Mt Passaconaway (8) – The South American Regional Office (SARO)

November, 2016

I began a new journey in May of this year (2016), tracing two long arcs in my life:

— Climbing all 48 mountains in New Hampshire that are at least 4000 feet tall (1219m), what is called “peak-bagging” by local climbers.  I’m describing, in words and images, the ascent of each of these peaks – mostly done solo, but sometimes with a friend or two;

— Working in international development during the MDG era: what it was like in the sector as it boomed, and evolved, from the response to the Ethiopian crisis in the mid-1980’s through to the conclusion of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015.

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To jump directly to my description of Plan’s South America Regional Office, skipping the description of my ascent of Mt Passaconaway, click here.

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The Climb – Mt Passaconaway

The eighth of the 48 peaks that I summited was Mt Passaconaway (4043 ft, 1232 m), which is slightly to the Northeast of Mt Whiteface, which is another 4000-footer.  I went up both of these peaks on 15 June 2016, just five days after having gone up Mt Osceola and East Osceola.

It was a very beautiful day.  The hike started from “Ferncroft”, a lovely farm settlement:

Ferncroft, With Mt Whiteface Just Above

I left Ferncroft at around 10am, walking alongside the buildings that can be seen above, and quickly entering the Sandwich Wilderness:

Here is an image I took in November, 2022, from Jennings Peak, one of the “42 With A View” mountains. You can see Passaconaway, and other 4000-footers:

The hike up Mt Passaconaway was beautiful, climbing up Dicey’s Mill Trail on a cool, partly-cloudy day.  A near-perfect White Mountains climb… challenging enough to get me drenched with sweat, so there was a sense of accomplishment, but not ridiculously hard.  There were very few insects, at least until I got over to Mt Whiteface!

Near the top of Passaconoway, I passed the junction with the Rollins Trail, which I would take over to Mt Whiteface, after lunch.

I had lunch at the top at around 12:30pm: not a spectacular view – actually not a view at all! – but there had been plenty of vistas on the way up:

Here’s a view back towards Mt Passaconoway, looking from near the top of Mt Whiteface, later that day (around 2:30pm):

And here is a photo of Passaconaway, and Mt Whiteface, taken from Mt Paugus, in July 2020:

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I climbed Mt Passaconaway again in later years, and in different seasons. For short descriptions of those climbs, click here.

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Plan’s South America Regional Office

I left off my narrative, last time, as Jean and I were leaving Tuluá, Colombia, and heading to Plan’s first Regional Office, in Quito, Ecuador.  Of course, I was very familiar with that city, having arrived there as a Peace Corps Volunteer-to-be in early 1984.  My two years as a PCV in Ecuador were described in earlier posts in this series (here, here, here, and here).

We moved to Quito from Tuluá in 1991.  The city hadn’t changed very much since I left Ecuador in 1986, which was (mostly) a good thing.  Living on 6 de Diciembre, near the Olympic Stadium “Atahualpa”, we were a short walk to the Plan office, close to Parque Carolina (where I jogged), and shopping was easy.  This was before the Ecuadorean government adopted use of the US dollar as currency, so the old “sucre” still circulated, but had devalued massively.  For us, the cost of living was low – not so for the bulk of Ecuadoreans, however, who suffered high levels of inflation. Soon that would lead to public unrest and the “dollarization” of the economy.

Our house was at the top of the “Jockey Club” building – pretty nice views of the city, and of surrounding mountains (which were MUCH higher than little Passoconoway in the White Mountains of New Hampshire!):

Jockey Club – 6 De Diciembre Y Portugal. We Lived Just Underneath That Big Antenna

What A View!

My new boss, Plan’s first Regional Director, was Andy Rubi:

Andy Rubi, Plan’s First Regional Director

Andy was a gifted leader, with many years of experience in Plan – he understood our work very deeply, and he understood the dynamics of the organization very deeply, too.  I learned a lot from Andy, and often find myself using advice he gave me.  For example, when in conflict, stepping back and remembering to ask “what is the issue.”  That’s a great question, very helpful when we are emotionally flooded and unable to stay focused!

(In fact, much later on, when I was in Australia in the mid-2010’s, I reached out to Andy for advice on a personnel challenge I was facing.  Andy, then retired and living in Honduras, was of great help to me then, as always…)

Here is an image of the Regional Office team, and senior staff from across South America a couple of years later, with many of the same people:

(Some names, from the left side of the photo: Luis Alfred Cevallos, Kevin Porter, Roger Braden, Hank Beder, Zach Macy, Washington Muñoz, Diane Carazas, Frank van den Hout, Durval Martinez, Martin Fanghaenel, Hernando Manrique, Beatriz Gonzales, Michael Taylor, Paul Bode, Prem Shukla, Palmiro Soria, Leticia Escobar, Hans van Oosten, Luis Paredes, Freddy Diaz-Albertini, Ron Seligman, Tony Nolan, Mac Abbey, Larry Culver, Yvette Lopez, and Alejandro Acosta.  Missing: Andy himself, Ricardo Gómez, Rezene Tesfamarian, Henk Franken, Jairo Rios, and others.  A great group of people.  Apologies to those whose names I’ve forgotten! – please write with additions and corrections!)

Under Andy’s leadership, Plan’s first Regional Office had been established in July of 1987; I wrote a bit about this in an earlier post, describing how I came to join the organization.

One feature of the Regional Office, when it was established in 1987, was that it was not really guided by a goal to regionalize; it was actually more of a decentralization of headquarters functions.  This soon became very problematic.

Here is my recollection of that initial RO design:

The International Executive Director, Alberto Neri, had his office at Plan’s “International Headquarters” (“IH”) in Rhode Island, in the US.  Reporting to Alberto were several Directors, a few of which are shown in the figure, above.

As you can see, in the initial iteration of the South America Regional Office (“SARO”), staff in Quito related to IH through four separate reporting lines:

— Andy Rubi, Regional Director, reported to the Program Director at IH;

— Hernando Manrique, Regional MIS Coordinator, reported to the Technical Service Director at IH;

— Jairo Rios, Regional Administrator, reported to the Finance Director at IH;

— Washington Muñoz, Regional Auditor, reported to the Board Audit Committee.

In addition, when SARO was created, the “Area Managers” had two “hats” – they managed a group of Field Directors, and they had a technical responsibility as well.  For example, Leticia Escobar, Area Manager for Colombia and part of Ecuador, supervised my boss in Tuluá (Monique van’t Hek) and also supported the implementation of new Human Resources systems across South America; in this, she related to the HR Director at IH.

Leticia’s colleagues, the two other Area Managers, handled, along with the rest of the Field Office Directors in Ecuador and Bolivia, the two other areas of systems strengthening that Plan was piloting:

— Impact evaluation, through the implementation of the new, pilot “Field Office Evaluation System” – FOES.  This system was developed by the Technical Services Department at IH;

— Planning and Budgeting, using the new, pilot “PB2” software.  This was developed by the Finance Department at IH.

So Regional Office staff were pulled in many directions, mostly towards headquarters (rather than towards serving and supporting the Field Offices).  These multiple reporting lines made life very challenging for the human beings involved… on both sides of the organization.

But SARO was meant to be a pilot, with lessons learned to be incorporated as the five other projected Regional Offices were rolled out (in Central America and the Caribbean, in West Africa, in Eastern and Southern Africa, in Southeast Asia, and in South Asia.

So the experience with SARO was studied very thoroughly, very professionally.  For example, when I was working in Tuluá, we hosted a couple of visits from Bill Kieffer, who was in charge of regionalization (reporting to Alberto Neri), and Fred Thomas, who was a Plan board member at the time, and a very experienced management consultant.  It was an excellent process, with Field Office staff (such as myself) listened to as important “customers” of  regionalization.  And, in fact, all of this attention led to major adjustments being made over time, in SARO and also as other Regional Offices were established.

But the initial pilot structure created plenty of conflict, which I could see and feel when I arrived in Quito, especially between Andy and the Regional Administrator: initially, Jairo Rios, and later Luis Paredes.  For example, I vividly recall Andy and Luis arguing over the relative sizes of their offices and, in the end, sending floorplans to International Headquarters for the issue to be arbitrated!

Early in my time in Quito, the structure was changed, and our Regional Office began to look much more like a Regional Office, with the entire regional team, except for the very-appropriate exception of Regional Audit, reporting to Andy:

Around the same time, the “dual hat” for the Area Managers was simplified: we focused on supporting and supervising Field Directors, and a new position was created to support the implementation of the Field Office Evaluation System.

Now Andy was able to form a real team and build unity of purpose.

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Several developments around the time when we arrived in Quito led, eventually, to dramatic changes in Plan.  In an earlier post in this series, I described the arrival of Alberto Neri, an Italian businessman, as Plan’s International Executive Director.  As I said there, it seemed (and seems) to me that Alberto’s initiatives were on target, and necessary, but his “approach to implementing them, and his interpersonal skills, however, let him down and created upheaval at headquarters.”

By the time I arrived in Quito, as Andy was consolidating a strong, creative, and united Regional Team, morale and effectiveness at International Headquarters was falling fast.  Many at Plan’s Rhode Island headquarters, including much of Senior Management, were extremely unhappy with Alberto’s leadership; as a result, the organizational center was becoming increasingly weak and inward-looking.

Meanwhile, across the world, people were showing signs of impatience with us in South America.  The establishment of other Regional Offices had been delayed, partly because changes in structure of our pilot Region were being made, and these changes needed to be assessed, too, before rolling it all out globally.  From our perspective, I think we viewed this as a good process, honest and accountable but a bit slow and painful. But others, in other parts of the world, were becoming impatient, feeling left out.

At the same time, headquarters was losing effectiveness, so staff outside of South America weren’t getting any more support than before – even less, since headquarters was focused on South America.  Alberto’s initiatives were getting a lot of attention, and they were only being implemented in South America, so understandably others got tired of hearing all about the work we were doing, and were skeptical about it – they wanted to get going, too.

Finally, alongside regionalization, and the HR, evaluation, and planning and budgeting initiatives that Alberto was pushing, he was very strongly focused on making Plan more “businesslike”.  This made a lot of sense to the finance and audit teams, but we development hippies grumbled as more financial systems, controls, and were put in place – didn’t Alberto trust us?

This was a potent mix, that only become more dangerous when Andy’s team decided to fill the vacuum that Plan’s headquarters was leaving.  We filled the vacuum with two big initiatives:

— We rallied around an initiative, coming from several Field Offices but, most strongly, from my old friend Annuska, in Cañar.  Annuska had implemented a “low-staff” model which seemed to be effective and exciting.  We rebranded this as “empowerment” and ran with it;

— Total Quality Management (“TQM”) was receiving lots of attention in the business world, and we at SARO decided to explore what this might mean for us.

These two initiatives gave us in South America a strong sense of momentum, that we were innovating and unifying, in an organization that seemed to be drifting.  For us, it was very exciting; for others, it seemed that SARO was going its own way, endangering the unity of the organization…

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Stay tuned for more about “Empowerment” and TQM in Plan’s South America operations in upcoming blog posts in this series…

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Here are links to all the blogs in this series.  There are 48 articles, including this one, each one about climbing one of New Hampshire’s 4000-footers, and also reflecting on a career in international development:

1. Mt Tom (1) – A New Journey;
2. Mt Field (2) – Potable Water in Ecuador;
3. Mt Moosilauke (3) – A Water System for San Rafael (part 1);
4. Mt Flume (4) – A Windmill for San Rafael (part 2);
5. Mt Liberty (5) – Onward to Colombia, Plan International in Tuluá;
6. Mt Osceola (6) – Three Years in Tuluá;
7. East Osceola (7) – Potable Water for Cienegueta;
8. Mt Passaconaway (8) – The South America Regional Office;
9. Mt Whiteface (9) – Empowerment!;
10. North Tripyramid (10) – Total Quality Management for Plan International;
11. Middle Tripyramid (11) – To International Headquarters!;
12. North Kinsman (12) – Fighting Fragmentation and Building Unity: New Program Goals and Principles for Plan International;
13. South Kinsman (13) – A Growth Plan for Plan International;
14. Mt Carrigain (14) – Restructuring Plan International;
15. Mt Eisenhower (15) – A Guest Blog: Max van der Schalk Reflects on 5 Years at Plan’s International Headquarters;
16. Mt Pierce (16) – Four Years At Plan’s International Headquarters;
17. Mt Hancock (17) – Hanoi, 1998;
18. South Hancock (18) – Plan’s Team in Viet Nam (1998-2002);
19. Wildcat “D” Peak (19) – Plan’s Work in Viet Nam;
20. Wildcat Mountain (20) – The Large Grants Implementation Unit in Viet Nam;
21. Middle Carter (21) – Things Had Changed;
22. South Carter (22) – CCF’s Organizational Capacity Assessment and Child Poverty Study;
23. Mt Tecumseh (23) – Researching CCF’s New Program Approach;
24. Mt Jackson (24) – The Bright Futures Program Approach;
25. Mt Isolation (25) – Pilot Testing Bright Futures;
26. Mt Lincoln (26) – Change, Strategy and Culture: Bright Futures 101;
27. Mt Lafayette (27) – Collective Action for Human Rights;
28. Mt Willey (28) – Navigating Principle and Pragmatism, Working With UUSC’s Bargaining Unit;
29. Cannon Mountain (29) – UUSC Just Democracy;
30. Carter Dome (30) – A (Failed) Merger In the INGO Sector (1997);
31. Galehead Mountain (31) – What We Think About When We Think About A Great INGO Program;
32. Mt Garfield (32) – Building Strong INGO Teams: Clarity, Trust, Inspiration;
33. Mt Moriah (33) – Putting It All Together (Part 1): the ChildFund Australia International Program Team;
34. Owls’ Head (34) – Putting It All Together (Part 2): ChildFund Australia’s Theory of Change;
35. Bondcliff (35) – ChildFund Australia’s Development Effectiveness System;
36. West Bond (36) – “Case Studies” in ChildFund Australia’s Development Effectiveness System;
37. Mt Bond (37) – Impact Assessment in ChildFund Australia’s Development Effectiveness System;
38. Mt Waumbek (38) – “Building the Power of Poor People and Poor Children…”
39. Mt Cabot (39) – ChildFund Australia’s Teams In Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Viet Nam;
40. North Twin (40) – Value for Money;
41. South Twin (41) – Disaster Risk Reduction;
42. Mt Hale (42) – A “Golden Age” for INGOs Has Passed.  What Next?;
43. Zealand Mountain (43) – Conflict: Five Key Insights;
44. Mt Washington (44) – Understanding Conflicts;
45. Mt Monroe (45) – Culture, Conflict;
46. Mt Madison (46) – A Case Study Of Culture And Conflict;
47. Mt Adams (47) – As I Near the End of This Journey;
48. Mt Jefferson (48) – A Journey Ends…