The grinning head of the head of charity:zombie explodes.

Explodes all over Jason, CEO of ZOMS.

But Mohammed, hand clutched to the fountaining ruin of his throat, still lives. Mouth moving silently. He tries to stand. Falls backward.

“Nooooooooooo!!!!”

Like lightning, Tom Fowler races to his side and catches him as he falls.

“Jesus Christ. Mohammed! Jesus. Jesus Christ, Mo.”

Stern face utterly stricken, Tom cradles him with one arm, the other applying extra torniquet pressure atop Mohammed’s hand. But the crimson flows freely through their fingers, entwining them together upon the deadly wound.

Mohammed’s eyes are dimming, but they manage to fix upon to OCHA chief’s.

Again his mouth moves, barely a croak beneath a whisper, as blood runs from the corner of his mouth.

“Arrhhh… annnd… arrrrhh…”

Fowler chokes on a  sob, half grief, half unexpected laugh. Tears fall onto Mohammed’s face from the one just inches from his.

“Go on ahead, mate. I’ll be on the next plane. See you on R&R.”

For the last time, across two decades of uncounted camps, and capitals, and half caught moments. Always another response. Always another outbreak. Never enough time.

But for the last time, they kiss. And then Mohammed is gone.

Fowler’s bloody hands cover his face, and he silently rocks in grief.

*-*-*-*-*

Patience from UNICEF is crouched over Jason the ZOMS CEO, who is curled in the corner of the room, intermittently vomiting. With a teaspoon and a tissue, she is daintily scooping and wiping the worst of the cerebral muck from Jason’s face.

They are joined by Mick Jenkins, the policy beanpole, who bends his lanky frame to sit on the floor beside the shell shocked social entrepreneur, and hands him a steaming mug.

“Drink up, chuck.”

Jason takes a sip. Tea, very sweet and very strong. Sips again and with trembling hands takes a gulp. It helps.

“Are. Are. Are all. Are all y-y-your cluster meetings. Are. Are they all. This. This bad?” Gulps the tea again.

Jenkins gives a distant, weary shake of his head. Sips his own.

“No, mate. Sometimes they’re worse.”

A horrified glance from marketing, into the thousand yard stare of policy.

“Sometimes there’s no tea.”

*-*-*-*-*

“Sir? Sir? Mister Fowler? Is there anything I can do?”

It’s Kochanski, the aide. Hovering, fretful.

With a wrench of will, Fowler visibly parks his grief.

“No, thank you, Kochanski.”

His hand moves gently across the face of Mohammed, closing his eyes. He picks up his enormous black pistol from the floor. Pauses for a moment, eyes resting upon it, as if considering another way. And yet he stands, and from some unknowable reserve of strength, his shoulders begin to square. His gaze raises to the room. A ragged voice.

“Agenda Item Four.”

They all look at him.

Libby, chainsmoking throughout, nods slowly at him, grim respect. “Aw’right then. You heard him, boys and girls. Agenda Item Four.”

Kylie and Agnes take up the echo.

“Agenda Item Four.”

Wordlessly, Agnes points past him to the doors of the conference room behind. He turned to look.

Through the frosted glass, there’s shadows and movement in the corridor.

Tom casts a sidelong eye at his aide.

“Kochanski. Do we have this room booked until six pm?”

“We do sir, there’s no one expected…”

“Kochanski. Did you secure the external corridor as I requested, following all you’ve been instructed on close quarter opsec?”

There is a low moan, a thump, and a pair of bloody hands can be seen pawing limply at the glass.

“Sir, I mean, Tom, sir I’m sure I-“

And then another pair at a conference room window. And then another. Another.

“Comments, questions, amendments?” says Tom, looking around.

Shakes of the head, small hand gestures of no. Two shrugs.

“Very good. Minutes agreed.” He ticks on his clipboard. “Agenda item two, Exzom proposal.”

He looks around the room. “Everyone received their copy, yes?” Mostly nods, except-

Jason, looking quizzically at Scott – the two late-twenties Americans. Both clean cut, well built, bespectacled. “Ah, Tom, I know we’re just new here, I guess maybe we must not be on your email list yet…”

“Goodness gentlemen, I really do apologize.” Tom again. “Kochanski, if you don’t mind?” The aide pulled extra copies from her folder and handed them down the row of desks. The first page of each was the distinctive lime green Exzom logo: a green circle shaped like an ‘O’, with the crosshairs of an ‘X’ in the middle.

“I’m being remiss in my duties as Chair. Have you all met Jason Sorenson of ZOMS, and Scott Anderson, Charity:Zombie?”

Noes and yeses from around the room. “California boys. Abercrombie and Fitch…” whispers Kylie to Patience, seated next to her. The Malawian stifles a giggle.

Tom, intently pretending not to have heard. “We’ll do other intros as need be. Libby? you have the floor.”

Libby sucks the last from her cigarette and stubs it on the blood spattered table.

“Thanks Tom. Right. Libby Dumont, Program Coordinator. Well, except for the newcomers, and I do apologize for tha’, it should all be fairly straightforward. In this proposal, we at Exzom request seven fifty kay from the Z Cluster ERF for ZomWatSan. Bread and butter multisector pudding, eh? Watsan for the thirty thousand refugees within the boundaries of the camp. Indicators same as last time, lined up with Sphere eleven like last time. An update on the last sitrep, my water boys are now satisfied we’ve got right the submersible pumps, and are a-ok and stable above ten litres a day per person for the last week. On the Zomsan side, we’re all squared away with ACDEAD” – a nod to Mohammed across the room, who gives a thumbs up – “as camp manager, around the perimeter protocols and firing lines. I can give a further run down on the latrines and all tha’, but in the interests of brevity, perhaps I can just take questions?”

There’s a moment of pause as everyone sheafs through the papers. A mixture of those who’ve done thematic review three nights ago giving it a glance, and those who were supposed to have read it when circulated yesterday, and trying to pretend like this isn’t the first time they’ve actually turned past the first page.

There’s one though who is different. Anderson, who’s just seen it. Eyes begin to blink rapidly. Closed hand rises to his mouth. Visibly gulps.

“Thanks Libby.” Tom chairs. “Patience? Anything from the UNICEF side on this?”

“No Tom.” She lisps. “We have seen the drafts on this and approve.”

Another tick on the clipboard. “Agnes? HCR?”

Agnes, Irish. The tiniest frown.

“I know the ink isn’t dry on the Zomsan standards, but I wonder Libby if you wouldn’t mind just talking us through how you’re doing the targeting.”

Libby turns to the sixth page. “No problem, dear. Short answer is, we don’t. Indiscriminate firing.”

A raised eyebrow. A few heads turn.

“Look, for us it’s a matter of simple cost effectiveness in this context. We’ve conducted the EMMA – the Emergency Mercenary Market Analysis – and came up dry. So there’s no point trying to ship in a bunch of fancy pancy poncy expensive laser targeting scopes, if we’re just putting carbines in the hands of semi-skilled beneficiaries. In theory we could recruit some of the random militias nearby to the project, but you know the broader protection issues they bring about. So yes, we do have significant higher ammunition expenditure, as you can see in the budget on page twelve, but we do still achieve one hundred percent CFR as measured at the minimum perimeter. And it’s all an approach strongly endorsed by Duncan Cover, our Senior Strategy & Tactics Advisor.”

Anderson’s face reddens like a beetroot.

“If I can just say,” says Kylie, eyes deep in her own copy. “I think we need to have the discussion around this kill ratio. I appreciate that Libby is on the mark with the zomsan standard, but between the high costs and the problematic intersection with the early recovery livelihoods work we’re doing at Save The Children From Zomb-“

Two fists smash on a desk.

“WHAT IN HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!” bellows Anderson, bewildered and enraged.

“Hey buddy, take it easy…” says the quieter American.

Fowler’s eyes narrow. “Mister Anderson. This is not the behaviour I expect in this meeting.”

“Take it easy, will I HELL!” He stands from his chair. “I cannot be-LEEVE this is what you all are about out here!”

“You!” Pointing at the man from O.C.H.A. “You’re a sick bastard, you know that? You fuckin’ loved killing those people ten minutes ago, didn’t you? I bet you didn’t even think once about it!”

“Mister Anderson. Scott. Those were not people. We have close protection protocols. Which save lives.”

Anderson flexes once, and flips the desk in front of him, sending his papers and both the folder and pistol of Mohammed flying across the room. The Iraqi merely crosses his arms and laughs, broad grin on his face. Can’t wait to tell the folks back at the team site about this…

“Save lives? Save lives? How can you save lives when this whole system you have here is a massacre? Can’t you hear yourselves?” he bellows. “Those people outside the wire, they – are – your – goddamn – BENFICIARIES!!”

He gesticulates furiously at the Exzom papers strewn on the floor. Gulps for breath.

“Look, I don’t need your fuckin money! I got more than enough! Seven-fiddy kay, fuck you lady! I can call fifty people in the Valley who’d wire that to me in an hour!

“I brought my ART supplies here from the States to collaborate with you old timers on the FRONT LINES! Yes, ART! To reach out, to bring these people back to humanity from the beyond! To like, teach you something, prove we can transform the whole fuckin’ nature of zombinitarianism! And you all… you’re all just going along the same! Aaagh!” He screams and theatrically shakes fist.

Mick, the lanky Brit in the corner, seems perked into action. He speaks quickly, soothingly. “Well, yes, you know, in terms of policy, I would just have to say, that our friend here, while somewhat excitable, isn’t completely speaking without merit…”

“Aaaah!!” screams the American again, hoarsely. The theatrical shake, now a whole body tremble.

“There’s promising new operational research from ZDI looking into the possibility of deoxyrybo-radioactive chimeric change adaptation, or DRR-CCA as we say, and-”

“Aaaaahhh!” screaming again, and his arms whip around at his own chest, head lashing back and forth. “Aaaaahhh!” Uncontrollably.

“Kochanski! Weapons!” barks Tom.

And then it happens.

Most people go over in ways that you expect. Night guard falls asleep from exhaustion, perimeter fails, shufflers approach under dark… gone. Then there’s the desperate horror of the villages too close to the borderlands. Children out collecting firewood the first to be infected, parents let them back into camp, who can’t see or don’t want to see the signs of milkiness at the edge of the eyes… parents who end up the first to be consumed, the toddler at the breast turning in the night to the zombie at the throat.

But sometimes it took people differently, somehow sooner, somehow sicker, somehow savage, it nestled in their brain first and fed them an overdose of rage…

Anderson’s hands clench, clawlike. With a final inhuman shriek, one wrenches upwards, almost involuntarily, and claws out his own left eye, the dainty rims of the Armani Eagle eyewear crushed into his face.

There’s a sudden movement as the first few to react dive out of their chairs. But Mohammed sits frozen an instant too long, grin still plastered on, and a vice-like hand from the figure standing next to him clutches spastically onto his throat.

He manages half a choked yelp, but it is too late. With one horrific motion, the camp’s newest, most muscular, gym-junkie zombie twists and tears away at the exposed flesh of the ACDEAD coordinator’s neck, gouting jugular blood into the air, and brings a dribbling gobbet of flesh to its mouth.

Its triumphant scream subsides into a delighted gurgle of glee.

An endless second too late, there is a thunderous, hollow-point gavel blow from the Chair.

The grinning head of the head of charity:zombie explodes.

.

To be continued…

“Hey, Kylie…. Agnes, Libby, Mohammed, Patience.” Tired smiles, nods of the head. Two new faces, two guys, though.

“Are we all early?”

“Nope. Email said ERF board’s on at four.”

Gingerly Mick peered through the frosted glass door into the conference room. “Occupied. Damn.”

“I suppose someone should… you know. Hurry them up?” This is Kylie, the ash-blonde, weather-tanned Australian.

No one else speaks. Awkwaaard. Eight pairs of eyes find something else to do. Skimming documents one last time. Fiddling with the gain on a handheld radio. Texting. Stretching in that way that’s meant to look relaxed, but –

A crack from down the hallway whips the group into a flinching instant of panic. Thirty yards away, a door smacks back into a wall, through it in a purposeful stride a stocky man in dusty fatigues, satchel over one shoulder, clipboard in hand. An aide scurries through behind him.  They relax, a little.

“Ah shit. Here’s Tom.” Mick mutters.

“Is he gonna be, like, pissed we’re all standing around….?” One of the neat new faces.

“Eh. Too late for that now, boyo.” This from Libby, Glaswegian accent as thick as porridge and treacle. Middle-aged with unkempt frizzy blonde hair, she has a cigarette behind her left ear, and her drill cotton field clothing is streaked with dirt and blood.

“I’m Jason, Ma’am. And this is my colleague Scott. I don’t think we’ve…?”

She laughs, emphesemically. “Another Jason. Of course ye bloody are.”

The man and his aide approach. He wastes no time. “Well. Are we all here?” Gruffly.

“All that’s coming, Tom.”

“Aaaand I suppose we’re waiting for…”

“Room’s occupied.”

Now it’s Tom’s turn to peer through the glass. “Anyone we know?”

“Protection cluster, sir.” From Mick, eyes downcast.

Tom grimaces, an expression utterly consumes his craggy features, before disappearing from it into resolve.

“Thanks, Mick. I’m sorry.” He places a firm but comforting hand on the gangly young Brit’s shoulder. For a moment. “Let’s take care of this.” Mick nods.

Tom gently places his clipboard on the floor, and takes from his satchel two enormously menacing black pistols.

There is a barest moment of pause.

“On three then?”

Groupthink of eight quick nods.

“Good. Three.” And before anyone can even reach a holster, he delivers a thunderous kick at the door and dives through.

Tom Fowler, OCHA guy. Lately, anyway.

His forward dive roll carries him well through the doorway to a kneeled position at the foot of the conference table, both weapons extended, seeking targets. The room isn’t large. In simpler days, it would have seated a stifling twenty, all hoping the generator and air-conditioning didn’t give out.

Ex-Special Boat Service, don’t mention Basra, especially not when he’s been drinking.

Today there are five zombies seated at it, in various states of repair and rot. Three react to his presence, issuing guttural moans and attempting to stand and grasp for the entrant. But they’re tangled up in the desk and chairs, trying to stand. It’s a turkey shoot.

But thank God he’s here, is what they say, except not to his face.

Three shots boom out in a single second, leaving ears ringing in the hallway. Head shots all, and explosive bursts of blood coat the walls behind.

Two other zombies remain seated, further into the putrefecation, and a two more blasts make short work, sending them toppling backwards off their chairs onto the floor behind.

Loudly, over the ringing he knows they’re dealing with. “The room is clear, ladies and gentlemen. I say again, the room is clear.” He holsters and stands in one motion.

They file in. One of the new guys, Scott, is tugging at his ear.

Tom’s aide hands him his clipboard.

“Kochanski!”

“Y-yes, Mr Fowler.” Raggedly, from the aide. “Sir, what about the-“

Brusquely. “Tom, please, Kochanski.” With a tight smile. “Could I possibly trouble you to kindly see to the hallway you failed to barricade on the way in? And then perhaps we can make a start.”

“Ye-yes, Tom.” Shamefaced, she retreats out the door.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we are… six minutes past the hour.” A distasteful wince. “If anyone needs coffee, or tea, or if you’re lucky some nine millimetre reloads, you should find them on the end table.” He walks down the middle of the U-shaped curve desks, slides casually over the end, and into the Chair’s position.

Libby is last through the door. She moves to take a seat by one of the chair-flipped zombie corpses, now sprawled on the floor. Somehow, a fetid gurgle erupts from its mouth despite the bullet wound which has removed half its face. What’s left of sentience stirs, a rotting hand clawing at her ankle.

She pauses, exasperated, and looks down at it condescendingly. “Kylie, be a dear and look after my papers?” She hands over a plastic wallet of printouts to the Australian, before turning her attention to the undead creature by her feet.

“The development community is often plighted by high cost trainings, where people all get paid transport fees and have accommodation and expensive consultants to train us. Often the training gets squeezed into 4 or 5 days. The results of these trainings are rarely reviewed, and by that very fact, we could assume not always very positive in terms of change.

And then comes the exception.”

He’s referring to the three-country trial of some different learning approaches on project management that I kicked off and wrote about back in February. You can read part one, part two, part three and part four. My colleague is in Tanzania, the ‘condition 3′ country – distance learning support only, no face to face workshop. He continues:

“The training was done through a series of on-line sessions over a period of about 8 weeks, but in total, we were together (virtually) for only about 12 hours, so the equivalent of 1.5 days.  This training came with no real additional costs to our organisation.  And the thing that I personally liked, there was no certificates for participation, only for passing a test.  Adding to that, a pass mark was set at a level of at least 70%.”

At the six month mark (in August) I’ll be doing an end line survey of all participants and discovering what the impact has been in each country – have people actually learned and changed the way they work for the better? But I’m very pleased to be beaten to the punch on this with what he writes next:

Recently, I was with some members of the team that took part in the training in a general meeting, which was bringing together people from the private sector, universities, research institutes, government and fellow NGO’s to review and confirm the allocation of responsibilities under a newly awarded donor contract. 

Impressive it was to see some of the familiar slides from the training up on the projector.  But that would be easy, just copying and pasting.  What was impressive is that the team had learnt and adapted the training tools to the piece of work that they were sharing.  More than that, in the process of the meeting they were training others on what they have learnt so that their work is improved as well (and doing this in a low cost way).

Here’s the whole post.

Regional office: Thanks for the update. You OK or you need some help with that shit?

Field: Shit yeah.

Region: What kind of shit is going down?

Field: Really shitty shit. I mean, there are shitloads of people coming across the border. Refugees. Returnees. You name it, we got it. And would you believe it, they all need shit, and they all need to shit.

Region: Sheeeeit. OK. Yo, HQ. Field is in the shit.

HQ: Well go help them with their shit.

Region: No shit, Sherlock. We are. It’s still shit. And it’s getting shitter. And now there’s like, bombs dropping and shit.

HQ: Oh, shit.

HQ: OK EVERYONE LISTEN UP WE ARE ON IT NOW AND IN CHARGE AND WE ALL HAVE TO GET OUR SHIT TOGETHER. I WANT DAILY UPDATES ABOUT THE SHITTYNESS OF THIS SHIT!

Region: Oh, shit.

Fundraising: Hi guys! Um… how much is all the shit you need gonna cost?

Field: Dunno. But shitloads, definitely shitloads. Call it ten million.

Fundraising: Oh, shit.

Region: HQ, can you give us some cash to give to Field, so they can get going while fundraising does their shit?

HQ: Ah, shit. Look it’s end of financial year… I’m a bit short right now… here’s $100k.

Region and Field: You have got to be shitting me.

Fundraising: Don’t worry guys! I totally got this. Field, can you please stop what you’re doing and send me some pictures of your shit?

Field: Shitshitshitshit. OK… fine. Here.

Fundraising: Thanks for the pictures guys! I’m afraid these pictures of your shit are a bit shitty. We’ll send out a shit-hot photographer. Also we’ll go shoot the shit with the donors.

HQ: WHY IS NO ONE PAYING ATTENTION TO ME? MORE SHITREPS PEOPLE!

Region: LOL! Well played.

Field: Ahem… can we get on with our shit now??

HQ and Region: YES! GO GO GO GO!

Logistics: Hey! Nobody told me you need ze big piles of sheet!! Whaz iz wiz you people, you teenk shit grow on trees!!

Region: Calm down logs, no need to lose your shit.

Field: Just ignore them. They’re always like that.

Logistics: Merde! *drags on cigarette*

Finance: What the shit is going on? You’ve spent a million quid! Which shit for brains signed off on all this shit!?

Field: Sometimes the spirit just moves you. Y’know, humanitarian imperative an’ shit. Soz.

Region: “The spirit” just moves you? Bullshit! Right. Gin is now banned from all team sites.

HQ: The shit is really gonna hit the fan when audit hear about this.

Fundraising: Hi guys! Got you a couple million, enough to muddle through, but not the proper shitload you really need. Some donors have some other nasty shit on their plate. Others have to hang back until this crisis is officially designated as “deep shit”. And frankly, some just don’t have their shit together. And as you know…. all this shit just rolls downhill. 

HQ: Ah, shit.

Region: Ah, shit.

Field: Eh. Same old shit.

Fin

But just noticed this:

I dont know, im nothing even close to a philanthropist, politician or nothing even NEAR an activist or even fucking EDUCATED for that matter. I just want to encourage more people to think for themselves more often… we’re all very apt at “spreading awareness” as a nation, a culture, WE HAVE THAT SHIT DOWN.

Let’s focus a little more on what kinds of peaceful resolve and positive action… can be taken to resolve a global issue. By asking the people claiming to be the “frontmen of the cause”  (which is no doubt, usually a noble cause) who are asking for money or attention, WHERE is this going, HOW is it getting there, WHERE is the data, WHO is doing the footwork, and most importantly what are the predicted results.

Attention, [b]advocacy practitioners. You have just been schooled by deadmau5, a man who travels the world wearing a giant mouse head, performing his music which is popular with huge crowds of people, many of whom have taken random pharmaceuticals with the express aim of diminishing their cognitive capacity for the evening.

If you’ve got less of a handle on it than this bloke, maybe consider a new career.

Mmm.. Jubalicious

Sorry for the delay. Stuff getting in the way. Airports and Life Saving Workshops(TM) of course. Where were we? Oh yeah, self deprecation:

Hasn’t this guy heard of the Open University? Distance learning and e-learning aren’t new or innovative at all, not even in Africa, what a melon head. What’s the big deal?

And the answer is, of course this isn’t anything new. I’m not trying to be Steve Jobs. I’m just trying to solve problems of cornerstone effectiveness down in the cogs of the aid machine. We’re pretty good at giving people heroically crushing expectations of quantity and quality of work and aid delivery. We’re less good at ensuring everyone in that team has the skills to deliver from day one. I think we need a bold view of professionalization of the sector; one that foregrounds teams as much as individuals, nationals not expats, and backgrounds the rest as (necessary) surge capacity.

In general, life’s too short and too full of way clever people, So of course I didn’t work out any of the elements of this approach, but rather tried to adopt what seemed to be the best and most relevant from elsewhere. I’m not being innovative, eff eff ess, I’m being replicative.

Rutger Hauer, replicant. (Coincidentally, I am also this handsome.)

Right now I work for an INGO that has some pretty significant internal global resources spread around the place. Generally, you can pick up the phone and on any nut-busting aid-ey kind of question, someone you know has good a pretty damn good handle on an answer for you. And they’re being paid to roll their eyes as little as possible, and share with you their many years of experience to you in words of one syllable or less. And if they don’t know, they know the right person who does. It’s one degree of Kevin Bacon. Organisations are ye olde social networks.

The upside to this is that there are usually great resources and people somewhere at your disposal. The downside to this is that it makes us a bit insular. The risk is particularly high in any headquarters, where if you’re not careful you can go weeks without talking to someone outside the wire. It makes us think that as an organisation, we’ve got it right, and we’re pretty self sufficient. And when certain magazines coming out with flimsy ratings exercises, well those too can be a source of undeserved and misplaced complacency.

On account of INGOs like this believing they’re so special and unique, it seems often to be difficult to believe in externally generated ideas and approaches, unless they’ve already been demonstrated internally to be relevant. Catch-22! Seriously, I swear the SPHERE standards must have only got signoff by everyone back in the 90’s due to an exasperated intern locking the doors on two dozen agency heads in a meeting room in Geneva one night, spiking the evian with ecstacy, and slipping on a nineteen hour extended remix of Kamasutra’s “Where Is The Love”.

Great ideas or approaches that weren’t ours, that we didn’t think of, occasionally have to be crowbarred into the organisation. Ian wrote a very right-on post a while back about skunkworks. And I’m pushing this laundry hamper in through a maintenance tunnel out in the Horn because it wasn’t recognized at the front door of HQ.

Now, stuff does get under the wire and adopted inside for all kinds of reasons. The alternative approach to skunking about is to use expensive consulting firms to tell us what we already know. I’m probably an idiot and will look back on this and laugh at my naïveté in five years. Maybe it would have been quicker to spend the same money on a consultant to assume the conclusions of this randomized control train and write it up in a nice report and send it up the line. Perhaps masochistically, I’m trying to do it on the basis of some internally generated evidence. That seems to me to be how things should work. Maybe generating that evidence is too hard. Ask me in six months.

What I really want to know down the line is if the evidence comes through, whether a three-country pilot this year leads to a situation where I can hand this off and see it taken forward to thirty countries next year. Which eventually will need engagement and ownership somewhere near the top.

So that’s the organisational meta-experiment going on here in my head. If this delivers better results, can my HRI affiliate HQ prioritise and pick this up and run with it? (Point (vii) in Ian’s framework.) If the HRI HQ doesn’t, what does that tell me? What if the movement around the issues of professionalization and effectiveness exist towards the periphery my HRI affiliate and not the core? What if that’s representative? What if too many core functions have been so disabled by post-GFC budget salami slicing and headcount-monitoring mania, they don’t have the capacity to understand and assess opportunities, develop intent and then lead initiatives that will drive the organisation towards greater nuts and bolts effectiveness, even if those benefits don’t directly accrue to HQ oriented outputs, budget lines, income streams or advocacy channels?

What if the predominance of initiatives that exist (like outcome-aggregating) turn out to be more extractive of data from the front line work, for PR and nice charts in annual reports, rather than supportive of them? Can we really fundamentally get accountability to beneficiaries, if the internal attitudes don’t bear some resemblance to that? If the core business of the CEO isn’t being supportive of and accountable to the Country Director, the Country Director to the Project Manager, the Project Manager to the PHP assistant, and to their ability to do their job? If they’re not, are the HQs of traditional INGOs fit for purpose, regardless of how and whether they re/construct their con/federations over the next few years?

Well, this jury of one is still out on all that. In the meantime, South Sudan is headed towards what we call a Category 2, and I will take my own advice and just get on with it.

But maybe we could start by drawing all our org charts the other way up.  It would be a fun place to start.

On Friday I said I was here in Uganda experimenting. 

Why? Okay. Rant pants on.

Flying sucks. Sucks time, sucks money, sucks autonomy out of your programmes. Approaches to building capacity in your teams, your people, you partners, that are built around on flying or even extensive road travel, well sorry, they are Teh Sucks. If there’s a plane ticket or a 12-hour drive or a week away, between your team at the pointy end and the voice of experience they need? Sucking. Yes, nothing beats face to face contact and communication. Personally: love it. We’re wired for it. But when there’s costs involved and limited budgets – and there’s always limited budgets – the people who get the high quality learning opportunities, skew senior. They skew male. Skew expat. Skew: not the young mother in the finance office who’s doing a great job but has rugrats to look after and can’t really travel to Nairobi or even up from Dire Dawa to Addis for the workshop so, oh, maybe next time. Maybe the time after that. Maybe in 3 years? Maybe never?

Well, skew that. I don’t like it. I don’t like it and I think we can do better. If we can’t come at gender equity in something so fundamentally controllable as our own internal approach to learning opportunities, we should get the hell off the soapbox.

A few years ago I kicked off the first proper formal & structured use of live online training sessions in my HRI affiliate, also known as (dumb word alert) webinars, on the enthralling subject of grant management. We did this in the months after the GFC when budgets were being savaged. As a result it was pretty easy call: make it work, or have nothing. Fortunately we made it work.

It was quite a revelation. Previously we had an expensive, unreliable Chinese whispers game of persistently out of date training materials and train-the-trainer.  Suddenly we had a small team in HQ, who instead of just training the HQ, could train practically the whole world. Almost without breaking a sweat.  No flights, no jet lag, no hotel bills; much more frequent and assured quality learning opportunities for staff all over, and somewhere above an 80%+ cost saving. Using a pretty robust platform over sketchy connections called Elluminate, we reached (are reaching) about 80% of regional, country and field office locations that want to join these… webinars (eugh). Reaching more staff, more junior & more national staff, more women, more often. Lost cost, less jollies, less CO2. Total win. Except for the people not getting training jollies. Tough.

But what about the 20% beyond that, and the partners they’re working with out beyond that, where project management (not grant management) skills are probably the most critical? Can we reach them effectively but on the cheap? Can we be sure we’re having an impact on their efficacy?

So this time I’m trying a bit of a randomized controlled train to find out.

Approach A. Uganda. Old school: week of training, zero followup, hope for the best, see where they are in three months.

Approach B. Tanzania. Distance learning. Individual study, plus group work within project teams to mutually support, reflect, learn. Optional virtual coaching via skype and/or email etc with instructors and experts elsewhere. Six weeks at just a few hours per week that can be integrated fairly painlessly into day to day working. PMDPro exam in week seven. And then, four more weeks post-exam follow through and further guided integration into team practices. Starting shortly.

Approach C. Ethiopia. Both barrels: a ‘blended learning’ combination of approaches A and B. What happens if we double down, do we get better improvement for the investment? Kicking off this week.

Approach D. Other countries around the region. No learning intervention at all, just collecting the same monitoring data as A-C over time.

So yeah. To sum up, I’m trying to validate whether we can have a really funky, cheap, equitable, scalable solution that takes learning opportunities to the front lines of the organisation and beyond it to partners, focuses on team-learning and change not individual knowledge, which improves our fundamental effectiveness, all without anyone ever having to get on a plane or drive twelve hours to make it happen. (Obviously this meant the first thing I had to do was get on a plane and drive twelve hours. Oh, scienceyness, you are a quixotic maiden.)

So as much as I really enjoy face time and chowing down on goat livers with our staff at the sharp end, if we have a system where people like me are constantly doing that, we are failing. That’s why I should never have to see these guys, or any other team like them, again.

Easy peasey? Most likely result is that I’ll get a jumble of data and fail to really prove or disprove anything. But having a go has got to be better than business as usual. Ask me at three and six months.

At this point I suspect you’re probably thinking one of two things.

You are most likely agog at the wonderfulness of all this adaptaliciousness and thinking me both a mensa-level and Adonis-like aid functionary. You are probably failing to resist the urge to scream excitedly as if you were schoolgirl in the presence of The Beatles circa 1963. This is normal. You see I am constantly beset by such throngs of ecstatic aidlandistan undergraduates, interns and junior members of staff. Ladies, please.

Except of course, not really. You are most likely thinking… so what? Hasn’t this guy heard of the Open University? Distance learning and e-learning aren’t new or innovative at all, not even in Africa, what a melon head. What’s the big deal? And where are the mobile phones in all this, eh? eh?

I’ll wrap this up tomorrow.

I said yesterday I hope not to need to see teams like this ever again. Before I get to that, let me give you a quick rundown on what they’re doing.

A couple of years ago some old hands at the NGO project management game saw there was a lack of a serious sector-wide approach. Oh sure, NGOs do various flavours of PCM all right. But all the PCM I’ve ever come across rarely gets past first base.

We throw the kitchen sink at project design, which is a strength. But there’s been neglect of detailed iterative planning and implementation tools and techniques. You know, all the stuff to do once the ink is actually on the grant: getting the project done on time, within scope, within budget. We spend so much time worrying about whether we’re doing the right thing, we don’t spend enough time making sure we’re on top of doing things right.

To cut a long story short, these old hands collaborated, coordinated, consulted far and wide, and came up with PMDPro – Project Management for Development Professionals. It is much more balanced across the whole project cycle. Practical too.

So far, so boring, right? Now if you have worked in aidlandistan for a while, the next thing I am going tell you might shock you. You have almost certainly sat in training, you have probably given training. You have probably filled out innumerable end-of-course happy sheets. Amirite? So I suggest you take a seat, and hold on to your lower garments.

Ready?

Doing PMDPro means sitting for an externally validated qualification. There’s an exam. There’s a freakin’ exam! I mean a really real exam, 2 hours long, 75 questions, 65% to pass, which everyone who comes on the course has to do. (OK, except for a nice quiet bloke called Moses here in Kotido, whose wife went into labour for the first time last night, and he’s a little freaked.) And only people who pass the exam, get the certificate.

Can you imagine?

For you project management nerds, PMDPro is a 3-tiered sector-specific deeply contextualized modification of the PRINCE2 framework, and the online exam/certification process is handled for next to nothing by APMG, bless ‘em. What we have here is the aid sector learning from and picking up approaches from the private sector. Bo selecta!

Watching people here do the course over the last five days has been awesome. The positive motivation is steaming off most participants. The opportunity for a basic but genuine qualification is a powerful motivator. Folks here are studying their collective backsides off. They show up early. Talk about the content all through lunch. Support the slower movers in their teams. Are hitting the books at night. (Well, just one book actually, the PMDPro Level 1 guide - pdf.) Does that sound like most NGO training you’ve been on or delivered?

So I’m nervous. The exams are going on right now all around me right now. The team have all worked so damn hard. Many coming from a pretty modest starting point in terms of project management theory and practice. I’m trying to be realistic but really keen they do well!

But in the end, it’s not about exam results, or getting all the levels of tiered qualification. That’s just a means to an end, to give people motivation to master the body of knowledge. Because professionalism isn’t just passing an exam, and it’s not just having a nice bit of paper. The really important thing is what this team does next Monday. The important thing is whether they use the tools and apply the skills. Whether they change how they work over the next month, next quarter, next year. Whether they hold themselves to a new standard of management quality.

Now of course the pass rate of the group is a nice easy to measure indicator. I suppose I could tick that off if its good and pat myself on the back. But it’s not the only thing, or most important thing, that I’ll be monitoring over coming months. In fact it’s not even the first thing, because we took up a baseline survey last week.

I never want to have to see these guys again, because I’m experimenting.

But I’ll tell you about that on Monday.