We at Samrakshan have undertaken an Organizational Development process to help us function optimally. First round of interactions were held during January 09 and the second during April 09 at New Delhi with facilitation by personnel from Saharth. In course of this second round we had decided to share our experiences ~ learnings with colleagues who had not been a party to these interactions. It was this sharing that we were organizing at Daribokre (a village in Garo Hills that touches the Nokrek National Park).
A plan for the sharing had been prepared during second round when we had also held trial runs to fathom how we would organize what I understand would be the third round. While it was clear that the Meghalaya and Mizoram field bases were to organize this third round jointly; during deliberations that ensued ~ over phone and email ~ we fine tuned the plan, freezed the location (it had to be away from the office) and decided that besides all colleagues informants of our “elephant monitoring programme” from Meghalaya field base too would be a part of the exercise. They have been with us for a few years and involving them in the exercise would help raise their awareness of Samrakshan’s existence, its actions as also augment their ownership of the actions.
We reached the place late afternoon through Tura (West Garo Hills) and I drove the bike after what felt like ages. Some of us had been to the villages enroute Chandigre and Sasatgre but not Daribokgre. The place was beautiful ~ peaceful and besides the majestic Nokrek ridge that looked down on the village I attributed it to the absence of mobile network and electricity. We were to stay in a bamboo hut at the edge of a hill. After tea and bath we got on to discussing threadbare the actions of the coming days. We began with the logistics and moved on to programme issues. Here we decided to revisit and revise the plan. An activity for which we had earlier budgeted more than an hour “Value auction” we decided to exclude and settled down with Garo as the principal language for the sharing. We also added a session on why we all were here and this we organized during the evening. Our apprehensions were shot down by the questions and comments that flowed in our direction. This came to closure with discussions on menu and session timings.
a session in progress
Later during the evening I read Kenneth Anderson for the first time ~ Jungles Long Ago. The short stories created forests with tigers and their pugmarks in front of my eyes, also present were the paths being used by buffalo driven carts and villages with prominent caste biases. They took me back to the days when I read Chandamama and Amar Chitra Katha and I turned pages with childlike inquisitiveness. The cold night that followed was broken by songs of the Hoolock gibbons at about 5.30 am. We heard them intermittently from 2 directions till it was almost 10.00 am.
We began at 8.20 am, ten minutes before we had decided to begin, with introductions after a brief discussion on whether we (facilitators) should participate in the activities. The introductions were done using paper and pen and while initially I thought they spoke a bit too slowly I realized that this was perhaps the first time all of us were together. “Stated Values” came next. This was fun as we even discussed how the paper was to be folded and all but one participant wrote their values. When this was realized there ensued a deliberation on whether and how much time was to be given to him to work further on his unfinished task. Language was the crux and only one of us had the familiarity to the extent that it could be put to use to share learning with other participants.
Next came the group activity of noting values (my, ours and theirs). 11 participants meant one group had 5 and the other 6 members; both the framing of groups and subsequent actions went fine. This of course was fuelled by presence of gui (arecanut). One question I found particularly interesting “why being short tempered found place in the list of values?” the reason stated was that one wanted to be short tempered with people at times to get work done. At times people simply did not act in a manner that would enable to get the work done in an apt fashion.
facilitators deliberating between sessions
Charts were then put up stating the values and discussed. As this progressed I noticed that the silent and vocal segments within the participants were shaping up. While language was a hindrance to my understanding the proceedings I was thoroughly enjoying their simplicity. As a team we had also begun working in a reactive mode, we had decided to conduct sessions at the school tea onwards but seeing things go fine continued at our bamboo hut. What also struck at this point was that all the facilitators as also the participants were males; the gender bias!
Post lunch session despite being preceded by tea and stretching exercises was quiet compared to the morning session. I also felt that a couple of participants were getting disconnected and realized that facilitation involves a lot of actions to be undertaken in a reactive mode. During the process however we were clear of two issues that this was a sharing workshop and not training where participants would be taught and while we wanted to be on time we in no case wanted to curb the enthusiasm that the participants’ body language expressed. We also decided to do away with computers ~ associated peripherals and in the process discovered the numerous merits of doing so.
During the evening we sat down to fine tune the programme for the coming days, the avenues for improvement over today’s actions and more. Later, after a brief walk, we sat to work on how we would approach the next day, specially the session on values. I read the notes ~ material on vision and mission that I carried with me and was intrigued when I felt some pages to be familiar and some otherwise.
working in sub-groups
The next day began with interaction on values. We asked the participants to fill in another round of their values, not on the A4 page that we used last noon but on a fresh page from the writing pad. This went on for 10 minutes. Some of them had added a value while some had changed their set of values. We had a short sharing session and discussed how we by way of thinking and interacting had formed our set of values ~ final values. A set of values, the organizational values, was then shared with them taking help of examples. These had been arrived at during the first round. We then tried to establish a connection between personal values and organizational values; and more importantly between values that we had been discussing since yesterday and our conservation actions.
Then we moved to the “Proud and Sorry” activity. This basically is listing what makes you happy and what makes you sad about the organization. This brought forth a range of interesting issues coming out from lack of staff at Samrakshan office to daily providing of only samosa for snacks at the office as sorries and opportunities to travel and attend trainings as the prouds. The collation was an interesting process with the participants exhibiting high level of involvement with the exercise.
The next step was the “Dream Exercise” or determining what the participants saw Samrakshan doing 5 years from now. 3 groups were formed and given time to come up with their versions of their dream. The notion was to bring together dreams and not to deliberate on them (at this juncture). By this time the participants had developed connect with the pace, language and the body language of the facilitators. This session nurtured enthusiasm in the participants and eliminated to a large extent the need for our intervention. Dreams ranged from setting up a big rescue centre (for wild animals) to creating an environment such that animals not visible today in the landscape are easily visible.
As this exercise was on we realized that the prouds – sorries – dreams all pertained only to Meghalaya field office and debated if it made sense to then also bring in the Meghalaya field office vision and mission as opposed to the organization vision and mission. We finally decided against doing so. The dreams were then collated and the cheerful banter that accompanied this collation had us invigorated for the next session on Samrakshan’s vision and mission. This had us bring all the elements ~ values, dreams, sorries, prouds arrived from yesterday as also the values arrived at during the first round that had colleagues from all the units that constitute Samrakshan. This was an interesting experience and the flow was smooth; particularly of breaking the vision and mission statements into parts and translating them.
We then, as decided midway during the noon session, put forth a proposal to the participants to constitute a committee from themselves and this was accepted with great rigour. The committee was to work the next day towards drafting the vision and mission of the Meghalaya field base. This done, the day ended on a very positive note and we did not have a separate closure (check out).
The following day despite communication by the committee that they would be working on the statements there did exist confusion in the morning session. After tea and breakfast when we thought it made sense to have a check in session considering that there was no sharing of the feelings the previous evening as also to draw a clear programme of action for the day. When this was shared with the participants they said we should have the said session immediately and we began, it was 7.30 am. One of the participants coordinated the check in (feelings); these ranged from being confused on connection of these interactions to our day to day actions to feeling happy about being aware of Samrakshan’s vision. The first half of the day i.e. up to lunch the committee was to frame the vision and mission statements for Meghalaya field office.
stretching
During this time we got ready at a leisurely pace, looked after our clothes and more importantly discussed the noon session. We decided to discuss the statements threadbare and undertake action with the group to bring out the components of the 5 year plan i.e. broad actions that we will undertake in the coming period.
The statements were presented by the respective groups, one working on vision and other mission. These were very nicely done statements. While the discussion on these was interesting we did sense losing some of the content in translating them from Garo to English. After discussions second drafts of these were formulated. These we read out and all of us agreed to them. At this juncture we realized the need for stretching ourselves and while I thought we were getting monotonous in this context I also realized that this was an all male group not acquainted to sitting for long sessions but acquainted to a physically stressing lifestyle. I joined in the stretching ~ shouting and enjoyed.
The next session was determining the primary action components for the coming 5 years. This we divided into 2 parts. The first part had the participants listing the hindrances to achieving the mission that they had set out and the second part were the broad actions that had to be undertaken to overcome those hindrances. In course of this exercise we had interesting questions and discussions that brought to fore the need to conserve the wildlife and also the major role that conservation education and awareness would have in achieving our mission. The crux was wildlife conservation without involving various segments of society would be ineffective and to get them involved it was pertinent to augment their awareness and sensitivity on wildlife conservation.
The entire sharing experience thus ended on an energizing note.
A plan for the sharing had been prepared during second round when we had also held trial runs to fathom how we would organize what I understand would be the third round. While it was clear that the Meghalaya and Mizoram field bases were to organize this third round jointly; during deliberations that ensued ~ over phone and email ~ we fine tuned the plan, freezed the location (it had to be away from the office) and decided that besides all colleagues informants of our “elephant monitoring programme” from Meghalaya field base too would be a part of the exercise. They have been with us for a few years and involving them in the exercise would help raise their awareness of Samrakshan’s existence, its actions as also augment their ownership of the actions.
We reached the place late afternoon through Tura (West Garo Hills) and I drove the bike after what felt like ages. Some of us had been to the villages enroute Chandigre and Sasatgre but not Daribokgre. The place was beautiful ~ peaceful and besides the majestic Nokrek ridge that looked down on the village I attributed it to the absence of mobile network and electricity. We were to stay in a bamboo hut at the edge of a hill. After tea and bath we got on to discussing threadbare the actions of the coming days. We began with the logistics and moved on to programme issues. Here we decided to revisit and revise the plan. An activity for which we had earlier budgeted more than an hour “Value auction” we decided to exclude and settled down with Garo as the principal language for the sharing. We also added a session on why we all were here and this we organized during the evening. Our apprehensions were shot down by the questions and comments that flowed in our direction. This came to closure with discussions on menu and session timings.
a session in progressLater during the evening I read Kenneth Anderson for the first time ~ Jungles Long Ago. The short stories created forests with tigers and their pugmarks in front of my eyes, also present were the paths being used by buffalo driven carts and villages with prominent caste biases. They took me back to the days when I read Chandamama and Amar Chitra Katha and I turned pages with childlike inquisitiveness. The cold night that followed was broken by songs of the Hoolock gibbons at about 5.30 am. We heard them intermittently from 2 directions till it was almost 10.00 am.
We began at 8.20 am, ten minutes before we had decided to begin, with introductions after a brief discussion on whether we (facilitators) should participate in the activities. The introductions were done using paper and pen and while initially I thought they spoke a bit too slowly I realized that this was perhaps the first time all of us were together. “Stated Values” came next. This was fun as we even discussed how the paper was to be folded and all but one participant wrote their values. When this was realized there ensued a deliberation on whether and how much time was to be given to him to work further on his unfinished task. Language was the crux and only one of us had the familiarity to the extent that it could be put to use to share learning with other participants.
Next came the group activity of noting values (my, ours and theirs). 11 participants meant one group had 5 and the other 6 members; both the framing of groups and subsequent actions went fine. This of course was fuelled by presence of gui (arecanut). One question I found particularly interesting “why being short tempered found place in the list of values?” the reason stated was that one wanted to be short tempered with people at times to get work done. At times people simply did not act in a manner that would enable to get the work done in an apt fashion.
facilitators deliberating between sessionsCharts were then put up stating the values and discussed. As this progressed I noticed that the silent and vocal segments within the participants were shaping up. While language was a hindrance to my understanding the proceedings I was thoroughly enjoying their simplicity. As a team we had also begun working in a reactive mode, we had decided to conduct sessions at the school tea onwards but seeing things go fine continued at our bamboo hut. What also struck at this point was that all the facilitators as also the participants were males; the gender bias!
Post lunch session despite being preceded by tea and stretching exercises was quiet compared to the morning session. I also felt that a couple of participants were getting disconnected and realized that facilitation involves a lot of actions to be undertaken in a reactive mode. During the process however we were clear of two issues that this was a sharing workshop and not training where participants would be taught and while we wanted to be on time we in no case wanted to curb the enthusiasm that the participants’ body language expressed. We also decided to do away with computers ~ associated peripherals and in the process discovered the numerous merits of doing so.
During the evening we sat down to fine tune the programme for the coming days, the avenues for improvement over today’s actions and more. Later, after a brief walk, we sat to work on how we would approach the next day, specially the session on values. I read the notes ~ material on vision and mission that I carried with me and was intrigued when I felt some pages to be familiar and some otherwise.
working in sub-groupsThe next day began with interaction on values. We asked the participants to fill in another round of their values, not on the A4 page that we used last noon but on a fresh page from the writing pad. This went on for 10 minutes. Some of them had added a value while some had changed their set of values. We had a short sharing session and discussed how we by way of thinking and interacting had formed our set of values ~ final values. A set of values, the organizational values, was then shared with them taking help of examples. These had been arrived at during the first round. We then tried to establish a connection between personal values and organizational values; and more importantly between values that we had been discussing since yesterday and our conservation actions.
Then we moved to the “Proud and Sorry” activity. This basically is listing what makes you happy and what makes you sad about the organization. This brought forth a range of interesting issues coming out from lack of staff at Samrakshan office to daily providing of only samosa for snacks at the office as sorries and opportunities to travel and attend trainings as the prouds. The collation was an interesting process with the participants exhibiting high level of involvement with the exercise.
The next step was the “Dream Exercise” or determining what the participants saw Samrakshan doing 5 years from now. 3 groups were formed and given time to come up with their versions of their dream. The notion was to bring together dreams and not to deliberate on them (at this juncture). By this time the participants had developed connect with the pace, language and the body language of the facilitators. This session nurtured enthusiasm in the participants and eliminated to a large extent the need for our intervention. Dreams ranged from setting up a big rescue centre (for wild animals) to creating an environment such that animals not visible today in the landscape are easily visible.
As this exercise was on we realized that the prouds – sorries – dreams all pertained only to Meghalaya field office and debated if it made sense to then also bring in the Meghalaya field office vision and mission as opposed to the organization vision and mission. We finally decided against doing so. The dreams were then collated and the cheerful banter that accompanied this collation had us invigorated for the next session on Samrakshan’s vision and mission. This had us bring all the elements ~ values, dreams, sorries, prouds arrived from yesterday as also the values arrived at during the first round that had colleagues from all the units that constitute Samrakshan. This was an interesting experience and the flow was smooth; particularly of breaking the vision and mission statements into parts and translating them.
We then, as decided midway during the noon session, put forth a proposal to the participants to constitute a committee from themselves and this was accepted with great rigour. The committee was to work the next day towards drafting the vision and mission of the Meghalaya field base. This done, the day ended on a very positive note and we did not have a separate closure (check out).
The following day despite communication by the committee that they would be working on the statements there did exist confusion in the morning session. After tea and breakfast when we thought it made sense to have a check in session considering that there was no sharing of the feelings the previous evening as also to draw a clear programme of action for the day. When this was shared with the participants they said we should have the said session immediately and we began, it was 7.30 am. One of the participants coordinated the check in (feelings); these ranged from being confused on connection of these interactions to our day to day actions to feeling happy about being aware of Samrakshan’s vision. The first half of the day i.e. up to lunch the committee was to frame the vision and mission statements for Meghalaya field office.
stretchingDuring this time we got ready at a leisurely pace, looked after our clothes and more importantly discussed the noon session. We decided to discuss the statements threadbare and undertake action with the group to bring out the components of the 5 year plan i.e. broad actions that we will undertake in the coming period.
The statements were presented by the respective groups, one working on vision and other mission. These were very nicely done statements. While the discussion on these was interesting we did sense losing some of the content in translating them from Garo to English. After discussions second drafts of these were formulated. These we read out and all of us agreed to them. At this juncture we realized the need for stretching ourselves and while I thought we were getting monotonous in this context I also realized that this was an all male group not acquainted to sitting for long sessions but acquainted to a physically stressing lifestyle. I joined in the stretching ~ shouting and enjoyed.
The next session was determining the primary action components for the coming 5 years. This we divided into 2 parts. The first part had the participants listing the hindrances to achieving the mission that they had set out and the second part were the broad actions that had to be undertaken to overcome those hindrances. In course of this exercise we had interesting questions and discussions that brought to fore the need to conserve the wildlife and also the major role that conservation education and awareness would have in achieving our mission. The crux was wildlife conservation without involving various segments of society would be ineffective and to get them involved it was pertinent to augment their awareness and sensitivity on wildlife conservation.
The entire sharing experience thus ended on an energizing note.
Thanking all colleagues (participants and facilitators) for a wonderful experience and Kamal for pictures ~ camera.
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