Why projects don’t work
The “expert”
The consultancy’s management
The donor agency officer
The civil servant
…Anyone wants to add a profile for the NGO worker…? P.S.
[A longer version of this essay is entitled: “Institution building: The Achylles heel of development projects” and was published as “Lessons from institution building in Kenya”]
Public Admin. And Dev., Vol.14, 1994.
MARC CATLETT
CLAUDIO SCHUFTAN
schuftan@gmail.com
Why projects don’t work
[After reading some emails the other day, I felt compelled to dig out a piece of an old paper I had written with Marc Catlett during my Kenya years entitled “Institution Building”: The Achilles Heel of Development Projects which appeared in Public Admin and Devpt. a few years back].
It deals with underlying realities in health projects in the Third World. It explores the real alter-egos in this game we are all in. I would agree it caricaturizes the situation of who we really are. But a caricature is only good if it lets you recognize the character behind the real life that is being exaggerated. (Those that are interested in the full text of the paper can write to me giving me their postal address to post it by snail mail)].
The “expert”:
He has recently arrived in the country and is busy moving into his new house. Part of his shipment has arrived; the rest has been detained by customs. He must acquire an automobile, finalize housing arrangements, acquire furniture, interview a housegirl for his children, find a good school for them, hire a watchman. He is busy getting acquainted with other expatriate colleagues, discussing his future role, finalizing administrative chores such as his work permit and his duty free status. He is concerned that his wife should be as comfortable as possible.
Meanwhile, anxious to put his abilities to work, he dives into his assigned duties. Very likely, his first task is to prepare a needs assessment to analyze the problems of the client institution. This he does with enthusiasm, since he wants to demonstrate his abilities to the project team. Before he begins, he must acquaint himself with the problems and his work environment. Many people are interviewed, but most of the creative input comes from him, who, at this stage, still has few people to rely upon for candid advice. Lacking colleagues with whom he might consult, not knowing whom to trust, and with little understanding of the complexities of the local problems, he is a bit on his own.
As the expert, he feels pressure to act as an expert. Experts don’t seek advise from subordinates. Experts have answers. Because of his own desire to do a good job and have his work appreciated, he tends to push others to work just as hard. His expectations of his ministry counterparts exceed their ability to produce, not because they are incapable, but because they lack the incentives which drive the expert. He tends to push them harder than is considered acceptable. He sets deadlines which allow little room for taking a breather. He himself is ready to work hard and produce, so why shouldn’t the people he has come to help feel the same way?
His poor sensitivity to his counterparts’ needs and abilities begins to annoy them, and his relationship with them begins to deteriorate. After a short while, they become less responsive to his requests. Their initial wait and see attitude is eventually transformed into resentment. The expert’s level of frustration also rises. He can’t understand the source of such hostility on the part of the people he has come to help.
The expert’s response to this frustration can take many forms, depending on his social skills and sensitivity to others:
1) He can continue to push his counterparts hard, creating further animosity between them and himself.
2) He can take up the problems he has been having with his counterparts’ superiors.
3) He can take up his problems with his counterparts directly and openly.
4) He can retreat into his own office (experts are usually provided with their own offices) and focus on the work that he can accomplish individually without much assistance. This may lead him to do things which were clearly earmarked for counterparts or co-workers to do.
5) He can lower his expectations of what can be accomplished, recognizing that whatever he does must be done with the counterparts, and that he may have overestimated the energies and resources which they are willing and able to contribute to the project.
The first two responses are clearly the worst, and are bound to irreparably damage his relationship with the people he must work with if the project is to succeed. The third option may be culturally offensive to his counterparts, or interpreted as direct confrontation. The fourth and fifth are also unsatisfactory. If he retreats into isolated, individual work, he will be ineffective since, for change to take place, many people have to be involved. Finally, as an outsider, he lacks important (local context) knowledge needed to plan and implement the project successfully.
The last two options seem the best, though, if the expert is to retain his sanity. However, they are not really solutions. If he simply resigns himself to the perception that little can be done, his own enthusiasm will diminish, and he will probably not be very effective in his work. Caught up in a difficult situation, his recognition that, like it or not, he must work with counterparts who have, so far, shown little energy to devote to this project may push him into seeking a better solution:
6) He can seek advice from those around him who are more knowledgeable about the people and the institution he is working for. Based on their advice, he may be convinced that there is need to start afresh, this time working closely with his counterparts in all phases of project development, including its re-conceptualization.
It takes an unusually sensitive person to come to this conclusion. Even so, he still must convince his expert colleagues and the consultancy’s management of this need. The project’s scope of work has already been approved by senior management within the ministry and the donor agency. People have been hired and perhaps some equipment and supplies have been procured. By the time the expert realizes that a mistake has been made, significant resources have already been expended. The enlightened expert faces an uphill battle to convince his colleagues that there is need to start afresh.
The consultancy’s management:
The management of the consulting firm faces its own pressures which go against starting afresh. On a regular basis, they are required to submit progress reports to the funding agency detailing what was accomplished during the preceding months. Donors want to hear that the project has made progress in achieving its stated objectives, and project managers feel pressure to create that impression, whether or not it is true. The longer the project has been in existence, the more difficult it is to change course. If too much time has passed, managers may feel that a radical change in approach is impossible to justify both to the ministry and to the donor.
Yet it generally takes some time before an expert comes to the realization that his initial strategy has been wrong. If such a realization does occur, the project may be approaching its mid-term donor evaluation, at which point substantial project resources are frequently devoted to preparing for the evaluation. To satisfy the donor (who in turn must satisfy its home office), large documents are prepared detailing what has been accomplished during the past 12 to 18 months. Since expert advisors tend to be prolific writers, there is a great deal of paperwork to compile. Summary documents must be prepared according to formats required by the donor. These go through several reviews and after several iterations the document is finalized. All this consumes substantial project resources. Furthermore, after 10-16 months have passed, it becomes difficult to reassess the project’s approach and perhaps begin certain work again from scratch. This is particularly the case after having submitted all of these documents which collectively tend to paint a rosy picture of the project’s progress.
Project management is interested in a good midterm review that might improve the chances for a project extension. The manager’s livelihood is based on the project, and his performance is often assessed by the consultancy’s management based on his ability to win his project an extension. The experts on the project would also be pleased to have it extended, so when they are asked to assist in preparing for the mid-term evaluation, they do not complain. If little of sustainable value was accomplished by the project to date, substantially more effort is required to prepare for the evaluation. Staff is formally oriented regarding how to present themselves to the evaluators.
This defensive posture can bring productive project work to a standstill for a period of time. Worse, it can create among the consultancy a modus operandus in which thick, impressive documents are considered products, and detailed reporting begins to take up a considerably larger percentage of the expert’s time.
The donor agency officer:
He is in his fourth-year of his overseas assignment in a Third World country and is counting the days until it is over and he is reassigned to a more developed country. His lifestyle, similar to that of the expert, is quite comfortable by any standards. Most of his friends and acquaintances are expatriates, and most of these from his own country.
As a career officer in the foreign service, he enjoys travelling from country to country, but he has demonstrated little interest in getting to know the people. He speaks English and a little French, and two or three words in two or three other vernacular languages. He seldom sets foot in the working class section of town, he has never taken a trip in a local bus, and he has only once eaten dinner at the house of a local person (a professor at the university). His distorted awareness of the local people’s priorities, expectations, abilities and ways of life is worrisome, especially given the fact that he earns his salary working in “development”.
Outside the guarded gate of his one-acre villa is a world which he barely understands. Understanding it better would require a serious investment in time and effort. Moreover, it would require that he lower his defences, accept his profound ignorance of the norms and expectations of a society very different from his own and risk making mistakes. It is much safer to retreat into the shelter of the expatriate enclave found in all developing countries. There, expatriate children study in international schools with other expatriate children; expatriate social gatherings are regularly held to which few local people are invited. The way he sees it, since he will be reassigned to another country within a year or two, the benefits of assimilation are not worth the effort.
After fourteen years in the foreign service, he knows what is a “good” project and what is not. “Good” projects are mostly large projects conducted on behalf of a governmental organization in the host country. The specific focus of the projects submitted varies, as the priorities of the donor organization change. (These days, family planning-or population control?-projects are quite popular). Projects which create demand for experts, which sell high-technology equipment and supplies, or which are in strategic policy-making branches of the government are preferred. “Unsuitable” projects are generally those submitted by small, non-governmental organizations involved in local, small-scale efforts requiring few external inputs.
The donor officer is accountable to his home office for all that he does. The home office is ultimately responsible for approving the project, and monitoring it based on the documents submitted to it by its local representatives. Since the performance of the donor’s project manager is often evaluated based in part on the quantity of funds he disburses (the size of his project portfolio), and since the work required to review a project is more or less the same regardless of the amount funded, the donor home offices also generally favors large projects. A few large projects are also easier to monitor than many small projects.
Bi-lateral aid is often given by the donor government with a view toward influencing economic or sectoral policies of the host government. All things being equal, projects which are strongly backed or desired by the host government are more likely to be funded than the ones which do not receive strong government support. Where aid is provided in the form of loans, large institutions (such as the government) are perceived to be more creditworthy than small, non-profit organizations. It is, therefore, not surprising that the bulk of development aid passes through the hands of the host government.
In addition to reviewing and selecting “good” projects, the donor officer spends much of his time monitoring the activities of these projects once they are funded. Since he was responsible for recommending them, he has an interest in ensuring that they are successful, or are perceived to be successful in the eyes of the home office. He, therefore, requires from the lead consultant detailed status reports and intermediate “products” (usually paper) demonstrating progress. Since a successful project should show systematic movement towards achieving established objectives, the donor is highly resistant to significant shifts in the scope of work or project approach.
The civil servant:
He completed his studies at the university six years ago, one of the privileged few to have made it this far in a country with scarce educational resources. Having graduated with honors, he is initially enthusiastic about the possibilities of getting a high-paying job in the private sector. (Also enthusiastic are the many friends and relatives whose contributions financed him through school.) After eight months of rejections, he soberly accepts an appointment from the employer of last resort: the government.
He quickly adapts his behavior and expectations to the demands of his new job. Accountability is quite low in the ministry, so he learns that he is free to work or not work, as he pleases. Still accustomed to the intense, competitive environment of the university, he prefers to work, so he finds himself a worthwhile project and, like the expert, dives in. Anxious to do a good job in an environment where things are often in disarray, he devotes himself to creating some order amid the chaos, not yet realizing that the disorder is not really an accident. One or several of his co-workers have an interest in keeping things as they are, and they find ways to frustrate his efforts.
Seeing the futility of direct confrontation, he resolves to work hard on a less sensitive project-one which can threaten no one. Yet even then he faces many of the same obstacles to accomplishing his goals as does the expert. Meetings are cancelled or postponed due to lack of quorum, co-workers fail to fulfil commitments, managers insist on being involved but fail to contribute. After five years of frustrating, energy-consuming failures, he has come to hate his job.
But he is afraid to leave it, remembering the difficulty he had getting work as a fresh graduate, and knowing that jobs are even more scarce now. He has since married and has a wife and three children to support. Prices have gone up faster than his income. Relatives from his home village arrive weekly for financial assistance: school fees, a wedding, a funeral, short-term lodging. He sends money home to his parents each month.
At some point, his frustrations turn to cynicism. He makes no waves trying to improve the prevailing systems. He follows the tide. As much as he awaits his pay check at the end of the month, it angers him to see how little money it brings. And all around him, others less scrupulous than himself are supplementing their meagre earnings using government resources. Some do outside work using government supplies and equipment; others steal; others take bribes; still others fail to show up at all, or are earning two salaries. Most come late and leave early; and few are enthusiastic about their work.
As a consequence, at all levels of the ministry, expectations are low that significant positive change is possible. Creativity and drive are systematically discouraged by the prevailing social norms, motivation is low, and it takes an exceptional person to withstand these pressures, continue to work hard and be effective, and still maintain his sanity. Most civil servants would welcome the opportunity to find employment outside the civil service, although many of them have since given up hope.
…Anyone wants to add a profile for the NGO worker…? P.S.:
Regardless of the formal rationality of a proposed change, the feelings and perceptions of the individuals involved are far more critical to its success than either the professional expertise of the expert advisor, the perceived need for the change, the size of the budget, or the neatness of the plan. Somehow, ministry counterparts have to develop enthusiasm, commitment and interest in the project if the untapped reserve of energy and resources in Third World ministries is to be used more effectively.
But even if a project succeeds in creating sustainable changes, it mostly fails to address the much more critical problem of power: who is guiding the health development activities of a particular Third World country, and in whose interest?
Underlying the issue of the individual motivation of the civil servant is the not unfounded perception that he has no control in his work environment, that he is powerless, and that things are only getting worse. His feeling of powerlessness, and the resulting despondency and cynicism, frustration and lack of hope for the future are inseparably related to his job performance. Unless ways can be found to somehow empower the civil servant so that his work takes on new meaning, health sector development projects will continue to die quiet deaths.
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.