Identifying, selecting and managing partners and consultants

The first step would be to understand the local ecosystem and its stakeholders and to become familiar with existing and similar experiences, their successes and failures, both at a local level and in other places. This would keep us from duplicating efforts, repeating mistakes and would allow us to learn from such experiences and to identify local partners and others with relevant experience.

With this basic knowledge, requesting written introductions would be important to evaluate the ability of candidates to clearly communicate in writing and to assess their understanding of the issues involved. This would also give them the opportunity to lay their cards on the table and show what they've got and what they have done.

Based on this pre-screening process, it would be most important to interact directly with them (face to face, tele-conferencing, etc.) in order to engage in an open conversation about the issues that matter to us and to determine their skills, abilities, aptitudes and where, how and what value they can bring to the processes to be addressed.

Both experience and flexibility would equally account in the selection process, as well as their ability to listen, learn, adjust and innovate and not just to follow pre-conceived notions and strategies.

Key to their evaluation would be how much they value the role of those we seek to serve in the very own process of improving their conditions and serving them. I would avoid those who come with pre-drawn solutions and answers and would definitely be much more interested in those who expect to learn from the stakeholders and the ecosystem we are addressing before offering approaches and suggestions. This openness to stakeholders and commitment to their involvement is key not only for achieving their buy-in, but also in the development and implementation of relevant actions that generate a significant and lasting impact.

There is no point in bringing solutions foreign to an environment if those solutions do not answer needs properly defined from within and relevant to the stakeholders. In a similar fashion, it would not be a positive approach to implement solutions that require our permanent presence or involvement as opposed to have local stakeholders take over and run it as a sustainable operation they consider their own.