Preparing for the Capacity Strengthening Journey PDF

**SETTING THE SCENE FOR PARTNER CAPACITY STRENGTHENING** Hi I'm Rick -- I've been meddling in capacity strengthening with INTRAC for more than 30 years. It's been quite an adventure learning a lot about organisations, how they change and how they resist change. I'm looking forward to sharing some o...

**SETTING THE SCENE FOR PARTNER CAPACITY STRENGTHENING** Hi I'm Rick -- I've been meddling in capacity strengthening with INTRAC for more than 30 years. It's been quite an adventure learning a lot about organisations, how they change and how they resist change. I'm looking forward to sharing some of my learnings through this course. And I'm Angela Zamaere Smith. Like Rick I have been in this field for nearly 30 years as both an OD consultant and also in leadership of grant making organisations. Currently I am Interim CEO of a UK NGO All We Can. I am passionate about putting partner capacity strengthening at the centre of what grant makers do. First the why. We know that organisations are the vehicle through which most social and economic change takes place. Grant-makers fund partner *organisations*. But this funding will only have an impact if the partner has the organisational capacity to fulfil its mission. Development is not just about how technically good a project is, the organisational capacity to deliver also matters. After all, it's not possible to harvest good fruit if the tree itself is not strong and healthy. We also know that strong national civil society organisations are key to long term, lasting impact. As grant-makers, you alone are not going to change the world or your societies. But hopefully your partners, the ones directly working with people that you are jointly serving, will. A forest of strong, effective national organisations is vital for a healthy society and so investing in the capacity of your partners, the trees that bear fruit is key to long-term impact as well as to shifting power in the sector. You'd hope the terminology in the field of capacity strengthening would be clear and precise. Unfortunately it is not. As Peter Morgan eloquently warned more than 25 years ago: How true his words have proved to be. But we do know that capacity strengthening is all about organisational change. And we know a lot about organisational change. In particular, how hard it is. Research studies estimate that between 75-80% of organisational change efforts fail. It is a complex and demanding process that we would do well to analyse and learn about. 2000 years ago Marcus Aurelius wisely advised: To better understand organisational change, we first need to debunk two appealing, but deeply misguided, assumptions about change. - The first myth is that organisations behave like logical machines. They do not. Organisations are full of human beings -- highly complex entities. For any organisation to change, **people** have to change how they behave. We all know from personal experience that even changing our own behaviour is far from easy. Even our most positive experiences have been full of emotion, both hope and fear. They have often been risky, uncertain, and unpredictable. They have rarely been neatly time-bound, and often take longer than we expect. So if change is complex for an individual, it is exponentially more complex with a group of people in an organisation. - The second myth is that we can actually **control** change. Organisations operate in open systems in rapidly changing environments. Leading in the context of change is much more like paddling in permanent white water than on a placid lake. We can only disturb a system. We cannot manage it, nor predict how it will respond. Organisational change is not simple, nor even just complicated. Each partner's situation and challenges is unique and highly complex. There is rarely a 'right answer'. Capacity strengthening needs an innovative mindset, trying something out and then quickly adapting if it doesn't work. Just as in our own lives, being prepared to tolerate uncertainty and risk; and test and learn is key. In the complexity of organisational change, we need some frameworks to illuminate the process. I like the quote from George Box the statistician who said: All models are wrong, but some are useful One framework I have found helpful is to think of capacity strengthening as if you were a detective like Sherlock Holmes. You always need to look for three things: - Motive - Means - Opportunity It's the same with effective capacity strengthening. First, there needs to be a strong enough internal motive for change. The organisation itself must own the process, not the funder or any other outside agency. Second, it's about the *means* - the capacity strengthening methods, such as training or consultancy, exposure visits or coaching. These must be both high quality and fit for purpose. Third, the organisation needs the *opportunity* to put the planned change into practice -- the time and resources to implement change. I also like another metaphor for organisational change -- seeing the process like guiding a group on a journey up and down a mountain, through key stages on the way. It's based on personal experience as well as insights from change practitioners and models like Theory U. Obviously any model, including this one, over-simplifies reality. The phases are not as linear as they appear here: they merge, flow together, zigzag, overlap and iterate. They do not necessarily follow this idealised sequence. Organisations probably never arrive neatly at the end point. After all, change is constant. So going through this model is not a one-off event, but a continual re-creation. The first stage of change is examining and even cultivating **the motive** as we looked at previously. We saw that for any organisation or individual to change, they need the motive -- the will to change. It is about assessing who really wants change? What is the attitude of the leadership, senior staff, and board? Why do they want change? And how much do they want it? Getting answers to such is harder than it first appears. We saw that leaders in particular, have to have enough willingness to change, not just the organisation, but also themselves. The second stage of change is about **understanding the organisation's situation**. To assist any organisation to change, including our own, we need to understand what really makes it behave as it does. We need to look broadly and appreciate the complex network of wider relationships within which the organisation lives and breathes. It is about looking deeply, trying to see beyond what is visible on the surface -- looking below the waterline to discern the root causes, the underlying attitudes, that make the organisation behave as it does. But coming to such conclusions ourselves is the easy bit. If people within the organisation are to change, they have to own this process themselves. This often involves carrying out their own self-diagnosis and identifying what needs to change. If people do not see and feel the need for change, their commitment will be lukewarm at best, if not indeed resistant. It is also about prioritising. You cannot work on everything at once. It is about people deciding together where to start as well as knowing what is at the root of the issue. From this diagnosis and prioritising second stage, it's tempting to take a short-cut straight to the fourth stage of planning. This misses out the **all-important summit of change**. Missing the summit means we'll treat change superficially as if it were just a cerebral, rational process, when major change is in fact it is a deeply emotional and some, like me, would say a spiritual process. At the summit of change, an organisation turns around by: - facing the truth; - letting go of past ways of working; and - being energised with hope for the future. We know from our own lives that it's mostly emotion, not brute logic, which drives and fuels how we behave and change. Without connecting with the emotional dimensions, and some like me would add spiritual dimensions, our efforts at change remain quite shallow -- more like most New Year resolutions. Reaching this summit is not easy, nor much fun. It is often the steepest and potentially the most dangerous part of the journey. It may be cold and foggy, hard to see the way ahead. People are usually tired and complaining. My colleague Bill Crooks, who illustrated these videos, describes this as the groan zone. Change often involves helping the organisation face some difficult truths; to feel the pain of past failures; and to address deep-rooted fears about change. As people face the truth, they need to let go of past ways of thinking and behaving. People cannot be forced to change from outside. It has to come from within. This stage often involves helping people to take personal responsibility for their contribution to the situation. It's so tempting to skip past this painful stage. Yet, without it, there is no turning point. Letting go is like breathing out -- expelling carbon dioxide, but we also have to breathe in the oxygen. To change, an organisation must have a vision and hope for the future and be clear on its priorities for change. To act collectively for a better future, people need hope and clarity. This comes from discovering that they share common ideas about a better team, organisation or world. The energy comes as people start reconciling relationships and rebuilding trust and aligning around a few key priorities for change. We can now get to the fourth stage - channelling this energy productively by **planning for implementation.** This is the nuts and bolts of how to make change happen. This usually involves a collaborative planning process to help people identify clear goals and prioritise activities within a feasible timeframe. This stage is all about working out the practicalities: What is the change we want to see? What does it look like? What needs to be done? By whom? And when? How will we know if we have arrived? Good planning ensures that the management and staff take collective responsibility for implementation. Walter Wright goes as far as to say Planning for change is just the beginning. Planning to change is not the same thing as actually changing. The next stage is **implementing the change**. This is where change is embedded. This is where the hard work happens. It requires commitment and follow through, often helped by regular monitoring. Systematically asking 'how are things going?' can maintain energy and build commitment, as people realise they are making progress. We all want to join in with something that is moving in the right direction. So it's important to monitor what has already changed and celebrate those successes along the way. And finally it is about leaving well -- disengaging from capacity strengthening support. [Cultivating capacity] As a grant-maker you are not there to *build* a partner's capacity, you are not there to *fix* problems for them, you are not even there just to be their banker. I find it helpful to think of your role more like a gardener. You are trying to cultivate capacity, strengthen autonomous, living entities. You are helping to cultivate a plant or a tree that has its own life. You can fertilise it and water it, but not force it to grow. You may even break bits off, whether intentionally or by accident. As a grant-maker, you have a lot of power and you are not always able to tread as lightly as you would like. This course is about helping you understand more about how organisations grow and change. And what you can do as a grant-maker to catalyse positive change in partners. Change that leaves partners more effective in achieving their missions. And also more resilient to the inherent challenges that come from within any human system as well as their turbulent and erratic external environments. Grappling with questions is at the heart of our learning. Take a moment to jot down the questions that you bring to this course...