OR WHY IS IT SO HARD TO HELP OTHERS TO LEARN, SHOW INITIATIVE, AND CHANGE?
Pick a field of practice, a profession, a policy. It could be anything - education, physical therapy, couple's counseling. They are all the same: "You can lead the horse to the water but you can't make him drink." If this analogy doesn't work, think of your trying to get your son motivated to do his homework thoroughly and on schedule. Or, really think about the phrase - "teaching is not learning."
Anyway, this is the message in a nutshell of David Ellermans important new book, Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance.
Whos David Ellerman? David is a very, very bright fellow. He looks a bit like a Mennonite minister. (The Abe Lincoln-style of beard) He has an undergraduate philosophy degree from MIT, a Masters in Philosophy of Science, a Masters in Economics, and a Doctorate in Mathematics. Hes as educated as the entire population of many whole towns and villages on this planet Earth. (His website hosts probably some of the most eclectic set of papers you have every seen. www.ellerman.org )
He has taught at the college level a variety of different courses, invented a well-respected model of a worker cooperative that solves some traditional problems that have plagued this ownership form, founded and managed a consulting firm in East Europe, and worked in the World Bank from 1992 to 2003, when he was an advisor to and speech writer for the Chief Economist - Joseph Stiglitz and later, Nicholas Stern.
So, Dr. Ellerman has been around the block a few times and his new book distills his hard-won lessons of how to do and not to do economic development. Here are just a few of his conclusions:
- Most development assistance is counter-productive, because it undermines the autonomy of the "helped." The right way to do it he calls: "autonomy respecting assistance."
- "The World Bank is the primary example over the last half century of the failures of social engineering to ‘engineer development."
- "The World Bank cannot be fixed." Its monopolistic power gets in the way of the active doing and learning that constitutes economic development as far as people are concerned. Its affiliation with US policies and interests spoils its role as independent advocate for the worlds poor nations. Its staff tends to believe that money is the key to development assistance. (It isnt.) Working through governments gets the Bank tangled up with those who are a part of the problem, not the solution. It tries to control its worst clients, rather than makes a graceful exit when its time. Unlike a commercial bank that has no fixed set of members, the Bank is "locked into a relationship with the worst borrowing countries in the world." Finally, the World Bank is like a church or totalitarian political party. It has its dogma. It does not appreciate dissent (especially in public). And you have to give up some of your Freedom of Speech rights when you take up employment there. You can only speak the Banks line, not your own views. Thus, it is hard to be the "Knowledge Bank", if you are being censored and scolded.
- The real answer to "doing" development is to get out of the way and use an indirect approach. This maxim is also appropriate for variety of other human endeavors - art, science, psychotherapy, management consulting, or whatever.
- For example, consider industrial sociologist and management advisor McGregors theory Y (e.g., a strategy for tapping intrinsic motivation in the workplace). Here are his five steps: 1) start from the doers problems; 2) see the problem from the doers eyes; 3) help the doer pursue own-ends to best solve the organizational problem; (4) help doer to implement and take responsibility for solution; and (5) help the doer gain autonomy and take responsibility for solution.
The book draws on a number of "heros" who were ahead of their time on this issue - a seemingly odd collage of people from radically different disciplines - E. F. Schumacher, Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Carl Rogers, Jane Jacobs, Everett Rogers, John Dewey, Sewall Wright, Charles Lindblom, and many others. Yet, all "preach" (or rather "dont preach-preaching" --- think Taoism) from the same hymnbook. The attitude needed - a sort of Zens "Beginners Mind" - wide open to new possibilities. "How are things? As they are."
But this book is not some New Age "go with the flow" tract. It is crisp, critical, and clear in its thinking. Its case studies of why the former Soviet Union flubbed making a humane and efficient transition to markets and why China aced it are fascinating reading. It proposes ingenious new models for projects and programs. He calls it "parallel experimentation, " which he takes "to be a process of multiple experiments, with benchmarking comparisons made between the experiments, and with the ‘migration of discoveries between experiments whenever possible to ratchet up the performance of the group." And Ellerman even has a few kindly suggestions for revamping the World Bank into an unrecognizable regional set of institutions.
As E. F. Schumacher put the matter: "The first step is to study what people are already doing . . . and to help them do it better. . . The second task is to study what the people need and to investigate the possibility of helping them to cover more of their needs out of their own productive efforts."
Let me leave the last word to the author: "Developing ownership . . . or generating sustainable change . . . such commitments cannot be bought with aid . . . hunt for the hidden rationalities in the small" and make more of them.