TOR171 - The Office Of Transition Initiatives with Stephen Lennon

For many years now - and its just crazy that I can say that about this podcast at this stage - I’ve been saying the social sector is filled with lots of very smart, well educated people who truly want to lift up others in pursuit of greater human flourishing. 

Almost always, this is a fantastic thing, I mean, having intelligent, thoughtful people on your team is something we all wish for. But, at the same time, something I’ve also noticed over my career is that when we create teams with many highly intelligent, ambitious, motivated people… those teams often miss the forest for the trees. 

Reports that could be 2 or 3 pages end up being 100 page tomes, people dive deep into their passions or niches and often have trouble seeing how their initiatives are interconnected with others and, as has been so often pointed out on just this show alone, we frequently forget to just listen to the very people and communities we’re trying to serve.

One area where this rings true is in the area of planning. We plan so we can measure. We plan so we can articulate the theory behind the change we expect to see. We plan because of budget cycles and resource allocations. We plan so much that sometimes - and no, I’m not kidding here - we forget to “do”. This partially why phrases often associated with places like silicon valley - things like innovation, iteration and fail fast - have become such buzzwords around the social sector.   

So, what if it was your job to lead a US Government Agency that had to operate without a plan and literally embrace the unknown to achieve foreign policy objectives? For most of the people I know in our sector, this would be  highly undesirable. Now, this isn’t a value statement, this is just common sense - most of us look for stability, predictability and minimal risk in what is otherwise a unique career choice.

But for people like Stephen Lennon, my guest for the 171st Terms of Reference Podcast, delivering positive outcomes in turbulent situations is his sweet spot. Stephen is the Director of the Office of Transition Initiatives for the US Government. OTI helps local partners advance peace and democracy by providing fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key political transition and stabilization needs.

If your like me - or really any shade of an Aidpreneur - you’re going to love this conversation  about how OTI operates, how they innovate on the fly in situations across the globe and why sometimes not having a plan is the best plan of all.