Judge not less ye be judged (if we can judge it at all?)

Dilbert teaches us that we are ruled over by a pointy haired boss who has no clue about the details of what is actually going on. In fact time and time again our performance is being evaluated by people who really don't understand the details. Not just management. Consultants, researchers, all the rest of it, who actually, often do not know anything about what it actually takes to accomplish a certain job. Doesn't sound good really.

Surely, only someone that understands what's going on would be qualified to judge and make recommendations. Let's break down what our judges are often asked to do:

Assess / Evaluate – how good was x?
Research – Why did x happen? What do y people think about x?
Recommend – What should we do next?

For the first and second – understanding the subject matter is really not needed. I can make reasonable comparisons on things that I don't understand the subject matter. One can see what the users think. In fact, having excessive understanding of the program itself could simply lead one to loose sight of the forest for looking at trees. Regardless of the brilliant foo() function, if users don't like it and it costs double what a similar program cost, something has gone wrong. Certainly there are some who can wear multiple hats – understanding the details but not getting lost looking at small shiny things. But I reckon they're the exception, not the rule.

What those who don't understand the subject matter are utterly unqualified for are for the most part recommendations. Without a firm grasp of the subject matter at hand, how can you say what should come next? Perhaps by luck there is a shining example somewhere else to draw on from evaluation, but without it, you're lost. For someone who doesn't know the subject matter to tell me that what I did was good or not is fine. For them to tell me about what they think about why that was is also fine. For them to tell me a plan for what to do next, when they don't have a clue and haven't experienced it, is often frustrating and arrogant.

Bottom line: The clueless can actually make pretty good judges, but not the best for making plans.

Accept stones from glass houses; avoid a downward spiral

In dysfunctional environments many might think they have answers. Answers often seem relatively apparent. Even whilst those prescribing the answers are not practicing that themselves; like the doctor telling us not to smoke, just before he goes for the cigarette break.

So it's easy to find the double standards think of one self as high and mighty for having identified that and then hastily ignore what was said. That the doctor smokes doesn't invalidate what he said about cigarettes though.

All we get is a downward spiral between all stakeholders - every iteration leading overall standards lower and lower. Before one knows it all the stakeholders in any given project; all knowing the dangers of smoking cigarettes and telling each other about it, and yet all themselves turn into chain smokers.

So I for one will start looking at the rocks thrown from those who reside in glass houses, or stone houses, in more or less the same way - on the merit of the rock that's just come crashing through the window.

[Photo by Thomas Hawk used under Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/5687171572/ ]

Capacity building critique

Few things in international development seem to be sexier than capacity building. It's the solution to everything. If only there would be more workshops, more capacity building, more training problems in any given developing country will surely, one day, vanish.

But please, when exactly is that day going to come? Capacity is mobile. It has legs. It can generally walk out the door. And where the demand for it is higher than supply, it often does walk out the door.

Whilst we are waiting for Nirvana with every one building capacity feeling good about themselves people are still suffering because the services that should be delivered from this capacity ain't coming. And they won't even when the workshop is over if the capacity decides to move somewhere else.

An equally important question is: how can we rework this job to reduce the needed capacity for it? Think like Henry Ford! He pumped out the Model T for prices no one thought possible doing it that way. And he didn't need to wait for capacity to be built to start the automobile revolution, because he designed jobs in a way that they could be done by almost anyone.

Of course not everything can be reduced to that level. But quite a few things can be broken down a lot more than they often are. And that can help get results today, not whenever after tomorrow which may or may not ever come.

That doesn't mean keeping people stupid either. Having a spell check does not stop me from learning how to spell. Having a calculator does not prevent you from doing long hand multiplication if you want to. Capacity building is not the whole picture, and it's not the whole answer, and it's generally too slow for the short to medium term.