Jane Carter

Jane Carter’s story elicited in an interview conducted by Arthur van Leeuwen and as Riff Fullan heard it…..

Click here to hear Jane’s talking to Riff and to record your comment.

Experience of Intercooperation (IC) in India – IC had been working in India for 20 years and was closely associated with the Swiss donor organisation, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The Deputy of SDC was also the IC Delegate. In 2003, there was a decision to clearly separate the two. In addition, shortly after that, it was announced that SDC funding in India was going to go down radically (these two decisions were not related, but people experienced them as connected). Both were somewhat unexpected developments. IC staff felt closely identified with SDC, and felt very demotivated. SDC was in a phase of uncertainty itself and it wasn’t clear within the organisation exactly which projects would continue to be supported.

Within the IC delegation, it was decided to have a series of meetings to let people know what was going on (as far as this was known), to discuss how to deal with immediate challenges, and to plan, as far as possible, for the future. At one of these meetings of project team leaders, things came to a head. The team leaders had no enthusiasm to dicuss mundane mangement issues; they wanted the opportunity to create a vision for the future of IC in India.

An opportunity was created a month later, and an external facilitator was brought in who was very experienced with the Appreciative Inquiry methodology. There were about 15 staff altogether, almost all local plus one expat staff member….

The question in the visioning exercise was: what do we want IC to be in India?

The visioning exercise was in June/July 2005.

Process: 2.5 days – They went through the Appreciative Inquiry steps of: 1) Discovery 2) Dreaming 3) Design and 4) Destiny.

1. First, they did appreciative interviews with each other. People were asked to describe what they appreciated in their work and in the organisation through one-on-one dialogues
2. What were the positive things that could be done in future – done in plenary, folowed by group sessions on different aspects.
3. They then looked for keywords on different aspects of the organisation that were common threads. They ended up with a large number of words, it was difficult to filter down to a concise set of words….
4. The Destiny stage was not really completed – partly because of the timeframe, but also as the facilitator felt that the time wasn’t right.

At the previous workshop, people had been very upset and rebellious. The visioning workshop, helped to build a greater sense of trust. People felt better and more positive about the future, although it was a very difficult situation, with projects and jobs in a greatly uncertain situation.

IC’s values in India: Results: Apart from people leaving the wkshop with a positive feeling, another result was the definition of key values of what IC in India should be in future (this was also incorporated into a brochure). A few people who had the drive and the wish to assemble proposals, looking for new funds did so and stayed on with the organisation; others needed a steady salary and decided to move on.

The Appreciative Inquiry workshop and other regular meetings eventually served as a way for people to vent their frustrations and fears, so their sense of anger and disappointment was improved. Appreciative Inquiry was a very good methodology in this case. Also having a highly experienced external facilitator was a critical factor, someone who could be a neutral party.

Ernst Bolliger

Last January, I collaborate to the organization of a fair at SDC (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation)’s Headquarter in Bern: the CoP (community of practice) Dare to Share. The idea was to let CoP animators present their work through a market stand. They were invited to show to SDC staff how they go about CoP, how they organize themselves, for what purpose CoP is a valuable way of organizing, etc. 25 CoPs were presented.

SDC collaborators could walk through the market, talk with CoP animators, ask questions and inform themselves about this instrument. This fair made the CoP working within SDC more visible and represented an occasion to show how they work day to day. We can say that it was a success, first because of the amount and quality of exchanges made and second, because of the number of people who came to discover this way of doing.

A couple of weeks later, we wrote a CoP manifesto that encompassed the main key findings of the CoP Dare to Share. Afterwards, we demanded to the participant to give us a feedback about this manifesto. We received a lot of answer and that was the proof of the interest and of the success met by this fair.

Rebirth

Petr interviewing Simone about her story.

A future story written by Simone

Monday, June 18

The group gathers in the Knowledge Expedition meeting room. Chairs are organized in a circle. Victoria, a storytelling specialist and the facilitator of this workshop welcomes the entering participants. The room seems ready for an event where multimedia has a role to play. It looks like there will be video and sound recording going on. Mary, a photographer is ready to take some shots and Camilo will take notes for the written documentation. Beverly is sitting on a chair with a laptop. She tells me that she is in charge of the documentation of this session which will be videotaped, and podcasted: “After the workshop, we will work virtually together to design, and develop knowledge sharing training modules”, she says. “The KM4Dev community has the project to pool its knowledge and make it available to a larger community”. Simone is coming in. She is one of the Knowledge Expedition workshop coordinators. I ask her to tell me more: “This project is a complementary track to the KM/KS4Dev curriculum project which is upon to start in the room next door. While they will work on basic KS training modules, we will be collecting practitioner’s experiences through stories, that will illustrate the modules”, she says. “The groups will interact as much as possible during the workshop in order to take into account new ideas that emerge at both ends.”

When everybody is ready, Victoria introduces Mukishi, a development worker from Tanzania. Mukishi will share a story with the group about her work on the development of market opportunities through the application of innovative knowledge sharing approaches. It is CARE that brought Mukishi to the workshop. “We are very interested in setting up training programs on knowledge sharing and management”, says Mare, KS advisor at CARE.

Victoria explains the process of this workshop: Victoria will interview Mukishi and the group will then engage in conversations that turn around Mukishi’s story, and the participants related experiences.

During the next hour and a half, I discover what a storytelling specialist is able to do: Victoria engages Mikushi in a fascinating dialogue that turns around her experience in the field. Victoria manages to keep the conversation focused on the people, what difference the KS approaches made to the collaboration and the results of the projects. A big junk of the session is about Mukishi’s experience with knowledge fairs as a way to engage farmers.

After the break, Victoria opens the floor to the whole group of 15 participants. Mukishi s experience remains the focal point around which the discussion unfolds. Ruff, who sits beside me, mentions that the process is almost like a peer assist, and he seems very excited about the process. At the end of the session Victoria invites for a last round of short comments. Mukishi thanks the group for the opportunity to tell her story and the fruitful discussion. “It was interesting to share with people who know a lot about participatory processes. I have the feeling I could give some of my field experience and that this was useful to the group”.

Day one is over. I go to see Mukishi to thank her for sharing her experience. I ask Beverly how it went: “We got so much material to work with! I think we captured a lot of good stuff. The people from the curriculum group saw some excerpts and got very excited about the possible links between both approaches” I ask Allison how she sees the knowledge expeditions to develop further: “This is a first small, but important step,” she says. Through the knowledge expeditions, and experiences like the one Mukishi shared with us, we would like to engage with interested development practitioners in a long-term inquiry process, where we would work in a perpetual learning loop – meeting, learning, going out and testing, coming back to share and so on.” Allison invites Adrian to add something. Adrian works for SDC, who co-funded this project. “SDC was present when the knowledge expedition concept emerged, and we wanted to support this pilot initiative. For the SDC it is important to contribute to strengthen the network of KS practitioners of international development organizations, and to contribute to capacity building efforts in the area of knowledge sharing.

Tomorrow is the next round of the workshop. This time Jonas will share his experience. It is on Headquarter-regional relationships in development organization, a more institutional issue. The knowledge expedition team calls this theme “the fire of the field”. I am looking forward to it.