When you get outside the aid sector, people don’t really talk about “capacity building” or “capacity development” much. People talk about training, or sometimes learning. There are times when I get fed up with hearing “capacity building”. Perhaps I’ve been involved in too many projects where it didn’t work! And it can be self-aggrandizing. Is a two-hour webinar about donor regulations so great and profound? Isn’t training good enough?
But thinking about “capacity development” (or “capacity building”, or “capacity strengthening” – whichever version you prefer) can give you real advantages. Given this is the language the humanitarian sector uses, it would be great if we could put this advantage to use more!
Number One – Think about more than training
When you think about capacity development, you should be thinking about all the elements that create capacity. Does your team have the right tools? Are there enough people? Is the process ridiculously complicated? Are you using web-based software that works fine in Berlin but won’t work in Darfur? Is it prioritised by managers? Are there organisational rules or national laws that mean it can’t be done right?
These are all related to the capacity that a person or a team has to perform – and there are many others. If you’re thinking about capacity development, you’ve got a chance to think about all these things and take action on the most important. In my experience, that tends not to happen. The possibility is there, though, and it’s opened up by thinking about capacity development rather than just training.
Number Two – Think about where people are already
When you think about developing capacity, you’re thinking about what people can already do, and where they need to get to. A lot of trainers make the mistake of treating people like empty buckets that they need to pour knowledge into. The reality is everyone has some prior skills and experience, and you want to make the most of that.
One of the best things you can do to help people learn is have them tackle tasks straight away. Let’s take budgeting as an example. Rather than presenting about why we need budgets, or the different parts of a budget, we can give each learner a budget with some gaps and ask them to complete it as best they can.
If we’re truly thinking about capacity development, this is the sort of approach we would take. Each person sees what they can do and then we address their gaps. Some will require more support than others – but that’s OK because we’re developing capacity! We know that some people can already do 50% of what they need to, and others only 10%. We’re not going to treat them as empty buckets and pour the same amount of information into each. We’re going to support and encourage each person in the way they need it.
Number Three – Think about whether a task is possible to do.
Training designers and trainers rarely stop to think whether what they’re asking participants to do is actually possible. If a job requires me to perform every task perfectly, 100% of the time, it’s impossible.
We don’t only need to think about the skills a person has or can learn. It matters whether someone can do them in reality. I do have the skill of patiently listening and suggesting helpful solutions to people’s problems with course platforms when they come to me. But when it’s the end of the day and I’ve already answered that question 9 times, it’s exceeded my capacity to be nice and polite. Person number 10 might get a slightly abrupt answer. It’s not the skill – it’s whether I’m able to apply it.
Lots of people can write a decent donor report. But it is very hard to do it surrounded by mosquitos in the middle of a power cut, in a shed in a refugee camp. You might be too tired. You might be too grumpy. Thinking about capacity development should mean thinking about whether a task is even possible. You can’t just stack skills on people until they reach the sky. We all have our limits.
Number Four – Be humble about your role and your relationship to the learner
As far as I know, this is a big reason why the humanitarian sector prefers this language.
For good and noble reasons, people don’t want to seem like arrogant foreign experts coming to teach locals how to do things. And nobody appreciates a know-it-all who doesn’t understand your challenges and the reasons why you do things from coming in with impossible to implement ideas.
That’s great. I do think that some experts can go too far and not share what they know are the best approaches because they don’t want to impose their ways. As trainers, you don’t have complete control of what happens after. If your way doesn’t work or doesn’t interest the participants, they won’t use it. You’re unlikely to be able to impose your ways, even if you dearly want to.
Still, it’s good to be humble! Your ideas are great, important and valuable. But they have to connect and help people with their real challenges in their real situations. If you think about capacity development and meeting people where they are, then you can adapt to focus on their needs in their situation.
Number Five – Implies an ongoing process
All the ways of saying this – building, strengthening or developing capacity – imply that what you’re doing is not a one-off. They imply that you’re engaged in a process. You shouldn’t expect to see important results from an afternoon’s training by itself.
The brain is remarkably good at forgetting what it doesn’t need. It would be horrible if you could remember what you had for lunch on the 23rd of February 2017. There’s a great short story by Borges – “Funes the Memorious” – which is well worth checking out if you’re not sure I’m right. One of the ways the brain decides what to forget and what to hold on to, is whether it sees it again. Repetition is very important for learning things.
One-off classes don’t offer that. If we really think about capacity development, we won’t think about training someone to be able to perform a skill once in a meeting room. We’ll think about a process where they get several chances to do it, with feedback. They’ll get reminders and chances to put right what they were getting wrong. And yes, over time, they’ll learn higher-level skills, or extensions to what they had been learning.
The lens of capacity development is a powerful way to look at how humanitarian organisations can get better. And it’s one where we all know the term, and it’s not going away – so we should use that power. There are ways that it hurts us, though, which we’ll look at in another article.
