Sylvia's Journal

Today we tackled the complex issue of coordination. Several of us went to see the minister who had blocked out one and a half hour for us – an unknown luxury. In the end we took even more of that.

As part of an effort to re-energize one of the consultative groups we had realized that this one group had way too many objectives: information sharing, donor alignment, policy discussions, feedback on policy implementation, just to name a few, each requiring different audiences, different frequencies and different leadership. We proposed instead four different mechanisms, some of which exist already but are essentially dormant, having lost their inspired leaders.

Coordination is probably one of the most used words in reports and the least understood organizational function. There is no dearth of coordination mechanisms, sometimes even coordinating bodies to coordinate the coordinated. The discussion circled around various issues, doubled back on itself, and moved into side roads.

At one point I felt like everything needed to be ‘cooked’ a little more as they say here but the minister wanted no more cooking and tasked everyone around the table to get on with the job. I was assigned to assist in this effort and pointed out to the acting leader of this small committee that this may well be the reason why people don’t like to go to such coordination meetings because they often return to their office with a new job. We both did.