So, I've had this long-standing thought about working with communities... I have this notion that it's not particularly original but all the same it strikes me as worth noting down - especially as I'm in need the middle of preparing a proposal that builds on this idea.
Most of the development discourse - and I suppose I'm talking here about the mainstream stuff - seems to talk about what they call CBOs - Community Based Organisations. This term refers to just about any type of organisation that consist of people who live within a geographically bounded area. In general, big implementing agencies like to work with 'CBOs' because they contribute to the 'sustainability' of the intervention being implemented and project the image of being community-centred and participatory. OK.
However, there's something I don't like about the term 'CBO'. Is it to do with the way that it doesn't really do justice to the very notion of community? For that matter, what is a community? Isn't a community form of organisation in its own right? And if it is, are we really treating it like one? How can we re-frame these questions and ideas in a way that gives them more meaning and brings them more to life?
These kinds of questions led me to the idea of talking about 'organised communities' rather than 'community based organisations'. The question then becomes not one of how strong is the community based organisation but one of how strong is the community. This then leads us to confront what we are actually talking about when we talk about community. What is a community? What would we like our community to be like? What are the fears we have about the future of our community? What are the hopes we have for the future of our community?
Community itself seems so much more rich and meaningful a concept than CBO. CBO doesn't seem to carry any sense of neighbours caring about each other, of people being engaged in celebrations or festivals together: it seems well and truly void of culture. This, I believe is one of the great dangers of most development work: it tends to ignore the vast realm of culture. And I don't mean preserving traditional culture - I mean thinking about 'development' as a process of bringing about intentional, positive, cultural change through a process of dialogue combined with action.
Community is all about relationships. The work that we really ought to be doing is helping to make these relationships deep, fulfilling, meaningful, mutually empowering. Somehow, this sees far more important and pressing than the idea of setting up some kind of a semi-formal CBO with management capabilities.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
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
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:
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.
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
- 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
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?
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.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
visions, dreams, problem-solving and change
So, I’m pretty sure that I’m not saying anything new here (I have been thinking about it for a while and have taken inspiration from numerous sources and even woven it into my own practice)… but it does kind of strike me as being rather important… here it goes:
One thing is for sure: the dream-based leadership workshop that we conducted in Delwara – which included an exercise for linking people’s own actions to the realization of their dreams – worked! Within a few days, a Muslim lady – a local leader – was out and about in her neighbourhood trying to collect money from each household to cover the cost of getting the neighbourhood cleaned on a regular basis. And just the other day, I was translating for a volunteer studying the relationship between women and water in Delwara, and two women quite clearly recounted: “it’s not that we didn’t have dreams before the Citizen’s Forum was established, it’s just that we didn’t have a way of realizing them”.
This is an urgent plea to not let ourselves start trying to possess other people’s dreams and to focus instead on trying simply to listen to, know and understand them, to get people to own up to having them and to cultivate a passion for realizing them – both individually and collectively!
I sincerely believe that these dreams are the source from which any glimmer of hope for positive social change emerges. As such, they are worthy of unfathomable respect.
- Vision-driven change is completely different from problem-solving-driven change.
- For the most-part, people are uncomfortable with moving away from problem-solving
- Vision-driven change requires an understanding of the problems but, instead of beginning with the problems, begins with tapping into people’s dreams, unearthing them, sharing them, building common dreams and then catalyzing collective action around these dreams
- Vision-driven change and problem-solving-driven change are not mutually exclusive… but putting the vision gives a better context for the problem-solving
- Vision-driven change is all about creating new realities – this gives a real sense of moving forward towards something that is desirable rather than simply away (or aside from) something that is bad
- Problem-solving change is all about trying to get out of slippery holes – getting out of one doesn’t mean that you haven’t fallen into another
- Vision-driven change is holistic, and presents an inclusive and clear goal that people can both relate and aspire to
- Problem-solving change is fragmented, and often fails to consider how one problem is linked to the next – it also often encourages looking for solutions at levels that are far beyond people’s grasp
One thing is for sure: the dream-based leadership workshop that we conducted in Delwara – which included an exercise for linking people’s own actions to the realization of their dreams – worked! Within a few days, a Muslim lady – a local leader – was out and about in her neighbourhood trying to collect money from each household to cover the cost of getting the neighbourhood cleaned on a regular basis. And just the other day, I was translating for a volunteer studying the relationship between women and water in Delwara, and two women quite clearly recounted: “it’s not that we didn’t have dreams before the Citizen’s Forum was established, it’s just that we didn’t have a way of realizing them”.
This is an urgent plea to not let ourselves start trying to possess other people’s dreams and to focus instead on trying simply to listen to, know and understand them, to get people to own up to having them and to cultivate a passion for realizing them – both individually and collectively!
I sincerely believe that these dreams are the source from which any glimmer of hope for positive social change emerges. As such, they are worthy of unfathomable respect.
dealing with tensions in conversation... a start
I now have some questions on the role of conflict, taking stands, - more generally surfacing tensions as a self-appointed change-maker in an unofficial organizational change process. There are a lot of complexities here – especially in terms of how the roles and the situation itself is framed…For example, the organisation considers itself to be a learning organisation continuously undergoing a kind of gradual learning and change process as a result of learning-by-doing. Another example is my own role as ‘person putting together the 6th Comprehensive Plan’ – a kind of in-house, part-facilitator, part-writer, part-outsider, but not with a totally clear organizational change mandate since we haven’t really been using that term (thanks to Hugh at Gaping Void for the cartoon)… But I do see myself as trying to contribute to organizational change… and in a way, this Comprehensive Plan is all about change...
Anyway, it seems to me that there is a general sense that facilitators should never utter harsh or strong words or express a stance on anything other than the design of the sessions that they facilitate – i.e. the meta-container. But often I have found myself not even really having proper control over these very spaces. Indeed, a lot of the ‘competition’ I face in my work seems to be around control of the container. In these situations, I need to think about how my individual actions, words and body language can be used to influence the container (or the people in it).
This, for example, is what led me to decide to simply keep quiet and out of the way on that day when I got upset about the attitude of a top manager during a staff gathering on strategies for not appreciating the open-space approach and wanting to bring more control into the process (see this earlier blog post)… In a way, I stepped back and the group then had to take ownership for the whole process… Though I was out of the way, at least the people were in charge and trying to figure it out themselves.
Anyway, several days later, and preparing for another event, I remember having a little clash over the idea of open space. I was trying to advocate for an open-space approach but the response from a top manager was negative. They said that they had seen open space in the past and that it hadn’t worked. They also said that they were concerned about the use of time by their staff – a process that doesn’t work out at a retreat for the whole organisation means that the time of some 250 people would be getting wasted – convert that into rupees and it really does seem like a big risk!
But then… it’s also a bit degrading for the staff at some level… don’t we have enough faith in our staff to want to use their time productively? Beyond that, in line with the general spirit of voluntarism and meaningful engagement, my sense is that a lot more value can be obtained from a group of people who are engaging with something pationately (while the rest wander around aimlessly or lounge in the trees) than forcing a group of disinterested people to sit in a circle silently, perhaps staring into space or at their navel, while a few people actually talk. Oh well…
In any case, the funny thing is that at the time I hammered my point, disagreed strongly with the evaluation of open space and cited an example of the villagers in Delwara (with whom we conducted an open space session as part of a visioning process) – which included a very mixed group (Hindus, tribals, muslims, women, men, adults and youth…) and yielded quite wonderful results! If they can do it why can’t we. Anyway, I feel as though I have been pushing this point on a number of occasions, occasionally arguing the case… and recently, I got the feeling that people might just be catching on a little to this idea… though I’m not totally sure about it…
There have also been a whole spate of examples of people using the ‘oh but we already tried that and it didn’t work’ statement – which pretty much ended a particular line of discussion. One was in the context of mobilizing the community to put pressure on the local government (panchayat) to secure better quality services and another was in the context of dissemination of improved agriculture through farmer-to-farmer learning. I have heard countless other applications of the same killer response to certain ideas that may have been tried in the past and they really do kill the mood. Generally, there is a reluctance – and perhaps the absence of the required time and space – to engage with some of these subjects in greater depth; the depth that would be required to get somewhere meaningful.
The first case, I tried to resolve – not by saying anything at the time – but by several days later talking to the person who had effectively ended that conversation and letting them know the impact of what they had said. What was most interesting was that the intended impact of what was said and the actual impact were quite different. Now it seems we are all quite happy about the idea of working with the government.
In the second case, I suppose I was lucky to have some kind of an inkling into the issue. I decided to start talking to the people who had proposed the idea and advocated the idea of us getting involved in a study to really explore the dynamics of farmer-to-farmer learning and the dissemination of farming practices within a community resulting from training a limited cluster… Really understanding these dynamics across several villages could help the organisation design much more effective dissemination strategies (which could involve various roles for local community organisations) that can get more people adopting good practices for a much lower cost… but for that we would have to know how the knowledge spreads! This would also help whoever is advocating the approach to counter the kind of ‘we did that in the past and it didn’t work’ kind of statements…
Indeed, there was a third case just today, in which there was a discussion about whether we should work to create model villages. A number of senior staff didn't like this idea (for various reasons - mostly, as far as I could figure out, to do with assumptions about what this implied). I tried to present an alternative conception of these model villages by suggesting that we view them as opportunities for conducting in-depth action research into what it takes to make really strong communities in these places - particularly in the context of securing real integration of all the organisation's activities, etc. This didn't go down too well. The basic response was that the organisation already has 40 years of experience so we don't really need to go studying these things and, in any case, the whole organisation is like one big action research process. To which I replied quite directly - 'you're wrong' - along with a whole host of other things explaining why (e.g. learning can't be taken for granted, it needs to be systematic, we clearly don't have all the answers, there are many things we are still struggling with, etc.). It's too early to judge where this will take us and the issue has now been flagged for further discussion (where I plan to present a more reasoned/structured version of my take on the issue and each of the 'blocks' will also present their thoughts...) Let's see where this goes.
I also find myself wondering about whether my somewhat unclear role has something to do with my need to take these positions… By this I mean to say the fact that I am part-way a facilitator of change and part-way just another person in the organisation… I’m not an external facilitator with an ‘expert’ reputation. But then reading Dave Pollard’s recent post (amazingly, I came across it in the middle of writing this one – is that synchronicity or what!?) helped me to realize that these are questions that one may have to face even as an external ‘expert’ facilitator.
I suppose that the best way to deal with it is to be open, honest and authentic, acknowledge that one is also learning and trying to make sense of things and do one’s best to accept that different people have different view-points and that one has to work with things the way they are. I also believe that sometimes leaving a little bit of a sour taste (that lingers) might be a good way of getting someone to ponder something a little… a kind of cognitive dissonance that resonates for a bit longer than usual…
innit?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
on complexity, chaos and self-organisation
Just the other day, I was reading a post by Dave Snowden on management vs. self-organisation that triggered a few questions in my mind... This is what I commented:
chaos and anarchy are not the same thing at all. anarchy would imply not having any ruler but this does not mean chaos since a group can be self-governing and leadership a dynamic and distributed process... take for example the classical example of a jazz quartet doing improvisation (would it mean anything to say that the underlying form of the music manages the player's interactions)? now, can the same thing be said of management? can a system be said to display self-management or self-organising properties?
i often come up across this question in the context of my work... is it about the coordinator 'coordinating' the team or is it about there being 'coordination' within the team and does thinking about it differently lead to different ways of trying to achieve the end result (i.e. a team operating with a high level of coordination or coherence)?
For some reason, I also thought that self-organisation was supposed to be a property of complex, not chaotic (= lacking any organisation or coherence) systems... tipping a system into a chaotic state may be a way of temporarily unlocking the system so that it has greater chance of self-organising in new ways (this would also be where the role of the 'manager' comes in - creating the container/parameters within which all this can happen)... It's also worth pointing out that self-organising does not mean 'good'.
I also think that you can call it management if you prefer the horse analogy but there can be many other words for it... one, possibly more appropriate one - given all the connotations - might be facilitation... but then perhaps there is a scale from command and control (absolute micro-management) to not doing anything at all (with facilitation somewhere more towards not doing anything)?
but what I understood from what I have read, practiced and reflected on of systems theory is that the whole point is that regardless of what you are doing in the system (i'm talking about an organisational -i.e. complex - system here), the system has its own complex dynamics, attractors, etc. - which leads to self-organisation (which could be good or bad)... so, like you said (but in different words?), the manager has to work with the self-organising characteristics of a complex system in order to help it continuously transition to levels which secure it a better fit with more of its external environment... in a social (human organisational) system, this would entail communication and quite possibly involving the whole system in the management of itself...
for some reason this always gets me thinking about the fact that little organisms had a big hand in making our atmosphere into something breathable... and plants which continue to play a critical role in regulating the earthly climate...
sorry for the rambling! does this make any sense?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Am I in a bubble?
Every once in a while, confusion sets in... and when it does, it tends to be everything at once. This leads me to believe that confusion is more about a state of mind than it is in relation to specific things... Though I may be off the mark here... In any case, a little bit of introspection always goes down well in these situations!
So, perhaps, it is time to review a few things:
1. Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?
I came to India after finishing my BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics. I had also completed several years of cultivating an anarchist, anti-system philosophy with radical green fringes. The City of London was the Heart of Evil and the whole transnational, capitalist elite that it represented was a part of a global network out to dominate the world and take humans away from the true path of liberation and freedom by putting them in little boxes where they live futile lives to earn the $$s so they can pay the bills and muddle about in little meaningless circles without ever knowing the Truth. People, instead, were caught up in self-centred, individualistic lives based on material gratification - and in the meanwhile, swathes were living meaningless lives, like robots. Linked to that, the last 50 years or so during which 'Development' arose as a fabricated story of the West/North (post-colonial powers) to exploit people and take their wealth, had undermined the rich cultures and sustainable livelihoods of people from the world over.
Hmmm... So there were a lot of people in the Rest (as opposed to West) of the world who had been oppressed, marginalised, exploited, disenfranchised, broken. My idea of my work probably had two main components: (a) seeking ecological restoration of the world; (b) bringing about radical transformation of societies to achieve this - keeping in mind the issues of power relations and social justice. I remember at the time thinking that in order to achieve the former, work would have to be done on the latter. I had this idea that if the people of countries like India could be sensitised to the ecological problems and socio-economic injustice that was making their lives worse; if they could be organised to raise their voice and get their issues onto the agenda, then there may be some scope for pressuring the rest of the world to modify its own behaviour. But there was a lot that I also knew I didn't know...
At the same time, i was particularly inspired by the ideas of direct, participatory, deliberative - maybe even ecological - democracy; of sustainable communities linked to their natural resource base, engaging in dialogue in order to make decisions and working things out. People taking control of their lives and enabling the full potential of human flowering to take place in a simple, natural and joyful way.
Equipped with these ideas and also lack thereof, I decided that I needed to go to India. There were many reasons for this, encompassing: food, philosophy, culture, abundance of NGOs, relatively safe and democratic, having lots of oppressed people, my family having been there before I was born. The idea was: go to India, find an NGO, spend some time working there, get a sense of what the work is, what development is, how does change happen, learn a good deal, and then make a plan about what to do next.
2. What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?
Well, I came to India immediately after finishing my degree - perhaps a little prematurely. I came with a bunch of my good friends, my ex-girlfriend and a reasonably unclear agenda. Although I had planned to come later and on my own, the enthusiasm of all my friends about going together swept me up and I headed of a good deal earlier - without a clear plan and without enough money to last very long...
My initial travels took me to Kashmere, where I was completely absorbed in the beauty of nature and the complexity of my own self. Lazy days, soaking up sunshine on Dal and Niggin Lakes and experiencing the bizarre atmosphere of a place filled with soldiers, death, fear, hope, loss and such tragic beauty... Trekking up to Sonna Marg and Gangabal, jumping naked into a glacial lake, catching fish, seeing marmots, sitting on goat skins with bearded, turbaned men in a little tent (to shelter from the rain) and eating boiled eggs... it was a very powerful experience. The travelling continued down to Dharmshalla and then into Rajasthan until one by one my friends had all gone... leaving me to fend for myself. It wasn't long before I hit Udaipur.
I got stuck in Udapiur, in the late monsoon season. The lake and the sunsets over it blew my mind daily. The other travellers were great company - so many good conversations. I made several excursions to Eklingji and Ranakpur. I wrote letters that I never sent explaining how I felt. And then, one day, I asked my rickshaw driver friend, Jameel, if he knew of a place where I could volunteer - and he said Seva Mandir. So I said take me there... and he did.
After some formalities I was accepted and assigned the task of helping the organisation prepare impact indicators. ? ? ? No-one, including myself, seemed to really know what this ought to involve... Gradually things became clearer - the result of a lot of muddling through. The main part of my first three years can be summarised thus: finding out about all the different work the organisation does by talking to people, thinking about indicators, talking about indicators, developing indicators, revising indicators, developing tools to collect data, testing these tools, training people to collect the data, getting the data collected, developing data entry modules, getting the data entered, cleaning the data, analysing the data, preparing reports based on the data, presenting the data back to people.
On the side, I spent a lot of time reading about evaluation, organisational learning, participation and participatory approaches/methods (including PRA, PLA, Open Space, AoH, Appreciative Inquiry, etc.), community development and complexity theory - and I was continuously trying to implement what I was learning in my work. I also wrote various reports - annual, progress, donor, proposals, and so on... Then, three years later (wait a minute... did you say THREE?), I couldn't work with my new boss and asked to be transferred somewhere else... So I ended up in Delwara, a small town 30 kms outside of Udaipur where Seva Mandir was working on integrated community development, focusing on responsible citizenship and local self-governance....
I was there for a year and a half - and I still am in a number of ways. I learned a great deal here that I still haven't managed to put into words. After this I was asked to help the organisation put together its 6th Comprehensive Plan which has involved facilitating dialogue across the organisation on issues of strategy, culture and structure (though mainly the former two). This has been my icing on the cake and this is kind of where I am at today. Almost 5 years have elapsed since I came to India. I never had any idea that I would stay in one place for so long.
So how have I and my ideas changed? The hardest question! I suppose that I have learned a huge amount about all the things that I have worked on, read and written about: evaluation, learning, facilitation, community dynamics (and what holds people together), organisations, empowerment, how change happens in an organisational and community context, complexity. I think I have also learned a great deal about myself... though I am not completely sure what. I have definitely evolved as a person - become more balanced, capable, in control of myself - maybe even wise... In many ways, though, I know that I still have a long, long way to go!
i have also developed a whole host of interests that I knew nothing about before coming - like facilitation, like complexity theory, like story-telling, like organisational change... I have become able to articulate one of the things that I would like to see myself doing in the coming years: working on organisational change processes as a means to attaining larger scale positive social change. None of the above does justice to what I have learned...
But I am still a green, spiritual, anarchist at heart. And I am still concerned with radically transforming power structures in the world, attaining ecological balance, claiming social justice and creating a world where humans live in harmony with each other and nature and where the full potential of all people can flourish. So in that regard, I think I have just gone deeper, not really sideways.
3. What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?
Another tough question. My decision to go and study - which I continue to question intensely from time to time - seems to signal something about how I feel... and it seems that I have to try and decipher my actions in order to really understand what is going on. The application (after 5 years of just thinking about it) is a sign that something deep within me (something beyond my simple, conscious chattering) wanted to go from here - for at least a while - and probably, eventually, for a longer time. My choice of course, one that lets me spend another year here though, shows that I really am not quite ready to just leave this place.
I have unfinished business here in Seva Mandir, in Udaipur. And there is a need for continuity - not just in terms of the work that I do but also in terms of my own personal learning trajectory: there are ideas that I am struggling with, trying to make sense of and trying to put into practice... and the place where I am now seems as fertile ground to work on as anything else... A list of some of the things that I would like to work on here can be found at: learn2act4change.
The items in that list seem to be what is calling me... But am I really hearing the greater call or am I in a bubble... is this just the local call? Am I really doing justice to what I am and what I believe in? Am I really doing justice to my ecological and environmental concerns? Have I found a way of weaving these dimensions in to the work that I do or have I somehow lost touch with these things by getting all caught up in other dimensions of the work? Is the scale at which I am working significant enough to really address the concerns - is it too big? is it too small? How is what I'm doing tying in to what's going on in the world? Is this work in Delwara - soon to expand to other peri-urban settlements - actually meaningful in the face of the bigger changes that our world is under-going...
I suppose I don't have the answers. I suppose that my decision to enroll in the Participation Power and Social change course, somewhere deep inside me, is an attempt to try and connect to people and knowledge that will help me make sense of all these things. Maybe it will let me look at my bubble from the outside, get a sense of perspective on things, understand how what I am doing and have been doing up to now fits in to the bigger scheme of things, the multitude of efforts for change going on at all scales and in all places... and then, perhaps, I will be able to make a more informed decision about what really matters... to me... for the world... and, therefore what I should do in the coming years.
So, perhaps, it is time to review a few things:
- Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?
- What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?
- What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?
1. Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?
I came to India after finishing my BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics. I had also completed several years of cultivating an anarchist, anti-system philosophy with radical green fringes. The City of London was the Heart of Evil and the whole transnational, capitalist elite that it represented was a part of a global network out to dominate the world and take humans away from the true path of liberation and freedom by putting them in little boxes where they live futile lives to earn the $$s so they can pay the bills and muddle about in little meaningless circles without ever knowing the Truth. People, instead, were caught up in self-centred, individualistic lives based on material gratification - and in the meanwhile, swathes were living meaningless lives, like robots. Linked to that, the last 50 years or so during which 'Development' arose as a fabricated story of the West/North (post-colonial powers) to exploit people and take their wealth, had undermined the rich cultures and sustainable livelihoods of people from the world over.
Hmmm... So there were a lot of people in the Rest (as opposed to West) of the world who had been oppressed, marginalised, exploited, disenfranchised, broken. My idea of my work probably had two main components: (a) seeking ecological restoration of the world; (b) bringing about radical transformation of societies to achieve this - keeping in mind the issues of power relations and social justice. I remember at the time thinking that in order to achieve the former, work would have to be done on the latter. I had this idea that if the people of countries like India could be sensitised to the ecological problems and socio-economic injustice that was making their lives worse; if they could be organised to raise their voice and get their issues onto the agenda, then there may be some scope for pressuring the rest of the world to modify its own behaviour. But there was a lot that I also knew I didn't know...
At the same time, i was particularly inspired by the ideas of direct, participatory, deliberative - maybe even ecological - democracy; of sustainable communities linked to their natural resource base, engaging in dialogue in order to make decisions and working things out. People taking control of their lives and enabling the full potential of human flowering to take place in a simple, natural and joyful way.
Equipped with these ideas and also lack thereof, I decided that I needed to go to India. There were many reasons for this, encompassing: food, philosophy, culture, abundance of NGOs, relatively safe and democratic, having lots of oppressed people, my family having been there before I was born. The idea was: go to India, find an NGO, spend some time working there, get a sense of what the work is, what development is, how does change happen, learn a good deal, and then make a plan about what to do next.
2. What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?
Well, I came to India immediately after finishing my degree - perhaps a little prematurely. I came with a bunch of my good friends, my ex-girlfriend and a reasonably unclear agenda. Although I had planned to come later and on my own, the enthusiasm of all my friends about going together swept me up and I headed of a good deal earlier - without a clear plan and without enough money to last very long...
My initial travels took me to Kashmere, where I was completely absorbed in the beauty of nature and the complexity of my own self. Lazy days, soaking up sunshine on Dal and Niggin Lakes and experiencing the bizarre atmosphere of a place filled with soldiers, death, fear, hope, loss and such tragic beauty... Trekking up to Sonna Marg and Gangabal, jumping naked into a glacial lake, catching fish, seeing marmots, sitting on goat skins with bearded, turbaned men in a little tent (to shelter from the rain) and eating boiled eggs... it was a very powerful experience. The travelling continued down to Dharmshalla and then into Rajasthan until one by one my friends had all gone... leaving me to fend for myself. It wasn't long before I hit Udaipur.
I got stuck in Udapiur, in the late monsoon season. The lake and the sunsets over it blew my mind daily. The other travellers were great company - so many good conversations. I made several excursions to Eklingji and Ranakpur. I wrote letters that I never sent explaining how I felt. And then, one day, I asked my rickshaw driver friend, Jameel, if he knew of a place where I could volunteer - and he said Seva Mandir. So I said take me there... and he did.
After some formalities I was accepted and assigned the task of helping the organisation prepare impact indicators. ? ? ? No-one, including myself, seemed to really know what this ought to involve... Gradually things became clearer - the result of a lot of muddling through. The main part of my first three years can be summarised thus: finding out about all the different work the organisation does by talking to people, thinking about indicators, talking about indicators, developing indicators, revising indicators, developing tools to collect data, testing these tools, training people to collect the data, getting the data collected, developing data entry modules, getting the data entered, cleaning the data, analysing the data, preparing reports based on the data, presenting the data back to people.
On the side, I spent a lot of time reading about evaluation, organisational learning, participation and participatory approaches/methods (including PRA, PLA, Open Space, AoH, Appreciative Inquiry, etc.), community development and complexity theory - and I was continuously trying to implement what I was learning in my work. I also wrote various reports - annual, progress, donor, proposals, and so on... Then, three years later (wait a minute... did you say THREE?), I couldn't work with my new boss and asked to be transferred somewhere else... So I ended up in Delwara, a small town 30 kms outside of Udaipur where Seva Mandir was working on integrated community development, focusing on responsible citizenship and local self-governance....
I was there for a year and a half - and I still am in a number of ways. I learned a great deal here that I still haven't managed to put into words. After this I was asked to help the organisation put together its 6th Comprehensive Plan which has involved facilitating dialogue across the organisation on issues of strategy, culture and structure (though mainly the former two). This has been my icing on the cake and this is kind of where I am at today. Almost 5 years have elapsed since I came to India. I never had any idea that I would stay in one place for so long.
So how have I and my ideas changed? The hardest question! I suppose that I have learned a huge amount about all the things that I have worked on, read and written about: evaluation, learning, facilitation, community dynamics (and what holds people together), organisations, empowerment, how change happens in an organisational and community context, complexity. I think I have also learned a great deal about myself... though I am not completely sure what. I have definitely evolved as a person - become more balanced, capable, in control of myself - maybe even wise... In many ways, though, I know that I still have a long, long way to go!
i have also developed a whole host of interests that I knew nothing about before coming - like facilitation, like complexity theory, like story-telling, like organisational change... I have become able to articulate one of the things that I would like to see myself doing in the coming years: working on organisational change processes as a means to attaining larger scale positive social change. None of the above does justice to what I have learned...
But I am still a green, spiritual, anarchist at heart. And I am still concerned with radically transforming power structures in the world, attaining ecological balance, claiming social justice and creating a world where humans live in harmony with each other and nature and where the full potential of all people can flourish. So in that regard, I think I have just gone deeper, not really sideways.
3. What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?
Another tough question. My decision to go and study - which I continue to question intensely from time to time - seems to signal something about how I feel... and it seems that I have to try and decipher my actions in order to really understand what is going on. The application (after 5 years of just thinking about it) is a sign that something deep within me (something beyond my simple, conscious chattering) wanted to go from here - for at least a while - and probably, eventually, for a longer time. My choice of course, one that lets me spend another year here though, shows that I really am not quite ready to just leave this place.
I have unfinished business here in Seva Mandir, in Udaipur. And there is a need for continuity - not just in terms of the work that I do but also in terms of my own personal learning trajectory: there are ideas that I am struggling with, trying to make sense of and trying to put into practice... and the place where I am now seems as fertile ground to work on as anything else... A list of some of the things that I would like to work on here can be found at: learn2act4change.
The items in that list seem to be what is calling me... But am I really hearing the greater call or am I in a bubble... is this just the local call? Am I really doing justice to what I am and what I believe in? Am I really doing justice to my ecological and environmental concerns? Have I found a way of weaving these dimensions in to the work that I do or have I somehow lost touch with these things by getting all caught up in other dimensions of the work? Is the scale at which I am working significant enough to really address the concerns - is it too big? is it too small? How is what I'm doing tying in to what's going on in the world? Is this work in Delwara - soon to expand to other peri-urban settlements - actually meaningful in the face of the bigger changes that our world is under-going...
I suppose I don't have the answers. I suppose that my decision to enroll in the Participation Power and Social change course, somewhere deep inside me, is an attempt to try and connect to people and knowledge that will help me make sense of all these things. Maybe it will let me look at my bubble from the outside, get a sense of perspective on things, understand how what I am doing and have been doing up to now fits in to the bigger scheme of things, the multitude of efforts for change going on at all scales and in all places... and then, perhaps, I will be able to make a more informed decision about what really matters... to me... for the world... and, therefore what I should do in the coming years.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
half full or half empty... the muddle continues
It's way past my bedtime but I feel compelled to write. Failing to follow on from my last blog, this is a return to a lingering question of growingly nagging proportions: appreciative inquiry - is it a biased way of looking at things and does this make it somehow less useful or worthwhile in the broader endeavour to make positive change in the world?
This question first began to move beyond being a simple blot on my landscape to a kind of subject for inquiry after reading an article by Dave Snowden. A recent blog post by Dave Snowden got me thinking about this again. He wrote:
It seems that Dave's approach is concerned with eliminating any kind of bias into the 'inquiry' or story-eliciting process. Now, I may be just fuddling my way through, but it seems to me that any process of gathering stories will need to have some kind of a purpose (am I missing something?) - whether it is simply to generate a database of contextualised organisational happenings from diverse perspectives (why would we want this) to something more overt like enabling an organisation to become more effective at what it does (e.g. by becoming more responsive to its clients needs, learning more effectively, improving leadership and communication patterns, etc.).
I recognise that I may have the wrong end of the stick (please point this out if I do). I also recognise that the very process of surfacing a question or purpose for 'inquiry' itself may require an inquiry in its own right... But even this sense that 'something needs to be done' will be informed by some kind of nagging notion that... well, there is something that needs to be done... about something!? Hmmm...
But Dave's critique focuses not so much on the subject or purpose as the 'type of story' - i.e. in the case of AI, this would be the story of what worked and what were the conditions that led to this thing actually working - a positive take. I suppose, the point is that it makes good sense to look at what isn't working and how things end up not working -because this might tell us what we ought to avoid doing.
In various articles of Dave's that I have read, he talks about using the story of the chap who discovered that latitude could be calculated simply by using a clock as a way of getting people to feel comfortable about telling stories of times when good ideas were scrapped because of bosses with old-paradigm world-views... Now isn't this as much an attempt at telling people what kind of story to tell as doing an AI would be?
So is the point that we should ask people to tell all kinds of stories - the good, the bad and the ugly? How do we decide how we should lead the questions? It seems that we have to elicit a certain type of story - at least in a number of situations - in order to get at the juiciest bits which may not respond to a simple question like 'tell me about leadership in the organisation' - it just seems way too vague - and therefore liable to elicit a vague series of answers that have to be gradually probed to get to the depth by gradually making it more specific (e.g. by using the latitude example).
The other tendency that I have observed is that people love talking about negative stories. Huge amounts of staff time go into ranting about problems, complaining about things, etc. My sense is that this tends to breed a negative mindset and can be very counterproductive. Just imagine if some more of this time was spent by people having constructive conversations about how to solve problems, or for sharing knowledge and experience, coming up with new initiatives and so on... Now wouldn't this lead to a dramatic increase in effectiveness? Perhaps I am completely missing the point!? What if bosses could listen to stories about times when their staff had really felt able to perform and deliver change?
In the end, I suppose that both the positives and the negatives are essential. It seems to be as important to know what we can do as it does to know what we shouldn't do. But when we are on the move, and we don't have vast resources to put in place high end knowledge management systems (as in the case of the NGO where I am working in India), might not an AI allow us to get rather a lot done - even if only in such constrained circumstances?
In any case, I have resolved to take this question with me into my practice and really have a go at unearthing all manner of stories - positive and negative - with the hope that I can begin to get a sense for what all of this adds up to...
This question first began to move beyond being a simple blot on my landscape to a kind of subject for inquiry after reading an article by Dave Snowden. A recent blog post by Dave Snowden got me thinking about this again. He wrote:
One of my real concerns here is the frequent conflation of Cognitive Edge methods with NLP and that other current popular method Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Now there is a big difference. My concern about AI is that it privileges one type of story over an other. Why should anyone tell people what type of stories they should tell? Despite my disagreements I can respect its practitioners and see that it has utility in constrained circumstances. [He then goes on to talk about NLP - for which he clearly has less respect than he does for AI]So, the question that I am really grappling with is: in what contexts does applying Appreciative Inquiry makes sense? Or even better, where does the role of purpose fit in to the whole practice of story-work?
It seems that Dave's approach is concerned with eliminating any kind of bias into the 'inquiry' or story-eliciting process. Now, I may be just fuddling my way through, but it seems to me that any process of gathering stories will need to have some kind of a purpose (am I missing something?) - whether it is simply to generate a database of contextualised organisational happenings from diverse perspectives (why would we want this) to something more overt like enabling an organisation to become more effective at what it does (e.g. by becoming more responsive to its clients needs, learning more effectively, improving leadership and communication patterns, etc.).
I recognise that I may have the wrong end of the stick (please point this out if I do). I also recognise that the very process of surfacing a question or purpose for 'inquiry' itself may require an inquiry in its own right... But even this sense that 'something needs to be done' will be informed by some kind of nagging notion that... well, there is something that needs to be done... about something!? Hmmm...
But Dave's critique focuses not so much on the subject or purpose as the 'type of story' - i.e. in the case of AI, this would be the story of what worked and what were the conditions that led to this thing actually working - a positive take. I suppose, the point is that it makes good sense to look at what isn't working and how things end up not working -because this might tell us what we ought to avoid doing.
In various articles of Dave's that I have read, he talks about using the story of the chap who discovered that latitude could be calculated simply by using a clock as a way of getting people to feel comfortable about telling stories of times when good ideas were scrapped because of bosses with old-paradigm world-views... Now isn't this as much an attempt at telling people what kind of story to tell as doing an AI would be?
So is the point that we should ask people to tell all kinds of stories - the good, the bad and the ugly? How do we decide how we should lead the questions? It seems that we have to elicit a certain type of story - at least in a number of situations - in order to get at the juiciest bits which may not respond to a simple question like 'tell me about leadership in the organisation' - it just seems way too vague - and therefore liable to elicit a vague series of answers that have to be gradually probed to get to the depth by gradually making it more specific (e.g. by using the latitude example).
The other tendency that I have observed is that people love talking about negative stories. Huge amounts of staff time go into ranting about problems, complaining about things, etc. My sense is that this tends to breed a negative mindset and can be very counterproductive. Just imagine if some more of this time was spent by people having constructive conversations about how to solve problems, or for sharing knowledge and experience, coming up with new initiatives and so on... Now wouldn't this lead to a dramatic increase in effectiveness? Perhaps I am completely missing the point!? What if bosses could listen to stories about times when their staff had really felt able to perform and deliver change?
In the end, I suppose that both the positives and the negatives are essential. It seems to be as important to know what we can do as it does to know what we shouldn't do. But when we are on the move, and we don't have vast resources to put in place high end knowledge management systems (as in the case of the NGO where I am working in India), might not an AI allow us to get rather a lot done - even if only in such constrained circumstances?
In any case, I have resolved to take this question with me into my practice and really have a go at unearthing all manner of stories - positive and negative - with the hope that I can begin to get a sense for what all of this adds up to...
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