team. It’s really important your team knows where you are and what you are doing most of the time, so they don’t end up feeling cut off from you. In a virtual world team members otherwise may have the impression you just seem to be missing or unavailable and it’s a very short journey to your team feeling deserted and unsupported, even if you are working hard in the background trying to smooth the way for their work.  

There are some easy practical ways you can address this: 

Use a shared calendar like Google or Outlook. Set it up so that your team can see full details of your calendar at the same time as theirs and vice versa. This way they can see you are in a 1-on-1 with David right now and so they won’t try and call you. This way too, the team sees all the other meetings you have as team leader, gaining insight into your busy role. N.B. Ensure you set it up with correct permissions so the team can see full details not just the frustrating “busy” description (you still can choose to keep some meetings private).  

Be active yourself in the team chat. Be the first to say “Good morning!”, bring up non-work related chat (this makes it OK for your team to do the same) and to generally be involved in discussions on the chat. The chat is really where your team exists and if you are not there regularly, you’re missing from the team. It’s a great idea to post little updates on meetings you’ve had so the team can stay connected with what your doing: “Just spoke with finance, there is a new budgeting process we are going to have to follow, talk you all through it in our meeting on Friday” 

Always respond asap, when people message you. When people send you instant messages they often need to chat or get an instant answer so you should respond asap, even if it’s just to say, “Cant talk right now, should be free in 2 hours”. Oh and if you are in a 1-on-1 with Saad when Fred messages you it’s best to just be open about it and say “Hang on Saad, Fred is just messaging me and I don’t want to be distracted, I’ll just send him a quick message to tell him when I’ll be free”. That way Fred and Saad both feel valued – it’s obvious stuff but easy to get wrong. 

6. Keep your team connected and motivated by the org mission 

If you work for an NGO, you are mission driven, but remaining connected to programme delivery can be tricky when you work in your spare room and have little interaction with the programme team. This has been a persistent challenge! You need to create opportunities for connection: regular program presentations, opportunities to participate in program strategy and delivery work, program visits etc.  

7. Be relationship more than task focused  

I think relationship focused people make better leaders of virtual teams – by nature they seek to overcome the challenging distance created by working from behind a screen. They know that a motivated, informed and included employee will deliver on the tasks.  

Some things I think are key to delivering this are: 

Weekly 1-on-1’s – You need to have them more often than you would in an office, because you need to overcome the isolation factor. Some of your team may not see or speak to any colleagues for days when they are home working. I spend the first 20 minutes or so of all my 1-on-1’s connecting with my team member on a personal level, as a friend, before I go anywhere near task related topics.  

Inductions. So much of getting to grip with a new org happens round the coffee machine: “So which team do you work in? And what do they do?” etc. In a virtual team you have to engineer that organisational understanding without the chance encounters and help them feel part of the whole org. I meet with newbies daily in the first weeks. 

Use your 6th sense and don’t let things fester. One of the problems with virtual working is that a doubt can fester without the frequent contact you have in an office. For instance, the thought – “I’m not sure my manager thinks I am doing a good job”- flows through us all at some point, but when you see your manager daily you can see from their behavior and body language that’s not true. In a virtual team where you don’t get that informal feedback, such thoughts can turn into a total loss of confidence quite quickly. Virtual managers need to read between the lines or anticipate these issues and address them quickly before they get out of control. 

Managing work/life balance for your team. As with office work, virtual working can easily lead to burn out. It’s easy to roll out of bed, switch on the laptop, and keep going (especially when working with different timezones, and team members will work different hours). You need to ensure your team learns the discipline to switch off. Don’t forget to promote good work life balance habits, set an example, and make it ‘ok’ to switch off and stop working

8. Meet often, including some “in person” time

Meeting often is critical to make sure you don’t turn into a team of people working in silos (something virtual teams are prone to). Meeting on Zoom weekly as a team helps us stay connected and bond, and focus on shared team strategy and objectives. Virtual teams do still need to meet in person sometimes though. Our team meets in person twice a year. During those meetings we do fun team building activities as well as team strategy and work planning.  You could do it online too but it is so much easier to get everyone together with post-its and a big wall chart. I have found that if it’s been more than 6 months of not meeting up the team bonds loosen a little no matter how hard you have worked in the year before that to keep everyone together.

9. Last but by no means least -Make it fun!  

Working virtually has huge personal life benefits but it does require more effort and discipline. So it’s important to make sure it is fun. It’s the little things that matter: the banter on the chat, the photos from our weekends, how we recognize and celebrate each other for personal and work achievements etc. We also organise a virtual Christmas party (the most fun ones I’ve been to). I’ll finish with a description of how we Xmas party: 

  • We bring our own drinks, party snacks, decorate our desks, and wear Santa hats etc.  
  • We log in to our video conferencing programme (Zoom) with cameras and Christmas jumpers on! 
  • We play charades, guess the baby/workstation/job we wanted when kids were etc. and other games complete with cheesy slideshows. We’ve even done a bake-off competition virtually! 
  • One of our team member sends us a party bag posted to us in advance (with chocolate, silly t-shirts to wear etc.) 

Can Organizational Culture Help Explain Recent INGO Scandals?

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Change Management, Organizational culture, Organizational effectiveness, Uncategorized

Can Organizational Culture Help Explain Recent INGO Scandals?

In recent years, leading international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) such as Oxfam International, Save the Children, Amnesty International, MercyCorps and others have been implicated in scandals about sexual abuse and other forms of abuse of power and harassment. In this ‘pracademic’ essay, just published in the peer-reviewed journal Nonprofit Policy Forum (Open Access, yes!), I suggest focusing on organizational and sectoral culture as an explanatory variable for these crises, which are particularly hard-hitting for purportedly value-based organizations. In the case of NGOs, these are driven by six factors:

(1) particular individual leadership traits that may be prevalent especially in the emergency and humanitarian relief related sector

(2) the effect of power on leaders’ perspectives and behaviors

3) a culture of silence that makes it hard for NGO staff to speak up about toxic workplace behaviors

(4) the presence of deep power structures within NGOs which are not openly acknowledged and therefore addressed

(5) the myth of own innocence that leads NGOs to treat wrongdoing as aberrations instead of systemic problems; and

(6) a culture of limited individual and team-level accountability practices.

The extent to which these cultural failures can be addressed through formal policy and (self)regulatory measures is limited, given that culture is primarily about informal, covert belief systems. NGOs will have to do sustained and disciplined culture work themselves if the roots of the scandals are to be taken away.

A couple of warnings and notes: this essay is on the longer side. And I do not claim I am an expert in sexual harassment and abuse, either in the workplace or when NGOs interact with program impacted people. I am an expert in organizational effectiveness, dynamics, and culture as it relates to NGOs, and have a background in gender and gender and leadership as well. It is from those perspectives that I have written this essay. What I do is drawing links between organizational phenomena well researched in other sectors (public/government and private) and what can happen equally in NGOs, based on my 30 years of experience in the sector.

The other essays in this special issue of Nonprofit Policy Forum – written by well-known academics – are also available if you are interested.

Your comments on my essay are very much welcomed.

When we admire decentralized power in other NGOs but we struggle with it in our own

Leave a Comment / Organizational effectiveness, Organizational structure

“Leaders often praise decentralization when commenting on the INGO world, yet perceive various challenges of implementing decentralization when it comes to their own organizations”. Does this point to a tension between what we say and think as NGOs?

My post, part of the Disrupt and Innovate blog of the International Civil Society Centre, is based on interesting research by Long Tran, whose data, in turn, is based on a Transnational NGO Initiative interview study. Long’s article triggered these provocative thoughts in me. What is your experience with these trade-offs between centralized and decentralized organizational structures? Do we talk honestly about these in the sector? And how would you answer my questions?

Activist wearing sign 'We don't have time'

Radical transformation: time to restructure? Or time to declare victory and move on?

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Change Management, Innovation, Organizational effectiveness

Radical transformation: time to restructure? Or time to declare victory and move on?

These are the views of Veena Siddharth, consultant on organisational change, advocacy and human rights. They do not necessarily represent the views of Five Oaks Consulting. You can reach Veena at veena_s@post.harvard.edu

 “It (Transition House) survived the seventies because the women who worked there were so fervently committed to the theory and the principles, and it survived after that because, year by year, they abandoned every one of them.”
(“The Radical Transformations of a Battered Women’s Shelter” by Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker, August 12, 2019)

In a recent blog, Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken asks whether hiring and promoting “rebels” could be a way to transform NGOs. Her skepticism reflects the reality that the crisis many NGOs are facing cannot be solved by individuals.

A mismatch between increased ambition and systems

As NGOs have broadened missions to take on global problems, measuring progress becomes harder. The failure to radically transform contributes to a vacuum of accountability that is fertile ground for poor performance at the very least. Sometimes, it even leads to allegations of abuse, as we have seen in the last few years. The root problem, in my view, is a mismatch between increasingly ambitious objectives and systems inherited from another era.

Although I focus here on INGOs, multilaterals and bilaterals share a similar dissonance between their objectives and functions. UNICEF, UNAIDs, and the Global Fund are just a few of the multilaterals that join Transparency International, Oxfam, Save the Children, IPPF, the Red Cross, and Amnesty International in allegations that include bullying cultures, sexual harassment, lack of oversight, exclusionary internal networks and misuse of funds.

For example…

NGOs that thirty years ago specialised in stand-alone projects added campaigning, policy research and advocacy to tackle power structures and problems that transcended individual projects. Oxfam’s website, for example, says, “Eliminate injustice and you eliminate poverty”. CARE aims to “to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and social injustice” Plan International focuses on “significantly advancing gender equality by tackling the root causes of discrimination.” This expansion of the mission is not limited to development INGOs. Amnesty International moved from championing the individual political prisoner to addressing climate change, corporate accountability and “living in dignity” as priority areas of work. For their part, humanitarian organisations are signatories to the “Grand Bargain”, which aims for nothing less than a “Participation Revolution” in which those receiving aid make the decisions – a dramatic shift in power and authority.

Old structures persist

Yet…. the old structures persist. Donors still dictate terms of funding with short-term horizons without real recognition of the need for collaboration. Foundations and other funders give lip service to holistic approaches but are themselves divided into regional and sectoral divisions that do not support the cross-sectoral and institutional cooperation needed. Achieving the mission is impossible without unconventional alliances that require long-term investments and risk-taking. Such strategic alliances are distinct from the typical MOU with a corporate sponsor and may require finding allies on the other side of a political divide or reframing a divisive issue.

Systems with regard to planning, strategy, staff appraisal, evaluation and learning, fundraising, knowledge management and the internal culture form the scaffolding that determines what is rewarded inside organisations. Being clear about the overall goal while giving staff a high degree of trust and autonomy is essential, yet most NGOs still operate with Cold War-era internal structures related to regional and sectoral divides that are no longer relevant in a more connected era. While there are nods to more relevant approaches – such as developmental evaluation and adaptive management — existing systems tend to support technical expertise with static outputs.

Governance structures are also ill-equipped. The INGO boards in many of the recent scandals appear out of their depth to address profound questions of the skills and metrics best suited to the current environment. Board members may be appointed for their background in management consulting, the corporate world or the NGO sector, but few boards understand the challenges that Executive Directors face today in meeting both technical and political challenges.

What we need instead

One reaction to the scandals has been a growing business in the area of safeguarding, restructuring, and governance. This is necessary but insufficient. We need ways to establish long-term strategies with adaptability to shift tactics in the short-term, and develop boundary-crossing networks organised around change. Stress learning over static evaluation and increase the tolerance for investing in new areas. And we need Boards who understand the shifts this way of working requires in measuring progress and ways of working.

On a global level, the challenges are unprecedented, and the broader goals are exactly the right ones. If we are serious about tackling climate change, migration, political instability and inequality we need a starkly different approach to what NGOs currently value, as expressed through their systems and processes.

person in black suit hired an employee

Is hiring and promoting ‘rebels’ the way out for changing our NGO cultures? A skeptical view

2 Comments / Change Management, Innovation, Organizational culture, Organizational effectiveness

Is hiring and promoting ‘rebels’ the way out for changing our NGO cultures? A skeptical view

Should NGOs hire and promote more ‘rebels’ – i.e. unlike minded characters – if they want to ensure enough adaptive capacity to weather the changes in the external environment? Will that make us better at seizing opportunities?

The case for rebels

Years ago I was part of a Task Force on Culture Change, hosted by the International Civil Society Center. Some participant supported the view that hiring and promoting ‘rebels’ or ‘strange bedfellows’ was the way to culture change. By ‘strange bedfellows’ I mean people who are squarely dissimilar from many NGOs types in background, social identity, cognitive outlook, skill set, industries etc. This approach has been recognized in the academic literature such as that of the organizational culture ‘guru’ Edgar Schein as one avenue indeed. And we know from the innovation literature and practice that when people from very different disciplines and backgrounds are exposed to each other, this can lead to creativity and innovation. See for instance my short interview with Aleem Walji, head of Aga Khan Foundation USA, who himself drove innovation in Google and the World Bank before coming to Aga Khan, in which he describes aspects of this process. Leandro Herrero, of the book ‘Viral Change’ about change management and a frequent, I might say caustic commentator on organizational dynamics, highlights the role of organizational dissenters, such as in this recent blog post. And the recent surge of attention paid to organizational diversity strategies in the private and public sectors also points to benefits in terms of creativity and innovation. In fact, the NeuroLeadership Institute argues that our brains must work harder and consider a broader set of ideas when we are surrounded by people who are different, i.e. ‘rebels’ within our workplace – and thus we do better work.

My skepticism

While I see the point of ‘rebels’ entirely, I am somewhat skeptical of how much space they are typically given in NGOs . In my observation, many NGOs I interact with have a limited ability to work with ‘strange bedfellows’; in fact, they form strong ‘antibodies’ against incoming ‘rebels’ who have been hired to change the culture. We tend to primarily be open to information that originates within our own sector. I wrote about this in a 2018 essay for CIVICUS’s Annual State of Civil Society report. In fact, the view that ‘radical, new leadership’ is critical and the only thing that is going to make culture change happen causes me to be skeptic in two ways. One, can leaders with formal positional power really drive transformational change in our rather leadership-averse, consultative cultures? And two, do our civil society organizations truly accept ‘radical leaders’? Or are we in fact quite good at spitting them out soon after they have entered?

So what to do?

What is your experience with this? And how can we be more open and inviting to rebels, once hired? Have them be sponsored as well as mentored more effectively (by people who already have much informal capital in the organization)? Have important meetings facilitated by outside facilitators so that rebels’ ideas and suggestions are given enough airtime? Let me know!

formal man with tablet giving presentation in office

The leader as learner: thinking out loud while being interviewed

2 Comments / Leadership development, Uncategorized

The leader as learner: thinking out loud while being interviewed

Lynne Gilliland and I were reflecting on leadership in her series ‘Lessons from leaders’. Lynne, a fellow independent consultant, focuses this interview series on leaders in international development.

What we covered: What have I learned in my 15 years of senior leadership development in the INGO sector about the tremendous value of robust self-awareness? How do I view failure and how to develop resilience? What is the tricky but critical balance between projecting strength and vulnerability as a leader? And what does it mean to be a ‘developmental leader’? This is what Lynne and I talked about in this 24 min interview. Have a look to see if there is a nugget of value here and there. We also spoke about a sense I have: that we as civil society people are not always honest about some of the motives of why we do the work we do. Lynne called that “provocative”; I call it necessary. You see for yourself…

Now if only I did not have this annoying habit of looking up at the ceiling every time…

A word of gratitude: Lynne has been tremendously helpful to me in offering advice about how to launch my independent consulting practice, and I am grateful to all the wisdom and resources she has so generously shared with me since I started in January!

airplane over world map on blackboard

Desire but also urgency? Driving organizational innovation in NGOs: learn from two innovation masters

Leave a Comment / Change Management, Innovation

Desire but also urgency? Driving organizational innovation in NGOs: learn from two innovation masters

Organizational innovation strategies – everybody in ‘NGO land’ is on the lookout for them. But how do you drive innovation, as NGO leaders and managers? Listen to these two innovation masters: Aleem Walji of Aga Khan Foundation USA, and Chris Proulx of Humentum. I recently interviewed them on Facebook Live as part of my series ‘Leading with Meaning’.

Here are highlights:

Chris on the role of urgency: NGOs may lack the urgency that spurs innovation in the private sector. The changeable wishes of private sector customers as well as shareholder needs for return on investment create this urgency. NGOs, on the other hand, tend to to be long term focused because of their mission. Moreover, the people paying for NGO services or outputs are not the NGO’s clients which means that the feedback loops are indirect.

Solution: bring in talent who are as such perhaps less committed to the mission (this can be culturally difficult to accept for NGOs). Build diverse and agile teams. And use lean project management methods.

Aleem on ‘connecting the dots’: Have people in your teams from across diverse sectors. Be able to ‘connect the dots’ by exposing a problem or asset to people from different backgrounds, people who normally don’t talk with each other – ‘unlike-minded characters’.

Have translators and bridge builders to help these people connect.

It is important that people across these different sectors respect and appreciate each others’ skills and worldviews, and are willing to listen and learn from people who are nothing like themselves. Over time, they develop a new shared vocabulary.

Second: Think big but test small: develop small scale prototypes with hypotheses you will test, disciplined data collection, failing forward and iterating as you go.

My reflection after listening to these two leaders: It strikes me that some of the advice of Aleem and Chris is not necessarily immediately palatable to the mindset of our sector. Clearly, however, NGOs need to integrate organizational innovation capacity if they are to remain relevant. So how does your NGO go about spurring innovation?