Event: PDIA in Tunisia and Jordan

Peter Harrington So I’m going to introduce our speakers, and then they’re both going to give a presentation of their sort of experience and the PDIA experiments that they’ve had. So I’m going to start with Lobna Jeribi. Lobna, please, I’m sure everyone knows who everyone is, but this is Lobna for those of you who don’t know. So Lobna, she is a public sector director at Wayview International, which is a consultancy in international transformation projects, building state capability, data driven policy, sustainable development. She works across Africa in the MENA region. Lobna has a fascinating career. She was minister of national projects. You heard her question earlier. She was minister of national projects and reforms in Tunisia and of higher education and scientific research. She also served as an MP. She was in the National Constituent Assembly from 2011 to 2014. She was also founder and president of a civil society organization called Solidar, which is a think tank, which has a really fantastic reputation and does very good work, working on all kinds of policy issues and development processes. She has a PhD in information systems and artificial intelligence from 2001, which I think is before artificial intelligence was a thing. So something’s happening here. I know she was a professor at Sorbonne. I mean, too many amazing things. Change management practitioner, PDIA trainer, implementer. So Lobna, thank you. I will introduce Tim and then I’ll hand over to you for your presentation, but please welcome Lobna. So Tim, Tim Kornprobst, who’s going to speak about Jordan. So Tim studied political science at the University of Kiel. He has a passion for international relations and development, you know, development aid. He has a master’s in international relations, peace and conflict studies from Frankfurt. And he joined the German Development Institute as a research and a postgraduate fellow and discovered movements like Doing Development Differently, PDIA, which I think has really captured your kind of imagination. And he works for GIZ, the German Development Cooperation Organization, and has been really working to try and integrate PDIA and sort of cultivate PDIA within that context. So since 2022, he’s been a technical advisor on a solid waste management project in Amman in Jordan. And he’s a researcher at Darmstadt Technical University. So he’s actually writing a PhD on PDIA. It’s a lot of letters. And I’m really excited to see what comes out of that, actually. So lots of ideas and thinking about reforms and decentralization. His interests are very broad, peace building. And I think you want to basically make PDIA the way that GIZ, you know, a core part of how GIZ works. So please welcome Tim. Thank you both. So Tim, have a seat. Lobna, I’m going to hand over to you to present. I’m going to be a little bit strict. I’m not as strict as Salimah, but I’m still going to be a little bit strict. So I’m going to give you 10 minutes to present. And then we’ll then we’ll hear from Tim and then we’ll have the discussion. I’ll make sure it’s really interactive and we ask lots of questions. So Lobna, you can have this or you can have the lectern, whichever you prefer. You prefer this? OK, OK. Over to you.

Lobna Jeribi Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Matt, for the invitation. And I’m very grateful to present our project and to for our region. And I hope that this group and this meeting will be organized in a structure to have been sustainable network and to as organization or foundation for MENA and Africa. As we have common challenges. As I don’t have a lot of time, so, OK, so this project is a part of the Tunisian Public Policy Consortium called TPPC or Al -Shabaka Tunisia, Al -Siyaset Al -Omoumiya. It’s a consortium. The aim of it is to solve complex policies. It’s a part of the social. It’s a part of a laboratory called Social Innovation Laboratory working on three innovation access, I would say. The first one is the capacity implementation for building for implementation. Of course, with on building state capabilities, but on many other fields than waste management, we are working also on water management, forest preservation, slaughterhouse, etcetera. The second innovation in the laboratory, we are working on evidence based and data policies and how we accompany government in collecting data, analyzing data in making evidence for design and evaluation. And this is with open government partnership. And the third innovation is on coherence is using holistic approach. And the pilot project is done with the United Nations on nexus water, energy and food. And you can find all details in our different websites. OK, so what is TPPC? So, as I said, it’s a complex public policy challenges addressing this complex policies with participatory governance and adaptive problem solving. The first we choose is the waste management as a pilot project because it’s a very we have during decades trying to solve this problem. And we didn’t succeed. So what we need here as a key success is sustainable solutions through stakeholders collaboration. We need to have building capacity among various stakeholders. So this is what we construct is stakeholders here, not only in institution, but we have built up consortium with unions, with private sectors, with NGOs. So all these stakeholders were a part of our team or PDIA team. And that was the main challenge for us. And also, of course, to create the iterative problem solving by showing successive step by step. And this was the main challenges. Well, so here maybe I can get in the OK, the fishbone, our fishbone. I would say the main challenge for our fishbone was not the fishbone by itself, but was to make all antagonist stakeholders being making consensus on, for example, the problem statement. Tunisia is submerged by waste. So that it seems simple, but we spent and Peter was accompanying us. We spent like one month between all different stakeholders to make agree on this problem statement. And that was the same thing for the sub causes that we have made. The three A approach has led us to the first entry point was addressing inadequate financing mechanism for municipal waste management. So the first entry point is the financial. That’s where we have the authority, the acceptability and the ability. And we made iteration adaptation on three regions that you have chosen, Sidi Bou Said, Siliana, and Hammem Sousse. So for the Sidi Bou Said initiative, Sidi Bou Said is this is the map of Tunisia, Sidi Bou Said is in, Tunis is the capital, so in the north. So we started having sixty five out of one hundred seventy five establishment have an agreement, agreement with municipality on noise management. The municipality of Sidi Bou Said have fifty two thousand dinar revenue and one having at the beginning one circuit of waste collection. Both waste and citizens and business owners. I will go to the results and then I will speak about the actions. The results is that here we have one hundred and seventy out of one hundred and seventy five establishment had agreements. So they were involved with the municipality and also in waste sorting. We have the annual revenue of the municipality raised on twenty hundred and sixty thousand dinar. So we have like more five multiplied by five the revenue and improve the collection efficiency by optimizing the collection circuit and enhancing scheduling. And this was the action was mainly I would say data driven, data making evidence. So what we first make is the establishment. So we make a census for all establishment that we have at Sidi Bou Said the waste characterization. What do we have as waste? What do we have as establishment? What are the agreement that they have? What is the real cost for the municipality of this waste? Because we were not applying the principle of polluter pay or pollute. OK. They promote the waste sorting by adjusting fees and incentive. So what we have the action that we have made is the advocacy for the business owners saying that you have to make the agreement on based on the real costs. So there are more fees or you have to make the waste sorting. So of course this engaged the majority of business owner to go to the waste sorting. And we also separate. We have two circuits: citizens’ waste and business owners’ waste. So here. Ah, OK. This is important is that the Ministry of Interior was really inspired by these results. And we issued a circular. The circular is saying for all municipality to apply the same action plan of Sidi Bou Said to all municipalities in Tunisia. Of course, as having success in raising revenue and I would say engaging establishment in sorting the waste. And it’s also sustainable because the municipality having the means to continue. And this is the main issue is to have sustainable solutions. For Siliana, it was the same entry point, but it was different actions because this is adaptation. And this is we have also low revenue from agreements. But also the diagnosis is that they have the cost of the waste collection was too high comparing to private sector. So here what we have led as action and I will go further is that we make private and public private partnership making more. OK, I have two minutes. My God. Adjusted so here we cost reduction saving for waste management. And we have also agreed the annual revenue. And for just for Hammem Sousse, we have it’s very advanced Hammem Sousse is in cost region and it’s very rich I would say region. So they have they are a lot advanced. And what we were able is really to improve already what was done in selective sorting and increase the citizen engagement. This is interesting because we used an application platform and that did real time monitoring and really increase the citizen engagement in waste sorting. And that was very interesting. And actually what we are doing, we expand. So we have we were asked by our partners to work on other issues like forest management in Tabarka in the north. We continue working waste management, but now with a regional approach. So the fishbone is regional and the process is regional. And so water management in the south, slaughterhouse, etcetera. I would speak about two innovation. It’s not it’s kind of OK. One minute. Oh, my God. Two innovation, it’s kind of learned the lessons learned of applying PDIA. The first one is that as it’s an initiative from the laboratory, which is an NGO and the consultancy, it’s not within the institution. So we need more authorization. That’s why we build up what we call the consortium. The consortium is larger than the PDIA team. The consortium is composed by hundred members. And this is more large stakeholders. And from the consortium. So the consortium has mandated the PDIA team. So PDIA team, we have here only eleven members and the PDIA team is accountable for the consortium. So each one or two month, he come back to the consortium to present results. And this was a huge lever for building authorization, because when we show result each month, we have doors opened in each ministries and saying, OK, that’s interesting. We wanted to make the same thing. So that was very interesting in creating this consortium. I would say before the PDIA team and going through the larger consortium to build the authorization. Lastly, the innovation, the second innovation is that for solution building and solution design, we implied a solution incubator. This is a new that we are doing it now. And the purpose is really to create like think out of the box process with the new ecosystem, young entrepreneurs, startups, technological platform to really think about like through hackathons, to really think about the solution, to think about other solution, other platforms. And this was an input for the PDIA team, very an added value to continue the work. Thank you very much.

Peter Harrington Merci, Lobna. Thank you. Well done. OK, over to you, Tim. We’ll hear from Tim and then we’ll get into the discussion. So, yeah, over to you, Tim.

Tim Kornprobst All right, all right, all right. So, dear friends, it’s my pleasure to be here today and to present to you the PDIA in Jordan case in roughly 10 minutes, but actually Salimah promised me 12 just to let you know. OK, so two PDIA cases I will present to you today. Now, what you see here, I’m here in the background and this is actually my role. I’m not actually the owner of the success story. It was done by Jordanian people, by Jordanian public officials, but they just give me the honor to present to you what they have been doing. So, first, my key message for the presentation, PDIA is possible in Jordan and in the region, and you can have real impact. Don’t let anyone tell you something differently. You can do it. It is hard, but you can achieve it if you are pushing hard enough and don’t take no for an answer. So, where did we use PDIA? Quite simple, free construction site, organizational development and greater Amman municipality from the capital. We used it for the informal sector integration in Irbid municipality, which is the second largest municipality in Jordan, and we used PDIA for the reduction of business barriers on a national level. Though I have to tell you here, this was my facilitation role here. Here, I gave more policy advice and the colleagues are doing it and working on the barriers of the private sector in recycling. And last but not least, I’m writing my PhD and doing a long -term study on the impact of PDIA in Jordan. All right? Clear? So, starting with greater Amman municipality, what did we do? Well, our focal team in waste management under the leadership of Dr. Omar Arabiyat said the biggest problem in GAM is they have very long processes, very long decision -making, which hinders any effective reforms in the organizations. So, they brought together 12 departments and staff and managers under the authority of His Excellency the Mayor, City Manager and Deputy City Manager, which are the executive management of the municipality, and start analyzing the problem, which was long processes in decision-making and solid waste management hinder effective reforms and projects. So, they analyzed in a workshop. Why was this the case? Because there’s centralization and decision-making, there is data gaps. We talked a lot about data today. We need better trainings to equip our staff to get the job done, and we have overlapping tasks in all departments. So, just as an overview for you, this was like the basic thing we were analyzing and tried to solve. Just as an impression here, sitting with all the departments. That’s me, by the way, getting translation. What they’re discussing in here is PDIA in Arabic, the fishbone that we do, 2022 it was. So, basically, this was a two and a half, three years journey. I’m trying to break down in like four minutes. So, we started in 2022. We got the authorization not only from the management, but we went to all departments relevant for waste management, from tendering, planning, you name it, too many, and asked them, do you want to join us working on this problem? The leadership said, yes. Are you also interested in thinking this is a really relevant problem? They said, yes. Go for it. We are in. So, then we had in August our first PDIA workshop where we made the first fishbone and solution analysis. Then in December, after some delays of decision making, meter problem, tackling our problem work, actually, we got the approval. And then we didn’t have the approval anymore because our authorizer changed, new deputy city manager, just saying, Halas, I want to rearrange everything. We lost half of our team. We needed to cancel everything. But through some communication strategies, we managed still to continue our work. And then in May, finally, we started with our work and our iterations. This is the short story of long, long years. So, what were the results or what are the results so far? Because it’s still an ongoing story. So, what we did, we created a data map for waste management to close those data gap in decision making from more than 40,000 containers in the whole greater Amman municipality of 4 .5 million people living there to make more informed decision making. And you know what? The people are really using it. They use it to make better routing, to collect the waste more effectively. And this is really reducing costs in the municipality and some pilot areas by 30 percent. And in the overall city, the whole operation expanded by 17 percent. Only the cost only increased by 3 percent. We’re still working on it even more effectively, but you see some indications. We are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars every year by this initiative. Now, looking at training and knowledge sharing, which was one of the causes of Fishbone, you can see we have new trainings fitting towards the tasks of departments. They’re really getting equipped for what they should do in the environmental sector to really manage complex problems and not only fixing like electricity lines or something like this. Then, better coordination between the departments. You can really see in the interviews we did together and where we are evaluating the impact that the departments now who used not to talk with each other started to talk now. They are working together. They are clear about what the others are doing. And this makes the work already much easier. And this is the beautiful side product of PDIA, that people start to know each other and know their tasks. And this already improved the processes and decision-making in Greater Amman Municipality. So, you can see this, for example, in Tendering. Two -thirds have gone from the length. Now, where are we now? In the process, we are scaling up PDIA in Jordan now. In Greater Amman Municipality, the management asked us now to involve the other managers to discuss with them what we can use from PDIA to make it as a part of the organization logic because they really see as a role model how to get things done in the organization. And we are using PDIA, for example, in a smaller scale to solve problems in our recycling pilots we have throughout the city alright. And maybe you can now go to the next slide, please. Does it work again? You see some pictures here. This is in KACE, in the King Abdullah Center for Excellence. And here you see Sura, my dear colleague, who is helping me so much from the governance team. We were sharing the knowledge of PDIA with the most important think-tank from governance questions in Jordan. And we really hope now to share this knowledge with the whole sector. And here’s just a picture of the whole team involved in this work from all different departments. Now, looking at the time, running through it. It’s like a marathon, not like a sprint now. OK, Informal Sector Partnership. And we brought together greater Amman municipality under the leadership of the mayor, His Excellency, together with associations for the informal recycling sector, those people who are collecting recyclables to make a living in Jordan. More than 10,000 people are doing this in Jordan alone. So we wanted to improve the situation and, on the other hand, improve the livelihood of those people to save costs for the municipality but also get more money in the pockets of the informal sector. So we brought them together for three days and analyzed the problem. And we found out they are not recognized as a profession. They are not respected. And they have problems to get the recyclables because police is harassing them all the time to go anywhere and charging them as beggars and giving them fees and even brought them into prison. So with the administration of Irbid and the informal sector, we started to work on this problem. And after roughly one year only, what can we see? 10,000 JDs, so I think $13,000 roughly, are saved every month. Hundreds of people have better income. They’re feeling more respected and their families are more safe. Because we did the following. Based on the cooperation, we had an MOU. They were legalized. They get ID cards. They get uniforms. And now allowed to work everywhere in the municipality. So, and this is like the summary of the impact. More than 300 got an ID card. They were legalized but not officially legalized. So this is a hybrid solution. So not giving them job titles but allowing them to do their work at the end. Simple solution for complex problems. They’re earning between $30 to $120 more per month, which is 30, 40% more of their income, what they usually get. And we’re saving around 250 tons per month regarding the amount of waste. Because they’re recycling more. They can collect more. They can really improve their work now. And what for me is the most important thing here, most of them in the survey confirmed they’re feeling more respected. They have better relation with the police, with the residents and the businesses. And they’re feeling now like a valuable member of the community. And this is something I really think is the most important thing we achieved here. So the MOU, the cooperation was extended. They want to distribute even more ID cards. And they want to integrate these workers and other solutions. For example, the sorting station. So, and they became a role model for the national waste management strategy. So, Dr. Kofahi, the mayor, signing with the informal sector. Here the first people getting a license. This is the pilot what we did in the sorting station where they are supporting the municipality. Coming to the last slide. Perfect. Two minutes all I need. So, lessons learned from research and practice. This was like quite a ride, sir. Okay, again, PDIA for me worked on very different problems in the waste management. It really made tangible approaches on administrative tasks, but also really on working on social policy problems, all right? So it worked on very different things here and proof waste management in Jordan. The challenges we see here, it was, how did you say it on page 57 of the toolkit? Doing PDIA is hard. I would add here doing PDIA is very hard. So, because it is so time consuming. You have to meet so often. And you have people who are delaying you in the decision making. You have people leaving the task force because they are not really convinced that this will make a change. And you have a donor organization very rigid requirements, which makes it hard with your indicators and your budget to really try out something new. And the question is, after we’re leaving, will it be sustainable? Inshallah. Only God knows. Okay, but keys to success here for donors and other reforms is a flexible project frame, I see. So it is really about that you give the flexibility about the measures you implement, right? To make already the frame good for reforms or projects what you are doing. Not to all the details to have it. You have to have an agile mindset. You have to train the people on PDIA or at least the thinking behind PDIA to understand why you are doing this, to take them with you. And you really need to focus on outcomes and problem driven indicators. We have this also in our project a lot, actually, that we say this is like the focus of our initiative that everybody is on the same page where the road should go. And so, last but not least, again, my key message. PDIA is possible in the MENA region. And it can have huge impact. Do more of it. Thank you.

Peter Harrington So, thank you so much. Really fascinating. Oh, okay, we might not have this anymore. Well, you need to refer to it. You can talk through. Thank you both very much for fantastic pair of presentations. I know there was a lot to say. There is a mic for you here. There is a lot to say in a short space of time. I tried to, I gave you both a couple of extra minutes. But we have a good amount of time for discussion now. I was really struck by how much there was some really interesting parallels between your cases. But there was also really interesting differences. Actually, where I want to start. So I’m going to, you know, let’s have a little bit of a discussion. I’m going to take advantage of the moderator privilege to start with a couple of questions that I find interesting. And then we’ll bring the whole group in and hear questions. You know, have some have some some some group discussion. Where I’d like to start is is an area which can be quite challenging with PDIA and which we sometimes don’t talk about very much, which is how do you get started? How do you how do you begin this process? So a little bit almost before you. What happened before your presentation began? How did you initiate this? How did you engage with the stakeholders and authorizers and convince them to try PDIA, convince the participants who you wanted to be in the teams? How did you kind of sell this idea in your area? Because I think for everybody here who might like to try and use PDIA in their context, that bit it’s almost before the page one of the toolkit before you do problem construction. How do you begin this, create this, get everybody in this process to get everyone in the room? So maybe Lobna you can talk a little bit about how you got started. Tim, we can hear from you. Just how did you go about that? How did you kind of sell this? How did you convince people, including the authorizers?

Lobna Jeribi I will start even before is that in 2019, I led a mission with United Nation on what are the risks that is facing our country in next five years. And we studied all the risks, security, migration, democratic, everything. And after months of discussion, structuring, etcetera, the conclusion was the first risk that is facing our country for development, and this is all United Nation has used this to prioritize their action, was the capacity of the state to make reforms. This was the first risk. So it’s the root causes of the risks. In fact, so why you are not facing we have a problem of security because we cannot reform our country to have better security, etcetera. So this is why the idea of the capacity building that we need to accompany our state to being more capable in implementing. And that’s why we want to so we went we were searching and we went to the PDIA and we went to the Building State Capability and we made the training. So and that’s why we are not specialized in waste management. We are specialized in transversal in organization change management, how make things better and efficient. So we choose your waste management and say, OK, this is where we can find the results for this. So after having the training on the PDIA, and of course, our for us, this important to make it through the consortium, because the implementation cannot be done without having a huge multi -stakeholders around the table. So it’s first of all, it’s multi -institution. We have how say silos, governments. So the environment ministry never discussed with the interior ministry. Interior ministry are in charge of municipalities and environment ministry are in charge of wastes. So and they have antagonist interests. So first of all, we need these two institutions to speak together and to have common issues. And we didn’t get this at the beginning. So we started without, for example, the interior ministry. We started only with environment ministry and other multi-stakeholders. And this is also the consortium. What our data has shown is that after having the results, the interior ministry saying, OK, I will be part of the program and we will let people representative of interior ministry being in the PDIA team. So it was step by step and showing successes that.

Peter Harrington Yeah. So this point about results, results are powerful communication tools is very important. I think what’s interesting about what you’re saying is some stakeholders agreed to participate from the beginning early on. Others were unwilling. But once you got some results, it was very helpful to persuade the unwilling stakeholders. It’s like the interior ministry to, you know, to join. So there’s some there’s some persuasion at the beginning, but also results are very persuasive to bring more in.

Lobna Jeribi Excuse me. And even at the final, we have also the presidency of government even represented because they were a lever to coordinate the communication between environment ministry and interior ministry and other agency. So they were also in the PDIA team at the end of the first mandate of the first government, because the government has changed and we have to build everything from scratch.

Peter Harrington Politics is very complicated. Tim, I think this was I think you are the the the kind of instigator of this idea to try PDIA in Amman in Jordan. How did you where did you start? Who did you speak to? And how did you convince them to try this unusual thing PDIA? It’s quite different. It requires a different way of working. It’s a bit confusing sometimes for the people that you’re speaking to. How did you convince your organization, but also authorizers particularly I’m interested in how you convinced authorizers to try this.

Tim Kornprobst Okay. Well, guys, now I can speak a little bit slower after this sprint through a presentation and like not 10,000 years, but three years of intensive work. So how it started 2020. I went to my former manager who was my boss in an internship in Liberia. And I talked with him because he was asking me when you learn something new in your recent workplace the IDOS Institute of Sustainability and Development think tank for the German government on development politics. When you learn something new, tell me I want to know it. And I told him I heard about PDIA. PDIA is awesome. It’s very oriented. It’s agile. It really gets things done. And he said like, wow, this sounds amazing. I’ve been working private sector and so this is how I think things should be done. Might you help us design this project. The new one we are planning and so waste management with PDIA. And I said, okay, I will do it. And then I helped them to design it. There were also some resistance at the beginning of the designing team if PDIA is really appropriate and so on. But I tried to convince them and my authorizer at this time, my manager helped me with this. So at the end, we got it done. And then he asked me, now you are the one who brought me to this idea. Now you are the one responsible and make this work. And you better do it good. So I joined GIZ in 2021 after being a researcher at the think tank. And then I got things started, which were also not easy because my director, he was not my director. The highest of my cluster, my department was really into this PDIA thing. But my direct manager wasn’t at all. That’s what she told me from the beginning, actually, quite harshly. But what I was doing, actually, after I convinced my director, I tried to convince her and my team really by teaching them about the PDIA method. By showing them where it has been applied, where it was successful, why we use it. We tried it also out for some smaller challenges. And then I went to the partners, actually. And we tell them, now, this is PDIA. This is how it has been applied. What do you think about it? And Dr. Omar Arabiyat, who is a great guy, very intelligent, very dedicated, public servant, mission driven, everything. Great guy said, yeah, we have this long process. OK, yeah. What about that we go to your management and just talk with them about it? And then we brought together the directors of greater Amman municipality and talked with them. OK, this is the problem. What do you think about it? And they said, yeah, OK. But we have also money issues. Why you don’t give us more money, as GIZ. And the budget is bad. And said, OK, but guys, we have also other challenges than the financial thing here. We have really the problem that this is what Omar was telling, that we want to implement more quickly. And then the deputy city manager, similar as Uli at the time to me, said, OK, do it. And this is your responsibility to get things done now. They delegated us with the work. But then, as I shortly mentioned in the presentation, this was not enough. Because at the vertical level and the hierarchy to have the leadership, the sponsorship is good. But to really get things done, as we learned, we need also on the vertical level, the authorization. So we went to every department and hall of Greater Amman municipality, which had more than 20,000 employees, by the way. It’s a huge monster of an organization. We went to all departments relevant and talked with them. This is the idea we have. Would you like to join? Not all were convinced. Some said, no, I’m not interested in this. But 80, 90 percent said, we are into that. And then we came together. But then after we got started, we again had the drawback or like really a cut when the authorizers were changing or one of them and really questions the whole thing. And we really cut down the size of the task force. Because we were planning to work with 30 people and having like basically four iteration teams at the same time to work on things on parallel, actually. So at the end, we were only like 14. Then we were just 12. But nonetheless, we were meeting with him. We were again explaining to him the idea and say, well, it’s important. And we keep again the authorizers all the time updated. We’re giving them reports. We are meeting them every two or three months to give them like really a short presentation about the progress. And we try to involve them and ask them also for their feedback. What can we do differently? What kind of solution did you forget about? So this is basically what we’re doing. And I would like to stress what Lobna was saying. With more success, the legitimacy is growing. You know, the stairway to heaven Matt is talking about. Suddenly, everybody wants to be part of the PDIA team. And people from other departments asking, can we join, for example, from the planning departments? They’re all not part of our task force from all the sectors in GAM. They all want to be part of the success story now. People in GIZ want to be part of the success story also now. We are planning big things. And thanks that Sura is joining me as really as a senior advisor who knows the sector so much. And she gives me so much advice, helping this thing to continue and to improve constantly. So with this support, I mean, you get people on board, you can do it. And in the first year, it was horrible. First call I had with Matt was basically said, I’m near to a burnout. I don’t know how I can do this anymore with my manager and so on. But after a while, after the second year, it got better and better. And now I’m feeling really we are doing something great here and get things done.

Peter Harrington Fantastic. Hear hear. It’s really fascinating to hear both of your answers. I think there’s some really interesting parallels. So one of the things that strikes me is, you know, the work, the time needed before you even have the day one workshop, the time that you both invested before that, just to get to that workshop on day one, you know, it was more than a year for you. So there’s a real amount of time and work that’s needed to kind of lay the groundwork and get the buy -in from the different actors. Lobna, in your case in Tunisia, you created this interesting model with this consortium of stakeholders, a little bit more like a formal structure to get that buy -in and maintain that. And then I think what’s really interesting that you’ve both spoken about is how important, just getting the buy -in at the beginning, you won’t get everybody. I mean, you said you went to, you know, dozens of different, the number of different conversations to build just enough buy -in to start, but then maintaining that and how important the results are in kind of maintaining that buy -in and growing it. Yes, please. And then I have a follow -up question and then we’ll come, and then I’m going to bring everyone else in.

Lobna Jeribi The point here, I would say, for convincing is really the trust of person. At the beginning, no one knows what is PDIA, no one knows what… It’s when I went to the different ministries and trying to speak about the project and also to discuss with unions, etc. Really, the first beginning is they trust the person. So, okay, I will go with you, but I don’t know what you are speaking about. Okay, so, but I trust you. And this is, of course, it’s  smaller actors, a number of actors and stakeholders, but it’s the beginning. We need to begin from something to start. And that was, of course, and then the showcase built up other authorizations. But I would say to answer exactly to the question this is. And, of course, the design of the framework, the consortium, the stakeholders- when we get our first consortium of multi -actors, we know already the PDIA team. But we were, how do you say, it’s like it’s very important that the consortiums think that the PDIA team is chosen by the consortium to have their add -on. They have to be committed. So, of course, but because we need the PDIA team, more representative, and we have chosen the persons. We spent a lot of time to choose the person that the PDIA team, that would be consensus. It’s very important. More the institutional belonging of the members of the PDIA team is also the quality, the human quality, the soft skills of this person. And we made a lot of time in choosing these persons. But, of course, we try to make the process. It’s like our democracies, but this is it’s yeah,  we try. We make people believe that they are deciding. But this is another subject.

Peter Harrington Ok, thank you Lobna. So I think you have really interesting takeaways here. You know, the the you know, that initial buy in is so important. The amount of conversations you have to have, the groundwork, laying the foundation. But then once you’re moving, how important it is to generate work and results to maintain the authorization. Because it has to be.. you build it, but it has to be maintained. And how much the work, the reporting that you spoke about making sure that authorizers are seeing the results and the progress that’s being done. So so important. I want to before we open out to everybody, I want to.. we’ve been talking about creating the right conditions around a PDIA team, which is very important. Authorization, the support, the stakeholders. But I want to move inside. I want to move from the atmosphere, the environment around the team to inside a PDIA team. And what are the important things that, you know, that we can learn about what’s happening inside a team? What are they going through? What challenges are they facing? And how did you see inside this team? How did they overcome those challenges? Maybe the, you know, thinking about the mindset shift. You both spoke about mindset shift that happens to the people-in the individuals. How is the culture growing within the team? How is the..what are the things that you saw which are really important for them to maintain motivation and momentum and just just, you know, to be able to make progress? What did you what did you learn to be the really important things? And what could you do to try and create that? Maybe let’s start with you, Tim.

Tim Kornprobst Excellent question. Difficult question also. I would say the most important thing is, of course, to just first of all talk with people what PDIA is about, as I talked about in my presentation. To make them understand the mindset and also some of the methods. And often you will be surprised because many people who did agile management course before in the municipality already know, oh, yeah, this is like here, not waterfall. And OK, really nice. OK, it’s like an IT and you see there are some parallels and they’re getting excited because they always wanted to try out those ideas. This helps when you retake the time to explain why we’re working on a problem and why we want to work in the way we want to work. OK, this is the most important thing. Now, in the team, you will always have people, even if you’re processing, even if you have progress, they are at the point not interested. They’re not saying anything. After maybe some month, they will no longer attend the meetings or even say, maybe just let you hear about other people. “Ah, I don’t really care.” “I don’t believe what Tim is doing is sustainable at all.” “And or what the team is doing. This is something you have to accept here – you will not get the buying of everyone at the task force level, so to say. Now, I would say is very important that you and your role trying to give a good..at least in Jordan, a good stage for the people to present and show that they’re doing something differently and something important, actually. So what I really tried all the time, as soon as we had like after some months, very promising first results, not only in front of the internal leadership, but also shared with GIZ, having like presentation formats for them, getting in contact also with our colleagues from the governance (seems to us, by the way, from the governance cluster). So working together, sharing this with them and see how they can also present their results to other people. Because what is the problem in the public organization? I think in the MENA region and also other countries, public officials often don’t feel recognized for what they are doing. They’re working on sometimes very harsh conditions. They’re trying their best to get the mission forward, but they aren’t seen for their work. And when you give them not only financial incentives, I don’t believe that is the most important thing. The most important thing for people is that they’re getting recognized, getting respected for their work. And you know, people like Manar, Mohamed, who are like a little bit elite of the iterative teams, they have been working for 20 years in the municipality. They are doing excellent jobs, and they are so dedicated. They’re very knowledgeable. And I can tell you, after we start publishing and also thinking about writing a paper of Harvard, which hopefully will be published as a teaching case soon- they were super excited. And this gave really a push also for them beyond the results and presenting it, but really seeing like, wow, our work is recognized, people see what we’re doing. And this really pushes us. And now I’m at a point- this is amazing actually- when I’m sitting in the conversations with them. First, I was talking too much and asking questions. And then, what are you doing? Now, most of the time, I’m just sitting back and let them do their work. And sometimes I ask maybe three, four questions in the room. “Yeah, OK, how exactly do you want to do that?””Uh -huh, OK. And when you want to do that?” “Uh-huh, OK. Go for it. Have fun.” And this is, for me, a first indicator that there is getting more and more ownership and room that they’re taking over and taking this thing away from me. And I’m very happy about that.

Peter Harrington Very interesting. So a little bit, same with the authorizers. The progress and the results was very motivating for the team. Actually, just doing the work and making that progress and then the recognition for the work was a big motivator for them. And I agree with you. I think a lot of civil servants, you know, people talk about incentives, but really it’s about that purpose and being able to achieve something. Lobna, what about the team in Tunisia? What challenges did they face? How did you get the team to go from something completely new to being able to perform and being effective as a team? What challenges did they face and how did you overcome them?

Lobna Jeribi Yes, very similar to the experience that the team has shared and very interesting. Also, first we have trained facilitators. So we have the PDIA team. And first, and you were with us, Peter, and the facilitators were the one that were behind and trying to get the team in structured and not wasting a lot of time, et cetera. The first challenge was also, of course, the fact that they have antagonists. So, for example,  the private sector and the workers. When we were speaking about Siliana on how to improve the costs of waste management, because when the municipality do it by itself, it costs like five times the private sector. So, of course, the municipality needs to privatize the waste management inside the municipality because it’s too costly. And of course, it was a problem for the workers because this is for the worker union. So what the antagonist point of view, what we made, we made kind of negotiation. So this kind of social dialogue. But what is interesting is that the solution and the consensus of inside is that there is a part what was privatized and other part- it’s within the municipality so that you will maintain the workers. But we are more effective in terms of costs. So that was very interesting. So the dialogue between both actors of representative of union private sector and the workers make the solution acceptable by all actors. So the solution is balanced, the solution is efficient. And the all the months of discussion was not really lost, even though, of course, we spent weeks, as Tim was saying, we also have the weekly meeting and the discussion. And it was very long. And you’re saying, OK, it’s what is the issue? But finally, we needed this discussion because then the implementation was very efficient and very interesting. And that was the same thing, for example, between Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Interior and Environment never work together for waste management. And it’s a transversal issue. That was a huge challenge for us to make this representative around the same table. But what was interesting is finally the way we use the final issue, because it’s not dividing. The financial having more finance for municipality was the issue where they are not against each other. So we choose also the subject through the discussion and hard discussion and very long discussion, as you remember, to find out. So it’s not lost. The discussion is interesting. The lesson learned. We feel we need to have discussion between the whole stakeholders. Take the time to structure the solution, to design the solution, to design the entry point, because it will be very efficient then when we implement.

Peter Harrington OK, thank you Lobna. So I think thinking about the team, the dialogue that they engage with and the consensus that you could build was very important to give the team that clarity, that the way to be effective. I’d love to take questions. We have some, you know, a good amount of time for discussion with everybody. So please put your hand up if you have a question about the experience that Tim or Lobna had in their environment. I see a question at the back from our Saudi colleague.

Abdulaziz Alohali OK, so it’s a question. Can hear me clearly. First of all, thanks for the fireplace. I think maybe it wasn’t…

Peter Harrington Yeah, it’s a little bit colder.

Abdulaziz Alohali Yeah. The question here is, you know, I would say you worked extensively in implementing the PDIA and, you know, on a mass level, you did, you know, with the training, the research, you did it with multiple agencies. So my question to you after that time, if there was a chance and just kind of to relate to all of us, maybe knowing PDIA, but not this exact problem that you’re working on to create the PDIA 2.0 and kind of like maybe apply PDIA on PDIA itself and improve it and then take it to the next level. And then, you know, have Matt here and the team. Would there be anything that I would say you kind of tried to push that did not work? Maybe for your context, it works in another context, and it would kind of create and evolve, grow PDIA even even further. So that’s maybe the question.

Peter Harrington And your name and for the benefit of people online, your name and where you’re from.

Abdulaziz Alohali Abdulaziz Alohali from the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority in Saudi Arabia.

Peter Harrington So yeah, how do we PDIA- how do we apply PDIA to PDIA? How do we experiment? How do we, you know, tailoring PDIA, the way we do things in different places? Lobna, you experimented with some new structures. Tim, how did you tailor the kind of PDIA model- which is very flexible- how did you tailor it in your context? And what didn’t work? I think was also an interesting question. How did you identify what didn’t work and learn from that? Let’s go with Tim first and then we’ll come to Lobna.

Tim Kornprobst This is a great question. And actually, if you ask me, we need a PDIA MENA toolkit. We need something which is not only in Arabic, but also maybe taking to account also a little bit different discussion cultures and really reformulating the question that they make a little bit more sense because what I experienced when using the PDIA toolkit at this time in English, by the way, we make a free translation because one of our colleagues was also a translator in his previous career. We translated them roughly to somehow be able to work because some people did not understand what is written there. And it’s very complicated English. Nonetheless, I love PDIA so much. So don’t get me wrong. So, but I think, yes, we should work on this and we should only what Sura had always in their mind and also other here in the room and Lobna and me, we also discussed this some months ago. We need to have like a new toolkit and maybe like really training guideline with more details, telling people what kind of exercise are possible to get the steps of problem analysis, construction, deconstruction and change space analysis possible. And regarding what didn’t work so well. And our Jordanian context is most of all went very well. But what I would say is that change space analysis is always a little bit tricky. And also in the toolkit, it’s very roughly only explained, actually. And I have the feeling sometimes you make an analysis and then everything is like, actually, from  what they’re saying, very, very good. But when you look at the toolkit, for example, they have like mid mid authority, mid acceptance, but huge ability. The two could basically, for example, say, OK, there’s no change space. I disagree with this and from my experience that is change space when there is this, for example, and also you should give the alternative of this analysis because it’s very timely actually to do same change space analysis helps, of course. But sometimes people don’t have the time for this. Maybe you should go for this alternative. What they did was this ranking of very impactful to less impactful and easy to solve and less easy to solve and start a discussion at least around this, which is not as elaborated as a change space analysis, but gives you at least a feeling and also gives you a feeling- what is the really important causes you should start working with the binding constraints when we think about Ricardo Hausmann and leading economic growth, the things that really matters. Also, what I felt in Jordan, what is hard is the agility and adaptation of solutions sometimes because earlier we saw it a little bit more. But in GAM team, they did it partly. But often it was more like first year was just, OK, we have now our plan. We want to implement those solutions. It was.. I always try to encourage them to think about how to adapt it. But they were like no no, we are  just happy to work as a team and do those things. And sometimes you have to really focus better now to be agile and always changing or just having a team working on a common thing and then see if it works out. So this was a little bit challenging. We get more agile in the second year, basically after a while. But at the beginning, this was hard, actually, in the bureaucratic environment of Jordan.

Peter Harrington So the learning and adaptation is a habit that has to be cultivated. Lobna, briefly, you spoke about some innovation that you brought in this wider stakeholder consortium. You talked about bringing in sort of hackathons and other methods to kind of come up with solutions. Just talk a little bit about why you introduce these innovations, the extra elements around the PDIA. Are there any things that didn’t work that you learned from?

Lobna Jeribi The PDIA team composition was difficult to maintain a PDIA team as changement of government. We have each year a new government. We have political instability. And this is, I think, also a common issue in our countries- MENA Africa region. So it’s very interesting to have kind of effective common, not guideline, but I would say sharing experiences and innovation. So that’s why the consortium is very interesting, because the consortium is the stable entity. So the consortium is wider, is representing institution and is including civil society, including public servants, which are not politics. And of course, then when there is the PDIA team, when the government change, we need to have new representative. But our stable entity is the consortium. So go back to the consortium and then nominate another representative of which is closer to the ministry, to the decision makers to be in the PDIA team. So it’s very interesting. The consortium is regarding the change context, regarding the author. This one is the level of authorization. And the second, the hackathon also. In our country, we have even we have the deep state, the weakness of administration. We have a huge potential in the youngs, in technology, in the startup ecosystem. We have.. they are making amazing work through the international, with international private sector. And we are not using them as.. are not acknowledging in this potential. So I think it’s very.. that was very interesting also to make this solution incubators, and the new community within to give a new insight for this public servants, even though there are discussion, it’s always, it’s a new air, a new and very, and having practical solutions. So yeah, this is our two major, I would say, PDIA process innovation that we have implemented. And I think it’s very, maybe relevant for our regions because we need this new levers to address the weaknesses for other, in other issues.

Peter Harrington Great. We have time for a couple more questions. So please put your hand up. But what I was interesting, what you were saying is when you have some kind of political unpredictability, this stakeholder forum that you created with civil society, with the bureaucracy, it created some continuity. They insulated you a little bit from the, from the political changes that were happening. I’d like to see if there’s.., I’d like to take a couple more questions. You’re pointing at someone, Mannat, but I don’t know who you’re pointing at. Yes, the gentleman here, please go ahead.

Boris Owonoa Hello.

Peter Harrington Please introduce yourself.

Boris Owonoa I am Boris Owona. I am Dr. Boris Owona. I am Civil Administrator from the Prime Minister Office in Cameroon,  IPP 2020. Thank you for your insight and about second thing in creating the condition for implementing PDIA. I just wanted to know if when implementing PDIA to your local context, I want to know if you have found some kind of positive deviance, something that you have learned from yourself, because PDIA is the journey of discovery. And sometimes we have to confront local solution with those best practices. So I want to know if when implementing PDIA, you have found some positive deviance that you can share with us. Thank you.

Peter Harrington Fantastic question. So yeah, you know, did you discover pockets of positive deviance where you were? I think everybody is familiar with this concept, positive deviance, but also what did you learn personally? I like that part of the question as well. I’d love to hear that. Lobna, briefly so we have time for one more question.

Lobna Jeribi What I learned personally is success, I would say build success.

Peter Harrington Success breeds success.

Lobna Jeribi Yes, this is very important. Even very small. Don’t be shy that working on very little small locality with the kind of things, because it will open the doors. So positive deviance we have- we use positive deviance. We have some regions, for example, that are making their circular economy, but it’s a very little region. And these are youngs and entrepreneurs that are in the municipality. We found that the actors within the decision maker in the municipality are represented by this ecosystem that we want to use in the PDIA. So we adapted and we learned and we structured this in the process. And of course, teaming. I really learned a lot in the training. In fact, I made the training two years after implementing. So it was very interesting also because maybe it’s more meaningful sometime because we experienced the challenges, the problems, and then when the training was very interesting because it makes. So of course, the triple A is very meaningful also for us- its structures. When we are within the administration or we work with administration, sometimes common sense. And after the training, it structures things. So what is triple A? We measure the authority, we measure acceptance, we know that if you have the ability, so that’s very interesting and more efficient for our work.

Peter Harrington Very interesting. And almost what I find interesting is what you were saying is on the positive deviance point, almost through the PDIA, you were trying to create positive deviance. You spoke about Sidi Bou Said, you made Sidi Bou Said a functioning example. And then other municipalities were inspired by this. The Ministry of Interior said, this is a good model. Let’s replicate it in other places. So you almost created some positive deviance in one municipality, which influenced others. Tim, what are your thoughts about on the question? And then we’ll take one more.

Tim Kornprobst Well, what I learned for myself while doing PDIA is don’t make things too complicated. Things are already complicated, complex enough. And if you’re not careful enough- thinking PDIA too much into complicating this toolkit, you are preparing, preparing, preparing, having very long workshops and bombarding people with questions. And at the end, they say, Oh God, what is this? So I had to learn also by watching, by the way, Matt also, how he’s doing this in Harvard classes, how simple you can make PDIA. Yeah, just tell me, okay, what is the problem? Okay, break it down on here on the board. And then we have like a first starting point, try to make it simple. And also, what I learned during my PDIA journey is talk less, listen more, ask more questions. This really helps give room really for the people. And regarding positive deviance. First, how we started was we discovered actually a positive deviance in PDIA in Jordan, because I think 2018 a team of dedicated ladies from the Ministry of Labor, for example, MaryEllen was under them. She did an excellent marvelous job in using PDIA to improve expert laws and to create more tax income. Yeah, nobody talks about this. And they even don’t talk about that much because I think there are also some things that don’t want to shine too much right now in their ministry, because in Jordan, there are also some challenges when you are too good. This could also be the end of your career actually. Yeah, this is some context. I think also in the MENA region also not that, maybe everywhere. Maybe also in Germany sometimes. Yeah. This was very inspiring because we talk with them in the beginning in the first year, and they retaught us PDIA is possible, and you can do it like this and this. And this is what I would like to recommend you. Go to the blog page, look for people who did the class and talk with them. Maybe some will say, I didn’t do any PDIA afterwards, and some will tell you, well, I did really a reform based on this. And those network really helps you use this network for us as an advice and positive deviance to combine both. The last thing is, well, the cool thing is now Greater Amman Municipality and Irbid became positive deviance cases by doing PDIA. Because I told you shortly with King Abdullah Center for Excellence, this governance thing, they’re really close to royal court, has a lot of influence in assessing and giving advice to the public sector. They are now use PDIA for their own organizational potential and challenges and heard from GAM experience in the presented, as you can see. And they really say we need more problem solving. And I could name much more. Sura can also tell a little bit about this. But really people see the success and see this is something very extraordinary. So you add one or two years, maybe you also get to this when you use more PDIA.

Peter Harrington Fantastic. We’ll take one final question because after that, it’s lunchtime. So the last question to our colleague from Cote d ‘Ivoire. And then brief answers and then we’ll wrap up.

Joseph Diabate Okay, thank you so much. Joseph Diabate , IPP 2023. How do you get the strong commitment of the main stakeholders? And I want to know what was the key success factors in your case? Thank you.

Peter Harrington Great. That’s a difficult one to answer briefly, but try and be very, very distilled and condensed. What were the key success factors in the process? Lobna?

Lobna Jeribi Small successes- build small solution and knowledge on it. This I would say key factors. Perseverance, is it? Yeah. Yeah. It’s really to make the weekly, to continue years by years. It’s really to not be tired. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. This is also very important. Agile, we really need to be to adapt. This is the philosophy of the PDIA is to understand the context, to understand the team and to try to, even though, for example, and now I will go back also to the question of Abdulaziz, if there is the process PDIA, there is methodology, but sometimes you should find other way to find the same. So it’s always the design thinking, there is agile processes. The aim is that we make little successes and it’s shared by the multi -stakeholders and everyone owns it and to build on it. This is, I would say, the most important.

Peter Harrington Thanks, Lobna. Very succinct. Last words to you, Tim. Critical success factors. Yeah.

Tim Kornprobst So I presented some of them on my last slide already, just to summarize it. You have to give yourself time in the preparation, what we also did one year or so, some months at least, talk with your authorizers, bring the idea into their heads, and based on this, try to create a structure which serves your purpose. Get projects or special initiatives, innovation hub, whatever, where you have resources and the space to try out things. Maybe you can also make it in a small PDIA that you start in your team. Yeah, we try now to use the Fishbone diagram to solve some solutions, but if you’re really ambitious and want to make a PDIA initiative, try to create a structure which serves you. This is what I tried to do from the beginning, actually. This is important, and then you should really have in this project a clear focus where you don’t have any strong structures telling you what kind of deliverables you have to give, but just giving you outcome or problem -driven indicators. We say we want to solve the eight main barriers of the private sector. You really want to see an increase of recycling rates or see really that the processes are getting shorter, obviously. When you have those frameworks and support of your leadership and work in this kind of field with some PDIA knowledge that you all have here in the room, then you have good enabling factors to succeed with your reform.

Peter Harrington Fantastic. Wonderful reflections from both of you. So much to take away and to learn and lessons that I think are relevant everywhere. So, I just want to ask everybody to join me in thanking our two presenters, Lobna and Tim. Fantastic. Thank you both. And I think it’s lunchtime now. Mannat, I don’t know what time you want us to reconvene?

Lobna Jeribi Just would like to really say that we need really an organization. We need that this event is not one shot. We hope that we continue sharing. We create really an entity able to make a network, able to share experience, to have expertise around regions, to knowledge in all these experiences and to make more synergy between us through foundation, NGO, whatever. We started discussion with Tim and our group and we hope that we can continue this discussion in our WhatsApp alumni to build this project and to make it really efficient for our different countries.

Peter Harrington Fantastic. Thanks, Lobna.

Tim Kornprobst Hundred percent.

Peter Harrington Hear hear. Over to you, Mannat.

Mannat Singh Thank you so much. If you can make your way up to the 10th floor, lunch is served and we’ll be back at 2:25p.m. for Matt’s session. Please be on time because the session is on time management. Thank you.