Managing Social Sector Projects : Importance of a Method in Madness

How project management can help bring in more focus and effectiveness in any social sector project

(This article of mine has been published in the November 2009 issue of MANAGE India - the online magazine of Project Management Institute, India)

The social sector in India faces tremendous challenges; this includes NGOs and community groups working on a range of development and governance related issues – in rural and urban India. The potential impact of this work needs no emphasis. While it can significantly impact various development issues, it plays an important role to keep our governments accountable and our democracy vibrant.

Therefore, it is extremely important for the social sector to operate within strict bounds of professionalism and use best available tools and techniques to manage their projects successfully.

Unfortunately, this does not match with the current reality. An overwhelmingly large majority of social sector projects in India are managed in an ad hoc and informal manner even today. Project management hasn’t matured to the extent it has in the private sector. Most of the organizations working in this space rarely take the typical approach to project management – defining clear targets, defining an action plan and timelines, allocating resources, mapping out dependencies, regular tracking and reviewing.

The reasons for this are varied, some of which are genuine. It is true that the vagaries and external dependencies that a social sector project is subject to, are rarely seen in other sectors. This is compounded by the fact that most NGOs have highly heterogeneous teams with non-uniform understanding on project management, and the tools that enable the same. In many cases, especially in rural NGOs, technology skills are a big impediment. On the other hand, many NGOs don’t feel the need to apply modern project management practices because they do not commit themselves to clear annual and quarterly targets.

But is it a wise choice not to adopt standard project management practices due to the inherent complexity of this space? I would argue this otherwise.

It is because of the fact that social sector is fraught with challenges and external dependencies – a chaos or a madness of sorts, it is even more important to deploy relevant practices in project management. To add to this, the resources available are so limited and the windows of opportunity so narrow, that one rarely gets a second chance to make an impact. Clearly then, little or no project management reflects poorly on an organization’s commitment to change.

Over the last few years, Janaagraha has taken important strides towards better project management in its various programs. Defining clear targets and action plans, and reviewing the same periodically are a norm. Weekly review meetings are conducted within programs and at the organizational level to ensure alignment of all staff and volunteers. All of these are open door meetings, where any kind of external input is welcome. This is complemented by a monthly review by the Executive Body and a Quarterly review by the Advisory Board.

Earlier this year, Janaagraha successfully executed India’s largest voter registration campaign – Jaago Re! One Billion Votes campaign – in partnership with Tata Tea. Strong project management practices were the backbone to running this nationwide campaign successfully.

Recently, Janaagraha has initiated an exercise based on Balance Scorecard approach to better define organizational goals and ensure alignment among its various programs. There has also been a shift from excel based project planning towards professional open source tools for project management. I am sure this will yield significant outcomes in the short and long term.

An Indian Shame in Professionalism

The worrying saga of India’s preparedness for 2010 Commonwealth Games at New Delhi reached a new low few days back when the President of Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Michael Fennell announced that the Games was heading for “partial failure” and decided to setup a special monitoring panel with international experts to oversee preparations on a monthly basis for the rest of the year.

Why this is a big slap on India’s image as a professionally reliable nation is because this is the first time ever in the history of Commonwealth Games when such a step has been taken. Apparently, the only other instance that comes close to this was the case of 1982 Asian Games when a similar monitoring panel was setup. Guess what, this was the Delhi Asian Games! Clearly, some things in India never change.

Subroto Bagchi’s latest book “The Professional” does a great job of defining what being a professional really means. It says:

First and foremost a professional is a person who can self-certify completion of a task and can work unsupervised. If somebody else is required to certify that this task needs a particular standard then you are not a professional. This is a very small, but very subtle and important, distinction between being competent and being a professional.

Now apply this definition to all the monitoring going on with the Commonwealth Games. Lets begin with the latest one to join the group, the special monitoring panel setup by Michael Fennel out of utter frustration to trust his Indian counterparts.

Countering this development, the Games Organizing Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi says “We don't want multiplicity of agencies, there are already agencies, including the Co-ordination Commission, which are monitoring the Games preparations”. Notice the words “there are already agencies, including the…”, clearly acknowledging that more than one group is monitoring the same project.

Now since that doesn’t sound like enough monitoring, Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit asks all her ministerial colleagues to regularly inspect various project sites and do the needful to ensure that all the projects are completed well ahead of the deadline. I wonder how on earth can all ministers together get into the act of ensuring timely project completion? Another example of “everybody’s responsibility and nobody’s accountability” syndrome so frequently seen in Government projects.

One would assume that this is enough of an overdose of monitoring. But wait, here comes the best. Enter the Sports Minister M.S.Gill and along with him the only man India can trust, Dr Manmohan Singh. Gill says, “The Prime Minister takes meetings regularly and has given the Group of Ministers under Jaipal Reddy the mandate to ensure that we are ready and complete for the Games”. Note the statement carefully “… Group of Ministers under…”. So half of Union Government has joined in the act as well.

What does one glean out of all this?

First, the easiest way to show you bother about the Commonwealth Games is to join in the act of monitoring it. Little doubt that the BJP has raised a demand that the PM appoint yet another Monitoring Committee, which can have members from different walks of life. A novel idea I think, perhaps it can take the added responsibility of ensuring that all the other monitoring groups are doing their monitoring jobs well.

Second, it shows an utter lack of faith in the abilities of those who are meant to deliver the Games in the first place. Clearly, Suresh Kalmadi has been caught in the act and he doesn’t mind showing off his frustration in pictures like the one above.

But most importantly and most unfortunately, this significantly compromises India’s image as a professionally competent nation. This at a time when China has pulled off the grandest Olympics ever and Brazil has clinched the 2016 Olympics from the jaws of US. It shows that not only are we quite far from achieving our targets for 2010 Commonwealth Games in a professional manner, but few of our public leaders even understand Bagchi’s golden definition of what being a professional really means.

Aruna Roy on Indian Democracy

Read this from a rediff interview by Aruna Roy today. A fabulous statement at the end!

Q: Have you lost faith in our democracy?

No, I haven't lost my faith in democracy. I have lost my faith in the way democracy is used by the people who go into certain institutions (Parliament) in this manner.

I think it's like the parson's egg which is good in parts. Even our government is good in parts in the sense that the same Parliament gave us the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as well as the Special Economic Zone Act.

But then we need to educate our parliamentarians; we need to educate our politicians. Their levels of literacy is so low, their levels of exposure (to people's problems) are so low.

After all, politicians are really the custodians of our Constitution, of the people but today they have become custodians of themselves.

Getting a new political party will not solve the problem; it is the interaction with the people that will help. After all, where will we go?

It is my country, an independent country. I can't ask for any outside intervention to cleanse it. I think it is the failure of the so-called literate people, of my generation, the generation after me and also the current generation who think that running the country is not their business.

In a democracy it is your business and my business to see that the country works properly.

How do we Define a Great Leader?

I read this statement from Mr NR Narayana Murthy’s interview in TOI (Bangalore edition) today:

Q: How would you describe a great leader?

A: A great leader is one who is not only good in creating a vision, creating the big picture, but also ensuring that he goes into the nitty gritty, into the details of making sure that the vision actually translated into reality through excellence of execution. In other words, great leaders have great vision, great imagination, great ideas, but they also implement those ideas through hard work, commitment and flawless execution. In doing so, they motivate thousands of people.

I think the need for “excellence of execution” (EoE) couldn’t have been stressed better. The private sector in India has learnt this the hard way. Thanks to globalization, this is a constant challenge for them, something which they can ill afford to ignore. This has also resulted in bringing to fore some truly exceptional leaders like NRN and Ratan Tata, separating out the giants from the men and boys.

Unfortunately, our governments and our politicians are never measured by a similar yardstick that lays emphasis on EoE. Victory is hailed when annual budget allocations are made or new schemes announced. There is little focus or talk on how a particular scheme or project is going to achieve EoE and thereby its intended outcome. In most cases, the outcomes themselves are never defined!

Take the case of recent spurt in metro rail projects for eg. the one in Bangalore. What could be the most important outcome of a project like this, something that would be a result of EoE? I would say a marked reduction in door-to-door travel time for an average trip in the city. Now do we know what this metric is currently, and how will it be impacted after the project because of EoE? We rarely hear, read or discuss these things.

The flip side to this is that we fail to recognize instances of exemplary public leadership that still exist today. These are the individuals (politicians and bureaucrats) who know that the battle has only begun when a project is launched, and that much of the hard work lies in achieving EoE.

The only figure that stands out here as an exception is E Sreedharan of Delhi Metro. Off late, also Mr. Madhavan Nair of ISRO but only thanks to our ability to define outcomes clearly – the rocket launch finally did yield some path breaking findings on lunar surface. But for every ‘x’ number of such examples that we do recognize, we miss perhaps ‘10x’ others – big and small.

One such example I feel is Project Arrow of the Department of Post. A Google search will reveal a lot of information on its vision and the wonderful work that is already under way, but public awareness on this mammoth project is extremely poor! What is largely unknown therefore is the name of individual (s) who displayed leadership in envisioning and implementing this initiative. One of them, I have learnt, is Jyotiraditya Scindia who played a key role in launching this initiative when he was the Union Minister of State for IT & Communications in 2004 UPA government.

One only hopes that we come across more and more visible examples of great public leadership characterized by “excellence of execution”!