Tag Archives: reflexive practice
Are we there yet?
Six months since we launched our Community of Practice and there is a sense of movement and progress. But if my objective is for it to be a self-sustaining buzzing network of ideas and initiatives, we are probably still a long way from that. The energy mainly comes from me in the centre. But what is […]
Strategizing when everything is unknowable
Our Community of Practice has been writing a strategy document to help us get a shared understanding of what we are doing. It has a vision and mission. It says a bit about why we think our workplace needs this focus on gender and social inclusion in our research into biodiversity for development and in […]
Can a CoP function with only voluntary contributions?
Everyone is busy. And yet, and yet… here we are working to nurture this community of practice (CoP) to improve the way we deal with gender and social inclusion in our research and workplace. Someone commented to me that it should not be “based on voluntary contributions”. It should systematically be built into people’s performance […]
The story of a Community of Practice: Planning it into life
We had decided that a Community of Practice was what we needed at Bioversity to raise the bar of our gender-responsive research. But what now? What could we do to tranform that abstract decision to concrete action? Not that life was statically waiting for us to move. In the meantime, Maria conducted some hands-on workshops on ‘making gender […]
monitoring performance to death
In economics opting for the middle ground is usually best. But in this case, the extremes seem to be a better choice: monitor hard, or do not monitor at all. A little bit of monitoring only annoys the good workers, causing them to slacken off. And sometimes the wisest thing is just to let people […]
Sisyphus rocks
In my last post, I was thinking about what we do when we do what we do when we do performance management. And I concluded that the way we manage performance at the moment takes loads of time and does nothing to improve performance. (If you want some reflections on what ‘manage’ means anyway – […]
Sisyphean tasks at work
King Sisyphus was punished in Greek mythology for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever (thanks Wikipedia). And this is what our performance tools at work feel like. No sooner have we completed one set of […]
How are you managing?
Many years ago, when I joined the management team at my previous workplace, I was sent on a Management Development course (Years later, once I changed career, I would follow a Development Management course too, but that’s a different story). I remember how it felt like the antithesis to the way I work. Manager as […]
Leadership – a property of individuals or organizations?
Most leadership programmes focus on building the capacity of the leaders to lead, a deficit approach, if you like. It seems to make sense – if there is weak leadership, help the leaders to get better. And yet, leadership is the result of the processes, structures and relationships in an organization. The individual leader’s qualities […]
Target alternatives
Two alternatives to the prevailing “social technology” or habit of using arbitrary targets to help us measure performance: 1. The Vanguard Method. Vanguard has done ample research into “how we do what we do”. Mainly they work in the public sector, so it is not about agricultural research projects. But still, I can’t help but […]
Becoming Better 