Development Through People and Not Things

I recently attended the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) conference in Las Vegas. I had the luck of stumbling into a session with Karol Boudreaux, of George Mason University, presenting a paper titled “Land Reform as Social Justice: The Case of South Africa”. I was interested in the title as social justice is not a theme you encounter much at APEE events unless it is demonstrate how us egg headed idealist tend to mess things up in our attempts to realize a more just world.
While her paper focused on examining South African land reform policies in the context of Hayek’s arguments about social justice, she mentioned private land reform policies that offer a comparative sample for evaluating land reform programs.

Her research found that state directed land reform policies were a disaster. The numbers demonstrated that transferring functioning agricultural holdings to poor farmers only decreased output with the majority of farmers abandoning the lands within a decade. While not providing very much analysis on why they failed, it appears that the primary issues were the lack of technical and business capacity to manage competitive commercial enterprises.

An exception to the failed attempts at justice through government intervention was the land distribution program of the sugar growers association. While their motives were self-serving, they wanted to lessen the demands for redistributing white sugar growing lands to blacks by increasing the number of black growers, their results where much better. The primary difference I was able to observe in the presentation concerned the focus of the private sector programs to assure success by not only distributing land but also providing capital, technical assistance and guaranteeing a market while the new farmers got their feet on the ground.

After her presentation, we talked about different land reform models and she commented on how the most successful agricultural programs in South Africa were not based on land or capital. It was working with women living in the slums to understand local markets. They were able to identify an urban market for the housewives in Johansburg looking for organic gourmet produce. With knowledge, these women were able to start producing and growing their business.

The South African land distribution program demonstrates that capital and land are not the critical elements of successful transformational development programming. People have to be empowered to use these tools. These resources are transformed into wealth by ingenuity and hard work. Programs that do not stimulate these attributes while at the same time undermining them create worse results then the injustices they seek to remedy.

HSP’s methodology to focus on the empowerment of people is demonstrated to be the critical factor in successful development programming. While this is obvious to development people, community organizing and empowerment programs are the least funded off all charitable, justice and anti-poverty pursuits. The reason is that these transformational programs are more expensive.

The challenge is to educate funding sources, be they the World Bank or Aunt Jane Doe, about the benefits of investing in real transformation.

The Haiti Aid Debacle: A Case for Community Organizing

It is becoming increasingly evident that the lack of local engagement by large international organizations has resulted in a breakdown of relief efforts in Haiti.

There are numerous reasons why international organizations do not foster coordination with and empowerment of local actors. A primary factor is the time and expense involved in developing local community infrastructure. Efficiency and scale are the primary measures that agencies are judged by in the development industry. Furthermore, community organizing does not produce an emotional response in potential donors. In the typical marketing that HSP avoids when it comes to development and relief services, it is understood that a message needs to be easily communicated and pull at the heartstrings.

If we visualize the development and relief industry in traditional market terms, we would have to ask what is the supply and who is the demand. Understanding that the foundation of market relationships is meeting demand, that becomes the salient question. While we would like to imagine that development engineers focus on the needs of an impoverished community, the reality is that they must meet the demands of donors. Without the donor’s funds, the majority of programming activities simply would not be possible. Therefore, it becomes paramount to meet the donor’s ideological, political and theological world view.

Another factor is the corporate structure of international development, relief, charity and faith organizations. Semantically, the difference between a corporation and a cooperative is very small, but in practice this difference has a tremendous impact on programming. A corporation exists to make itself money while a cooperative exists to make its members money. Investors gain value with the growth of a corporation. In a cooperative, the entity exists to facilitate the growth of the member.

If we analyze the usual relationship of community members with international development agencies, we can see relationships akin to an investor in a corporation. The community members are passive recipients. A significant difference is that they typically do not have any voice and management policies as a shareholder would have in a private enterprise. Their benefit is dependent on how large the agency becomes. Increases in funding are typically directed towards growing the size of the agency. Staff and personnel allegiances are with the agency rather than the community and are compensated based on the growth of the agency.

The relevance of these issues are striking when considering reports like those on today's Democracy Now.

Sasha Kramer witnessed that aid arrived quickly but was not able to be distributed for lack of local coordination. She noted that when the big aid organizations do circulate around Port-au-Prince they are in large vehicles with their window sealed. They are not able to develop good relationships with the community and do not speak Creole. These organizations are that have worked in Haiti for decades, but do not have the local contacts or organization to go out in the communities themselves.

Catherine Lane commented on how the security concerns before the earthquake limited the type of interactions you would expect people to have after working in the country for a long time. She said this lack of connections in the community is the main reason they are not able to get things out quickly and that this is a major failure in the way larger aid organizations function and in general.

This underscores HSP's methodology in focusing on community empowerment and fostering agency with partner organizations. This reinforces our commitment in staying the course even though it is very challenging.

Wolfowitz should have studied Che

I recently watched Steven Soderbergh’s two part film project based on Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s memoir “Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War”.

I found it to be extraordinarily pertinent for community organizers. It shows that development can only be sustained from within. This constant is demonstrated through the difference of Che's role in Cuba and then Bolivia with a clear view of the results.

In Cuba, Che played a supporting role in Castro' s revolution. On various occasions, Che was relegated to medical support rather than leadership of a column. This validates the appropriate and most functional role for outsiders engaged in organizational efforts. Che provided critical support in a role that he was trained to perform. A role that was needed and there was not sufficient local capacity to perform. When a Cuban capable of performing the role appeared, he moved on to another training role.

The documentary makes clear that the Cuban revolution was an indigenous effort led by Cuban nationals who had investments in the process on different levels. You see the importance of family and professional networks that went well beyond ideological solidarity or strategic interests.

A second significant role that Che played for the Cuban revolution was that of international spokesperson. As a highly educated vagabond documented in the motorcycle diaries, Che had the life experiences and literary flair to play the role of international revolutionary rock star. He played this role in support of and with the direction of an indigenous movement. He was not an outside media star imposing a strategy or ideology on a third-party; rather, he was a spokesperson for that movement.

Analyzing his tragic adventures in Bolivia we can witness the disastrous results of failing to follow the prime directive of community organizing. In the Bolivian experience, we find Che and his merry band of international zealots attempting to jump start a peasant revolution. Che's frustration is almost palatable as he begins to experiences the lack of commitment and integrity of his Bolivian counterparts. In him, we also see the arrogance of the expert attempting to impose a strategy rather than fostering of local leadership. In Che's Bolivian experiment, we witness the problems of not engaging family networks, lack of personal ownership over processes, lack of ego or material investment in the process and impatience in building community capacity and organizational infrastructure. In the end, Che's failure to follow basic organizing practices is a fatal error that is as costly for the Bolivian peasants as it is for his band of Cuban followers.

Therefore, community organizers must support local community development whether we are attempting to spread a worker's utopian revolution or democracy in the Middle East. Unless we have a Messiah complex, the rule of development must be followed lest we wish for others to suffer along.

From Dependency to Agency

The mission of the Highland Support Project is to promote transformational development. A term that often needs to be defined. In the simplest terms, we define transformational development as fostering agency to end cycles of dependency.

We view poverty as a complex process rather than a singular condition. Focusing on indigenous communities, it is arguable that the greatest obstacle to sustainable development is the colonial legacies that forced entire nations into states of dependency that continue to be sustained today.

Therefore, it is imperative to analyze the effects of development and charitable programming to assess the degree that these policies encourage dependency.

Do not be afraid to fail

One issue we find over and over again in our work is the fear of people to fail. As an NGO, we are judged by the success and failure of our programs. We also find that many of the folks we partner with are afraid to fail. I know for myself, posting on this blog that I am supposed to handle has been poor because I want it to be perfect. I am going to follow the advice provided here by Perter Bregman and just do. It will not be perfect, but it will be.

Peter Bregman How We Work

How to Escape Perfectionism

3:10 PM Tuesday September 1, 2009

According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That's right, Iceland. Yes, I know it's cold and dark six months out of the year there. I'm just giving you the data.

The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, Author of The Geography of Bliss, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn't stigmatize failure. Icelanders aren't afraid to fail — or to be imperfect — and so they're more willing to pursue what they enjoy. That's one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation. "There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write," Weiner writes.

Which makes them incredibly productive. They don't just sit around thinking they'd like to do something. They do it. According to the psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, "It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have."

So if you think you're good at something, whether or not you are, you'll do it. The converse is also true: if you think you aren't good enough at something, you won't do it.

A friend of mine, Jeff, has wanted for some time to start a business teaching guitar*. But he hasn't yet. Why? When you sift through his various explanations and excuses it comes down to one simple problem.

He's a perfectionist.

Which means he'll never think he's good enough at guitar to teach it. And he'll never feel like he knows enough about running a business to start one.

Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it's they who aren't ready. At the end, it's their product that's not. So either they don't start the screenplay or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don't want to show it to anyone.

But the world doesn't reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It's the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.

So how do we escape perfectionism? I have three ideas:

1. Don't try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.

   Don't write a book, write a page. Don't create the entire presentation, just create a slide. Don't expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well. Pick a small, manageable goal and follow through. Then pursue the next.

   This gives you the opportunity to succeed more often, which will build your confidence. If each of your goals can be achieved in a day or less, that's a lot of opportunity to succeed.

2. Do what feels right to you, not to others.

   My wife Eleanor is a fantastic mother to our three children. Sleep is extremely important to her and in her early days of parenting she read a tremendous number of parenting books, each one with different advice on how to predictably get children to sleep through the night. Each expert contradicted the next.
   The only thing those books succeeded in doing was convince her she didn't know what she was doing. It was only after throwing all the books away that she was able to find herself as a parent. It's not that she found the answer. In fact, what helped is that she stopped looking for the answer.

   What she found was her answer. And that allowed her to settle into her parenting. It made her calmer, more consistent, more confident. And that, of course, helped our children sleep better.

   By all means, read, listen, and learn from others. But then put all the advice away, and shoot for what I consider to be the new gold standard: good enough.

   Be the good-enough parent. The good-enough employee. The good-enough writer. That'll keep you going. Because ultimately, the key to perfection isn't getting it right. It's getting it often. If you do that, then, eventually, you'll get it right.

3. Choose your friends, coworkers, and bosses wisely.

   Critical feedback is helpful as long as it's offered with care and support. But the feedback that comes from jealousy or insecurity or arrogance or without any real knowledge of you? Ignore it.

   And if you're a manager, your first duty is to do no harm. A friend of mine, Kendall Wright, once told me that a manager's job is to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their maximum contribution. That's as good a definition as I've ever heard.

   And yet sometimes, we are the obstacle. As managers, we're often the ones who stand in judgment of other people and their work. And when we're too hard on someone or watch too closely or correct too often or focus on the mistakes more than the successes, then we sap their confidence. And without confidence, no one can achieve much.

   Catch someone doing seven things right before you point out one thing they're doing wrong. Keep up that 7:1 ratio and you'll keep your employees moving in the right direction.

These three ideas are a good start. Don't worry about following them perfectly though. Just well enough.