‘Change readiness’ of CSOs is a key condition for the success of CD support efforts

Targets for Capacity Development (CD) efforts largely depend on the CSOs’ ambitions for organisational change. But how do CSOs show that they have embraced a need for change within their organisations?

Besides the right conditions, resources and a vision for an intended change, change readiness refers to the motivation and attitudes of CSOs to engage with organisational change. Change readiness may be stimulated by internal concerns or external pressure, and often depends on the urgency to change and previous experience with change processes. The ‘change readiness’ of partners is considered as a key parameter for the level of ambition for capacity development efforts and is important as an indicator to find out whether or not the timing is right for a capacity development process. The risk of failure of capacity development is high if organisational change readiness is inadequate.

CSOs need to identify themselves as being open to, and ambitious for, organisational change. However, organisations are made up of people who play a critical role in organisational change and differ in their willingness to change, their level of curiosity, and their capacity to cope with uncertainty. An engagement in words that shows a sense of ownership of EU-funded support does not necessarily indicate that the CSOs have embraced a need for change within their organisations. For example, a CSO that embraces capacity development interventions for transparency and better accountability, like the provision of ICT equipment and training of staff members in book-keeping and financial reporting, does not necessarily embrace other specific changes in the way that it operates. The CSO may not be committed to introducing a completely different set of practices, like monthly meetings at organisational level to go through figures, or to change its attitude towards sharing information, and thus the CD intervention is left ‘half-baked’.

CSOs commitment to organisational change can be visible in many ways. Their history may show a good track record in handling change and examples of organisational development leading to measurably improved performance. CSOs engagement with other organisations may illustrate either past changes or commitment to future change, for example, a service-oriented CSO that has an agreement with a local university to improve its capacity for monitoring and evaluation demonstrates an awareness to the need for change. CSOs participation in learning events that involve innovative practices may be an indicator of change readiness too.Signs of financial commitment may illustrate change readiness as well for example when the costs of inputs to facilitate the organisational change are shared by, and sustained in the long term, by the CSO. Some CSOs might already have stimulated an internal organisational dialogue about the desired change and the change process to be pursued captured in the minutes of executive and staff meetings and reflected in work plans. Others may even have a drafted ‘organisational change’ plan that shows that organizational members feel committed to implementing organizational change and confident in their collective abilities to do so.

Thus, paying attention to organisational behaviour towards change, to the results from the past, and to any obvious ambitions towards change in the future is important in identifying that the conditions for a successful capacity development process are in place. A very brief introduction to approaches to Organisational Assessments can be found in the linked documents below, and capacity development stock-taking and ‘change readiness’ practices are discussed at www.lencd.org/learning/howto-readiness

Sharing insights into how change readiness has been addressed in practice is something that we can all benefit from, so, please provide comments and your tips on illustrations and signs of organisational change readiness.

Organisational development of CSOs is the main focus of guidance currently being developed for the European Commission. The Guidance is a response to the September 2012 Civil Society Communication which emphasizes the importance of strengthening civil society actors to perform their roles more effectively, particularly local actors. The guidance will be made available later in 2014.Materials from a series of seminars on support to the capacity development of CSOs are available for download.

This posting and the related materials have been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents are the sole responsibility of the contractors providing the technical assistance and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union