Unpacking "NGO management" in East Africa
Strategic management, OD and service delivery
Conscious learning strengthen MRADI's institutional development and outreach
EASUN facilitated both the first and second strategic thinking and planning processes of MRADI, a small grassroots organisation in northern Tanzania that strives to control and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS in Kilimanjaro region. MRADI carried out its first strategic planning exercise in January 2006, when it had only a pioneer leadership of two sisters and a small volunteer staff who delivered relief items to orphans in schools and hospitals, and agriculture extension for affected families to improve their nutritional conditions and incomes. MRADI's strategic plan (2006-2008) had taken the organisation to unprecedented heights in its institutional growth; thus, in mid-November 2008, the time had come for MRADI to plan its new strategy for 2009-2012.
Acceptance
(Acceptance, in an organisational context, is the formation of a common conviction that new action is necessary) An effective strategic process requires an organisation to sufficiently diagnose its current internal environment, which includes sets of functions and relationships that directly affect its performance in outreach. Thus, before embarking on future strategy planning, MRADI was facilitated to construct a picture of its current situation. To help MRADI examine and accept its current internal situation, deep interventions were made to help MRADI make meaning of its identified strengths and its remaining questions for institutional development. The process enabled MRADI to chart out clear opportunities that it needed to manage more consciously in order to strengthen effectiveness of its internal management, governance, service delivery and advocacy towards its stated goals of preventing new infections and improving the lives of people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
Meaningful strategy-making
Reviews of MRADI's vision, mission and values were necessary components of the strategic thinking and planning processes. After all, an organisation is a living organism. Strategy making, therefore, means much more than the mechanical instruments, activities and physical resources we are able to put in a document and seek to implement. At the core of any strategy is the will of the people who make up an organisation. A mission statement is a declaration of both identity and intent. This is often difficult to recognise. It was therefore quite fulfilling at MRADI when Board members and staff were able to perceive and integrate organisational identity and will as the starting point and end of their strategic planning and management processes.
"New learning" is the point of movement and acceptance
After two days of picture building and the usual SWOT analysis, we asked Board members and staff of MRADI to share what they had learnt about their organisation. This was a point of responsibility-taking and coming to acceptance about the current situation. We recognized this to be a delicate exercise, treading an area where denial and resistance are likely to manifest themselves. The challenge of managing acceptance was confirmed by the responses, with regard to what MRADI members had come to learn about their organisation.
Fifty percent (50%) of the participants simply described some kind of balance sheet, for instance: "Successes have been more than difficulties experienced by the organisation"; "We learnt the difference between what went well and what did not go well; or processes and tools used"; "We learnt to use the action-learning model." Others brought back recommendations: "MRADI needs to strengthen cooperation with some of its stakeholders." This suggests that that there had indeed been some learning up to the level of knowing what MRADI might need to do (i.e., listing), but had not necessarily involved coming to acceptance with regard to what the situation was asking of MRADI at that very moment in terms of transformation.
One group that came close to highlighting new learning in ways that characterise some responsibility-taking about the current situation in their organisation noted: 1) "We have been particularly successful in providing needed services to target groups"; 2) "There has been limited communication between the organisation and its stakeholders"; 3) "There is conflict between some policies of donors and the reality that MRADI experiences on the ground and must work with." To reach full acceptance and make choices that expand MRADI's essence and intent in its external environment, the exercise could have been taken deeper still, through work with metaphors, to shape how MRADI will live, learn, develop and transform the world around it.
Levels of energy required to drive commitment to transforming practice comes from a much deeper place compared to energy levels necessary simply to drive recommendations for action.
How much does one analyse at this point?
The facilitators deliberately wanted to keep members of MRADI at the point of "meaning-making" and "responsibility-taking" a while longer, since some participants, with their recommendations, solutions and strategic responses, seemed to be rushing to the "way forward". New learning, meaning-making and responsibility-taking, call for "stillness".
At this point, MRADI's courage, confidence and ability to see urgency to be nurtured, and it needed to generate its will. SWOT had not worked sufficiently to generate the will for transforming specific practices, thus, additional analysis would not be helpful. The lack of sufficient time for strategic thinking became evident to us. We needed more time to support participants to engage sufficiently with their experiences of the current situation in MRADI, through alternative language channels that would help them make connections to issues related to the identity and values of their organisation. MRADI needed passionate energy to take forward in its institutional development, in order to shape relevant programme activities that reflect what the organisation stands for.
For more information, questions and sharing of experiences contact: mosi.kisare@easun-tz.org
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CSO leadership effectiveness
Insights from a Board training workshop
KWANZA is a civil society organisation based in Moshi, the headquarters of Kilimanjaro region in Northern Tanzania. KWANZA's strategy has evolved steadily since its inception in 1993, from an exclusive focus on legal support (property and other rights) for abused women, to a much broader orientation of providing human rights education and legal services to poor families and children.
In November (18-22) 2008, EASUN was invited to run a Board training workshop for KWANZA. There have been a number of inquiries for Board training since EASUN advertised it as a new OD support area in 2008. KWANZA became the first NGO to invite a consultancy-based Board training, after a regional sensitisation workshop held in Moshi, in May 2008. The intervention at KWANZA had a dual purpose: 1) to strengthen understanding of Board essentials such as roles, responsibilities and selection; 2) surfacing and coming to acceptance about key questions for strategic Board leadership. The latter led to planning specific actions for improving the quality of KWANZA's Board leadership across various levels of the organisation.
To begin with, analysis of "burning questions" shared by each participant enabled the Board members to clarify and become more conscious of issues that, in the current situation, lay at various, deep levels of the organisation. One question raised and discussed at length was about "the qualities of an effective Board in a member owned organisation." Analysis of responses to this question showed that they were all pointing to the levels of structure and policies as the places that determine Board effectiveness. The underlying assumption seemed to be that a Board's leadership and role is all about hierarchical decision-making and, therefore, its effectiveness only has to do with how well it is performing in its hierarchical function.
Hierarchy is only speculative as indicator of leadership & structural effectiveness
An example of the constraints experienced by the facilitators from the way the workshop space was structured offers an illustrative example:
The meeting room was arranged with a series of long tables connected in rectangular form. The top, where I stood, was closed with a high table. This arrangement configured my leadership and shaped my performance in very specific ways. From the point of view of a facilitator, my leadership had become compromised and likely to be ineffective, i.e., I did not have the flexibility to change the structure and, therefore, my relationship with participants in ways that would enable more dialogue, shared learning and trust building in the situation. Such inability to change structure to support the desired learning outcomes resulted in wasted opportunities and resources. The structure itself was blocking positive engagement and the maximum possible contributions of the greatest number of participants in the learning situation.
One can make different assumptions about what makes good leadership. What needs to inform such assumptions include the values that an organisation claims and its ability to work consistently with such values. EASUN's approach to leadership, for instance, is based on the values it claims, and works with, during facilitation (some of which are highlighted in the paragraph above; i.e., dialogue, shared learning, trust). The kind of structure that EASUN works with must therefore support these values and related processes, as the basis of an effective learning and development process.
Leadership is ethical
A recurring question throughout the workshop was what KWANZA needed to do in order to develop facilitative leadership as its benchmark. Leadership styles have a direct relationship with overall organisational purpose and design. KWANZA, therefore, would need to work hard to transform its approaches to both structure and leadership, in order to bring them into alignment with its purpose which, as stated, compels it to work for people's equal rights in communities and lobby to remove barriers to equal development of marginalised groups. This highlights a critical challenge to NGO management generally; i.e., the need to align the design of their organisational structures, systems and leadership styles with fundamental principles enshrined in their vision and mission statements.
On the second day of the workshop, Jackie, a young lawyer who had newly joined KWANZA, shared her exciting discovery that elements of good leadership, like elements of strategy, are to be found in the vision and mission of an organisation, through its claimed values. The moral here is that your leadership is likely to be more effective when what you practice is consciously based on the ethical elements described in the vision and mission of your organisation.
The same principle applies to desired effectiveness of structure. The tensions that are specific to structural needs of NGOs - voluntary, development and civil society organisations driven by the principles of equity, participation and human rights - are quite often different from the structural needs of a government bureaucracy, which may not claim the same ethical standards as a civil society organisation.
For more information, questions and sharing of experiences contact: mosi.kisare@easun-tz.org
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