A. Healthy Organisations Supporting Dynamic Practices
Helping organisations to restructure and "re-culture" themselves to better support their purpose and practice.
This is a consulting service where we work alongside organisations, accompanying them on their journeys of development. This process is usually collaboratively held with an organisation and designed once we have a clear understanding of what the organisational system is needing and where the main challenges are as well as what the organisation wants to achieve with the process and what its intentions are for engaging outside external facilitation. Usually we start with an organisational survey centred around telephonic or face to face individual or focus group interviews.
We ensure individual and group perspectives are heard equally and objectively towards finding a solution or a way forward for the challenges and expressed needs. We use simple experiential and participatory methodologies tapping into individual and collective wisdom. The facilitator uses dialogue processes where staff will be encouraged to tackle difficult issues in honest and open ways and using a specifically designed process to have these conversations in a safe and contained manner.
The facilitators bring objective perspectives to the process and an expertise and specialist understanding that will help the system understand itself and better find its own solutions and different ways of doing and being.
An appreciative positive approach is held as an important thread throughout. This looks at strengthening what needs to be appreciated and valued about the organisation and thus building the organisation through reflecting on what is working well and should be celebrated and continued, or re-energised and renewed, as well as what new elements need to be incorporated to ensure organisational health and well-being.
The role of the facilitators is to guide and facilitate the process in a manner that helps the organisation to improve and become more effective so that staff are energised and motivated to reach their potential.
This is a consulting service where we work alongside organisations, accompanying them on their journeys of development. This process is usually collaboratively held with an organisation and designed once we have a clear understanding of what the organisational system is needing and where the main challenges are as well as what the organisation wants to achieve with the process and what its intentions are for engaging outside external facilitation. Usually we start with an organisational survey centred around telephonic or face to face individual or focus group interviews.
We ensure individual and group perspectives are heard equally and objectively towards finding a solution or a way forward for the challenges and expressed needs. We use simple experiential and participatory methodologies tapping into individual and collective wisdom. The facilitator uses dialogue processes where staff will be encouraged to tackle difficult issues in honest and open ways and using a specifically designed process to have these conversations in a safe and contained manner.
The facilitators bring objective perspectives to the process and an expertise and specialist understanding that will help the system understand itself and better find its own solutions and different ways of doing and being.
An appreciative positive approach is held as an important thread throughout. This looks at strengthening what needs to be appreciated and valued about the organisation and thus building the organisation through reflecting on what is working well and should be celebrated and continued, or re-energised and renewed, as well as what new elements need to be incorporated to ensure organisational health and well-being.
The role of the facilitators is to guide and facilitate the process in a manner that helps the organisation to improve and become more effective so that staff are energised and motivated to reach their potential.
B. Culture Change Processes
Facilitating deeper conversations to unlock and more fully engage and implement diversity, inclusivity, equality, equity and justice.
Deep and sustainable systemic change must happen in several dimensions. It must shift who we are and how we think and feel (Being), it must shift our relationships, especially the sense and experience of power between us (Relating) and it must lead to different behaviours and practices (Doing). Systemic change that involves everyone’s effort must be tackled from all sides: top-down, bottom-up, inside-out and sideways.
A key challenge is to unblock and cultivate the will of organisations to set aside time to take these issues seriously. This means processes that are owned and not imposed, that are themselves diverse and inclusive, that are creative and not didactic or pedantic, that are generative of human vitality and joy. The stuff that matters is invisible and so it will require the kind of practices that require different ways of engaging, conversing and dialogue. Making this connection will help to unlock the energy required. The kinds of methodologies used are layered, structured and emergent so that we start with the experience of people in an organisational system and we build on that to inquire into what needs shifting. We then focus on the areas that need shifting and design processes that have honest human engagement at their core.
To help organisations get to this point, we assist them to create spaces that are open and inviting and where people feel free to engage - we start small at times with one on one, then pairs, triads, small groups and eventually larger groups. We work with all levels of an organisation to ensure that people start in spaces they feel comfortable in, and then eventually we encourage integration and cross pollination so that organisational silos are dismantled and we connect all parts of the organisational system in learning webs and networks. This also creates shared understanding, commonly understood language and deeper insight and perspectives. We work intentionally with the collective wisdom in an organisational system and ensure that problem solving and creative solutions are found from within. We connect all of this to the purpose and values that bind organisations together and also ensure that this is constantly renewed and refreshed.
Deep and sustainable systemic change must happen in several dimensions. It must shift who we are and how we think and feel (Being), it must shift our relationships, especially the sense and experience of power between us (Relating) and it must lead to different behaviours and practices (Doing). Systemic change that involves everyone’s effort must be tackled from all sides: top-down, bottom-up, inside-out and sideways.
A key challenge is to unblock and cultivate the will of organisations to set aside time to take these issues seriously. This means processes that are owned and not imposed, that are themselves diverse and inclusive, that are creative and not didactic or pedantic, that are generative of human vitality and joy. The stuff that matters is invisible and so it will require the kind of practices that require different ways of engaging, conversing and dialogue. Making this connection will help to unlock the energy required. The kinds of methodologies used are layered, structured and emergent so that we start with the experience of people in an organisational system and we build on that to inquire into what needs shifting. We then focus on the areas that need shifting and design processes that have honest human engagement at their core.
To help organisations get to this point, we assist them to create spaces that are open and inviting and where people feel free to engage - we start small at times with one on one, then pairs, triads, small groups and eventually larger groups. We work with all levels of an organisation to ensure that people start in spaces they feel comfortable in, and then eventually we encourage integration and cross pollination so that organisational silos are dismantled and we connect all parts of the organisational system in learning webs and networks. This also creates shared understanding, commonly understood language and deeper insight and perspectives. We work intentionally with the collective wisdom in an organisational system and ensure that problem solving and creative solutions are found from within. We connect all of this to the purpose and values that bind organisations together and also ensure that this is constantly renewed and refreshed.
C. Strategic Planning & Strategic Reviews
Renewing purpose and focus and developing theories of change and change practice
Strategic planning is a creative process between the past and the future: we build on past achievements and current strengths, breaking out of hard-baked habits of thinking and doing to unlock the creativity required to really see what is possible in the future, re-imagining purpose, strategy and practice. But the past does not hold all the clues to the future – innovation and experimental mindsets must be called on to complete the process.
Participative strategic planning is not just an intellectual process to develop a great plan but one that does so while building or strengthening honest and creative relationships and unlocking the inherent will of people to do something meaningful and joyful together. It is the most important team building process an organisation can undertake.
We have worked over the past 35 years, with organisations large and small, facilitating a wide range of organisational processes around the notion of the ‘learning organisation’, including participative strategic planning. Our approach is both collective and, at key moments, intensely individual, helping the individual find their right work in the organisation but also shaping the organisation around the will of individuals to mobilise their best selves. It is our view that modern organisations have their work cut out for them trying to keep up with the post-modern consciousness of individuals. If you can do it, you can harness the best in people, and strategic planning is a great opportunity for just that.
We are particularly interested in Theories of Social Change and helping people to heighten their thinking and their understanding of human nature and behaviour and how we become stuck and unstuck. And knowing what and how to approach resistance to change. Good strategy must be coupled with good practice (like a doctor or architect has a practice). Strategising must be combined with a continually developing understanding of practice, but many organisations struggle to articulate what it is they really need to work on, inside their strategies, what their practice is. Not all of this can be clarified in a strategic process, but it can be identified and anticipated.
We use a number of different “tools” to not only help a good strategic plan to emerge but in doing so to build thinking and work relationship capacities, within and between the people participating, that are essential for healthy organisational functioning:
There are all sorts of tools and methods to draw on, but we don’t work with recipes. We do like to work with co-designed plans, because clients usually have a better sense of their own process culture, but we also work with emergence, re-assessing and re-designing continuously, with the help of a reference team from the organisation.
Our experience extends across a wide variety of contexts and cultures, and across the different modalities between thinking, designing and doing. We are deeply committed to genuine participation, not only as a democratic principle, but also because we have seen how encouraging the quiet ones to come forward, and the confident ones to bring themselves differently, makes available a wealth of hidden wisdom and capability.
Because of our complex contexts and unpredictable future, continuous strategic thinking is as important as the big moments of strategic planning, and so it is important to include some thinking and commitment to this in the process. We talk about ‘learning rhythms’, which is about finding the regular time to revisit and rethink strategy and practice, as experience emerges, and make conscious strategic adjustments, sooner rather than later. It may require some time investment, although some of this can be incorporated into existing processes, but in the long run it can save much more time through avoiding strategic cul-de-sacs before it is too late and optimizing ongoing learning from experience.
Although the above approach may leave you with a sense of a lot of facilitation work happening, the experience that the participants will have is of quite light facilitation, of setting up the process clearly and then moving out the way to enable the chemistry to happen between them.
Strategic planning is a creative process between the past and the future: we build on past achievements and current strengths, breaking out of hard-baked habits of thinking and doing to unlock the creativity required to really see what is possible in the future, re-imagining purpose, strategy and practice. But the past does not hold all the clues to the future – innovation and experimental mindsets must be called on to complete the process.
Participative strategic planning is not just an intellectual process to develop a great plan but one that does so while building or strengthening honest and creative relationships and unlocking the inherent will of people to do something meaningful and joyful together. It is the most important team building process an organisation can undertake.
We have worked over the past 35 years, with organisations large and small, facilitating a wide range of organisational processes around the notion of the ‘learning organisation’, including participative strategic planning. Our approach is both collective and, at key moments, intensely individual, helping the individual find their right work in the organisation but also shaping the organisation around the will of individuals to mobilise their best selves. It is our view that modern organisations have their work cut out for them trying to keep up with the post-modern consciousness of individuals. If you can do it, you can harness the best in people, and strategic planning is a great opportunity for just that.
We are particularly interested in Theories of Social Change and helping people to heighten their thinking and their understanding of human nature and behaviour and how we become stuck and unstuck. And knowing what and how to approach resistance to change. Good strategy must be coupled with good practice (like a doctor or architect has a practice). Strategising must be combined with a continually developing understanding of practice, but many organisations struggle to articulate what it is they really need to work on, inside their strategies, what their practice is. Not all of this can be clarified in a strategic process, but it can be identified and anticipated.
We use a number of different “tools” to not only help a good strategic plan to emerge but in doing so to build thinking and work relationship capacities, within and between the people participating, that are essential for healthy organisational functioning:
- Listening deeply - at three levels (thinking, feeling and willing)
- How to ask better questions
- How to give helpful feedback (appreciative and constructive)
- How to learn from experience (action learning) and from each other (horizontal learning)
- Using metaphors to “see” what is complex and invisible and to fire up the imagination
- Using artistic activities to unlock creativity (free writing, colour conversations, forum theatre)
- Learning to move to and from different conversational forms: downloading, debating, reflective dialogue and generative dialogue. Also working with “courageous conversations”.
- Making thinking and conversations visible (e.g. through World Café and Open Space) in self-managed processes
- Working with Theories of Change and Programme Theory (See attached ARASA document)
There are all sorts of tools and methods to draw on, but we don’t work with recipes. We do like to work with co-designed plans, because clients usually have a better sense of their own process culture, but we also work with emergence, re-assessing and re-designing continuously, with the help of a reference team from the organisation.
Our experience extends across a wide variety of contexts and cultures, and across the different modalities between thinking, designing and doing. We are deeply committed to genuine participation, not only as a democratic principle, but also because we have seen how encouraging the quiet ones to come forward, and the confident ones to bring themselves differently, makes available a wealth of hidden wisdom and capability.
Because of our complex contexts and unpredictable future, continuous strategic thinking is as important as the big moments of strategic planning, and so it is important to include some thinking and commitment to this in the process. We talk about ‘learning rhythms’, which is about finding the regular time to revisit and rethink strategy and practice, as experience emerges, and make conscious strategic adjustments, sooner rather than later. It may require some time investment, although some of this can be incorporated into existing processes, but in the long run it can save much more time through avoiding strategic cul-de-sacs before it is too late and optimizing ongoing learning from experience.
Although the above approach may leave you with a sense of a lot of facilitation work happening, the experience that the participants will have is of quite light facilitation, of setting up the process clearly and then moving out the way to enable the chemistry to happen between them.
D. Developmental Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation Systems
Strengthening learning and innovation systems and culture to continuously improve organisational practice and accountability
Our approach seeks to strengthen learning in organisations to develop their capacity and practice. The approach resonates strongly with the principles of action research.
In the complex world of social change and development, organisations and practitioners face vital questions flowing from a) the need for accountability, e.g. how effective are we and are we worth supporting? and b) the need for learning and strategic innovation, e.g. how do we become more effective and how do we stay at the cutting edge?
Having worked with some 1500 organisations (my colleagues and I) over the past 3 decades we have observed that many, if not most donors put a strong emphasis on the need for accountability but a weak emphasis on and support for the need for learning and innovation. As a result, there is pressure on organisations to continuously prove their worth by amplifying and communicating their successes and downplaying their failures. They are rewarded for success rather than for what they are learning from their successes and their failures (indeed failure to learn is the only real failure in our book). Even donors who try to emphasize a good balance between these needs often struggle to impress this on their partners who assume that donors only want to hear how they are succeeding. And yet learning from all kinds of experience and experimenting with risky innovations are vital for cracking the wicked problems of social change. Sadly, this focus on accountability, on proving rather than improving and taking risks, has become the culture of so much of the development world.
In our minds the need for learning from experience, for risk-taking and strategic innovation is paramount. Indeed, when we look at organisations that have this as a primary orientation within themselves and in their relationships with their donors, we find a continuous and successful striving for improvement and a motivated staff unafraid to break boundaries. The essential ingredient is honesty and commitment to the truth and a wide-awake flexibility of all stakeholders to see development as a learning journey rather than a mechanical construction project. Honesty is required for learning to happen, and also for unlearning what does not work, which helps keep the spaces of innovation wide open. This honesty is actually a higher form of accountability. A Dutch colleague often used to say “look after the learning and the accountability looks after itself.”
With this orientation in mind, we see M&E systems as primarily strategic innovation and practice development processes (which also answer any accountability questions thrown at the organisation). This means that data gathered, collated and made sense of becomes intelligence gathering to inform ongoing strategic and practice development conversations at different layers of the organisation. By “data” we mean not only the numbers but also the deeper stories or case studies through which sense can be made of the unfolding and apparent results (what appears to be a failure may be the seed of an astonishing success). An M&E system would need to include processes of sense-making that are continuous, even rhythmic, in the life of an organisation, coupled with a continuous eye for innovation and the space this needs for experimentation and culture which rewards honesty above success and requires the acceptance of failure and the need to unlearn.
We have developed a set of online case study writing workshops to help practitioners to surface and make sense of their stories or experiences, individually and in teams. The key to this process is to help them to a) break through writer’s block and b) surface not only the visible ‘outside story’ but also the less visible ‘inside story’ of the hidden developing agendas, assumptions, relationships, emotions etc., which when revealed provided a deeper understanding of why things happened as they did.
Evaluations
In our work we have found that external evaluations can be an excellent opportunity for organisational learning. However, to ensure that evaluations are not simple paper-exercises and do indeed contribute towards learning (and change), certain methodological considerations arise. A few principles guide us towards ensuring that the evaluations we conduct are useful and applicable with respect to the interests and concerns of the organisation:
Our approach seeks to strengthen learning in organisations to develop their capacity and practice. The approach resonates strongly with the principles of action research.
In the complex world of social change and development, organisations and practitioners face vital questions flowing from a) the need for accountability, e.g. how effective are we and are we worth supporting? and b) the need for learning and strategic innovation, e.g. how do we become more effective and how do we stay at the cutting edge?
Having worked with some 1500 organisations (my colleagues and I) over the past 3 decades we have observed that many, if not most donors put a strong emphasis on the need for accountability but a weak emphasis on and support for the need for learning and innovation. As a result, there is pressure on organisations to continuously prove their worth by amplifying and communicating their successes and downplaying their failures. They are rewarded for success rather than for what they are learning from their successes and their failures (indeed failure to learn is the only real failure in our book). Even donors who try to emphasize a good balance between these needs often struggle to impress this on their partners who assume that donors only want to hear how they are succeeding. And yet learning from all kinds of experience and experimenting with risky innovations are vital for cracking the wicked problems of social change. Sadly, this focus on accountability, on proving rather than improving and taking risks, has become the culture of so much of the development world.
In our minds the need for learning from experience, for risk-taking and strategic innovation is paramount. Indeed, when we look at organisations that have this as a primary orientation within themselves and in their relationships with their donors, we find a continuous and successful striving for improvement and a motivated staff unafraid to break boundaries. The essential ingredient is honesty and commitment to the truth and a wide-awake flexibility of all stakeholders to see development as a learning journey rather than a mechanical construction project. Honesty is required for learning to happen, and also for unlearning what does not work, which helps keep the spaces of innovation wide open. This honesty is actually a higher form of accountability. A Dutch colleague often used to say “look after the learning and the accountability looks after itself.”
With this orientation in mind, we see M&E systems as primarily strategic innovation and practice development processes (which also answer any accountability questions thrown at the organisation). This means that data gathered, collated and made sense of becomes intelligence gathering to inform ongoing strategic and practice development conversations at different layers of the organisation. By “data” we mean not only the numbers but also the deeper stories or case studies through which sense can be made of the unfolding and apparent results (what appears to be a failure may be the seed of an astonishing success). An M&E system would need to include processes of sense-making that are continuous, even rhythmic, in the life of an organisation, coupled with a continuous eye for innovation and the space this needs for experimentation and culture which rewards honesty above success and requires the acceptance of failure and the need to unlearn.
We have developed a set of online case study writing workshops to help practitioners to surface and make sense of their stories or experiences, individually and in teams. The key to this process is to help them to a) break through writer’s block and b) surface not only the visible ‘outside story’ but also the less visible ‘inside story’ of the hidden developing agendas, assumptions, relationships, emotions etc., which when revealed provided a deeper understanding of why things happened as they did.
Evaluations
In our work we have found that external evaluations can be an excellent opportunity for organisational learning. However, to ensure that evaluations are not simple paper-exercises and do indeed contribute towards learning (and change), certain methodological considerations arise. A few principles guide us towards ensuring that the evaluations we conduct are useful and applicable with respect to the interests and concerns of the organisation:
- Organisational learning is the route to external accountability. This does not exclude an external voice, but it integrates it into a broader process that is centrally to do with internal self-assessment and learning. Though facilitated, the evaluation is essentially ‘client led’ and therefore requires a high degree of ownership in the process.
- Participation. Evaluation for learning is a collaborative effort that goes beyond assessment of facts and figures. An evaluation “finding” is often arrived at through a process of questioning, listening, making meaning and deepening understanding of the work that has been undertaken. This requires the use of instruments and spaces which allow for such conversations in the process.
- Strategic connection. Finally, evaluation should be conducted with an eye on the future in order for learning to be maximised, and for the evaluation to be of real use to the organisation. Therefore findings should be explored further and their implications for the future strategy and practice should also be drawn out - how might things be done better, and what would that imply.
E. LEADERSHIP COACHING AND MENTORING
Supporting leaders to better see themselves, the people they lead and manage and their real work to unlock potential
Effectively leading and managing a civil society organisation in a complex world towards an uncertain future, sometimes feels like an impossible challenge. Staff are more empowered and want their say, while the work pace accelerates and the pressure to deliver results climbs higher than ever. In addition, it is clear that strategies and practice must become more partnership-based, but experience has proved this to be more than difficult.
The things that matter are not getting the right attention.
Organisations are social beings with a life of their own and cannot be treated as mechanical things to adjust and manipulate. They are creative, purposeful human processes of dynamic relationships that leaders and managers can learn to observe, to listen to and to facilitate, rather than to impose and control. Occasionally you must lead from the front, at other times from behind and sometimes you are there to walk alongside. The promise of purpose, passion, insight, curiosity and joyfulness that first attracted you to this work can still live at the heart of your organisation doing the right work in the world. If you, as leader and manager, can find the right approach and balance.
This coaching and mentoring service provides a safe and confidential learning space to bring your leadership and management practice, your questions, challenges and hopes, to share and talk through with an experienced consultant. You will be stimulated by approaches and frameworks that will help you to ask the right questions, to discover fresh ideas, to both solve nagging problems, and to open up new possibilities for a thriving and purposeful workplace and practice.
The service can be offered both face-to-face and online.
Effectively leading and managing a civil society organisation in a complex world towards an uncertain future, sometimes feels like an impossible challenge. Staff are more empowered and want their say, while the work pace accelerates and the pressure to deliver results climbs higher than ever. In addition, it is clear that strategies and practice must become more partnership-based, but experience has proved this to be more than difficult.
The things that matter are not getting the right attention.
Organisations are social beings with a life of their own and cannot be treated as mechanical things to adjust and manipulate. They are creative, purposeful human processes of dynamic relationships that leaders and managers can learn to observe, to listen to and to facilitate, rather than to impose and control. Occasionally you must lead from the front, at other times from behind and sometimes you are there to walk alongside. The promise of purpose, passion, insight, curiosity and joyfulness that first attracted you to this work can still live at the heart of your organisation doing the right work in the world. If you, as leader and manager, can find the right approach and balance.
This coaching and mentoring service provides a safe and confidential learning space to bring your leadership and management practice, your questions, challenges and hopes, to share and talk through with an experienced consultant. You will be stimulated by approaches and frameworks that will help you to ask the right questions, to discover fresh ideas, to both solve nagging problems, and to open up new possibilities for a thriving and purposeful workplace and practice.
The service can be offered both face-to-face and online.
F. In-house Courses
Developing individual and team thinking, ability and will, in customised learning and practicing processes.
We offer courses in many areas like:
These are all offered on an in-house basis. Variations and combinations of the courses can also be negotiated.
In-house courses offer an opportunity for a customised offering that speaks to the unique needs and dynamics of the organisation. These interventions can be very effective in supporting broader change efforts and capacity building within the organisation.
While we provide important and stimulating input, all of our courses are highly participative, engaging the participants' own experiences and challenging them to develop, ask and to answer their own questions. This inside-out approach engages not only the world of ideas but approaches the less-visible emotional and intentional dynamics to enable participants to identify their own will to work and any resistances that are holding them back. We catalyse cross-learning between participants. This generates a horizontal learning dynamic especially fruitful for teams of practitioners wanting to rethink and renew the way they work together. Every course leads back into action to ensure that participants are able to apply their learning to their real-world practice.
For the in-house course, a survey will be conducted beforehand. This will provide the facilitator with information regarding the challenges and issues currently being faced, so that the content and process can be adapted to accommodate for the needs identified. The course design will also make provision for team building, joint reflection and learning as to how new concepts and skills can be applied towards improved organisational functioning and practice.
We offer courses in many areas like:
- Organisation Development for leaders and managers
- Facilitation and design of effective social processes
- Writing out of field practice including stories, case studies, reflective reports and articles for publication,
- Learning-focused Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation to deepen practice and supporting organisation
These are all offered on an in-house basis. Variations and combinations of the courses can also be negotiated.
In-house courses offer an opportunity for a customised offering that speaks to the unique needs and dynamics of the organisation. These interventions can be very effective in supporting broader change efforts and capacity building within the organisation.
While we provide important and stimulating input, all of our courses are highly participative, engaging the participants' own experiences and challenging them to develop, ask and to answer their own questions. This inside-out approach engages not only the world of ideas but approaches the less-visible emotional and intentional dynamics to enable participants to identify their own will to work and any resistances that are holding them back. We catalyse cross-learning between participants. This generates a horizontal learning dynamic especially fruitful for teams of practitioners wanting to rethink and renew the way they work together. Every course leads back into action to ensure that participants are able to apply their learning to their real-world practice.
For the in-house course, a survey will be conducted beforehand. This will provide the facilitator with information regarding the challenges and issues currently being faced, so that the content and process can be adapted to accommodate for the needs identified. The course design will also make provision for team building, joint reflection and learning as to how new concepts and skills can be applied towards improved organisational functioning and practice.
