Building development orgs of the future: what are some levers for change?

The standard way of working in international development is broken.

Linear plans to deliver silver bullets that don't work. Incentives to deliver fixed milestones keep us following plans (even if something else would work better).

We can do better. We need to do better.

Imagine a future where development organisations* put systems change at their heart. *funders like governments or philanthropists, groups of funders like the United Nations or implementers like NGOs or social enterprises.

Where the organisations on a mission to address complex challenges (like the environment, education, agriculture or health) recognise complexity, and take approaches that are locally led, build relationships and experiment (try things, learn and adapt).

Creating a shift

At Brink, we are working with some brilliant partners (consortia, NGOs, government departments and philanthropists) to test what this looks like through:

Org change and design: Helping to understand and align current ways of working (methods), mindsets and mechanisms (systems and incentives) to support the mission

Teaming, leadership and delivery coaching: Building the relationships, behaviours and ways of working inside an organisation to support the mission

Learning and adapting: Partnering on learning - from facilitating sensemaking (and action taking) sessions to looking at how org mechanisms support (or get in the way of) ambitions to be adaptive

Movement building: Joining together the many organisations interested in this shift

Follow along in the next few days as I share some of the mindsets, methods and mechanisms that support these