1.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
Author name
Date
November 2015
Learning for international non-
government organisations (INGOs)
from Southern NGO leaders
Getting good at disruption
in an uncertain world

2.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
The backdrop
• Many drivers of disruption will affect how the SDGs are
implemented
• demographic and geopolitical shifts, climate change, urbanisation, resource
scarcity, technological transformation
• Disruptors within the professional world of development are
changing practice within both INGOs and national NGOs in
the South
• disintermediation, new donor nations, blurring of ‘civil society’ and ‘private sector’
ways of working, online giving, changing regulatory space for civil society, rise of
social enterprise
• INGOs are already preparing for disrupted futures
• Southern NGOs are key implementers for the SDGs and
critically important partners for INGOs, but little is known
about how they view or manage disruptive change

3.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
The project
Collating and sharing learning from
Southern NGO leaders on how to
manage disruptive change
May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Literature
review
Workshop
with IIED
donors and
partners
23 interviews with donor-
savvy Southern NGO
leaders across Africa,
Asia, Latin America
Written outputs, DFID and INGO
engagement (including through ICSC),
learning exchange among interviewees
Agreement to focus
on Southern NGOs

4.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
The project
Why focus on Southern NGOs?
• The SDG commitment to ‘leave
no one behind’ demands
effective organisational
capacities to adapt and innovate
• Local and national NGOs are
invaluable in building agency and
achieving lasting change. INGOs
need to work with Southern NGO
priorities for change
• Southern NGOs can feel
development disruption
more acutely than INGOs.
They are often closer to its
impacts
• Southern NGOs are used to
managing disruption in the here-
and-now. INGOs need to
understand these experiences so
that they can better address
future development disruption

5.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
What is disruptive change?
Interviewees suggest disruption means many things:
•Disruption is life!... At moments of ‘stuck-ness’, disruption brings the energy to move again.
•Our organisation has grown from something very small to something very large, all in the
context of wars, conflicts, earthquakes, and changing donor priorities, government policies and
spaces for civil society. This is an incredibly turbulent environment.
•Our reality is one of ‘consistently trying to overcome uncertainty’. The reality of the change
process has been to learn to manage uncertainty on an ongoing basis.
Turbulence, uncertainty,
a fact of life
•The idea of a shock assumes a steady state earlier, and that after a shock there is a return to
the initial condition. [Conversely] the layman’s definition of disruptive change is ‘life will not be
the same again’.
“Life will never be the
same again”
•The first thing you think is always negative, but there are pluses and minuses.
•‘Disruptive change’ has a negative connotation. [But] …disruption might not be bad because
[your organisation] can thrive on other peoples’ sorrow or misery. And there is also a positive
dimension when disruption benefits everyone.
Positive as well as
negative
•There is a risk that external priorities are somehow submerging the internal. There are
stronger, if not bigger, issues … that create more disruption.. The relationship with government
is the major disruption which we manage: particularly with change towards ‘loved’ and ‘unloved’
NGOs.
Externally or internally
driven
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6.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
How to respond?
Interviewees said responses to disruptive change can be:
Adaptive, reactive Proactive, innovativeor
Adaptation is dancing to somebody else’s music. Innovation is composing and playing your
own music – and having the others dance to it.
“
Some organisations … are successful because they can survive through the adaptive
capacity of capturing the mood: climate change is a good example. Any new fashion will force
us to adapt: for some in a positive way; for others in a way that is too opportunistic for our
mandates or missions to survive.
The typical kind of change in developing countries is reactive, and it happens when some
event occurs in the environment and the system or NGO reacts… But it’s essential to think of
innovation which comes from within. And innovation can also be disruptive.
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7.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
So what?
The many meanings of disruption matter because, in
Southern NGO contexts:
‘Mega disruptors’
like climate change
are often obscured
by disruption as a
daily ‘fact of life’.
Addressing
disruption-readiness
here and now is a
vital stepping stone to
‘future-fitness’
How disruption is framed
internally can affect how it
is addressed at an
organisational level (Harvard
Business Review, 2002).
so
If INGOs use the idea of
‘disruption’ in their
strategic planning, they
should consider framing it
in ways that allow the
best mix of adaptive and
innovative outcomes to
emerge
so
Reactive Southern NGOs often
nimbly deliver on changing
donor, INGO, and government
priorities. They can appear very
resourceful. But they may lack
capacity to develop the
organisational systems and
innovation needed to chart their
own futures in a disrupted world.
INGOs could usefully reflect
further on what blends of
advocacy, partnership and
financial support are most likely
to deliver adaptation that is also
rich in innovation potential
so

8.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
So what for INGOs?
By consciously becoming more attuned to Southern NGO
experiences of disruption in the here-and-now INGOs can:
• Build a stronger evidence base for what it will take to
build ‘disruption-readiness’ on systemic drivers of
disruptive change
• geopolitical shifts, climate change, urbanisation, resource scarcity, etc
• Embody solidarity by becoming better partners to
Southern NGOs
• with potential positive spillovers for overall development outcomes, shared
pursuit of change, INGO legitimacy, and INGO strategic planning for new
‘disintermediated’ roles (e.g. through subcontracted technical support to
Southern NGOs)
• Support ‘disruption entrepreneurs’
• people and organisations with scalable ideas that embrace disruption and
could accelerate implementation of the SDGs

9.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
Learnings for INGOs
Our work reveals four kinds of learning for INGOs as:
Positive
development
disruptors
Supporters of
effective disruptive
change
management
NGOs facing
disruption
themselves
Disruptors of
Southern NGOs
Supporting
others
Direct
agency
Embracing disruption
Adapting to disruption

10.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as positive
development disruptors
Where INGOs disrupt the status quo in
ways that advance implementation of
the SDGs.
Many Southern NGOs also see themselves
as disruptive innovators. INGOs could
actively seek to amplify the outcomes of
Southern NGO-led disruptive innovation, and
take inspiration from existing Southern NGO
practice.

11.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as positive
development disruptors
Insights from our interviewees:
We wanted to embrace a new movement of start-ups creating technology for the poor, and to
create a connection to areas that need them. The fact that unusual suspects are joining this
area is really disruptive.
“
”I feel that there is a vast field of innovators; people with courage and capacities who are
showing the way and can help us move forward, and use disruption not as something to fight
against, but as a stepping stone for the transformation that is needed.
If you want to be disruptive, you need not to take the world as it is, but leave more windows
open to the world as it should be. What that means at an organisational level is that you need
to be very open to breaking stereotypes.
Most innovation is at the grassroots, in smaller NGOs. They can deliver, but they are not
aware of… opportunities [to work with the private sector].
“
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12.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as positive
development disruptors
Southern NGO-led disruptive innovation casts new
roles for INGOs
Disruptive innovation shifts ODA
geographies. INGOs need to make
space for Southern leadership to
thrive.
INGOs can help partners build
skills to craft ‘proof of concept’,
and advocate donor support for
new Southern NGO-led
innovation delivery models, e.g.
through a shift in risk appetite.
We want international cooperation agencies to be open to innovative
organisations that bring something different… looking at us based on
usefulness, not geopolitics.
Donors seem to want innovative solutions, but they won’t finance things
until you have proof of concept. There must be greater coherence here.
It becomes very hard to have innovation in how you deliver services
because the system tends to take you to proven and traditional ways of
doing things.
Grassroots disruptive innovators
may need support from brokers
including INGOs to connect their
innovation capacities to
development outcomes.
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13.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as supporters of
change management
INGOs could better support Southern
NGOs to manage disruptive change.
Southern NGO leaders have lots of insights
into what makes for effective disruptive
change management. INGOs could be more
effective in supporting this.

14.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as supporters of
change management
Four broad categories of insights into the ‘disruption-
ready’ Southern NGOs:
Skills and capabilities
• getting beyond survival, building skills
Leadership and governance
• ‘distributed leadership’, engaging the board
Culture and learning
• working on cultural alignment, continual commitment to learning
Funding and coalitions
• securing resources for organisational development, applying
coalitions to disruptive change management

15.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as supporters of
change management
Skills and capabilities
Good reactive
disruptive change
management is also
important for survival.
But Southern NGOs
with strong innovation
capabilities may deliver
better development
outcomes than those in
‘reactive’ mode.
DFID’s civil society support
could lead the way in building
understanding and a Southern
NGO community of practice on
‘disruption-ready’ innovation.
I don’t think reactive disruption management can lead
to innovation.… It’s the survival mode in which NGOs
and many organisations live in the developing world...
[S]urvival is different to development.
“
”
Effective organisational
change processes
support and diversify
internal skills to deliver
desired outcomes.
‘Disruption-ready’ decision-
making on internal skills and
competences demands strategic
reflection and organisational
learning. INGOs need actively to
support Southern partners to
resource this.
If you let people pursue their passions and interests,
they will always leave something.
Our management approach is different from the one
you see in business school literature. We focus on
people with the skills and traits of leaders, who can take
decisions on their own in the field at any time.
We’re writing a new strategic plan; and part of my
thinking is that we need to re-think the kinds of skills
and people you bring into your governance model.
“
”

16.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as supporters of
change management
Leadership and governance
Leadership behaviours
and styles have a
significant impact on
how organisations
experience disruptive
change management.
Do ‘distributed leadership’
models deliver more effective
disruption management? If so,
there are implications for INGOs
own leadership cultures, as well
as for how they work with
Southern NGOs.
Our leadership style is ‘distributed’: everything is based
on personal responsibility; each one of us is a leader
one way or another.. We had a funding shortfall twice
where we stayed more than fifteen months without
resources. And still people came to work.
With new leadership, we are very decentralised. Most
operational decisions are taken in the field, which builds
confidence and ownership in local managers.
“
”
Boards can be
invaluable in supporting
effective disruptive
change management.
How much do INGOs know about
the workings of boards in the
Southern NGOs they partner
with? Is there a case for
supporting boards’ enhanced
‘effective change governance’
capacity, through grants, peer
exchange, or information
resources?
To confront changes in the external environment, many
NGOs are.. changing the composition of their boards.
By the time we got the subcontract, we were told it
could not be used to cover the cost of salaries for the
previous six months…The board said they would make
personal contributions to cover the shortfall.
“
”

17.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as supporters of
change management
Culture and learning
Organisational culture
can predispose Southern
NGOs to positive or
negative outcomes from
disruptive change.
INGOs could partner with
national and local NGOs in the
South to reflect on links between
organisational culture and
development outcomes with a
view to building ‘disruption-ready’
or ‘disruption-embracing’ culture.
It’s the culture of busy-ness that’s the problem. You
never stop to reflect, and there’s a tendency to think
that the bigger we are, the more successful we’ll be…
One thing we really wanted to embed is a culture of
always identifying opportunities and areas for
improvement. Also a culture of ‘action’ rather than talk.
We [have] an online culture page
[www.kopernik.ngo/page/our-culture]… We still discuss
it every quarter... We go through the culture [statement],
and assess whether we’re living up to it.
“
”Learning is a key
resource for disruptive
change. At first blush,
there appears to be a
strong correlation
between effective
disruptive change
management, internal
mechanisms for
learning, and rapid
feedback from mistakes.
Many NGOs around the world
struggle with short-termism in
their operations. Organisational
learning is vital. INGOs may
need to allocate a bigger share
of limited learning funds to
Southern NGO partners, and try
out new ways to learn from one
another.
Every year, boards should have a meeting for horizon
scanning, or for a consultant to come in and talk about
patterns in the external environment.
In our organisation, for 22 years, we dedicated a week
of each month to learning. This was our ‘home week’.
At every staff meeting we have an agenda item on
‘what we have learnt’ which creates space for all levels
of learning — we keep track of this in a learning journal.
“
”

18.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as supporters of
change management
Funding and coalitions
Effective organisational
development and
change management
must be funded.
Effective organisational
development (OD) approaches
minimise the disruptive impacts
of change, positive or negative.
Flexible OD funding is in short
supply, and can be hard to
access. Could INGOs better
integrate funding for this into
project-based support?
Projects, in many ways, kill organisations. They make
us lose our strategic focus.
You just can’t fund organisational jumps through project
funding. MacArthur is one of our key donors, and gave
us a grant to strengthen our organisation, to do a new
website and produce a strategic plan. Without this
support, we wouldn’t have a coherent strategy.
“
”
International networks
and coalitions could
play an enhanced role
in enabling peer
support and learning for
management of
disruptive change.
The international network or alliance can enable each
[member] to handle [potentially disruptive issues] more
effectively in their national setting.
There is no way you can deal with [climate change]
only in the South if you are not connected to the same
approach in the North.
“
”
INGOs could consider supporting
a peer to peer support network
on managing disruptive change,
or explicitly seek to integrate a
‘change management learning’
component within existing
relevant networks.

19.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015INGOs as organisations
facing change
Many INGOs are making and
implementing plans for getting good at
disruption.
There is inspiration for INGOs from Southern
NGOs that are doing disruption well.

20.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015INGOs as organisations
facing change
Transferrable insights:
Southern NGOs are diversifying
their skills in response to disruption
in the operating environment. Gaps
remain, e.g. in natural and physical
science for climate mitigation and
adaptation. INGOs can learn from
diversification and help partners fill
gaps.
In a typical screening in development agencies, you look at the number
of years of experience, and you weigh them and so on. To us that’s not
really the point. The person should be really driven and motivated to
make a difference. It’s hard to judge that by looking at CVs. So our
policy is to ask for a one-minute video first, about why [the candidate is]
the best for the job. We get a sense for what kind of person they are;
what kind of drive [they have]. That’s the first thing. Without that, it’s
hard to run an organisation at the forefront of disruptive change.
“
”
Distributed leadership models in
some Southern NGOs appear to
deliver strong staff commitment,
experimentation, and resilience in
the face of disruption.
We try to be as open as possible so that people don’t have fear. Fear is
a real block for creating change and learning.
“
”

21.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015INGOs as organisations
facing change
Implications for INGOs
As civil society actors preparing for disruption,
INGOs can learn from inspirational examples of
organisational practices in Southern NGOs.
Could INGOs do more consciously to integrate
learning from Southern NGO change
management and disruptive innovation into
their processes?

22.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as disruptors of
Southern NGOs
INGOs can cause negative disruptive
change for Southern NGOs.
Southern NGOs have practical insights into how
INGOs can minimise and avoid negative disruption
out of their own operating practices. For many,
there can be little practical distinction between
bilateral donors and INGO funders.

23.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as disruptors of
Southern NGOs
Three broad categories of insights from our
interviewees:
Competitive impacts of disintermediation
• commitment to enhanced agency and empowerment
Changes of direction
• changes in funding policies and priorities
Tendering and consortiums
• terms of reference and proposal evaluation criteria

24.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as disruptors of
Southern NGOs
Disintermediation needs to be re-
connected with Southern empowerment
Equal partnership can be
sacrificed in the
competition for scarce
resources.
The dynamic now for us is the dynamic of
competition as a result of disintermediation.
What would have been ideal would have been for
[Northern] members/partners to explore ‘equal
partnerships’/responsive programming together.
But they are not ready to do that because their own
organisational cultures are not ready… [And so] in
a way, we are disempowered by smaller CBOs who
will work with them on the basis that they ask.
The INGOs are maintaining old ethics and culture,
and perpetuating dependence – even when they
set up offices on the ground in the South… They
should aim to loosen their structures significantly —
so that they work towards genuine empowerment.
CBOs that are ‘INGO
condition- or contract-
takers’ can disempower
national NGOs that are
seeking to become equal
partners.
“
”
Many INGOs are seeking new
identities in response to the
dynamic of disintermediation.
‘Nationalisation’, relocation and
decentralization are among the new
approaches. A new dynamic of
competition between INGOs (or
former INGOs) and Southern NGOs
is emerging. INGOs need
consciously to create systems that
further Southern agency and
empowerment as they travel this
road.
“

25.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as disruptors of
Southern NGOs
Good partnership means more attention
to INGO changes of direction
Southern NGOs know
that INGO partners’
sometimes need to
change policy or
approach. But sudden
change can destroy the
social and institutional
capital on which effective
development interventions
are built, and hamper
efforts to maintain
strategic direction.
A change in [INGO donor] policy is
understandable... but changing the geographic
focus is really hard for national NGOs to adjust to.
Why can’t they involve their partners in the change
process; make them understand what the change
means for them?
Impacts can be particularly
hard on ‘locally embedded’
NGOs with the strongest
community links.
“
”
Many Southern NGOs relate to
INGOs as donors. INGOs need to
lead the way in donor good
practice. Could grant agreements
and/or terms of reference for
contracts be ‘disruption-mitigated’,
e.g through provisions on advance
notification, simple impact
assessment tools, or phased
approaches to changes of
direction?
“

26.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
INGOs as disruptors of
Southern NGOs
Funding, tendering and consortiums
Consortia can force
Southern NGOs to
compromise in ways that
undermine long-term
strategies.
In a consortium, you need a common
understanding. That means that some part of the
consortium may have to compromise. The
compromise might be somewhere in the middle —
or it might be dictated by the bigger agencies
(because it can be easier to change the 30% than
the 70%). But if we compromise on our approach,
we also compromise on our long-term strategy.
An INGO’s core or
unrestricted funding can
easily become restricted
funding for Southern
NGOs.
“ ”
Could INGOs pilot Southern
NGO-centred ‘disruption impact
assessment’ of funding, tendering
and consortia arrangements, with
a view to making adjustments in
contracting and partnership
practices and advocating change
with donors?
“
Mandating consortia.. gives an unfair disadvantage
to local NGOs. For example, one requirement in a
recent situation was to have a UK regulated bank
account. That limits who can submit proposals to
like-minded agencies. If it’s always the same ones
getting the grants, it doesn’t open the way to
innovation.
”For local NGOs, it can be hard to access donors
directly, so they have to rely on international NGOs
— who make their own restrictions.
Criteria can be
exclusionary — to the
detriment of Southern
NGOs — and stifle
innovation.
”
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27.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
Learnings for INGOs
• Southern NGO perspectives on disruption are as often ‘here
and now’ as connected to ‘mega-disruptors’ of development.
INGOs need to adapt framings of disruption to reflect this.
• INGOs that aspire to real solidarity with Southern NGOs, as
both change and adapt, need to behave like counterparts
and partners not donors or competitors.
• Increasingly squeezed space for civil society is creating
significant disruption for NGOs in the global South.
Interviewees were critical of donor focus on governments to
the exclusion of NGOs: INGOs need to step up advocacy on
Southern civil society roles in delivering the SDGs.
• INGOs must be prepared to share scarce organisational
development funds and pass more on to Southern NGOs for
strategy and learning.

28.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
Learnings for INGOs
What can individual INGO teams/functions do to help
Southern NGOs craft best practice ‘disruption-readiness’?
Advocacy
(policy and
campaigns)
Innovation Learning
Interviewees suggested
pathways for more effective
grant-making and funding
through support for
‘disruption-readiness’
(including via intermediaries
such as INGOs). They
stressed the importance of
policy engagement on the
operating space for civil
society.
Many Southern NGOs already see
innovation as a means to greater
local ownership of regional or
national development pathways.
INGOs could, if invited, help
Southern NGOs build the skills
needed to engage effectively with
the tools of the contemporary
mainstream innovation landscape,
and broker scalable outcomes.
Continual learning processes
are a key resource for getting
good at disruption. There are
implications for INGOs’ internal
processes as well as support to
Southern NGOs. INGOs can
get better at ‘disruption-
readiness’ by learning from
partners who live with
disruption as a fact of life.

29.
Managing disruptive change
November 2015
Learnings for INGOs
What can different INGO teams do to support Southern NGOs
to get better at disruption?
Evaluation
Programmes &
‘mega-disruptors’
climate change,
urbanisation, migration,
demographic change
Business
models
Interviewees hinted that the idea
of ‘disruption-readiness’ could
help inform more effective
evaluation of development
outcomes, including by INGO
donors and partners. Adaptive
programming can generate
insights for anticipatory
disruptive change management.
INGOs can seek ways to link
Southern NGO ‘disruption-
readiness’ in the present to
shared learning and foresight on
how NGOs can get good at
‘mega-disruptors’. Climate change
and urbanisation could be good
starting points: their implications
can readily be connected to
existing experiences of disruption.
Interviewees suggested that tendering,
consortia, and grant arrangements
need to change if they are to minimise
disruption to Southern NGOs. INGOs
need to align their contracts with
commitment to sharing OD and
learning resources with Southern
partners. Business models and core
funds need to make more space for
INGOs to provide contracted input to
Southern NGOs at their request.