Learning in Development

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Over the past decade or more, knowledge has become increasingly important in achieving the goals of development as the operating environment has become increasingly complex. Previously the focus of aid or development agencies was the provision of services or assistance, with the standard of performance being the effectiveness of those individual activities. Now, many organizations are delivering at a much higher sector level and are expected to contribute to context-appropriate development that has a holistic impact and ‘does no harm.’

Instead of simply providing microcredit, development organizations are conducting value chain analysis and working within that structure to facilitate credit relationships. Instead of simply providing business development services, organizations are working to improve the overall business enabling environment in which their clients operate. In this environment, practitioners need to not only have specific technical expertise but also a broader understanding of the environment in which those receiving their aid operate, as well as a broader understanding of their ambitions, experiences, and knowledge systems.^[1] If an organization is to learn and improve its impact, the management mentality therefore needs to shift from commodity provider or activity facilitator to knowledge generator and sharer. These are major shifts in the approach that have changed the knowledge foundation from which development needs to be provided, and we now need more knowledge and more constructive use of that knowledge than ever before. The thought and delivery processes are correspondingly different, as are the contextual challenges.

Mike Powell^[2] speaks of development cooperation not as a service sector but rather as a knowledge industry, in which NGOs need to accumulate and link the various knowledge components in the best way possible in order to achieve development. For example if a microenterprise development organization’s actual impacts differ from those in its stated mission, reflection helps to discover why this is the case, to learn from the current situation, and to redesign the methodology, procedures, policies. The organization should also reflect on what pressures (in this example perhaps a requirement to be fully financially sustainable) are distorting its values and obstructing attainment of the social mission. If development organizations want to succeed in bringing about sustainable change, they need to ask themselves and be willing to learn from the following questions: How well informed are we about the reality that we seek to change? How conscious are we of the perceptions of other stakeholders? What are we doing to use and improve the knowledge that we have?^[3]

These could be tough questions and the facing of self in the mirror may be even tougher. Many of the challenges encountered by development organizations can be attributed to a failure to recognize this industrial shift and to grapple with self-learning questions. Those organizations that do not see knowledge as their core business and learning as key to its success fail to put in place a strong knowledge support framework. These organizations, in fact, operate as if knowledge management is only a support function of their activities and not as if it was a key driver. In doing so they miss the opportunity to put learning at the forefront of program design and decision making, instead it comes as an afterthought.

According to Maaike Smit in a study of 14 development organization, lack of time as well as opportunities for experiences from which to learn were amongst the most cited challenges to individual and organizational learning. Opportunities for field experiences, allowing cross-fertilization of staff amongst projects and offices, were few and therefore failed to contribute to the trust-relationships necessary for candid knowledge sharing and learning. Isolation of staff as each worked individually either directly on or in support of stove-piped projects as well as meetings designed strictly for the exchange of information and not for the sharing of experiences with reflection and learning also contributed to a stifling of organizational learning.^[4]

Continual reliance on external consultants, failure to reward or recognize individual staff contributors, donor relations, and project plans and timelines all create gaps in knowledge sharing that are opportunities lost for learning. While it is the above time constraints that often make consultants necessary, organizations lose vast opportunities for capacity building, knowledge generation and learning by hiring short-term assistance to complete work that long-term staff are hungry for. Outsourcing these learning opportunities creates low staff morale as does the failure of organizations to recognize the source of contributions to learning and the value individuals bring. In the rushed environment of development, it is easy to get stuck in the ‘to-do’ mode (meeting deadlines for deliverables, staying on target with workplans, closing out projects and conducting final evaluations) while failing entirely to learn from our doing and changing our behavior to reflect new changes and developments in our environments.

Notes

1. ↑ Heres, Mariette, NGOs: learning from experience? Aid is a knowledge industry, The Broker, Issue 5, December 2007.
2. ↑ Powell, Mike (2006), Which knowledge? Whose reality? An overview of knowledge used in the development sector, Development in Practice, Volume 16, Number 6.
3. ↑ Ibid.
4. ↑ Smit, Maaike, (2006), We’re Too Much in ‘To Do’ Mode: Action Research into Supporting International NGOs to Learn, Praxis Paper No. 16, INTRAC.

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