The Best Practice is Being Inquisitive, Not Prescriptive - Rethinking Capacity Building

I am a bit trepidatious to even use the term "capacity building" in this post. It elicits so many reactions, many of which are accompanied with a sigh or one of those monstrous eye-rolling routines teenagers have perfected when embarrassed by their parents. 
 
Just typing the words makes my face tighten and my eyes start that movement. I brace myself for the list of advisory "best practices" that are about to fill the air with everything "we should do" to be sustainable (Now, let me add raised hackles to the sighs and eye-rolling since "best practices" and "sustainable" have been invoked)

What is it that leads me to react so strongly in this space where people are genuinely working to help people and organizations succeed?

It is the prescriptive nature of "capacity building" and "best practices." The words "capacity" and "best" are normative words. They are dependent on a set of values and the context within which they exist. Yet, they get treated as absolutes. Cast as proven actions that, if taken, will make things better.

What happens when we turn that notion inside out? 

What does it look like when we begin to think of capacity and practice in terms of asking questions and increasing understanding - inquiry - as opposed to a quest to find someone else's answer to how "it's" done?

"Capacity" is simply the ability to do something. First, we need real clarity on what that something is. For most of us, that something, at its essence, is a person accomplishing something or behaving in a particular way that makes their life better.

Taking a lead from Creating the Future's Catalytic Thinking framework, people behave in response to the conditions/circumstances they experience. 

Capacity is then the existence of a set of conditions that naturally facilitate a person's ability to take desired, beneficial action.

Capacity Building is then an act of inquiry and modelling that involves...
  1. articulating the desired, beneficial behavior (aka Outcomes),
  2. asking those who understand, "what does it take" for someone to be able to engage in that behavior (aka Conditions),
  3. identifying the conditions you will take responsibility for supporting and/or creating (aka Focus)
  4. determining "what it takes" to do that work (aka Efforts),
  5. then, asking who knows how to do what we are trying to do and what has worked for them (a supportive practice or system)

Best Practices then become Supportive Systems that...
  1. clearly link to our theory of change and the conditions needed for people to behave in desired, beneficial ways,
  2. are measured by how well they consistently lead to those behaviors over time, and
  3. are adaptive enough to change when determined to be disadvantageous (produce undesirable behavior) or when our understanding of the conditions that need to be met changes

In the coaching world, conviction, strength, commitment, and accountability come from supporting people in inquiry - asking them questions that help them make sense of their world, articulate the change they want, and unpack the effort that is required for them to make and sustain that change. In coaching, we don't prescribe because experience consistently demonstrates that that approach doesn't have a lot of efficacy when it comes to changing behavior consistently over time (aka sustainability).

If we are trying to change the organization (and let's be clear no-one engages in capacity building to keep things the same), and organizations are simply a collection of people behaving together, why would the rules be any different?

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