Assessing Capacity Strengthening Needs PDF

**Engaging and Assessing Capacity Strengthening Needs** How do we know if capacity strengthening is needed or even wanted? We can't assume it is. Without a felt need and the right timing, capacity strengthening efforts may produce little results or even be counter-productive. I read once that: "Pre...

**Engaging and Assessing Capacity Strengthening Needs** How do we know if capacity strengthening is needed or even wanted? We can't assume it is. Without a felt need and the right timing, capacity strengthening efforts may produce little results or even be counter-productive. I read once that: "Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice, whether in medicine or management'. Good diagnosis is at the heart of effective capacity development. It is the starting point for organisational change. But what do we mean by "good" diagnosis? Some would say it's an outside expert coming in and using a comprehensive and complicated tool that generates numbers (however spurious they might be!). But for me, ***good*** diagnosis is when the assessment does two things: 1. It gets to the heart of the matter, whether a problem or opportunity. 2. It's owned by the organisation itself, not by an outside funder or even consultant. Taking these two factors seriously, has significant implications for how we assess capacity needs. This video will talk you through: - A couple of simple models for understanding organisations; - Some helpful methods to gather information - How we might enable self-diagnosis. **Understanding organisations** Organisations are incredibly complex. The writer Gareth Morgan advised: *'If one truly wishes to understand an organisation, it is much wiser to start from the premise that they are complex, ambiguous and paradoxical'. After all, we know how complex one individual person is. And when you put a group of people together, an organisation is exponentially more complex. I think non-profits are even more difficult to read than most businesses because they have no easily measureable bottom-line, they have a voluntary element and the people they serve are not the ones who give them money. When the well-known commercial consultancy McKinseys, dabbled in the non-profit sector a while ago, they concluded: '*Almost everything about building capacity in non-profits takes longer and is more complicated than one would expect'. To make sense of the complexity of any organisation some frameworks or models can help. And there are literally thousands to choose from, from 7-Ss to psychic prisons. They all simplify reality to a degree. Remember Henry Box's maxim: "All models are wrong, some are useful". Of the myriad of models, let's look at just a couple: A very simple way of looking at organisation is using the three circles: 'to do, to be and to relate'. To be effective an organisation needs well-run technical programmes or services (whether health, education, rights etc); but it also needs a healthy core (the leadership, strategy, systems and resources) to make an on-going difference, and vibrant external relationships with its stakeholders, whether communities, government or funders to enable it to achieve its mission. Focusing on the organisational element, my personal favourite is the onion skin model. I've been using the onion skin over the last 30 years in a huge variety of countries and contexts. People have found it both simple and 'useful'. **The organisational onion** Any organisation comprises a number of interrelated elements or layers. If you ask any NGO what it needs, what will they answer? Yes -- money. The outermost layer of the 'onion' represents the physical and financial resources an organisation does need to perform. But it needs more than just money. Even if it has the financial and physical resources, it also needs the people -- the staff and volunteers with the competence and skills to do the work. But even with the right people, they need systems and structures to perform effectively, particularly as organisations grow. These might be finance systems, HR policies, safeguarding, or monitoring and evaluation systems. Moving to a deeper layer, we find the organisation's vision, mission, objectives and strategy -- its direction and priorities. But even this is not quite the heart. There is a deeper level still. I believe the core of the onion is the organisation's 'soul' -- its identity, lived values, and culture. Leadership and relationships are at this core. Every single layer is essential if the organisation is to perform well. The layers are inter-connected and mutually dependent. With an onion, there is only the thinnest of membranes between the layers. If we work on one component in an organisation, then this has ramifications for the whole of the rest. For example if we want to introduce a new monitoring and evaluation system this has implications throughout the onion. Staff may require different skills, there may be resource implications too. And closer to the core, a new M&E system has to align with strategy and may also require shifts in the working culture. We also notice a hierarchy amongst the layers. As with an onion, an organisation's vitality and creative energy come from its heart. Its life force is at its core. So, if there is corruption at the core then it doesn't matter how well-resourced an organisation is or how great its systems or clear its strategies, it will not perform well. People and organisations, like onions, grow from the inside out. An onion that rots from the outside can still be salvaged if the core is good. It's much harder to use an onion that rots from the inside out! With capacity strengthening, it's important to realise that it's much easier to bring change at the outside levels than at the heart. We can make a bank transfer to resolve resource issues, or we can train staff to deal with competence gaps. But working on heart issues like values, or leadership or culture is highly sensitive. We know that cutting up an onion can make you cry! I also like this analogy, because an onion, like an organisation, is something living and organic, not a machine. What it looks like, how big it is, depends on the soil it grows in All organisations are products of their environment too. Systems thinking reveals how any organisation operates in a complex network of relationships that profoundly affect how it behaves. NGOs are open systems. So to understand any organisation we first have to understand its context. But just as plants will grow differently in different climates, so organisations are influenced by their contexts. They cannot help but be affected by issues from their local environment. Working in Malawi, I realised that unless carefully managed, regional and ethnic biases or political hostilities could easily play out in recruitment and decision-making. To mitigate such influences as far as possible, the better organisations made deliberate efforts to cocoon themselves from unhelpful cultural and social norms. Instead they intentionally created and then managed their own organisational culture. In reality a lot of what funders do is simply influence the environment in which grantees operate. Funders can water or fertilise the soil but they can also degrade it with poor funding practices. Perhaps then it makes more sense to talk about cultivating capacity rather than capacity development or capacity strengthening. I also like the onion analogy because onions grow underground. In any organisation, what we can see above the surface, its website, reports, plans, policies, tells you only a small fraction of what it is really like. It's like a CV which really tells you only a very small part about who a person really is. To understand an organisation, to know what makes it tick, we need to look under the surface. Here we'll find what really matters - the lived values, not just the aspirational ones posted on the wall above the photocopier. We may well discover power dynamics, including gender and ethnicity that over-ride any organisational chart. We'll find out what really makes it behave as it does. For effective capacity strengthening we have to get to the heart of the matter. Unless we understand and even engage with what goes on below the waterline, we limit ourselves to superficial and cosmetic efforts at change. **HELPFUL METHODS TO GATHER DATA** So what can we do, what methods can we use, to find out what makes an organisation tick? [Formal Organisational Assessment Tools] Many grant-makers use formal organisational assessment tools, which they have developed or adapted to fit their context. There are literally hundreds to choose from. The questionnaires and online surveys mostly cover a similar list of 7-12 capacity areas, like governance, leadership, strategy, structure, systems, staffing and funding. Some have a rating scale with descriptors for each area, others bring in criteria related to the stage of growth of the organisation. OA tools can be useful for involving lots of people and enabling them to feel they have contributed. By generating numbers, quantitative surveys can be a powerful trigger for change, especially if they reveal distinct perceptions amongst different groups. But formal OA tools often fall into a number of traps. Grant-makers try to use the same OA tool for multiple, different purposes. They often use it for due diligence to help them decide whether or not to fund. But they also hope the same process will help the prospective partner learn about its own wider capacity strengthening needs. Some even add a third aim of it being a baseline to evaluate the impact of the programme. These purposes are at best in tension and more often mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the quality of information from most OA tools is at best highly qualified, some might say meaningless. Questions may not be understood, or if they are, understood in different ways by different people -- a particular issue if the respondent is working in their 2^nd^ or 3^rd^ or 4^th^ language. They rarely get to the heart of organisations. They aren't able to really explore the important issues such as relationships, power and culture which are below the waterline. OA tools often focus only on gaps and weaknesses. Sometimes they come up with a paralysingly long list of things to work on. Yet many funders appear almost obsessed by designing the perfect OA tool. But such assessment is only a precursor to change. Assessment is not the same as change. I've seen grant makers invest heavily in an initial organisation assessment, but then not invest at all in supporting the actual process for capacity strengthening. In reality, any tool is of secondary importance. It is the process of reflection and discussion during the assessment that may (or may not) catalyse change. It is this process that influences whether or not the organisation owns the assessment findings and therefore decides to go through the challenging process of change. So in any assessment there needs to be a strong element of self-diagnosis. In most situations I have moved away from formal **OA tools**, and rely on a variety of more informal methods to understand what is really going on under the waterline. Some of my favourite activities include: **Observation** We learn a huge amount simply by observing. Apparently our brains make 10 quadrillion calculations every second. When you walk into a room, when you meet someone for the first time, we constantly and continually make assessments. Most of us take about 1/10 of a second to make a judgement about a person. In understanding organisations, it may be worth observing a bit more intentionally. **I remember once visiting a large organisation in Africa. I was surprised to see Swedish and Norwegian flags prominently displayed in different rooms. I found out later that the organisation had been formed 20 years earlier by a merger between Swedish and Norwegian groups, but that still today, the on-going split Swedish-Norwegian identity within a supposedly African organisation, profoundly influenced how they behaved.** **While any observation data is highly subjective and can easily be misinterpreted, it can raise questions to probe with other data gathering methods.** **I tend to use semi-structured interviews as the main method to gather information. I usually do this with individuals, but sometimes in pairs or as a focus group discussion. I talk with staff, leaders, board members, donors, beneficiaries and other stakeholders. Having a short series of questions can help give some structure to the interviews, but also allows the freedom to probe further and make up new questions as you go along.** **Open questions, which do not allow a 'yes' or 'no' response are more effective as they do not lead people to an expected answer. Good questions usually start with 'what?' or 'how?' rather than 'why?' (which tends to put people on the defensive). They should be thought-provoking, without being too aggressive. The best questions help people discover the underlying issue for themselves.** **\ **I also find **Participatory exercises** particularly useful to help people get to the heart of the matter and also cultivate ownership. I often use: **[An organisational timeline]** **where people note key dates in the organisation's life along a line in the middle of a flipchart (or a series of flip charts stuck together). In a relatively short period, people identify the critical moments or turning points in an organisation's history. These events often reveal a lot about how the organisation still behaves today.** **[A river of life]** **Is similar to the timeline, but here people draw their organisation's history as if it were a river. They illustrate key moments (both good and bad) with twists and turns, rocks and obstacles, waterfalls, rapids, new tributaries and some even draw crocodiles! Pictures can elicit sensitive information in a non-threatening way.** [Relationship mapping] involves identifying the key relationships in the situation. I sometimes get people to trace all the relationships that need to work well for the organisation to achieve its mission. I then get them to identify the most critical relationships, where trust may have broken down. [Matrix or bean ranking] involves participants identifying options and then assessing them against a set of criteria that they themselves establish. Scoring by voting with physical objects e.g. sticky dots, bottle-tops or 'thumbs up' icons if doing this online can reveal important differences within in the group in a non-threatening way. Such participatory methods get people using different parts of their brains to explore what their organisation is really like. It means that rather than just an external consultant coming in and carrying out the interviews, analysing on their own and presenting back their findings, these methods enable people to come to a shared diagnosis of where their organisation is at and what they need to change in order to improve. **HOW TO ENABLE SELF-DIAGNOSIS** For genuine change an organisation has to see and feel the need for change themselves. Simply inviting an outside expert to come in and give their external opinion is unlikely to achieve this. If people see the assessment as an external judgement, they are likely to react defensively. So for an external funder or consultant to inspire any organisation to change, it's more about facilitating collaborative diagnosis. But self-diagnosis is often better if it is externally facilitated. Good facilitators can help NGOs see their blind spots. It is a bit like holding up a mirror, reflecting back what people are saying, so that the organisation can see itself as others do. Having an externally facilitated process can also help by simply forcing an organisation to create space for self-reflection amidst the relentless frenzy of activity. A sensitive facilitator creates a safe space for people to air diverse opinions, constructively manage power imbalances and put the unasked questions on the table. However the self-diagnosis is done, prioritisation is critical. There are always capacity issues at every level of the organisational onion. A comprehensive diagnosis leading to 58 recommendations is likely to go nowhere. Without prioritising, analysis leads to paralysis. Instead as one Malawian proverb says: 'Many, many are the bees, but tell me about the ones that are stinging.' In prioritising it is so important to ask questions like: 'What is most urgent? What might be a quick win to gain momentum? What is the underlying issue that is the root cause of everything else? 'What one thing would this organisation need to do differently to make more of an impact?' So what does this all mean for you in your role? Take a moment to think through: 1. What power do you bring into conversations with grantee partners? How do you think that might affect how grantee partners respond? 2. What are good questions for you to ask, which will help them stop and think? 3. How might you identify local facilitators to recommend to grantee partners, to support with a self-assessment process?