Tag: capacity building

Towards reimagined technical assistance: thinking beyond the current policy options
In the article “Towards reimagined technical assistance: the current policy options and opportunities for change”, Alexandra Nastase and her colleagues argues that technical assistance should be framed as a policy option for governments. It outlines different models of technical assistance:
1. Capacity substitution: Technical advisers perform government functions due to urgent needs or lack of in-house expertise. This can fill gaps but has “clear limitations in building state capability.”
2. Capacity supplementation: Technical advisers provide specific expertise to complement government efforts in challenging areas. This can “fill essential gaps at critical moments” but has limitations for building sustainable capacity.
3. Capacity development: Technical advisers play a facilitator role focused on enabling change and strengthening government capacity over the long term. This takes time but “there is a higher chance that these [results] will be sustainable.”
Governments may choose from this spectrum of roles for technical advisers in designing assistance programs based on the objectives, limitations, and tradeoffs involved with each approach: “The most common fallacy is to expect every type of technical assistance to lead to capacity development. We do not believe that is the case. Suppose governments choose to use externals to do the work and replace government functions. In that case, it is not realistic to expect that it will build a capability to do the work independently of consultants.”

Furthermore, technical assistance should be designed through “meaningful and equal dialogue between governments and funders” to ensure it focuses on core issues and builds sustainable capacity. Considerations that need to be highlighted include balancing short-term needs with long-term capacity building and shifting power to local experts.

However, this requires reframing technical assistance as a policy option through transparent dialogue between government and funders.

What key assumptions about technical assistance does this challenge?

The article challenges some key assumptions and orthodox views about technical assistance in global health:
1. It frames technical assistance not as aid provided by donors, but as a policy option and domestic choice that governments make to meet their objectives. This contrasts with the common donor-centric view.
2. It critiques the assumption that all technical assistance inherently builds sustainable government capacity and questions this expected linear relationship. The article argues different types of technical assistance have fundamentally different aims – gap-filling versus long-term capacity building.
3. The article challenges the idealistic principles often promoted for technical assistance, like localization, government ownership, and adaptability. It suggests the evidence is lacking on if these principles effectively lead to better development outcomes on the ground.
4. The article argues that technical assistance decisions involve real dilemmas, tradeoffs and tensions in practice rather than being clear cut. It challenges the notion of win-win solutions and highlights risks like unintended consequences.
5. By outlining limitations of different technical assistance approaches, the article pushes back against a one-size-fits-all mindset. The appropriate approach depends on contextual factors and clarity of purpose.
6. The article questions typical measures of success for technical assistance based on fast results and output delivery. It advocates for greater focus on processes that enable long-term capacity development even if slower.
How does The Geneva Learning Foundation’s work fit into such a model?

At The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), we realized that our own model to support locally-led leadership to drive change could be described as a new type of technical assistance that does not fit into any of the existing three categories, because:
1. TGLF’s model is grounded in principles of localization and decolonization that shift power dynamics by empowering government health workers from all levels of the health system – not only the national authorities – to recognize what change is needed, to lead this change where they work. We have observed that, even in fragile contexts, this accelerates progress toward country goals, and strengthens or can help rebuild civil society fabric.
2. It focuses on nurturing intrinsic motivation and peer accountability rather than imposing top-down directives or extrinsic incentives.
3. It utilizes lateral feedback loops and informal, self-organized networks that cut across hierarchies and geographic boundaries.
4. It emphasizes flexibility, adaptation to local contexts, and problem-driven iteration rather than pre-defined solutions.
5. It builds sustainable capacity and self-organized learning cultures that reduce dependency on external support.
Reference: Nastase, A., Rajan, A., French, B., Bhattacharya, D., 2020. Towards reimagined technical assistance: the current policy options and opportunities for change. Gates Open Res 4, 180. https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.13204.1

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024
February 13, 2024
Debunking the “Social Age”, a dead end for humanitarian leadership practitioners

“And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still … put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster.” – Joseph Campbell, Foreword to The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, 1969

Humans are social beings. If there is one constant in our experience, this is it. Of course, the tidal waves of digital transformation are reshaping the cultures of how we learn, share, communicate, and grow. But this constant remains.

Claiming that our entry into a “Social Age” is the key to grappling with change is akin to clamoring that we are entering a new “Age of Transportation”. There are obviously new means such as electric cars. But to try to understand what is changing – and how we can learn, grow, and lead to harness change – through such a narrow lens is likely to lead to reductive, myopic approaches. It confuses both symptom with cause and effect with intent.

Anyone who values peer-reviewed evidence will find nothing to discern whether the “Social Age” is a valid concept. Zero articles in Google Scholar and just one book written a decade ago by IBM’s vice president of cloud computing enablement. There is no science to describe or theorize the “Social Age”. Stripped of its marketing collateral, the pretty pictures painted by the “Social Age” reveal themselves to be hollow of meaning.

There is no denying the constance of change. It is a truism by definition. The need to adapt is true by necessity. One should be suspicious when a concept appears to be premised by not one but two tautologies. Stating the obvious is a wonderfully effective way of reassuring those who maintain the status quo that only need to adopt a new vocabulary, distinguishing themselves from the “usual suspects”… when in fact they should be front and center in the line-up.

There is no Social Age.

So why is the “Social Age” concept a dead end for humanitarian practitioners, and especially the learning leaders amongst them who work on the outer cusp of chaos in emergencies, disasters, and toward greater community resilience?

First of all, the humanitarian space is already littered by amorphous, vague, or empty concepts that, combined with opaque jargon, lead to analysis paralysis or just produce more litter. We need tools and approaches that help us clear the rubble, not add to it.

Second, there are evidence-based approaches to understand and harness the sweeping changes we face, how they impact our work, and how we can build on them to strengthen how we learn and how we lead. Yet, given the dearth of impact measurement in humanitarian capacity-building, this not the first time that we have observed senior managers seduced by an imported concept with no sector-specific evidence to back it up, for reasons that have more to do with their own identity and moral quandary than with the actual relevance and usefulness of such imports. There is a need to resist our own insularity, but this should not lead to embracing obscure concepts as an end unto itself. The vocabulary of the “Social Age” proponents may be different, but how is it different from failed attempts of the past to build capacity through training?

Third, nothing in the amorphous relativism of the “Social Age” explicitly recognizes the unequal power relations that are the heart of the contradictions in a humanitarian system that preaches localization from the center to the periphery, but lacks effective mechanisms (and, in some countries, domestic political will) to shift the balance of power. There is a growing number of promising projects that are already helping us find new, authentic and meaningful ways of growing collaborative leadership from margin to center. These are increasingly often being driven and led by those on the periphery. They are about inspiration, innovation, and collective responsibility to progress through self-directed growth and development. By contrast, the “Social Age” seems to be about renting and delivering the policies of others, rather than shared ownership and development around a compelling purpose. (Yes, I am paraphrasing Hargreaves and Shirley’s distinction between Third and Fourth Ways in their book about inspiring future for educational change.)

Barbara W. Tuchman, in her analysis of why governments pursue policy contrary to their own aims and the needs of the people they serve, asks why we should “expect anything else of government”, answering that “governments have a greater duty to act according to reason” because “folly in government has more impact on more people than individual follies.” This echoes the peculiar responsibility of those who are in the business of transforming the aid business. Imported gimmicks are not where we should be expending time and effort. Staying silent is not an option.

Yet, inertia remains a powerful force in our peculiar, mission-driven corner of the universe. Once an idea somehow gains currency, it breathes a life of its own. Lip service to failure tolerance has not changed the reality that once you have promoted a clunky concept, chances are that you will feel offended or threatened or both when challenged, especially if you lack the evidence for a rebuttal. There is little or no reward for critical reflection or questioning, for taking a necessary step back to reconsider, especially when scarce sector resources are being expended at for-profit corporate rates in the name of doing something different. This is unfortunate because stonewalling equates to lack of accountability – no matter how stringent the logframes and other formal mechanisms that may be in place. Is dissent ignored, tolerated, or does it open up to potentially nasty reprisals?

La critique est facile, l’art est difficile. It is really easier to tear down than it is to evolve and/or reconstruct? In fact, my perspective is shaped by substantive collaborative leadership work that I admire or the digital learning that I see transforming people and strengthening their individual and collective capabilities. Few blog posts about this work ever get written. I consider this failure to self-promote to be consistent with the modesty and authenticity of practitioners who are truly pushing the boundaries. We need a space where such stories can be told, not for competitive advantage in the marketplace of ideas for rent, but to strengthen and deepen the bonds of our yearning for a better future.

Image: It’s a dead end baby (Andrew Mason/flickr)

February 7, 2018
Implementation of guidelines, officially
This is everything that the World Health Organization’s Handbook for Guideline Development says about implementation.

Implementation of a guideline should be taken into account right from the beginning of the guideline development. Implementation is generally the responsibility of national or subnational groups, which explains why their participation in guideline development is critical. WHO headquarters and regional and country offices can support implementation activities by promoting new guidelines at international conferences and providing guideline dissemination workshops, tools, resources and overall coordination [emphasis mine].

Implementation strategies are context-specific. The basic steps for implementing a guideline are:

convene a multidisciplinary working group to analyse local needs and priorities (looking for additional data on actual practice);

identify potential barriers and facilitating factors;

determine available resources and the political support required to implement recommendations;

inform relevant implementing partners at all levels; and

design an implementation strategy (considering how to encourage theadoption of the recommendations and how to make the overall context favourable to the proposed changes). Implementation or operational research can help inform field testing and rollout strategies to promote the uptake of recommendations.

There is a range of derivative documents or tools that can be developed to facilitate implementation. These can be distributed with the guideline, or local guideline implementers can develop them. Such documents or tools may include a slide set re ecting the guideline content; a “how to” manual or handbook; a flowchart, decision aide or algorithm; fact sheets; quality indicators; checklists; computerized applications; templates, etc.

Source: World Health Organization. WHO Handbook for Guideline Development, 2014.

Image: Aboard the USS Bowfin in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, United States of America. Personal collection.
December 7, 2017
From guidelines to impact

Most global public health organizations issue guidelines that are of a high methodological quality and are developed through a transparent, evidence-based decision-making process. However, they often lack an effective, scalable mechanism to support governments and health workers at country and sub-country level in turning these into action that leads to impact.

Existing activities intended to help countries build public health capacity carry potential risk for these organizations, as they rely on high-cost, low-volume workshops and trainings that may be characterized by startling disparities in quality, scalability, replicability, and sustainability, often making it difficult or impossible to determine their impact.

In some thematic areas, stakeholders have recognized the problem and are developing their own frameworks to improve quality of training and improve capacity-building. A few stakeholders are experimenting with new capacity-building approaches to empower local actors and strengthen the resilience of communities.

The global community allocates considerable human and financial resources to training. The delivery of this training, however, has not kept pace with the increasing cost and complexity of global challenges.^[1] Furthermore, a reductive focus on formal training is unlikely to lead to improvements in service delivery.^[2]

Digital learning offers new ways to scale and open learning. However, existing digital learning platforms appear to be premised on the one-way transmission of knowledge – when it is the co-creation, adaptation, and application of knowledge that are needed to achieve double-loop learning – and from the center (HQ, capital city) to the periphery (countries, villages, volunteers). The transmitted knowledge is often abstract and decontextualized, while the value of existing local knowledge, practices and understanding is not recognized or incorporated into the learning experience.

Progress toward the global health goals will remain elusive if the prevailing paradigm for capacity-building remains unchanged.

^[1] The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Framework for Immunization Training and Learning.” Seattle, USA: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, August 2017.

^[2] Sadki, Reda. “Quality in Humanitarian Education at the Crossroads of History and Technology.” In World Disasters Report 2013: Technology and the Effectiveness of Humanitarian Action. Geneva: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2013.

Image: Personal collection. These levers control the diving planes which allow the vessel to pitch its bow and stern up or down to assist in the process of submerging or surfacing the boat, as well as controlling depth when submerged. USS Bowfin, a Balao-class submarine, was a boat of the United States Navy named for the bowfin fish. It is now stationed in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

December 4, 2017
3 critical questions for the new Humanitarian Leadership Academy
This morning, I’m looking forward to the London launch event for Save The Children’s Humanitarian Leadership Academy, touted by the Guardian as the “world’s first academy for humanitarian relief” that “may revolutionize” the sector. I ask the following three questions as a sympathetic observer: the Academy’s focus on the learning need for improved and scaled capacity in the face of growing humanitarian challenges is spot on. Now comes the execution.
1. Is the Academy a platform or a hub? There are two possible roles for the Academy: as a connector, hub or platform for others and as a platform of its own (developing and delivering its own content). They certainly can overlap, but then how will the Academy both collaborate and compete for limited resources with already-established specialized training organizations? Is it a knowledge broker, catalyst, and connector – or an implementer? How will Save The Children – which has invested so much in the launch – step back to allow the multi-stakeholder governance model to succeed and recognize that the thought leadership this calls for may reside outside the confines of its established organizations and networks?
2. What is the Academy’s learning strategy – and how is it different from failed attempts of the past to build capacity through training? What will be the relationship between those who know, those who do, and those who teach? What new learning models will foster cross-cutting leadership, collaboration, and analytical competencies needed – not just technical skills already taught elsewhere? How will it impact the trajectories of humanitarians at different stages of their professional lives? How will the Academy resolve the applicability problem? So far, the Academy’s approach appears to be based on formal learning through training. Can its organizational model foster the kind of informal and incidental learning that is responsible for much of getting things done in humanitarian work – as well as for innovation? Last but not least, how will educational technology be mobilized to help divest of the legacy of face-to-face training that is inefficient, ineffective, and cannot scale to meet the coming humanitarian challenges?
3. Is it sustainable? DFID’s initial commitment covers 40% of the very ambitious business plan of £50m, and, more recently, the Academy’s touted partnerships with the private sector. This question, from my vantage point, is closely related to the learning strategy question. This can’t be only about more resources for training – even after rebranding as capacity-building – without first rethinking the why, who, and how and, second, reimagining learning beyond training. And that will require the Academy’s new governance to focus first and foremost on the “transformational” aspects of the project.
Photo: Sunrise Over Cape Yamu Phuket Thailand Panorama (Kim Seng Suivre/flickr.com)
March 23, 2015