Over the past eight years, I’ve evaluated a number of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) projects, about two per year, on average. This and a follow-up post (to come) sum up things I’ve learned.
The post is mainly aimed at evaluators who haven’t conducted USAID evaluations but are interested in doing so, or are just curious about how the process works.
I’ll go over the somewhat dry, but important nuts and bolts issues of doing USAID evaluations as an independent consultant. The next post on this subject will cover implementing the evaluations.
Some context
For those who may not have great familiarity with it, USAID is the largest U.S. bilateral development agency. It devotes budget resources to helping countries in the name of U.S. national security and economic prosperity . These days, that amounts to over $19 billion worth of foreign assistance. (The Department of State manages a similar amount.) That’s a tiny slice of the total U.S. annual budget of $4.4 trillion, as of 2019.
Interestingly enough, after four years of the Trump Administration, both USAID and its budget have survived largely intact. Given the attitudes expressed by the President on the subject of foreigners and the countries they live in, this might seem surprising. However, foreign assistance is generally a low priority for most American presidents, and quite possibly off the radar for the 45th.
Although USAID funds hundreds of projects that vary in focus, scope, size and geographic location, they have one thing in common: at some point, they all get evaluated. That’s where evaluators come in.
USAID’s guidelines call for its country offices to spend between 5 and 10 percent on personnel resources for performance management and, out of that, to earmark about 3 percent on external performance and impact evaluation. A rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests this is equivalent to somewhere between $14 and $28 million per year on evaluations. Dozens of companies vie for these contracts, and they rely heavily on independent consultants to put their evaluation teams together.
Nationality
Work on USAID evaluations is not restricted to US citizens. It is qualifications, not nationality, that matter.
Often, evaluation team members hired by consultant firms are not even based in the US. I’ve been on teams made up of colleagues of all nationalities, who live all over the world, and we only meet in the country of the assignment to do the field work.
Some firms have a policy of prioritizing the hiring of country nationals. This makes sense, as there are no international travel costs, locals know the country better and are well-connected, not to mention that their rates are lower, reflecting the local labor market conditions. COVID-related travel restrictions have created even more opportunities for country nationals.
English language skills are important for evaluation team members, but not every team member needs to be proficient in written English.
A typical team includes a mix of international consultants and local consultants. I’ve been on teams as small as two and as large as eight, not including any surveyors responsible for collecting quantitative data.
The diversity that comes from a mix of international and local perspectives improves the quality of an evaluation. International consultants bring experience from work in other countries, while local consultants know their own country better than anyone from outside.
Contractual arrangements
On evaluations, individual consultants are contracted under what is referred to Short Term Technical Assistance, or STTA. The alternative would be to work as a full-time staff for the consulting firm.
Individual consultants never work directly for USAID on evaluations, in my experience. They are always sub-contracted by private firms or NGOs that have contract with USAID.
Sometimes the staff from the firms are part of evaluation teams, but usually they provide managerial support, directing and managing the evaluation process. This includes liaising with USAID, handling administration and logistics issues, ensuring deadlines are met, quality control, report formatting, etc.
Daily rate
USAID contracts pay by the day. That means they are based on a daily rate, and on a set number of days agreed to in advance.
In development lingo, contract days are referred to as “level of effort’ or LOE. The term actually makes sense, since the number of days signals the amount of effort you are expected to put in. It should guide you when managing your time.
For example, if you are subcontracted as a STTA by a firm (the contractor) to do a USAID evaluation, you may get 40 days of work (your LOE is 40), which is what you have to finalize all the work. I’ve had contracts from 22 to 60 days, with 45 being the average.
On their invoices, however, normally consultants are asked to bill by the hour. Most consulting firms will have their won combination invoice/timesheet template which consultants are asked to complete and submit on a monthly basis.
There is a maximum USAID rate, or “USAID max,” above which contractors will almost never go. In 2020 the USAID maximum was $698 per day. I’ve only heard of one case where a consultant refused to take USAID max, which was well below her standard rate. She told the firm that wanted to hire her, “This my rate, take it or leave it.” She got the contract. That type of case seems to be rare, however. It is up to you whether you are willing to work for USAID max, try to negotiate more, or not work on USAID evaluations.
Beyond the total amount you receive in fees (your daily rate times the number of contract days), all your expenses will be covered. This includes hotel, meals and incidentals, communication, and transportation. You will also normally receive a standard per diem (set by the Foreign Service) to cover meals and incidentals.
Firms usually place consultants in very decent hotels. This is not Peace Corps work where you live in a village for months and years at a time. There is little chance of going native while doing an evaluation.
The biodata form
USAID uses what’s called a biodata form (technically the Contractor Employee Biographical Data Sheet) also referred to as the “1420 form.” As a consultant, you need to fill it out by listing all your employment or assignments going back three years. It only gives you three lines, though. So, if you have had more than three assignments during that time period (which applies to most consultants), simply attach an addendum to the form listing the rest.
In the past, the 1420 form had a column for salary or daily rate for each assignments. Asking about salary history is no longer legal in many US states, as it puts the consultant at a disadvantage, so the form no longer has a column for salary. However, consultant firms will probably still ask you to provide a rationale for why you are requesting x for your daily rate.
The contractor role
The firm that hires consultants normally provides good management and back-office support. It may also provide one or more of the team members. The firm will manage the schedule, arrange travel, hire local firms or consultants, manage the relationship with USAID, and relieve you of other administrative matters. This allows you, as a core team member, to focus on the substantive aspects of the evaluation.
There are firms that take good care of their consultants and are professional in managing the entire process. If you have a good experience with them, and they have a good experience with you, chances are high that you will work with them again. There are also bad firms that you will want to avoid. Working for an unfamiliar firm means taking a risk. Sometimes the risk is worth it.
Evaluation schedule
USAID doesn’t tend to dawdle, at least once the evaluation is ready to start. It is best to approach USAID evaluations in a spirit of ruthless efficiency. The entire evaluation may be completed in 3-6 months and you may only get 10 days or less to draft a final report. This is in stark contrast to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) timelines, where an evaluation can drag on for years and years.
How to get work on USAID projects
A question that comes up a lot is, how can I work on a USAID evaluation if I haven’t worked on one before? That’s because consulting firms, when hiring for a USAID evaluation, are looking for prior USAID experience. That can be a hurdle. (USAID vets the proposed evaluation team, by the way, and can ask a firm to replace a consultant if they don’t believe he or she is qualified.)
Of course, logic dictates that, at some point, every single person working on a USAID evaluation (or a USAID project, or at USAID itself, for that matter) initially had no USAID experience. My advice is, get as close as you can to the real thing – maybe you were on a project that partnered with USAID, or have done an evaluation project with a different US agency, or worked on an assignment for a similar bilateral agency? Those are all possible entry points for the would be novice USAID evaluator.
It can also happen that a firm is simply desperate for someone with your qualifications, and that will be enough to force the door open. It also never hurts to demonstrate your enthusiasm and eagerness to do the work. Recruiters like to see that spark of interest, and it can make you stand out. I find that the work is, in fact, often interesting, and usually enjoyable.
Having worked on a number of USAID evaluations, I’ve come away with an overall positive impression – the work that’s done is, by and large of good quality, and really does seem to help people. Which, as a U.S. taxpayer, is good to see.
If you want to be popular, probably best not to go into evaluation. Pick another role, another profession.
However, evaluation performs a necessary and valuable function. Like street cleaning and colonoscopies, someone has to do it.
Evaluators are paid (tolerated?) to deliver sometimes unpleasant truths or hard-to-swallow advice. The role has evolved, slightly, since Medieval times when the king’s fool, among other things, had to speak truth to power, presumably in some palatable way like mixing humor and self-deprecation. Mercifully, we evaluators don’t need to dress up in funny costumes and makes fools of ourselves anymore (although sometimes we inadvertently do a bit of the latter).
In all honesty, the point of this blog post is not to deter would-be evaluators from entering the field. Rather, it is to warn you that you may not make as many friends as you would if you were, say, working in sales or marketing.
Also, when I say “unpopular” I do not mean that demand for evaluators is low. To the contrary, there is (still) lots of evaluation and evaluation-type work out there.
The fact is, auditors, tax collectors, inspectors, evaluators and their ilk – in what are sometimes called the accountability professions – are not really meant to be liked.
President Trump’s firing of six Inspectors General in the last few months notwithstanding, most people know that accountability is important. Like taking medicine or going to the gym, being evaluated or investigated can be disagreeable for the object of the evaluation, but there is also good chance it will make whatever or whoever is being evaluated better.
Why you need a thick skin
I have known of evaluators who have been threatened, fired, had their work trashed, or even been held against their will. Here are a couple of examples (one personal).
I once was leading an evaluation in Croatia on the impact of employee redundancies at the country’s shipyards. The data collection supervisor on our team, an intrepid young Croatian woman, was asked by a shipyard manager to turn over the list of (randomly selected) employees she was interviewing. When she refused, he locked her in the interview room and threatened not to let her out unless she complied with his request. She still refused, risking her safety and well-being in the name of professional integrity and respondent confidentiality. Luckily, she had a contact in the Ministry she was able to call, and the manager relented and unlocked the door. She was shaken, but able to continue with her interviews. The evaluation was completed and well received. The reforms, on the hand, did not happen.
It happens to evaluators – it has happened to me – that your findings and conclusions are rejected, even when I thought the analysis was strong.
Last year I conducted an evaluation-type study in an African country for the World Bank. It involved assessing the likely social impacts of a $100 million program. The manager who commissioned my work (in a division– referred to as “Global Practices” – at the Bank, with a focus on social issues) was happy with the analysis. However, the manager whose program I reviewed (from the Global Practice responsible for the assistance program) actually refused to speak with me. After reading my report and its conclusions, he rejected the analysis and brought in someone else to redo it. Not a happy experience, but you develop a thick skin in this line of work.
A popular way of rejecting evaluation findings is to question or attack the evaluation methods, or the evaluator’s qualifications. These are good ways of deflecting attention from the findings.
Often, you won’t know whether the client was unhappy with the quality or scope of the work, or if there were other internal politics at play.
These types of unpleasant experiences tend to be rarer, and less of an issue when the client commissioning the evaluation is not the one whose work is being evaluated. This may be the case with donors or US Government agencies such as USAID or Millennium Challenge Corporation evaluations. They are the agencies funding the work, while another organization implements it, so they are generally truly interested in whether the money is being well spent, e.g. is the program going according to plan and getting results.
You may not be popular, but you still have to be nice
With evaluators, when people are nice to you, it isn’t necessarily because they like you, or see you as a linchpin in their career progression. Of course, hopefully you’re a decent person with a disarming personality! But quite possibly, their chumminess could reflect a, shall we say, slight bias. You are evaluating their programs after all, and they most likely prefer it that you see them at their very best. If people are quite nice to you at the beginning, but when they realize that you’re serious about your job, they start cooling to you, you’ll know that the amicability was more of a tactic than anything else.
It is your job to look past the surface, dig into the data, find what what’s really happening, and report fairly. Yet, you yourself need to adopt an attitude of goodwill, and cordiality toward others, regardless of what your finding are, no matter how useless your inept or corrupt the program is. (I honestly have evaluated very few programs that fall into that category, quite possibly because everyone knows that the evaluators will be showing up.)
Why is being nice to others who might not be nice to you important?
First, being nice is simply part of being professional.
Second, you want to build relationships. You need others trust you and share information and, if all goes well, accept your findings.
Third, maintaining a pleasant demeanor is a simply good default attitude to have to contain whatever feelings you may have about the program you’re evaluating. Whether you think it is amazing or terrible, you want to keep those feelings separate from the work.
The bottom line is that being decent to others is a soft skill you want in your toolbox.
The evaluator as outsider
Closely linked to being “unpopular” is being an outsider.
Professional independent evaluators are, by dint of their position, outsiders. (This is different from internal evaluators who work within an organization.) You need to accept and embrace that role, even while building trust with the client and stakeholders you meet. You need to obtain information from them, and want them to accept your findings.
However, it is a fine line. As an evaluator, you arrive in a new place, with its own professional or work culture, maybe in a new country. You start poking around, and asking questions. That’s the job. People will be on their guard.
The outsider status is beneficial in that it can shield you from certain biases that you might bring. These biases might include if you were part of the system you are evaluating, such as belonging to one or the other political parties, ethnic groups, clans or other groupings of which you are probably not aware.
A corollary of this is that foreign governments often value non-nationals because they are outsiders, independent, not connected to a particular faction. Sometimes this is justified, sometimes not. Despite being an outsider, and thus often partially aware (or unaware) of the unwritten and unspoken codes and connections, there is value in standing outside, in not being part of the culture.
One can be less beholden, less biased, and face lower risk of consequences from producing unpopular findings, since everyone knows that when it’s over the evaluator will board the plane and leave the country.
The international consultant, very much an outsider position, also brings an international perspective to the table, based on evaluation experience in multiple countries and cultures.
The evaluator as friend?
I like the concept of critical friend, which I have found very useful in understanding and accepting my role as an evaluator. It implies that you are there to help through constructive criticism. One of the best descriptions comes from John MacBeath, a Cambridge University academic, in a 1998 article on improving school effectiveness:
The Critical Friend is a powerful idea, perhaps because it contains an inherent tension. Friends bring a high degree of unconditional positive regard. Critics are, at first sight at least, conditional, negative and intolerant of failure. Perhaps the critical friend comes closest to what might be regarded as ‘true friendship’ – a successful marrying of unconditional support and unconditional critique.
Good evaluators should be respected for their work. They are not going to be the most popular kid on the block and should not strive for that.
Sometimes evaluation findings are accepted, sometimes rejected, sometimes ignored. Sometimes you are hired again, sometimes you are not. As an independent consultant moving from one assignment to the next, one client to the next, you often never learn of the outcome of your work. It comes with the territory and you should not be disheartened by this.
I began this post by noting how evaluation is not a popular profession. In this age of online calumny and fake news, where many suspect any criticism of being driven by ulterior motives, the notion of accountability is more important than ever.
Nonetheless, if you stick to your guns, maintain your integrity and deliver credible and useful advice, you may be the best critical friend, the people who hired you have ever had.
On the face of it, independent consulting in international
development is not an appealing career choice.
You’re on your own, with no institution to back you up. You’re an outsider, a transient professional,
an interloper. You touch down for a few weeks in a foreign country and have
little time to acclimatize or develop relationships. You often find yourself counting on team members
who up until yesterday were complete strangers. You have to pray that they’re
competent.
Of course, there are plenty of independent consultants for
whom their career path was less a choice than a default position. It might have
been thrust upon them. They may have originally sought the stability, structure
and institutional opportunities that come with being part of a big development
agency or a consulting firm of whatever size. But that didn’t happen.
Freedom is not always a blessing
Certainly, independent consulting comes with a lot of
freedom. But freedom is only a positive thing insofar as you enjoy being
untethered and don’t mind not belonging. There are a lot of reluctant gig
workers out there.
Although it is rarely acknowledged, there are non-negligible
advantages to being told what to do. A professional life where you can mostly
focus on completing the tasks you are given. There is less decision making and
need for self-discipline. Plus there is no need to file estimated taxes every
quarter (as the self-employed in the US must do).
If, in addition to being an independent consultant, you are so “unlucky” as to work as an evaluator, you can expect to enjoy several additional drawbacks. While it is true that someone is paying you to look into a program or project, to collect data and information and ferret out the truth, a lot of people involved in that program won’t exactly appreciate your poking your nose around and asking sometimes uncomfortable questions.
They say evaluators play the role of “critical friend,” the person you can trust who will also point out your faults. Not everybody is reconciled to that concept. Who likes a party pooper? Who likes to get a diagnosis that they aren’t as healthy as they thought?
In other words, independent consulting ain’t for everyone.
But if you must…
Still, there are rewards to be had. A few of us are out there doing this type of work, after all, and not all of us plan to throw in the towel…
If you happen to fall into the sub-sub-sub-category of a) being a consultant who, b) works independently, c) is active in the field of international development, and d) conducts evaluations; then here are a few observations on what you might face.
In the article, we discuss common divides and some useful competencies that consultants that belong to the sub-sub-sub category use to navigate them.
We consider various divides that consultants likely deal with while working abroad. We identified divides along cultural, power, gender, national–international, language, geographical lines. None of these are insurmountable but, in one way or another, they require a bit of navigation.
Language is a common and obvious divide. Not speaking the language won’t necessarily prevent you from getting an assignment (except in French or Spanish speaking countries). However, relying on interpreters does pose some risks. Things do get lost in translation. It adds yet another a layer of complexity to your work.
Because you are not part of the system, probably lack a deep understanding of the country, don’t have the relationships, or necessarily speak the language, you come with a built-in disadvantage.
If you are young and female, you may face further
challenges. You may find, at least in some cultures, that you are not taken as
seriously as your male counterparts.
Privilege and power – those perennial aspects of life that insinuate themselves into so much of our political and social life – are part of the equation, too. Independent consultants have both more and less privilege and power than meets the eye. On the one hand, as professionals who are independent, well-remunerated, and often based in Western countries, we have certain advantages. On the other hand, we face limitations. As outsiders, (often) not knowing the local language, not have the connections, not the institutional backing that our full-time employed colleagues do, our influence is certainly limited.
Most of the divides we identified spring from disparities between you, the consultant, and the social, political and cultural environment you work in.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
I’ve emphasized the difficult and less
appealing sides of independent consulting for two reasons.
If you have doubts about this path, maybe
reading this will help you clear them up, and push you in a different
direction.
However, if you still think it’s a good
idea, then embrace the challenge with open eyes.
On a related note, I like the concept of cognitive disfluency. It refers to the benefits that come from the mental effort of completing a task. If something is too easy to do or to learn, your mind is, according to the theory, less likely retain it. Learning to play the piano is hard. But by practicing day after day, you improve. The same applies to many other skills people acquire. Although a more nebulous skill than mastering a musical instrument, wWorking as an independent consultant, at least until you get the hang of it, is fairly effortful.
This brings me back to our article: we conclude that the very process of overcoming these divides and dealing with these issues can strengthen you as a professional, while also making the work more interesting and enjoyable. There is satisfaction to be had from overcoming life’s tribulations.
———-
*Junge, N.,
& Negroustoueva, S. (2019). Bridging divides and creating opportunities in
international evaluation consulting. In N. Martınez-Rubin, A. A. Germuth, &
M. L. Feldmann (Eds.), Independent Evaluation Consulting: Approaches and
Practices from a Growing Field. New Directions for Evaluation, 164,
127–139.
First of all, negotiating is about more than getting as much
as you can. It isn’t really even about getting what (you think) you’re worth.
Many factors come into play and it is worth spending a little time thinking
them through. After you’ve signed the contract, assuming your negotiations land
you at that point, you want to feel good about what you’ve agreed to.
When it comes to work, money isn’t everything. It’s one element among many that gives satisfaction. Why else would people volunteer, or work for low pay at organizations they believe in? In other words, when you are negotiating, the dollar amount (or whatever currency you’re getting paid in) is not the only thing you should be thinking about.
In this blog post I am going to suggest 12 things to consider when negotiating your rate. The goal is to help you be more conscious of what exactly you are negotiating about, as well as more strategic.
This post is longer than normal, so if you don’t have the time or inclination to read on, here are the main messages: Know thyself. Think about what the number (your daily rate) means. Decide what matters to you.
The scenario
To make it more realistic, let’s build the discussion around
a typical scenario.
I’m going to posit that you are a consultant working in
international development, although some of what follows applies more broadly.
The basis of your remuneration is your daily rate, because
you undertake short-term assignments, rather than full-time, salaried work. The
daily rate and number of contract days are normally the basis of short-term
contracts in this field.
You have entered into discussions with an organization over a short-term assignment. Let’s call them Acme & Partners International. They are a consulting firm based in Arlington, VA and they submit proposals to organizations like the World Bank, the UN, and USAID, and they subcontract consultants like you.
They found your profile on Devex.com or assortis.com, they’ve checked out your references and contacted you. You’ve had a few exchanges. It turns out that, yes, you are available and there is mutual interest in having you on the project. Your role and responsibilities have been defined. You’re expected to spend part of your time working from home and part of your time onsite, i.e. overseas. So far so good.
Because you haven’t worked for Acme before, you need to
agree on remuneration. The subject might come up as part of their initial
inquiry as to your qualifications, interest, and/or availability, or it might
come up later.
Like most organizations, Acme has a standard range —
and upper limit — for the daily rate they are willing to offer their
subcontractors, i.e. independent consultants like you. It will be based on some
combination of their fee structure or guidelines, what they pay similar
consultants, and the demand for your services.
Now that we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way, what
factors should you take into consideration when negotiating your rate?
1. Any previous assignments may be used as reference points
If you have previous consulting work experience, you will
probably have received different fees, and thus established a range. For the
rest of the discussion, we’ll think in terms of your range. That range can be
wide or narrow.
If you are new to the field of consulting and have not yet
had an assignment based on your daily rate, ask around for advice. Ideally, ask
another consultant. If you’ve been employed full-time somewhere, do not
divide your salary by 250 (the approximate number of working days in a year) to
arrive at your rate. Why? You will
arrive at a figure which is too low, because the full-time nature of salaried
work, the benefits, and the overhead covered by the employer, do not generally
apply to independent consulting work.
Especially as a beginning consultant, you will probably not
be working a full 250 days. It took me about three years working as a
consultant before I was able to corral enough assignments to keep me more or
less busy year-round. And, as noted, you need to take into account the fact
that you will not be getting benefits — health insurance, vacation, sick
days, etc. —
with this rate.
Also, bear in mind your personal overhead —
i.e. the time you spend on activities associated with your work for which you
cannot bill a client. These activities include things like updating your CV, applying
for assignments or responding to inquiries, planning and organizing your
schedule, managing your taxes and accounts, developing your technical capacity,
maintaining or building up your professional network, etc.
Unless you’re a superstar in your field or your skills are
hard to find, you will not be able to unilaterally declare your rate. The vast
majority of us live and function in a world of constraints. That requires self-knowledge
and intelligent negotiating.
Ideally, the rate you eventually agree on with Acme will be
toward the upper end of your own range. However, there are a number of reasons
you may accept a rate that is toward the low end of your range, or even below
it. Read on.
2. How much do I want or need this assignment?
Have you been trying to get work with Acme (or the UN or the
World Bank) for a long time, and this seems like your chance? Have you always
wanted to go to South Africa, and this is your opportunity? Have you been
trying to get experience on refugee issues?
The more attractive the assignment is, the more willing you
may be to agree to a rate that is toward the bottom of your range. On the other
hand, if you’re feeling lukewarm about the assignment, think about how much
they’d have to pay you (and under what conditions) for you to say “yes.” In
other words, anything below that — you’d be willing to walk away, no
regrets.
3. Are there any opportunity costs?
What if you accept this three-month assignment —
which perhaps you’re sort of interested in, since you need the money, but you’re
not enthused by — and then, a month from now a much better one comes along?
It might pay better, or it might be more aligned with your skills or goals, or
it might just be more interesting. Will you have to forgo the better
opportunity because you’ve committed to Acme already? If yes, then that’s your opportunity cost.
The higher your opportunity cost (i.e. the chances of
missing out on something better) the less willing you should be to accept a
lower rate. Of course, you may be able to say yes to both, and fit them both into
your schedule.
I tend to have multiple assignments going on at once.
Juggling is part of the deal. Here’s a bonus trade secret —
it is very common for projects to start later than planned. If the whole
discussion so far has been about starting the work on September 1, don’t be
surprised if it actually starts in October.
4. Will this assignment lead to other opportunities?
Some organizations are difficult to break into. Maybe this
Acme contract is with USAID, whom you’ve always wanted to work for — either
directly or indirectly. USAID, like other organizations, likes it when
consultants have previous USAID experience.
If you think this will indeed open up other doors, then you
may not feel like negotiating too hard. But be a bit careful here —
see Consideration #5.
5. Will this rate determine my rate for all future work with this company or organization?
The answer to that is usually yes. You won’t lock yourself
in, but future increases will be based on this first contract. We can call this
“salary path dependency.” If you start too low, you potentially are giving up a
lot of income down the line. It’s true that $20 per day may not seem like a
substantial amount on a 50-day contract. However, if you end up working off and
on for Acme over the next 10 years, for an average of 50 days per year, that’s
500 days, i.e. equivalent to $10,000.
A low daily rate at Acme won’t necessarily depress your
ability to get a better daily rate elsewhere. Most organizations won’t
generally ask you about your previous rates but some might. (USAID is the
exception, requiring the so-called bio-data form which asks you to list your
salary or rate for the past three years — but note that in some states asking
about previous salaries is now illegal.)
However, a good daily rate can be used as leverage in
negotiations with other organizations.
6. Are there other benefits?
Maybe the daily rate is only part of a package. For example,
the Asian Development Bank typically includes a fairly generous lump sum per
diem amount for every day of onsite work in its contracts. The per diem
includes both accommodation and ‘meals and incidentals’ (most organizations
provide a per diem only for meals and incidentals), so it can be substantial.
If you don’t splurge by staying at a luxury hotel and eating at fancy
restaurants, you can come out ahead. This might lead you to accept a lower
rate.
Another benefit might be that this particular assignment
includes a lot of flexibility — in terms of when and where and how
the work is done. If that is important to you, factor that into your
thinking.
7. Are there any creative solutions lying around?
Sometimes managers may be happy to pay you more, but they
have to work within their organization’s fee structure, which maybe doesn’t
align with your range. The budget is there, and both the manager and you want
to move forward.
In such a case, sometimes more days can be added to your
contract, effectively increasing the total amount while not exceeding fee
guidelines. The outcome might be that, instead of the initially mooted 20-day
contract you get a 25-day contract.
Another option is to enter into a lump sum contract, with no reference to any daily rate at all. A lump sum contract refers only to a total amount, and does not break out expenses for travel, accommodation or other items, which you must cover out of the total sum. You are not required to submit receipts. With a lump sum contract you can avoid being constrained by a low daily rate, and work the number of days that is appropriate to the total contract amount, taking into account expenses. Lump sum contracts are not very common, however, in the international development field.
8. Do I have to pay taxes?
Because Acme is a private company, the answer is yes.
However, at some organizations, such as the IMF and World Bank, international
hires do not pay taxes, only U.S. citizens do. That means U.S. citizens need to
try and ensure their daily rates are about 25-30% above what their fellow
international consultant rates are.
If you are a U.S. citizen and are earning the same amount as
an international hire, you are effectively paying a tax penalty, because, come
next April, you will owe a cut of your income to Uncle Sam, while they will
not. In theory, this would put U.S. consultants at a competitive disadvantage.
However, as a rule, I have not found this to be the case. Hiring managers tend
to have budgets that are elastic enough to enable them to focus on
qualifications.
9. Do I want to help this organization out?
Let’s say you really like Acme and the work they are doing, because they’re a small outfit, doing incredibly meaningful work to help _______ [fill in the blank with your favorite cause]. Maybe they simply don’t have very much budget for the work they’re asking you to do.
In this case, you may be happy to charge them less than your
normal rate or range. That’s absolutely fine. However, I suggest stating up
front that you are giving them a ‘discount’, so that this doesn’t set a
precedent. Thus, if you normally would be asking for x, then charge them 50% of
that. That way, your standard daily rate has not gone down, you have simply
given this particular organization a one-time rebate.
There are some assistance programs that rely on pro-bono
work. They recruit highly skilled senior specialists in a particular field to
work pro bono, i.e. for no fee at all. These might be, for example,
contract lawyers, horticulture specialists or infectious disease specialists
whose day job is academia or at a government agency. The program only pays for
their travel and expenses.
I’ve even heard that work done pro bono can exceed
the quality of paid consultants. The money motivation is just not there;
they’re doing it because they enjoy solving problems, engaging with
counterparts abroad, and making a difference.
10. Is the marginal difference important to me?
It could be that the marginal difference of a higher rate
isn’t meaningful to you. Maybe you don’t even need the extra income.
For example, you’re approaching the end of your career and
the extra income that a 10% higher rate would bring just doesn’t make a
difference. Or maybe you have reached your annual income target, if you have
one. This also highlights the fact that at different phases in your career
different considerations come into play.
Likewise, the pro bono assignments described above
may be more accepted by professionals who have the income or accrued assets to
the extent that they are willing to work (occasionally) for free.
11. Should I always negotiate?
Yes (while bearing in mind the previous considerations).
12. Won’t negotiating make me seem difficult, or greedy?
No, it won’t. Negotiating, if conducted in a reasonable way,
is considered normal and is expected. It may also be as simple as a few emails exchanging
offers and counter-offers.
Keep the tone pleasant, be reasonable and make a good argument. The organization may or may not be able to meet your request, but they won’t hold it against you that you asked for more. There is a side-benefit to the negotiation process: the back and forth over daily rates and other aspects of the contract gives both you and Acme a chance to get to know one another better before making a commitment. And that’s always a good thing.
I recently had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at the International Relations Career Challenge (IRCC), a week-long intensive program aimed at young professionals aspiring to get into the field of international development. It is a terrific professional development opportunity run by Young Professionals United Nations (YPUN), an organization helping young professionals build their international relations careers.
I spoke on the subject of independent consulting in the international development sector, a seemingly daunting path that generated plenty of questions from participants. Some focused on whether it is a path worth pursuing, how to get started, and what are the risks involved.
Let’s get this out of the way first – independent consulting is not for everyone, and I’ve written elsewhere about the downsides. It can be risky the first few years, when there is lots of uncertainty about finding enough assignments to earn a living with. However, it can be an attractive option for those who don’t enjoy 9-to-5 office life, have a set of marketable skills and the motivation to pursue a more independent path.
In this post, I’m going go over in more detail just one of the topics I touched on at IRCC: six ways of finding finding assignments. Three are active and three are passive.
Active methods
Responding to job announcements. The conventional way of getting most work, whether full time or consulting assignments, is applying for advertised assignments. You scan the relevant sites for job announcements and apply to the ones that look attractive and for which you feel qualified. For example, Devex.com lists short-term assignments, as do others, such as Indeed.com and Developmentaid.org.
Reaching out to your personal and professional network. It is a good idea to reach out to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to ask if they can introduce you to people working in your sector. Once you make a connection, arrange an informational interview, thereby getting to know an organization or company better, and putting yourself on their radar.
Cold calls. Today’s version of “cold calling” simply means contacting professionals in your field without any third-party introduction. This could be through email, Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, organizational websites, or publications. If you are working within an organization, permanently or temporarily, you can simply send the appropriate person an email or, better yet, just knock on their door.
Passive methods
Seeding the Internet with your profile/CV. This is important in terms of making your profile, and availability known. You can post your CV on a number of jobs websites such as Devex, LinkedIn, and organization websites. You can also upload your CV to the websites of consulting firms that work in the sector. You can find a lot (though not all) of firms working on US government contracts at these websites:
Small Business Association for International Companies: sbaic.org/about
Socializing in the real world. Now
this is the easy and fun part. It involves randomly getting to know people during
the course of your workday, at events, workshops, seminars, conferences, embassy
soirees, cocktail parties, dinner parties, bar-b-ques and so on. You get the
picture. Face-to-face contact is hugely important (see knocking on doors,
above). It gives people a sense of your character, which can build trust, or at
least a willingness to risk hiring you. If someone gets a good impression of you, that
will separate you from the pile of nameless, faceless CVs. I don’t claim to
understand why, exactly, being in the same room with someone and being able to
look them in the eyes is so important. Ostensibly all the important information
about your experience and expertise is detailed on your CV. But that’s how the
world works.
Through referrals. The
final passive method is something that will take care of itself as you
accumulate work experience. Do a good job, prove yourself to be competent and
reliable, and managers you’ve worked with will recommend you – to colleagues or
others in the sector – for other opportunities. They may change organizations
and then come back to you for more, and voila! you have a new client.
The passive approach isn’t completely passive, of course. Some
minimal activity is still required on your part. However, two of the passive
methods involve a limited amount of up-front work, maybe a couple of days’
worth, after which they go on autopilot while you focus on other things. The socializing “method” involves you getting
out of the house and mingling with the rest of the world. It shouldn’t really
involve job searching or any sort of stress. Going to parties, events,
workshops and seminars is merely about you being in circulation and keeping up
with what’s going on. Then let serendipity do the rest.
What method works best?
If this were one of those so-called sensationalist click-baiting websites, I would have titled this post something like “6 Common Ways to find Consulting Jobs: You’ll Be Shocked that #5 works best,” or “Why You Should Go to Parties to Find your Dream Job.” Sorry, I just don’t have the stomach for it. And you’ll notice from the lack of ads that I don’t depend on this blog site for income.
However, passivity and partying are, in fact, very good
approaches. Similar to investing in the stock market, in the medium to
long-run, passive investing for your job search beats active investing by
far.
Early in your career or job search, you
can afford to invest your time in the active strategies. The opportunity cost
is low. That is, you don’t have many alternative ways of spending your time. However,
the more experience you have, and the broader your network, the more important
your passive approach to getting work will become. In any case, if all goes
well, you will be too busy to apply for work.
After a couple of years in the field, passive methods will dominate
In my first couple of years as a consultant I tried all six methods. And all, except the first, have paid off. All I got for my application efforts were a few interviews, during which I clearly didn’t, ahem, shine. They did not lead to work. Luckily the other methods have worked fairly well. And over the past 15 years or so, fully 100 percent of my assignments come from passive methods. That means I can devote most of my energy to the work I have and not looking for the work I don’t have.
And yes, for those who are curious, my stock market investment strategy is also passive…
In many fields, starting out can be daunting. This goes not
only for those who have graduated from university but for more seasoned
professionals interested in switching careers.
How do you step onto that first rung of the ladder in the
field of international development? Even though unemployment has hit historic
lows, and jobs are seemingly plentiful, you don’t want to get onto just any old
ladder that’s leaning against a wall — you want to get onto a ladder that
will get you over the right wall.
What are the barriers to entry and how can you overcome them?
In this post, I’ll take a look at four barriers to launching a career in
international development – experience, knowledge, confidence and name
recognition – and some things you can do to lower them.
The experience barrier
The experience barrier can be a maddening catch-22.
Employers want you to have experience, but how do you gain experience if you
haven’t been employed yet? For junior professionals, the experience issue isn’t
about the problem-solving skills. It is about whether you’ve done something
similar before — even just once — and whether you can deliver the
goods.
Through time, this barrier will fade as you build up a body of work. Meanwhile, you need to find creative ways to compensate for your (temporarily) limited experience. If you don’t have professional experience, you may have country experience or language skills from living or studying overseas. Other things that compensate for lack of experience could be your interest in, and commitment to, working in the international development field. Or, better yet, your interest (some call it passion) in a particular issue, whatever it is that keeps you up at night.
A good way of getting experience is to take field
assignments, even volunteer ones. You go to live and work in a country for a
period of time, test your mettle, and gain a better sense of how the real world
works. This is a great way of gaining a perch on the career ladder, while also
learning a new language, and accumulating some marketable practical skills
along the way. I recall a friend saying
that even minimal overseas experience helps.
Her international recruiter explained it this way: “Look, we just want
to make sure that when you get off the plane you don’t freak out and turn
around and come right back. This, unfortunately, has happened more times than
we care to admit.”
Being well-spoken, personable, and reliable, possessing good
analytical and writing skills are always good attributes to have. You can
demonstrate all these things in person and by sharing examples of written work.
And while having 20-30 years of experience in one area is highly valued and
opens doors, it is, of course, only expected of very senior professionals. For
junior professionals, having successfully performed a project once signals to
prospective hiring managers or clients that you can be trusted to do it again.
There is running a joke at the World Bank, where staff shift between projects
and countries at a pretty high frequency, that if you done something once, you
can be considered an expert.
The knowledge barrier
If you are a recent graduate, the knowledge you draw on will
be mostly theoretical. And much of it may turn out to be only marginally applicable
to the work you end up doing.
In the consulting field, technical knowledge relating to a
field or a method is what is most valued. Some examples are: rural water supply
systems, climate change mitigation, social behavior change, natural resource
management, data analytics, governance, and evaluation methodologies.
To build up an area of knowledge, it is advisable not to spread
yourself too thinly. Find a niche that interests you, and focus on building up your
expertise there. After a while, you may find that the niche area that you chose
has a lot of transfer potential, and you can apply it to other sectors. Teach
yourself about the economics of forestry. Learn a statistical software program.
Follow blogs and podcasts that cover a specific issue. All of that will make you more marketable. In
the meantime, you’re keeping your synapses active.
The confidence barrier
Not having worked in the field yet, and not (yet) having a wide
network of experienced friends and colleagues, may make you feel you are at a
disadvantage. It may sap your confidence. How can you compete with the
professionals you meet? My advice is to be bold. Suppress those misgivings.
Hide your nervousness, wear a confident smile. Most people won’t notice your
nerves. Remember that all these senior professionals also started out with zero
experience at some point.
I know of a young woman who was desperate to get her foot in
the door of New York’s high-stakes fashion industry. Freshly graduated, she cold called a
name-brand designer and was told there were no jobs. “Nevertheless,” as they say, “she persisted.” By the end of the call, she had wrangled an
internship, based on her years as a summer camp counselor, where, she assured
them, there was no crisis she couldn’t handle.
And if you are young, remember that you come with distinct advantages.
You probably possess some measure of energy, enthusiasm, resilience,
intellectual curiosity, and analytical prowess that many of us older folks wish
we still had! You also bring tech and social media savvy that you may take for
granted, but that may be valued by your employers.
The name recognition barrier
By virtue of being new to the field, you are unknown. You don’t have “name recognition” as they like to say in politics, because no one knows you. Bizarrely enough, we seem to live in an age where name recognition trumps competence, ideas, and even previously unacceptable behavior when it comes to politicians getting elected. The lesson for you, however, is not to see how much you can get away with and still get hired — the lesson is that name recognition is really, really important.
It is completely normal and understandable that people don’t
know who you are. You don’t have a big network yet, or a reputation. Maybe it’s
going too far to say that this is an existential barrier, but before they can
consider hiring you, people simply need to know that you exist…
That means finding as many opportunities as you can handle
to meet people and get your CV out there in the public domain where
organizations and people can find it. Devex, Developmentaid.org, Assortis.org, are
some of the bigger sites in the development field (and LinkedIn works, too) where
you can post your CV and profile and where employers can find you. In addition,
many consulting firms invite people to upload their profile and CV, which they
can then use to identify potential staff or specialists.
While you’re doing this online, nothing can replace
face-to-face networking – through job fairs, think tank events, conferences,
meet-ups and yes, happy hours and parties. I’ve gotten work simply because I
shared an office with someone, or was introduced to them at a bar-b-que.
Conclusion – Natural barriers
We can consider the four above-mentioned obstacles as “natural barriers.” They are part of the landscape. Everyone has faced them, and almost everyone who is working in their profession has overcome them (and gone on to face other obstacles in their career — but that’s another story).
The barriers I’ve described above are actually pretty straightforward, and there are established (and creative) methods for getting over and around them. Learn to enjoy the challenge. Don’t give up at the first rejection. Be resilient. (What you want to avoid doing is creating unnecessary barriers that you have inadvertently created yourself. More on those in a follow-up post.)
You may need to meet or get in touch with 25 people – remember,
name recognition! – before one comes back to you and says, “I’d like to talk to
you about a project…”
Although it is said that humans are social animals — which presumably means that they love to talk and hang out with each other — it is rather striking how often they (ahem…we) mangle basic communication. I find the issue of poor communication, which extends all the to no communication, comes up as a problem in many of the projects I evaluate. The problem can arise between the implementer and project beneficiaries, between the funder and the implementer, between management levels at the same organization. And, of course, at times team members also have their own internal communication problems.
Poor communication can result in all sorts of unpleasant outcomes: people stop cooperating, stop doing what they’re supposed to, misunderstand or distrust each other, get frustrated, get angry. Generally, whatever the cause of the miscommunication, it leaves people unhappy. The situation is unstable; there are dynamics which are pushing it to change.
For example, on a recent evaluation I worked on (whose details I can’t divulge), the project counterparts complained that the consultants who were advising them would disappear for months at a time. They wouldn’t hear from them. They didn’t like being kept in the dark, and when they saw the recommendations the consultants produced, they weren’t very happy. There had been almost no consultation, no input. In short, bad communication.
In another evaluation, the donor organized monthly meetings so the different project leaders could share information. However, communication was reduced to presenting progress reports, which most attendees found terribly boring and not very useful. There was no substantive discussion, no back and forth.
I have also been on projects where the team leader simply would not respond to emails, leaving us in the dark.
Why does communication come up so often as an issue in one form or another? Does it not occur to people that it’s helpful to keep others informed, or to check in with them? Are people just too busy? Or perhaps, do people deliberately withhold information, whether out of an abundance of caution or in order to get some advantage? Really, it could be any of these reasons. Take your pick.
It is
inevitable that when two parties sit down to talk, to work something out, each will
have its own interests. These interests may overlap, but they rarely coincide. This
is particularly true at the policy level, when one, or both, parties are
unhappy with their current situation and want it to improve.
Is talking
really necessary? If one party decides to change a situation unilaterally,
without talking to other stakeholders, in all likelihood this would require
coercion and could lead to an unstable new status quo.
I would argue that, as a rule, it is easier, and less costly, to get the other party to agree to a change by taking their interests into account, as opposed to forcing them to comply with a new policy. It may not always be possible, and opposing interests may lead to full-blown conflict, but it is always worth the attempt.
When is the optimum time to sit down and talk?
Let me propose that a situation is ripe for parties to hold talks when things are veering out of balance, out of equilibrium, and it is in at least in one party’s interest to seek a change. Of course, both parties may be interested in talking, or it could be just the one. In the latter case, it try to might persuade, or even force, the other to engage. The broader objective of talking between stakeholders with different interests is to effect a change.
The new governments of Algeria and Sudan — which replaced those of their ousted leaders, Bouteflika and al Bashir, respectively — may be facing this choice. They will either need to be so strong and ruthless that they force the populace to give in (as many Arab Spring governments in the Middle East have done), or they will need to sit down with opposition leaders and negotiate until a new political system is put into place that everyone can live with. The more powerful the interim governments feel, and the more money and support they get, say, from sympathetic countries, the less they will feel compelled to meet with protesters to address their demands and concerns. In that case, expect the new status quo to be unstable.
Refusing to
talk to others signals that you don’t want to see a change, and/or that you
anticipate losing something as a result.
Of course, there are times when communication may be difficult or impossible, due to language or physical barriers. Although such factors may not be of primary importance, they do also illustrate the value of communication.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma –
communication and cooperation
We can consider the “prisoner’s dilemma” game to illustrate an extreme case — how the failure to communicate leads to sub-optimal outcomes. The prisoner’s dilemma presents a scenario — drawn from game theory — which is based on an inability to communicate and reveals the negative consequences that ensue. Without being able to talk to each other, two prisoners, apprehended for the same violation or crime, will struggle to cooperate. Depending upon the decisions they make, this inability to communicate, can end up hurting both of them.
The dilemma arises because, unable to talk to each other, each prisoner fears the other will betray him or her, and may make a decision which could negatively affect his release.
There are
many variations and applications of the prisoner’s dilemma, including using it for
strategies of cooperating or not cooperating in order to come out ahead in a
game, a competition (in business, for example), or a conflict, and also for
when the game is expanded beyond two parties.
While the game, and the math behind it can get complex, and quite hypothetical in terms of the different outcomes – the larger point is that if the two prisoners could communicate, it is more likely that they would cooperate on an optimal strategy for both, which is generally what it takes to identify solutions that satisfy everyone involved. (Of course, even after agreeing on a strategy, one could still betray the other). Studies have found that, indeed, the ability to communicate reduces the rate of non-cooperation (or “defection” as the academic literature puts).
What I want to draw attention to is the critical factor of communication. Of knowing vs. not knowing what another person’s intentions are. It makes it hard to come to the “right” decision, since you don’t know what the other person wants, what they are thinking. You don’t know where they stand, what they are willing to accept, where they are willing to compromise. Without being able to communicate, the optimal outcome of mutual consensus is out of reach, and both are confined, as it were, to a bad status quo, or “low level equilibrium” (a stable situation that isn’t very good for anyone) as game theorists refer to it. Communication doesn’t automatically erase distrust – the other person may not be sincere, or not keep their word – but it can reduce it.
To return to the context of development work, whether you are in the field, or operating out of headquarters, the inability to communicate with partners, stakeholders or adversaries puts you in a metaphorical prison cell, solitary confinement, only able to guess the other’s intentions. Establishing better communication, breaking out of the metaphorical prison cell, may be the best way of breaking free, and getting to a better, and more stable, equilibrium.
I’m often
asked what life as an independent consultant is like, typically by people who
have spent their working lives ensconced within an organization…while
fantasizing about breaking free.
What to say?
If you have ever hankered to play in a one-man band, put on a one-woman show, or
strike out on your own as a gun for hire, then yes,
independent consulting may
be for you. It can satisfy those urges — to a degree. It also demands
somewhat less creativity and risk-taking than the aforementioned vocations, while
allowing you to earn a pretty decent living.
…and the limits of that appeal
Independent
consulting is not, however, just about indulging in appealing work arrangements.
You still have plenty of obligations. The less that is imposed upon you by
others, e.g. managers, the more you have to impose upon yourself. You need to
substitute internal motivation for external motivation. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt,
with freedom comes responsibility. A big part of independent consulting is
about managing, or coping with, that freedom.
There are conditions
attached to being a free-wheeling consultant. This includes the need to be
self-motivated. You must also develop the discipline to manage your own
schedule, set your own internal deadlines, and find substitutes for the structure
and social interactions that a normal workplace provides. And although you will
be liberated from the yoke of the worst bosses, you’ll also want to avoid
becoming your own worst boss. In other words, there are tradeoffs.
Is there
anything in life that doesn’t involve trade-offs? No, there is not.
One hundred tasks
To return to
the one-man band analogy, consulting means doing a lot of tasks that normally would
be carried out by others. In fact, you would be delegating those chores right
now if you hadn’t turned down that plum managerial position last year.
Out of
curiosity, I recently made a list of everything I do, professionally, over the
course of a year. I came up with over 100 different tasks. (And yes, writing
this blog is one of them.) Those tasks that are normally divided among supervisors,
subordinates, and specialists — now fall in your lap as a solo
independent contractor.
You may have
a fantasy of specializing brilliantly at just one thing, of becoming, say, a
world-renowned expert in energy regulatory policy or on malaria. That’s a
luxury few consultants can afford. Going narrow means going deep, but going too
deep can become a problem if demand for that particular skill dries up, even
temporarily. I myself am a generalist. It took me years to figure out a balance
that works for me. Like Goldilocks, you want to build up capacities in the
“right” number of areas — not too many and not too few.
Many roles, one employee
As a
consultant you don’t split your identity, but you play many roles: supervisor,
researcher, data analyst, writer, administrative assistant, accountant,
business development specialist, PR person and so on. You are, to a greater or
lesser extent, going to have to internalize the various positions that
constitute, well, a small firm, while staying sane. What I mean by
“internalizing” is that, instead of different employees performing specialized
tasks, you have to do them all yourself, in effect consolidating the different
employee roles within yourself. To keep things moving, you’ll find yourself
almost continuously switching back and forth between them.
At a
minimum, you need to think of yourself as your own boss and your own employee.
A boss needs to manage the budget, make sure deadlines are met, ensure quality
control, motivate employees, and deliver results. An employee needs guidance,
instruction and direction, and to produce what is asked for. Sometimes I, in employee
mode, feel tired or lazy, or just totally bereft of inspiration. So, in manager
mode, I have to cajole, or lay down the law, to get my “employee” to complete
the darn task. Try out the carrots and sticks that work best for you.
Breaking it down
Here’s a tip:
depending on how your brain works: you may want to cut your work up into small slices,
and alternate between them. I’ve found that frequently changing tasks
throughout the day can be invigorating. When
you get tired of analyzing the data, you can revise your CV, after which you
can review that report, go to a meeting, review the background literature for
your next project, and answer emails in between. In this way, you give the different
parts of your brain a rest while still getting plenty done.
Other people
may prefer to set aside large blocks of time and complete a task in one
sitting. I really admire that. I know someone, a phlegmatic fellow, who will
sit down for eight or more hours at a time, with barely a break, staying up
into the wee hours of the morning to ram through a task to meet a deadline.
The outsourcing option
Another
option, especially if you are overwhelmed, is to consider outsourcing some of
your work. Depending on whether it makes financial sense, you can pay other
people to do some of your tasks. You probably have to absorb the costs as part
of your pay, since you are contracted as an individual. But it may be worth it,
if you find it allows you to take on more work and it improves the quality of
your outputs.
The key is
to find good people — who are reliable and deliver the
quality you want. Over the years, I have subcontracted work to research
assistants, editors, translators, and graphic designers on a short-term basis.
Find out who you are
The relative
freedom from the constraints of a nine-to-five life suits some people better
than others. You need to figure out whether you have what it takes to live
without fetters. It comes down to temperament. Do you do your best work in bed,
like Marcel Proust and Mark Twain? Be my guest. Does the ambient noise and
languid activity of a coffee shop help your neurons to fire? There are probably
a dozen choices within walking distance from where you live. Or do you find
that you do your most penetrating analysis in a beach house in Bermuda? Experiment
until you figure out an optimal routine.
And if you
discover that you are, in fact, your own worst boss, that management position
might start looking attractive. After you are back in an office, you can then hire
those freewheeling independent consultant colleagues to do the work for you…
The year 2018 is over (thank goodness) and we have a chance
for a fresh start. For many of us that means time for personal stocktaking.
What did you accomplish last year? What did you learn? How can you apply those
hard-won lessons to the coming year? Should you keep striving to outdo yourself,
or should you settle for what you’ve got and ease into the comfort of routine?
Rifling through the mental files in my “2018 evaluations” folder,
I’ve come up with a few of my own lessons. The one I’ll share today is this: One
thing you can count on is that you can’t always count on people. And you need to prepare for that.
As I’ve observed in an earlier post, we live in a world
where professional failure is more common than conventional wisdom would allow.
Failure is also less interesting than is portrayed by the media and in the
self-help industry. It can become a serious headache, however, when it is your
fellow team member who is doing the failing. I can use myself as a prime
example: I don’t always live up to my own professional expectations. It won’t
come as a shock to readers that people are not always up to the task. The
question is, how do you handle it?
First, let’s get a few obvious things out of the way. Humans
are complex, multi-faceted and, not infrequently, multi-talented. This is a
marvelous thing, accounting for some truly astounding cultural, engineering,
and intellectual feats that have enriched life on this planet. Indeed, in many professions,
it is assumed that employees bring multiple talents to the table. We are not like
robots, programmed to do only one or two tasks at a time. This truism applies
very much to the evaluation field, where evaluators are called upon to deploy a
range of both soft and hard skills.
The fun starts when you suddenly discover that key talents are
missing from a team member. While it is rare that a new team member is brilliant
across the board, most bring at least basic levels of competence to the table.
Most score at least a seven on a 10-point scale across the range of necessary
competencies. But every now and then, someone doesn’t. They’re a “one” or a “two”
in some important area. That’s the thing with being human. We may be
multi-talented, or at least multi-capable, but we also come with built-in
limitations, which sometimes leads to a giant team-implosion. Oops!
What competencies are we talking about? I would offer that, in the evaluation field, you must be able to:
communicate comfortably with others;
put together words, sentences and paragraphs in
a clear and logical manner;
analyze the information you have collected;
collaborate with others like a mature and
responsible adult;
be pleasant and respectful;
do what you say you will do; and
manage your time and priorities.
On top of these soft, but necessary skills, you may also be expected to be equipped with technical skills and experience in:
the sector being evaluated, i.e. agriculture, education, environment, gender, etc.;
qualitative or quantitative evaluation methods; and, if applicable;
effectively leading a team.
Nothing listed above is rocket science, that particular
field generally not falling within the scope of international development
projects. You still find yourself surprised, however, when a fellow team member
is —
how to put this delicately? — totally incompetent.
Of course, the safest solution is to only work with people you
have worked with before, and whom you can count on. For individual consultants,
however, that is a luxury. Instead, what is more typical is that you join a new
team on almost every new assignment. Every year, for example, I end up working
on maybe half a dozen different teams, the majority of which are composed of
folks I have never laid eyes on. On the one hand, it’s a great way to meet
people, make new friends, and learn from your peers. On the other hand, you can
end up in some frustrating and stressful scenarios.
I’ve had experiences where it soon became obvious that a team
member had pretty serious deficiencies in the interpersonal skills department.
For example, Team leader Mr. A, a very plausible stand-in for Ricky Gervais in
the TV comedy series The Office, would
spend the first 10 minutes of a meeting boasting about his own experience and
often end the meeting by insulting the people on the other side of the table. Other
times you get a bad case of weak ethics and poor writing skills, as with Dr. B,
a native English speaker, who couldn’t write proper English despite her
academic pedigree. When I came across passages that were surprisingly
well-written, a quick check on Google revealed she had been happily
plagiarizing them. (Always good to find out that kind of thing sooner rather
than later.) Or someone might impress you in person, but not on paper. Local team
member Ms. C knew the sector and country very well and asked the right questions
during stakeholder interviews, but couldn’t string two sentences together in a
logical way in a report. These were all setbacks which it fell to me to remedy,
through many hours — and sometimes days — of extra work.
I have to admit that I only had the pleasure of working with
one of these people in 2018; I’d worked with the others before that. But it was
last year that it finally hit home: I needed a coping strategy for the next
time this happened.
So, what to do on occasions when capabilities are missing? For
starters, if the shortcomings are yours,
it’s a good idea to reflect and take concrete actions to perform better. If the
shortcomings belong to others,
cursing under your breath or venting to your significant other can have a wonderfully
calming effect, but may not be enough to rectify the situation. Is it possible
to overcome such defects through mentoring or teaching? Unfortunately, I have found
that it is totally unrealistic to attempt to build the capacity of someone (even
if you are in a position to do so), over the course of a single assignment. In
any case, you’d first need to spell out their failings to them. That could be
pretty awkward, right? Furthermore, you don’t really have much time for
capacity building — you need to get the bloody job done.
What you need is a back-up plan, especially if you are
ultimately responsible for the work (if you’re the team leader) or because you
were asked to pick up the slack (by the team leader). Here are three
suggestions:
Build in a
time buffer: Provide enough slack in your schedule to take into account the
extra time that you might need to address the shortfall. For example, if you
think a task will take two weeks, try to allocate three weeks.
Build in a
human resource buffer. Identify persons, either on the team or not, who could
step into the breach. Maybe the organization that put the team together (if you
are subcontracted) has the resources to bring on extra help.
Build in a
mental buffer: Prepare yourself not be surprised or upset when colleague X lets
you down. Unless you’ve worked with them before, and therefore know their
strengths and weaknesses, assume that people have a least one weakness, and
that it will impact the work at hand.
In a word, contingencies!
Let 2019 be a year of contingency planning. The plan comes
with its own reward: if you have a
decent contingency plan, you will end up with more time, energy, and even
inspiration, to focus on the interesting and fun stuff.
Like other forms of inquiry, evaluation involves sorting, filtering and distilling information in order to communicate something of importance. (Academics, journalists, attorneys, and private investigators do this, too.) When the work is done, you want to be able to present your findings in a clear, convincing, and attractive manner for easy consumption.
The problem is, there is a vast amount of information out there. It can easily overwhelm. With the Internet entering its mature phase, we swim in an information glut. I leave for another time a discussion on the differences between data, information, knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, except to say that (from what I can tell, anyway) there is a lot less wisdom than there is data in the world…
A big part of your job, if you are an evaluator, is to know what information you need, and where and how to find it. To do this effectively, you want to be able to zero in on the essential stuff, while still being open to any interesting findings you may not have considered.
Let the purpose of the evaluation be your guide. Keep the reason you are searching at the front of your mind. Perhaps you seek to understand how well a program has built the capacity of agronomists to introduce innovative irrigation techniques to farmers? In that case, keep your focus on factors that may have a direct bearing on capacity building efforts, while limiting the amount of time you spend on learning about other things. Take note of them, but try not to let them distract you from the main question.
As an evaluator, you do not have the luxury of time that you would if, say, you worked in academia, to produce a dissertation or journal article (often years!). Evaluation, which is often about collecting and applying evidence to problems (in programs, policies, etc.) is relatively fast-paced. So even though you must review the literature, reports and data relevant to your evaluation, you simply will never have the time to read every word. You need to prioritize what you read and develop the ability to scan a document for what is essential.
When it comes to writing, you again will need to be strict with yourself. Avoid padding your reports with unessential information. Have you ever read a report (or a section of report) where you don’t understand what the point is? Have you found yourself asking, why am I reading this? Don’t put your readers through that.
A hierarchy of information
Imagine now that information and its offspring, exist in the form of a pyramid.
At the bottom of the pyramid is, let’s say, all the information in the world. Every piece of observable and non-observable phenomenon, from myriad perspectives. This amounts to untold trillions of bits of data, which are constantly accumulating and constantly changing. Think of this as an ocean of information. For all intents and purposes, this ocean is infinite and growing, much like the universe. It cannot be encompassed. All you can do is dip a sieve into these waters and try to collect what is most suitable to your purposes.
At the next level up is all the available information and knowledge. This is any information that has been processed somehow, whether printed or digital, spoken or written. Much, but far from all of it, is searchable using an Internet search engine. It is still a huge, overwhelming and unwieldy amount. But it has at least been produced by someone. It must also have some meaning, which is why I combine it with the concept of knowledge.
Next comes all the topical information that is out there. Maybe you’re writing about the electricity sector, or artificial intelligence, or breast-feeding. Depending on the area you are looking at, you will still find a plenty to review, and many experts, authors and practitioners you could talk to. If you are writing a general overview or introduction to these topics, you would synthesize all of this. Generally, however, you will not have such a broad focus.
Next comes the information that addresses your subject. It will be quite narrow in focus. For example, what is the impact on the poor of rising electricity tariffs? What does the introduction of artificial intelligence mean for workers in the fast food industry? What is the correlation between breastfeeding and the immune system? Now we are closer to where we want to be. It is still more information than you need, but the amount is manageable. You will only draw on the research and practices and reports that exist, plus any new primary data that you have distilled.
The next level in our pyramid is all the data and information collected for the specific purpose of the evaluation. This is the material you have reviewed with the aim of understanding your subject and informing your audience. It may include a database with thousands of observations and a hundred variables or more. You may have a bibliography of dozens or hundreds of sources. You may have hundreds of hours of interview or focus group discussion recordings. This is your personal store of information and it should, ideally, all be somehow relevant to the purpose of your evaluation.
Still higher up and narrower in scope are the evaluationfindings. This is where the rubber hits the road. The findings, which normally come with conclusions and recommendations, are the core information, which you have transformed into knowledge. This is what answers the evaluation questions and backs them up with evidence. In the evaluation world, reports should generally not be longer than 20-30 pages, excluding annexes. That is about the amount of detail which specialist readers who are interested in your subject can stomach.
The summary findings, which includes the executive summary of a report, and may also exist in a standalone short note or slide presentation, is how the essence of the report is presented. This is what most people will read or watch. If the findings are a distillation of all the information you have collected, the summary findings are a distillation your broader findings. As a rule, the length should be about 10 percent of the full report, from 2 to 5 written pages maximum, or no more than 10-30 slides.
Finally, the main story. This is the quick one minute story you tell your significant other or friends or colleagues who ask what you learned, without boring them with all the details. It could be in the form of a few paragraphs and bullet points that result in a one-page policy note that goes to the Minister of Energy, for example, as a policy brief. For example, “We found that most of the poor didn’t suffer as a result of electricity tariff increases because electricity expenditures fell as a share of their total expenditures. And all households now have 24 hour service;” or “We project that artificial intelligence will eliminate, on average, one job per restaurant, while customers have shown a preference for interacting with humans when they order fast food;” or “Breastfeeding was shown to reduce the incidence of illness in infants under 5 if they were weaned only after x months.”
And with that we have reached the pinnacle of our pyramid. Time for the next project.
