Change and Challenge 183I used all these ideas to look for leverage when I was working
with the United Nations Industrial Development Organiza-
tion (UNIDO), helping them design a workshop to explore
developmental co-operation projects in developing coun-
tries. UNIDO, like other development agencies, has been
using objectives oriented project planning (OOPP) to for-
mulate and implement development projects. This method
has three main steps:
- analysis of the problems of the main stakeholders
(government, bankers, industrialists, technology and
training institutions, etc.) - analysis of their objectives
- planning how to achieve these objectives^2
The project would be identified and researched and then
UNIDO would run a short workshop for two to three days in
the country with representatives of the key stakeholders –
central government, local government, bankers, industrialists
and the target benefit group. UNIDO trainers would facili-
tate the workshop, bring together the parties, establish how
they could work together, find out the existing problems and
then develop the project after establishing a working rela-
tionship with the stakeholders. UNIDO Quality Assurance
was satisfied with OOPP as a broad working method, but not
satisfied with what happened after the workshop. The results
of the work were not sustained, the stakeholders did not feel
committed, they did not feel they owned the project and
many projects had little or no developmental impact.
The project I was working on was to encourage small en-
trepreneurs in the development of the textile and
metalworking industries in Uganda.
Three areas of the workshop needed looking at. First, in
previous workshops, too much time had been taken up
mulling over present problems. People would blame each
other, everyone would talk at length about what was wrong
and little time would be spent on actually finding a way for-
ward. So the first step was to change the workshop format so