by Ken Caplan
We’ve done some thinking recently about working in teams. Not a lot, but just enough to make us pause for thought. It seems there is discussion in all the leadership and management books about the importance of teams. In fact, much of BPD’s work is related to working in teams – partnerships after all are about finding ways of working that rely on “horizontal accountability” and “appreciating the contributions of all”. These two concepts are inextricably linked – creating an environment where there are no hierarchies and there is clear recognition that goals cannot be achieved without everyone’s contribution. On the other hand, some may say that hierarchies create greater clarity, and some contributions are always deemed more important than others (particularly by the financiers).
“Team working” in partnerships (at least for the delivery of water and sanitation for the poor) is notoriously difficult. Both the constraints and the variables are too numerous. In recent BPD team discussions, we quickly came to the conclusion that the only place we’d really seen teams genuinely work for any length of time was in sports. After all, in sports, there is a common and immediate goal (to beat the opposing team). In partnerships the targets may be held in common but the goals (and their implications) are not always understood in the same way. In sports, the rules are clear and the roles of each player from the third baseman to the goalie are understood. In partnerships, this clarity is often missing on both counts. In sports, there is usually a referee or umpire. In partnerships, we watch each other to make sure we are each contributing what we committed to providing, but there are any number of risks to blowing the whistle on our partners. In sports, there is usually a clear time frame – 90 minutes, 7 innings or 4 quarters – after which you know who won (or at least who played the better game). Partnerships may have clear windows of opportunity – like between election cycles or in the dry season – but getting everything done within this period usually proves impossible. One thing in common with sports though, is that there is always a coach, a quarterback, a pitcher or whoever calling the shots – so maybe there isn’t such equality after all?
There is an interesting book called Impro by Nick Johnstone, which teaches actors how to act. Much of the guidance is about getting actors to understand the “status transactions” that occur in the scenes they are playing. In any situation, the drama coach is trying to get the actors to understand where each character fits in the scene – is he or she high status or low status? Or high relative to one character but low relative to another character? Or even more confusingly is he or she high status but needing to raise the status of those around him or her? Or low status but keen to puff himself up to seem higher? Confused yet?
The point is that team or partnership building is a complicated business. As with acting, it usually involves understanding “status transactions” that involve competition between players. This manifests itself in how each partner positions himself or herself vis-à-vis both his presumed but also desired status in the relationship, and these can change over time. Even within teams we are constantly repositioning ourselves depending on each new set of circumstances that arises.
Over the years, our guidance for how to make partnerships work has seemingly become more and more sophisticated, but in fact, it usually still relates to the old faithful inter-related skills of empathy, a sense of fair play, an appreciation of what each player brings to the table, moves that are fit for purpose etc… Maybe even these can be boiled down to one skill – listening. Somehow you can’t do the other things without it.
by Ken Caplan
Over the past year, a wide range of people have been encouraging us at BPD to “blog” – to put some of our ideas down in a space that allows us all to explore, to play, to provoke. Certainly we in the water and sanitation sector do too little of all three. Exploration means admitting we do not have the answers. Playing means discounting the seriousness of the sustainability challenges we are facing. Provoking is not something that is done in polite society (at least not generally on an individual level among and between colleagues, friends or peers). So this new blog is meant to be a space to share things we are thinking about. Exploring allows us to get away with not having the answers. We learn a lot from play. And a bit of provocation might just keep us more honest. So here goes…
Much of the talk in the water and sanitation sector these days is about scale – trying to get our heads around the scale of the problems we face and of the contributions we are making both to the problem and the solutions. The related scale of climate change and global warming is something most of us can’t really comprehend. Our small efforts in the UK to convert to energy-saving light bulbs and turn off the taps when brushing our teeth seem rather insignificant somehow. This leaves the messengers feeling frustrated that they are not getting through and a vast number of us –perversely - positively disincentivised to change our behaviour, uncertain that our contribution makes a difference.
I was recently asked to facilitate a meeting that brought together civil society partners from various countries to revisit the impact of a governance programme halfway through its funding cycle. This wise and experienced group were struggling with how best to learn together and share their experience. Part of the challenge was to find ways of overcoming the seemingly huge differences in the contexts in which they are operating. There is a bigger problem at hand though. While the conversation was going on, I couldn’t help but think that we have done ourselves a disservice in some ways by constantly reiterating just how enormous the water and sanitation challenge is. The numbers and implications are certainly staggering and incomprehensible to those of us who have had the very basic services of running water and access to toilets in virtually every aspect of our lives since birth – at home, at work, on public transportation, in big towns and small.
Yes, somehow - unbelievably - we still need to convince the wider world – donors and funders, policymakers and decision-makers, friends and “competitors” from other development sectors – that water and sanitation are critical to human development. With clear parallels to the climate science discussions, I can’t help wondering whether this shouting to the outside world has had an impact on us within the sector. I have often been struck of late by how colleagues from across the developing world, though justifiably proud of their achievements, are reluctant to draw out their learning for wider audiences – thinking perhaps that it wasn’t of sufficient magnitude to live up to the enormous needs, that it wasn’t ground-breaking, fully formed, easily transferable, a magic bullet, or the holy grail.
Are the pressures to find the answers so great that we are losing the art of iterative thinking and learning? While the poor are desperate for services, they may recognise better than anyone that small steps can make a huge difference in people’s lives. I was reminded at this meeting in India that learning comes from the ground up – by doing, exploring, playing, provoking. It then gets shaped, reshaped, discounted or exaggerated as it makes its way up the system – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Whilst we should still be encouraged to think big and think bold, we need to keep sight of the pressures this puts on us to big-up or bold-up, which may in fact immobilise most of us when we come to articulate our learning. In a fast-moving world where big ideas only take hold now and then, we need the perspective to maintain those smaller conversations that encourage the little “Aha” moments and the everyday reflections that might ultimately make the most difference.
