The importance of soft power in professional life
Recently, a senior manager at a multilateral development bank told me about problems she had been having with a lead consultant on a project. He had resigned without completing the assignment, and she needed to replace him. She said she was looking for someone ‘with common sense.’ She was even willing to hire a candidate with fewer technical qualifications, as long as he or she could deliver the work and facilitate the relationship with the government. Apparently, this particular consultant had been unreliable and unpredictable. For example, on one occasion he failed to show up at a workshop he was supposed to lead, having failed to notify his client in advance. She arrived at the workshop only to learn that he had left the country without warning!
While I wouldn’t say that this type of behavior is common, it is certainly something you come across when you work in the international development field. Indeed, I have seen stranger behavior, to wit: Exhibit A: a consultant team leader who spent the first 10 minutes of nearly every meeting with partners or government officials bragging about his qualifications, yet never actually delivered anything. On top of that, he threatened to sue counterparts from other organizations who disagreed with him, and essentially went about ruining relationships with almost every key partner. Exhibit B: a consultant- engineer who determined that an entire country’s gas infrastructure was substandard based on observing a single, rusty pipe; and whose understanding of sampling boiled down to “Let’s ask our local colleague to get in touch with his friends to see what they think.” Exhibit C: a senior manager at a bilateral organization whose capricious and unpredictable behavior played havoc with an evaluation, by, among other things, changing the scope of work well after the work started, and undermining her colleagues in front of the consultants. If you’ve spent any time in the development field, you will have stories of your own to tell.
These people may have had the technical skills and looked good on their CVs, but they were difficult to work with, and had a disruptive effect on the work. They lacked soft power. In some cases, they ended up squandering months of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention putting at risk the usefulness of the work.
The point I want to make, though, is that in order to do good work, non-technical skills – such as common sense, the ability to communicate with others and present themselves well, plus a commitment to doing the work – are at least as important as the other kind – such as mastery of a subject, experience in a sector, or technical abilities.
Based on my 17 years working as a consultant in international development, I would boil down the qualities you need to the following:
- Knowledge
- Experience
- Common sense
- Communication skills
- Commitment
The first two I consider hard skills, and the last three soft skills. Try to cultivate each of them. Let’s take a closer look.
1. Knowledge
By knowledge I refer to the technical understanding about a subject that is gained from learning, study, and doing. It comes from formal education at university or in technical schools, training, continuing education, and staying up to date on the literature in the field. It is a core element of the specialization needed to accomplish a task, e.g. analyzing data, developing models, designing surveys, assessing a particular sector. For virtually any field you work in, there will be many courses, webinars, software programs, and training sessions, ranging in price from free to very expensive (thousands of dollars). As you assess these learning opportunities you will need to weigh the costs and benefits in terms of money and time. But this is how you invest in yourself!
2. Experience
Experience is what you get as you act in, and are acted upon, by the world. Your knowledge and assumptions are tested, and you find you have to adjust your approach to doing things. Drawing on experience enables you to make better decisions and work more efficiently. It is the whetstone against which you sharpen your theoretical knowledge. In the beginning, you will be inexperienced. If you are starting out, this is not held against you. It is normal and expected. On a team, or a consultancy, there will be a mix of more senior and more junior members. All are needed, like the cogs in a wheel, and there is a role to play for everyone .
3. Common sense
It turns out that common sense, as I discussed above, is a valuable and perhaps underrated commodity. At its most basic level it means acting as a reasonable person. It involves critical thinking. More advanced concepts of common sense could include seeing through complexity to the essence of a matter, connecting the dots, and framing and organizing information in a useful manner. Much of the time it boils down to the simple ability to reflect upon something, see what is needed, and do what is necessary to get results. Maybe this is not a satisfying explanation, but if you don’t understand the concept of common sense, this may be a problem.
4. Communication skills
The basic ability to have a conversation and get along with your colleagues and counterparts can carry you a long way in any field. People want to get a sense of who you are, whether you are trustworthy, and whether they will be able to cooperate with you. Under communication skills I would include not only to the ability speak in public and engage with colleagues and clients, but the ability to write well. This means conveying information, no matter how complicated or specialized, clearly, succinctly, and grammatically. If you want to build up your public speaking skills, I highly recommend joining a Toastmasters club near you. I have been a member of Toastmasters since 2011 and find it highly useful.
5. Commitment
Commitment to doing the work is just what it sounds like. This is probably what people in the business world refer to as “passion”, which I myself consider a wholly inappropriate quality that should be kept for the opera or the bedroom. Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times even argues that it is dangerous in the professional field. Emotional teammates are not the most reliable or stable. No, what you want to have is a commitment to doing top quality work, to meeting deadlines, to developing new skills, to learning new things, to being there when your colleagues need you. It is part of having a good work ethic.
The portfolio approach
These five qualities form the bulk of your portfolio of skills. Consider them the tools for building a career. Good luck!
In just the past few weeks, I’ve received online requests to fill out surveys from my bank, my newspaper, an airline I flew with, a hotel I stayed at, Best Buy, the DC regulatory agency, several graduate students, and my dentist’s office. I’ve been going to the same dentist for almost 15 years – an indicator which suggests I’m quite satisfied with her care. So why am I asked to fill out a survey after every single visit?
Because designing and implementing surveys is one of the things I do for a living, I tend to sympathize with whoever prepares these online surveys and is hoping for a high response rate. However…
Providers of goods and services want customer feedback for marketing purposes and, presumably, for improving their performance. I understand that. Yet, because it is so easy now to conduct surveys via the internet, we are getting bombarded with them. Surveys are just too easy to create and disseminate. All these companies and researchers are asking us to give them our precious time without, however, offering anything in return. Well, for a while, a hotel chain I frequently used would at least offer 250 award points for every customer survey I completed after a stay, but they eventually stopped with that incentive and I, quite rationally, stopped responding. The deal was off. In fact, I’ve mostly stopped responding to any surveys at all, at least of the online variety.
Indeed, people in general are responding less and less willingly to surveys; over the last several decades, there has been a steady decline in survey in response rates. This is apparent in annual or quarterly surveys which seek to elicit information on incomes, expenditures, and assets – the type used by the government and researchers to gauge changes in national wellbeing, or inequality. To take one typical case, whereas in 1990 just 12 percent of survey people did not respond to the US Census Bureau’s Consumer Expenditure Diary, in 2009 the share had risen to 29.7 percent, as reported by Roger Tourangeau and Thomas J. Plewes. In their 2013 book, Nonresponse in Social Science Surveys: A Research Agenda they note that survey nonresponse is a growing issue not just in the US, but in all wealthy countries. Of course, this is also the period over which we’ve seen the rapid rise of internet access. Is it a coincidence? Maybe not.
One can easily imagine how survey, or interview, fatigue has become an issue. Survey fatigue generally refers to the phenomenon of a respondent tiring before she has answered all the questions. (Remedies include reducing the number of questions, and making them more interesting and relevant. Tourangeau and Thomas J. Plewes also cite studies showing that female interviewers get higher response rates to surveys, but we’ll save an analysis of the gender angle for another time. ) However, another type of survey fatigue, which I can personally attest to, comes from being surveyed just too darn often.
Because they are so cheap and ubiquitous, survey proliferation could be creating problems for researchers attempting to get a better sense of the attitudes, or merely trying to track economic and social trends over time. If non-responses are more common among very high income households inequality may be underestimated, a point that Nobel-prize winning economist Angus Deaton has highlighted. It’s hard to say for sure. We would need to do a survey, to ask folks if they’re tired of being surveyed! While the meta-nature of such an endeavor appeals to my sense of irony, it might be tempting fate.
In the meantime, if you’re as tired as I am of clicking on those ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘don’t know’ boxes, try to be more selective. Think about who’s asking you for information, and who’s going to benefit. Is it a firm, which has already squeezed your wallet a bit and now wants to squeeze your brain as well? Or is it some other sort of research which, potentially, is somehow targeting the greater good?
Edited July 10, 2019
Apologies in advance for the slightly sensational headline. I’m trying not to let these blog posts get mired too deeply in the earnest and the technical.
What I’m about to tell you isn’t exactly news, and it is far from salacious. Yet, it is hugely important for thinking about pretty much any change you ever hear or read about. These can be changes in a patient’s health after starting a new medication; the sprouting and blossoming of an iris in your garden in the spring; changes in a baseball player’s batting average after he adjusts his swing; and changes in someone’s earnings after they get a college degree. It applies to virtually anything that involves cause and effect. Open a newspaper, listen to the radio, pay attention to what people talk about at work or over dinner. Most of the time, it comes down to a story of ”this happened” or ”so-and-so did this,” and as a result, x, y, and z occurred.
So what is the dirty secret with timing? It is this: your result will be heavily influenced by the point in time your study is conducted. Bear with me for a minute while I fetch my watercolors and brush, and paint you a fairly typical scenario from the development aid world.
Let’s imagine that, several years ago, a big project to help improve people’s lives was implemented. A new agricultural technique to grow vegetables was introduced in the country of Ruritania. Now the government who funded this project wants to know – how much bigger was the yield as a result? Was the money well-spent? Are people better off?
Now imagine that, two years later, a world class team of researchers has been assembled. They employ the most rigorous research design and methodological skills ever developed. Money is not an issue (This is my super, best-case scenario). They design and implement an evaluation that asks the right questions, surveys the right people, and is statistically rigorous in all aspects. It includes qualitative research to understand why and how those changes are or are not occurring. The supervision of the field research and quality control were outstanding. The results have been checked and rechecked for accuracy. It was, in short, a legendary evaluation! The outcome – drum roll, please – was that average yields had increased by 43.5% after two years.
Is that not a terrific result? Yes, most certainly! Our donor is thrilled. But the truth, folks, is that 43.5% is a totally arbitrary figure. Why? Because of the timing. That’s our secret. That lovely figure is culled from just one point in time. Come back in two years, apply the same methods, and you will get another answer. I guarantee it. Maybe come back in 20 years, and you’ll find that average yields had settled in at between 20 and 30% higher than they were before. Or maybe they’re back to square one, perhaps because of soil depletion (We won’t even get into the 500 external factors which influence yields).
You see, every development follows its own trajectory, and the point at which you take the measurement matters hugely. I owe this insight to Michael Woolcock of the World Bank, who emphasized its importance in a seminar I attended a few years ago on qualitative methods and the limits of quantifying change.
Change trajectories follow their own patterns. Some start slowly and then accelerate. Think of the college graduate and her earnings. After graduation, she works for months in a fast-food restaurant, quits out of frustration and is jobless, but then a year later, bingo! she lands a high-paying job in Silicon Valley. (If you had measured the impact of her college degree after 6 months, it would have been disappointing, but if you measured the impact after one year, it would have been very positive!) On the other hand, some developments start rapidly, but eventually fade away. Think of the flower that blooms so prettily in spring, but eventually wilts, as she must. Some changes exhibit modest, steady improvement, and then level off – think of the patient who, after taking the pills, feels a bit better each day, and after a week is back to normal from a full recovery.
This subject is one over several touched on in a fascinating podcast on Freakonomics Radio that describes the results of research conducted by Raj Chetty and colleagues on a 1990’s program, “Moving to Opportunity,” in which poor families in poor neighborhoods were given the chance to move elsewhere. The initial results, in terms of changes in earnings after a 10-year time lapse, were disappointing. But when they repeated the study after 10 more years, they found that the very young children in those families, who were now of working age, were seeing significant differences. It was a matter of timing (And realizing that the main beneficiaries, at least in monetary terms, were the toddlers).
Photo credit: Phaedra Wilkinson
What I’ve described above is not an argument against doing evaluations, or an argument against trying to measure impacts as accurately as you can. It is a call to take into account the nature of our world. It is extremely rare for anything to change in a constant, upward direction.
So, what does this mean for evaluations? For users of evaluation research, it means, don’t take those scientific precise results you get as immutable. They tell about the magnitude of a change at a specific point in time. If sustainability is an important issue (and usually it is) you should do a follow-up evaluation at regular intervals. If that sounds expensive, maybe don’t spend all your funds on one evaluation that will give you precise but chronologically arbitrary results.
For us evaluators, it means that we need to talk about the results we obtain in a way that values accuracy and rigor, yet doesn’t fetishize precision. We need to take into account the limitations while also probing more deeply into how those changes are occurring. When conducting research, we must consider the trajectory of a change. We should take a deeper interest in the chronological context by asking questions about how the changes have come about: how quickly or slowly? What do people experiencing or observing the changes expect in the future? This may not be a scientific method, but I would argue it embodies the scientific spirit by asking important questions of how a change transpired, and what path it took. It means recognizing the ephemeral. It means accepting that, in most cases, we grasp at answers at a moment in time, and tomorrow those answers might be completely different.
Nils Junge
February 28, 2017
In an op-ed for the Washington Post on February 3, discussing journalism, Ted Koppel wrote that “we are already knee deep in an environment that permits, indeed encourages, the viral distribution of pure nonsense.” What is disconcerting is that many people may not care, as long as the nonsense aligns with their worldview.
Take note, evaluators, and anyone for whom collecting evidence is important. If until now the critical issue was ensuring your evidence was credible, henceforth the challenge may be convincing others that credibility even matters. We have entered an era in which information has gone from being something more or less firm, to one in where it is going to be fluid.
The term ‘post-truth’ was selected by Oxford Dictionaries as the word of the year for 2016, defined as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” While Oxford Dictionaries has highlighted a serious problem with its selection, I think it would be more accurate to call post-truth the euphemism of the year. Post-truth just smells Orwellian; its academic-sounding preface adds a gloss of respectability to an insidious practice. Post-truth is not related to truth in the way post-modernism is related to modernism. The term hardly deserves to be dignified. A better description is ‘anti-truth.’ This would more accurately and honestly convey what happens when half-truths and falsehoods are spread, aimed at degrading the consensus on reality and contaminating public discourse.
Yes, there are grey areas when it comes to information. It can have multiple meanings. You can argue opposing sides by marshaling selective facts to make your case. (Lawyers are trained to do this.) Thus, it is accurate to note that under the Obama administration (January 2009 to January 2017) unemployment fell from 7.8 to 4.8 percent, which is a good thing. But you can also point to a fall in labor force participation rates from 65.7 to 62.9 percent. Not such a good thing. But in order to have a meaningful argument rather than, say, a shouting match, the basic facts must be accepted, and accessible, to all. If one side says, we don’t trust the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (where these data come from), they’re just a bunch of liars, then there is no basis for conversation.
What seems to be occurring is that one side has become increasingly less interested in engaging in a meaningful argument and is happy to make stuff up, i.e. invent facts. And when credible evidence is produced, it is now often derided as false. For example, the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate: although the certificate was made available in 2011, as of 2016, 41 percent of Republicans disagreed with the statement in a NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll that “Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
Will the skepticism of credible sources filter down to the technical research work conducted in the social sciences? Let us hope not, although the new Administration’s gag order on scientists in federal agencies is not encouraging. We may have to confront a whole new dilemma. No longer will it be sufficient to provide credible evidence, transparency of methodology, and detailed information on sources. We may need to defend the very concept of credibility, make a case why credibility matters to those who disagree.
Nils Junge
February 5, 2017
Prices go up. That’s part of life, whether we like it or not. We can just go along with it, reduce our consumption, or…take a stand. For governments providing a service for which they charge, it’s a balancing act. How to raise the price of something without causing hardship or protests, while still covering the cost of providing it?
Last year I was involved in designing a study that, among other things, assessed customer’s willingness to pay for better utility service. This meant asking people all over the country, as part of a household survey, whether they would pay more for better service.
Governments planning to develop or upgrade public services may be interested in knowing to what extent consumers are willing to bear the costs of investment, via higher rates. For example, if water supply service provision is substandard, governments will develop investment plans to improve quality, supply, access, etc. Governments can go to commercial or development banks to access financing up front. However, typically they will seek to recoup at least part of those costs by passing them on to customers via higher tariffs. That was what brought me to the country in question.
The survey would, ideally, help determine what poor households could afford and whether proposed new tariff levels would pose a hardship or not. An array of mitigation measures, including various kinds of subsidies, can be developed for those households deemed to need them. Beyond that, governments also want to know about overall household tolerance for paying more. Will higher tariffs lead to higher non-payment levels? Will they bring people to the streets? Could proposed tariff increases fail to pass? In that case the whole investment strategy would be called into question.
The way a willingness to pay (WTP) study works is that respondent are asked if they would pay more, either a specific amount, or as a percentage of their current water bill. Originally, this method contingent valuation, was used to estimate whether and how much extra people would pay for an environmental good, such as clean air or water.
There are all kinds of different ways of asking WTP questions. For example, you can ask a yes/no question, ask different households about different amounts and build a demand curve, or use an open-ended approach, asking them to volunteer an amount themselves. Naturally, how you formulate the question will affect the answer. And getting reliable answers is a challenge. Some people hold their cards close to their chest, unwilling to reveal they might pay more. Consciously or unconsciously, they enter bargaining scenario, like at a bazaar, hoping to get the best deal. Others may answer that they’re willing to pay a higher amount than they would like. They may be trying to convince the government to just hurry up and get on with the investment, and let’s worry about the tariffs later (when maybe they won’t go up quite so much).
Almost all WTP methods are quantitative. The idea is to collect data from a sample of households that represent a population of interest (a city, a region, a country). Now, getting back to our survey: about half replied they would not be willing to pay a cent more for water and sanitation improvements. Of the half that did say they’d pay more, the amount was about 5%. Fair enough.
What was interesting, however, was that when we broached the subject of paying more during a focus group, covering questions very similar to our survey, but in an open-ended, more in-depth manner, the share of people saying they’d pay more for better service was very high. Almost everyone said yes. Of course, this is not a scientific comparison – a thousand households vs ten people sitting around a table. But it got me thinking again about the manner in which we as researchers engage with our subjects. How much does the context matter? Focus group discussions, by their nature, foster open dialogue and exchange of ideas. They tend to put the research subjects on a different footing. They are given more agency, they able to share their thoughts and ideas with a moderator who guides the conversation. (Unlike the survey interviewer, the focus group moderator is not trying to get through a long list of questions, looking to get a limited range of responses.)
This got me thinking about a hypothesis that might be worth testing. It goes something like this: asking about people’s willingness to pay as part of a back-and-forth conversation (i.e. focus group) rather than via a survey questionnaire leads to a greater stated willingness to pay. In the context of a conversation people can ask clarifying questions, can explain their reasoning, can describe under what conditions they would be willing to cough up more. Engaging them more as equals, as ‘experts’ so to speak, in the matter of their own consumption habits, leads to a different place. Trust is probably going to be higher when people don’t feel so much like they’re just going to be a data point.
Methodological purists may argue that, ‘well, of course you’re getting different responses, since you’re asking questions in a different way.” My response is – that’s exactly the point. To me, the more relevant question is, to what extent do the research methods mimic real world conditions under which higher tariffs are pushed through?
While it would be certainly more difficult to analyze qualitative research on WTP than quantitative survey data, let us test what the former approach can add. Engaging customers through such an approach, treating them as thoughtful partners with valuable perspective on a public service, rather than only as data points, could be useful in informing tariff strategy. It could yield more information concerning the conditions people would countenance paying more, why and why not, and how to best to engage them on this often difficult topic.
The next time you ask someone to pay more for a service, don’t just take ‘no’…or ‘yes’ for answer.
Nils Junge
January 10, 2017
Warning – Contradictions Ahead!
I’m a big fan of using mixed methods in evaluation. That means combining qualitative and quantitative data, such as statistical data on household energy consumption and interview findings, where people reveal what it’s actually like to live with regular blackouts. This is not just because it’s always interesting to poke around at problems from different angles, but because the resulting analysis is generally much more layered and nuanced. Let me use a case study from a few years ago to illustrate what I’m talking about.
Applying different methods to the same problem is like stepping into the shoes of different blind men around an elephant, all trying to determine the nature of the creature. Instead of standing in front, holding the trunk and guessing it’s some kind of snake, or standing alongside, grabbing a leg and guessing it’s a tree, and so on, you test every dimension by shifting your position. A key advantage in using mixed methods is the ability to triangulate findings. Not only can you compare and cross-check your results – when done well, a more multi-layered, nuanced version of the underlying issues emerges. On the other hand, doing so can also complicate your life: there is always the risk of ending up with findings that don’t make a lot of sense.
Nonetheless, when findings derived from different methods not only highlight different attributes, but point in different directions, that is when the most interesting decision points and nuanced analysis can arise. Assuming the problem does not lie with the methodology or data collection itself (something which should always be checked), evaluators will need to do some probing to figure out why the data points in different directions.
We faced this issue as part of a 2004 World Bank-financed evaluation of the household impacts of electricity sector reforms in Moldova, using the ‘poverty and social impact analysis’ (PSIA) approach. The accompanying steep increase in electricity tariffs was seen by some as hurting the poor, and a reason to roll back reforms.
The data we analyzed showed a marked improvement in electricity consumption among the poorest 20% of households. However, the perception among poor households, gleaned through qualitative methods (focus groups) painted a less than rosy picture. We heard a lot of complaints from them. Based solely on the quantitative evidence, our report might have concluded that all was well, that concerns over hurting the poor with high prices were overblown. Conversely, if we had only used qualitative findings, we might have concluded that the reforms were indeed a negative for the poor.
Is raising electricity tariffs good or bad for the poor?
A bit of background: by 2003, with World Bank assistance, Moldova had privatized two-thirds of its electricity distribution network (the part of the grid which delivers electricity to customers). The aim was to improve sector performance by moving it to a commercial footing. Then, as now, Moldova was one of the poorest countries in Europe. A Spanish operator, Union Fenosa, had won the tender, with a pledge to invest $54 million in upgrading the infrastructure.
Prior to privatization, bills had gone unpaid, operating costs had not been covered, barter payments were common, and the network was severely degraded. Outside of Chisinau, the capital, most people could only count on a few hours of electricity per day. However, a Communist government had recently been elected and, with electricity tariffs rising steadily for years, some policy makers were now arguing that the reforms were having a punitive effect on poor households. There were fears among the donors that the privatization would be reversed, returning the distribution networks to state control. This is what triggered the study.
I was part of a team of Bank staff and consultants tasked with evaluating whether the poor were, in fact worse off now than before the reform. As tariffs increased, were they consuming less electricity? Or were they perhaps cutting back on consumption in other areas? Either scenario would have pointed to a negative welfare effect.
The methods behind the madness
By matching billing data provided by the electricity with data on household expenditures (from the country’s Household Budget Survey), we were able to track consumption patterns over the 5-year period which coincided with tariff rises and privatization. Tariffs had begun climbing prior to privatization (to make the sector more attractive to potential bidders) and continued to afterwards. Over that period, they rose a whopping 300%, in nominal terms which translated into 26% in inflation-adjusted terms. This meant that the cost of electricity rose slightly faster than the average costs of other goods in the household consumption basket. That fact doesn’t provide a sufficient basis on which to base a conclusion about welfare.
With this in mind, we did not just analyze the data, we also talked to the population directly (thereby mixing our methods). A local research firm held 43 focus group discussions and 59 key informant interviews across the country. We basically wanted to hear about the users’, the electricity consumers’, perspective on these changes. Many focus group participants related how badly conditions had become during the, literally, dark years after independence.
“About two years ago a girl was raped, and now I don’t permit them to leave the house in the night,” reported a woman named Anea
“Everybody, children, the elderly, grown-ups, are affected by the darkness in the entrance hall and on the streets. It is very difficult to walk when we return home late in the evening. The roads are in a bad state, full of holes and one can easily fall down and break the neck,” Tamar said.
“In our entrance hall, the bag of an old woman was stolen, together with her pension for one month,” according to Elena
What did the data show? We found that over the period electricity consumption among the poorest 20% had risen by 14.6%, even as electricity tariffs rose more than 300% in nominal terms and 26% in real terms. Of course, people weren’t consuming more electricity because the cost went up; they were consuming more because their incomes were increasing. We also found that among all other households (which we designated the ‘non-poor’), consumption rose by 3.2% (i.e. the poor experienced bigger consumption gains). Perhaps more importantly, there were no more rolling blackouts. From having on average 4 hours of electricity per day, everyone now enjoyed electricity service 24/7. Based on the data, we could confidently say that the poor were not being hurt by privatization with the concomitant tariff increases. (We did not seek to determine whether the electricity reform made the poor better off, a rather more complex and somewhat subjective question.)
Data vs. perceptions
So was the government wrong? Were the poor pleased with the changes? Hardly. Although many people acknowledged that things were better – they now had electricity 24/7 – the overriding message that emerged from focus group discussions was that many people were unsatisfied. They did not feel better off. They certainly did not express undying gratitude for the reforms. They complained about costs going up, about having to save, and about quality issues (e.g. voltage fluctuations). And they were unhappy about what they perceived as Union Fenosa’s excesses. The company had built itself a multi-story headquarters building, bought new company vehicles, sent out electricity bills using colored ink on high quality paper (replacing the cheap brown paper used previously, a Soviet-legacy. To top it off, it was seen to be spending money frivolously by paying for schoolchildren to go on outings to the circus and other measures aimed at burnishing its corporate image. All of this did not seem to impress the average Moldovan. In her view, the company should instead have kept its tariffs lower.
Returning to our quantitative findings in the light of public perceptions, one particular piece of information was of critical importance for setting the context: electricity consumption levels in Moldova at the time of privatization were extremely low. The average household consumed just 50 kWh per month, the equivalent of a couple of light bulbs and a TV. This was close to one third the Eastern European average, and a small fraction of developed country consumption levels. Many people (exactly half, of course) fall below the average increase in electricity consumption, and many had to reduce
According to Vasile: I think that the reform had a positive impact, the regular blackouts prior to the reform practically stopped the activity in many fields. However, there is the price issue.
“During winters I unplug the refrigerator, hence I pay by 35 lei less per month” a participated named Victoria said.
Did these findings invalidate our quantitative findings? I would say no, they were complementary. They helped explain why the government had been hearing mostly negative feedback about the privatization. While we found that the poor were not being hurt financially, it would have been a stretch to say that privatization had been a boon for them. The difference between 50 and 57 kWh per month is not exactly a game changer or cause for rejoicing if you’re a poor household.
This study illustrated the importance of using different methods of inquiry and, conversely, the risks of not doing so. If we had used one method only, we would have arrived at rather different conclusions – one too rosy (based on the consumption data) and one two bleak (based on people’s perceptions). Neither finding was right or wrong. They simply told different sides of the same story, and helped explain two very different but valid perspectives on the complex and charged (no pun intended) issue of privatization.
You can read the full report here: World Bank 2004 Moldova Electricity Reforms
Nils Junge
October 24, 2016
How to launch a satisfying career in international development
I am often asked how to break into the field of international development. In this post I’m going to address this question. I’m going to assume that you are interested in doing interesting work and having a satisfying career as an independent consultant. In an effort to keep things short, I’m going to zero in on the three things I consider the most critical.
Get a graduate degree in a related field
Because of the vast number of issues covered in international development, a degree in practically any field, from economics to health to statistics to law to education, will be useful. However, degrees in some fields are likely to open up more opportunities than others. This is either because they are more broadly transferrable, or because there is a lot of work in this sector. In the first category I would include anything related to economics, statistics, sociology, public policy, or international relations. In the second category, I would include agriculture, health, education, finance, water and energy. However, the farther along you are in your career, the less the specific degree matters. When I work with team members who have at least 5 to 10 years of experience, what they studied all those years ago is often more of a conversation starter than anything else.
When you are just starting out, expect to have shorter contracts and do more work that involves research. If you don’t have a lot of experience yet, being hired to do a desk review may be a common entry point. This is not a bad thing at all, however. It enables you to become familiar with and build expertise in a particular subject, while demonstrating that you are reliable and have good writing skills. (This last is important). With time, you will start working as a specialist or team leader
Be willing to travel anywhere
Travel abroad is obviously a big part of a career in this field. For some assignments, it can mean a foreign posting, for others it may involve months on end away from home. However, in many cases trips last from one to several weeks.
The more willing you are to go to less desirable places and stay there for longer periods, the better your chances of finding work. Think of it as paying your dues. I have friends who, for family reasons, were unable to take on long-term assignments in challenging countries (like Iraq or Afghanistan) and were stymied in their career goals. I have others who spent a year or more in some of the world’s least desirable countries, and it opened doors for them.
Let people know you exist
Finally, people simply need to know that you exist. From a strictly mathematical perspective, the more people in the field who come across your CV or, better yet, meet you in person, the more likely you are to find work.
So put your CV in the public realm. You have various options here. For a monthly fee, you can post your CV on Devex.com and other websites, such as Assortis (for work in Europe). Create a LinkedIn profile. Many consulting firms also ask you to upload your CV and other data onto their company websites, which they then check when trying to find consultants. Applying to specific jobs is another way of getting noticed. Even if you don’t get the assignment – a fair number of job advertisements seem to be pro-forma, with a preferred candidate already selected – many organizations will keep your CV on file and may contact you about other opportunities in the future. Of course, if you have a blog or a book out there, or have won an award in your field, you have opened up a whole new platform on which to stand and let the world know who you are.
I have found that a highly effective way of addressing this existential issue is meeting people face to face. It may appear counterintuitive in our digital age, but making that personal connection remains important. Perhaps it is related to the fact that everyone is now adept at curating their online persona; meeting people in the flesh, where self-editing is more difficult, is a more reliable gauge of character. I have found work because I happened to meet someone at a party, because I shared an office with them for a few days, or because I was introduced to them at a dinner with friends. Of course, qualifications matter, but it seems that the crucial factor was first getting a sense of the person. This informality, and serendipity, still plays a large role in moving along the career path.
There are many ways of getting out and meeting people. Here are some:
- Attend events, seminars, BBLs in the international development field.
- Join a professional association (I belong to the American Evaluation Association and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, among others) and attend their events and conferences
- Send out emails to people working in your field (blind calls). Although many won’t respond, some will. And those that do will tend to be the kind ones who are interested in helping others.
- Request informational meetings through people you know, and thus expand your circle of contacts.
- Go to more parties and dinners!
If you need some tips on taking a a healthy approach to and getting the most out of networking, , I recommend the book Make Your Contacts Count.
In another post, I’ll discuss some of the keys to getting repeated work in the field.
Good luck!
Well, it’s happened again, to paraphrase the Car Talk guys from NPR: someone has wasted another perfectly good opportunity to do tariff reforms properly.
This time, the Government of Argentina is in the hot seat. The Economist reported that the government recently tried to quadruple the price of gas and raise the price of electricity sixfold. It did so just as autumn set in, when customers heating bills go up anyway. Protests erupted, predictably enough. Reducing subsidies or raising prices is a balancing act requiring
Now, raising the price of anything by 400% or 600% at one go may sound extreme. But Argentina’s utility prices have been at rock bottom for a long time. They are a a legacy of populist measures under the previous Kirchner regimes. In fact, the cost of electricity per kWh is just 1 cent per kWh, compared with 16 cents in Brazil and 12 cents in Chile. The previous governments had kept prices artificially low through massive state subsidies, which ballooned to 12.3% of government spending by 2014. A nice parting gift to the new administration of President Mauricio Macri. This is a precious use of public resources that could be put to far better use elsewhere. The Economist noted that the subsidies were costing the government $16 billion a year.
When a commodity is so cheap, it also tends to be wasted. Who is going to turn the lights off when you will hardly notice the difference in your bill? A knock-on effect is rolling blackouts, as power producers struggle to generate enough supply.
With mounting opposition to the price hikes on August 18, the Supreme Court ordered the increases blocked. According to the Financial Times , the grounds for the decision were that the gas price increase “violated the right to participation by consumers in the form of public hearings in the revision of tariffs.”
And so yet another chapter can be added to the story of how not to raise utility prices. There is a long list of governments failing in this particular endeavor.
What could the Macri government have done differently? Lessons from efforts by other countries to introduce price reforms could have been studied. They boil down to taking some basic measures. A few, but not all of them relate to the Supreme Court’s comments:
- Engage in consultations with key stakeholders
- Offer some concessions, instead of imposing the changes by fiat
- Study the potential impacts, preferably using multiple tools – surveys, focus groups, stakeholder consultations – and doing so in an open, manner.
- Time price increases better, so they didn’t kick in right at the time when usage is highest, i.e. with the cold weather season starting
- Do a better job of communicating your rationale for raising prices
- Introduce measures to mitigate the impact on those most affected
Of course, none of the above would have guaranteed that the price increase would have stuck. But preparing better would have considerably reduced the risk of failure, while also addressing public concerns. The failure to both raise prices and to consult more with consumers may effectively cost the government billions of dollars. That is money which could be spent on a host of other areas the country needs to invest in.
Nils Junge
September 3, 2016
Freedom. Independence. These are inspiring words. But do you really want those things when it comes to your work? Because that is what it means to be an independent consultant, rather than a full-time employee.
I happen to enjoy consulting. I’ve been doing international development for 16 years in this capacity. It has led to a highly satisfying and rewarding career. I have no intention of throwing in the towel. I enjoy the independence as well as the travel. (My parents once told me I was named after Nils Holgersson, the little Swedish boy who flew around the world on a goose. Perhaps another case of nominative determinism?)
But this ‘lifestyle’ isn’t for everyone. Let’s begin with reasons not to work as a consultant:
- The most obvious advantages of full-time work are job security and benefits. If these are important to you, consulting won’t be up your alley. Relying on a slowly rising salary year in year out, regular bi-weekly deposits into your account – not to mention paid holidays, health insurance and other benefits –means one less source of stress in life. Even if job security isn’t what it used to be, full-time work is still far different being an independent contractor. As the latter, you often don’t know what you’ll be doing three to six months from now. And you may only have a ballpark estimate of what your annual income will be.
- You need or like structure in your working life. A staff position comes with stability, interactions with the same colleagues, responsibilities more or less clearly defined. The routine and structure of the workplace appeals to many people. It’s what forces them to get out of bed in the morning. If you have a hard time managing your time or motivating yourself, then working independently could prove to be dispiriting.
- You aspire to a leadership or management position. If you work within the structure of an organization, you can pursue a career track, moving up through the ranks and taking on more responsibilities as you build management and leadership skills. Working as a freelance doesn’t mean you can’t grow and take on more responsibilities. In this field, you can work either as a specialist, or a team leader, which does involve managing other consultants, budgeting, etc . On occasion, headhunters have asked me to apply for director positions at different institutions (I declined). So choosing the path of a consultant doesn’t necessarily take you out of the game. But most are simply not focused on climbing the career ladder.
- You value the status that comes with your title and being part of a (well-regarded) organization or company. Let’s face it, at some level, consultants are just guns for hire.
And now, reasons consulting can be a good career choice
- Consulting gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility with respect to where, what and with whom. You can work just about anywhere – from home, a café, the library, sometimes even the organization which has hired you, such as the World Bank or Inter-American Development Bank. One day here, the next day there, and then off to work in the Caribbean for a couple of weeks, where you set up your laptop by the pool or the beach. Over time, once you’ve built up your reputation, say, by producing reliable, competent and useful analysis, you can pick and choose what jobs to take on. You can say yes to work that looks interesting, and turn down other inquiries. And crucially, when you end up on assignment with a crazy, intolerable team member or manager, you can choose never to work with them again!
- You like the sense of adventure and possibility that comes from not knowing where you’ll be or what you’ll be doing a few months from now. This can keep work from getting routine and dull. You’ll work with an ever-changing mix of colleagues, and make new friends and connections along the way. You will build up a large and valuable network.
- You can increase your earnings. As a consultant, you face a soft earnings ceiling. Depending on how hard you work, the number of offers you get, and the rates you’re able to negotiate, you may be able to increase your annual earnings substantially. You’re not locked in. Experienced consultants can earn more than staff, even when taking the latters’ benefits into account. If you get enough contracts, and manage your projects well, there is no reason for earning less than them.
- Perhaps the best reason to work as a consultant is that most of the work is substantive, i.e. it is about addressing problems ‘out there’ in the world. For example, in the field of evaluation or policy analysis, you spend most of your time working to solve questions about a program, a project or a policy. Conversely, staff at the organizations that rely on consultants like you spend a considerable amount of their time on internal reporting, business development (e.g. writing proposals), budgeting, hiring consultants, and other administrative tasks. These tasks are important, presumably, but not directly related to the problems they are trying to solve beyond the walls of the organization.
I’ve focused on differences. But to be honest, consulting vs. full-time isn’t an either-or proposition. People switch back and forth depending on their career phase, their goals, their options, etc. For some, consulting is a stepping stone to full-time work, a chance to show what they can do, and for the organization to get to know someone before offering them a position. A considerable share of World Bank staff, for example, have worked previously as consultants. For others, it is a way of leaving behind the daily grind that working for an organization entails, and taking control of their lives again.
Government policies create winners and losers
Regardless of what you think of politicians who love to speak in these terms, it is fair to say that the world is full of winners and losers. Government policy may be active, e.g. raising tariffs or taxes to improve its fiscal situation, or it may be passive, e.g. standing by while the forces of globalization and technology sweep jobs from an economy. In either case, some people benefit, some don’t, and some lose out. In fact, just about every benefit comes with a cost, but those costs are not evenly distributed.
Despite great progress in many sectors of the economy, inequality has increased in the US and elsewhere. According to the Pew Research Center, while median real wages have barely budged since 1970, most of the gains since 2000 have gone to the top 10 percent of the population.
How do we know what the impacts will be?
It is extremely difficult to predict the exact impacts of a given policy. Many factors come into play, and there are direct and indirect impacts. However, you can make estimates, and that can be very useful. A big part of my work involves looking at the potential impacts of policy reforms in developing countries. Years ago, the World Bank developed an approach called Poverty and Social Impact Analysis , or PSIA. This is a type of evaluation. It deploys quantitative and qualitative research methods to muck around in people’s financial and economic cupboards (using surveys and focus groups, for example) to try and figure out how they might fare if the government enacts a new policy.
How does this work in practice? I often conduct studies on the effects of price increases on different population groups. Analysis allows us to predict what the effects will be in terms of affordability for different income groups. Quite simply, we assess the winners and losers of a given reform. If electricity rates go up 25%, but you also get more hours of electricity supply per day, what does that mean for you, as a poor household? The risk is that the losers, in the short-term, will be those for whom electricity bills are a serious chunk of their total expenditures.
The agony of asking others to delay their gratification
Of course, reforms typically aim for positive outcomes. But these don’t kick in immediately. In the short-term, most people may experience only costs. The long-term benefits are abstract and perhaps uncertain. This is especially the case if the government has a poor track record of following through on its plans.
The relative costs of a price hike will be higher for those least able to afford the good or service being reformed. Thus, raising water or electricity rates can be a delicate exercise. It can make people quite unhappy, and politicians quite nervous. But those tariffs do need to rise. Otherwise, what will ensure that a utility company can operate sustainably, invest in operations and maintenance, attract external financing, and expand its network?
Tariffs are not boring if you’re poor
If you think utility rates is a boring topic, think again. Such an attitude suggests you are comfortably middle class. Probably your eyes glaze over when you see news reports from some faraway country about the latest unrest over price rises. At most, you may be mildly irritated when your utility bill goes up.
In fact, it is not unusual in some countries that when prices rise, some people pay with their lives. Demonstrations and riots occur on a regular basis. People protest against government attempts to squeeze more money out of people (the demonstrator’s perspective). The argument that it will put a utility on a sustainable footing (the technocrat and economist’s perspective) is not accepted. Especially when the government is perceived as corrupt and unaccountable.
Demonstrations over prices can block policies…and bring down governments
Just last month, violent demonstrations broke out in Cote d’Ivoire against proposed electricity price increases. One person was shot dead by security forces. In Nigeria in 2012 cuts to fuel subsidies led to widespread, violent protests leading to two deaths and many injured. In Bulgaria in 2013 in response to a doubling of electricity rates, six people immolated themselves, and street protests brought down the government. In 2015, Armenians took to the streets to protest proposed electricity price hikes, and dozens were injured. There are many other such cases throughout the world.
The Cochabamba demonstrations in Bolivia, dramatized in the 2010 feature film Even the Rain starring Gael Garcia Bernal, is a great primer on this, although it shows just one side of the story: the poor protesting against the privatization of the city’s water supplier. (It’s also an excellent and evocative film which draws a parallel between oppression by elite outsiders over 500 years of history.) The other side of the story, not covered in the film, concerns the aftermath of the multinational water company’s departure. Sixteen years on, the cost of water has indeed stayed low, but most of the poor still don’t have access to it. In other words, it was Pyrrhic victory for the protesters
Put some effort into finding a way forward
Yet it doesn’t have to be either/or. Yes, tariffs do have to cover costs or the infrastructure will break down and a lot of people will be left without any water at all. But there is more than one way to skin a cat. As a government, you can raise prices – or reduce subsidies, effectively the same thing for the consumer – gradually. You can include protection measures for the poor. You can engage on the problem with people affected. You can be smart about communicating why you have to do this.
In 2003, I was part of a team that studied the impact on the poor of rising electricity rates in Moldova. We found that the poorest 20% of households were not cutting back on electricity use, but were even consuming more. This was because the poverty rate had been coming down, so people in general had more money in their pockets to spend. In another study, in Lebanon, we found that the real (inflation-adjusted) cost of public electricity tariffs had been falling for years, but reliance on expensive private generation has pushed up household electricity expenditures.
The type of approach mentioned above – poverty and social impact analysis – can be usefully applied to all sorts of different reforms, not just utility tariffs. By doing some investigating, and carefully analyzing the data, the road to reforms can be smoothed. Social unrest can be avoided.
Government wins by generating goodwill among the population. It shows cares about them and is trying to work out a solution. And the people win because their needs and circumstances are being taken into account, and painful up-front costs are being reduced.