Essentialism in Aidwork

The Social Sector Titan site is a good place to learn about the best mindsets, strategies and tactics to create deep focus and do our best work. But how do we decide what to work on in the first place? How do we decide which social mission to choose as a humanitarian? Or how do we discern what really matters in a noisy world? Are we working on essential things? How important to your overall mission were the things we did last week? 

Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism explores these choices. I’ve distilled and translated a few of his ideas below for a Social Sector context. The book uses clear concepts and smart graphics to help the reader simplify and focus. 

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Many of us reading this site have reached a certain level of success. Although we may not feel like we are ahead of the game all the time, we have more than we need. We have more opportunities than we can metabolize with our brain, body, and career. This success comes in the shape of information to consume, projects within our current work focus, opportunities to spend time with loved ones, or hobbies outside of work to pursue. In a lucky and abundant world where we live, we face a deluge of these good things and are constantly faced with choices about what matters most. If we try to do it all, we will eventually reach a breaking point and become overwhelmed. But how do we decide where our focus as Social Sector professionals should be? 

My career in international humanitarian response work began with a job in Kenya, helping interview refugees who were trying to come to the USA. These were people that were unable to return to places like Somalia and Liberia and then were also unable to make a life in the camp or urban setting where they lived. It was fascinating work but also challenging. Were we working on the right thing to bring these people to a new country? Maybe it would have been better to spend that time and money running programs in the places where they lived in the camps and cities of East Africa. Or perhaps working only on the political solution that would take away the need for people to flee their borders in the first place. This was a classic dilemma: were we working on the right thing? Were we helping the most vulnerable people through the program? Were we making an essential humanitarian decision, or were our efforts best spent on other projects? 

Many years later as a contractor helping the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) shape and deliver its disaster assistance at the global level, I face similar essential humanitarian decisions. The United States as an international donor needs to decide which humanitarian programs: disasters like Haiti, Yemen, and South Sudan will receive taxpayer dollars to help save lives. Which emergencies are the most severe? Where will life saving assistance be most needed? Are we as Americans putting our wealth towards an essential humanitarian decision, or should we fund other projects in other places? 




The essentialist humanitarian
Greg McKeowen’s framework provides a method for moving from complexity and confusion toward clarity and reduction. McKeowen provides some useful drawings in the book. His summary graphic is here:

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The Essentialism Model Adapted for Aid Work
Here are a few ideas about the Essentialist approach adapted for the Social Sector context: 

McKeown helps to discern the  essentials from the noise of work and life by taking an offsite retreat from his own work every quarter. The quarterly retreat means simply getting away from his normal workspace for an afternoon and asking himself a few essential questions about his work and life focus to determine if he is still on the essentialist track. One of my favourite questions that he poses is: “Looking back from three generations in the future, how would these generations look back at your work?” Adding in the multi-generational lens to work/life strategic planning is  a nice way to depersonalize and take the focus off ourselves. Obsession with the big ‘I’ (ourselves) can creep in when working on the Social Sector Titan type processes. This question helps us zoom out and takes the focus off of ourselves. 

In the end it's never really about us. Many Social Sector Titans understand that already as we have dedicated our careers toward a global common good. But it's easy to shrink into our own heads the minute things get difficult. 

Making it work for you
This is a fun new framework for getting to what matters. But how do you determine the essential things in your life and work? Give this process a try, and let us all know how it worked out. 

Happy Trails. 

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