We recently took part in the first in a series of safe space #RID Pathways to Change conversations. These are an attempt to weave together various strands of activity to help build a picture of change happening across the international development system and to learn from one another as recipients of positive deviants grants.

In sharing some of the threads of this conversation we want to acknowledge our positionality as two white, middle-class UK based practitioners. We do this work because we think there is a role for us in challenging the status quo, but the role is often to get out of the way and allow things to fall apart and be remade as much as it is to have the answers.

We both work together some of the week at ADD International but like many others, we also occupy other spaces and experience what Knipe, Maerten, Moger and Shivji in Mindset Matters, call the ‘tyranny of now’ where the urgent seems to constantly get in the way of structural and systemic change. So, while another conversation might seem ironic given the frustrations and criticisms faced by the sector of so much talk over limited action, this conversation provided a valuable opportunity to disconnect from the system’s hard wiring and create space for a generative practice of reflection.

At the outset, we think it’s important to make a clear distinction between generative reflection, which we see as critical to doing things differently, and the systems change ‘stuckness’ dominating our sector. Our sense is that ‘too much talk over too little action’ is a symptom rather than a cause of the  inertia, and we need to address an underlying resistance and bias towards the status quo which can manifest in multiple ways. We explored some of these in the conversation and share our reflections below in an attempt to help weave with others in the international development space.

Firstly, we think a performative leadership culture is often a huge barrier to transformation, and the onus needs to be on all of us to cultivate and celebrate different skills in our leaders. For example, we need humility. We need leaders who readily admit they don’t have all the answers and who acknowledge that their organisations don’t always get it right.  We need to move away from ego-driven leadership and towards approaches to leadership that enable vulnerability and imperfection to exist, and still support organisations to change and thrive.

We also observed that performative leadership seems to both drive and sustain a ‘cookie cutter’ approach to change. The quest for examples of who is doing it well, all too often becomes a reason not to act, or the basis for claiming more success than seems warranted. Learn from others within and beyond the sector but don’t get locked into searching for a silver bullet and a ready-made ‘how to’ kit. In our experience, change needs to be messy and iterative to be tangible. It takes courage and a willingness to take risks, and given change necessarily looks different for every organisation, learning from others shouldn’t become a barrier to doing.

So, how do we create spaces which enable news ways to emerge, embrace mess and empower people to reject performative culture? Our conversation suggestions that we hope might help erode the sector’s performative obsession.

Neutralising the ego at the top through better CEO recruitment and board involvement. Jackson and Popkins pointed to this in their article, Boards: Blockers or Drivers of Transformation where they talked of their desire to avoid ‘heroic’ leadership. This is also about ridding ourselves of the machismo tenets of ‘I’ and looking to a ‘we’ which celebrates interdependence. As Laura Roth noted in a 2022 blog ‘is not so much about offering answers, but about asking the right questions, raising awareness and finding solutions together.’

Creating safer spaces to facilitate connectivity and to foster interdependence. We really value practices like a simple ‘check in’ to open work meetings. It feels to us like these approaches support human connectedness and allow people to hold and listen to each other in a way that can transform the depth of meetings. After all, if we can’t have inclusive conversations where people can bring their full selves, then we’ll never be able to shift and share power. A prerequisite to this, and to nurturing collective action, is creating space to process anger and frustration both individually and collectively. So often this is overlooked which results in exhaustion and burnout.

Valuing the uniqueness of our sector. The importance of thinking about the role of money in rewarding performance also needs to be addressed. The failure to come up with more equitable approaches to reward in non-profits and an over-reliance on practices imported from the private sector has meant that reward tends to reinforce performative and competitive behaviours over collaboration.

Minority world headquartered organisations have often benchmarked their salaries with each other, which has tended in many of the countries where INGOs operate, to replicate the growing gap seen in wider society between those who earn the most and everyone else. We’re not sharing this observation to fuel unhelpful narratives that suggest non-profits should be run by volunteers or should pay people a pittance. Rather we seek to shine a light on how mirroring the private sector has positioned income growth and market share as ‘performance’ worthy of reward.

This reward culture emphasises competition over collaboration and centres it on the relative budget size of an organisation or individual, rather than on their ability to collaborate for greater collective impact. This entrenches competitive and credit-claiming behaviours, which are obstacles to power shifting and the kind of collaboration needed to connect non-profits with social movements.

Reward-driven performative behaviours have arguably spread widely within international non-profits and are not restricted to staff in minority world located headquarters. At ADD International we have tried to find ways to make reward less performative in our revised transparent salary structure by having set rates of pay for different role levels with no link to performance.

We have also applied a deliberate brake on executive pay so it increases more slowly than lower paid staff roles. But this approach is by no means perfect and may create risks for retention and recruitment. This is one of many areas where structural inequities in the sector make organisational transformation challenging.

Aligned and supportive board. Finally, and reflecting on our experience in supporting ADD International’s transformation, it’s critical that the board supports decisions to say no and to stop doing things, including saying no to some forms of funding.  Such decisions are never taken lightly but our approach collectively mapped with movement allies is critical to achieving our purpose. We need to be honest and acknowledge that, for example, servicing some donor demands intensifies and sustains a performative culture which is incompatible with genuine change.

To support ongoing sector efforts to change the way we do and decide, we need to see money differently. At ADD International this has meant combining culture with our finance function to help ensure all our processes are in service of our values.

These are some of our reflections which we’re sharing to spark discussion (please use the comments section below) and to help those who are also doing and deciding differently. We know there are many other examples and it is by weaving these together that we’ll create a positive framework to shift power and reimagine international development.

Tim Boyes-Watson is the co-creator of Fair Funding Solutions and ADD International’s Director of Resources, Systems and Culture

Mary Ann Clements is a feminist writer, coach and action learning facilitator, co-founder of Healing Solidarity and Co-CEO of ADD International with Fredrick Ouko.