A FRAMEWORK FOR GENDER-RESPONSIVE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

BEST PRACTICES FROM BUSINESS and best practices from participatory development: this may seem a strange pair but as I have been reading through books on "the management revolution" and through case studies on gender and participation, I have been astounded by the parallels. For example, the top concern of the chief executives of the world's most successful businesses is "creating total client responsiveness". This sounds strikingly similar to what we are trying to achieve with participatory and gender-responsive planning.

The guiding principles and objectives outlined in this document are one of the outcomes of the FAO Global Workshop, From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices. The women and men who participated, all of whom have hands-on experience with the implementation of participatory gender-responsive development work in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Near East, made it clear where the constraints continue to lie. I learned that the greatest barrier to mainstreaming gender and participation in agricultural development stems not from the field, but from the very institutions we work with.

The Responsive Planner, I have taken the workshop participants' lessons and linked them with the lessons learned in the private sector. This may sound a little farfetched, but many of today's struggles in participatory development have already been overcome in the private sector. Granted, businesses are driven by different motives; they struggle to profit from volatile market forces. But they have found new and successful ways of working towards objectives that we also seek in the world of agricultural development, such as effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability and responsiveness to diversity and change. These new ways of working include strategic planning, participation, decentralization and demand-driven services. Sound familiar?

The challenge

THERE IS AN UNMET CHALLENGE IN THE WORLD of agricultural development. That challenge is to mainstream participation and gender issues. Meeting this challenge requires changes in the procedures and operations of the large agricultural development institutions, and in the responsibilities of the planners who work within them.

Agricultural development that is explicitly participatory and gender-responsive is often found only in short-term, small-scale pilot projects or in small budget sub-programmes of larger projects. Limited support, naturally, translates into limited impact. Meanwhile, the bulk of large-scale and long-term agricultural development programmes, managed by the large national and international institutions, continue as before, with little or no attention to the microlevel complexities raised by gender and participation.

The responsibility of large agricultural development bureaucracies in participation is to respond to the needs of women and men farmers - each in their own right - by providing the best services possible. The use of participatory methods to enable farmers to plan their own development activities is necessary but insufficient. There must be follow-up.

The staff members of FAO Headquarters in Rome learned a lot about these issues from the planners and project staff from Africa, Asia, LatinAmerica and the Near East, who participated in the FAO Global Workshop, From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices. These participants, brought a number of important lessons to FAO. First, they shared a wide variety of ways of making participatory planning and monitoring methods more explicitly gender-responsive. Second, they confirmed that the livelihood strategies and priorities of women usually differ from those of men, as well as from what development professionals often assume. Third, they demonstrated new processes for linking gender-disaggregated field information to policy-makers. Many policy-makers are now well aware of the gender/participation jargon and most agricultural development policies at least mention the importance of women and community participation.

Participatory Rural Appraisal

PRA has evolved so fast, and continues to evolve so differently, that no final description can serve. At one stage PRA was called "an approach and methods for learning about rural life and conditions from, with and by rural people", with the emphasis on learning by outsiders. The prepositions were then reversed to read `by, with and from', as the analysis and learning shifted from `us' to `them'. Then the term PRA came to cover more than just learning. It extended into analysis, planning, action, monitoring and evaluation. It was also used to describe a variety of approaches as they evolved in different countries, contexts and organizations. To cover these, it was described in May 1994 as: `a family of approaches and methods to enable rural people to share, enhance, and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act'... To this can now be added `and to monitor and evaluate'. For some, too, it is now a philosophy and a way of life which stresses self-critical awareness and commitment to the poor, weak and vulnerable.

- Chambers (1997:104)

FAO also learned that the "and Back" part is still very weak. Agriculture institutions still lack the mechanisms for responding to the voices of rural women and men. Without exception, the experience in all 12 countries participating in From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices, showed that the positive impacts of gender and participation are sustained only when institutional policies, procedures and norms support them.

All too often, the use of participatory approaches, such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), is introduced during implementation of already de-signed programmes. The priorities revealed by the PRA may contradict those already fixed by the programme and the institution may be unable or unwilling to make the necessary changes. Both farmers and field staff, who are often the only people to receive training in participatory approaches, can becomedisillusioned.

The workshop participants all stressed that for these approaches to work, they must permeate the entire system. This means from the grassroots up - all the way up - and back again. Sufficient resources and time must be allocated and political commitment must be sincere if field-level staff and local women and men are to remain motivated to work through analysis and change. A major constraint to participatory gender-responsive agricultural development is the lack of institutionalization.

The institutionalization of gender and participation cannot occur on a large scale without the involvement of large-scale institutions, such as ministries of agriculture, large non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the FAO, donor agencies and others. But for large institutions to support increased and higher-quality participation in more places means more than focusing on local women and men. It also means changing the institutions themselves. Even though these large bureaucracies have an advantage of scale over local groups, the disadvantage is that their working procedures are usually neither participatory nor gender-responsive.

Yet, more and more, the large bureaucracies of agricultural development have a growing interest in gender and participation. This interest has grown, in part, because knowledge of local conditions and local priorities has proven to be essential to improving food security and natural resources management and, in part, due to pressure from progressive donors and NGOs. But, the internal systems, structures and procedures of development institutions are not as conducive as they could be. Work tends to be organized around standardized, bureaucratic procedures, including fixed targets, tight deadlines and inflexible budgets, which inhibit more flexible, innovative practices. The challenge of integrating gender and participation cannot be met without dealing with this web of internal bureaucratic elements.

The From Farmer to Planner and Back workshop participants were explicit about where the weaknesses lie. They said that the focus on the field-level and policy-level has left out the middle: those who plan agricultural development programmes and oversee their implementation. Planners have been left out which has had negative consequences for participatory efforts as a whole. While many field staff (and some policy-makers) have learned new approaches and skills for gender analysis and participation, planners have continued with status quo planning procedures, many feeling threatened by the changes that they do not understand. In some cases, the participatory work of field staff has been curtailed by traditional planning processes and supervision criteria. But the planners have little room for manoeuvring unless the institutions they work in change too.

The workshop participants were asked to tackle this challenge explicitly and worked to draft their recommendations for a participatory and gender-responsive planning framework. Their recommendations, which form the backbone of this document, emphasized the need to:

• use participatory methods to empower women and men to express their needs and aspirations;
• build linkages and partnerships among stakeholders at all levels;
• build communication channels to facilitate the flow of information up, down and across the planning ladder;
• open dialogue and build consensus to allow farmers and planners at all levels to make decisions together about appropriate actions; and
• follow-up community based planning efforts and commitment of resources (both financial and human).

Framework: Diagram of Workshop Participants' Recommendations

The institutional challenge then is not only determining how to make single institutions more participatory through internal organizational change, but also developing more collaboration and linkages between and among institutions which may not have worked together in the past. Participatory development on a large scale requires learning to build cross-sector partnerships at all levels, between local and external organizations, as well as among civil society, governmental and private institutions. When and how to develop such partnerships or coalitions are critical strategic questions. New ways of planning and management are needed which can operate across institutional and power differences, while keeping the participation of the grassroots women and men at the centre of the process.

Identifying key principles to guide the process of institutional change is a useful starting point. The Responsive Planner proposes such principles, with its hypothesis that for agricultural development institutions to become responsive, they must become "learning organizations". The challenge is to flatten and soften hierarchy, in order to develop a "rapid response task culture". In other words, to adopt and promote procedures, norms and rewards that embrace field-level realities of diversity and change, and encourage open-ended listening at all levels.

Functions also must be clarified before new processes can be designed. The Responsive Planner focuses on the responsibilities of one of the key players within agricultural development institutions - the planner. Without the dedicated support and participation of agricultural planners, in real terms rather than merely an adoption of the rhetoric, PGRAD will not succeed. Planners (who often hold management positions) are crucial.

The Responsive Planner offers both broad principles and specific planning steps. By dealing with agricultural development institutions as a whole - as well as with the roles of the planners within them - it is hoped that each of us will find several ideas that will help us respond better to rural people's needs.

THE PLANNERS

Planners can play many different roles. Micro-level planners are often logical framework specialists. They strive to capture the complexities of agricultural development within simple cause-effect formulas, while also listing the factors that might derail them. The macro-level planners usually turn their skills to 5-year and 10-year national agricultural development plans, policy framework papers, poverty assessments, food security strategies and special papers setting out how the country will implement the resolutions of various international conferences. Planners also often act as facilitators of decision-making by policy-makers, as technical experts in sectoral areas, or both. Planners are also analysts of existing or potential strategies, or strategists themselves.

You do not have to have the title of "planner" to be a planner. Many women and men whose work contributes to the planning of agricultural development are policy-makers, project managers, technical officers, supervisors or even consultants.

The Responsive Planner is written especially for:

• planners and managers of international development agencies (including the FAO), who are responsible for the finance, design, backstopping, monitoring or evaluation of agricultural development projects or programmes;
• planners working in (or with) ministries of agriculture, including the departments of livestock, fisheries and forestry, who need guidelines and encouragement to align planning procedures to gender issues and participatory approaches;
• planners and managers working in large NGOs that focus all or part of their resources on enhancing the food security and livelihoods of rural women and men; and
• all agricultural development workers who are occasionally frustrated with those field workers, extension supervisors, project managers, or government, NGO or UN staff members who do not fully recognize the importance of gender and participation.

THE PLANNERS' DILEMMA

Agricultural development planning, as a profession and as a system, has developed many axioms over the past decades. But in the past 20 years, the conditions that led to the emergence of these universal truths have blown apart.

The work of agricultural development planning carries enormous responsibility, influencing the wellbeing of hundreds, thousands or even millions of women, men and children. It must be carried out with integrity. But, as agricultural development planners we need to confront a core learning dilemma. We know that we (like everybody) learn best from experience--but we do not experience the direct consequences of our decisions. It is not our own farms, our own livelihoods, or the household food security of our own families which are affected.

Agricultural development institutions are taking an increasingly active interest in gender issues and participatory approaches because of four main forces (Thompson, 1998).

1) Survival. The pressures of structural adjustment, rising debt, declining terms of trade, economic liberalization and market integration are forcing many government agencies to reduce the size of their civilservices and thus their capacities for direct service provision. In the drive for survival, governments are searching for new ways to do more with less. In some cases, the state is doing this by establishing new partnerships with local and international NGOs, many of whom strongly promote gender and participation issues.

2) Donor Pressure. The donor community has been instrumental in stimulating national and international agencies' growing interest in gender and participation. With increasing frequency, donors are placing conditions on grants and loans to governments, requiring them to support community participation and to ensure that women benefit.

3) Failure. During the past two decades, "blueprint" development strategies have been shown to be ineffective in meeting the basic needs of large numbers of marginalized, vulnerable people. The standardized, reductionist approaches to agricultural development have proven incapable of addressing the complex realities of poor people, which are locally specific, diverse and dynamic.

4) Success. The successful application of gender-responsive participatory approaches, especially by NGOs but also by public sector agencies, has attracted the attention of planners. These success stories have demonstrated that it is possible for large-scale agricultural development agencies to implement people-centred approaches and attain positive results.

Let's face it. Planning without attention to gender and participation is easier than planning with it. It requires attention to endless variations of micro-level details. It requires both high-level analytical skill and great humility. It forces us to recognize diversity and change. But it also leads us to more successful, more equitable and more sustainable agricultural development because we learn exactly what is needed in a particular place, by particular groups of people. Gender and participation permit us to plan on the basis of facts, rather than assumptions or generalizations. With participatory, gender-responsive planning, the planner's chief job is to dismantle dysfunctional old axioms and prepare people and institutions to deal with the realistic complexities of diversity and change.

Gender-responsive planning means first learning about how gender shapes the opportunities and constraints that women and men face in securing their livelihoods within each cultural, political, economic and environmental setting. Because women and men have different tasks and responsibilities, and different livelihood strategies and constraints, they must each be listened to. There is overwhelming evidence that development must address the needs and priorities of both women and men in order to be successful.

Participatory planning means that local women and men speak for themselves. After all, it is only the local farmers who know the details about the local ecology, and of the linkages among their family members' activities in food and cash crop production with livestock, forestry, fisheries and artisanal activities. And only they know how these are managed and by whom, and under what constraints. The knowledge and practices of farmers need to be recognized by planners and built upon in development activities.

Taking on all these complex issues is not easy. Herein lies the dilemma for agricultural planners. On the one hand, understanding complexity is necessary to provide agricultural programmes and services that are truly responsive to needs and priorities. If we are not dealing with complexity we are not dealing with reality. On the other hand, it is not realistic to expect planners to deal with thousands, perhaps millions, of micro-level differences. What then, can they do? The easy answer is to say what "not" to do. It is not a matter of attaching gender and participation to existing planning processes - these are not simple add-ons (Sheperd, 1998). It is the entire process of agricultural development planning that must change (and is changing). Any agricultural development institution contemplating adoption of a PGRAD approach soon re-cognizes that methods and training alone will not convert a conventional, technically-oriented, bureaucratic institution into a more gender-responsive, learning-oriented, strategic organization. The institution's mandates, management procedures, reporting systems and supervisory methods must also be reoriented.

Anything But Simple

We find women and men evolving farming systems which are non-linear, multi-story, sequential, interactive, and mixed and managed in many different ways, forming and fitting micro-environments, making their land more heterogeneous and its enterprises more diverse, and multiplying labour-intensive internal linkages. All these demand a continuity of intensive management. All move in a direction opposite to the simplifying, standardizing, management- and labour-sparing farming systems of industrial and green-revolution agriculture.

- Chambers (1997:170)

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

Planning requires looking forward. It is largely a creative activity. But planning also has a concrete impact. It involves mobilizing resources and people, often in large numbers, to do new things. That is not to say that we make plans without looking back - reflecting on past experience and events - or looking around - learning from what other organizations have learned and identifying their best practices.

The world of agricultural development planning has not been standing still. New models, pressures and opportunities have emerged. The philosophical tide has turned away from concepts familiar to planners, such as order, sequence and predictability, towards new less manageable concepts such as variability, risk and diversity.

In addition to gender and participation, a responsive planner builds upon other changes already taking place. He/she draws upon the trend towards decentralized planning and demand-driven agricultural services, which are well known to agricultural planners. Perhaps less familiar to many planners, but of great relevance to PGRAD, are the areas of strategic planning and progressive management for learning organizations. Ideas, principles and best practices from all of these areas, from both the public and private sectors, are incorporated into The Responsive Planner.

Decentralized Planning

Decentralization makes the most sense when agricultural development has to deal with a multitude of complex issues. It is also a policy priority for many governments, driven either by changing political ideologies and/or by budget constraints. Decentralization means moving decision-making down the planning hierarchy where, to the greatest degree possible, operational functions and certain support services are transferred to intermediate and local government levels, producer organizations and civil institutions. The underlying principle is that decentralization should lead to increased efficiency because support services can meet producers' needs in a more timely and appropriate manner on the basis of local diagnoses.

Decentralization means moving away from an exclusively supply-based approach to development, led by centralized policies that take no account of local conditions, to one that is more demand-based (though not exclusively so). Supply-based policies are largely ineffective since they lack mechanisms for adjusting to the specific problems of each region, sector or type of producer. Centralized planning also means centralized information systems. When information is concentrated at the central government level, the rural population is prevented from knowing about the institutional, economic and technological environment in which they must develop, and therefore cannot play an effective role in planning.

While decentralized planning holds promise for increasing the responsiveness of agricultural institutions, it does not always do so. Decentralization can provide a policy context in which gender sensitive and participatory approaches are more likely. But decentralized planning can take many forms, some of which are not participatory. Local authorities to whom a range of powers have been devolved, in the fields of finance, policy design, and resource management, for example, can choose to accumulate rather than share power. In some cases, central governments encourage local authorities to use PRA and related methodologies to involve local people in research, planning and resource-management activities that are part of the process of implementing democratic decentralization. The governments of Bolivia, Uganda, India, the Philippines, Colombia and Mexico are all experimenting with ways of scaling-downgovernment and scaling-up participatory approaches.

Demand-driven Agricultural Services

More and more, farmers are being viewed as "clients" for whom agricultural services must be tailored. The definitions and roles of extension and extension agents are changing, especially because of the need to cover the information and training needs of a diverse, heterogeneous clientele. Public agricultural extension services are being restructured and reoriented in order to respond to the need for participation by a wide range of stakeholders, to improve responsiveness and accountability, including sensitivity to gender issues, and to include non-conventional messages that incorporate environmental issues. These agricultural services are decentralized and open to multiple delivery mechanisms, including delivery by private-sector enterprises, NGOs and producer associations. The result is called "demand-driven" or "client-responsive" agricultural services. This innovative approach is being incorporated into national extension systems that promote a variety of services and methods of delivery within a unified policy framework (Crowder, 1998).Vietnam, Ethiopia and Namibia, to name only a few, are countries experimenting with demand-driven agricultural services.

In the past, extension was simply expected to close the gap between what the farmers actually do and what they should do. Extension was automatically assumed to know what was best for farmers. But in a client-responsive extension system, the focus is on extension as a communication process. Are extension agents and farmers talking and listening to each other? Are they jointly and critically reflecting upon the applicability of the technologies at hand? Grandiose planning gives way to an effort to listen, learn and respond.

Another key concept in client-responsive extension is pluralism. It is increasingly acknowledged that the complexity of agricultural development demands an array of technological solutions and service structures, including a readiness to adapt and change these packages as situations change and understanding increases. Pluralism also means recognizing that farmers are not all alike; there can be tremendous differences in needs and priorities among farmers according to whether they are rich or poor, male or female.

Progressive Management for Learning Organizations

While agricultural development has been shifting from blueprints to participation, the parallel shift in the business world has been from mass production to flexible specialization. Standardization has been replaced by variety and rapid response.

The world's most successful companies, such as Apple, IBM, Honda and Royal Dutch/Shell, have had to turn their planning and management practices upside down and inside out, in order to survive. They have been driven by the discipline of the market and the opportunities and imperatives of new technology. In other words, they have had to respond to incredibly complex, diverse and changing situations. It is also remarkable that, after years of experimentation and adaptation (with perhaps the world's most highly paid management consultants) they have all settled on the same strategy: to become learning organizations (Bryson, 1995; Peters, 1987 and 1994; and Senge, 1994).

In learning organizations, people continually expand their capacity to produce extraordinary results. Learning is used to enhance abilities to respond rapidly to changes in development needs, with the procedural flexibility such changes require. It is a mix of both behavioural and technical disciplines, drawn from both the East and theWest.

The following are the core disciplines of the learning organization.

As the world becomes more interconnected and business becomes more complex and dynamic, work must become more `learningful'. It is no longer sufficient to have one person learning for the organization.... It's just not possible any longer to `figure it out' from the top, and have everyone else following the orders of the `grand strategist'. The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.

- Senge (1990:4)

Systems thinking: seeing things as a whole. The focus is on seeing inter relationships, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots. It is also a set of specific tools, including feedback. Systems thinking is used for dealing with greater complexity and faster change. It helps planners see those structures that underlie complex situations and discern high from low leverage change.

Personal mastery: personal excellence and proficiency. It is a personal commitment to lifelong learning, always striving to do better. People with a high level of personal mastery never "arrive". They are acutely aware of their ignorance as well as their core competencies.

Mental models: recognizing the deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations and mental pictures that influence how we understand our work and how we take action. Questioning our mental models opens us up to inquiry, reflection and learning.

Building shared vision: creating a shared understanding of what the institution is trying to achieve. Shared vision is vital for learning organizations because it provides the focus and energy for learning. An institution's vision defines its mission and clarifies its future course and priorities. Moreover an important and socially justifiable vision is a source of inspiration to its stakeholders, including staff members.

Team learning: aligning and developing the capacities of all stakeholders to create the desired results. It has three dimensions: i) to tap the potential of many minds in dealing with complex issues; ii) to support innovative and coordinated action, in which each team member knows that the others can be counted on to act in complementary ways; and iii) to influence other teams (at other levels), and vice versa, through dialogue, discussion and listening (Senge, 1990).

People working in learning organizations are working on themselves as well as working on their systems of operation. Decentralization of certain management tasks and responsibilities to field staff and beneficiaries is a practice that already has great legitimacy in the business world.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a process designed to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an institution is, what it does and why it does it (Bryson, 1995). For the past 35 years, strategic planning has been a standard part of management practice in the business world. Only in the last ten to 15 years has strategic planning become the standard practice of large numbers of public and non-profit organizations. Strategic planning was introduced at FAO Headquarters in Rome, in 1997.

Compared to the logical framework traditionally used by agricultural development institutions (which is based on a model of cause and effect and not conducive to changing conditions), strategic planning offers a number of advantages. First and foremost, strategic planning allows planners to work with the realities of diversity and change. Second, it includes intense attention to all levels of stakeholders and their interests. Third, before identifying strategic issues to focus on, strategic planning requires the identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats posed by the environments both external (environmental, economic, political, social) and internal (policies, staffing, procedures) to the institution. Finally, through intense monitoring (by the stakeholders), strategic planning evolves. It is an iterative, rolling process - adapting as new needs and priorities emerge. In other words, there is not one plan, at least not for very long. Instead, there is a disciplined, realistic and responsive process of planning. Strategic planning provides a way of blending content and process.

Cautions and Limitations

Because The Responsive Planner has a global audience, and because conditions will be different in each specific planning situation, it outlines a planning approach that is process oriented and open-ended, while still giving some direction. This is risky. It assumes cooperation and support from and among policy-makers and planners at all levels, as agricultural development planning is not the job of any one individual. It also assumes that planners will adapt it, using their own creativity and skills to respond to their own planning contexts.

The ideas offered in this framework will be perceived by many planners as a support or articulation of actions already in process. For others, they may be perceived as a challenge or threat to current ways of working. Either way, this Framework is just a frame. It is one proposal for structuring a core set of ideas, principles, issues and questions into the planning process. It can be a beginning or it can be a stepping stone. As planners gain more experience in facilitating PGRAD, the subject will surely grow and change.

A Declaration of Assumptions

All planning frameworks are constructed on the basis of certain assumptions - and these assumptions need to be stated clearly. The Responsive Planner's greatest assumption is that planners are human beings, with both minds and hearts. For our minds, The Responsive Planner is based on best practices. It draws upon what has been proven to work-- in both the public and private-sectors. But it is also based on a value system that promotes equity and empowerment for those who currently suffer inequity and marginalization.

The Responsive Planner also assumes that planners do not mind a bit of innovation in their work. While planners see some of their roles and tasks changing, some even devolved completely, there are new roles and responsibilities to take their place. These new responsibilities are immensely important to successful participatory and gender-responsive planning and challenging to the individual planner.

Creating extraordinary responsiveness

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE PLANNER in PGRAD? The responsive planner is a proactive problem solver. He or she is not just passively planning, but actively seeks ways to enable practical actions to be taken faster. As learners, enablers and advocates, planners can create extraordinary responsiveness by practising decentralized and fast-paced facilitation across formerly sacred sectoral boundaries. The role of the planner is to make things happen.

PLANNERS AS LEARNERS

What does it mean to be an agricultural development planner in an increasingly interdependent, interconnected and constantly changing world? It means that we must give up the presumption that we know exactly what we are doing. We do not - and we cannot - know everything necessary to formulate plans that meet the highly complex and ever changing needs of women and men farmers. This is because we are unavoidably ignorant in at least three ways.

1) We do not fully understand the complex realities in the field. We have no viable theories of change that fully acknowledge economic, environmental, social, technological and political linkages. We cannot even predict agricultural production beyond the next season.

2) Even if we had all the information we would still disagree about its implications. There are always multiple theories as to why conditions are as they are and no way to settle on the one simple interpretation.

3) What we choose to pay attention to, to seek or to avoid is strongly influenced by our professional training, education and experience. Even as we claim rational reasons for what we do or do not do, we may be missing important points, because we tend to focus on what is familiar to us.

Each planner must challenge conventional wisdom, especially cause and effect relations that have been considered axiomatic. Since new truths are not yet clear, the planner must become a good learner. We must learn to see planning as a learning process. Therefore we must see ourselves as learners, and allow others to see us as learners. This may not be easy at first. Many planners have received a lifetime of training in being forceful, articulate advocates and problem solvers. We know how to present and argue strongly for our views (backed up by piles of data). But when we are forced to deal with more complex and interdependent issues (such as household food security) we begin to realize that no one person knows the answer. The most viable option is to work with our clients (women and men farmers suffering food insecurity) to arrive at the most promising strategies.

To meet our responsibilities as learner-planners, we must become obsessed with listening. Responsiveness requires listening. Listening to farmers must become every planner's business. Listening is strategic. It reveals the big and little things that can pose stumbling blocks to responsiveness, equity, efficiency, etc. The listening learner-planner is the one most likely to quickly perceive changes in the environment.

Learning

It takes two Chinese characters to represent the word "learning". The first character means to study. It is composed of two parts: a symbol that means, "to accumulate knowledge," above a symbol for a child in a doorway. The second character means to practice constantly, andit shows a bird developing the ability to leave the nest. The upper symbol represents flying; the lower symbol, youth. For the Chinese then, learning is ongoing

- Senge et al., (1994)

Listening is not simple. Since it must be practised if we are to be effective learners, it must become a mindset. Our ways of listening must change - and new ways must be created. Traditional modes of listening- such as ministry meetings, donor meetings, village meetings and national meetings - are important. But new modes also are needed, because the numbers and diversity of peoples to whom we listen must be broadened. For example, we must ensure that we are tapping into women's listening posts. We must also make sure that we are listening to and learning from those working closest to the farmers, such as extension workers and community group leaders. They must get a thorough hearing with those higher up the planning ladder. We must also find ways to listen directly to women and men farmers. We must listen to them frequently. We must listen systematically - and unsystematically. We must listen for facts - and for perceptions. We must listen "naively".

Seeing ourselves as learners is a long-term approach of continuous listening and continuous adaptation. We should always seek to learn more about how to create extraordinary responsiveness.

Good learners provide quick feedback on what they hear. They act on what they hear.

PLANNERS AS ENABLERS

There is a "surprise factor" in the participatory process that causes difficulties for traditional models of planning. While a programme may be geared up to deliver, crop protection activities, for example, a PRA exercise may reveal that the farmers have a completely different set of priorities. How should planners respond?

It is common sense to start with local perspectives. We must keep our focus on enabling women and men in communities and local institutions to define and interpret their own realities and not interpret for them. Our job is to respond with the best services and programmes that we can offer. But this is seldom a straightforward job.

In truly participatory approaches (which are rare), the menu of development options is wide open. It is up to the farmers to decide what they want from development. But a word of caution is warranted here: participatory activities will have little impact if the participants do not have access to relevant information. Rural people, especially women, often have limited exposure to development options; they may be unaware of new marketing or employment opportunities, new methods for increased production or improved technologies. Women may ask for tie-and-dye training, not because this is a truely lucrative activity, but because it is the only activity they are aware of. For this reason, as a PGRAD enabler, planners must ensure that communities are exposed to an expanded menu of viable development options (including their relative costs, benefits and risks) so that participatory plans will be based on informed choice.

Even in objective-focused participatory approaches, which are increasingly common (such as participatory programmes for household food security), the range of relevant problems and priorities that may be raised by various groups of farmers is very large. As PGRAD enablers, planners must be ready to facilitate the delivery of a wide variety of technical services. And these cannot be limited to tidy sectoral boundaries, say fisheries here and livestock there. Sectoral boundaries are meaningless to farmers. The highest priorities of many agricultural development programmes today, i.e. household food security and natural resources management, require coordination across sectors.

As enablers, planners should spend a majority of their time seeking ways to make the whole system of agricultural services more responsive. First, planners must ensure that women and men farmers have access to relevant information. Second, planners must become expeditors, barrier destroyers and facilitators. Our role is to find ways to speed up actions, especially those actions requiring cross-sectoral and inter-institutional cooperation. Planners work to eliminate the sectoral barriers or traditional roles that constrain, prevent or slow actions.

PLANNERS AS ADVOCATES

Agricultural development planners do not live by pie charts alone - nor by bar graphs nor three-inch statistical appendices to 300-page reports. We live, reason and are moved by true-life conditions, principles and personal ethics.

Principles and ethics mediate all of the actions of agricultural development institutions, of UN agencies, of governments, of NGOs. But assumptions that planners working within big bureaucracies are just paper pushers tend to overlook the fact that many sincerely care about the impact of their work. There are countless agricultural development planners who are motivated, at least in part, by altruism and their aim is to make things better for those who are less fortunate or in need.

A key role for responsive planners is to advocate empowerment with equity. Empowerment with equity increases the involvement of socially and economically marginalized people in decision-making that affects their lives. The assumption is that participatory approaches empower local women and men with the skills and confidence to analyse their situations, reach consensus, make decisions and take actions that will improve their circumstances.

But empowerment without equity is a risky business. Whether empowerment is good depends on who is empowered and how their new power is used. If those who gain are outsiders who exploit, or a local elite that dominates, the poor and disadvantaged may be worse off (Chambers,1997). Without concern for equity, the tendency would be for men rather than women to be empowered, the better-off rather than the worse-off, and members of higher-status groups rather than those of lower status. The challenge is to advocate a process in which the weaker are empowered and equity is served.

Paying attention to equity means paying attention to poor rural women, as well as others who are socially and economically marginalized. We know this is important because we have learned that misunderstanding or ignoring women's needs not only affects the women themselves but also has a negative impact on the immediate family and the wider community. We have also learned that an appropriately constructed equity approach, which is basically an inclusion approach, can help raise women's confidence, open up space for their views and ease oppressive gender relations.

Definition of Equity

Equity can be defined as that which is fair and just. Equity is not the same as equality because equity represents value judgements about what is fair, whereas equality is about being exactly the same in quantity, degree or value.

- Ingles, Musch and Qwist-Hoffman, 1998

While planners are not in a position to empower rural women and men directly, we can create some of the conditions that enable equitable empowering processes to take place. All too often (inadvertently and unaware perhaps) we do the opposite - undermine or create tough barriers. Good practice: advocate empowerment with equity which is a valid objective for agricultural development programmes. The advocacy can take many different forms. Planners can advocate empowerment with equity in speeches, programme documents and policy papers. It is even more important for planners to ensure that everyone is listening to women and other marginalized groups, and that relevant information and services are directed to them. At every stage of the PGRAD process and during every meeting, whether national, district or local, we must always ask the tough questions: Who is participating? Who is benefiting? Who is not? Why not? and What can we do to improve the situation?

FIVE STRATEGIES FOR CREATING RESPONSIVENESS

With a goal as ambitious as creating extraordinary responsiveness to the complex and ever changing priorities of farmers, planners need proven strategies for getting started. The strategies given below are based firmly on lessons learned from the business sector and from evaluations of agricultural development programmes.

Amplify the Best

All too often we focus only on what is wrong and what is missing. It is even more important to identify, value and affirm that which works and has gone well within the context of our agricultural development institutions. Amplify the best of what is already practised. Start by locating and illuminating the reasons programmes or activities were especially responsive, where staff had exceptional commitment to meeting the priorities of women and men farmers. Seek to discover the factors and forces which allowed them to be so responsive. ² These resources - actual experiences and skills - are powerful seeds and momentum builders with which planners increase their responsiveness.

An organization that reflects good capacity is somewhat like a festive curry meal. Making the meal requires skills, dedication, fresh ingredients, and good timing. There are staple ingredients that are understood as being essential - transparent management systems, clear communication, participatory work approaches - but there are also specific ingredients and spices that can only be selected by the people of that place. And, in the end, it is only they who will be able to put all the ingredients together in a recipe, select just the right cooking utensils, and make a curry that will truly reflect what they and their communities enjoy most.

- William Postma (1998:60)

The extraordinarily responsive planner is a clearinghouse and walking newsletter, a diffuser of best practices, passing on and sharing success stories, so that efficient learning throughout the entire system is facilitated. Such planners assiduously seek out examples of cross-sectoral multi-functional activities that went smoothly and fast, under ordinarily complex and trying conditions. We find out who makes it happen and praise him or her- as an example to others. Learning from experience - with a focus on positive experience - ensures that we do not plan the future on the basis of whims and fashions, but rather on plans planted in firm and fertile ground.

Learn to Love Diversity

In PGRAD, we recognize that communities are neither homogeneous in composition nor concerns, nor necessarily harmonious in their relations. We use gender analysis as a planning tool to understand how gender influences the roles and relationships of people throughout all their activities, including their labour and decision-making roles. It is also important for understanding the position of women and men relative to one another, and vis-à-vis the institutions that determine their access to land and other resources, and to the wider economy.

Many participatory development programmes have not dealt adequately with the reality of community differences, including age, wealth, religion, caste, ethnic and, in particular, gender differences. Looking back, it is apparent that "the community" has often been viewed naively, as an internally equitable collective. Too often there has been an inadequate understanding of the internal dynamics and differences that are so crucial to positive outcomes (Guijt and Shah, 1998).

It is well-documented that development efforts in which women are marginalized are destined to fail. Using gender analysis helps planners establish an environment in which women and men can both prosper. Gender analysis, in other words, never focuses only on women. Good practice: include an analysis of both women's and men's positions, views and priorities. We seek to understand the constraints and priorities of both women and men, relative to one another, focusing on where they overlap as well as where they differ.

Gender analysis helps us learn about diversity. A frequent mistake is to assume that gender analysis treats women and men as single identifiable categories. Not so. Good practice: combine an analysis of gender differences with other locally meaningful differences - such as caste, ethnicity, race and wealth.³ It is called gender analysis because within any single socio-economic category, e.g. low caste agricultural labourers, there are always gender-determined differences that have important implications for development.

Gender analysis helps us break away from stereotypical assumptions and generalizations about what women and men do, and what they want from development. It helps us focus on the facts. Therefore it also reveals how the constraints and priorities for agricultural development may vary from one village to another, and among various groups of people within a village.

This does not mean communities are not important to agricultural development. They certainly are. But the assumptions of homogeneity or harmony have been replaced with recognition of multiple interests within communities. We have learned to love diversity and to recognize its implications for creating extraordinary responsiveness. In PGRAD, we emphasize "specialist" rather than "mass" or "blueprint" thinking.

Learn to Appreciate Change

Change, by definition, means disruption. Both the macro- and micro-level contexts for PGRAD planning are rife with change. Agricultural development institutions have become more tightly interconnected with volatile economic, environmental, political and social changes. These changes reverberate at every level of society - from village to state and beyond. Every place is different from every other place - and every place is changing.

While some changes, such as those brought by natural disasters, are swift, others are gradual. One of the gradual changes is the shifting dynamics of gender relations. Changes in gender relations are by no means a simple issue. They are interconnected with environmental, economic, technological, political and social changes. But they can have profound effects on the success or failure of agricultural development. Nor can it be assumed that these changes are always bad. Girls' increasing access to education, for example, is a positive change.

In many parts of Africa, a worrying gender issue is the absence of useful social and economic roles for men in the face of high unemployment, and their loss of traditional activities which contributed to their households' well being. This has negative effects for men, women and children in terms of their household food security. Dealing with this kind of change with a gender-responsive approach means seeking to respond with services which benefit all individuals within the household. It may, for instance, be of top priority (to both women and men) to increase the dry-season production options of men.

Acknowledging change challenges traditional planning models. Complexity, ambiguity and diversity can be difficult for planners. Under conditions of continuous and accelerating complexity and change, how can we plan agricultural development programmes and services that will be extraordinarily responsive?

At the micro-level, participatory methods help us learn about change. For agricultural development planning, participation means farmers analyse their own problems, prioritize their own options, and plan, implement and monitor their own development activities. Good practice: a participatory analysis of change with a cross-section of women and men, including changes experienced (e.g. deterioration in the natural resource base, new economic opportunities) and changes desired (e.g. improved fodder production, increased access to clean drinking water) (Wilde, 1998). Over time, the very act of participating in development activities creates important physical, economic and social changes, e.g. an expanded irrigation system, or empowerment of the most marginalized groups to plan their own development activities.

For dealing with macro-level changes, progressive business managers use systems thinking. Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the whole picture, for seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-effect chains, for seeing processes of change rather than snapshots of the moment. Because it helps planners see the structures than underlie complex situations and to discern high from low leverage change, systems thinking is used for dealing with greater complexity and faster change (Senge, 1990:68-69).

Success will come to those who embrace change - constant change - not those who attempt to eliminate it. Stability and predictability are gone forever (they never really existed) and therefore must not be the implicit or explicit goals of agricultural development plans. We can master change by focusing on patterns and processes, and by constantly working on responsiveness and enhancing the capabilities of others to do so. We must learn to see changes as opportunities.

The Parable of the Boiled Frog

If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will immediately try to scramble out. But if you place the frog in room temperature water, and don't scare him, he'll stay put. Now, if the pot sits on a heat source, and if you gradually turn up the temperature, something very interesting happens. As the temperature rises, the frog will do nothing. In fact, he will show every sign of enjoying himself. As the temperature gradually increases, the frog will become groggier and groggier, until he is unable to climb out of the pot. Though there is nothing restraining him, the frog will sit there and boil. Why? Because the frog's internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival is geared to sudden changes in his environment, not to slow, gradual changes.

- Senge, 1990

Fail Forward

Faced with the complexity, diversity and dynamism of gender-participation issues in combination with volatile environmental-economic-political-social conditions, it is only to be expected that mistakes will be made. But errors that are recognized and embraced can lead quickly to extraordinary responsiveness. Lessons from mistakes are needed to "fail forward"-- to learn to do better (Peters, 1987).

Responsive planners must be open to learning from mistakes, always seeking to do better next time. Such an attitude requires a high degree of critical self-awareness and willingness to embrace error. The latter is perhaps the most difficult personal attribute to develop (Chambers, 1997). Professional insecurity and career pressures usually lead us to hide or minimize the errors we commit, be they of judgement or action.

If we don't make utter fools of ourselves from time to time, we grow smug - that is, we do not grow at all.

- Peters (1994:278)

Learning depends absolutely on embracing error. The most competent planners know that errors will happen as plans are implemented. They design mechanisms for participatory monitoring in advance so they will learn about mistakes as soon as they occur, and use the resulting understandings to continually adjust the plans. Failing forward is an operational precondition for responsiveness - the capacity to learn from errors, adjust and improve.

Defer to the Field

Embracing complexity, continuous learning and always seeking to improve - these words cannot be repeated enough. No one denies where the answers are: in the field. Unfortunately a certain distance is institutionalized between planners and the field. This distance blocks, blurs and distorts understanding. Many big mistakes have been made in agricultural development programmes -usually because they were designed by those who were physically, organizationally, socially and cognitively distant from the people and conditions they were planning and prescribing for (Chambers, 1997).

What are the practical implications? Rethink control. The long-term success of a participatory process depends more on the skills and enthusiasm of the field staff than on any other single factor. In learning organizations, the organizational chart looks like a reverse pyramid, with field-level people on top and supervisors and planners below them in a support and facilitation role. In other words, we must defer to those who are in the field or close to the field. The job of all responsive planners - from national to district levels - is to enhance the ability of the field staff to do its job better. The most effective planners empower others to act and grow. In a traditional hierarchical organization, the top level thinks and the local level acts. In a learning organization, we have to merge thinking and acting in every individual.

Ironically, the most lightly regarded staff in agricultural development organizations, public or NGOs, are those who are closest to the farmers and most directly responsible for the quality and responsiveness of services delivered. This must change if total farmer responsiveness is to become reality. The responsive planner spends time with field staff members, gives them recognition, listens to them, empowers and trains them, and gives them the technical support they need, making sure that the systems are in place which allow them to do their jobs to the fullest extent possible.

Deferring to the field means unleashing field staff's commitment by giving them the flexibility to act rapidly, to respond directly to farmers' needs and to be responsible for the results. We must delegate to act horizontally too. Delegation has traditionally meant pushing decision-making to the lowest level. But there is another level of delegation which is growing in importance--delegation to farmers and to field staff as part of a horizontal planning process which seeks fast connections with other women farmers, farmers' groups, entrepreneurs, etc. and across sectoral functions without having to check up the ladder first.

Changing from the inside out

PLANNERS DO NOT WORK IN A VACUUM. They work within institutions - generally large bureaucracies - where the cultures, procedures and methods of operation are far from conducive to PGRAD. How can a large agricultural development bureaucracy support and encourage its planners to create extraordinary responsiveness? How can a gender perspective be promoted and sustained to the point that it is institutionalized and still remain responsive to the variety of women and men's experiences and priorities? Through people. People must become the primary source of value added, to be optimized.

GET A RAPID RESPONSE TASK CULTURE

Like everything else, institutions have a culture and this culture exerts great influence on what can and cannot be accomplished by their staff members. Institutionalization of PGRAD requires a "rapid response task culture" that draws planners, policy-makers, programme managers and farmers into a relationship that is cooperative and action-oriented.

It is the "role culture", not the task culture, which is typical of large bureaucracies (Handy, 1993). The role culture - which works by logic and rationality - can be illustrated as a Greek temple. The institution rests its strength on its columns, which correspond to sectoral functions or specialities. The work of the columns, and the interaction between the columns, is controlled by clearly defined roles (e.g. job descriptions), procedures for communications (e.g. required sets of memoranda) and rules for decision-making. They are coordinated at the top by a narrow band of senior management, the pediment. If the separate columns do their jobs, as prescribed by the rules and procedures, this should be the only coordination needed-and the ultimate result will be as planned.

The Greek Temple

This Greek temple institution will succeed as long as it operates in a stable environment. When next year is like this year, so that this year's rules will work next year, then the outcome will be good. But Greek temples are insecure when the ground shakes, i.e. there is change. Role cultures are slow to perceive the need to change and slow to change even when the need is seen.

The task culture is job or project orientated. Its accompanying structure can be best represented as a net, with some strands thicker and stronger than others. Much of the power and influence lies at the interstices of the net, the knots. The task culture seeks to bring together the resources, the right people at the right level, and let them get on with their jobs. Influence is based more on expertise than on position. Influence is also more widely dispersed and each individual tends to think he or she has more of it. The task culture is adaptable. Groups, project teams or tasks forces are formed for specific purposes and can be reformed, abandoned or continued, as necessary. The net institution works quickly since each individual has a high degree of control over his or her work, is monitored by results, and enjoys easy working relationships within the institution because relationships are based on mutual respect.

Agricultural development experience, including integrated rural development, multi-sectoral nutrition planning, farming systems research, national food security planning and poverty alleviation planning, has shown that the traditional role culture is not well-suited to such integrated, cross-sectoral, multi-sectoral or participatory programmes. In all cases, different departments have been thrown into conflict over priorities and resources, decision-making has been disrupted or slow, and planners and managers have been ill equipped to handle new levels of complexity (Maxwell, 1996).

One striking feature of the process approaches advocated by participatory development workers is that they correspond closely to a task culture approach. The key features of a task culture, namely innovation, flexibility, participatory leadership, result-orientation, are all found in process models for participation. Good practice: for institutionalization of PGRAD, shift from a role culture (hierarchical bureaucracy) which typically uses a blueprint approach to planning, to a task culture (learning organization) which promotes a process approach to planning.

In today's world, learning organizations and private-sector business managers prefer the task culture. With its emphasis on groups, expert power and rewards for results, it is the institutional culture most in tune with current ideologies of change and adaptation, individual freedom and low status differentials. But its virtues should not be exaggerated. When resources are not available to all those who are able to justify a need for them, when money and people have to be rationed, planners begin to feel the need to control allocations and to set priorities. Alternatively staff members begin to compete, using political influence for available resources. This new state of affairs necessitates procedures and planning processes to help managers and planners to make strategic decisions.

GENDER-RESPONSIVE PROCEDURES

One of the most fundamental tasks for the PGRAD institution is to mainstream gender issues, not only in its fieldwork - but also inside its own offices.

The word "gender" is probably the most misunderstood word in development today. At best, many development planners see it as useless jargon, relegating it to that extra (but required) paragraph in programme and policy documents. At worst, it causes feelings of anger and hostility.

Gender can be defined as the social differences in female and male roles, rights and relations that are:

• learned (they are not the direct result of biological differences);
• dynamic (they change over time);
• multifaceted (they vary within and among cultures) and
• influenced by class, age, caste, ethnicity and religion.

Gender issues are controversial because they are relationship issues - and therefore politically and culturally sensitive - not between individuals, but between classes of females and males. As a fundamental organizing principle of all societies, these relationships colour and mediate all forms of social and economic activity, at all levels. It is about understanding these relationships. Gender is about addressing dynamics that are harmful, inequitable and unfair. And it is about ensuring that both women and men have a say in their own lives.

Slowly, gender issues are gaining legitimacy in development institutions. It is increasingly recognized that gender issues are inter-linked with the issues of human rights, equity and fairness. Gender issues have also proven to be closely linked to efficiency and success. This link is especially strong in agricultural development.

Within all types of development institutions, women's exclusion is most striking in the case of agricultural institutions and services, despite the prevalence of evidence that women are central to agriculture in most agrarian economies. Across Africa for example, where women are responsible for 60 percent of total agricultural output and 80 percent of food production, they receive less than 2 percent of contacts with extension workers. It has also been observed that the bias against women farmers increases in intensity as the value of agricultural service increases. This is also true for other agricultural institutions such as marketing boards, research institutions and credit agencies. That these services overlook women raises serious doubts about the gender-neutrality of agriculture institutions (Goetz, 1992).

Before institutions can ensure gender-responsive outcomes on the outside, they must work on the inside. No matter how clear policies and responsibilities might otherwise be, without gendered procedures, the bureaucracy can undermine PGRAD. The lack of female staff, for example, has often proven a barrier to reaching women farmers. Good practice: make a "gender scan" of the organization at three levels: institutional mandate, organizational culture and structure, and human resources (Sprenger, 1996). This scan, useful for revealing where internal staffing and operational procedures may require adjustment, includes the following questions.

MANDATE

• Does the institution have a clear gender policy? Is this gender policy accompanied by a strategy with timeframe and allocation of responsibilities?
• Are adequate financial resources allocated for implementation of the gender policy? Are funds explicitly earmarked for gender-related activities?
• Does the institution conduct its strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation in a gender-disaggregated manner?
• Do the activities of the institution contribute to the empowerment of women and to changing inequitable gender relations?

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND STRUCTURE

• Does top management fully promote the gender policy? Does everyone feel ownership of the gender policy?
• Are staff with specific gender expertise located in key positions? Are gender specialists participating in key decision-making processes?
• Is gender stereotyping addressed and countered by individual staff members? By management?
• Does the institution have a reputation for integrity and competence on gender issues?
• Does the institution comply with gender-sensitive behaviour, for example, in terms of the language used, images and materials displayed and procedures on sexual harassment?
• Does the institution have the physical infrastructure and arrangements to facilitate women's presence and mobility?
• Are there effective mechanisms for coordination, consultation and institutional gender learning among various divisions of the institution, both horizontally and vertically?
• Is there sufficient gender-disaggregated information to do the job well?

HUMAN RESOURCES

• Is management committed to promoting female staff representation at all levels? Is this commitment translated into concrete goals and timeframes?
• Do selection criteria for new staff members include capacity to deal with gender issues in practical terms?
• Do women and men receive equal wages for equal work at all levels? Do they have equal opportunity for career development and promotion?
• Are gender issues discussed during staff performance appraisals? Is good performance on gender issues rewarded, recognized and shared with others?
• Is there a gradual increase of gender expertise among all staff members as a result of training?

FOUR CAPABILITY BUILDING BLOCKS

The capabilities required to institutionalize PGRAD are numerous, touching upon every aspect of work. While the task may appear daunting, the capabilities needed are already at hand. Lessons learned from both private and public sector institutions show the way.

Think Horizontal

Shifting the institution's entire orientation from vertical (hierarchical) to horizontal (fast, cross-sectoral, cooperative) is one of the most dramatic requirements of institutionalizing PGRAD. Horizontal thinking is partnership thinking. We must see agricultural development as a joint venture of stakeholders, including government, NGOs, donors, UN agencies and private business, while keeping the voice of women and men farmers in the centre of the process. Creating responsiveness is as much about inter-institutional change as it is intra-institutional.

Considerable knowledge is revealed when planners and practitioners from different areas come together to work for PGRAD. Everyone must look at the whole together. Good results in a complex system depend on bringing in as many perspectives as possible. By its very nature, PGRAD points out interdependencies and the need for collaboration. Thus, we must make sure that the institution is open to working together with all the relevant stakeholders to pave the way for fast, cross-sectoral solutions.

Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants

There is a Sufi tale about three blind men who encountered an elephant. It is a large rough thing, wide and broad, like a rug," said the first, who was grasping an ear. The second, who was holding the trunk, said, "I have the real facts. It is a straight and hollow pipe." And the third, who was holding a front leg, said, "It is mighty and firm, like a pillar." Are the three blind men any different from the directors of livestock development, fisheries and crop production in many agricultural development institutions? Each sees their sector's problems clearly, but none see how they interact with the others. The Sufi story concludes by observing that, "Given these men's way of knowing, they will never know an elephant.

- Senge, 1990

Establishing partnerships is especially important in the early stages of adapting to a gender-responsive and participatory approach, when many of those concerned will not welcome the changes. Good practice: twinning - pairing people or groups within and between institutions, and between levels in institutions, to support one another. The purpose is to establish a direct horizontal link between those facing similar challenges, in order to channel expertise and knowledge from one to the other, through regular, formal and informal contacts between colleagues on both sides. The strong point of this strategy lies in the horizontal and collegial aspect of the relationship, its flexibility, and easy access to regular advice. Twinning is most successful however if it has a clear focus, such as development of methods for participatory monitoring and evaluation.

Share Information to Share Power

There are few greater liberating forces than the sharing of information. Knowledge is power - it always has been, it always will be. Without the power of information, there will be no responsive action.

Those with less power, e.g. women and men farmers, tend to have less access to information and less power in defining what sorts of knowledge and information are useful in agricultural development. Many in this position also accept the superiority of the knowledge of those in more powerful situations, such as village leaders, extension workers and planners who often feel confident about the superiority of their own knowledge. One of the biggest contributions of PRA experiences to date has been its challenge to the superiority of professional knowledge over that of the non-professionals.

The world today is dealing with a host of new variables surfacing and changing at lightening speed. Therefore, the institutions of agricultural development must have access to a variety of information sources to match the complexities of the field, or risk being led to erroneous conclusions. The demands and complexities of PGRAD have at least two possible information-related risks: distortion and overload.

We all Guess Wrong Sometimes!

I think there is a world market for about five computers.

- Thomas J. Watson
Chairman of IBM 1943⁴

Information distortion is a great peril of responsive planning. Most information used for agricultural planning, especially nationally and internationally, comes professionally packaged. But there may be many distortions behind the tidy columns and computer-generated graphics. Most information systems are designed to protect planners from trivia and complexity so that our minds are clear as we confront "big picture" decisions. Instead our minds are all too likely to be empty of all but the findings of the pre-packaged data, leading to uninformed decisions. One of the most pervasive examples is the lack of gender-disaggregation in agricultural statistics which can create enormous distortions in understanding field-level realities and lead to ineffective, even harmful, development programming. Good practice: include the use of gender-responsive PRA methodologies in addition to gender-disaggregated statistics.

Too much information can have a counter-productive effect, as no one will have enough time to digest it. Hence the importance of original presentations and summary reports that present only the most pressing issues. Macro-level development information flowing down to communities, and micro-level information flowing up from communities to planners needs to be made user-friendly. Horizontal channels of communication and information sharing - farmer to farmer, women's group to women's group, NGO to NGO, etc. also are key to PGRAD. Having the capacity to ensure adequate information transfer, vertically and horizontally, is a priority and should be built into the institution's routine functions.

Communication media can help overcome barriers of information access, illiteracy, language, inter-cultural differences and physical isolation. Good practice: well-designed communication strategies that establish dialogue with rural people, involve them in their own development and relay information useful for improved farming. Key strategies and media tools for improving the dissemination and sharing of agricultural knowledge include rural radio to reach remote audiences, video for training illiterate farmers, multi-media campaigns for widespread dissemination of better practices, and, where available, tele-training and electronic networking using the new information technologies. The challenge is to combine the use of communication media with audience participatory processes in order to achieve empowerment through information sharing. The challenge is also to ensure that women and other marginal groups have full access to these communication channels.

Train Everyone, Lavishly

When people are seen as the prime source of value added, it becomes clear that they can never be trained too much.

While training is not sufficient, it is essential, for creating responsive institutions.⁵ Training is a key component in shaping and influencing the institutionalization of PGRAD. To have lasting impact, the training focuses not only on preparing staff members to use innovative field methods, but also on improving their communication and analytical skills. It encourages staff members at all levels to take increased responsibility for their own learning and supports the development of competencies such as adaptable, transferable skills. This kind of training fosters an environment in which staff members from different levels feel encouraged to communicate and able to work together constructively. This means concentrating on attitudes, behaviour and principles, as well as key methodological concepts and techniques. Of course, the training must be context specific.

Good practice: design a capacity-building process that moves forward not only the staff of the institution, but also its partners and counterparts as well as women and men farmers. It is important that everyone becomes familiar with similar processes, methods and tools for PGRAD. Today, in many countries there is a hodge-podge of approaches with everybody doing their own thing and little coordination among them. Below is an outline of a process for developing a PGRAD training programme. The focus is on bringing existing capacities together in a common approach, and filling in the gaps, as required.

Make training a priority. The most important ingredient for moving toward an effective capacity-building process is commitment. Training must have political as well as financial support.

Designate a training coordinator. A resource person must be given responsibility, at least temporarily, to coordinate the development of acapacity-building process. This person must be familiar with both PGRAD objectives and with participatory methods of training, and be in a position to communicate with farmers and with all of the institutions involved.

Carry out a needs' assessment. A detailed needs' assessment clarifies the technical and methodological needs of both farmers and implementation staff, including planners. The purpose of a needs' assessment is to identify the gaps between "what is" and "what should be".

Set training objectives. Final objectives for training should be based on the findings of the needs' assessment. This could include: i) raising awareness, e.g. about the relevance and applicability of participation and gender issues and an integrated cross-sectoral approach to PGRAD; ii) expanding the menu of methods, e.g. for communication, gender analysis, participatory planning and participatory monitoring; and iii) expanding the menu of technical skills, e.g. for horticulture or poultry development in response to farmers' priorities.

Select priority training topics. A finalized list of priority training topics is set on the basis of the training objectives. It is also recommended that the following general categories of training topics be given serious consideration: strengthening local organizations, animation training, participatory communications, gender analysis, participatory planning and monitoring, and responsive planning. Good practice: ensure that gender issues are fully integrated into all training topics.

Identify training capacities. Once the training needs and priorities are identified, capacities to deliver the appropriate training courses must be found. Training capacities must include: knowledge of agricultural development and household food security issues, extension and farming systems, gender analysis and poverty alleviation approaches; knowledge of adult learning theories and experience with participatory training methods; experience in communications methods and training materials' development; general management skills including planning, budgeting, logistics and supervision of personnel; and an overall willingness to listen and learn from the trainees of all levels. Of course, no one person will have all of the training capacities needed. Good practice: for long term institutionalization, select the most promising institution (or team of institutions) and build up their capacities to deliver PGRAD training on an on-going basis.

Design a capacity-building strategy. It is recommended here that there be less focus on study tours to other countries and more focus on building-up training capacities within each institution or each country. This would benefit PGRAD in the long run. Good practice: start with training-of-trainers (TOT).

Design the training programme. Once needs, priorities, capacities and strategies are identified, it is finally time to design a training programme. The programme should provide an overview of all the training courses to be delivered, over a certain time period, showing a balance between methodological and technical topics, and explaining how the programme will meet the needs revealed in the needs assessment. Good practice: intermittent training stretched over a longer period so that trainees have the opportunity to use their new skills and knowledge and to bring work-related challenges into future courses.

Implement and evaluate the training programme. When it comes to implementation, we must look back--to the first point. Implementation will not happen unless there is strong support and coordination. The institution(s), and the trainers will not be able to tackle the challenges of continuously introducing new skills and new knowledge in new ways and in a timely manner, unless they have the necessary support. The training strategy must have the flexibility to learn from successes and failures. For this reason, training evaluation must be included at every step. Good practice: evaluate methods and processes, as well as materials and information, and the skills of the trainers themselves, so that areas for improvement can be identified continuously.

Plan to follow up. Training opens windows of opportunity, but these windows can quickly shut again unless appropriate follow-up activities are planned. Typically, where well designed, trainees leave workshops with increased awareness and enhanced skills. But the trainees' capacities to use what they have learned, over the long-term, often depends on institutional structures and supports. Further, as the PGRAD process proceeds, new needs will surely emerge at all levels.

Use the Sandwich Model to Monitor Responsiveness

Everybody, high or low on the organizational ladder, has a supervisor who is responsible for monitoring his or her performance. Senior field workers-who are monitored by regional supervisors who are monitored by management at the national level, and so on--monitor field workers. Even the Minister of Agriculture or director of an international agriculture agency, must answer to others.

Although monitoring by supervisors is important, it is not sufficient for monitoring responsiveness. Good practice: create a system in which staff members are in a kind of sandwich, being monitored from below and above.⁶ For example, the responsiveness of field staff would be monitored: (i)bottom-up by their clients, women and men farmers with whom they work closely for planning, implementing and monitoring agricultural development activities; and (ii) top-down by management, through performance evaluations that give priority to communication and listening skills, gender responsiveness, innovation and willingness to embrace errors, in addition to technical expertise. Both field workers and top management, for example, would monitor planners. The monitoring must incorporate indicators about short-term activities as well as long-term processes. Thus accountability to responsiveness would permeate the institution, illuminating where the constraints lie and where extraordinary responsiveness is being achieved.

The sandwich model of staff monitoring touches upon the relationship between farmers and field staff and also the relationship between superiors and subordinates in the institution. Changes in these relationships are at a personal level and can only be facilitated in an atmosphere which reduces the fear of loss of power and where new types of relationships can be negotiated.

At the beginning, staff monitoring may not be enough to motivate agricultural development workers and planners to change entrenched working styles, especially where incentives are fairly low. Good practice: include structural incentives that encourage responsiveness. This includes policy statements, programme objectives, training opportunities and performance-oriented bonuses. It is recommended that a series of bonuses be offered to the planners and field workers who receive high appraisal from their clients.

FOUR INHIBITORS

It is clear that the kinds of pressure commonly experienced by agricultural development planners, e.g. unrealistic time constraints and inflexible budgets, would be seen as archaic by the more progressive business managers of today. More importantly, such practices are often incompatible with both the philosophy and operational implications of PGRAD. To dangle the carrot of participation, while continuing to maintain control over resources, time and procedures, is plainly counterproductive.

Product (only) Focus

Agricultural development programmes (designed using the log frame) include quantifiable targets such as numbers of cattle that will be vaccinated, number of hectares that will be irrigated, and so forth. But these pre-set targets become a tyranny, serving as determinants of the activities to be undertaken and as benchmarks for monitoring progress. They do not leave room for learning along the way or for flexibility to adjust in order to improve responsiveness. In other words, pre-set targets put the focus on "product" rather than "process". Product does matter. Poor and marginalized people usually view processes primarily as a means to secure something that can improve their livelihoods. Indeed, a productless process is an intellectual and theoretical exercise - ill afforded by the poor. But process also matters. Processes that treat people as ends, not merely means, are empowering and are more likely to produce responsive products and services. Process and product interact.

Inflexible Budgets

It is difficult to plan exactly what will be needed in a PGRAD programme in advance. The particular requirements will depend largely on what local women and men identify as important, and how the institution's staff can best respond to their needs. Rigid, pre-set budgets, in which specific amounts are tied to particular activities (to be done within a pre-set time period, which is usually far too short), do not allow for the unplanned requirements of gender and participation issues.

Agricultural development institutions must operate in an environment of progressively decreasing budgets. Naturally, every programme has an overall ceiling figure. But having fixed spending budgets for sub-programmes and activities, and rewarding staff who make big loans, spend fast and achieve high physical targets, only propagates blueprint programmes. They also propagate dependence. Especially in the early years, PGRAD programmes and projects need to spend more on exploration, training, learning, capacity-building and processes of institutional change. Flexible funding is needed to allow more or less to be spent, according to emerging needs and opportunities, and for directions and priorities to change (Chambers, 1997).

Upward (only) Accountability

The lines of accountability in the majority of agricultural development institutions move upwards. The procedure is for reports on monies spent and activities implemented to be passed from field office to the district office to the national office and, finally, to the donors. Upward accountability assumes that people in the higher levels of the hierarchy know best about how much money should be spent, on what, and by when. The further down the line, the fewer people are entrusted with such decisions. The intended beneficiaries find themselves at the end of the line with no say whatsoever.

The challenge in a responsive institution is to make accountability work downwards. When this happens, not only are local people informed of the monies that have been spent in their name (horizontal as opposed to vertical transparency), they are also more likely to have a say about how future monies should be spent. In certain cases, it may be appropriate to extend monies directly to women and men's community-based organizations and let them pay for external services as and when they see fit. Since it is now common in many development programmes for local women and men to be trained in credit management, bookkeeping and other basic financial skills, it is not unrealistic to expect those who hold the scheme's purse strings to be accountable, or at least more transparent, to those in whose name they have obtained funding.

Seeing Ourselves as the (only) Experts

Responsive planning's greatest enemy is attitude. If agricultural development institutions see themselves as having all the expertise required for good development planning - and if they see the farmers as ignorant and backwards - then all is lost.

Experts do not bother with elementary questions anymore - and thus fail to learn about the true sources of bottlenecks, negative impacts and failures. Experts rely much too much on "we've always done it that way". Typically, such experts rarely leave their offices to visit villages and, when they do, they meet only with the male village elders (usually talking more than listening).

But it's the basic fundamental questions that yield good results. And those in the best positions to get the answers are not the district and national officers sitting in their offices, but those who are out listening to both women and men, asking basic questions.

There is no doubt that expertise is needed - technical, financial and managerial. And most staff members in agricultural institutions have a great deal of expertise to offer. But in PGRAD, this expertise is provided as needed, in response to a greater process. We must never assume that we know all there is to know. We must remain deeply inquisitive - always asking elementary questions - committed to seeing reality more and more accurately.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Changing from the inside out - to institutionalize PGRAD - is not going to happen overnight. Learning comes from doing. Naturally, new approaches and methods meet resistance. Therefore, gradual evolution, establishing and securing small successes, works better than going abruptly to scale. It is only realistic to start small, with a focus on practical actions rather than philosophies, to undertake collaborative field work, and to build larger programmes slowly over time as attitudes and capabilities begin to change. In other words, to follow a process approach.

Big bureaucracies have a tough time thinking small. Because agricultural planning is usually perceived as a big job - covering millions of farmers, several agro-ecological zones and several farming systems - the general pattern has been to produce national or regional plans, generally covering five to ten year periods. But planning exercises producing voluminous long-range plans are less useful than before. Instead, a strategic mind-set, which focuses on learning, skill and capacity-building for responsiveness, is more important than ever. We must break the "think big" mind-set.

The challenge is to view every element of every farm through the lens of each female and male farmer and constantly to redefine every line of an agricultural plan in terms of the farmers' perceptions. This is comparable to nature, where meaningful beginnings are almost always unnoticeable.

There is no such thing as an insignificant improvement. Small, well-focused actions can produce significant, enduring improvements, if they are in the right place. Business systems thinkers refer to this principle as "leverage". Tackling a difficult problem is often a matter of seeing where the high leverage lies-- a change that would lead to lasting, significant improvement with a minimum of effort. The only problem is that high-leverage changes are often invisible to planners, though usually obvious to the farmers.

Thinking small is also a good way to avoid expensive "big project" failures. With small starts it is easy to have small stops, if necessary. But of course, small starts mean endless variation.

A small-starts approach starts with listening, followed by quick response to specific needs in a specific place with specific groups of women and men farmers. It is aimed at shortening the development cycle. A small-starts approach demands that:

• all levels of staff visit the farmers, listening and learning;
• the voices of various groups of women and men farmers are central to the planning process, each in their own right;
• pilot projects, rather than full-scale programmes, are established;
• bureaucracy adapts to allow field staff to operate efficiently;
• sectoral boundaries are softened for fast cross-sectoral response; and
• the process is treated as an experiment, to be continuously improved.

Strategic planning for a world turned upside down and sideways

THE WIDESPREAD AND DEEPENING PROBLEMS of food insecurity and natural resource degradation testify to the need for more effective planning models. Strategic planning is a forward-looking process that allows us to consider where are we now, where we want to be, and the best ways to get there. The process of strategic planning facilitates communication and participation, accommodates divergent interests and values, fosters wise and analytical decision-making, and promotes successful implementation.

Strategic planning offers many advantages for PGRAD. It is conducive to participation and gender issues because it includes intense attention at all levels of stakeholders and their interests, and because it allows planners to work with the realities of diversity and change. Before identifying which issues to focus on, strategic planning requires an identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats posed by the institutional environments both external (environmental, economic, political, social) and internal (policies, staffing, procedures). Finally, through intense monitoring (by the stakeholders), strategic planning evolves, adapting as new needs and priorities emerge. Listening and learning are key inputs. As this diagram shows, it is an iterative, rolling process.

The Rolling Process of Strategic Responsiveness Planning

STRATEGIC RESPONSIVENESS CYCLE

The Strategic Responsiveness Cycle is based on the classic principles of strategic planning plus value-adding methods to support a strategic agricultural planning process that is explicitly participatory and gender-responsive. It draws upon a considerable body of practical experience, from major business corporations, from public and private agricultural development institutions, and from women and men who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The process is deliberative and participatory. It can be broken down into four steps.

STEP 1: CREATE AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING

The first step is preparing to do the planning. Because the process of strategic planning involves new ways of working and thinking, appropriate preparations must be made. These include identification of the resources needed, identification and involvement of the stakeholders, and composition of a guiding vision.

Identify Enabling Resources

There must be agreement among decision-makers about the need for strategic planning. The support and commitment of decision-makers within the agricultural development institution is vital if strategic planning is to succeed. The involvement of decision-makers outside the institution is crucial because implementation will involve multiple parties. It is important that these decision-makers include both women and men, from both government and NGOs, working in all sectors of agricultural development.

The next task is to designate and source the resources required.

Time. Identify when the completed plan is required and estimate how long the strategic planning process will take. But be flexible. If strategic planning is new, estimates may be unrealistic.

Funds. The amount of money available for the planning process is an issue that must be addressed early. It will influence the extent and level of involving stakeholders, information distribution, bringing in outside experts, etc.

Staff Involvement. The number and role of staff to be directly involved in the process must be clarified before the process can begin. What proportion of staff? From what levels? With what roles? Which ones will be involved in consultations with the other stakeholders? Can a staff member act as overall facilitator or is outside expertise required?

Information. A primary purpose of a strategic plan is to convey information. That information must be appropriate to the institution's stakeholders. It is important to understand the official information requirements of the institution, how the plan will be used and with whom it will be shared.

Identify & Involve Stakeholders

The key to responsive agricultural development is satisfaction of the stakeholders. Effective strategic planning in agricultural development institutions requires the participation of high-level planning officials and all levels of stakeholders, including various groups of women and men farmers.

Strategic planning in which policy-makers and planners participate is more likely to be implemented. Strategic planning in which women and men farmers participate is more likely to be effective.

One may also argue that "...performing a stakeholder analysis is an ethical necessity, since only by understanding stakeholder interests and concerns is an organization likely to take truly ethical action" (Bryson, 1995).

Definition of Stakeholder

A stakeholder is any person, group or organization that can place a claim on an institution's attention, resources, or output or is affected by that output.

Many agricultural development planners make the mistake of seeing "the farmer" as their only key stakeholder, particularly if the institution is using a participatory approach. There are two dangers in focusing on farmers: the institution may lose sight of the great heterogeneity among farmers; and there are many other types of stakeholder groups who have a tremendous influence on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of agricultural development programmes, including marketing boards, credit institutions and political bodies, to name a few.

The key elements to stakeholders' analysis for strategic planning are:

• identify who the institution's stakeholders are;
• identify what their criteria are for judging the institution's performance (what is their stake in the institution or its output?); and
• identify how well the institution performs according to those criteria from the stakeholders' point of view.

Good practice: ensure direct consultation with the stakeholders, as opposed to simply guessing what they want. To identify and involve stakeholder groups in the strategic planning process means that mechanisms of consultation must be identified or created, i.e. stakeholder workshops, PRAs, field visits to listen and learn, and participatory communications via radio or theatre. Ideally all stakeholders are involved in all stages of strategic planning but this is probably unwieldy and unmanageable in most cases. Three stages of the process allow the greatest number of women and men to be involved: scanning (see Step 2 below); providing feedback on a draft plan (see Step 3); and monitoring responsiveness (see Step 4).

The consultation process will generate at least two types of input: information, as the stakeholders air their opinions, needs and expectations; and decision-making, as the stakeholders participate in selecting goals, priorities and the activities to be undertaken.

Compose a Guiding Vision

Yogi Berra, the famous New York Yankees baseball player and manager, once said, "If you don't know where you're heading, you're likely to end up somewhere else."⁷ His maxim emphasizes that without a sense of purpose, we are quite literally lost.

A vision is a soaring purpose. To facilitate PGRAD, in a time of constant change and uncertainty, everyone must have a clear understanding about what the agricultural development institution is trying to achieve. We must:

• develop and use an enabling and empowering vision. Effective planning at all levels is marked by a core philosophy or a vision of how the institution wishes to contribute to food security and development.
• ensure that the vision is specific enough to act as a "tie breaker" (e.g. equity is more important than quantity) while general enough to leave room for taking bold initiatives in an ever-changing environment.

Composing a guiding vision starts with looking at the mandate and mission of the institution. An institution's mission provides the social justification for its existence. These are the technical and social needs, related to agriculture, that the institution seeks to fill. Viewed in this light, institutions must always be seen as a means to an end, not as an end in themselves.

Clarifying the mission of an institution eliminates unnecessary conflict. An institution's purpose defines the arenas within which the institution will directly implement or collaborate, and it charts the future course of the institution (at least in a broad outline). Moreover, an important and socially justifiable mission is a source of inspiration to its stakeholders, including staff members.

It is also important to look at the past experience of the institution for lessons learned. But a strategic vision is mostly about the future. It answers the questions:

• What is our preferred future?
• What values and beliefs do we hold as central to the way we operate?
• What role should we perform in the future?
• What outcomes should we aim to achieve?

The best planners are master users of vision, especially in chaotic conditions, almost without exception and at every level. The vision must act as a compass in a wild and stormy sea and, like a compass, it loses its value if it isn't adjusted to take its surroundings into account.

STEP 2: SCAN FOR STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS TO PGRAD

The task of scanning is the critical link between an institution's vision of what it seeks to achieve (see step 1, above), and what its most strategic options are (see step 3). Scanning clarifies strengths and opportunities for PGRAD as well as constraints and threats. Scanning makes clear what is and is not feasible. Scanning also provides the opportunity for the opinions and needs of stakeholders to be voiced and incorporated fully.

Because changes in the environment are occurring continuously, scanning needs to become a regular process of collecting and analysing information. Scanning information can be collected in many ways, including consultation with stakeholders, management information systems, programme monitoring and evaluation findings, and research.

Scan the internal environment. The question addressed in this step is: Which aspects of the institution at present help or hinder its implementation of PGRAD? The focus is on internal factors (those within the control of the institution) such as performance, policies, procedures, staffing, budget and structure. This scan focuses more on the present than on the future.

Good practice: identify both internal strengths and weaknesses. For PGRAD, the scan should include the institution's policies concerning gender and participation, its budget allocations to these issues, and whether there are gender-responsive procedures and staffing.

It is important that this scan not be conducted only by management. There is a risk that managers will not be truly objective and may see things as they wish they were, rather than as they are.

Identification of an institution's strengths and weaknesses for PGRAD leads to identification of its distinctive competencies, or in the words of business managers, their "core capabilities". These consist of the institution's strongest abilities and most effective actions and strategies, or the resources on which it can draw routinely to perform well. It also identifies areas that require change or strengthening.

Scan the external environment. The question addressed in this step is, "What are the trends and pressures in the external environment that could affect the institution's ability to implement PGRAD?" External factors are those that are not under the institution's control. The focus of this scan is mostly on the future.

The most common approach for this scan is to use political, economic, social and technical (PEST) analysis, looking at trends. But for PGRAD, it is also important to include environmental issues, to include a scan of gender issues in all categories, and to understand the interrelationships among them.

Unfortunately institutions often focus only on the negative or threatening aspects of external changes and not on the opportunities they present. Good practice: look for both external opportunities and threats to PGRAD.

Planners and managers often find it difficult to be truly objective about the external environment. To avoid problems, it is best to include:

• as much factual information as possible;
• consultation with stakeholders outside the institution;
• consultation with field staff who are closer to the operational environment; and
• the use of a facilitator with wider experience who is willing to ask the tough questions.

Attention to opportunities and threats, along with stakeholder analysis, will lead to identification of an institution's "key success factors". Success factors are the things an institution must do or the criteria it must meet in order to be successful in relating to its external environment.

STEP 3: STRATEGIC PLANNING

The iterative nature of the strategic planning process becomes apparent in this step. Information analysed in earlier steps presents itself again as part of a strategic decision-making process. Strategic planning puts the focus on what is truly important and truly feasible.

Identifying strategic issues. Identifying strategic issues is the most riveting step in strategic planning. Strategic issues are those which affect the institution to such an extent that they have to be considered in making decisions about its future direction. Virtually every strategic issue, by definition, involves conflict of one sort or another. The conflicts may involve ends (what), means (how), vision (why), location (where), timing (when), and people favoured or disadvantaged by different ways of resolving an issue (who).

The first step is to look back at the previous steps. Start with the vision - then look at the information gained from the internal and external scans. Strategic issues should contain three elements:

Positive possibilities. Each issue should be framed as a question that the institution can do something positive to answer. If the institution cannot do anything about the issue, it is best not to have it as a strategic issue. An institution's resources are limited enough without wasting them on issues it cannot address effectively.

Relevant factors. The factors that make the issue a fundamental challenge should be listed. In particular, what (in terms of the institution's mandates, vision, internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats) makes this a strategic issue for the institution? Every effective strategy builds on strengths and takes advantage of opportunities while minimizing or overcoming weaknesses or threats.

Consequences. Prepare a statement of the consequences of failing to address the strategic issue. This will help all the stakeholders decide just how strategic or important various issues are. If no consequences will ensue from failure to address a particular issue, then it is not strategic. At the other extreme, if the institution will be destroyed or will miss a valuable opportunity by failing to address a particular issue, then the issue is clearly very strategic. Thus the step of identifying strategic issues is aimed at focusing attention on what is truly important for the effectiveness and responsiveness of the institution.

Identifying the Strategic Issues

Once the strategic issues are identified, they should be listed in order of priority. This is easier said than done. It is crucial that both external and internal stakeholders, both women and men, have a voice in setting priorities.

Plan Responsive Strategies. A strategy is defined as a pattern of purposes, policies, programmes, actions, decisions or resource allocations that define what an institution is, what it does and why it does it. A strategy therefore is an extension of the institution's vision, forming a bridge between the institution and its environment.

Strategies are developed to deal with the issues identified in the previous step. The focus of this step is on creating consistency across people's rhetoric (what they say), their choices (what they decide on) and their actions (what they do), as well as the impacts of their actions. Effective strategy formulation and implementation processes link all of these into consistent patterns across levels, functions and time. Good practice includes the following five steps.

1) Identify practical alternatives for resolving each strategic issue. Each option should be phrased in imperative action terms, such as "do", "get", "achieve", and so forth, making them more real to the stakeholders.

2) Enumerate the barriers to achieving those alternatives. Focusing on barriers at this point is one way to ensure that the strategies developed deal with implementation difficulties directly rather than haphazardly.

3) Develop proposals for achieving the alternatives either directly or indirectly by overcoming the barriers. Ideas from stakeholders are key here.

4) Identify actions that must be taken over the next two to three years to implement the major proposals identified.

5) Develop a detailed work program for the next six months to a year to implement these actions.

In order to secure the passage of any strategy, it is necessary to continue to pay close attention to the goals, concerns and priorities of the internal and external stakeholders.

STEP 4: RESPONSIVE IMPLEMENTATION & MONITORING

Just creating a strategic plan is not enough. Developing effective PGRAD programmes, projects, action plans, budgets and implementation processes will bring life to the strategies and create real value for the institution and its stakeholders. The implementation and monitoring process must allow for adaptive learning as new information becomes available and circumstances change. Such learning will lead to more effective implementation - and to new rounds of strategizing.

Participatory Implementation. It is time for action. The most important outcome that responsive planners should aim for in this step is increased responsiveness to stakeholders.

The first step is a reasonably smooth and rapid introduction of strategic plans throughout the agricultural development system. This requires that all implementers, including the farmers, are aware of what needs to be done and when, why, and by whom. This is usually written as work plans in programme or project documents, including the following information: objectives; responsibilities of various stakeholders; proposed action steps; tentative schedules; estimated resource requirements and sources; a communication process; a monitoring process; and upward and downward accountability processes.

Inevitably, whenever something new is introduced, something will go wrong. The strategic planning process described above ensures that major difficulties do not arise. But, there will probably be many small problems that will need to be worked out. Planners, as enablers, are responsible for overseeing the problem-solving process.

It is very important that the coalition of stakeholders involved in developing the strategic plans continue to play a role in their implementation. Successful implementation of PGRAD requires power sharing as it also ensures a sharing of resources, responsibilities and learning.

Participatory monitoring. Slavishly following a strategic plan, because of the time and political capital invested in assembling it, is counterproductive. Once the implementation process has been under way for some time, it is important to monitor the strategies as a prelude to a new round of strategic planning. Participatory monitoring is the key to knowing what needs to change and why.

Willingness to be monitored by the different stakeholders is essential. Participatory monitoring must be seen as a way of creating space in which to systematize and learn from experience, to reflect on a programme's activities to see how they might be improved. A learning organization has to be willing to be monitored and evaluated, not only by external expert evaluators and donor representatives as is usually the case, but also by different units and levels inside the institution and by the women and men farmers it serves.

Most institutions have volumes of information on inputs such as salaries, supplies and personnel. Unfortunately very few institutions can say much about their outputs, let alone their impacts. For example, while many agricultural development institutions can report on the number of cattle vaccinated last year and the number of farmers who attended demonstrations, they cannot report on the impacts these activities had for household food security.

A lack of information about impacts presents problems both for PGRAD and for the stakeholders. Stakeholders judge an institution according to criteria they choose, which are not necessarily the same criteria the institution would choose. For external stakeholders in particular, these criteria typically relate to responsiveness to their priorities. If an institution cannot effectively meet its stakeholders' priorities, then regardless of its inherent worth, the stakeholders are likely to withdraw their participation - and the development effort will fail.

The absence of impact information may also create - or deepen - institutional and stakeholder conflicts. Without impact criteria and information, there is no way to evaluate the relative effectiveness of alternative strategies, resource allocations and distributions of power. As a result, conflicts are likely to occur more often than they should, to serve narrow interests and to be resolved in ways that do not further PGRAD.

The best system of monitoring responsiveness and impacts is by listening intently to the farmers and adjusting rapidly. Excessive reverence for work plans can blind us to unplanned and unexpected - yet incredibly useful - sources of information, insight and action.

TAILORING TO MEET SPECIFIC PRIORITIES

The Strategic Responsiveness Cycle outlined here is a general approach. Like any planning and management process it must be carefully tailored to specific situations if it is to be useful. Although the steps are laid out in a linear sequence it must be emphasized that the strategic responsiveness cycle, as its name suggests, is iterative in practice. Stakeholders typically rethink what they have done several times before they reach final decisions. Moreover, the process does not always begin at the beginning. Institutions typically find themselves confronted with a pressing strategic issue (Step 3) or a failing strategy (Step 4), and this leads them to engage in strategic planning.

In addition, implementation usually begins before all of the planning is complete. As soon as useful actions are identified, they are taken, as long as they do not jeopardize future actions that might prove valuable. For example, if the institution's mandate needs to be redrafted, then it should be. If the scans turn up weaknesses or threats that need to be addressed immediately, they should be. If aspects of a strategy can be implemented without awaiting further developments, they should be. And so on. Strategic thinking and acting is important, and all of the thinking does not have to occur before actions are taken. It is this iterative, flexible, responsive nature of strategic planning that makes it so attractive.

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Endnotes

¹ Direct technical support is usually provided by local NGOs who, while often more flexible and innovative, lack the resources to scale up in ways that would significantly improve the lives of farmers on a wide scale over the long-term.

² For FAO, the Global Workshop From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices was an example of this kind of sharing and celebration of what works.

³ Called the "analysis of difference" by Alice Wellbourne (IIED), or the socio-economic and gender analysis approach (SEAGA) by the FAO.

⁴ Quote cited in Peters (1987)

⁵ The value and limitations of training was one of the most consistent lessons learned from the 12 countries participating in the From Farmer to Planner and Back workshop.

⁶ "Sandwich model" adapted from Hagmann, Chuma, Connolly & Murwira (1997).

⁷ Cited in Bryson (1995).