{"id":3086,"date":"2016-06-17T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T01:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/actionresearchplus.com\/?p=3086"},"modified":"2017-03-07T03:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T03:18:32","slug":"flying-under-the-results-radar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/actionresearchplus.com\/flying-under-the-results-radar\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying under the results radar"},"content":{"rendered":"
Blog post by ANDREA RODERICKS\u00a0and is shared generously by The Ideal Practitioner.<\/a><\/h5>\n

\"flying_under_radar\"<\/a>What challenges does an \u201cideal\u201d social change\/development practitioner face in trying to live up to that ideal in the real world?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I think the \u201cindividual agency\u201d constraints are different for local practitioners and for those who work in a more international contexts.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • The results agenda and nature of competitive processes have put pressure on people to appear more confident than they may be about particular solutions or strategies\u2026 this is dangerous, especially for a practitioner who faces this early in their career.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
      \n
    • In many cases efficiency is valued above all else, especially for large-scale service delivery projects with short timeframes, or those that have \u201cpay by result\u201d mechanisms. The culture of such projects and of the organisations pursuing them marginalizes social change practitioners \u2013 they are made to feel incompetent if they don\u2019t pretend to have all the answers.\n
        \n
      • I once complimented the manager of an action research project on taking advantage of the flexibility of her project funding to adjust her work plan and budget in response to community feedback, moving funds out of an area where they were not needed. While she appreciated the recognition, she said that she almost did not go through with it, because she thought she may appear inefficient in the eyes of her peers, not being able to forecast accurately for such a small grant, when these colleagues managed operations ten times in scale, and spent millions as forecast. The organizational culture had evolved around metrics for large-scale blueprint operations.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
          \n
        • Overloaded jobs, with a high amount of administrative tasks, leaving little time for reading, reflecting, talking to others.\n
            \n
          • The leader of a sex worker self-help group once explained this eloquently. She said that the one of the biggest challenges they faced since their group had received donor grants for HIV prevention was that they had started spending their time like \u201cNGO people.\u201d Instead of using their drop-in centre to solve problems, strategize, meet and listen to each others\u2019 stories, they spent most of their time writing reports and new proposals, going to NGO meetings and entertaining visitors. She ended her comment by saying, \u201cI have started to take refuge in, and trust documents more than my interactions.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
              \n
            • Navigating organisational power imbalances and taking risks \u2013 I have often found the most meaningful social change practice among junior practitioners who tend to have more regular interactions with impact populations. But they sometimes find it hard to communicate what they are learning to more powerful people in the aid industry.\n
                \n
              • A couple of years ago, during a meeting that one of our project based teams had with the senior management team of the organisation, I realized that they failed to mention some of their most valuable insights from their work. When I asked them later why they had not shared some of their most important lessons, these were some of their comments:<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                \u201cAt certain levels, people only hear what\u2019s familiar to them. What we learned was not connected to our deliverables, so it didn\u2019t seem important.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

                \u201cEven though everyone says it is good to share and learn from mistakes, it is sometimes very risky for people at our level.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

                \u201cIt would have taken too long to explain the context.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

                  \n
                • A new one I discovered in conversation with a group of masters development students is that many of them were entering the profession carrying significant debt from their student loans\u2026 this coloured their choices of internships and first jobs significantly. It also made them much more conscious of having their names on outputs that they worked on, which did not always go down well with others on their teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                  How have you personally navigated these issues?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
                    \n
                      \n
                    • I sometimes tried to stay under the radar<\/strong>, doing the most interesting work almost surreptitiously until it gained some momentum, to avoid having to show results too quickly<\/li>\n
                    • I focused on closely managing the administrative work in order toprotect my team\u2019s space for social analysis<\/strong><\/li>\n
                    • In a risk averse organisational culture, social change processes (because of their political nature) are sometimes perceived as risky to the organisation. However, often these risks are not openly named, and their likelihood not assessed. In a project where we worked on access of marginalized fishing communities to water bodies we realized that it was helpful to take the lead in facilitating organizational risk analysis<\/strong>ourselves to contribute to more informed decision making.<\/li>\n
                    • Tried to set up regular<\/u> reflection platforms<\/strong> with participation of diverse levels and groups of development practitioners (with an emphasis on regular\u2026 because it was only when they became a regular practice that they became a safe space for reflection)<\/li>\n
                    • Have social change practitioner friends\/ allies\/ peers<\/strong> outside of my own organisation\/ team.<\/li>\n
                    • Create \u201calone time<\/strong>\u201d in the day to process thoughts\/ experiences<\/li>\n
                    • Read about what others are doing<\/strong><\/li>\n
                    • Consciously resist the pressure to know everything<\/strong> by focusing on what I am learning, and taking pride in speaking truth to power<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ol>\n

                      What questions should we be asking that we are not?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

                      Many practitioners themselves have a role to play in protecting\/ widening institutional space for good social change practice to flourish \u2013 there is a lot of work on organizational practices and culture, but not enough on managers\u2019 individual agency in development organisations to enable social change. A good question to ask may be,<\/p>\n

                      \u201cWhat management practices can help widen the space for social change work to thrive?\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

                      or<\/p>\n

                      \u201cWhat kind of leadership competencies are most enabling of social change practice?\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

                      Another question may be:<\/p>\n

                      \u201cWhere do social change practitioners draw support from? Who are their mentors or accompaniers, and, what kind of interaction between them has been most supportive?\u201d<\/h3>\n

                      ANDREA RODERICKS IS A FREELANCE CONSULTANT WHO FOCUSES ON PROGRAMME AND ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN AND EFFECTIVENESS, AND CURATING PARTNERSHIPS TO COLLECTIVELY ADDRESS COMPLEX DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES. SHE HAS WORKED ON DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN ISSUES FOR THE PAST 24 YEARS, MOST OF THESE WITH THE NGO CARE INTERNATIONAL, IN MANAGEMENT AS WELL AS TECHNICAL ADVISORY ROLES, LARGELY IN SOUTH ASIA AND SOUTHERN AFRICA. ANDREA IS A MEMBER OF THE SYNERGOS SENIOR FELLOWS\u2019 GLOBAL NETWORK THAT CONNECTS CIVIL SOCIETY LEADERS COMMITTED TO COLLABORATIVELY ADDRESS UNDERLYING CAUSES OF POVERTY AND INEQUITY. SHE SPENDS MOST OF HER TIME IN HER HOME COUNTRY, INDIA.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                      Blog post by ANDREA RODERICKS\u00a0and is shared generously by The Ideal Practitioner. What challenges does an \u201cideal\u201d social change\/development practitioner face in trying to live up to that ideal in the real world? I think the \u201cindividual agency\u201d constraints are different for local practitioners and for those who work in a more international contexts. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":3175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nFlying under the results radar - AR + Action Research Plus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/actionresearchplus.com\/flying-under-the-results-radar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flying under the results radar - AR + Action Research Plus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Blog post by ANDREA RODERICKS\u00a0and is shared generously by The Ideal Practitioner. What challenges does an \u201cideal\u201d social change\/development practitioner face in trying to live up to that ideal in the real world? I think the \u201cindividual agency\u201d constraints are different for local practitioners and for those who work in a more international contexts. 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