Development Entrepreneurs

  Effective leaders - of business enterprises, development organizations, civil society organizations, etc - develop and execute plans at three levels: strategic, tactical, and operational.   Strategic plans define the most important directions for a whole organization over the long term (example: to be a thought leader in property rights in the Philippines, within the next three years).  It is grounded on the organization’s sense of purpose - what it does, who it serves, how it excels.  The strategic plan takes into consideration current internal and external conditions and trends. Tactical plans describe how parts of the organization contribute to strategic plans.  These are short-term: one year or less.  A tactic for “becoming a thought leader in property rights” could be “starting a series of videos on property rights”.  This is exactly what our friends at the Foundation for Economic Freedom are doing - they are regularly producing “Usapang Lupa...

  Rey Cordeniullo with a colleague Political feasibility is the probability that a reform would be acceptable.  Acceptable to whom? There is an idea that reforms need to be acceptable to policy-makers - only.  Once policy-makers officially adopt the appropriate policy, everybody would comply with it, and the reform would be achieved. Certainly there are policies that need only the approval of Congress and the Senate - and then implementation follows.  My guess is that these are economic and finance-related policies like the “Sin Tax” law, and my other guess is that these are the kinds of policies that are implemented by a national government agency. And then there are reforms for which laws have been passed, but implementation leaves much to be desired.  An example is the provision in the Reproductive Health Law that shays teenagers should have access to birth control information and resources.  This has not happened broadly.  It might be because of th...

  Before the pandemic, a friend said he didn’t feel inspired by any particular area of reform; he would support other people’s reform because he liked them, but did not have his own agenda.  “I feel like I’m carrying a spear in another person’s opera”, was the colorful way he put it.  Recently we met online and he bewailed the same thing; he was desperate to find a reform area that he could spend the rest of his life on.  I told him about two other friends: Nagiel Banacia and Ed Karlon Rama.   Nagiel Banacia can’t drive down a street without noting things that need to be fixed: uncollected garbage, a broken street lamp, a pothole, etc.  He is focused on local governance and public service, through and through. Thankfully he works for a local government unit, and he holds a position that allows him to address many of these things.  Personally, I find it amazing that some friends have focused on something early and then honed their competence and experti...

“In the beginner’s mind there are many choices, but in the expert’s there are few” - Shunryu Suzuki E xperienced reform leaders are, in a way, like physicians - some are General Practitioners, some are Specialists. Specialists Specialists are reforms who have become experts on a certain specific area.  They pursue reforms in these areas.  They hardly venture outside of this area.   They have few, specific, and highly developed reform ideas.  They work on their technical papers until these are bulletproof.  And because they move within his specialized area, he tends to know the social and political milieu of his reform.  Chances are, he holds a high and respected position in his field. His knowledge of how reform works is shaped by his experience in this area.  Since each sector tends to have its own culture and norms, change dynamics in a specialist’s environment can differ from the way things work in other environments.   Taken from hi...

A lot occupant fills up an application for a free patent title (Sta Fe, Agusan del Sur) “H ow do you plan to scale your reform?” It’s the buzz-question of the day, the latest trend in the development world.  How can the scope and benefits of your reform go beyond its initial area of implementation, preferably without investing additional funds or effort? It’s the antidote to pilotitis , the expensive practice of implementing a sophisticated reform in the one place it can happen, then leaving it there to hopefully inspire others to copy.   Scaling up is about getting the widest bang for the development buck.  If the reform can be scaled, more would benefit.  But it has to scale without additional effort from you or additional investment from your funder. A good number of reforms have been scaled up, and subsequently attracted attention.  Scaling up has been talked about in national and international development conferences.   So muc...

A fter three workshops on Development Entrepreneurship (held in Quezon City, Davao, and Cebu City), we have gathered plenty of feedback from participants, and so there's much to think about. There are practical ideas for improving the workshop, like spending more time for introductions and small-group work, samples of filled-up Tools, guide questions for writing the Theory of Change, etc. Our participants included development professionals, some funders, and members of the academe.  There's been much discussion about how funders can support the DE approach given their traditional desire for certainty, which they try to enforce with deliverables and timetables.  This reflects the dialogue that's going on with the global development community, as all actors find their footing with adaptive development strategies. Two questions from participants that resonate with me are a) will the DE approach still be useful if policy is not the problem?, and b) can the DE a...