Lesson 8: UN-CIMIC Project Management and Measures of Effectiveness


¿Problemas al ver un Video?
Enlace de YouTube a video.
Descargar el vídeo: MP4

 Transcripción del video

Welcome to Lesson 8. This particular lesson is about two things: it’s about project management and about measures of effectiveness. Now, I think you may have figured out by now that UN CIMIC is really more of a mindset than a skillset. Yet at the same time, there are very important skills that a UN-CIMIC officer should have: liaison, coordination, communication, assessment, and so on – and you’ve learned about those already. But among the most important skillsets that you can have is project management. And that’s very important in CIMIC because it’s one of the most effective tools that you have to facilitate the mission of transition management and civil assistance. In this regard then, project management is one of the most demonstrative ways of applying the UN principles. Community support projects, for example, are where the core principles of UN-CIMIC really, kind of, where the rubber meets the road. You’re talking about the primacy of civil authority, of course, the military as supporting and not supported, indirect versus direct support, the management of this transition process as we talked about, and again, as always, the military as an enabler. There are certain rules of UN-CIMIC project management: First, work by, with and through civilian external actors. Always. Second, front load local ownership of both the problem and solution. So problem identification and the assessment phase of project management is really where you bring these people in. You don’t bring them in later. You bring them in right from the very beginning. The other is that their outcomes and benchmarks are your outcomes and benchmarks because if it’s not their results that they want, then they’re not going to take ownership of it. So you have to let them define what they think success means. Another is to make sure that you build in transition and sustainment. Take opportunities, for example, using the project management itself as a way of building the capacity of those people you’re trying to help … for them to in fact do project management by working with them in this process. Synchronize capacity building with service delivery. And then again, as always, manage the expectations and risks of those you’re working with and helping out. The other part of this lesson is about measures of effectiveness, and the same kinds of principles really apply. What you’re trying to measure when you’re measuring how well you’re doing in CIMIC is to measure how well the coordination is going on, that one function of CIMIC, which is this interaction, and then the other is this transition management. And so one way of looking at it is, how many of the projects we’re involved in, and what aspects of those projects that we’re involved in are more direct? I would say, if you’re doing things more directly in UN-CIMIC you’re probably not doing as good a job as you need to be. But if you’re doing things more indirectly, working by, with and through those external actors, helping to civilianize and localize – and that’s what you’re really measuring, civilianizing and localizing – then you’re measuring how well you’re working your force commander out of a job, which as we talked about at the end of the day is really what you’re trying to do. So remember this, whatever measures of effectiveness you are trying to implement, your measurements are part of a much bigger picture. It’s all part of a greater activity of measuring effectiveness and measuring how well things are being done in the UN mission in general.

 ¿Tienes una pregunta para el autor?

Pregúntale al autor una pregunta relacionada con el curso.