SID/IDEA Sponsored Learning Sessions on “Fielding Effective Development Teams”
January 10, 2012 Teams Working Under StressThe Wolterstorff Group (TWG), a consulting firm that helps or prepares teams to work well in crisis conditions presented concepts that are especially useful to international project teams facing a lack of integration, alignment to objectives and team work. Numerous project management units are faced with this challenge because of the way international development teams are often recruited and fielded, a process that is even more complex with the increased focus on local consultants. In stressful or crisis environments, team behavior degrades in a predictable way—teams’ “hard-side” behavior (resource allocation, decision-making and process management) and their “soft-side” behavior (people skills and team work)—get out of balance. With TWG’s analytical tools, home office project managers, chiefs of party and team leaders can identify the stress culture of their team at any given moment, and take quick steps to bring them into balance, avoiding costly inefficiencies and realigning the project in the short-term with the desired outputs and impacts.
TWG’s founder, Eric Wolterstorff, is an expert in social trauma, and
helping business and political leaders to manage in complex, traumatic
environments. He has over 25 years experience as a psychotherapist, consultant and analyst.
helping business and political leaders to manage in complex, traumatic
environments. He has over 25 years experience as a psychotherapist, consultant and analyst.
October 13, 2011 Learning Event on the Results of the Listening Project and Approaches of the Hunger Project
A successful two hour participatory event on Mutual Learning was held at the Millennium Challenge Corporation featuring speakers Dayna Brown, director of the Listening Project, and John Coonrod, executive vice president of The Hunger Project. The content of these presentations proved to be excellent and the participants answered the questions: “Which concepts are the most relevant to me, my organization and/or international development? What are the take-aways that I can use?” The answers are included under another post on this website.
MORE ON THE FIELDING EFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS SERIES
The International Development Effectiveness Alliance (IDEA) co-sponsored a Society for International Development event on “Fielding Effective Development Teams” on June 16. The Open Space technology proved a good means for surfacing important topics in a short time and can be employed effectively for project planning and other problem resolution. The participants’ further refinement of the conversation topics from that event plus additional thoughts on the topics about which were discussed most passionately, based on the notes sent out by Frank Page, one of our facilitators, enabled IDEA to organize and schedule a series of sessions through the SID Monitoring & Evaluation group starting in October 2011 and continuing through the rest of the year and 2012. We developed a white paper based on these notes and developed the outline and sequence for the sessions. These sessions involve serious discussions on innovations on how to design, plan, implement and measure effective development efforts.