Making sense for higher grounds — a reflection on what it means for our Thailand Country Office
by Renaud Meyer, Resident Representative, UNDP Thailand
Many consider skepticism to be a negative attribute. I have always considered it as a useful tool to provoke and disrupt common thinking, conservative attitudes, and too comfortable “in the box” thinking.
So, when our colleagues from the RIC introduced a new methodology and approach entitled ‘sensemaking’, it immediately caught my attention and curiosity.
Having just arrived in the UNDP Thailand office that had reached the mid-point of its country programme, and observing much untapped potential and the strong appetite of partners for additional engagement with UNDP, I thought it would be interesting to get the team in a mid-term review mindset, and finding a way to inject some “sense making” in the process.
After spending time to better understand the Regional Innovation Centre’s
“sense making” methodology and tailoring it to our needs and intentions, UNDP Thailand has now embarked on a mid-term review. The exercise began with a 3-day workshop facilitated by the RIC team. The ultimate objective is to re-think our engagement in Thailand and ensure we are offering the most relevant development support to the country.
By questioning the fundamentals of our on-going projects and anticipated initiatives, pushing colleagues from describing activities to justifying projects’ intent and defining links to the country’s vision and challenges, we were able to better identify our niche, the rationale for our engagement and derive from it key lessons to refine our programme and even lay the foundation for the next cycle.
As the CO team leader, it was not only encouraging but also thrilling to see colleagues too often stuck in day-to-day transactions and constrained by operational issues raise to new levels, questioning activities and challenging each other to think bigger. As a development practitioner, it was exciting and even emotional to see colleagues call for more value-driven interventions and embracing a more holistic approach to defining their work, how they contribute to their own country becoming better.
This workshop ended up being a deep introspection of not only who we are as UNDP Thailand but why, as individual citizens, we want to work for the UN and use our accumulated skills and experiences to foster Thailand’s development.
A three day workshop has produced useful results. Continued management and guidance will be required to keep the momentum. But I am confident that if the team keeps the focus on what “makes sense”, we are off to higher grounds.
Let us know your thoughts- find me on twitter or see more from the UNDP Asia Pacific Innovation work here.
