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.

Vision