Is it Too Early for New Year’s Resolutions?

Around this office we talk a lot about empowerment and self-reliance. We talk about it as it relates to the people with whom we work and serve but we also talk about it as it relates to one another—our own staff, our own co-workers. Our manager in Bolivia perhaps put it best when he told his team that they all needed to make personal goals in addition to work goals because he said no one would believe what we were teaching if we weren't putting the ideas into practice in our own lives. That puts us in a precarious position. It means that when one of our very best workers decides that he is going to start his own business after teaching small business owners for years, we cheer. When someone takes the Foreign Service exam, we anxiously await the results hoping that they are good as he would like them to be. Those are successes, even if they leave us scrambling to find and train other great workers. It also means that sometimes we get burned.

I just got off the phone with a friend from Peru. Peru has been causing us more concern than any of the other places where we work. The volunteer from Peru called to ask me some simple questions and then told me that our troubles in Peru come from trusting too much. He needed to get some things off his chest and told me that we shouldn't have trusted the way we did and that we should have had other people checking up on what was happening. He told me we needed tighter controls (which is true. But we're still working on the best way to do that). His anger did make me think. He's right. There are some things that we need to work on, we need better communication and we need better documentation. But in some ways it made me think that he still doesn't get it. He still doesn't get what we're trying to do and he doesn't' understand why having a volunteer call on a paid staff member at random to verify his work and to do all of the fundraising isn't promoting the kind of development that we're trying to espouse in the villages where we work. However, I don't want to be the kind of person who hears criticism and then gets offended or defensive and doesn't do anything about it.

So, even though we're a few months away, I'm making my resolution list for 2010—his suggestions in mind. Here goes!

1. Expand our evaluation of programs to Peru and Ecuador
   
2. Statistically analyze the results of Bolivia's evaluation (with professionals) and talk to the staff about what's happening
   
3. Follow up with staff goals
   
4. Appropriate controls in admin and accounting—as shown by a procedure manual and enforced procedure to be presented at Jan training
   
5. Historical, searchable database for projects
   
6. Continue to believe that people are basically good and want to help other people
   
7. Have faith in other people.
   
8. As Ronald Reagan put it, "Trust, but verify." (I can't believe I just quoted Ronald Reagan. Don't tell my parents)