Thomas Kerscher Capacity Building Specialist

When planning capacity building interventions one needs to determine what to focus on from a plethora of possible things to observe. My assumption is that groups and organisations always have three fundamental issues to deal with:

1. how to manage their boundaries, (i.e. determining who is in and who is out);
2. how to survive in their external environment by fulfilling their main functions or tasks; and
3. how to manage their internal interpersonal relationships.

These issues are listed horizontally across the top of the chart below:

Each of these issues can be observed on three levels: 

1. the content which the group or organisation works on;
2. the processes it uses to go about its business; and
3. the structure it has in place (in terms of the ways it operates) that is independent from individual members, the subject matter dealt with, and stable over time.

These three levels are presented vertically alongside the chart above. Each of the nine cells describes a common capacity issue facing groups and organisations, and identifies areas in which an intervention is possible. When embarking on a capacity development effort we must therefore decide, which of the nine cells in this chart will be the most appropriate focus for intervening in the particular situation, and when to shift from e.g. content to process.