Not the vehicle for change
It was the winter of 2019, and almost twenty years of working as a humanitarian and development practitioner. My enthusiasm and focus were clear, with a deep intent to, together with other peer practitioners from across the globe, shift the paradigm of power imbalance in the humanitarian system. I was happily surrounded by passionate changemakers, from diverse fields of social and humanitarian change: foresighters, partnership brokers, local leadership champions. However, I was feeling increasingly stuck, with where I was at with work… I realised I was in the ´wrong´ vehicle for change.
At the time, I was working in a big INGO, which boasted many commitments for change and transformation towards a more just humanitarian system, supporting the leadership of local actors and people affected by crises in the decision-making and emergency response. However, I also noticed and felt that between the stated narrative, and the actual change, there was a wide, empty space… who was the narrative for?, for donors? where was this narrative coming from?, from the ´ego´ of organisations, or from those most affected by power imbalance in the humanitarian system? I kept on hearing “we don’t put our money where the mouth is”, to mean that the resources were not being channelled to make that change and transformation happen, but rather support first and foremost those local and national organisations at the frontline of humanitarian work, through complementarity support and equitable partnering.
I started looking for ´feedback´ from the humanitarian ecosystem I was operating in. I didn’t know if it was only my critical voice or perhaps was I too impatient? or maybe my feelings were just magnified in a distorted kind of way?
One thing I felt for sure: There was a significant mismatch between the public statements made by international organisations on their shifting power commitments, and the transformative action actually being taken, or better said, not being taken! The way I was experiencing that mismatch, through my feelings, thoughts and values, revealed itself not only in frustration and feeling stuck; they also manifested through somatic symptoms. Really, I was getting sick more often. To a point that I thought this is crossing the line! What kind of humanitarian system constellation was I in, what kind of narrative was I being determined by? Why did I feel that the air that I was breathing was not clean? Something was not right…
Projectitis
Whilst I could not answer many questions, I knew by then, like many others fellow practitioners, that the humanitarian sector in which I had been working, was terribly sick. It was (is) squashed between the increasing frequency of humanitarian crises and a paradigm of humanitarian action based on funding interests and political agendas. The various efforts of early warning and anticipatory action, preparedness and resilience, participation of affected people in setting humanitarian response priorities, localisation commitments, etc … all of this, was simply not changing status quo. Not due to a lack of championing and courage of practitioners in southern and northern hemispheres, but because the humanitarian (eco)system, seems forever trapped in this kind of ´prison´ or vicious cycle, where progress is illusive:
donors’ funding –> international organisations –> project implementation –> subcontract local organisations –> report to donors –> apply for new funding -> funding-> international organisations –> projects -> reporting …
An experienced practitioner once told me, as we were talking about paradigm change: “the humanitarian system suffers from projectitis”. Yes, projectitis. It is a kind of delusion whereby, the obsession with project delivery in the humanitarian system is the go-to-paradigm-for-reactive-action, and that heavily reinforces power imbalances, whilst at the same time it fails to achieve, in its humanistic ability, any effective response to humanitarian issues. Projectitis reacts, but it does not allow for the system to respond to complexity.
"I wonder what we can do about this projectitis? Can we break this vicious cycle? Something needs to change, but how?” I didn’t have the answers, but I knew something really had to shift, somehow. The deep truth, commonly attributed to Einstein, is that: we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. This thought kept appearing in my mind and paved the way to gain new impulse to connect with something else.
Connecting the dots from a place of purpose, joy and creativity
Pandemic summer of 2020. One day, unexpectedly, I received a message from a peer partnership practitioner asking if I was interested in supporting a new action-learning initiative. It felt exciting, but one simple thing that struck me was the fact that the lines in the email message seemed to have a life of their own (!), a special glow, a kind of movement, a calling force… there and then, I sensed a new kind of creative energy. That was it! With a mix of excitement, fear, and curiosity I moved on from my then ´formal´ job, and used that as a gateway to start exploring new ways to transcend the projectitis paradigm. Am I really doing this?, I questioned. It felt a bit crazy at the time. A change was coming.
If I was not to operate in the projectitis mode, what would it be instead? I intended to model collaborative action and to explore alternative futures in the humanitarian system: somehow, to work in a way that could support bridging divides and dualities we find in the humanitarian system (and in ourselves!): local-international, rich-poor, them-us, donor-NGO, neo-colonial-decolonial, incremental change – transformative change… and so on. My sense at the time was that, if we practitioners are able to generate a creative space, for co-creation and collective reflective action, new shared energy and wisdom will possibly help overcome challenges that belong to the existing humanitarian paradigm.
What followed for the next three years, was a succession of rich, diverse, exciting work conversations and initiatives in a very connected, interdependent, collaborative way: with humanitarian foresight fellows, with partnership brokers, with changemakers from diverse organisations in the south and in the north, alliances, partnerships.
As I set out to explore with others new avenues for social change, it felt as if the universe kept on supporting me, with synchronistic events. I kept honouring these moments and showing up with my ´full self´: with all my heart, with all my purpose, with the best of my mind, with all my being. There were intense moments of working, across time zones, feeling the different vibrations of online working throughout the pandemic, and connecting and meeting new people remotely, but this intensity was not tiring as such. It was even ecstatic at times. It was an intensity of purpose, joy and creativity, and this led to sharing a new healing and resourcing energy with others, whilst learning so much from other practitioners´ experiences. A true learning journey it felt.
There were so many curious small facts. For example, one day there was a last-minute need for Portuguese speaker – partnership broker. I had never actually worked in Portuguese, and it was amazing to be able to work on multistakeholder collaboration in my native language. Also, as the world started to open from the lockdowns, I had the joy doing in-person facilitation work, and to listen deeply from others, their stories, their talents, and connecting to their frustrations and aspirations; they were maybe not so different from what I had gone through recently. I think that that was really when I started bringing everything together: connecting the dots between experiences and approaches from different people and places. The heartfelt energy of bridging divides and challenging that projectised ´vehicle´ of the humanitarian system that does not work started to materialise in action, and it was no longer only from my place of idealism and sense of justice.
Harnessing collective wisdom
I felt the time had come for us, practitioners, to work with more wisdom, not only knowledge; to contribute every day and every moment with this sense of connection to what is, what might be. I kept on working in that spirit, doing whatever was required: training, facilitating, and advising, and drafting strategies, and reports, and listening to what people from different places were observing and noticing.
It became clearer to me that humanitarian practitioners in different organisations and network settings were seeing diverse opportunities for new ways of action and supporting collaborative change. I could notice strong interest and drive from practitioners to shift ways of working and relating, to support new forms of collective humanitarian leadership. However, these practitioners also shared that they felt tied in their organisations’ agendas, and this was not conducive to a principled, equitable and effective collaborative leadership paradigm. I observed that the challenges of and impediments to quality collaboration were similar across different organisations.
This was when the idea of collaborative foresight, as a co-created and co-evolving approach to explore alternative futures, appeared as a realisation. When offered the space to step back, reflect and think outside of the box, communities of practice do share the best of their knowledge and wisdom: in the action learning processes I was facilitating, new ideas and fresh co-created narratives for more collaborative and equitable humanitarian futures kept on emerging.
Fast forward to 2023. One day, a friend asked me about how I facilitate change and harness collaborative processes, and if could I share about what I do. This invited me to reflect: what is it that makes me do the things that I do? I mean, I use many frameworks, learnings, processes, and concepts from various exciting places. I also refresh regularly by learning from those changemakers, their stories and experiences, which is often the starting point for change conversations and process. I create new approaches along the way. I try, I test, I fail at times, and I succeed in others. But what is it that defines my approach in 2023 when trying to contribute to a change towards a more equitable and connected humanitarian ecosystem? What lenses, filters, and elements really matter…? These words emerged to my inner eye:
Insight, hindsight, foresight.
What is this? I was curious. I started doodling, noting words, trying to unpack, reflecting on the various experiences of my journey, and identifying what appeared to be a constant thread in what and how I observe, listen, and learn from different experiences of working with practitioners, and the feedback they offer.
Depth and breadth
This generated a new impulse for me to reconnect to humanitarian changemakers: how can we co-create alternative humanitarian futures? How can we envision and explore together what needs to be different? What shifts can and need to take place? What is the future requiring from us? What is possible? What do we mean by paradigm change?
Can we use more collaborative foresight to co-explore alternative futures? Can we explore desirable and possible futures? Can we envision the future not only across a timeline or horizon (horizontal dimension) but also along different layers depth (vertical dimension)? Can we allow more future narratives to emerge from diverse (and seemingly divergent) worldviews?
The future in itself might not exist, but the future is a powerful resource to co-envision alternative approaches. And it is group intelligence or collective wisdom that brings out the potential for (radical) systems change and changed futures!
What next? As we start 2024, I share here the Insight, hindsight and foresight framework: an experiential and experimental lens, created from many conversations and group harvests over the last years. It brings attention and intention to jointly exploring change along those horizontal (time) and vertical dimensions (depth):
Awareness and consciousness: the intent to work by sensing, connecting with deeper layers of reality, and transcend the mechanistic collective mindset that leads to projectitis; bringing our attention and ability to operate from an eco-systemic place for change, beyond divides;
How, not only what: commitment to participatory process facilitation that explores alternative futures challenging the status quo is not only about what the projects deliver, but also about how projects are delivered, and how the diverse worldviews can be brought together to genuinely include and be owned by concerned people as the agents of change;
Soft art and hard science: striking the balance between the right side and the left side of the brain; harnessing the multiple intelligences that individuals and organisations possess (intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual); the rigorous and the creative; diving from the toplines to the deeper meaning of the present and the future.
The visible and invisible: making diverse forms of power visible, recognised and acknowledged (rather than only the financial power that shapes the humanitarian ´business´; sharing and exchanging diverse forms of power; truly valuing the different experiences and perspectives, ideas and social-entrepreneurial initiatives; exploring alternative mind-and-heart-sets for change.
Figure 1. Insight, hindsight and foresight
Those four dimensions seem to be helpful in gaining insight, hindsight and foresight in learning change-based processes.
An unfolding story
The idea of insight, hindsight, foresight has emerged from my daily practice of facilitating social humanitarian change in an ecosystem of changemakers driven by passion and wisdom. It is a lens that is open to be co-evolved, rather than readily applied as a dogmatic framework.
In this way, it is an invitation for us practitioners fighting the projectitis syndrome to change and learn; to generate renewed impulse of collaboration for humanity, peace, and equitable humanitarianism; to harness the collective energy that shapes alternative and preferred futures.
What narratives will we be sharing in the future? In 2034, what else will we have learned from our efforts of on humanitarian system change? The story continues.