when there is no right answer

Some of the most important lessons arising out of complexity sciences are the simplest. And for those of us with a habit of making the simple complicated, simple lessons can be the hardest thing to learn.

Take the notion that in a given context, agents have a range of different pathways before them. These are informed by the past, which shapes the internal and the external set of constraints an agent operates from. For any given objective, there is rarely any one way of getting there.  Plus, causality is not linear. A does not lead to B. Lots of things happen between A and B, but its rarely linear. Especially in human systems, where a myriad of meaning-making occurs.

In short, there is no right answer.

There is no one sure-fire outcome.

Of course, if we understand systems, some outcomes are more likely to occur than others. We are highly path-dependent.  We create structures around ourselves and one another in such a way that life becomes predictable.

But there is no one right answer.

I'm not sure why this is so difficult for me to grasp, why I cling, desparately, to there being one right way over another way. Why it matters to me so much that there might be one right way and that I learn to follow it.

We keep trying to find a 'rightness' that does not exist.

This does not mean there is no such thing as 'rightness'. I like the frame 'right relationship' with ourselves and one another. But it is not the same as there being 'one right answer'.

What's the difference?

Here, I speak from what I think, not from what is grounded in my experience. Or rather, it is something I have only tasted briefly, in moments, spread out over time, without consistancy.

There is a light.
Or something like a light.
Something inside and outside
Inside of time and outside of time
Inside of the physical world - intimately coiled around it, closer than you might imagine - and yet at the same time, far away from it.

Or perhaps it is like music.
We can be resonant with it - with ourselves, the earth, and with one another. When we are, we are closer to the flow, closer to the Dao.

For this music, there is no 'good enough' or not 'good enough'.

There is, however, joy. Less joy and more joy.


And here I begin to fade into a conversation that I don't know well enough, or rather, it is what other people say and not, yet, something I fully know.

Faced with confusion?
Where is the joy?

Unruly Politics in Unruly Times

The time is upon us - when the world is being turned upside down.

It can be seen in a million small interactions across the world.

Arab Spring. Donor organisations hastening to call themselves 'Southern'. And in a rather non-descript brick building at the University of Sussex, a room crowded with MA students and PhD students and staff at the Institute of Development Studies discuss 'unruly politics'. I've been to quite a fair number of IDS seminars, but this is my first one where an academic discourse was opened with a poem (is it time) set to the background of a song. A good beginning.

So what is this lens - this way of seeing the world that enables a juxtaposition of objects and motion and people that we have not been able to fully understand, appreciate or work with - for 'unruly politics' that my colleagues are trying to develop? They seek a framework of intersectionality. Something that can bring together race and class and sexuality. There seems to be something about these unruly times where what happens in one place - not just an idea or an idiom but the practices and processes of change over time - impact across scale and space in ways that have not occurred before. There is a growing recognition of the failures of capitalism within the West - even as BRICS continue to fly full-fledged ahead in their own variations of capitalism. They seek a politics where conflicts have a high level of legitimacy for the democratic process. It is shadows and discomfort and the hacker who is always one step ahead of Microsoft. A certain celebration of that which 'misbehaves' - and not only to celebrate, but to recognise the discomfort and a space for argumentation.

Looking around them, the researchers see a different kind of engagement of citizens with the sate; questions of representation, accountability and governance.... collective action of citizens in the form of movements. common to both : imagine politics to be about interests when it refer to the interests of individuals.

The state challenges these approaches: what are your demands? what is your leader? direct democracy a new voice of the people?

the voice of the collective was not being articulated through the logic of representation. the occupy movement, indiganodo, trafalgar square - they provide fundamental challenges to the way we understand politics in development. is it possible to hear that voice of the people, but they are not speaking in the same voice of the authorities. The body, the sexuality, becomes a place for substance and protest. A woman kisses the police man's helmet.

In their search to explain and find a framework for unruly politics, they went to Badiou, one of those impossible-to-read theoreticians who speaks to both mathematicians and philosophers. for this man, there is a return to seek truth and substance. But where do we find truth? In the abstract such as mathematics? There may be a moment of rupture, of revolution. There is, in general, an absorption of the unruly into the everyday. We can take for example Ghandi's mode of political action: the hunger strike, in which his own body becomes a way of speaking directly to the (im)moral economy. The British can not control this. But then that same experience of the hunger strike has since become so common in south-east asian political protest that it is taken up by those who are closer to the everyday protests and can take on a nearly staged effect. So older ideas come to be incorporated into new ones. We might be able to see this as a series of successes; or a series of failures. The unruly suggests modalities of political action. What are the conditions of those modalities? Social media is of course one of the current modalities of political action. Twitter starts as a way for the US military to communicate within itself and is taken up by the outside world and turned against the US military and the London Riots are co-ordinated by social media. There is a centrality of the body in these unruly politics.

The body, technology, moral economies (a claim to justice that is beyond the law and beyond politics as it is defined) and 'conceptualising a true politics in cynical times'. The last is worth teasing out - there is a cynicism about the potential of any political act. And yet people are seeking 'true politics'.

I appreciate the focus on the arts: the recognition that if we are, indeed, at the beginning of yet-another-new-world, we must dig into that part of ourselves that can infinitely create from the creative destruction around us. The need for continual creation and re-creation resonates across sectors, from science and innovation at this time.

But more than anything else, what struck me from the seminar is that this framework is giving students and staff here at IDS a space to seriously engage in these alternative ideas that move away from the technocratic bureaucracies reflected in programmes or projects. They were able to relate the theory to their personal lives, from Pakistan to Northern Indian tea plantations, and in so doing their experiences were greatly enriched. Regardless of the framework they are developing, just the chance to discuss the links between Occupy and Southern Movements is a real contribution to the individuals and the communities gathered here.

Unconference: Discovering the CEC process

There is an unfortunate assumption in much of the discourse that it is the system that perpetuates good or poor governance. In this perspective, the system exists without people in it. The CEC proposes an alternative solution: focus on the people in the system to create transformational change. Integrate personal and organizational development for overarching societal development. The last day and a half of the unConference was an opportunity to explore this notion as a means of creating transformational change to ensure better service delivery.

Morning plenary speakers emphasized the importance and the urgency of changing the public sector and the importance of empowering employees to do so. The question became: would the conference participants internalize these messages and make the connections necessary to themselves further become agents of change? The World-Café-style round tables around the topic of ‘challenges’ facing the public sector gave participants a chance to brainstorm, play with and engage in interactive exercises. It was a clever design that enabled people to consider these challenges for themselves and with one another. ‘Trust’ – within departments, between departments, and with the larger community was a clear challenge. It was easy for participants to come up with images of the ‘stereotypical bureaucrat’ who was only there for the stable salary.

During the session on challenges, I wondered if the participants really ‘got it’. It was hard to tell. Participants laughed at the farmers when they got upset at the officials (in what was actually a slightly elaborated role play) for not paying attention to their needs and for blaming them for their problems instead of helping them. Their laughter did not sit easily with me. The ‘old values’ of the bureaucracy sat heavily in the room. I wondered if they believed that change was actually possible – even though they said it was.

Talking is easier than taking responsibility. Sometimes participants talked as if they were talking about someone else, with a slight smile and a cynical nod of their head, as if they themselves had neither responsibility nor agency. It took a student in the audience to point out the Elephant of Corruption that was lurking somewhere in the middle of the room – and a few of the stronger leaders to acknowledge it and her.

Later, there was a play acted out by individuals who had participated in the CEC’s notable Change Management workshops. The play demonstrated how one civil servant took the CM workshop and subsequently grew closer to the farmers and his family. It was powerful and demonstrated a strong shift in the values of the main character. Those playing in it had, indeed, had this particular experience. They were exposing themselves to the larger audience of their peers and supervisors.

This was followed by discussing the outcomes of the Change Management program. This included the evaluation from the Values Survey that we had done. We found that values that we associated with technocratic bureaucracy decreased. The various value-themes associated with humanizing the bureaucracy increased. Firming foundational values and the re-alignment of individual and organizational values towards the social good followed. We had the fortune of two people who had taken the surveys at our table, to share about how their values had shifted as a result of the workshop. Our evaluation was nicely complimented by a community-evaluation that affirmed that the relationships with the community had actually increased.

Later, there was a chance for the participants to actively explore the process by which this occurred. Here, the space of truth that lies at the heart of the CEC process, the Muttram space, was revealed. The Muttram is an alternative space where people could be themselves. In it, they break down the hierarchy and with it the rules and regulations that shape so much of the habitual and well-engrained behavior that prevents the needed innovation. This was a level of deep ‘employee’ engagement hinted at by the members of the private sector during the plenary discussions. Here, however, this is not done for the sake of improving the profit of the business: it is about improving delivery of water for the poorest. That teleos brought to the Muttram space an urgency and the capacity for change. In the Muttram space a new trust was created. Trust in themselves, in one another and in their surroundings.

Here, then, was a solution at work: changing the people at work through creating a new ‘Muttram Space’ based on the traditional courtyard spaces of joint-family living arrangements where trust and truth can gain dominance over dishonesty, disease and following-the-rules. This led to a shift in their identities – their values, worldviews and how they related to one another. Shifting their worldviews shifted the questions they asked. Shifting the questions shifted the solutions. There was a strong focus on changing themselves – a focus on creating agency. Done within the mandate of better service delivery, and within the context of their fellow officers it was not ‘another self-help workshop’ but instead a process to enable better service delivery.

CEC is primarily a voluntary organisation. In a system ubiquitous for its corruption, voluntary work by civil servants for the community is rare. At the moment, the CEC has over a thousand active members throughout the state. They support one another in building strong relationships with the farmers, leading to better innovation and appropriate action. This resonated with the plenary speakers in the private sector who emphasized the importance of ground-level innovation.

Celebration and awards are critical aspects of any social change endeavor. The CEC offers no financial compensation to its members. It does, however, recognize strong leadership through pins of excellence. At the end of the conference, several change-agents were awarded these pins before those gathered. Each of them held the self-confidence and dignity that comes not from external recognition but from having undergone an internal process of change and accomplished real results that mattered to those whom they served. To my mind, knowing that these pins are only given out to those who had shown real leadership at the community level, these were the real heros of the conference.

Their work is only possible because they trust one another. They have engaged in a form of values shift. Through building this social capital they are able to better respond to complex change. To be successful, this needs the support of senior officials, further experimentation and further consolidation.

One model of transformation offered during the conference was ‘de-freeze, un-freeze, freeze and re-freeze’. It sounded like a rather cold and frigid model to me. What came out of the conversations and experiential processes of the UnConference was not a rigid model but a warm – even hot and uncomfortable - dynamic, living one. There was nothing easy about what they were doing. But it was easy to tell those who had gone through the CM process from those who had not. It was the look in their eyes. A look of life.

Knowledge and the power of play: reflections on change management workshop

Before me: two geckos on a white wall, coconut trees in various shades of yellow and green and the sounds of ‘Hotel California’ mingle with cawing crows. At the end of the Irrigation Workshop hosted by the Centre of Excellence for Change Management, the campus where it was hosted is now largely still. I sit in the midst of an old library with so much dust on the floor that my footprints are easy to spot. The once buzzing centre is in a mild state of disrepair. Familiar books of development – ‘the global possible’, the ‘debt crisis’, ‘rural development’, ‘participatory action research’, ‘the study of an Indian village’ are strewn about me in various degrees of organization. An old black board has sketches of faces – all with big mouths and noses. Ceiling fans spread the smell of woodsmoke from local fires between the book cases. I think of the British Library of Development Studies at IDS where I have spent many hours. I wonder if, someday, it will ever resemble this largely forgotten storehouse of decades of knowledge.

What I most clearly recall from BLDS are the people who run it, generously giving me their time and attention and passing along skills of such things as finding ‘critical’ knowledge resources. Here there is no librarian. The books, without human hands to care for them, sit, waiting, growing slightly yellow around the edges.

These books may be rarely read, the campus overgrown and the paint chipping around the corners, but the knowledge being cultivated in the past few days might well delight the long-gone founders from another era. The Centre of Excellence for Change (CEC) is using this campus for the workshops that help cultivate and spread the knowledge of how to create a transformation of human lives that can enable true socio-economic development. Books are not the most important knowledge resource here. Instead, it is the people who come and go in cars, buses and their own two feet, with purses and marking-pens and flip-charts, who are creating a kind of living knowledge. A knowledge that can live in community.

The CEC conducts a series of educational programmes around what they currently call ‘change management’, which is much of what has been occupying my intellectual and emotional energy since arriving in India. ‘Change management’ might not be the best word to describe their process. It is more of a kind of ‘change technology’, using ‘technology’ broadly, that reliably delivers significantly improved results in water service delivery for the poor. Their technology entails a process that dives into the essence of the human being as an agent of change in her work and in her community.

Some of their workshops integrate the entirety of the 8 departments within the Integrated Water Resource Programme. Other workshops work with only some departments or single departments. This workshop was composed of recently recruited irrigation engineers. Many had only been a part of their department for a few months. They came together for 3 days of education that was, for them, an entirely new and unique experience outside of any of their previous ‘education’.

This education was about them.

It is perhaps the great irony of the institutionalization of social systems that we so frequently leave out people. Or that when we focus on people, we leave out institutions and the technologies that shape both the organization and the person. Much less the Spirit – the Spirit Corpus, Politus and Nobus that shapes and is in turn shaped by each of us.

Before coming, people told me that these workshops had changed their life. I asked what they did. We played games, they said. I was not sure what they meant. At the workshop, I discovered the accuracy of their statement: They played games. Simple games, puzzle games, full-body games, role-playing games, circle-games, energizer-games. Many of these games might be familiar to a Westerner who has participated in ‘participatory’ workshops within Western contexts. I’ve played many variations of these games before. But this time the games were different.

After each game, there was a substantial discussion about what the games meant. Lessons were drawn about leadership, team-work, hierarchy, trust, communication, different perspectives, high-level performance and equality. The games got under the participants’ defenses, poked holes in their armor (not too difficult for this group which was pretty young) and gave them some wiggle room to discover new things for themselves through experience. Security needs were met again and again even as new rules were introduced and reinforced, such as being on time. They were thrown off balance and brought to a new balance with a subtle deftness that most of them were largely unaware of. It didn’t take long before the group was laughing more often than not. Laughter became the access to humanization.

And then all of it was tied to their mandate as civil servants: to serve the poor and the citizenry of India. Their focus was returned, again and again, to their interactions with villagers and with their co-workers and one another. A villager was brought in to talk to them about how often engineers do not listen to the perspectives and needs of the villagers. These young engineers were given a chance to have an open dialogue with him. He was accompanied by an older engineer who had already been through the Change Technology program and had grasped much of the essence. I had met him before: he sat besides the villager with a humility and respect for the other’s humanity that spoke more about their relationship than any of the words I did not fully understand. The villager, meanwhile, said that what he wanted was to be treated with dignity, and respect to be given to the traditional ways of irrigation. I sighed: the value, ‘dignity’ flowed out of him, infusing every part of his being. How anyone could not treat him with dignity that was so clearly part of his essence escaped me.

At the end of the workshop, they took concrete actions. Each chose to experiment with two villages who had some of these new ‘values’. This enabled them to discover what was going on and engage with the farmers in creating real, co-created solutions. They would gather together in 45 days and in 90 days to report on their progress and learn from one another. Some of them already had the support of their bosses, though they might not realize this. The participants left in a serious tone. There was no ra-ra so often found at the end of workshops. There was an awareness of how much work there was to be done.

I had, as one does, become friends with a few of them – mostly women with good English. They found their jobs, which they had been so thrilled to obtain to often be difficult, lonely occupations. Gone was the commodery and mutual understanding of their peers. Instead, they were distant from their co-workers and supervisors and having to learn to submit their sense of self to their professional commitments. Some of this is normal for any person entering any organization, especially one as established as the civil service.

None of them particularly wanted to go back to their offices. They craved the sense of mutual support and belonging that they found in this newly created space. While taking on the new assignment of engaging in a different way with villagers was rather daunting (despite having clear and measurable results in a specific time scale) it gave them a way to engage with valuable work in a community with which they wanted to be associated and in which they wanted to be held in high esteem. Here, words, action and knowledge can integrate into a new way of living. Done in the context of the Indian Bureaucracy, a new social order becomes possible, orientated towards serving the poor.

Maybe someday books will be written about this. Maybe they won’t. But for these young people, a dream is being cultivated. That dream may well gain a life of its own. It is certainly not a new dream. But the dreams of a Beloved Community have brought men and women out of their bondages and closer towards the present moment before. There is no reason why it can not happen again.

Between gutters and oxen: that sleeping human

I’ve published about poverty before. I’ve slept on the outskirts of slums, worked with some amazing NGOs in Kibera, watched family members negotiate the welfare system, food stamps and the prison-industrial complex. I’ve slept next to homeless people in London. When people said, prepare yourself for the poverty of India, I raised my eyebrows. I thought I knew something about poverty.

Three weeks in, and we’re in a new location – on the outskirts of a massive cricket stadium, the local muslim neighborhood and some large overgrown areas that are fenced off - and we are fending for ourselves more than before. Last night after one of the best meals I’ve had recently (though I say that almost every day) we took a stroll around 10pm. The city was alive and hopping, shopping, eating, biking and talking. People - everywhere. In between shish kebabs and tea-stands where men practiced the art of pouring tea (and now that I finally realized what a significant influence Islamic culture had on India pre-colonialism, I’m seeing traces of Morocco in many of the customs here) and Muslim women in the full hajib – here, they tend towards styles with elaborate sparkles, gold and glittery designs chit-chatting with their girlfriends. There’s laughter and dust and piles of concrete and, of course, cows. (3 weeks in and I’m still amazed at the ubiquitous cows). And somewhere between the broken sidewalks are people sleeping, some without so much as a blanket. Hands, sometimes without all the fingers, are curled around heads of thick, unbrushed hair. I soon lost count – how many sleeping figures on the side of the road, under archways, next to doorways, in the open, on the seat of a rickshaw, the back of a vegetable cart, in the gutter? Sometimes families – children standing awkwardly behind mothers. I looked at one particularly strong-willed and beautiful woman who was probably my age with three small children around her. Chennai is known for its grittiness and congestion –and the friendliness of its people. I meet that friendliness everywhere in this city. I smiled at this woman. She did not smile back.

I found myself trying to search my vast amounts of reading for explanations. I remembered colleagues talking about slums and participatory action research and urban poverty. Something about corrupt politicians, entrenched interests, unequal resource distribution, the fallacy of trickle down economics, profit before people, people leaving the rural areas for the urban areas and then finding nothing. Something about the lack of social welfare policy. I recalled the graphs we created about the transmission mechanisms of poverty. Looking at the dark hands, fingernails bitten and fingertips worn and dusty, I did not recall how we came up with those numbers. I’m sure we did a good job. But face to face with this human being, all I can think is, ‘there but for the grace of god go I.’

Day after day, I go from hotels to rickshaws to office buildings to beaches to my computer to dinners to meetings…. And in every movement, I am surrounded by what we loosely call ‘poverty’. Not the poverty of a healthy village but of homeless men, women and children whose sleep looks like the sleep of the exhausted, the drugged, those in denial, the depressed. The cows look far, far healthier.

I know that I actually, have very little sense of what their lives are ‘really’ like.

This morning we ate outside of the hotel – masala dosa, fresh fruit and lassi. A delicious, healthy breakfast for 2 people for under $2.

This morning, the homeless were still there.

I’m here to try a new form of evaluation to measure a new type of program that is designed to enable the government to better serve the poor. By and large, I’ve been motivated by the chance to engage with a new and potentially significant way of measuring results (value: innovation) and the incredible people I’m working with (value: belonging, team/collaboration). This morning, I’m reminded of another motivation: anything that I can do to address anything that resembles the root causes of poverty. Value: Service.

cultural sighs

Walking to my room after eating in the local small-small town, pulling out my key, and then the power generator goes off and I can’t see the lock.

Going to the bathroom at 4am, mild stomach upset, and remembering that they don’t have toilet paper.

People saying I should prepare a presentation. Powerpoint. With another group. Then, no, it won’t be with another group, it will be alone. Then, no, it won’t be a presentation. Then, no, it won’t be powerpoint. Then, no, it will be a preseantion and you should make posters. Then, you will present with these people whom you have not yet met. Then, well, everyone else was preparing the posters a week ago, why aren’t yours ready?

Choose what food you want. Eggplant. Eggplant is a side dish. OK, chicken. Chicken is a side dish. Choose a main. What’s a main? Rice, rotti, chippatti, igli. I actually just want eggplant and chicken. Why don’t you do a mini meal? Because it is too large; I’ll take a North Indian meal. (silence.) Maybe this was not a good restaurant, you don’t understand how to order. Actually, I don’t care. I’m starving. Maybe you should just order for me. How about a mini-meal? Fine. I stare at the rice. If I eat that much rice, I won’t be able to move. Someone else passes by with what looks like a steaming dish of eggplant curry.

On the beach with a new (male) friend, it is dark, we are leaving. A strange man approaches us. He wants my friend to introduce him to me. They speak in a language I don’t understand. The stranger’s eyes are big, eager, he is looking at my pale skin in the moonlight and I do not want to know where his mind is going. I act on pure, unbridled instinct, positioning my body behind my friend. He reacts, also instinctual, shielding me from the stranger. The stranger leaves. I suspect the stranger was harmless. I am slightly shaken – not by the stranger so much as my response – I am tall, strong and big-boned, but in that moment, I was a woman, and my primary experience was vulnerability. I felt my gender shaping every glance and every interaction. We keep walking, talk turning to other things. I am grateful for that process by which strangers become friends, and friends can, at times, become protectors. I need to take some more Judo.

The scarves are so beautiful. The women here wear them draped around their chest and then thrown over their shouldres. To my eyes it looks like a graceful necklace turning into flowing coat-tails. I try. It falls off. Again. And again. Maybe they have better posture than I do. Eventually, standing in a line, I look closely at the woman in front of me. Safety pins. Ah! Now I know! I watch the school girls – the scarves are perfectly pressed and stay in place, very factual. I ask my companion – do the scarves have meaning? Yes, they are to cover the chest. I pause. A woman tells me a story of how work-etiquette requires that women pin the scarves carefully as to cover the entire breasts. (Over an already conservative dress-like outfit). Suddenly the beautiful ‘necklaces’ become symbols of a conservative society. I have seen no women wear jeans or pants. Looking around the women suddenly seem trapped. The scarves loose their beauty. I ask my companion about his thoughts about men wearing jeans and women not. He points out that the traditional saris women used to wear are rarely worn any more (apparently a different style than what I’m surrounded by); that the modern outfits for women are much more free and comfortable. Maybe the scarves are not so bad. I will try wearing one over my chest on Monday to the office. With pins. And a pair of jeans.

Meaning, meaning, meaning. It’s all about meaning.

Transforming the Indian Bureacracy? Inverting the Pyramid

Transformation needs to happen at all levels. For transformation to happen, there needs to be an environment at the grassroots level of the bureaucracy. The whole system needs to change. But who is part of that system? People are. Who builds the good institutions? People do.

Sanjay Pahuja from the World Bank suggested that 'development' is about bridging the gap between those who have and those who have not. We do a lot of work to design a wagon - but who is going to do the work of pulling the wagon? The real work that needs to be done will increase the hard work of those who are engaged. There are vested interests in each system. People who seek to change the system are facing tremendous odds. They may risk their careers, their livelihoods and sometimes their family members. Dr Pahuja suggests that 'the people who will do so are insane people.'

These people are internally motivated. Using the Hall-Tonna values development map, Dr Puhuja showed how there always are those internally- and service-motivated people who do not need to get approval from the external world of authority.

We need 'insane people' who are internally motivated to create change. And we need to support them. This is not about one charismatic leader. It is about many people working together. We are motivated by different things. We need to support the resources for change agents so that they know they are not alone. Because creating 'transformational change' isn't exactly easy. He suggests that if we can support those 'insane people' who are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty we can create a tipping point in which other people will follow suit. How can we find and support such insanity?

I wonder, sometimes, how many of us are really insane people. The more I get to know people, the more I see how many ways all of us have courage - and capacities we are generally unaware of. In my evaluation of this project thus far, I have met many ordinary bureaucrats who have become heros for themselves and their communities. This was possible because they have learned to trust themselves and one another. They can authentically move up the values map.

Later, we heard from IBM - 'Making Change Work'. We need to change mindsets and attitudes. Technology is not the issue. Of course, this is much of the work that lies behind Values Technology. Hearing it from the mouth of IBM was still powerful: the problem is about management, people and attitudes. They have change as a track under their strategy and management process. They have a 'change manager', recognising that because change happens, there needs to be someone who can continually work with change. While I question this notion of 'managing change', it is certainly critical to acknowledge that change is going to keep on happening. Change is here to stay.

In this session, I sense increasing levels of honesty from the floor. One man asked Dr Puhuja, who works at the World Bank - we've done what you've told us for the past 20 years, and it isn't working. Dr Puhuja, who has worked in some hard conditions in the villages, spoke about the importance of focusing on the front-line people. He admitted the Bank faces some of the same challenges as any other.

As the questions become more honest, people are becoming more grounded and less abstract. As this occurs, some of my earlier skepticism is lifting. There is, indeed, real potential in this room: to really consider what needs to be done. I am curious, now, right before lunch, how this discussion of changing mindsets to enable passionate professionalism can occur.