emerging patterns, outcomes and questions of the 6th CP Process

So, it seems like it's about time to share the progress so far with putting together the Comprehensive Plan (CP). Around 6 months have elapsed since the process started. It started with some initial discussions with the CE leading to me preparing a concept note and a presentation of the same. The framework was approved and the process began.

Now that process of consultations has just about completed and I have started the process of turning it all into a document for internal and external circulation. This blog post contains some of the things that have really struck me as being profound and meaningful in terms of process-outcomes and also strategic direction-setting. It ends with some of the questions that are now with me.

Process-outcomes

• rather than simply looking at our strategies, we were able to inquire into organisational culture (essentially our values, principles and how we relate to each other and our purpose) and structure (who sits where, holds what power, has what function and reports to who) – and many people who would usually not be so directly or openly involved in these discussions had the opportunity to contribute
• participatory process enabled critical perspectives to find voice throughout the process and feed into strategic direction-setting process enabled all parts of the organisation to see what all other parts of the organisation were doing, inquire into this and also give suggestions individual
• relationships amongst certain groups of staff have changed – more people have more of a feeling that they have had some control or influence over the course of events
• topics such as organisational culture and structure were opened to discussion by all members of staff – critical questions have been asked and important directions have emerged
• in many instances programme staff have given honest assessments of their performance and the issues that they are facing many assumptions and differences of opinion were aired in a non-confrontational manner and there have been signs of people from across various levels really changing the way they relate to each other and think about the work they are doing
• created a positive can-do attitude amongst the staff discussions were held on many sticky, frustrating and also confusing topics

Strategic direction-setting

• readying ourselves to double-up our efforts at working with the local governments (Panchayats) and also the other government departments
• pushing for the idea of federating community organisations – including village-level organisations and women's groups - at various levels
• conceptualising new staff induction as a 1 year long process rather than a 3 day workshop
  
• promoting the idea of using monitoring and evaluation as a tool for facilitating dialogue with communities about their local development process (rather than simply a way of reporting to donors)
• deciding to form a livelihood/income generation internal network cell that would bring together staff from different programmatic units (such as natural resource development, women's empowerment, and village institutions) to explore new ways of addressing what is now officially recognised as a cross-cutting issue
• more generally getting integration across programmes onto the agenda – e.g. integrating livestock and agriculture activities to give a more integrated farming systems approach
• deciding to look into the oragnisation's ecological footprint and find ways of minimising it

There are probably plenty more significant outcomes that I could present in a more structured manner after actually writing down the Comprehensive Plan. But these give the general gist of the sorts of new things that have been taking place.

Many of these – perhaps seemingly small – changes are of quite massive significance in the overall scheme of things. What is most exciting for me at the moment is that a whole bunch of decisions were taken by other people that I had dreamed about in the past. I was seeing the people around me saying the things that I had hoped they would say. I even had the experience of people saying exactly the points that I had written in my notebook. In some ways the last few months have felt like a bit of a dream. They have been intense too! I have been angry, overjoyed, frustrated, exhausted and at times almost ecstatic. The best moments have been the ones where it simply felt like everything was coming together for the best. The worst were the ones where I was wrestling with my own ego. Truly fascinating!

But I still have a lot of questions. For example, this morning in an email to the Chief Executive, I asked the following:

• How do we sustain and even deepen whatever positive changes we have seen so far?
• How do we keep open the dialogue and creativity that we have unleashed so far and make it a permanent feature of the organisation?
• How do we avoid falling back into sub-optimal patterns of relations and interactions that mitigate our effectiveness as a catalyst of positive social change?

They all seem to be getting at the same thing. My concern is that there was a kind of tipping point that we could have crossed and that we didn't quite cross it... What does this imply?

Which really leads me onto this:

One thing that people don't seem to write about is whether it is normal to see or feel things happening as part of an organisational change process in a kind of staged manner... for example, we might not have transitioned to being a 'chaordic organisation' or something of that sort but hey! we might nonetheless have moved some way towards appreciating the value of meaningful conversation, of 'getting the whole system in the room', of challenging our present limits and so on. Now for the facilitator (for want of a better word for my role), these may seem like baby steps in comparison to the strides that were dreamt of. Is this normal? Sometimes, there's a feeling that it's a kind of all-or-nothing shift – especially when we're talking about complexity, chaos, self organisation, emergence, open space and so on. But is that even fair? Sometimes it seems as though we need one of those 'paradigm shifts' or some kind of 'turn the whole thing inside out' approaches. There will, of course, be some kind of a gap perceived by the facilitator between 'what could have been' and 'what actually was'. Won't there? Other people – perhaps because they are more experienced and take it for granted – don't seem to talk about this 'gap' so much.

Having said this, a recent mail (today) on the aoh list seems to be getting at just this point.