It’s a cool Monday morning, so I’m wearing my Baja hoodie to start the day. A it is Monday, there is the weekly general meeting for SEMUS. The heads of each department gather in the the “salle de reunion”, for an overview of the projects and their status. Today will also be the first time I get to meet with TAHO, as he has returned from his meetings in Ouahigouya (a city to the north of Yako, closer to the Mali border). It will be the first time that I am able to confirm with TAHO that my perception of the value I might create is on track. If I’m wrong it will be a real drag and the waste of an entire week. I will also learn how committed TAHO is to my project and efforts. A frequent experience of volunteers is that by the time a volunteer has arrived, so much has changed that the intent around the original mandate can change so much, that it is often hard to reintegrate the volunteer’s presence and contribution into the current priorities. Who is to say that I have arrived at a time when the team is still focused and available to work through my assignment.
Three hours later, we finished the general meeting and my 1:1 with TAHO. My interpretation of the organization’s need and the approach I have suggested is exactly what he is looking for. Great news! I suggested that I would build a tool in Excel that would allow them a simple way to consolidate expenditures and provide a “Récapulatif” of these expenditures by category, month, and business unit (Bric-a-Brac, Pharmacie, Centre D’Accueil, etc). Initially this will support the creation of more infomred annual budgets. In addition to saving time from the manual effort of creating a summary of expense, on an ad-hoc basis, we will empower managers to use the newly found gift of time to analyse the results and formulate recommendations….to think, rather than simply reacting to newly crafted totals and results. In my mind this puts SEMUS in a better position to execute strategy and establish stronger credibility with donors and the rest of their ecosystem. But what was most important to me was that I could train his team to create, modify and apply the techniques employed in the creation of this tool. enabling them to extend these techniques into other areas of the business. An over-arching objective in the Leave for Change program is to build capacity. Taking the approach, along the adage of “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life” is certainly the opportunity before me and aligns well with my perspective to empower people…to liberate them. For those that know me (and there are so few you of you), I’m all about the long run and lose a disproportionate amount interest in short term gains. I recognize this as a personal handicap. If I can find a model where I have faith that sustainability is the goal, I’m all in. If I suspect that the goal is short term reward (even for me) or change for the sake of change, frankly I think you can get just about anybody to dig that hole. For those of you that are all about the business and wondering “what the heck is he doing over there anywhere?” my “Plan de travail” is as follows:
- Establish the context and objective
- Select the appropriate techniques to be employed
- Perform a learning needs analysis for the accounting team
- Develop and deliver training
- Follow up with support
I was delighted to have TAHO also suggest that he would lead his team, through this program, by establishing a few goals to be pursued following the training. For example they would retrofit their 2012 accounts, using the new tool. An excellent reinforcement for learning and practice and change. It also, to my delight reaffirmed that he really was interested in the outcome and what it would do for him and his team.
If I can just pause here to share with you that personally this was quite gratifying and reaffirming. With the limited information, as a result of the minimum time I spent with TAHO this past week(~1 hour) and the language barrier, I was able to establish an appropriate objective, gain trust and propose a manageable outcome. It’s not an optimal solution but one informed by experience. You have to be flexible enough to not have things perfect but get things to a level that might be nurturable and organic. It has reminded me of a time when I had the title of “Vision Engineer”. I was trusted to scope out, not only the problem but the appropriate solution. As John Klaas (a prince of guy that I used to work for) once said to me during my days of running a “skunk works”, “…you just throw things up on the wall Dan and we’ll go with the goo that sticks to the wall”. I often described my organisation’s business model’s greatest strength as, “if we liberate people to do the right thing…they usually will”.
I concluded my meeting with TAHO explaining to him that I felt the only advantage I had over his team was that I had learning resource available to me, that allowed me to research and learn on my own. To take examples of solutions and apply them to problems that I was trying to solve. He explained that he felt their was a cultural gap in his environment that did not support the idea of self-training; of self-learning and development. I told him things were much much easier where I came from and yet this challenge plagued many people back home. People assume that their needs are so unique that the possibility of finding resources that would allow them to solve (identify a solution) was next to impossible. The truth of the matter, from my perspective, is that there are a limited number of problem patterns out there and that when you are faced with a challenge you can adopt a perspective where you can begin to say “oh it’s one of those” or that solution or technique can be used in these 5 or 6 challenges. Adaptability and flexibility are two of the key strengths that I feel allowed me to be the successful Leave for Change candidate this year. I can often be criticized for not planning as much as others, but in the end my resistance is deeply lodged in the perspective that if you formulate a plan too early, you have already begun to constrain the possibilities, you have already begun to limit the potential and prescribe the outcome. You have to remain open enough to seize the moment and pull the trigger just at the right time. For me, creative solutions are the ones that “glow”. They are the ones that least rely on patterns. Some people see the glow earlier than others and some only see the magic once the solution is complete. There is nothing like having someone believe that what you see exists…even if they don’t see it yet. That is truly engaging.
At the end of the day, I went for a walk through town with
a noticeable bounce in my stride, and began to notice many of the kiosks and vendors had their establishments draped in the Burkina Faso flag. The African Cup football tournament is under way and Burkina Faso is playing its first game against Algeria. As the evening began to unfold, many TV sets were making their way outside and benches were being set up along my route for people to watch. I believe that Burkina Faso is considered the underdog, but I may have just established this to over embellish the romantic aspect of my experience. Later that evening, as I sat outside my room, the entire town erupted in a celebration. It was quite clear to me, not even watching the game, that Burkina Faso had scored. This experience would be the equivalent of a huge campground watching the Stanely Cup and having the home team score. What I hadn’t realized was that this goal had tied the game, and had occurred with less than two minutes to go in the game. Many people were excited late into the night. I’m not a huge sports fan, but there’s nothing like a crowd that’s excited and rallying around a team.
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