Management Tips;
Mobilizing a Community or Managing an Organization
 by
Phil Bartle, PhD

Training Handout

Participatory principles in management training for communities or
organizations

 Community participation for empowerment  and participatory management
 for organizational capacity development have many things in common.

A. We Need Vision:

 The organization, or community, must decide, as a whole, what it
 wants to do. There are many possible goals, but the organization, or
 community, must be unified and choose what it wants to do.

 Trainers can use a quotation from Alice
 in Wonderland to illustrate this. "If we do not know where we are
 going, then any road will do." (Lewis Caroll).

 Without a vision for where the organization, or community, wants to
 go, it might as well
 stay where it is or how it is (with its apathy, poverty, disease and
 discomfort) at present.

B. It is Necessary to Make Some Planning Decisions:

 Once a goal and a direction are chosen, it is necessary to make some
 planning decisions as to how to reach or get closer to that
 end. This can be illustrated during training by a catchy phrase: "If
 we fail to plan, then we plan to fail." (Also see "Slogans").

 If success or winning can be defined as reaching the goal, then it
 is necessary to plan in order to reach that goal. (Of course the
 goal, or how it is interpreted, may change during the process of
 reaching it, and certainly after it is reached).

C. We Plan Backwards in Time:

 Planning means the series of thought processes that will lead us
 from where (or in what condition) it is now, to where (or in what
 condition) is envisaged when the goal is reached. Those thought
 process must be logical and consistent, and lead from the present
 actuality to the future desired result.

 Point out that: "We plan backwards in time (Start with the end and
 end with the start).".Start planning by identifying where we want to
 go, then ask what steps are needed in order to get there.

 Every step from the current situation must logically link with the
 next until the desired end is reached.

D. Get More Output for Less Input:

 During the process of identifying and selecting strategies, the
 group is encouraged to make the best or most efficient and effective
 use of what they have to get what they want. Efficiency must not be
 rejected, although it can be interpreted in many ways.

 "Rate of Efficiency" is the ratio between output and input.

 Efficiency can be defined as being able to "Get more output for less
 input (maximise our efficiency)".One catchy phrase that may
 illustrate this is, "Do not work hard; get results."

 Here the admired value of "hard work" (the means or the input) is
 shown to be less important than the result of that work (the end or
 output). It is not intended as an encouragement to be lazy, but as
 an encouragement to use resources (including one's own labour)
 wisely, and therefore (in this context) efficiently.

E. Tap Hidden Resources:

 A participatory and inclusive decision making process can tap hidden
 resources that would otherwise be lost by a dictatorial decision
 making style. The participatory management trainer or community
 participation trainer teaches to, "Involve everybody in decisions."

 One (imperfect) human, even if boss or chief, has less information,
 experience, wisdom, than the whole concerned group, including the
 quiet or humble ones. In terms of democratisation, it is the right
 of every community member to participate; in terms of maximising the
 strength of a community or organization, identifying the most of its
 resources, and finding creative and previously overlooked
 strategies, involving all makes good management sense.

F. Encourage Self Reliance:

 The community management trainer must remind the community that it
 must aim to "stand on its own feet." Dependency, and reliance on
 outsiders' help, resources, and even direction, is simply not
 sustainable (the outsiders leave after some time), as well as a
 weakness and vulnerability.

 Encourage self reliance; it is an obligation or duty as well as a
 right. Another catchy phrase can be used here: "If you blame others,
 you give up your power to change," (Ray Anthony).

 The mobilizer must never be duped by the dependent plea, "We are too
 poor so we need outside help." Every (every) group or community, no
 matter how poor, if it is composed of live humans, has resources it
 can tap, most of which are hidden.

 The real poverty is in the lack of knowing what those resources are,
 not in their absence.

G. There Is No Free Lunch

 There is no free lunch (nothing is for nothing).
 Volunteer labour and public donations must be
 paid for, even if not in purely monetary currency.

 That payment may be public recognition, encouragement, praise and
 acknowledgement. Management trainers even in the biggest
 corporations have pointed out that even paid labour does not
 participate fully or produce the most just on the basis of salaries
 or wages; recognition, praise and encouragement go a long way to get
 the best output from both volunteers and paid labour.

 Recognise contributions, praise honestly, emphasise the positive,
 ignore the negative, do not criticise.

H. We Cannot Stand Still:

 If we are not going forward,
 then we will slip backward. Human society is dynamic,
 it is always changing.

 It is impossible to solve any problem, "once and for all," (that is
 a fallacy). What may be today a solution to a problem, if it is
 continued to be used, may tomorrow be the problem.

 Even if we are on the right track, if we are not moving forward we
 will be run over.

 And More:

 Of course there are many other lessons and principles in management
 training. This web document cannot list or describe them all. You
 are invited to identify more. As you do, add them to your personal
 professional bag of tricks in mobilizing, and also share them with
 us and with your colleagues.

 There are many similarities in methods and principles for capacity
 development of communities
 or capacity development for organizations, especially when you
 emphasise participation.

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Updated: 2003 April 20