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Introduction

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 short paper is designed to help organisations to do this by considering three questions:

  1. What kind of organisation do we want to become?
  2. How do we organise ourselves internally?
  3. Who do we need?

1. What kind of organisation do we want to become?

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves."

Abraham Lincoln

Research shows that at times of stress and pressure, people have a tendency to ‘revert to type’ and organisations are no different. The landscape of humanitarian action is one of crisis and questioning and developing a deep understanding about the best role our organisations can play in these moments is a vital part of preparedness and ensuring a relevant response.

Let’s be clear on the goal from the outset: locally-led humanitarian action is not an objective in itself; the ultimate purpose is the ability to effect change, increase the agency of disaster-affected people and the impact and effectiveness of our organisations.

For some organisations, this 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.

This process of stepping up and stepping back can be likened to learning to dance in harmony with others. Perhaps the tunes are familiar and you know your own routine - but learning to coordinate with others and adjusting your steps to theirs takes effort. They must be choreographed, internalised, and rehearsed. There must be conversations about who will lead and who will follow and when, and dancers must demonstrate a deep and genuine appreciation of the troupe’s strengths and weaknesses. It is easy to picture what would happen in a dance without this practice, yet too often in a humanitarian crisis, toes are on trod on, coordination falters, and organisations slip and fall.

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 the 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 questions below which may be helpful in formulating your vision:

  1. What does being a humanitarian actor mean for us in our organisation? And what then does locally-led humanitarian action mean in light of this?
  2. 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?
  3. What would it mean for our organisation if we shifted our focus from ‘What can we do?’ to ‘How can we help?’
  4. How ready and how prepared is our organisation to respond to the transformation implied by locally-led humanitarian action?

There are some important concepts which organisations can consider when they are working on this vision and which could potentially serve as organising principles:

  • Allyship: "Long-term change requires people standing with us, not for us."

    This clear message about the support young refugees in Malaysia want for their work on gender equality as part of Project Stand Up embodies the concept of allyship. This has been defined in a recent Forbes article as:

    • A lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalised individuals and/or groups of people.
    • Not self-defined — work and efforts must be recognised by those you are seeking to ally with.
    • An opportunity to grow and learn about ourselves, whilst building confidence in others.
  • Complementarity: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts"

    The metaphor of learning to dance in harmony with others is reflected in the concept of complementarity. Echoing Aristotle’s observation that “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, complementarity is about recognising more can be achieved through collaboration and building on mutual strengths and capacities than can be achieved alone.

  • Subsidiarity: "Subsidiarity serves as a constant reminder that humanitarian response, whether local or external, is best developed with and for affected people."

    Subsidiarity in humanitarian action proposes that important decisions are best made by people closest to and most affected by issues and concerns of the community and is an important mechanism for increasing the accountability, relevance and impact of humanitarian aid.

What these concepts 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.

In practical terms, working on this vision in your own organisation can include the following considerations:

  1. Courageous and honest conversations which intentionally involve a diversity of perspectives at different levels. A useful starting point is to consider your organisation’s current positioning vis-a-vis locally-led humanitarian action, and where you need or want to be in the future. As we have seen, this may entail unpacking assumptions about your organisation’s role, identity and purpose.
  2. The vision you establish will be a ‘North Star’ or compass to guide the future direction of the organisation. It must therefore be sufficiently compelling and inspiring to keep people engaged as the journey progresses.
  3. Once the direction is set, the journey for every organisation will be different and will entail different opportunities, challenges and risks. From the outset, it is important to identify and think about the specific enablers and barriers which will help or hinder your organisation along the way.
  4. It is not sufficient for leaders to articulate a vision and expect the organisation will automatically follow. Change is not easy and there will be a need to mobilise and coalesce support for the vision at every level of your organisation.
  5. As the vision is a guide for the future direction, then it will also need to be translated into a strategy or action plan to attain it. This may include identifying and putting in place the resources – time, leadership, financial and human – to implement it.

The vision and the resulting strategy will be different for every organisation; there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question: ‘What kind of organisation do we want to become?’ To genuinely shift power will be a long and sometimes painful transition but it needs to start somewhere; it needs to start with a genuine examination of this question.

2. How do we organise ourselves internally?

“The most difficult challenge at this time is how to modernise our organisation, adapting to the changes of the 21st century. Technology outpaces our current thinking and people’s ideas outpace our ways of working. We have to make our organisation more nimble, more efficient and effective and transparent and accountable.”

Ban Ki Moon

This section focuses on four internal domains organisations can examine when designing themselves for locally-led humanitarian action:

  1. Leadership and decision-making.
  2. Organisational form.
  3. Organisational infrastructure.
  4. Organisational culture and ways of working.

Leadership and Decision-Making

Just as organisations as a whole may need to step up or step back in support of locally-led humanitarian action, so too it is valuable for leadership teams to consider how they may need to do the same. Some useful questions to help leadership teams consider this include:

  1. Who holds the power in our organisation and what is the impact on those who do not hold it?
  2. How are decisions made in our organisation?
  3. Who has a voice and whose voice might not be heard, or be at risk of marginalisation in the decision-making process?
  4. How can we use power in our organisation to increase the agency of crisis-affected people, and ensure our own humanitarian work is more accountable and relevant to them? Who needs to be involved to ensure this?

We believe 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.

Organisational Form

Think about how we communicate, shop, work, live, and love and how quickly technology has transformed this in the past decade. The majority of today’s organisations are still formed in a way which reflects the industrial economy, based on scientific management principles and a top-down approach to control. The hierarchical, pyramid structures of many humanitarian organisations concentrate power into the hands of a few at the top, creating a sense that power is scarce and contributing to a climate of politics, ambition and mistrust. In large organisations, layers of management and bureaucracy are required to manage the flow of resources and information up and down these structures, and even for small organisations, there can be a gulf between those at the top and those on the ground.

Nowadays, in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) context, this sense of control can be little more than an illusion. 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 form which are becoming flatter and use networks rather than a centralised hierarchy as the organising principle.

Some of the key differences between industrial era organisational form and those that are emerging are shown in the table below. This helps to illustrate the level of change many organisations are contemplating or undertaking to stay relevant in the modern world.

 

Industrial Era Organisational Forms

Emerging Organisational Forms

Organising Principles

Centralised

Networked and matrix

Hierarchical

Flat

Top down

Bottom-up

Command and control

Shared decision-making and empowerment

Based on functions

Based on projects and services

Power and control

Accountability and voice

Risk management

Innovation and creativity

Characteristics

Slow

Agile

Bureaucratic

Flexible

Authoritative

Collaborative

Reactive

Adaptive

In large international NGOs, we are seeing some changes in governance and structures in response to locally-led humanitarian action. Many are working on projects such as how to place technical assistance closer to Country Offices and creating new national entities with local registrations, leadership and governance. Whilst these changes could be viewed as a step towards stronger local ownership, the intent behind them requires interrogation to ensure it represents a genuine re-positioning of the organisation to complement local capacity, and not to compete with it.

Smaller organisations too, are not immune from these challenges. Local cultural norms are often reflected in their organisational form and the composition and power of leadership teams and how they operate.

Some useful questions to help you think about your organisational form include:

  1. How would you characterise your current organisational form based on the two columns in this table?
  2. How is your current organisational form enabling or hindering organisational, team and individual performance?
  3. What changes would enable greater collaboration, information and knowledge sharing and movement across different teams?

Below are some suggestions which can help organisations to become more agile and flexible:

  1. Consider how using networks of teams that collaborate horizontally (with others at the same level) and vertically (with others at lower and higher levels of the organisation) and allowing people to report to more than one manager could be used.
  2. Design structures with the purpose of encouraging teams and people to share information and knowledge, collaborate, co-own and co-create.
  3. Identify the implications for leaders and managers in your organisation of new structures and ensure they are equipped to operate effectively within them. This includes the need to define how decisions will be made and how people will be held accountable for them.
  4. Monitor and take action if there are signs of overwhelm or burnout which can result from the ‘collaboration overload’ associated with some modern workplace practices (e.g., volume of emails, number of meetings).

More information: Network Humanitarianism [Humanitarian Policy Group paper by Paul Currion]

Organisational Infrastructure

Organisational ‘infrastructure’ refers to the policies, procedures, systems, frameworks and guidelines that define how your organisation operates, programmatically and administratively.

Some useful questions offered to help your work on this include:

  1. How fit for purpose is your current organisational infrastructure to support your vision for locally-led humanitarian action?
  2. What changes are required and what are the implications (e.g., time, resources, leadership) to manage these changes?
  3. How ready and able are your people to think and work in different ways?
Below are some suggestions to help ensure your infrastructure operates in support of locally-led humanitarian action:

Get the Basics Right

There have been too many cases of exploitation, corruption, abuse, and harassment with devastating consequences for those involved. In a #Metoo #Aidtoo world, all humanitarian organisations must have:

  • Effective checks and balances and an organisational culture which help mitigate risks and prevent issues such as fraud, corruption, sexual abuse and exploitation, and misconduct from arising in the first place.
  • Effective reporting mechanisms and a ‘speak up’ culture to ensure your organisation is aware of cases that do arise and is clear on how to handle them.
  • A clear and comprehensive safeguarding framework that prioritises and reflects a survivor-centred approach. Recent scandals have highlighted the need to regularly and objectively review the effectiveness of these measures to ensure they are working properly. Addressing this has to be an immediate and top priority of all humanitarian organisations and there is a growing body of resources to support this.

Listen to your people

Due to their senior positions, Boards, leaders and managers may have relatively limited contact with the organisational infrastructure so it is important to seek input and listen to the people who use it 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.

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. Too often priority is given to maintaining current systems and processes – and sometimes the power held by different support functions in service of this - rather than in examining how fit for purpose they are to meet evolving organisational needs.

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.

Organisational Culture and Ways of Working

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.

Some useful questions to help consider this include:

  • To what extent does your organisation intentionally seek to address overload / workload issues (e.g., by re-framing an organisational imperative to ‘do more with less’ to a more focused and prioritised approach of ‘do less with less’)?
  • Does your organisation truly treat all of your people at all times and at every level with dignity and respect?
  • Is your workplace accessible and welcoming to the people who work for it and to other stakeholders, including community members who your work is intended for (where applicable)? (This means both physically accessible and a consideration of other aspects of accessibility, such as language translation and access to leadership by more junior staff).

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? Are there any others?

Barriers

Enablers

Anger

Anxiety

Apathy

Assumptions

Blame

Conformity

Control

Corruption

Disenfranchisement

Fear

Friction

Greed

Guilt

Hierarchy

Insularity

Nepotism

Pessimism

Politicking

Reactivity

Repression

Resentment

Rigidity

Risk-aversion

Shame

Short-term gain

 

Accountability

Adaptation

Agency

Collaboration

Courage

Creativity

Curiosity

Diversity

Empathy

Ethics

Future-focus

Honesty

Humility

Innovation

Integrity

Intuition

Listening

Open-mindedness                          

Optimism

Patience

Questioning

Reflection

Resilience

Respect

Understanding

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. Some useful questions to help consider this include:

  1. What internal capacity will we need to support locally-led response and what do we have at the moment? How will we address the gaps identified?
  2. How do we make our workforce more representative, relevant and accountable to the people who we serve?
  3. How ready and able are our leadership and our HR department (or those responsible for people management in organisations that do not have this function) to make the necessary changes in our people management practices to reflect this?

In some ways, the question of ‘who do we need?’ can be the most challenging to tackle.

An internal drive towards locally-led humanitarian action is likely to result in changes to the jobs, skills and behaviours your organisation needs, and this may mean some people will leave, including valued colleagues and friends who you might have worked with for a long time. This is hard and handling it well means acting with clarity, integrity and courage and remembering that all your people at all times deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, even if they are not part of the organisation’s longer-term future.

Below are three ideas all organisations can use 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.

    Ultimately, you will need staff at all levels of your organisation who are not simply seeking to provide answers, but are willing and able to ask the right questions and in the right way; staff who believe in the power of collaboration and allyship, and empowering others rather than solving everything themselves.

    Hiring, developing and rewarding people with the right attitude is critical for locally-led humanitarian action and below is a tool which defines some indicators around the mindset, skills and behaviours which can be useful. Dependent on your mandate, you may also need to identify new technical skills areas to add to this.

    Mindset

    Skills

    Behaviours

    Growth Mindset

    Communication skills

    Accountable

    Indicators

    Enablers

    Believes that abilities, intelligence and talent can grow with effort, learning and persistence

    Able to articulate ideas clearly when speaking; able to tailor communication style / approach to suit the audience

    Takes personal responsibility and ownership for own work and results; admits when mistakes have been made

    Barriers

    Believes that basic abilities, intelligence and talents are fixed traits

    Unable to express self clearly; unable to adjust communication style to reflect different contexts

    Deflects responsibility to others, blames others when things go wrong; will not admit when mistakes have been made

    Big Picture

    Creativity and innovation

    Courageous

    Indicators

    Enablers

    Able to take a long-term perspective; thinks and cares about the future; able to understand complex ideas

    Able to identify and act on new ideas; takes steps to make improvements in ways of working; willing and able to take risks.

    Has personal conviction and bravery to speak up, even if this is unpopular or ‘against the crowd’

    Barriers

    Tendency to focus on how things have been managed in the past; or to focus on short-term; struggles to understand complex ideas

    Prefers to stick to the status quo; conservative in approach; unwilling to take risks.

    Tendency to conform to expected norms or ‘follow the crowd’ without question

    External Orientation

    Effective interpersonal skills

    Humble

    Indicators

    Enablers

    Genuine interest in understanding of external operating environment; good practice; learning from other organisations.

    Able to build effective working relationships and trust quickly at different levels of the organisation

    Displays humility in interaction with others; chooses to hold back to allow others to express views and invites broader participation and inclusion; asks questions

    Barriers

    Focus on own role with limited interest in external operating environment or opportunities to learn from it.

    Difficulty building effective relationships with others; tends to mistrust others and to be mistrusted by others.

    Displays arrogance in interaction with others; insists on own perspective or understanding; gives answers instead of asking questions

    Open-minded

    Listening

    Respectful

    Indicators

    Enablers

    Open to testing new ideas and ways of thinking and working; able to see nuance and different perspectives; willingness to change mind; “Yes, and…” approach

    Able to actively listen seeking to understand; allows others to talk without interruption.

    Treats all people at all times with dignity and respect, regardless of who is watching

    Barriers

    Inflexible thinking; difficulty in changing mind; tendency to see things in binary (“either-or”) terms

    Unable to listen to others without interruption; focused on own response instead of whole-heartedly listening to others

    Shows contempt and / or a lack of regard for feelings, wishes, rights or traditions of others


  • Create a Positive Employee Experience

    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:

    • What can you offer in return for the skills and experience people will bring to your organisation? This is sometimes described as an ‘employer (or employee) value proposition’ (EVP) and means your organisation can clearly answer the question: Why should I work for you? It is important to think about your purpose and mission, your organisational values, the workplace environment and culture, and the opportunities for training or advancement you can offer, as well as salary and benefits. Research has shown people are motivated when their work gives them a sense of autonomy, mastery and meaning , and all organisations, regardless of their budget, can foster this with the right culture and leadership in place.
    • How can you create an experience of working for your organisation that fosters the engagement and performance you need? Organisations tend to design and implement their people management systems such as recruitment, induction, performance management, and learning and development in siloes. However, from the moment people first encounter your organisation, to the moment they leave, they are forming impressions – both positive and negative – that will impact on their performance, productivity and commitment. This reflects their experience of your organisation’s formal people management systems but also the day-to-day reality of their interactions with their manager and colleagues and how they perceive themselves and others to be treated. It is important to be intentional about this and ensure everyone in the organisation – and especially leaders and managers – play their part to create a positive and engaging experience for all of your workforce.

  • Actively create a diverse and inclusive workforce

    It is important humanitarian organisations have a solid grasp of the composition of their workforce. This includes understanding:

    • The numbers, locations, and area of expertise of your workforce at different levels.
    • The diversity profile of your workforce including considerations such as age, caste, disability, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

    Different diversity characteristics will be more or less relevant in each context and leaders should be aware of and adhere to local labour law requirements, including those pertaining to gathering and storing this type of personal data. No-one should be compelled to provide any personal information that they are not legally obliged to provide in the course of their employment.

    It is important to not just understand the overall composition of your workforce but how it changes at different levels of your organisation. It is also important to think about how representative it is of the communities where you are working, and particularly those you are trying to reach in your programmes. This is even more important if you are seeking to target people at risk of marginalisation and exclusion in your humanitarian work.

    At the highest level of your organisation, consider what the current composition of your leadership team means and what signals this may be sending to both your workforce and the communities you are working with. If you do identify an issue, then consider how you will put in place actions which will mitigate this in the future, such as learning opportunities and support for career progression for groups which may be under-represented at senior levels at the moment.

    Remember that working on the diversity aspects of your workforce and leadership is insufficient on its own. Supporting a sense of inclusion where your people can bring their authentic selves, feel they belong and can meaningfully contribute are important reflectors of our human need for acceptance and recognition.

The way forward

We hope you will take these three questions and some of the ideas underpinning them back to your own organisations for discussion and to shape the internal actions required to support locally-led humanitarian action:

  1. What kind of organisation do we want to become?
  2. How do we organise ourselves internally?
  3. Who do we need?

We invite you to take ONE idea in from this think piece, implement it in your own organisation and let us know how it contributes to your organisational performance.

Bongo HR plans to continue to build on this research by identifying good practice and models that exist, helping to share them with others, and creating spaces where debate and dialogue to support these internal aspects of locally-led humanitarian action can be fostered.

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. 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.

If, how and when we get there is in our hands.

…