Trying to get some bearings...

It's been a while since I managed to get back to the blog and I have a lot to say. At the same time, I really want to learn how to say whatever I am trying to say in less space. One approach could be to use several smaller blog postings (to create the illusion of using less space). Another is to try and use visual media (to really use less space). I think I will use a combination of the two.

In any case, here are the main things on my mind that I want to blog about a little bit more (though not in any particular order) in the coming days:

1. How most communication takes place (and why)
   
2. How this leads to the mess we're in (and why)
   
3. What getting out of it might involve (and why)
   
4. The place for spirituality in all this (and why)
   

All of these seem to be connected to each other - within myself at least. Making sense of this all will be an important part of my own learning journey. All this is inspired by various things I have experienced and read over the last couple of months, including:

1. Re-visiting my early reflections on Action Science
   
2. Reading Dave Snowden's work on stories and complexity
3. My recent engagement with anthropology
4. Reading the Katha Upanishad and the Tao Te Ching
5. Facilitating communication between a volunteer and organisational staff
6. Witnessing various conflicts within my 'home' and within the organisation
   
7. Late night and other engaging discussions with friends on much of the above
8. A good bit of improvised fictional story-circle
9. Some reflections on stepping out into the unknown and how this makes me feel

Let's see how this unfolds.

If I were God... Oh but I am - if only I could realise it!

After that last outburst on narratives, which seems to have opened up an entire new dimension of reality to me, I started reading San Beck's translation of the Katha Upanishad. This marvellous story, and I really mean MARVELLOUS STORY, is a must read. This little quote gives a taste of what it is trying to tell us:

Know the soul as lord of a chariot,
the body as the chariot.
Know the intuition as the chariot driver,
and the mind as the reins.
The senses, they say, are the horses;
the objects of sense the paths.
This associated with the body, the senses and the mind,
the wise call 'the enjoyer.'

But why did I start to read this? To be honest I have a little theory about the Upanishads - one that I have long been nurturing but that makes itself clearer to me every day. Upanishads means (etymologically) 'to sit down beside/close to'. Usually, it is presented as sitting down close to the Guru - but I think that this is unnecessary Guru worship (and this is where I defect). Doesn't the Guru learn from his student? What, nothing at all?

Perhaps we all host a collective Guru when we sit down close together and talk from the heart about what really matters - at moments it is you, at moments it is I (for This is That) - and together we learn in communion with a self that is self-transcendent - more than just you and more than just me. And this is what is so beautiful. Even while having a conversation with Death itself!

Sounds like the foundation of a great community to me!

Full Circle? Maybe more of a spiral!

Today, I am reminded of a dream I had when I first joined this organisation. I entered a room, lit by sunlight and decorated with potted plants. In the room there were a series of low tables (of the coffee table kind) with chairs around them. People were sitting around these tables engaged in conversation. The people were from all the different units in the organisation and they were excitedly and passionately sharing their ideas. The air was ripe with inspiration...

An odd dream, I suppose (it's not made up, honestly!)... Clearly a sign that I am obsessive! But today, having completed my first Appreciative Inquiry (at least the first part of it), having discovered World Cafe, Open Space and the Art of Hosting, having come across the work of people like Dave Snowden and Shawn Callahan of Anecdote, and having discovered all this gigantic world of story-telling and meaningful conversations, I feel a little like I am coming home. Is this the reason why I came here (here being this 40 year old organisation in Udaipur, Rajasthan with whom I am presently associated)?

The reason I came here, and stayed on, was simple: I wanted to make a 'sustainable contribution'. The more I worked, the more I learned about people, systems, organisational learning, systems dynamics and complexity theory, the more I came to understand what this 'sustainable change' really meant and what it might take to bring it about.

The more I think about it, the more i realise that the deep change will take place when the patterns of conversation within the organisation change. And changing the patterns of conversation within the organisation is, by and large (not meaning to sound overly naieve), a matter of opening spaces for conversations and asking the right questions to get the right kind of conversations. And the message that I am getting now, after reading and listening to all kinds of things on the subject, is that stories need to be the basis of this conversations.

Of course, the conversations can build on, manipulate, deconstruct, reconstruct and distill the stories in myriad ways - all guided, of course, by matters of purpose (why these stories?) and context... But those stories are the foundation of any learning and change that is going to emerge. They are the raw data for creating meaning collectively. Story, it seems to me, only really has significance, only really comes to life, in an inter-personal setting.

I have been using anecdotes throughout my time here at a personal level to explain or justify things. Not very effectively though! For the most part, I seem to have used them almost accidentally - not as the foundation of a carefully considered way of generating deeper understanding. Now I feel that a whole new universe has opened up before me based on story-telling. It is as though the entire organisation just dissolved into its basic unit: stories.

The story has the potential to connect the women's group leader who isn't getting the support she needs to the chief executive in a way that a target (30 women's group leaders trained) doesn't. It can also connect the health in-charge to the education in-charge through the story of the child in the community school who got ill and none of his friends had basic first-aid knowledge. (By the way, I just made these stories up... to prove a point).

Another realisation, and one that came just now, is that the real pressing need - to complete the learning cycle - is to link the stories of the villagers themselves (the local leaders, the users of the irrigation system, the trained birth assistants, the children in the community schools) to the stories of the field workers and to link the stories of the field workers to the stories of the block staff and the stories of the block staff to the unit staff and the executive committee and beyond.

Now I may be obsessing a little. But for an oral culture, of which Mewar (the region I am living in), I do believe, is a fine example (though it has its writing too), story telling should be a piece of pie as natural as herding goats or collecting berries from the forest! All we need to do now is navigate the donors and their out-dated obsession with de-contextualised numbers that drain time and energy away from meaningful, inspiring, change-inducing conversations based on stories!

This is all, perhaps, a gross simplification of what will probably take a lot of perseverance and (self-)mastery to apply. And I by no means intend to do injustice to story-work. But I feel I have just reached a new level in my understanding of something of great importance.

The excitement of the adventure continues! Or, rather, begins (again, only more so)!

Digging the Narrative Approach to Civic Driven Change

I couldn't help myself, to be honest. The opportunity to participate in the dialogue on civic driven change in Jaipur organised jointly by Context, International Cooperation (a Netherlands based social enterprise/consultancy) and CECOEDECON (a 25-year young Jaipur-based NGO), especially getting to spend some time bantering with Fons and his friends/fellow-travellers was just too good to miss... Especially as the subject seemed to be a wedding of two subjects that I am passionate about: social change (of the civic driven variety) and complexity theory.

Admittedly, I was a little confused about the purpose of the gathering (as in what we hoped to get out of our discussion on these two subjects), and I also felt that I would have appreciated more time and space for genuine dialogue on the subjects raised rather than what turned out to be a rather linear (admittedly it was a circle) exchange of views (funny, considering all the concern with social change itself being a non-linear process!)... But there were great time constraints and I had the good fortune of sitting in the debriefing group at the end, where there was more space for this kind of an interaction.

Overall, what was most meaningful for me? I think, it is the insights I got into the following questions (which is also, I realise now, a reflection of my what questions I was carrying with me):

• Why does a complexity perspective mean that should we look at ourselves as explorers rather than experts or traditional researchers? And how do we go about our exploration? Why is it important to do so in a collaborative manner?
  
• What would a large scale, multi-stakeholder collaborative action research - with the objective of understanding how civic driven change actually happens - look like and how would it operate?
• How I should deal with the ugly thing we know as the logical framework (LFA) in the coming 6th Comprehensive Plan and what kind of meaningful, participatory, qualitative-focused learning systems could be used to compensate for the horrible void that is the LFA?
  
• What is the potential for taking up the strengthening of the inter-organisational platform for civil society learning and self-governance at the Udaipur level? How should I get started and who can I to talk to for this (thanks to Pradeep and Marieke)?

I'm leaving them all as questions because what I have gained is a bit more insight than clear answers. But all rather encouraging.

An interesting opportunity has also emerged for Seva Mandir to work with Fons and Co on the narrative based collaborative action research on civic driven change, including - but not limited to - child-centred change. It also seems to reverberate with conversations we have been having within Seva Mandir on the topic of distilling our own understanding of the change process (including the one we had during the annual camp) and our oft repeated pride in being an organisation that learns from and builds its knowledge based on experience!

Some questions, however, that I'm still not totally comfortable with are the following:

To what extent and what kind of NGO intervention can still permit us to call what happens as Civic Driven? For example, if Seva Mandir initiates a dialogue, makes available certain resources and provides facilitation inputs as a result of which citizens begin to organise themselves around certain resources, issues, commons and values - does this count as civic driven change? Where is that fine line between civic driven and not civic driven change (or perhaps we'd be better off talking about a gradient from totally self-organised civic driven on the one side to coordinated with some civic participation on the other)? It seems to me that the nature of the change that we talk about has some pretty serious implications and this need to be unpacked.

In any case, the wonderful company and conversations at dinner provided a great end to a very interesting day! So thanks to all for making it possible!

Post Delwara Realisations

A view of Delwara's roofscape at sunrise while having morning chai at the house of the former Secretary of the Citizens' Development Forum

Today, sitting in Jaipur airport, on my way back from a fantastic day with Fons and team (to be discussed in more detail in the forthcoming post), I find myself remembering Delwara.

I'm not really a believer in regrets. I much prefer the idea of learning from the past in a positive, constructive way rather than dwelling in past failings or shortcomings. Having said this, I will permit myself a couple of backward looking thoughts in the context of Delwara.

First, I wish I had known about blogging while I was in Delwara. I kept a diary in an almost fanatical manner during my time there and was also working on putting together a website. If only I had thought of putting together a blog I could have killed more birds with one stone than you could shake a stick at (not that I am in favour of killing birds with stones). Based on this realisation, I have taken a vow to cover any project that I have the good or bad fortune of embarking on through blogging. It will be my tribute to the world and all the people who are part of my efforts.

Second, I wish I had not been (a) so arrogant; and (b) so confused about my role. Of course, there is nothing I could have done about it at the time - because that's probably where I was at as a person... But if I hadn't been so fixed on doing something related to Planning Monitoring and Evaluation - and more specifically Outcome Mapping - at the outset, I might have been better able to really engage in the change process.

I feel that I placed all kinds of barriers on my role and didn't quite manage to do what Ajay had advocated (going about and having meaningful conversations) - which, to be honest, seemed far too unfocused for me at the time... and my understanding was that more than anything, the project needed a fancy, participatory visioning and M&E kind of a process (which it did but not at that point)... Admittedly, I did manage quite a bit of what Ajay suggested, but still... far too bounded by my own thoughts. Easy to say in retrospect, I suppose.

Finally, I thought it would be good to include a link to a paper (soon to be published) that I prepared based on my experience in Delwara. Although it is rather long, and doesn't quite capture the full richness of what has taken place there (there are hundreds of good stories of change from Delwara), I feel that it distills the essence of the change process. It also offers what I believe may be some important insights in the context of the bigger debate on 'good governance'. Here are some snippets...

[...] this paper calls for a more culturally grounded understanding of the role of participation in the development of complex societies and is concerned as much with the value of participation in securing immediate instrumental objectives as in transforming the way that a fragmented citizenry relates to itself.

[...] it is critical to recognize that the Panchayat, at the local level, is a culturally embedded system and that its status is, by and large, a reflection of the society from which it is constituted. It is, therefore, only to be expected that an unaware, fragmented citizenry, deeply embroiled in conflicts of interest, mistrust, etc. will not be able to elect a Panchayat that is able to function in a democratic, transparent, accountable – or, for that matter, even remotely effective – manner. Nor will they be able to make or hold it accountable to themselves or to the village as a whole.

[...] the experience to date in Delwara indicates that when the starting point is a highly diverse and fragmented citizenry, establishing participatory governance systems is primarily a challenge of (i) enabling citizens to engage in processes of self-transformation; and (ii) enabling citizens to form relationships of mutual empowerment amongst themselves. To achieve this involves creating spaces and processes that support this transformation by bringing together citizens of diverse backgrounds in an organisational culture that embodies values of equality, dignity, respect, compassion, transparency, democratic deliberation, inclusiveness, collective strength and learning together.

An organized, cohesive and empowered community is far better placed to collaborate with and leverage the resources of the Panchayat than a fragmented citizenry. This means that the idea of responsible citizenship is about a great deal more than mobilizing people to demand resources from the state. It is, instead, about engaging people in a process where they have to confront themselves – both as individuals and as members of a social group. [...] Differences in ideology, values, worldviews, class, gender, geographical location - all provide pretexts for accentuating or shaping conflicts over decision-making processes. These conflicts have to be surfaced and [collectively] deconstructed in order for positive change to occur.

I will be thinking of ways to do justice to the Delwara experience in the coming months...

...indeed, the journey's only just begun!

This appreciative inquiry thing is rather interesting. Although I had the sense that I wasn't quite managing to do what I ought to be doing, I think that I somehow managed to pull loose ends together and tie them up with a neat little bow. Thanks are due to the appreciative commons through which various ideas about how to present what had come out were made available. The feedback I have gotten so far on the appreciative inquiry and the presentation I made based on it, has been, for the most-part, very positive. Not only the (verbal) feedback though… People seem to have a little bit more spring in their step - though of course its far too early to tell whether (a) this is just because of my own perception; and (b) it is going to last.

In any case, some reflections. First, although I obsessed about what I was doing, it seemed a little bit too easy. It seemed as though I didn't have to do anything. Now, this is also nonsense - because I was working until midnight for several days during the run-up to the annual camp… But that was also due to other reasons.

Once the data had come in and once we had done our group work of analysing the data and converting it into themes and values with their quotes and stories to back them up, it was just a matter of figuring out the provocative propositions. I feel that I didn't do this properly. Somehow, it seemed to be too much a matter of me just piecing the statements together, one after the other… Yes, I did spend a night in the office with some of my workgroup looking at these statements but the word-smithing was mostly me… and that felt like a problem at the time.

Anyway, the first time it got air-space was at the meeting of the sanchalak mandal (the executive committee) meeting - the day before the camp was due to start. It was generally appreciated but there were some tensions and questions: the expected ones - where is the negative stuff? Why focus just on the positive? But you haven’t told us how we are performing in relation to these values (which I very, very clearly stated was in no way my objective whatsoever)? And all the associated points that back up the idea of dwelling on problems… (and the image - shown above - taken from Yes!andSpace (hat tip) didn't seem to help so much as aggravate the idea that things were one-sided, too positive… it triggered the response: "if we only focus on the positive and future things, we are not learning from history - so we will end up just repeating past mistakes" - which indicates that the whole concept of the appreciative inquiry had not been properly digested by the audience).

I tried an array of methods for explaining the principle and ended up using the kind of analogy that I don't usually feel comfortable using in front of people in high posts (because I worry that they will be degrading). I said: "If I want to know how to get to Delhi from here and you tell me - 'don't go to Ahmedabad, don't go to Kota, don't go to Jaisalmer, don't go to Bhopal' and so on it doesn’t really make it much easier for me. However, if you tell me - 'this is the road to Delhi' then I can set off along it more easily and with greater confidence." Which seemed to work a little - though I didn't ask for feedback to confirm this.

Anyway, I conceded enough on the basis of our discussions to incorporate a question that would give people the space to talk about what Mustafa (on of the structure consultants) called 'the shadow behind the values'… And this was a very interesting part of the whole event for me. Things were happening fast, there were pots and pans banging in the background (so it was necessary to make quite a lot of effort just to hear each other) and we'd just eaten ice-cream (which was very nice indeed). Everyone had just been sitting in the presentation looking and listening (to varying extents). And now we had to talk about performance in relation to the values.

It took almost one hour to get the group to move out of the comfortable silence on the topic of where we were failing to live the values. It took coaxing. It took trust-building, no doubt made more difficult by the presence of Sachin - a representative from PLAN who funds us. To get around this I eventually got the bright idea of getting Sachin to share his own experiences from PLAN. When it came up that they've been having their own challenges (all organisations do y'know!) people got a little bit more open.

After wrestling with conceptual clarity and getting over the fact that it isn't easy to talk about these things - especially as they may be personal, we got into a fairly heated discussion about the values. Some individuals became a little bit too garam and had to get up and cool off. Others sat cold as stones. Various stories came up of ways that leadership had not been sensitive, ways that the organisational system wasn't supporting workers' contribution to change, ways that there wasn't openness (of which the one hour it took to open up was the most striking example)…

The energy was fairly tense. I was doing some fairly active facilitation - though I can't recall many of the specifics - but almost as much energy as went into opening the discussion to the deep dark well of 'what ain't right' went into trying to pull the group back out to the world of 'what we gotta do then'… Eventually we did this and ended up with some suggestions that we then pooled with four other groups who had been talking on the same subject. We were able to compile together from across the various groups into a presentation that pretty much captured everything that need to be captured. This got presented the following morning and seemed to go down relatively well… This is basically what it recommended at the end:

How to take the values forward:

• Start with yourself: be the change that you want to see
• Use the values as a basis for staff performance evaluation
• Create time and space for dialogue on these values amongst staff
• Improve organisational systems so that they support the practice of these values
• Establish a system for grievance redressal involving staff from all levels of the organisation
• Take this conversation forwards

I suppose this means we are at least thinking in the right direction…? Of course, there's a lot more fleshing out to be done... Given the discussion we had the following day (mentioned at the end of my last post), I suppose, means that we are actually doing something about it all? And to think this is only the beginning!

One of my lingering questions though... was the negative patch useful and important? Did it add or subtract from the discussions we had? This is something I will need to ponder on and explore as I continue on my adventures!

And the journey goes on...

Well, today, I'm sitting on the other side of the mountain. The annual camp is over. It was brief. Very brief indeed! And there was less space for dialogue than I might have liked. But the dialogue we did have was, for the most part, pointing in the right direction. In line with the framework that we've been using, there were three main components on the agenda - (1) strategies; (2) structure and (3) culture.

Each of these sessions started with a presentation and was followed by an open discussion (except for the the values one due to time constraints) and a panel.

For strategy, an organisational level perspective was given - highlighting the cross-cutting social issues that Seva Mandir sees itself as struggling with: an absence of trusteeship and too much spectatorship and complicity - issues as relevant internally as externally. It was made clear that Seva Mandir's concern lies with society more than it does with the government: for Seva Mandir, the government is a part of society. It then went on to flesh out the key strategies that Seva Mandir would be pursuing across different program areas to address these.

The structure presentation was made by some consultants and focused on the question of where Seva Mandir wanted to apply more of its 'energy' (a catch all for everything from manpower and resources to capacity, power and attention). While the model (based on ...) was rather confusing because of its ambiguities, abstraction and technical jargon (that people couldn't easily relate to Seva Mandir), it did play the important function of generating dialogue - largely with the intention of seeking clarity.

The culture presentation was based on the appreciative inquiry (AI) that we have been working on over the course of the last few months. This involved an incredibly brief section explaining AI followed by a presentation of 8 core values backed up by quotes from the appreciative conversations we had over the last few months within Seva Mandir and ended with six provocative propositions based out on these core values.

Based on these, the following sub-themes emerged as subjects to be taken forwards in group discussions: (1) how does change take place (and what is our role in this); (2) what are the desired roles and linkages between Seva Mandir, the community, the panchayat and the government; (3) what are the strengths, weaknesses and suggested improvements to the organisation's structure; (4) where do we stand in terms of living up to the organisation's values, what causes us to fail or live up to them, and what can we do to further cultivate our values within the organisation?

Four groups of up to 20 people participated in the discussions on strategy, structure and culture for not quite enough time. However, the basic sense of what mattered emerged in each of the discussions and presentations were prepared on each topic for the following morning. The need for continued, more extended and deeper dialogue on all issues - especially on structure and culture - came up as very important concerns.

The event wrapped up with thought-provoking ideas from Rajni Bakshi that helped to situate Seva Mandir's efforts within the international context - putting a special emphasis on environmental issues, broader economic development issues, consumerism, communication, dialogue and the need to cultivate spaces and individuals who can help to bring about a broader based social change.

All in all it went quite well. There is no doubt in my mind that we could have benefitted from more and longer conversations - possibly in smaller groups and with more of an explicit action focus built in - i.e. a kind of "this is what we're going to do" rather than a "these are things that we could do"... But the sense of a commitment to doing some of these things is present nonetheless.

This revealed itself the following day when a large body of staff gathered at Seva Mandir to celebrate the founder's birthday and do shramdan (cleaning of the office). At the end of this, there was a good discussion amongst members of the Seva Mandir community on such issues as maintaining cleanliness, how to become more environmentally friendly (someone was commissioned to lead this process), ensuring that suitable facilities (from hygienic water coolers to motor-cycles) were available for the staff and also discussing problems associated with delays in the purchasing system that held up getting work done. All-in-all a promising start for round 2 (of what exactly?)...

Now, it would seem, the focus of efforts will be on operationalising the kinds of changes that we have been talking about - helping people change their patterns of behaviour and relationships, develop more empowering organisational systems and ensure regular and open dialogue on values and structure, etc. This is long-term stuff...

In the meanwhile, I will need to get busy with looking at how to put together the organisation's 6th Comprehensive Plan document which means another round of discussions, thinking about targets, indicators and budgets and fleshing out strategies wherever this may be required... Back down to the dirty work!