Sylvia's Journal

They greeted me in their shiny silver suits this morning, the security people from the Intercon. It was their uniform for the day, for everyone, from lowly gate guard to receptionist. There were two important and high profile conferences going on at the same time and lots of important visitors from all over the region (the other conference) and from donor headquarters in DC, Brussels, and Bonn for our third annual strategic health retreat.

I joined the two most dedicated members of the logistics committee at 7:15 AM and helped them prepare the participants’ nameplates which we then shuffled to get all the tables as mixed up as possible, this in a partially successful attempt to create community.

I had not had much input in the opening session which therefore proceeded among a traditional path: speeches, powerpoints with too much text and too small a typeface and then an awkward silence when no questions or comments were forthcoming. I would have done it a little different but sometimes you just have to sit on the sidelines and let people do their own thing.

The profession of facilitator is not really known here, as it is in so many other places in the world. I try to explain and then model that facilitation is just a variation on the leadership theme: you have to constantly scan your audience to make sure everyone is in and on; you have to focus the discussion with focus questions and reminding people over and over why they are there; you have to align people around a common vision and mobilize their energies, especially after lunch; and finally you have to try to inspire the participants in the event so that they set individual needs and aspirations momentarily aside to work together for the common good.

The afternoon session was our big experiment and I explained to the DG for Admin and Finance what a guinea pig was. I am not sure he understood but he and his team kicked off the real work quite well. It was better than some had expected and just about how I had envisioned it, except for the final wrap up that was a little awkward and not much of a wrap up. Even if I had been allowed to do it, it would have been a challenge. The subject of procurement, organizational structure, capacity building, laws, rules and regulations is a complex one and there are some deep divisions within the ministry about the way forward.

What I had hoped would happen did happen: the Afghans instructed the foreigners about life on the ground here, in a context of deeply entrenched habits, good and bad, and structural and legal constraints that are not easily removed; in their turn, the foreigners were able to question, and at times, challenge practices that made no sense to them and open eyes to new possibilities.

The combination is powerful: when do you have 1500 years of professional experience at your disposal for a whole afternoon towards a specific organizational dilemma? One would hope to have some good stuff come out of the deliberations regarding the procurement of goods and services by several governments (Afghanistan, USA, Germany, and the EU, itself a collection of governments, each of those having their own procurement rule). When you think deeply about it, that we can move forward at all boggles the mind. I think there was some progress and definitely some ideas about where we can help.

We had a brief after action review with the teams that presented today and those on for tomorrow. We explored what went well and should be continued tomorrow; what could be improved and what should be stopped. These discussion are still new and a little challenging because (a) everyone is so used to criticize things that they can’t help themselves and (b) I am not the chair so that I can’t facilitate things as I would were I the chair. Still, we have a good relationship and the reflection was useful.

During our after action review I learned about the concept of the ‘non-implementable no,’ which refers to people making a decision not to do something that they all know cannot be implemented. In this case it was the decision made weeks ago not to feed the countless drivers and security guards that are attached to senior officials (we did feed them).

Our day was not over at 5 PM since we were invited by Her Excellency to dine with her in the Iranian restaurant that is getting some good business from all our various events: lunches everyday at the three-day Results conference and now this.

I had some fantasy of staying at a bar at the Intercon and drinking a beer while waiting for the car to take me deeper into town for the dinner but the Intercon is now government-owned and the bar is a tea and coffee ‘bar.’ So I had a cappuccino while watching an American sci-fi movie and learning my Dari lesson-du-jour.

At dinner I sat next to the Deputy Minister for Admin and used that occasion to pratice more of my Dari. I am progressing in leaps and bounds now that I am being emerged in ministry life more than ever.

One of the nice things of this is that I am starting to learn some Dari proverbs, of which there are many, so I can partake in this national linguistic pastime. Today’s proverb was: the porcupine mother tells her baby that he (she) is the most beautiful in the world. In the process of learning the words I discovered that porcupine is a ‘thorn-in-the-back’ and that the famous Afghan buzkashi game literally means ‘goat-pulling.’ I love this language!