Building organisations for locally-led humanitarian action
“WE NEED DONORS TO CHANGE THEIR PRACTICES.”
“WE NEED TO BUILD THEIR CAPACITY FIRST.”
“WE NEED MORE SUPPORT FOR OUR INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTHENING.”
Despite the myriad of ‘localisation’ initiatives including the Grand Bargain and the Charter 4 Change, progress is patchy and many of the underlying assumptions, systems and structures of the international humanitarian system pervade with limited change. The challenges are real, but too often the difficult questions about what locally-led humanitarian action means for our own organisations and the transformation of our own practices are dodged or deflected, and responsibility placed elsewhere. With an estimated 150 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, this is not acceptable. It is time to put them first and turn our collective lens inwards. We urgently need to examine our own organisations and reimagine our ways of working for their benefit.
This Quick Bite summary is designed to help organisations do this by considering three questions:
- What kind of organisation do we want to become?
- How do we organise ourselves internally?
- Who do we need?
1.WHAT KIND OF ORGANISATION DO WE WANT TO BECOME?
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
For some organisations, locally-led humanitarian action will mean learning to step up, finding a voice, and doing the difficult organisational work to be ready for this. For others, it will mean letting go, ceding control and stepping aside; perhaps to be replaced by other organisations and alternative models of delivery. And maybe your organisation will need to do both; understanding when to step up and when to step back in different contexts and scenarios. Being ready and able to do this takes time, reflection, dialogue and hard work.
DEFINING A VISION
To create an organisation which supports locally-led humanitarian action, organisations need a vision of the role they want to play in this. It might sound simple, but in practice is founded on an examination of your organisation’s core purpose and identity which may not have been considered for a long time - or perhaps ever. This can be illustrated by considering the following question:
Do we ultimately exist in service to our own organisation, or in service to crisis-affected people?
If there is tension between these two perspectives, which takes precedence and why.
ORGANISING PRINCIPLES
There are some important concepts which organisations can consider when they are working on this vision and which could potentially serve as organising principles including:
Allyship
“Long-term change requires people standing with us, not for us.”
Complementarity
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”
Subsidiarity
“Subsidiarity serves as a constant reminder that humanitarian response, whether local or external, is best developed with and for affected people.”
What they have in common is an underpinning sense that locally-led humanitarian action is not at its heart, a process to be led or bestowed by those that currently hold power, but a fundamental reconfiguration of existing power relationships by all actors working together - and with genuine mutual respect - to increase the agency of crisis-affected people, and strengthen humanitarian action.
BUILDING THE VISION
In practical terms, working on this vision in your own organisation can include the following:
Courageous and honest conversations and an unpacking of assumptions about your organisation’s role, identity and purpose.
Intentional work to create a vision that is sufficiently compelling and inspiring to keep people engaged as the journey progresses.
Identification of the opportunities, challenges and risks this will present within your own organisational context.
Building a coalition of support.
Translation into a strategy or action plan to achieve it and allocating the resources to implement it.
2. HOW DO WE ORGANISE OURSELVES INTERNALLY?
This section focuses on four internal domains organisations can examine when designing themselves for locally-led humanitarian action:
Leadership and decision-making
Organisational form
Organisational infrastructure
Organisational culture and ways of working
LEADERSHIP AND DECISION-MAKING
Just as organisations as a whole may need to learn to step up and step back, so leadership teams will need to consider how power, agency and voice are used and dispersed throughout the organisation with the goal of strengthening the effectiveness of humanitarian action. The following are attributes senior leadership teams of all humanitarian organisations can nurture which will support locally-led humanitarian action:
Having courage to face rather than dodge difficult questions and hard-to-make decisions. Hiding from them does not make them disappear; it simply defers them for a later time.
Listening with an open-mind to a broad range of voices and engaging in meaningful and honest dialogue with them.
Championing the changes that are needed for locally-led humanitarian action and ensuring the drivers for them are understood.
Having a clear, sustainable and long-term sense of vision and purpose.
Accepting the disequilibrium associated with transformation and being able to hold and support the organisation through it.
Think about the following questions:
- How fit for purpose is your current organisational infrastructure to support your vision for locally-led humanitarian action?
- How ready and able are your people to think and work in different ways?
ORGANISATIONAL FORM
New technologies – including cash-based models of humanitarian assistance - are creating unprecedented disruption, demanding a brutal re-thinking and driving a global transformation from the industrial to the knowledge era, where information rather than capital is the driver of competitive advantage. Slowly, we are starting to see this reflected in organisational forms which are becoming flatter and use networks rather than a centralised hierarchy as the organising principle. To stay relevant in the modern world, organisations need to shift from the hierarchical structures of the industrial economy to flatter, networked structures which promote agility and flexibility.
ORGANISATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Organisational ‘infrastructure’ refers to the policies, procedures, systems, frameworks and guidelines. Below are some suggestions to help ensure your infrastructure operates in support of locally-led humanitarian action include:
Get the Basics Right
Ensure there are effective mechanisms for preventing and dealing with risks and issues such as such as fraud, corruption, sexual abuse and exploitation, and misconduct, that they are supported by a ‘speak up’ and survivor-centred approach, and that their effectiveness is regularly reviewed.
Listen to your people
Listen to the people who use the organisational infrastructure on a day-to-day basis – what are they saying about the key challenges, and what ideas do they have for overcoming them? The biggest complaints and frustrations in humanitarian organisations are often about the systems supposedly in place to support; changing this and overcoming stifling bureaucracy are largely within our own organisation’s control.
Leverage technology
Consider how to leverage technology. Much of the infrastructure in the sector remains what could could charitably be described as ‘archaic’ and often appears more focused on inputs than results and impact. It is becoming ever-more important for organisations to keep pace with the digital revolution and to free up people in your organisation to focus on work that has impact on the ground.
Diagnose and Adjust
Each dimension of locally-led humanitarian action as outlined in the Near network’s Performance Assessment tool needs careful unpacking to ensure the required infrastructure is in place to support it. It is also useful to consider the fundamental assumptions your current infrastructure is based on and ensure it is adjusted to meet evolving organisational needs rather than maintaining the status quo.
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND WAYS OF WORKING
It is worth spending some time thinking about your culture and the extent to which it is an enabler or barrier to the kind of organisation you want to become in the future. Fifty organisational culture characteristics which can be barriers or enablers to locally-led humanitarian action are outlined below to help you do this:
- Which do you identify for your organisation and what does this mean?
Many people are attracted to humanitarian work because they want to make a positive difference in the world. This sense of purpose is powerful and humanitarian organisations that can harness it will create workplaces where people can reach their full potential, participate in decisions that affect them, and use their talent to drive impact. Too often, however, humanitarian work is leading to burnout, a sense of overwhelm, and disillusionment which organisations are failing to adequately address.
3. WHO DO WE NEED?
To build an organisation capable of supporting locally-led humanitarian action, it is critical to identify who you will need in place. This means identifying the internal capacity your organisation will need to support locally-led response, what is in place at the moment, and how the gaps will be addressed. Locally-led humanitarian action is likely to result in changes to the jobs, skills and behaviours your organisation needs, and this may ultimately mean some people will leave which can be difficult to manage in practice. Below are three ideas all organisations can think about to help ensure they have the right people in place in support of locally-led humanitarian action: • Clarify the skills, knowledge, attitudes / mindset, and behaviours you require to support-locally-led response. • Create a Positive Employee Experience • Actively build a diverse and inclusive workforce
CREATE A POSITIVIE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
There are two important components to this:
- Being clear on what you can offer in return for the skills and experience people will bring to your organisation.
- Creating an experience of working for your organisation that fosters the engagement and performance you need.
Once you have identified the workforce profile you need, you will need to consider how to ensure your organisation can attract, retain, engage and develop people towards this. There are two important components to this: Being clear on what you can offer in return for the skills and experience people will bring to your organisation. Creating an experience of working for your organisation that fosters the engagement and performance you need.
ACTIVELY BUILD A DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE WORKFORCE
Understand the current diversity composition of your workforce at different levels of the organisation and consider how representative it is of the communities you are serving.
Identify the actions needed to improve the diversity of your organisation and implement them.
Foster a sense of sense of inclusion where your people can bring their authentic selves, feel they belong and can meaningfully contribute.
There are two important components to this:
- What kind of organisation do we want to become?
- How do we organise ourselves internally?
- Who do we need?
THE WAY FORWARD
Bongo HR will continue to build on this think piece by identifying good practice and models that exist across the sector and helping to share them with others. Our own vision is to build a community of practice around HR&OD for the humanitarian sector and to help engender collaboration and knowledge sharing which will have impact on the ground. If, how and when we get there is in our hands. We are also ready to offer help and support for organisations that are working on this. If you think you can contribute or would like to know more, we’d love to hear from you at info@bongohr.org
CONCLUSION
We have briefly outlined some ways in which organisations can think about the internal transformative implications of locally-led humanitarian action through the lens of organisational development and people management. The world needs humanitarian action to change. That change is hard in practice, but the challenge ahead cannot be used as a reason to delay. We are standing on the brink of transformation with the potential to place power and agency back in the hands of those we claim to assist and to change humanitarian action forever.