Tag Archives: work

Remote work makes who does & doesn’t actually do work way more obvious

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For many years, in promoting virtual volunteering, I’ve talked about how it’s very hard to fake it when you volunteer online: if you say you have web design skills, and I get you started on a project, I find out very quickly if you really do have web design skills or not. If you say that you can translate something from English to Spanish because of your language fluency, I find out very quickly if that’s true or not. With online volunteers, I’m experiencing people based on their work and productivity almost immediately.

By contrast, I have been fooled many times by onsite volunteers: they come in on time, they are oh-so-nice, I see them onsite, walking in the halls or sitting at a desk, we chat here and there, and I just assume they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. I mean, they are THERE, right? I can see them and, therefore, they are volunteering, right? And later, I find out they haven’t done most, or any, of what they signed up to do, or they haven’t been doing it well.

That isn’t to say that I prefer online volunteers to onsite volunteers, but it certainly has changed how I manage people, volunteer and employee alike, onsite or online: I require onsite staff I am managing to check-in and report on what they are doing as often as online volunteers, and in the same way: in writing, via email or an online system I’ve set up. I want to know very quickly if a volunteer or employee is doing what they’ve signed up to do, what I NEED them to do. Weekly or bi-weekly check-ins are a must – it can be as simple as an email, but I have to have an update, something more than “I’m working on that.” And I do the same: my direct reports know what I’m working on as well, what is challenging me, what my priorities are, what my deadlines are, etc.

I’ve also said many times that organizations that start employing virtual volunteering – using the Internet to support and engage volunteers – may find out, as a result, that their manager of volunteers isn’t a very good manager. That person may have also have been judged by being seen walking in the halls, talking to volunteers and sitting at a desk, and always having a smile for everyone, rather than on abilities to create tasks and roles for volunteers, guiding staff who work with volunteers, tracking successes with volunteers, identifying challenges and addressing them, etc.

Similar thoughts can be found in this essay in The Atlantic by Ed Zitron. He’s writing about how companies need to let go of the idea that employees and consultants need to always be onsite:

Remote work lays bare many brutal inefficiencies and problems that executives don’t want to deal with because they reflect poorly on leaders and those they’ve hired. Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line… I have known so many people within my industry (and in others) who have built careers on “playing nice” rather than on producing something. I have seen examples within companies I’ve worked with of people who have clearly stuck around because they’re well liked versus productive…Remote work makes who does and doesn’t actually do work way more obvious.

How nice to see the corporate world once again catching up with the nonprofit world (grin).

I’m never going to want to entirely stop working with people in same place, at the same time. I do think there are some things that can happen in an office that just cannot happen remotely. An example: at a nonprofit that produced an event with more than 150 online volunteers in an eight-week period, the night before the launch, myself and another staff member sat at the same table, in the same place and time in Austin, Texas, with our laptops, a massive whiteboard and some yummy snacks, rapidly putting together all of the things that had to be in place. It was hours of frantic, at-times stressful, incredibly energizing work, and there’s an efficiency and clarity in having the person right there, at the table across from you, reacting in real-time, that can never be matched by Slack or Zoom. By the time we were finished from this marathon work session, we were mentally spent but oh-so-celebratory, and we broke out our favorite live musical moments on YouTube and all sang along at the top of our lungs. That wouldn’t have been at all the same at home. It wouldn’t have been as productive or as fun. But I carried that experience, and the onsite event launch, back with me when I returned to my home office in Oregon, and it fueled my remote work for the next several weeks. I felt oh-so-close to co-workers I’d spent those intense days with. Our incredible productivity and teamwork continued for the eight weeks of the project when we all went back to working remotely, and we were a stronger team for that onsite, face-to-face experience, no question – but working remotely after that was not just fine, but much more appropriate for the bulk of the project.

I was the chair of a board of directors last year, for a program that gives away small grants to nonprofits. We asked the county government agency a few times three years ago if we could have at least some meetings remotely, and were told, absolutely, NO. When the pandemic came along, suddenly, that thing we were not allowed to do, that could not be done, was permissible and possible. And I think our board meetings have been much more efficient as a result, with much better attendance, and much more productive. Do I want to get together face-to-face eventually? Sometimes, yes. But there’s no question: the norm for these board meetings should be online.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

If you are a manager of volunteers and you want a better way to support and engage all of your volunteers, even if all of their service is onsite at your organization, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is worth your time. And if you want to create more tasks and roles for volunteers online – and you should, no matter the focus of your organization, even if your volunteers do things that must be done onsite, like care for animals in a shelter, repair roofs on homes where elderly people live, plant trees, whatever – this is the book for you. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

“mandated telecommuting” has lessons for “mandated virtual volunteering”

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In the early days of the Virtual Volunteering Project back in the 1990s, I used telecommuting manuals, combined with guidelines and best practices for working with traditional, onsite volunteers, to develop the initial materials to advise organizations on how to create roles and tasks for online, remote volunteers.

I’m reminded of that as I read Deriving Long-Term Strategic Advantage from Mandated Telecommuting, a December 17, 2020 article from the American Management Association.

Here’s an excerpt:

Rapid changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic gave leaders little time to make strategic decisions in preparation for the anticipated recession, while forced telecommuting added significant challenges and pressures. Executives were forced to reboot established policies and practices even as they fought to keep businesses afloat…

…there are opportunities for companies to emerge from this crisis stronger and more agile, especially among those that can quickly adapt to the realities of remote work. The most successful leaders in this new era will prove able to fully embrace the new normal, strategically reorient their management practices, and drive efficiency through more purposeful meetings, while ensuring that any fears about the future of work don’t hinder potential and progress…

Even as leaders anticipate the business environment “returning to normal,” they need to accept that the new world will likely look very different from the one before. Significantly, remote work will be much more accepted, even preferred, as organizations and leaders begin to acclimate…

Adjusting to this new reality is less about making telecommuting work during self-quarantine, and more about determining how it will best function even after the pandemic is behind us. This will require that leaders understand the development of telecommuting-focused policies and practices as more than just temporary measures. Such thinking will help them adapt in ways beyond learning how to conduct videoconferences, as just one example. They’ll benefit from considering the much larger picture, including how to engage employees, ensure productivity, build and sustain culture, and maintain focus, all while people continue to work from home.

End excerpt.

This could so easily be rewritten for the nonprofit world:

Rapid changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic gave leaders at nonprofits, public sector agencies and other mission-based programs little time to make strategic decisions in preparation for the anticipated recession, while forced telecommuting for staff, virtual volunteering for volunteers and remote engagement with clients and the community added significant challenges and pressures. Executives were forced to reboot established policies and practices even as they fought to keep their programs afloat…

…there are opportunities for nonprofits, public sector agencies and other mission-based programs to emerge from this crisis stronger and more agile, especially among those that can quickly adapt to the realities of remote work and remote engagement. The most successful leaders in this new era will prove able to fully embrace the new normal, strategically reorient their management and engagement practices, and drive efficiency, while ensuring that any fears about the future of work don’t hinder potential and progress…

Even as leaders anticipate the work and program delivery environment “returning to normal,” they need to accept that the new world will likely look very different from the one before. Significantly, remote work and remote engagement will be much more accepted, even preferred, as organizations and leaders begin to acclimate…

Adjusting to this new reality is less about making telecommuting, online engagement and virtual volunteering work during self-quarantine, and more about determining how these will best function even after the pandemic is behind us. This will require that leaders understand the development of telecommuting-focused, virtual volunteering-focused and remote engagement-focused policies and practices as more than just temporary measures. Such thinking will help them adapt in ways beyond learning how to conduct videoconferences, as just one example. They’ll benefit from considering the much larger picture, including how to engage employees, volunteers and clients/the community, ensure productivity, build and sustain culture, and maintain focus, all while some people continue to work from home and online/remote engagement continues with clients and the community.

It’s a terrific article – just remember how to translate it for the mission-based world. Virtual volunteering will continue at all the thousands of organizations where it did before the pandemic – let’s hope organizations new to the concept, who embraced the concept so late, will realize virtual volunteering has made them stronger, more agile, and better prepared for new generations of volunteers.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

If you want to deeply integrate virtual volunteering into your program and expand your engagement of online volunteers, such as in an online mentoring program or other scheme where online volunteers will interact with clients, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Purchasing and readin the book is far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer regarding virtual volunteering – though you can still do that!

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Judgment & reputation online – and off

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This week, I’m blogging and launching new web resources based on my experience in October as the Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

Monday, I blogged about one of my workshops regarding Democratizing Engagement. Specifically: has the Internet democratized community, even political, engagement. Tuesday, I launched a new web page about online leadership. Wednesday, I blogged about things I learned while in Kentucky for this program and presenting separately for the Kentucky Network for Development, Leadership and Engagement (Kyndle).

Today, it’s about a comment made repeatedly in student evaluations for one of the classes that invited me to lecture, one that’s given me pause ever since.

My visit at the University of Kentucky was focused on leadership development, and community development and engagement, as both relate to the use of online media. And as guest lecturer in CLD 230 Intrapersonal Leadership, my topic was “How to use social media and online collaborative tools to demonstrate leadership and to support a team.” During my lecture, I noted that text-based online communi­cations, unlike video conferencing, hide our weight, ethnicity, hair color, age, and other physical traits from each other online. That means, online, people are judged by the quality of their online performance, not their physical appearance or regional accent. As Susan Ellis and I note in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: “Today’s preference to actually see and hear each other online is a double-edged sword: it can make electronic communication more personal and personable, but it can also inject offline prejudices evoked by how someone looks.” I pointed out that, online, via text-based communications, I can’t judge people regarding how they look but, rather, by the quality of the character they show through their words.

The comment ended up on many of the students’ “guest speaker reflection” form the instructor, Grace Gorrell, asks all students complete during class. The comment struck a chord with many of these students, most of them in their teens or 20s. And that’s given me pause: about society’s obsession with appearance, and about stereotypes. Young people are quite aware of those two factors affecting people’s lives, including their own – and probably quite worried about such. There are advantages, and disadvantages, to being perceived as attractive during a job search, and even a Harvard degree doesn’t level the playing field for African-American graduates in the job market, a study by a University of Michigan researcher found. It’s likely that these students have experienced first hand or witnessed first-hand preferences given because of someone’s appearance, perceived ethnicity or age, accent, etc., or discrimination because of the same. I think these students really like the idea of being evaluated purely by their work and communications skills – by their character.

Are we giving young people the information they need to portray themselves online as worthy of employment, of being involved as a volunteer, of inclusion? Are we teaching them how to build trust among people they work with, with their neighbors, and with those they will encounter online – and why this is important?

And are we continually exploring our own prejudices that may be affecting how we work and interactive with others?

Updated April 15, 2021: A comic strip demonstrates the challenges women face online. It’s developed by Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet). In a story of three differently aged, differently shaped and differently employed women, we see what violence can look like online, how the seemingly harmless can actually contribute to it, and what we can all do to prevent it and to create a safer space for women online.

Also see:

Skills & experience, unpaid, are still skills & experience

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“A few of our volunteers have been listing their experience with us on their résumés, as though this was paid work, so we’ve asked them to stop doing that.”

She said this to me with a look of I’m sure you understand. I didn’t.

“You mean they listed their role at your organization, the name of your organization, the list of their responsibilities and their accomplishments at your organization?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said, “As though it was a job!”

And I said, “Why is that a problem?”

She said, “Because they were just volunteers! You don’t list that on your résumé!”

Sigh.

As I said in a previous blog, a marketing director is defined by the scope of his or her responsibilities – not a pay rate. Paid or not, you call such a person a marketing director. An executive director is defined by the scope of his or her responsibilities – not a pay rate. Paid or not, you call such a person an executive director.

If a person has a role at your organization, with a title and responsibilities, and that person has met goals / accomplished things as a result of his or her work at your organization, paid or unpaid, that person has EVERY right to put that experience on his or her résumé! The person should also say if the role was part-time (5 hours a week? 10? 20?) and to whom he or she reports/reported (the marketing director? the executive director? the manager of volunteers?). You should do all that for PAID jobs as well.

Should the person say if the role is paid or unpaid on his or her résumé? I keep trying to imagine a scenario where a person should, absolutely, say he or she was/is a volunteer in that role on his or her résumé, and I cannot think of one. Certainly if you are asked how much you were paid for each job, and you are filling out that information for each job, you should be just as transparent, and write $0.

And maybe you want to brag about having been a volunteer, specifically. I was just an employee of the United Nations Volunteers, I never had the honor of serving as a UN Volunteer – I was merely an employee who supported UNVs in the field (I really did say this when I worked at UNV, and it was hilarious to see the reactions from paid staff who worked so hard to tell people, “Oh, no, I’m an employee, I’m not a volunteer!”). If I did have the honor of serving as a UNV, I would make absolutely SURE it was clear on my CV that, indeed, I’d made the cut and been an actual UNV. Of course, that’s my way of thinking – by contrast, a lot of UNVs list their field work title on their CVs (Youth Program Director, HIV/AIDS Community Educator, etc.) and that their employer was UNDP, rather than UNV, to distance themselves as much as possible from the term volunteer – sad, but true.

When I am an employer, I look at experience, skills, training and accomplishments, period. I don’t care if the candidate did anything as a paid employee, a paid contractor or an unpaid volunteer – I want to see what they’ve done and what they can do. Whether they were paid to do it or not is irrelavent to me.

And you?

Also see:

What I Did in Ukraine

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Ukraine booby dollMore than a week has gone by since I left Kyiv. The photo at right sums up how I felt most of the time whilst there.

Now, I’m in Germany, fighting a cold, and wondering if I dreamed that whole nine-week Ukrainian adventure.

What did I do in August and September 2014 for the United Nations in Ukraine? I tried to remember everything:

  • Drafted (and re-drafted and re-drafted) the revised strategy for the UN’s work in Ukraine, per the drastic change in circumstances in the country earlier in 2014 (this took up probably 25% of my entire work time in Kyiv).
  • Edited and rewrote more document proposals, press releases, web pages, meeting reports and field reports than I care to try to list (this took up probably 25% of my entire work time in Kyiv).
  • Drafted a marketing plan for a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project focused on getting people to care about and take action regarding climate change.
  • Drafted a strategy to leverage most of the UN days in some way via social media and, in some cases, traditional means (onsite events, press tours, etc.).
  • Live-tweeted UNDP Ukraine Social Good #inno4dev / #2030now summit, highlighting the many excellent tech-for-good initiatives happening all over Ukraine, and blogged about how future events might be more interactive and produce something by the end of the day (more than knowledge-sharing). I also blogged about how I was part of a group at UN Volunteers HQ back at the start of the century that tried to do many of the things now, at last, being embraced by UNDP, and got quite a bit of attention thrown UN Ukraine’s way as a result. 
  • Invented the #uatech4good tag, which I’m hoping will catch on as a social media tag for any tech4good initiative in Ukraine, including those with no UN-affiliation.
  • Mapped all of the various UN agencies and programs in Ukraine with regard to their Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Flickr accounts and any other social media profiles they had, and created a page on the UN web site where anyone could find such (it also includes suggestions on where to find further info regarding the UN’s work in Ukraine using various UN HQ accounts).
  • Did research and then drafted recommendations for how various UN agencies, particularly UNDP, could use social media to promote respect, tolerance and perhaps even reconciliation in areas of Ukraine currently in conflict.
  • Live-tweeted UNDP Ukraine’s Social Good #inno4dev / #2030now summit, highlighting the many excellent tech-for-good initiatives happening all over Ukraine.
  • Helped to develop some simple ways to leverage the Humans of New York focus on Ukraine.
  • Advised on how to deal with some specific negative activities on both social and traditional media targeted at the UN.
  • Did trainings on using Twitter for all UN communications staff, and another for just UNDP staff and another just for UNICEF staff, tailoring those last two trainings to those different agencies specifically.
  • Prepared a guide for the UN Volunteers office in Ukraine on how to use Twitter and Facebook to better publicize their activities to not only external audiences, but also to those they are working with and their colleagues within various UN agencies in Ukraine (never forget that social media sometimes reaches someone in the office next door with news they don’t know about your initiative).
  • Wished for a better word for reconciliation
  • Wished for more web sites like this Ukrainian journalism student project, Stopfake.org
  • Lamented with my Crimean Tatar co-worker the lack of sustainability and evaluations of hacksforgood/appsforgood and any other projects launched during a hackathon, and our lamentations inspired this blog (I mention his ethnicity only because other references to such all seem to be only about how they are internally-displaced people and frequently oppressed – which is true, but many also happen to be very knowledgable, experienced professionals – just like anyone).
  • Advised on an app to help citizens report infrastructure issues to the government.
  • Researched whether or not our offices might need a policy re: editing Wikipedia (such editing is easily monitored by citizen activists and even some hostile “bodies”, and conflict of interest editing can turn into a PR nightmare; I doubt anyone is editing Wikipedia from the office, but this is a VERY tech savvy country – I was trying to think preventatively).
  • Had various ideas bounced off of me by various staff for events, announcements, activities, speeches, using Twitter, etc.
  • Participated in department meetings (though, believe it or not, I would have liked to have been a part of even more).
  • Created new text for the UN Volunteers in Ukraine page regarding online volunteering and volunteering NOT as a UN Volunteer.
  • Asked a lot of questions, listened, took a lot of notes, read lots and lots of information so I could write about various topics when called upon, read and responded to a lot of emails…
  • Tried to kill my boss with roses.
  • Took care of our field security guy’s puppy for a few days.
  • Bothered my co-workers regarding my overwhelming desire for mashed potatoes.

I bring up the mashed potatoes because, while very few people liked or commented on Facebook regarding my “I want mashed potatoes” status update, several co-workers did in-person; it’s how I realized just how much people were reading what I posted online, and what a poor judge of readership the number of “likes” is.

Did anything change as a result of my time in Ukraine? I’m not sure. I think a couple of people now realize the power of social media and it seems that the changes in their use of such while I was there is continuing after I’m gone. I think I helped to raise the profile, to a certain degree, of what various UN agencies are doing in Ukraine, and helped to reinforce that those agency reps are essential to have at the table when talking about addressing the critical needs of the country. But I wish I could have had more time to get more cross-fertilization happening regarding communications and to get more people pro-active instead of being so reactive and passive when it comes to communications, so that when one initiative launches something major, all of the UN communications staff at different initiatives see it and share it with their networks, and that no one waits to hear about news – they go out online and look for it. I wish I could have done a workshop on writing in plain English. I wish I could have worked with a few people one-on-one more. I wish I could have gotten everyone better using Flickr. I wish I could have done an analysis of current press relations.

I also really wish I could have done a workshop on the UN’s Online Volunteering service. I’m sorry to say that no one in the UN Volunteers office in Ukraine really knew what it was or why to use it. It wasn’t a part of my mandate to talk about it to anyone – but I tried anyway, specifically with UNV folks, squeezed in among several other topics. I would not only like to see UN Volunteers in Ukraine using the OV service, I would not only like to see all of the UN programs in Ukraine looking for ways to use the service to engage with online volunteers regarding their work, I would also love to see UNDP Ukraine launch, or help to launch, a Ukrainian and Russian-language version of the online volunteering site focused exclusively on Ukraine. Ukraine is still afire with civic engagement desires – so many civil society initiatives there are using the Internet to engage and support volunteers, without ever having heard the term virtual volunteering. Imagine what more could be done with Ukraine’s own online volunteering service for both Ukraine-based and Ukraine-focused civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Oh well, I did what I did, and I think I did what most needed to be done.

What did I learn? Oh, that’s a whole ‘nother blog, thrice as long. I learned SO much, and re-learned so much. I think that’s what I’ll reflect on these next two weeks.

So, that was my work time in Ukraine, and my latest adventure with the United Nations, an organization that frustrates me greatly often times but, even so, I still believe is humanity’s best hope for getting every person equal access to education, safety, care for basic needs, a healthy environment, economic choices, and life choices, and for keeping us from killing each other and destroying everything. I’m proud to be a part of the United Nations, and while I hope this isn’t my last gig with the UN, if it is, wow, what a high note to end on!

Also see:

My photos from Ukraine (Kyiv and Korosten)

My photos from in and around Chornobyl (Chernobyl)

How to Pursue a Career with the United Nations or Other International Humanitarian or Development Organizations, Including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Reality Check: Volunteering Abroad / Internationally

A volunteerism blog, not a political one

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During this election season in the USA, there has been a lot of talk about the role volunteers played in the work of various campaigns, including the presidential campaign. But most of it has focused on the “free labor” aspect. Yet, as we all know (right?!), volunteers are NOT free.

 

The reason volunteers were effective in various campaigns this time around – and, well, always – isn’t because they were unpaid labor. Rather, it was because volunteers were the best people for certain tasks, and could do certain tasks far better than paid staff.

 

I got a lot of phone calls related to the election for the last three months. I realized after several of them that, when the person said, “I’m calling from the such-and-such campaign…”, I almost always interrupted them at some point, even if they were calling from a cause or campaign I supported, to say, “Hi, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have absolutely no money to donate to the campaign whatsoever.” But when the person said, “I’m a volunteer, and I’m helping with the such-and-such campaign…” I let them finish their spiel and answered all of their questions (but still couldn’t give money).

 

I thought about why I was doing that, why I was being so much kinder to the volunteers, and the answer was, for me: the people that are volunteers are supporters of such-and-such campaign, no question. A lot of people will do anything for a paycheck and, therefore, I wonder if the motivation for the political call from someone who is being paid isn’t actually all about the commission they are trying to make for every person that donates. With a volunteer, I know, absolutely, that that person is volunteering from a passion for that candidate. And I want to be a part of that.

I ended up volunteering for a campaign because one of those callers said, up front, that he was a volunteer and he was NOT calling for money – rather, he was calling to see if I would be voting, if I would be supporting a certain presidential candidate, and if I wanted to volunteer. And I said yes. And there was something so warm and energizing about sitting in another volunteer’s house, with lots of other volunteers, calling potential voters on my cell phone, rather than being paid to sit in a corporate-esque phone bank making calls – do you think people could hear that in my voice? I do.

 

That is not to say people that are paid to work on campaigns don’t have passion. I have been paid to do public relations and marketing, and I’m quite passionate about the causes I’ve been paid to promote – I’m not sure I could do the same for something I don’t really feel personally supportive of. I used to cringe when I worked at the UN Volunteers program and people would try to say that UN Volunteers had more passion than UNDP workers in the field – having worked in the field, I could never tell the different in what contract someone had just based on the passion they exhibited, or didn’t in the field.

 

But the fact remains that, often, the public responds more positively to someone that says, “I’m a volunteer” than they do to a person that says, “I’m an employee.” And exactly the opposite is true as well in certain situations – some people will refuse to work with “just a volunteer”, even if that person has more qualifications and expertise than a paid employee of the same organization.

It goes back to what I’ve said again and again: for some tasks, volunteers are the best people for the job, and for some tasks, employees or paid consultants are the best people for the job, and it does NOT have to do with saving money!

Also see:

Writing a mission statement for your organization or program.

Going all-volunteer in dire economic times: use with caution

The Value of Volunteers (and how to talk about such)

theater as a community development/education tool – it takes more than artists

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It’s been a few years now since, for my Master’s degree, I embarked on a year-long investigation of the non-artistic elements necessary for success in “Theater as a Tool for Development” initiatives. It’s a subject that remains a very big interest for me. I wish I had the time and resources to research it further!

There are numerous organizations using theater techniques as part of their community development / education activities all over the world – for instance, to educate children about a health issue – and there are also numerous initiatives, publications, web sites and individuals that promote and chronicle successes regarding live, in-person performance as an effective tool for development. Even in our current age saturated with multi-media, live, in-person performance/TfD is a popular and effective tool for education, outreach and capacity-building regarding a variety of development issues, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, domestic violence, evolving gender roles, or good sanitation practices

However, there is little information on what has to be in place before these techniques are used, excluding performer training, to better ensure that these techniques will be well-received by an audience/participants, and to better ensure that the desired outcomes will be generated. My research was meant to fill in a bit of that gap. And my conclusion? Without deliberate, thoughtful cultivation of support for and trust in such an initiative among staff at the lead agency, among partner organizations, and among those for whom the theater-for-development techniques will be used, and without clear definitions of what everyone expects from TfD activities, such efforts will fail, no matter how experienced or enthusiastic your artistic staff is. In fact, in one case I studied, not doing this groundwork before hand turned out to be deadly.

My project included a review of key literature on TfD, and semi-structured interviews with 12 TfD practitioners. You can read online:

If you have undertaken similar research – not about theater as a tool for development, but specifically what needs to happen before such activities take place in order for them to be successful, give me a shout.

Do departments at your org hate each other?

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I once had lunch with a friend of a friend who worked at a very large, well-known company in Silicon Valley. She worked in the marketing department, and had been charged to create policies and activities around employee volunteering, product donations to nonprofits and schools, financial grants to nonprofits and schools, and all other philanthropic activities the company untertook, or wanted to undertake. Since I had run such a program at a Fortune 500 company in Silicon Valley back in the early 1990s, she wanted advice.

My advice was, more or less, this:

You’ve got this great resource already at your company, I’ve no doubt: it’s called the BNA Index. Your human resources department or your corporate library has it. It’s a series of notebooks that has samples of just about any policy or procedure you can think of. It’s frequently updated. I used its samples as models for the policies we developed at such-and-such company for all of our philanthropic activities. It’s awesome! 

(note: BNA stands for Bureau of National Affairs, the early name of what is now Bloomberg BNA).

She smiled in a wow-that-is-totally-not-helpful way, and said, firmly, “The marketing department is in charge of our philanthropy activities, NOT the HR department. HR would really like to be in charge of it. So I’m not going to them. That’s out of the question.”

I gently pointed out that she didn’t have to tell the HR department why she wanted to see the BNA Index – just that she wanted to look up a policy. And that I didn’t see how telling HR staff what she was looking up would somehow give them the power to take the activity away from her. That just made her – well, kind of hysterical. The rest of the lunch was super awkward and we haven’t spoken since.

I wish I could say departments not getting along is unusual, but it’s not: I find this story again and again from people that work for corporations, as well as people that work with government agencies or nonprofits. I’ve encountered it at many organizations where I’ve worked as well. The siege mentality that so many individual departments have is unhealthy to the organization and counter productive to everything that organization is trying to accomplish.

I’ve always wondered: are executive directors of these organiations aware that departments within their own agency are refusing to work with each other? Not one to mince words, I have brought up such circumstances in meetings: “That’s a great idea. Do you think the IT department will support us though, because based on such-and-such incident, I’m not sure they will help out with this.” Awkward silence follows… but what’s funny is that the department in question is then usually shamed into helping because their past non-support has been talked about so openly and officially.

I look at fellow employees as my customers. They have needs, and part of my job is to support those needs. In any position, I look at the requests of fellow staff members as priorities, and I treat them as I would like to be treated. It’s but one of my many wacky approaches to working.

I’ve also suggested at several organizations that staff performance reviews include rankings of all departments by all other departments:

  • are the staff charged with evaluation providing your department the data it needs in a timely manner?
  • is the IT department supporting you with the tools and resources you need to meet your department’s goals in support of the organization’s mission?
  • on a scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being an absolutely perfect score, how would you rate the customer service of the human resources department?

I’ve been turned down every time…

Are you brave enough to explore how well employees, volunteers and consultants, grouped by department, get along with each other?