Hopefully you read my first post to this blog and thought: “Drew’s right, the development industry has lost its courage ... what can we do about it?”If you do an internet search using the keywords “AID + Effectiveness” and then click on the first few links, there’s a good chance that before too long you’ll find yourself reading about a 1997 working paper by economists Craig Burnside and David Dollar. In that paper Burnside and Dollar make the case that there is a positive correlation between a country’s economic policies and the long run impact that foreign aid will have on that country’s GDP growth.
Well it turns out this innocuous academic working paper became the basis of a new development manifesto for the better part of a decade. It was attractive because it offered a new paradigm for thinking about one of the world’s most intractable problems: How can we turn foreign AID dollars into tangible development results? Burnside and Dollar’s findings shifted much of the industry’s focus away from thinking about what to do and how to do it and towards the question of where to spend. While I do think it was an important finding, it unfortunately served to obscure further the biggest issue that I think has always been at the heart of the industry's dismal performance. The real reason that most development programs fail is ineffective management.
Development is a thinker’s paradise. Lofty ideas and complicated theories represent the industry’s greatest attributes, and also its biggest problem. An obsession with concepts and ideas prevents most of the best ideas from actually happening. We get results by finding ways to deal effectively with all the wonderful quirks and imperfections of human beings trying to work together in foreign countries, under pressure, with competing agendas. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, our industry remains naive enough to think it can pull off extremely complicated programs, in the most extraordinary circumstances, without professionally trained management.
Now, if past experience is any guide, this is where I’ll probably lose you. For one thing, it’s tough to describe good management. It's also because good management means doing things that feel awkward and uncomfortable. I have spent hours scouring the web for tools that would make it easier to communicate the key characteristics of good management. One of the best things I’ve found so far is a metaphor of a "fast food window.” This example vividly contrasts the difference between “order takers” and “project managers” and illustrates just how easy it is to fall into the common traps that virtually guarantee project failure for those who have not been professionally trained or mentored in project management.
The key takeaway from this is realizing how crucial it is to start thinking upfront about how to make our clients and counterparts happy at the end of a project, not just the beginning. And we need to learn to work through periods of discomfort in the beginning of projects in order to create value and impact when they are finished.
What makes this more relevant now than ever is that once again we find ourselves on the precipice of significant change. The explosion of aid funding over the past decade, and the heightened expectations and attention that came along with it, pushed our delivery system so hard that we had no choice but to finally admit it was broken.
At the time of Burnside and Dollar's finding, the United States foreign aid budget had sunk to its lowest level in nearly two decades (~ $11 billion/yr). Expectations for aid programs at that time were fairly modest in comparison and the scrutiny and pressure was nowhere near as intense. There were also enough pockets of capable management talent in place to enable the industry to muddle through, but nowhere near enough to handle what happened next. Between 1997 and 2003, the US foreign aid budget more than doubled (to ~ $25 billion/yr), and over the next six years it tripled (to ~ $36 billion/yr). In a nutshell, the industry’s courage was killed by a decade of turbocharged spending through a system ill-equipped to manage it, all at a time when a significant portion of the industry was reducing its focus on what it was doing and how it was doing it.
The industry’s failure to deliver against heightened expectations over the last decade has been a tough pill to swallow. Old habits die hard. That has made it hard for some people to see the bright side, which is that once again we have an opportunity to drive some meaningful change in an industry pursuing one of the world’s most noble causes. There’s a lot of insightful new literature out there with exciting ideas about the direction we can take the industry in the aftermath of our perfect storm. But, what’s still missing from the dialogue is a recognition of how ill-equipped the industry is from top to bottom to effectively lead and manage its projects for real results.
That’s what this blog is all about ... providing practical suggestions for those of you that want to transcend the sexy world of debating development ideas and dig into the heavy lifting of delivering real and sustainable development results. This blog will draw on my background and experience as a mainstream management consultant who made his unlikely landing in the world of development twenty years ago, and share with you a few of the key things that my experience has shown can help the industry make more of its ideas actually happen.
The Bottom Line
Our industry’s obsession with concepts and ideas has long undermined its ability to recognize how difficult it is to make even the best ideas actually happen. If we want to get serious about turning development dollars into real results, we’ve got to really learn how to manage for results and open our doors to trained management professionals.
Next up ... Suggestion #1: Get Naked
- DS
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