Opinion and Analysis
A staff meeting. Public servants the world over have always been known for their aversion to risk. PHOTO | FILE
By MIKE ELDON
In Summary
- The Rapid Results Initiatives should become ‘the new normal’, a regular way of life.
It’s hard to get things done in today’s world, never
mind in large organisations such as governments. Long-entrenched
bureaucracies have added mile upon mile of red tape, with past excesses
leading to more ways (often fruitless) of ensuring compliance with good
governance.
Meanwhile, public servants the world over have always been
known for their aversion to risk, on the basis that sins of omission are
much more easily forgiven than sins of commission.
Not for them the mantra that it is better to have a
go and apologise later than to seek permission up front (almost hoping
the answer will be “no”).
These drags on progress are exacerbated by the
presence of hidden agendas, from the political to the financial to all
kinds of other interwoven complications. No wonder that even where
political will is present it is so hard to move forward.
Development progress is at least as challenging at
the grassroots, where too often conservative attitudes lead to the ready
assumption that tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday, except
that a few more things will have fallen apart. Needless to say, politics
is also not absent at the local level.
The World Bank is one of the many agencies that
have been scratching their heads over how to accelerate development, and
a few weeks ago I wrote about my experience in Istanbul with some of
their Collaborative Leadership for Development team.
Last week I was in Accra attending another event
run by this group, in which we focused on how to work with a short-term
intervention methodology known as the Rapid Results Approach (RRA),
through which one or more specific, measurable goals must be achieved
within 100 days. Such RRA projects have come to be known as RRIs, or
Rapid Results Initiatives.
I was delighted to have been invited to the
programme, as when I was one of those supporting the Public Service
Reform and Development Secretariat team some years ago, it was the RRIs
that gained more traction than any of the other reform efforts within
the overall Results Based Management programme. (Sorry about the jargon,
but I must admit I find some of these terms quite useful.).
I remember being present at the launch of the
University of Nairobi’s RRI, at which then vice chancellor George Magoha
spoke with gusto on how serious the institution was about unblocking
the serious things that had remained blocked for too long.
And RRIs continue until today in Kenya, at both
national and county levels, unblocking the blocked. So how does it work?
The idea is to identify an issue that is amenable to seeing measurable
progress made within the specific and limited time-frame of 100 days.
An RRI team composed of around 12 people must be
assembled, supported by a senior executive owner, maybe a minister, and
by a coach or facilitator who guides the team through the process,
ensuring progress towards the desired outcomes.
Yes, outcomes. Not mere outputs. More jargon here.
In performance management terminology an output merely signifies that an
activity has been completed successfully. For instance, that the
desired number of people has been trained.
But are they using the skills they have learned? It
is only if that happens that an outcome can be celebrated. We are not
finished yet though.
For they might still be using their skills without
the final desired impact being made, such as reducing infant mortality
by a certain number.
Too many performance contracts stop short at the
easy-to-measure but insufficient output level. I can’t resist smiling,
for instance, when I see elements like “Goal: Produce strategic plan”
followed by “Measure: Strategic plan produced”, with no reference to
either its quality or its consequence.
As the originator of this approach Robert Schaffer put it, RRIs are about “breakthrough strategies”.
And if we are to tear down the silos between units involved
in a stuck process; if we are to re-engineer that process, eliminating
steps that slow things down; if we are to innovate and take risks… then
we must be bold.
The RRI team must be empowered to do whatever is necessary to achieve the target set — and within the 100 days.
If they come across roadblocks they cannot remove
themselves then the higher authority, the executive owner, must
intervene to smooth the way. There is no room for timidity or hesitation
here.
The team must act decisively, knowing that
sometimes what they hope for will not turn out as expected, and that
indeed there will be setbacks.
All this requires flexibility to keep focused on
outcome and on impact, doing whatever is necessary to get there. And let
me introduce you to another concept necessary for working in these
complex, high-paced environments.
Many tasks can be accomplished by just applying
“technical” expertise, where leadership is merely required to be
systematic. But in tackling the kind of obstinate challenges that RRI
goes after, leaders need also to be “adaptive”.
They must display emotional intelligence to deal
with the political and cultural issues that lead to resistance and
undermining. And they must have the negotiating and consensus-building
skills to bring people together around a common goal.
Not least they must help all involved to act as a high performance team that lives by healthy values.
My dream is that RRI becomes “the new normal”, a
regular way of life that assumes it is possible to be ambitious, to
achieve great things in short periods of time.
A final point though. RRI grabs a particular issue
by the scruff of the neck and deals with it in 100 days. Fine. But the
bigger challenge is how to keep the momentum going, and how to spread
the mindset of urgency beyond it.
mike.eldon@depotkenya.org
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