February 16, 2023
Ben Ramalingam introduces his new book In Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity, I set out to explore how stress, pressure and crisis can be transformed into performance and creativity through a process that I call ‘Upshifting’. This book was originally inspired by my work on humanitarian innovation. But as I researched and learned, the scope expanded
Read more >>
Five types of humanitarian influence
February 15, 2023
Loved this piece from Hugo Slim, first posted on the Humanitarian Law and Policy blog. Influence is typically conceived as a subtle form of power that is indirect, unconscious, or deliberately hidden. Influencers are often off-stage rather than on it, whispering behind a curtain, appearing in dreams, or using magic of some kind. Influence tends to work gradually, seeping gently
Read more >>
Links I Liked
February 13, 2023
Apologies for the initial dose of anglocentrism in today’s LiL. Just couldn’t help myself….. Kieran Hodgson does (all of) Happy Valley. Priceless. ht James Norton Pope Francis’s visit to the DRC: The Congolese are divided over the Pontiff’s pronouncements Oxfam GB boss Danny Sriskandarajah gets grilled on BBC Hardtalk. Video and podcast. Don’t think they laid a glove on him
Read more >>
Development Nutshell: round-up (21m) of FP2P posts, w/b 6th February
February 11, 2023
Links I LikedIs Class the Missing Dimension in the Aid Sector’s search for Diversity? Great New Guide to ‘Systems Thinking and Practice’Book Review: The Systems Work of Social Change
Read more >>
Book Review: The Systems Work of Social Change
February 9, 2023
Following on yesterday’s post on a new guide to Systems Thinking and Practice, this was the last and most interesting of my Christmas break catch-up reads. It also had the longest title. In full: ‘The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change’. (I think the punctuation is wrong, but
Read more >>
Great New Guide to ‘Systems Thinking and Practice’
February 8, 2023
I’m always on the lookout for good guides to the practical implications of systems thinking, so got very excited when I came across Systems Thinking and Practice: A guide to concepts, principles and tools for FCDO and partners, by Jim Woodhill and Juliet Millican. Its 38 pages are stuffed full of crisp summaries of the main ideas, case studies applying
Read more >>
Is Class the Missing Dimension in the Aid Sector’s search for Diversity?
February 7, 2023
Guest post by Lauren Anderson, who was one of my Activism students last year Recently, the right wing press has been coming for the volunteers working to support refugees in Northern France, and I am writing here as one of them. The right wing response has been to vilify the efforts of volunteer organisations, claiming they are engaging in “assisting”
Read more >>
Links I Liked
February 6, 2023
When to (not) ask a question. Thanks Makarand for this great addition to last week’s top tips for seminars ‘NIMBYism is just the lefty-approved version of a border wall.’ Bit of gentle cage-rattling in this thoughtful interview with Oxfam America Director of Campaigns Ben Grossman Cohen Yes, British arms are killing innocent civilians in Yemen. Why is the UK government
Read more >>
Development Nutshell: round-up (25m) of FP2P posts, w/b 30th January
February 4, 2023
No excerpt
Read more >>
Book Review: Political Settlements and Development: Theory, Evidence, Implications
February 2, 2023
If you hang around conversations on ‘thinking and working politically’, as I do, you’ll hear a lot of references to ‘Political Settlements’ as it’s grown up, more academic, but sometimes incomprehensible cousin. As this new book’s blurb declares ‘At its most ambitious, ‘political settlements analysis’ (PSA) promises to explain why conflicts occur and states collapse, the conditions for their successful
Read more >>
The Global role of Grandmothers in the Care Economy
February 1, 2023
In recent years, Oxfam’s been doing some pioneering work on the ‘care economy’, aka the bit Adam Smith left out (example here and here). My uninformed mental image of this had been all about the role of parents, generally mothers, in running the household and bringing up the kids, so I was struck by a recent Economist piece on the
Read more >>
Top Tips on Seminar Presentations and the return to IRL – In Real Life
January 31, 2023
After the Zoom years, lots of us are now back in the lecture theatre/other forms of real life contact and exchange. Intoxicating, in many ways. But I’m also struck that it feels the same, but different, to the pre-Covid world, so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about getting the most out of these encounters, partly for readers,
Read more >>