Embracing Opportunities: You Can Be Anything

Do you remember the first day you ate pizza?

Well, I do. I did not grow up eating pizza, so when I joined secondary school and heard people talking about it, I was fascinated. I swore to myself that I would save some money to buy pizza.

Long story short, my dream came true after I graduated from secondary school. I remember walking into a pizza shop in Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) and getting out with a big box. I cannot remember what I told the cashier because I had never bought or eaten pizza before, but God bless him because I wouldn't even know what to order!

I went home and ate some slices, and unfortunately, I didn't like the taste! Can you imagine? Oh, it gets worse. I had some leftover pizza slices, and the following day, I couldn't figure out how to warm them. You don't want to know what happened to the leftovers!

Have you seen the We Listen, We Don't Judge Social Media challenge? If yes, please do not judge me based on this pizza story. First, I don't know why my brain keeps this memory, and second, I will share the background story of why it took me almost 18 years to test pizza in my memoir??

To any pizza lovers out there, I do not hate pizza. How could I? I went to college and realized that all the events that offered free food essentially provided pizza as the 'food.' So, I eat pizza.

Anyway, welcome to The LAM Collective! Happy New Year, old and new friends!

Before we continue, guess what? We have 6,024 subscribers! ?? Thank you. What does this mean? More than 6,000 individuals or pages receive a notification every time a new edition is released!

My dream is to increase this number, and I hope that a higher percentage of you will open and read future editions and act on the knowledge they contain!

Today, I will share the last part of my story.

I will focus on my four-plus years in Karamoja, Northern Uganda. This period of my life was crucial in shaping me and has greatly influenced my career. Like the pizza memory, I remember in detail almost all my highs and lows during this period.

If there is a quote that can summarize my experience in those 4+ years, it would be this quote by Napoleon Hill;

"You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith"

For the sake of my professional friends, I will focus this edition on my professional experiences. (I know I just told a pizza story, but my other life experiences during this period need an editor)

I made this LinkedIn post?two months ago about embracing all the M&E extensions (MEL, MERL, MEAL, MRM, etc.), inspired by my experience in Karamoja.

To save time and leave the details for the memoir, I will highlight what jobs I did during my tenure there and the lessons I learned.

You can access Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you missed previous editions.

MEL Participant Registration Officer

I was hired for a 3-month assignment to support the program in validating its participants' details based on registration data they had received from WFP Scope. The goal was to validate data for over 310,000 households across four districts!

Friends! This is one of the most challenging jobs I have done. Not because the job itself was difficult but because I had to learn almost everything while simultaneously delivering the assignment.

Before the interview, I learned that the team used?CommCare. Guess what I did? I read about CommCare and took the CommCare Fundamentals course. (and yes, I got a certificate for this important course ??). Anyway, I did the interview and got the job! (PS: I did not get the job because of the certificate, but it showed that I took the initiative to research and learn)

Some of the low but probably necessary memories I have from this role include working for more than 12 hours a day, crying at night when my CommCare calculations did not work, trying to manage a team of around 40 enumerators across four districts, managing procurement and logistic contracts, not meeting deadlines and many more!

Despite all these moments, when I wasn't stressed or crying, I traveled across districts to meet and connect with the program team members and enumerators and learn more about Karamoja and the communities!

Lastly, I cannot discuss my CommCare journey without mentioning my dear friend and one of my favorite MEL/Infomation Management experts, Ivan! He was the light at the end of the tunnel every time I spent a night crying because my calculations did not ??

Before this assignment, I had no idea I needed to know and do MERL Tech as an M&E professional. This was my foundation!

And before you ask, the assignment was extended to 6 months because we did not meet the goal despite the 12-15 hour working days.

Country Community Accountability Reporting Mechanism (CARM) Manager

I ended up on this 3-month assignment because my contract ended, and I needed a job. Don't worry. This is not what I said during the interview, nor was it my only motivation.

Before I left for Karamoja, I had been involved in multiple platforms where specialists, mainly from the humanitarian sector, discussed community feedback and the 'do no harm' principle.

I did not know that there were people whose job was to create safe and accessible mechanisms to ensure we received and responded to community feedback.

If you know me, you will know I am interested in this type of work. I was entirely on board with the idea of a community feedback mechanism.

Still, in a few instances, discussions centered only on accountability and compliance, nothing at all, or just a tiny bit on how to use community feedback to improve our work.

This role allowed me to dive into the CARM world and learn from the experts as I delivered on my assignment. I was tasked with designing a country-level CARM plan, supporting program teams in developing program-level CARM plans, and recruiting and onboarding a permanent CARM officer for the country portfolio.

I know different organizations use different terminologies for this concept. If you are interested in Mercy Corps CARM Policy, it is publicly accessible here.

This job taught me a few things: accountability to affected communities, developing country-level strategies/plans, recruiting and onboarding permanent staff, and risk management (thanks, D.Okware). It was also my first official manager position, and I had the opportunity to work directly with country and program leaders and participate in leadership training.

This job was not technically challenging, but I had a lot to learn on matters of emotional intelligence, how to, directly and indirectly, manage teams (beyond enumerators), and this was probably the first time I thought I should move on from wearing jeans and Tshirts for work??

MEL Manager | Interim MEL Advisor

After almost a year of doing many things except the key M&E responsibilities (as traditionally defined), I was back! This was all serendipity!

My CARM Manager contract was almost ending, and I had no plans. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for the program), the MEL Manager resigned. This was the same program I had worked with as a MEL Participant Registration Officer.

I was offered a short-term assignment again to fill the MEL Manager role after my contract ended! I held this position for less than a week before the MEL Advisor resigned, and I was promoted to the Interim MEL Advisor.

Was I ready? You tell me! This was a $41 Million (Later $51 Million) USAID-funded program!

Holding the Interim MEL Advisor role meant that I was entirely responsible for the program's MEL Unit; we are talking about managing donor relationships, partner MEL activities, being accountable for all MEL-related reporting, managing a team of almost 10 MEL professionals across different districts and everything else you can think about.

This is the only position for which I can't give you a detailed account of how I survived. I know I used the word 'survive,' although, from the outside, I was thriving! This was the time in my career when I didn't have time to entertain imposter syndrome thoughts. I had the thoughts but was too busy to give them a seat!

Everthing was happening too fast: donor reporting deadlines, midline evaluation planning, planning for the next fiscal year, getting to know the team, and then boom!

COVID-19 and lockdowns!

These were followed by me getting COVID-19, continuing to work because our program introduced COVID-19 response activities and we had donor deadlines, worrying every time I got a message that someone from my team had COVID-19, and hoping that this time would pass and I would be able to travel home to see my mom ??

Well, friends, I survived!

In this role, I transformed from a MEL Lead for a small program where I was doing everything to a MEL Lead for a $51 Million multi-year, multi-sectoral program with a team of 10 MEL professionals.

I was not crying about CommCare calculations because I had an excellent Information Management expert (hi Ivan) handling that.

Still, I did stay up late at night writing reports, doing workplans and budgets, contracting evaluators, replying to donor questions about some missing age and sex disaggregations on output indicators, doing performance reviews for 5 direct reports, signing documents (many signings), and everything else you can imagine!

Was I ready? Damn right, I was!

"You can be anything you want to be if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith."

I was the MEL Lead!

Based on the results (numbers don't lie; check the scoreboard, ahem ??) and feedback from my supervisor and colleagues, I did an excellent job, but above all, I grew as a manager and a leader.

Despite what was happening, I was reading books, researching on Google, and watching YouTube videos about how to be a good manager! I wanted to create an environment where my team had clarity on the vision and felt empowered to deliver on it and ask for help when needed. I applied the knowledge - some things worked, others didn't.

One of the management rules that guided me during this period was, 'Never be the stumbling block.' I prioritized supporting my team to thrive! And they did.

Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) Manager and Strategic Learning and Adaptive Management (SLAM) Lead

Remember all those detours I took since I joined the sector as a BORA intern? Well, they were all preparing me for this part of my career!

PS: After jumping from one short-term assignment to another and worrying about what would happen every 3 months, I finally got an actual long-term position with the same program, first as a CLA Manager and later promoted to SLAM Lead! ??

In my previous role, I spent so much time on compliance-related tasks and putting out fires that I never even considered what learning would look like for the program. It was an interim role with clear deliverables, most of which were aimed at ensuring all donor-related MEL requirements were met.

When I got the CLA Manager role, I immediately knew I found my 'thing'!

This role kicked off my current career season! I started dedicating long hours (not mandated by my employer this time) and equipping myself with the extra skills to facilitate learning and adaptive management.

The difference between this role and the MEL Participant Registration Officer role was that I wasn't crying!

I was working long hours but loving it;

I was designing and facilitating workshops and 'planting' people to observe and share both positive and 'negative' feedback about my facilitation skills;

I was spending more time in the field with the frontline staff;

I was spending more time with program managers and intervention leads, trying to understand the pathways of change beyond the logic model and indicators;

I was sharing more about the challenges I was facing in the role and taking advice from my peers on what new techniques to try;

I was smiling more!

I have much more to say about this particular role and how it shifted my perspective on how I view myself as part of the international development community, but I know I must stop this blog here!

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Florence Randari is an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) professional with nearly a decade of experience designing and implementing effective MEL systems and promoting a learning and adaptive management culture within the development and humanitarian sectors.

She is also the Founder of The Learn Adapt Manage (LAM) Network, a social change initiative aimed at advancing the adoption of learning and adaptive management as essential factors in promoting development effectiveness.