Change Management!

Tools to help in implementing this crucial element of capacity development.

Change management is, strangely enough, rather a new discipline in development cooperation. However, it is absolutely crucial for capacity development – and there are tools to help.

Capacity development is successful when several factors are present: There must be dissatisfaction with the current situation among powerful stakeholders and an attractive and realistic vision.

But this is not enough. Crucially, there must be capable change management.

All too often in the past, donors have assumed that consultants placed in a programme implementation unit could “do” the change management. They cannot – unless leadership, political backing and an open network to key stakeholders is available.

There is a tool from the Toolkit for Capacity Development that helps to assess the capacity for change management, and to detail the key tasks that change management include.

The message is quite simple: The stronger the change management capacity, the more ambitions the CD agenda can be – provided, of course, that there are stakeholders that are sufficiently dissatisfied with the current state of affairs to back the change. And this is also when change begins to hurt.

The tool is crucial when discussing with partners if and how to support CD processes. Just looking at “what needs to be done” leads nowhere unless somebody is able to steer the course, trim the sails and keep the deck clear when the ride gets rough.