A tale of 2 interviewers: Ecosystems Approach
An interviewer’s tale
The term ‘systems change’ gets thrown around a lot. Especially in doing development assistance geared towards governance. I hear it more often today than when I first joined the field of international development. The general approach taken by international organizations working towards improving governance and its outcome is to work through one or more stakeholders to influence the system.
Last year during an interview, the interviewer asked one the questions I call ‘why questions’. It was a question around the ‘systems-change’. Incidentally, I had some prepared responses as I had thought reflexively about the phrase in the days leading up to that interview.
As part of my response, I said ‘systems change requires working with multi stakeholders and working with only one type of stakeholder is limiting your perspective and chances at systems change.’ The interviewer responded to this saying “if you are working with only one stakeholder dedicated to systems change, and helping them get better at what they do, that is also systems change work”.
We had a little back and forth, the internet was terrible, and probably under interviewing conditions I might have been less clear. He basically swiped past the conversation after a few secs. By the end of that time span, however long it was, I agreed with his point and at the same time stood by mine. He didn’t express if he agreed with me in any form.
Splitting Hairs over Stakeholders
There is always a system in place. The fact it’s not working the way we desire lures us to think that there is no system in place. I think a basic model for thinking about stakeholders in systems change can be along the lines of two opposing forces (familiar?): one seeking to control and preserve the system and another set on upheaval or disruption of the system. Ultimately, the effects of the opposites tugging at each other cancel out themselves helps to maintain balance in the system. And change to the system happens anyway, not necessarily the one we seek or at the pace we expect. This is regardless of how many stakeholders one chooses to work with.
In a single stakeholder scenario, your entry point is understanding their interface with other stakeholders and how your work with them can make an impact on that. The down side is you have to take sides to an extent to be effective at this. The upside is the ease it brings in demonstrating one’s ethics and values. However you are bent over on seeking the change they desire — they want what they want. The single stakeholder perspective can quickly fill up with hubris and a sense of self righteousness. They take a stand that largely assumes everyone else is wrong and they alone seek to do right. It can be difficult to call this out if you choose to work with a single stakeholder even when you don’t agree with that notion.
In a multi stakeholder scenario, you have a chance to hear the same one sided story but this time from all sides. This gives you a chance to ask a different type of question — what change is possible from the vantage point of everyone’s interests and priorities. Straddling multiple stakeholders also prompts a different change process, one that takes collaboration and comes slow. It opens up the chance that multi stakeholders might seek the same outcome even though they have different approaches and strategies.
Making Ecosystem Approach Count
While preparing for this interview, I had done some thinking about how we develop our strategic influence for getting a stakeholder group to deliver on systems change — taking an ecosystem approach. This is regardless of whether you work with a single or multi stakeholder — we general select key and notorious actors and organizations working at pivot of the system and we invest wholly in them. The rationale is that they are already making changes and we want to help them do more of what they already do. Part of the rationale is that they can create ripples that reach other actors or they could even uplift other actors. This makes sense for multiple reasons. Firstly, we can’t work with every actor at the same time with limited resources. Secondly we need to prioritize for most impact, and lastly it is easier to break down a complex change process to influential actors.
However, I think an ecosystem approach should entail more than working on the pivot of a system — with the notorious actors already on the spotlight when we arrived or who we discovered as we like to say. Every actor not on the pivot are as important as those notorious actors — systems change needs the critical mass behind it by working with collectives. The complex painstaking work of integrating the collective into our strategy is more akin to an ecosystem approach. Why do it with a subset and then wait on them to replicate it? We get away with this approach on the grounds of quick wins, proof of concept, minimum viables, scale thinking and so on. We create further imbalance in the system mostly to serve up fine reports in record time. We unduly strengthen and empower a few actors and worsen the balance in the ecosystem. We hope that they will redistribute their power and strength but it takes more work to consciously redistribute such power than it took to center it in the first place.
Conclusion
I think organizations working on systems change and wanting to take an ecosystems approach, should develop double edged strategies — one edge facing actors already at the pivot of systems and the other edge on actors between pivots. They should be strategies that leave no one out to effectively be an ecosystem approach.
The priority of actors already at the pivot of systems should be less about taking on systems change by themselves but about uplifting and mobilizing other actors not yet at the pivots of systems change.
If you are curious, I didn’t get the role. Interviewer forgot to get back to me after the promised time. I followed up and he served me the cold template that he had served a thousand other applicants. His question was “why do you want this job?” I wanted to try out this theory on ecosystems approach, but never got to say that to him.
There’s a sequel coming and it has the tale of another interesting job interview I had last year.
