I’ve living in Ethiopia for awhile now. I don’t have everything figured out, by any means, but I have started to learn some things. Like how to manage my team to increase the chances of things getting done. This may apply to different cultures. But I’m a North American in Ethiopia, so that’s how I’ll phrase it. Here goes.
1) Constantly question
Question your staff and colleagues constantly to understand your surroundings, and how things work. Question in different ways. Use phrasing that doesn’t allow people to just agree with you. So instead of asking ‘do you think we should X?’ (which will produce a ‘yes’), ask either ‘What should we do in this situation?’ or ‘Do you think we should do X or Y in this situation?’ And when evaluating the answer, look for subtle clues. With Teshome, I can tell a lot from his facial expressions, which add to his verbal answer. For a Canadian, coming from a very direct and forthright culture, it can be tough to capture information this way.
With government (and you have to work with the government in Ethiopia, there’s absolutely no way around it), questioning is a different form. Not every government official will actually know the answer, even if it is official policy. This produces a lot of wrong answers, which leads to wasted time running around. The trick is to be respectfully assertive, to ask ‘Are you sure it’s X, because I have heard from other sources that it is possible to do Y?’. Maybe the answer really is Y. Being respectfully assertive just saved you a ton of wasted effort.
2) Remain adaptable
Try not to lock yourself into only one possible course of action. Or at least have actions running concurrently so that if one path gets blocked, you can work through another. Consider any eventualities that will cause your team to fail, and develop alternatives.
3) Establish a network
As a Canadian, there’s basically nothing I can do here without help. I realize that relationships are key to managing anywhere in the world, but it is truly the only way to build anything significant here in Ethiopia. Develop contacts, friendships and links constantly, and maintain those links. At first nothing will happen. With time, this will help yield strong results.
4) Triangulate information
Ask 5 people the same question. You will get a few different answers. When several reinforce each other independently, you can have confidence that the answer is probably right. Courses of action aren’t so clearly laid out, so get many perspectives, and ultimately go with your gut.
5) Buffer
Buffer everything. Develop contingencies. The best example is communications. Have a phone line for the times the mobile network doesn’t work. Have dial-up internet for the times broadband doesn’t work, and a CDMA (mobile internet) card for the times when neither of those works. Store extra water. Keep gas tanks at least half full. Have a generator if you can afford it, and UPS units for your computers. And in Ethiopia, hold onto a store of foreign currency.
Beyond these aspects, buffer time and staff. Plan everything to take 50% longer than you think it should. Salaries are relatively low, so have a little extra staff on hand avoids costly roadblocks.
6) Establish a culture
North American and Ethiopian (/African I suspect) work cultures are polar opposites. The most interesting North American work cultures are more flat, emergent and meritocratic, allowing people to take ownership and responsibility for their work and deliver on results, and good ideas to spread from anywhere in the organization. Traditional Ethiopian work cultures are impossibly hierarchical. People are creative by default, but this is slowly crushed by years of orders from the top, without space for people at the bottom to question. Orders are obeyed, without much question.
So, especially given the fact that I must rely so heavily on others to help move things forward and develop solutions, I need to foster a strong North American style culture. This means encouraging staff and colleagues to develop their own solutions, give credit obviously, and being encouraging even when I disagree with a suggestion, explaining my rationale. I must still remain assertive and make my expectations clear, but it’s important that people understand that I’ve incorporated their contributions into decisions.
7) Follow-up
Constantly follow up with staff and contacts. Sometimes things take a lot longer than I expect, sometimes shorter. The best way to improve the average is to ask regularly.
8 ) Remain positive
There are many reasons to become frustrated as a Canadian working in Ethiopia. There are also many reasons to be pleased. Focus on the latter. Getting frustrated just leads to heads banging against a wall, and may actually slow you down. Remaining positive allows you to have a sense of humour about the hurdles and more ridiculous situations, which helps you deal with them better and relate better to everyone around you.
Those are the lessons I’ve learned. I’m sure there are differences and similarities for Westerners (etc.) managing teams in other African countries and cultures. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
B
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Great list–as I was reading it, I thought of which ones to add, only to continue reading and finding you’d written them. “Triangulate information” was absolutely critical for me in Tanzania.
To “Constantly question,” I tend to completely rephrase an answer and confirm that it makes sense. Think of key discoveries in really corny mystery book dialogue: “so you’re saying… [amazing discovery].” Often, once rephrased, the answer sounds ridiculous to the person who gave it (even when it makes perfect sense to me), and he or she will invest effort in correcting me.
As far as “Establish a network” goes: I found a constant willingness to learn and practice Swahili helped me befriend many of my Tanzanian colleagues, maybe because I was showing that I, a white person, was completely pathetic at certain things and that humour and a willingness to learn trump shame every time. Or maybe just because every conversation, interaction, and inside joke builds valuable trust.
And in the realm of “Establish a culture”: in my office, everybody hated meetings but I absolutely needed meetings for my job. Stakeholders would skip important meetings and I had to postpone my work for what felt like ages. Eventually I found a strategy: I ran a weekly meeting “no matter what,” pestering only a few absolutely critical stakeholders to attend the first couple of weeks, with the intention of showing the others what they were missing. Together we attendees would review last week’s progress, build a list of action items, and then prioritize those actions as quickly as possible with a rapid-answer, near-zero-discussion poll for each: “1, 2, 3, or 4? (1: right now; 2: this week; 3: this month; 4: later)”. By sticking religiously to a schedule (while most meetings in Tanzania run extremely late) and engaging people to think quickly (especially at the soon-to-become legendary finale), the meetings became something of an enticing curiosity; and by transparently producing results based on those priorities, I proved to those who attended that the meetings rapidly helped make their lives easier. By the time I left, stakeholders had learned the importance and usefulness of the meetings and, to my infinite delight, would appear on time and remain engaged throughout. (I often walked in on people bantering about my “1, 2, 3, or 4?” game, too.)
(Maybe these examples are obvious and maybe they’re unconventional; I’m no manager. But I know the experiences will save me months of floundering next time.)
The best part: these skills are all extremely useful back in North America (even to me, the non-manager). I can think of no better way to learn them than by working overseas.
[Reply]
Brendan Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Good suggestions. I think everybody develops different techniques, and there are many good ones. I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a lot of stuff as well. Thanks Adam.
B
[Reply]
Brendan Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Also, that whole ‘how to ask questions and interpret responses’ on is super key, and I’d love to keep hearing examples. It’s a work in progress…
B
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In fact, this is probably a good template to apply ANYWHERE you work, with changes in emphasis and degree, of course, but a good guide nonetheless.
[Reply]
Brendan Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Agreed. There are some differences. For example in Canada, I’d focus more on efficiency than information gathering, for example. But many of the suggestions are transferable.
B
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I agree with Dad: as I was reading through, I was checking off all those that could and should be used in firefighting, by a lowly crew member like myself. Especially number one. I find when a proposal goes like this: “I was thinking about putting the rock line in this way. What do you think?” It seems like false inclusion–their mind is generally set on that way, and the question can come off as patronizing, in a funny way. Rather, as you say, “Where do you think we should put the rock line in?” can lead to endless discussion, but is much more respectful of coworkers’ worth.
And of course number eight: stay positive. The story of my life, usually it’s easy, but not all the time.
Love,
-t
[Reply]
Hey Brendan,
Thanks for these words of advice! My Extreme Affordability group is moving forward with our project after the class, and we have been fortunate enough to receive external funding. We are now planning for a trip back to Ethiopia in the near future (hopefully, by September). I was hoping to be able “leverage” your expertise while we were there, but it sounds like you may be moving to the UK. At least now I have some guidelines. :-)
Cheers,
Sam
[Reply]
Brendan Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Sam, really? That’s fantastic! Well done. I will be gone at that time. I leave Ethiopia on August 25th, unfortunately. Let me know if I can help, and keep me psoted on your progress.
B
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I find that my translators often assume they know what is interesting to me in a particular question to the scribes I work with, but that they are frequently (usually?) wrong. I have had little success with explaining to them what I find interesting, because their idea of what my project is doesn’t go very far beyond the questionnaire and the basics of scribal technique. So, I keep asking the question, in slightly different ways, until I get them to probe for an answer to the question that actually satisfies my curiosity. I find that simply persisting in asking the same question in slightly different ways also works with government people, if only because it signals that the annoying foreigner isn’t going away until he actually gets a satisfactory answer, rather than simply being shuffled to another office.
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