Development Solutions Consultancy

Courtesy of Curtis Alan Jackson with no edits.

With increasing focus on achievement of results, role profiles are rightly replacing job descriptions even though at a somewhat slower speed than one would expect. In developing countries such as Tanzania, the use of role profiles is even scantier. It is a reflection of continued predominance of the traditional functional rather than results based outlook of the job.

A major downside of the job description is its functional focus that blurs not only the focus on but also conceptualization of results of any given job. A job description is essentially an assembly of activities related to skills and common areas of expertise. Such a configuration virtually bears no reference to results to be achieved. Continue reading...

Welcome to another episode of the DSC podcast. In this episode David and Patrick talk about how Activity Based Budgeting creates more value in an organization.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the DSC podcast. In this episode David and Patrick talk about the importance of Strategic Planning for organizations.

I conducted a two day Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) training to Directors and Managers of the Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) on the 14th and 15th December 2015. The training was aimed at enabling participants understand M&E in order to be able to implement it and operationalize a recently established M&E Unit in the organization. The following is the participants' anonymous evaluation of the training.

1. Did the training make you understand M&E? Continue reading...

In any organization every employee is serving someone. Every employee has customers to serve. Customers are the very reason for everyone's employment. For each employee, the most important thing is not knowing what to do but knowing what service to deliver to one's customers. It is very easy for employees to get swamped into implementing activities without clarity of the customers they serve and the service they deliver. Knowing the customers and the service to be delivered is key to understanding the value customers and the organization as a whole attach to the employee. Most employees think that they are employed to do things instead of to deliver services.

Understanding one's customers, the services to be delivered and delivering them in the right quantities, quality, time, and in the most economical way possible is key. It is a sure way of not only commanding one's relevance and demand in the organization but also contributing to organizational success. Invariably, an organization has two types of customers; external customers and internal customers. External customers are found in the market place and they are the primary reason for the organization's existence. Any organization exists to create and serve external customers. Organizations create and increase external customers by delivering what they value. Continue reading...

I have, often enough, come across the terms Key Performance Areas (KPAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used in organizational planning particularly in strategic planning by public or service organizations. However, quite often they are used incorrectly something that has prompted me to make this small contribution. So, what are KPAs and KPIs?

To understand KPIs one has to first understand KPAs, in terms of what they are and where they are found, which then paves the way to understanding KPIs. The key word in both terms is performance. Performance is a description of achievement in the market place or in relation to customers. An athlete will have put up excellent performance if they won a gold medal. The medal is symbolic but the real value is the pleasure they give the fans and spectators for running the fastest. The service provided is entertainment.

In organizational terms performance is about delivery of products or services that have economic value to beneficiaries or customers. Continue reading...

We all agree that performance is about results. It is about delivering the results or service expected by customers. Depending on your position in the organization you may be serving external or internal customers. Both have similar needs in that they need your service; and they need it so much that they are desperate if you do not deliver it in time. However, the service delivery process has considerable interconnections that need consideration in ensuring an employee's effective and sustained performance.

Performance is not just delivering that service or results. Effective and sustained performance is also about relationships; it is about connections and networking as much as it is also about accountability. In this multi-dimensional context, performance is not just about being accountable to your boss about deliverables and their deadlines. It is first and foremost about timely meeting customer needs, which one often achieves in the absence of the boss, and about relationships with peers, reports and suppliers of products or services because they matter in the effective service delivery process.

Under the circumstances it is not enough to account for results to one's "boss" during a performance appraisal as this is done in the absence of the customer. To get a good and total employee performance picture the boss needs to know what results or services were delivered, speed of delivery, the extent of customer and stakeholder satisfaction. This requires the various stakeholders attesting the individual's performance in terms of customer service and work relationships. Continue reading...

One thing I particularly like about staff performance appraisal is that designed properly it is the one thing that is an indicator of how well many other things are harmoniously working in the organization. Performance does not simply happen; it is a result of many systems working well together in the organization. For example it is an indicator of how well staff training, coaching, planning, delegation and leadership are working together by re-enforcing one another.

An effective staff performance appraisal is also an indicator of change as it should be able to show performance trend of the organization over a given period of time. Such performance trend would indicate the extent to which the various interventions the organization has put in place are working well together. And where else is the best place to check for this rather than at the organization's unit of performance; the individual staff level? So what can and should determine value of a performance appraisal system?

First of all a staff performance appraisal should be viewed as an integral part of the whole performance management system. Continue reading...

We recently had the privilege to facilitate a retreat for the VETA Hotel, Tourism and Training Institute (VHTTI). The retreat took place at the Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge in Arusha from the 24th to the 27th of January 2013.

The Overall objective of the Retreat was:

• To raise awareness and understanding about how to improve individual and organizational performance.

The Specific objectives were:

• To hold reflective discussions on how to further improve staff collaboration and performance;
• To create awareness and understanding about leadership, teamwork, OPRAS, work planning and budgeting;
• To identify pertinent issues that may need further action and draw up an action plan.

In order to tailor make the facilitation to needs of VHTTI, Continue reading...

The use of data and information is still limited in Tanzanian public organizations. It is not uncommon to see organizations prepare strategic plans without the aid of data and information. Obviously, strategic plans prepared in this way are not strictly strategic and consequently they do not impact the organizations. Long term effects of poor data and information usage leads to non–responsive management resulting into poor organizational performance and even total organizational collapse. Glaring evidence of this is from the public business enterprises formed in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies but which collapsed and had to be privatized twenty or so years later because they could not respond to their changing business environments.

It may well be argued that even currently there are some public institutions which exist only because they are legal entities and not because their services are demanded by those who benefit from them. They simply survive because of supply based funding. Such organizations have, unknowingly, lost relevance to their customers a long time ago. But why is it that public organizations do not use data and information during strategic planning and the normal management process? Continue reading...