Reflections on a USAID Development Journey #1: The missing middle, and the LEGO story,

Introduction to these informal notes

On Halloween 2022, I retired from working with USAID after almost 40 years, as a technical officer, a Project Design Officer and supporting the Agency in what was the former Bureau of Policy and Program Coordination (PPC) and then the Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL).  I also had a lot of fun working on renewable energy programs as well as Natural Resource Management (NRM) policy programs throughout Africa, as well as part of the reengineering team developing the Agency’s programming guidance and co-designed the Results Framework.  I also had a  lot  of work on training, knowledge management and a wide range of other things.  

One of my most fun jobs over the last several years has been working with a number of the PPL Communities of Practice (COPs), including the Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting COP and the Program Cycle Implementation COP, which are internal knowledge sharing spaces for USAID staff.  I decided to leave by summarizing some of my thoughts over the…decades, through a series of posts. Here are the posts, with just some irrelevant timing logistics deleted and grammar and typos corrected, as well as reducing the level of USAID-centric situations and acronyms. 

Please remember that they are informal posts, and represent my personal perspective, and do not represent USAID policy.

Reflections on a USAID Development Journey #1: The missing middle, and the LEGO story

OK, in cleaning out files, and files, and...I have also been trying to flag ones which might be of interest to a new audience (plus it gets me to move them along and stop thinking about them).  

Please bear in mind, as with everything written in one of our COPs, these musings don't represent USAID policy but are just to help stimulate discussion. If something doesn't sound right, or if you have another perspective, please say something.

This one includes a story (LEGOs) which has actually showed up TWICE (oh my god, I hear you say, give it a rest...) but a couple folks were asking for it, plus it also allows me to bring up an enduring area of interest for me - what happens in the space between contracts and grants, and a strategy. I have a few of these older notes about this issue, but if you've read it, move on to something else more important in your inbox.  

This analogy deals with the reality that seldom do we start new; in part, problems don't suddenly appear out of nowhere, neither do opportunities.  Many times we are building on something and often picking up pieces to move the ball forward. And also, often activities don't move in lockstep; some are ending, some beginning and some continuing, and your job as a (project) designer is to figure out how to move the larger picture forward.  

Which leads to LEGOs. For many missions, one way to think of projects, at least at their beginning, is to imagine you are an 8-year-old kid who is sitting at home alone on a rainy day, and then thinks, "Ah HAH!  Let me go build a really cool, really big sailboat out of LEGOs!" You go up to the attic and open up the LEGO box and find lots of smaller rainy day activities - a car, a duck, a tree, etc. - the work of several of your siblings over the last couple of years.  

So, what do you do? Take apart all of the existing stuff and start from scratch, or even worse, go down and ask your mom for a new set? Most likely, you see how you can build your vision from what’s in the box. 

And for missions, life’s a lot like that: many activities have a slightly different purpose, or end at different times, so you have to make the best of what you have.  Now, at some point you COULD take apart the previous work of yourself and others (including that dopey bird done by your evil older brother) in order to build your boat/project, but in the meantime you may build a boat with a sail which looks suspiciously like a tree, and a bird that's supposed to be a cabin.  Doesn’t mean it can’t be your boat, for now, just not perfect.

Some technical officers can be like the kids who originally built the car, duck and tree, and really, really don’t understand why you need to sacrifice their own work for this boat thing. They think that what they are working on is fine and deserves to stay in one piece until the activity ends on its own. And they even have their very own LEGO certificate (aka COR letter) which never talked about changing the purpose of the overall program into which their piece fits.

The LEGO analogy isn't really very good, of course (although one CAN say that the way we write about activities and projects can represent real life to the same extent that a LEGO tree reflects a spruce). I think it might help generate some discussion! 

Next up, some thoughts on the length of projects and strategies.