Introduction
* Violet Yimbo has been asked to give this report because she is the member of the executive committee who received the highest number of votes in the election.
* Our questionnaire on last year’s program revealed that members did not rate the officers very highly for being helpful and organized.
* We hope to improve this rating significantly during 2007.
* One of the key ways to do that is to be very clear about what jobs each officer is supposed to do, and to keep records of how the officers perform in doing these jobs.
* In December, we agreed a list of officers’ responsibilities. This has been published on the network’s web site.
* Starting from January, we began to keep records on individual tasks carried out by the officers and how promptly they were done.
* Each time an officer has a task to do, we set a ‘deadline’ – a date by which it should be done, usually one week away if the job takes less than one hour. If it is not done, the officer gets a ‘chase’ – a reminder by phone or email or text message to do the job. If the officer does not do the job after one more week, the officer gets a second ‘chase’. If the officer does not do the job after two more weeks, then the job is recorded as ‘given up’.
* Each month from today onwards, there will be a report on how the officers are performing. The report will be read out at the network meeting.
* We shall also publish on the web site each month the full list of all officers’ jobs and when they were done. At the moment, this information is available only in English, but we are happy if any member wants to translate it into Kiswahili.
* This report should help members to understand where are the weaknesses in the network and how to fix them.
* We hope that this report will not be used to criticise any individual officer or cause a personal argument.
* However, the key point is that the officers of the network were elected by the members and their job is to run the network effectively, fairly, openly and economically.
* It is the job of members to make sure that the officers do this. Members should always feel free to ask questions about how the officers are working.
Summary of Work Done
* December and January are the hardest-working months for the officers and coordinator, because they have to collect and send to London information on how the money was spent in 2006, and also put in place new processes for 2007.
* We estimate that the total number of hours’ work needed to ‘close out’ 2006 was over 100 – mostly done by Donatian, who visited every group. We estimated that the hours’ work needed to set up new arrangements for 2007 was nearly 20, while the hours needed simply to do the regular maintenance of the network for January was only just over 11.
* These hours of work are shared between the officers. The time estimates are made by Tim, and they are updated and corrected when the officers finish a job and report if it took longer than expected.
Successes and failures
* The greatest achievement was the site visiting. This was done very thoroughly by Donatian, and he collected a lot of information and had it ready to send to London early in January.
* The greatest weakness was that we were not able to pay grants to groups early in January so that children could start school. We could have had grants ready for payment by 12 January, but we were more than two weeks late because both Tim and officers were not effectively organized.
Lessons from the New System
* We have already learned some lessons from the new system:
* Officers are making promises to do tasks by certain dates, but then not doing them. Furaha had 20 tasks taking 5.45 hours, but completed none on time. Pascal had 11 tasks taking 3.05 hours, but completed only one on time. Yovita had 20 tasks taking 6.35 hours, but completed only four on time. Donatian had the biggest task – site visits. So of his 13 tasks taking 87 hours, he completed 3 on time but did 82 hours of work on time.
* Tim is spending a lot of time reminding officers to do things that they already promised to do. For instance, during January he gave 9 reminders to Donatian, 22 to Pascal, 25 to Yovita and 25 to Furaha. A good target would be 2 or 3 reminders for each person.
* Overall, many jobs are not getting done. Out of a total of 61 tasks to be done by officers, 5 are still in progress, 8 were done on time, 14 were done late, 13 are overdue and 21 have been marked as given up because they are still not done after two or three reminders.
* We can see that these things can be harmful for the network. For instance, Furaha agreed to produce a list of ideas for training for three meetings ahead, to contact people in the network who could give training, and to make sure those people come up with good training materials. At this meeting today, we have only one training arranged – Winston Emanuel on volunteers – and no plans in place for February, March or April.
Recommended Actions for Officers
* Officers should be sure that when they make a commitment they should stick to it.
* In normal life in Dar es Salaam, there are often uncertainties – for example electricity outages, rain on the roads, health problems of family members and other emergencies. To get their jobs done on time, officers need to plan ahead much more effectively, so that they will be on time even if one of the many possible emergencies happens.
* The new system is designed to make it clear who is responsible for doing a job. If an officer does not understand clearly what his or her responsbility is, he should communicate with other officers and with Tim.
* If an officer is particularly busy, then it is still his or her responsibility to get jobs done. If the officer asks someoone else to do them, then the officer has to make sure that the substitute does the job.
* Good planning is very important. For instance, the officers have been trying during January to change the bank account so that cheques can be signed by Furaha instead of Beatrice Samuel. If this project had been well planned, then it could have been done with one visit to the bank – but in fact, many visits were made, so the officers spent a lot of time on it.
* Donatian is becoming very expert on the groups, on email, on spreadsheets and on many other skills that are important for the network. Officers should make use of him by calling to ask Donatian for help and advice.
Overall Conclusions
* We need to accept that some of the difficulties are cultural: in Tanzania, people expect everything to take lots of time, and expect other people to be unreliable. However, our network’s job is to care for vulnerable children. This is a great task, and it is up to us to try to make the best use of the money and the talents that we have.
* If the officers can learn to run the network effectively, this will be a great achievement in building capacity in Dar es Salaam. It is much better for decisions to be taken locally than in London. For instance, it would be easy to hire an outside company to carry out all our training, but then we would not be building any training capacity inside our own network.
* We should all recognize that the success of a network like ours depends on hundreds of very small jobs. Even though each job may not seem significant, they are in fact very important when they are put together.
* We should remember that in building this network, we are doing something new that nobody has done before. Most grantmakers do not give grants to small organizations. Most small organizations have no chance to get training and do exchanges.
* It may be tempting to think that we need to have officers who are full time and paid. But the list of tasks and the estimated time they require shows that if our officers can work effectively, it is easily possible for the jobs to be done by part time officers who have other jobs.
* Finally, we should thank the officers and Donatian. This has been the busiest month of the year for them, and like everyone else the officers have other commitments and family and friends that they are responsible for.
Download officer_performance_report_january_2007.doc
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