Thomas Kerscher Capacity Building Specialist

In most cases, capacity development involves a substantial number of assessments and interventions, requiring know-how and input. It is therefore legitimate for management to ask whether the system needs help from outside. In the event that commitment has been secured through designing a commitment strategy, the following criteria can be applied in deciding whether a system is able to embark on a capacity development programme without external assistance:

It is realistic to assume that a capacity development initiative will constitute a formidable threat to some members of the client organisation. Some individuals or groups may see their privileges, prestige and prerogatives in danger, and feel compelled to protect themselves. The greatest challenges, however, may come from the organisational context, i.e. the organisational culture and climate. The fact that organisations have survived in the past has helped to institutionalise their historical assumptions, belief systems, and norms for acceptable behaviour, which are displayed in myths, stories, practices, taboos, etc. These cultural variables may be even more developed in crisis or post-crisis situations, where the experience of survival is still part of the collective memory.

In capacity building, much energy is often devoted to finding the one "best" solution, the "best practice", or the best strategy, policy or procedure. A great deal of managerial time and effort is devoted to identifying the one right answer, while all other solutions are considered wrong. The enormous time end effort invested explain the intense feelings that go along with the need to be right. The expression of these feelings often go beyond rightness to righteousness.

In the daily practice of development work, the three models described in the post on consultation modes (the expertise model, the doctor-patient model and the process consulting model) interrelate with four types of consultants:^[1] extra-pairs-of-hands, training specialists, technical specialists and organisation development consultants.

Officials from development agencies, consultants and clients should be aware of basic consulting models, in order to be able to make the right choice of model in a given situation. The following sections present three distinct consulting models: the expertise model, the doctor-patient model, and the process consulting model.^[1] These models rest on very different assumptions and have potentially very different consequences. Development agency staff and consultants engaging in a capacity development effort cannot use more than one model at a time. Consequently, the decision on which model to choose in a give situation must be conscious and based on reality (see Chapter 6 on possible distortions in the decision making process).

In initial discussions with potential clients, it can be useful to draw upon a typology of capacity development interventions. The following typology differentiates between five different types of intervention: strategic, preventive, early-warning, corrective, intensive care:^[1]

Culture is often described as the way things are done in an organisation, the values, the leadership style, etc. These statements oversimplify the complexity of culture. It is useful instead to assume that culture exists at several levels^[1], namely artefacts, espoused values and shared tacit assumptions.

Resistance can take many shapes. Leaders and consultants engaged in a capacity development effort must analyse the type of resistance in order to work with it, reduce it, and secure the needed commitment from the resisting party. A useful formula for thinking about resistance in a capacity development initiative is:

CD = D x V x P x C^[1]