Thirteen Conversations about One Thing
It’s the little things that drive home the difference. Thursday was to be a holiday, as scheduled. Then the decree came down that Independence was important enough for Wednesday and Friday to be holidays, too. There was much rejoicing, only for word to filter through on Wednesday evening that Friday was being called off as a holiday (still with us?). Most of us had already made plans for the day off (such as loafing around and wasting time), and some, including the rather foolish Ramble, made the mistake of working on Wednesday and Thursday; as a result, about three people turned up to work on Friday.
I wasn’t one of them, having already left for a forest reserve called Dzalanyama, where we trekked (Rambled?) up a mountain. Beautiful, but not enough birds.
* * *
Not much to talk about insofar as work goes. Even if the five-day weekend existed only in theory for me, the absence of colleagues made for a slow week. The major event of interest was the first signs of a concrete result from the Strategy we’ve been working on. We’re holding a meeting soon, bringing together senior representatives from all the major players in the aid relationship to air grievances, discuss solutions and generally be open about what they want and what they’re willing to do.
Doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? But my experiences here have opened my eyes to the importance of getting the ‘simple’ things right, because they’re often far more difficult than they seem, and when they fail everything else becomes even more difficult. In theory, open dialogue, honest discussion and constructive criticism shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. All you need to do is put people with different opinions in a room and get them talking. Unfortunately, where theory is neat and tidy, practice is rather more convoluted.
We all know that our donors have a number of issues with the way Government does certain things, and we all know that donors disagree with each other as to what the Government should be doing and what the donors should be doing. The difficulty is that while many of the individuals we work with are open, clear and straightforward when expressing their opinions, their organisations are usually less so; for essentially political reasons, both Government and donors feel the need to keep their cards close to their chest, at least officially. As a result, working with some donor organisations can be a little like the early rounds of a boxing match – the signals from each side give you an idea of their intentions, but neither one is really ready to commit just yet.
The main problems from the Government point of view are that until all donors are completely explicit as to what they want to see, we can’t really begin to address what we feel we need to address, and present explanations as to why the rest isn’t a priority for us. Further, until donors work more effectively together and present a more unified view, we will always be forced to discuss the same issues time and time again, explaining our position to each donor or group of donors individually. We’re never going to get uniformity of opinion, but a greater degree of consolidation would certainly help.
I should point out, however, that these are institutional problems, rather than problems concerning individuals. Many of my colleagues on both sides of the aid divide are painfully honest. Naturally, some are less straight talking than others, but the basic problem here is in the way in which organisations relate to each other, rather than people. It’s much easier to tell an individual to stop obfuscating and to get to the point; much harder to get the same message across to multi-million dollar organisation.
I’m not really sure of the extent of this problem, and whether its equally severe or even present in all countries. What I do believe, though, is that the lack clear and unambiguous discussion represents a kind of Prisoner’s Dilemma – both Government and donors would benefit from it, but there’s a collective action problem preventing them from actually working together and achieving it. I could go on for days about collective action theory, but I’ll spare you: all I’ll say that there is a need to develop social norms of openness, no matter how long it takes.
* * *
And of course, the World Cup Final. Well, Malouda dived, and whatever Matrix said to Zizou, he shouldn’t have gone all Rhino on him. All in all, an engrossing ending to an engrossing tournament. Can’t wait to go through it all again in four years time.
I wasn’t one of them, having already left for a forest reserve called Dzalanyama, where we trekked (Rambled?) up a mountain. Beautiful, but not enough birds.
* * *
Not much to talk about insofar as work goes. Even if the five-day weekend existed only in theory for me, the absence of colleagues made for a slow week. The major event of interest was the first signs of a concrete result from the Strategy we’ve been working on. We’re holding a meeting soon, bringing together senior representatives from all the major players in the aid relationship to air grievances, discuss solutions and generally be open about what they want and what they’re willing to do.
Doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? But my experiences here have opened my eyes to the importance of getting the ‘simple’ things right, because they’re often far more difficult than they seem, and when they fail everything else becomes even more difficult. In theory, open dialogue, honest discussion and constructive criticism shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. All you need to do is put people with different opinions in a room and get them talking. Unfortunately, where theory is neat and tidy, practice is rather more convoluted.
We all know that our donors have a number of issues with the way Government does certain things, and we all know that donors disagree with each other as to what the Government should be doing and what the donors should be doing. The difficulty is that while many of the individuals we work with are open, clear and straightforward when expressing their opinions, their organisations are usually less so; for essentially political reasons, both Government and donors feel the need to keep their cards close to their chest, at least officially. As a result, working with some donor organisations can be a little like the early rounds of a boxing match – the signals from each side give you an idea of their intentions, but neither one is really ready to commit just yet.
The main problems from the Government point of view are that until all donors are completely explicit as to what they want to see, we can’t really begin to address what we feel we need to address, and present explanations as to why the rest isn’t a priority for us. Further, until donors work more effectively together and present a more unified view, we will always be forced to discuss the same issues time and time again, explaining our position to each donor or group of donors individually. We’re never going to get uniformity of opinion, but a greater degree of consolidation would certainly help.
I should point out, however, that these are institutional problems, rather than problems concerning individuals. Many of my colleagues on both sides of the aid divide are painfully honest. Naturally, some are less straight talking than others, but the basic problem here is in the way in which organisations relate to each other, rather than people. It’s much easier to tell an individual to stop obfuscating and to get to the point; much harder to get the same message across to multi-million dollar organisation.
I’m not really sure of the extent of this problem, and whether its equally severe or even present in all countries. What I do believe, though, is that the lack clear and unambiguous discussion represents a kind of Prisoner’s Dilemma – both Government and donors would benefit from it, but there’s a collective action problem preventing them from actually working together and achieving it. I could go on for days about collective action theory, but I’ll spare you: all I’ll say that there is a need to develop social norms of openness, no matter how long it takes.
* * *
And of course, the World Cup Final. Well, Malouda dived, and whatever Matrix said to Zizou, he shouldn’t have gone all Rhino on him. All in all, an engrossing ending to an engrossing tournament. Can’t wait to go through it all again in four years time.
posted by the Maradona of Malawi at 11:13 PM
