Full Circle Associates

Chris Collison points to a conversation underway in the comments of Dave Snowden's blog critiquing a small animation on Peer Assists that I pointed to a while back.

I wonder how many of those commenting, one way or the other, have worked in international development? I wonder how many of them have particularly faced environments where people aren't given the opportunity/freedom to express their thoughts and to regularly tap horizontally into their peers, rather than working in a rigid, hierarchical structure which moves at the speed of pre-global-warming glaciers.

I am amazed at how easy we can read meaning into things when we skim it, out of context. I got fired up and posted comments on both sites, knowing full well that commenting on Dave's site can be a challenging experience, one that I both love and dread at the same time. (I dread it most when I don't have enough time to really prepare a response and back it up with data. But that will have to wait, because I have work to do!)

Here are my comments on Chris' site:

I don’t perceive that the video is intended as a be-all-end-all of processes or perspectives. I know it reflects input from people in the sector who want to use it. My read is not that Peer Assists are new and different (Hi Jon!), but that the animation is aimed at offering an idea, a perspective, that encourages horizontal peer support and knowledge sharing.

I’m a bit amused at how strongly people responded on Dave’s blog. I wondered if there was any consideration of context, because in the end, context rules. Christian, I agree with your idea about open workspaces, but in development, getting to that point is not a simple, direct path. We need lots of options.

The video was designed for use in international development, which is often very rigid and hierarchical with lots of interesting cultural contexts. And often donor driven. This peer assist video is so much LESS formalized and rigid than the general operating context. So I had to giggle Dave, when you found it rigid. On a continuum with formal, large international development NGOs and your work, I’m sure it is still far from yours. And I do deeply believe their world needs to meet your world, but some need a gentler or different path.

I think it is also worth noting that “positive” feedback is not the same as being uncritical, but I know I won’t have much success carrying that torch with some of my friends. I’ve seen peer assists give VERY critical feedback. For me, the most important benefits of peer assists I’ve participated in have simply been the questions that people ask me. They have often reframed my thinking and given me new directions to take my project or problem. They got me outside of the story in my head, which I need and value.

In the comments on Dave’s site, there was a concern about diminishing the value of an experienced facilitator and, without one, losing the value of nuance in the process. (Jozefa, I believe, who I respect. In fact, I recognized most of the commentors and respect all of them!) This assumes two things: 1. the expert is the right choice (not always in my experience) and 2. that you have the resources for an expert facilitator.

In the donor driven world of international development, there is a bit of a disease of experts. Consultants from the north (yes, I am one of those and am aware of this problem) come to the south and tell people what to do based on the directives and values of the donors from the north. Can you see where an expert might not always be the solution, even in the role of facilitator?

What if you don’t have an experienced facilitator as a resource? What if you had the talent within your group that needed an opportunity to be expressed? Does that mean you should not watch a video and try it?

In the end, it is a privileged view that we can make our wise and knowledgeable assertions. We sit at our nice computers with broadband, our books, with our luxury of time to spend discussing online with our amazing colleagues.

We are operating out of a place of privilege and need to hold that in our perspectives. What we might ask instead is how useful have people in international development, particularly those in the South, found the animation? Did it open up learning for them, or was it trite or too prescriptive? There’s the bottom line for me, not our expert critiques, most often out of context. (Mine included)

One animation won’t change the world, but seeing a different perspective may be the first door we have to walk through to start the process. It is like the process of quitting smoking that we now come to describe as “the seven doors.” It takes the average smoker 7 tries to stay quit. Walking through 7 “doors.” If we don’t go through the first one, we’ll never get to the 7th.

Oh, now I need to get off my curmudgeon’s soap box. I recognize that I am afflicted with the same disease I suggest that others might suffer from: my privileged and sometimes out of touch perspective.

And on Dave's

I posted a comment on Chris' site, since I read his post first, but I'd like to ask here about how we are taking in to account the context of this animation. Is it clear it was intended for international development, which is a particular set of contexts. (See Chris' post/comment thread at http://chriscollison.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/dissent-from-snowden/#comment-19)?

The development world is often a rigid, top down world where something like this video is seen as quite open and horizontal. So inch by inch, we move into the sorts of settings where knowledge sharing, getting feedback from mates etc, is much easier, natural and part of the fabric of the organization/group/network. Where we have the flexibility, values and practices of seeing patterns, learning together.

But many development orgs are not there yet. This is a step in the direction.

Are these processes being used usefully or are they being foisted on people? It's a very real and relevant question. We can make as many negative observations as positives, depending on our actual experiences. For example, I've never seen anyone coerced to conform to "positive messages" as an excuse not to be thinking critically, nor do I see appreciative approaches excluding critical thinking or critique, but I know I won't win that one with Dave! We can save that for a conversation over a drink! I have seen the immense value of a question from a peer that opens up a whole new perspective, making the peer assist a home run in a single moment. I would shoot a facilitator leading me to create artifacts just for PPT but that doesn't' mean I haven't seen really useful recording on flip charts. One of the best I experienced was where we mind mapped the inputs and surfaced some new perspectives on an issue.

I don't believe though, that we can make sweeping assertions that either peer assists, or this video, are not useful. Cindy, spot on about context! Context rules. Our processes are only as good as we make them. We can critique it, find the faults, while at the same time others are using it, finding it useful, and are propagating it. It has been very well received by some folks in the international development world. There are offers for translation, etc. And I’ve learned new things reading the critiques here. We are living it.

Another bit of fact correction: the content was developed by Bellanet, a Canadian NGO, not the university.