Expanding Horizons

In the declaration for establishing India Water Operators Partnerships there was a firm recommendation on structure, objectives and action plan for the India Water Operator Partnerships. The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has formally recognized CEC as a National Key Resource Centre (KRC) for building capacities of the India Water Organizations across the Water Sectors and enabled CEC to function as a National Secretariat for the India Water Organization Partnerships.

The CEC had the unique opportunity of working with the many States of the Country and Globally with the Governments of Maharashtra (Jeevan Prathikaran) and Jharkhand (PHED) State Water Departments, Governments of Himachal Pradesh and Tripura to initiate change interventions among their Engineers and other officials. CEC has also shared its experiences at the National level with UNICEF and GOI. The democratization of water management has found resonance in World Bank assisted TN Water Resources Management Project (TNRWS). Similarly, the States of Rajasthan, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh‘s Water departments have also used the expertise of CEC in the change management initiatives.

CEC also promotes international collaboration (South South Collaboration) with countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Bangkok, Malawi, Madagascar, etc and World Bank Institutes.

Field-Level Leadership (FLL) is a values-driven change management approach with a growing record of being able to mobilize staff across the ranks of water agencies, translating their motivation into systemic and significant performance improvements at the organisational level.

The FLL approach was developed in early 2000s by a group of public servants in the Government of Tamil Nadu in Southern India. The Chennai-based Centre of Excellence for Change Management (CEC), in collaboration with the World Bank, has further improved and systematized the FLL approach over the last 15 years, through numerous pilots implemented in World Bank-financed projects.

These pilots have spanned 13 public utilities, agencies and departments in Asia and Africa. An FLL program comprises of a standardized set of interventions and techniques, implemented through South-South collaboration between public utilities, and covering peer-led safe-space workshops, support for emerging networks of change leaders across the organization, and individual and collective change initiatives. FLL initially engages staff across the entire organisation for a period of several months, and it is organically sustained thereafter by the emergent leadership that it creates.

In the mean time the World Bank had launched a “Webinar (Web-Ex Meeting) Presentation on Field Level leadership (FLL), an innovative approach that improves development outcomes by creating large number of Change Leaders in the Ranks Public Agencies on 28.9.2020.

The outcome of the Webinar was overwhelming and this Web Ex Meet paved the way for expanding the horizons of FLL across the Globe In response to this growing demand, the World Bank has consulted with the key stakeholders on how to set up a self-sustaining network of public water institutions that can provide the needed FLL trainings and support at a global scale. Following a competitive selection process, the World Bank has now recruited the Global Water Partnership’s Mediterranean Office (GWP-Med) as the facilitator and anchor organisation for setting up the FLL global network. In this context and aligning with the related Terms of Reference for this assignment, GWP-Med is organising in Athens, Greece, a 2-day workshop (26-27 March 2024) with the Core Partners -the Centre of Excellence for Change Management (Chennai), the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority, and the World Bank, to discuss and agree on the instruments, modalities and way ahead towards the future FLL Delivery Network.

In the process of exploration for scaling up of FLL, it has been decided to develop the capacity to deliver FLL support to 20-30 organizations per year considering the the potential demand for delivering FLL at this scale - and the demand could be further grown. Adequately responding to the growing demand would require setting up a systematic operation, including but not limited to coordinated business development, orderly planning and precise targeting, timely provision of training services, quality assurance interventions, and learning from experiences.

Responding to growing demand would require the ability to deliver FLL workshops in multiple countries, cultural contexts and languages, with teams of about 5-10 trained facilitators deployed for 14 days per intervention, followed by backstopping support throughout the implementation process. This necessitated a partner (an “Anchor organization”) that could serve the above-mentioned functions and thus support CEC and the regional FLL training centre (like AAWSA) in scaling up FLL.

The World Bank launched and concluded the procurement of “Anchor Organization” late last year. The Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean Team (GWP-Med) Athens, Greece, was selected for this assignment. GWP-Med has global recognition and a solid reputation for successfully facilitating many multi-stakeholder processes involving water organizations. They have many decades of experience in the water sector, having operated thoughtfully and with diligence in multi-cultural environments. The first step, by the Anchor Organization was to organise a workshop that would allow all the Core Partners to jointly build a shared vision for the FLL Network of the future, agree on principles of working together, and begin to lay out some key business processes and perhaps even set out the scope for what could become a strategic plan.