The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years. On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Kirk Gibson. Kirk is an international development practitioner working in the Pacific, Timor-Leste and Australia for over 15 years. He has worked on education, governance, leadership, workforce development, TVET and youth development projects for a range of NGO’s and Australian Government funded programs. He is passionate about the thinking and thinkers behind community development and about supporting locally led development. He currently works for a Papua New Guinean led organisation called The Voice Inc.
Learn more about BSC's engagement with The Voice Inc in Papua New Guinea.
To learn more about Building State Capability (BSC), visit the website, access the PDIA toolkit, read BSC blog posts, and listen to the podcasts.
Salimah Samji Welcome to the Reflecting on a Decade of Building State Capability podcast series. On today's podcast, I have with me Kirk Gibson. We met Kirk for the first time in September 2018, when he and a group from Papua New Guinea took our free PDIA online course. Welcome, Kirk.
Kirk Gibson Thanks, Salimah. Great to have a chat.
Salimah Samji Great. So why don't we start with that first experience. You know, this was our flagship free PDIA online course. And this was the practice of PDIA, the group course where you had a group and a problem and you took this course with us. Can you share with us, how did you find out about this course and what was that experience like?
Kirk Gibson So in 2018, I was working for The Voice Inc., and we had been exploring the idea of taking individual forms of leadership up to ideas of collective leadership or developmental leadership. We were starting to explore these ideas, and we together worked on forming the first youth coalition in PNG, so brought together around 25 organizations to see whether they're interested in collective action on specific issues, and then started to take action on building Youth Force into a couple of more reforms that were going on at the time. And during this time, we got information from our friends at La Trobe University's Institute of Human Security and Social Change, Chris Roach and crew about PDIA as a way to perhaps take some of these coalitions energy and help understand the problems that we're dealing with to target them. So yeah, we found out about the course. We put it out to the Youth Coalition to see if members of that wanted to form a team to go more deeply into some of the issues we're talking about. And yeah, we got about 7, 8 of them signed up and we got into it.
Salimah Samji So you participated in this 16 week course. And that's a long time period to be able to stay engaged even though it's free. Can you share a little bit about that experience of what motivated you to stay through to the end?
Kirk Gibson Yeah, I think, you know, it was an exciting time for the Voice in this group of youth organizations. It was the first time we'd come together in a coalition, and the energy in the organizations was incredible. I mean, we had our first meeting, and on day 1, 22 organizations turned up, and on day 2, 25 organizations turned up. And we're like, wow, I've never been to a workshop where more of innovation turned up on day 2. So there was this palpable energy. And so when we started PDIA, that energy maintained, and those people who were representing their organizations just kept turning up and kept engaging in the work. So for us, The Voice, myself included, we were sort of acting as a facilitator for that group and providing a space for them to meet. So I think we were drawn along by the energy of them. And so yeah, we had to see it through really, because we were supporting that group to see it through.
Salimah Samji And then the course ended in December 2018. And what happened after that?
Kirk Gibson Well, I guess what happened during the course as well was that the group took on this idea of fading into two law reforms that were happening at the time, fading youth voice into two law reforms. And this incredible effort. They mobilized all their different organizations across the country and got 1000 youth responses into a law reform process. You know, other government bodies have been trying to get voice into this reform process for a long time. And in 24 days, they got 915 responses across 12 provinces from young people into drug and alcohol reform. And so it was an incredibly exciting time. And realizing the power and all that was done with no extra resources, with no money at all, was just through mobilizing different people and what they already had, which is very much in the PDIA kind of thinking. So I think what happened during that course was that people felt a real energy for what was possible when we worked together this way, and then afterwards I left PNG the next year. But The Voice continued on, supporting that youth coalition and trying to do other action. But for myself, I mean, if I was to continue my story. So I then went to Timor-Leste, and I was heading up, Workforce Development program, which was working to support the Timor-Leste government on youth unemployment and employment and then pathways into employment like training and skills development. And, I've been doing that for about a year. And then one of the newly created government agencies, which was tasked with implementing a national employment strategy, some highly ambitious employment strategy to create, you know, 60,000 jobs in 5 years. We were starting to talk to them, and I didn't really know where to start. And the government had put this huge priority on employment. We had this massive bulge of young people coming through in this very young country and, being a new nation for about 20 years. And we started working with this agency and I said, well, where can we start? How do we even understand this problem? How do we unpack it? And so I thought, oh, well, actually, I remember I took this PDIA course and our friends at Building State Capability. So I introduced some of the concepts to them and they loved it. And so then over the next three months, we worked with them in a sort of trying the China model, where we customized the resources that are in the PDIA self-help toolkit. I think it's code and broke them down to Timor-Leste context level. And this team from the National Employment Strategy Secretariat learned how to deliver some of the first stages of PDIA and then went out there to a range of communities and did sessions with stakeholders around employment, using particularly problem construction, problem deconstruction, then identifying access points, and found that was an incredibly useful tool for them to bring people around a problem and understanding how they could take action. So they embraced that tool in a way that really exceeded our expectations. And then at the end, we just stepped back. And they're still today, I think, using at least some parts of PDIA as a way to bring together people around, understanding the problem and, and implement and really where to take action on such a massive problem that has so many elements in Timor-Leste.
Salimah Samji That's a really impressive story. How long were you there?
Kirk Gibson I was there about three years, and we worked with this government agency for probably about a year on this, and it was funny at the time, I remember I was like, should I be talking to Salimah and Matt about this before we start using tools? But and then I was really would think of the sort of creative commons, you know, we support the idea of getting things out there, particularly for people in developing countries, to use some of those tools. So I felt comfortable would support the feeling behind that, sharing of those resources.
Salimah Samji Absolutely. And in fact, I think through this podcast series, I'm hearing a variety of stories that are like yours that I was not aware of, that just give me a lot of joy. When we developed the toolkit, the idea really was to be able to put these tools in the hands of the people that needed it the most and make it simple, and it's been one of the reasons why we actually have actively translated the toolkit. Granted, we have six languages right now, not 100 languages. The motivation is to be able to give people tools in a language that understands and contextualize also the translation in a way that would make sense in that particular language. So it really is incredible to hear that.
Kirk Gibson Yeah. And I think on that note, yeah, you will now find that you might go to a small town, you know, on an island, optimal rest day and at Odo and you would potentially come across some ADR resources in Tetun, which is the national language of Timor-Leste. And because, yeah, those resources were translated into Tetun. And when they were being used by this government agency and they found it was a really effective way, a very practical way of breaking down a problem that people just really didn't know where to start. Youth unemployment in Timor-Leste, and though particularly the problem of construction and deconstruction with the fishbone, was a great way of bringing a whole lot of different stakeholders who were acting on the problem in different ways together into sort of shared understanding of where they were contributing.
Salimah Samji And I think the fact that it continued even after you left is a real testament to kind of the capability that you built yourself while you were there in the three years.
Kirk Gibson Yeah. And I mean, hats off to my Timor-Leste team, who were the geniuses in the training. My captain was pretty basic, but we had incredible buy in from these government leaders really in that agency, and that was critical. They were looking for a way, and they latched on to this as a way that really stepped in to try and attack the problem.
Salimah Samji So then you leave Timor-Leste. And where do you go after that?
Kirk Gibson So then at the end of Timor-Leste, I get a phone call from my friends. I wasn't even at the end. I was still over there from my friends at The Voice Inc., saying that they've been working on this huge new program called Local Leadership and Collective Action, and they've received a large amount of funding and that they need to now stand up. This program is highly ambitious program, which would see them really scaling up their organization and this collective action part of their work, developmental leadership and collective action and coalition building. And would I be interested in coming to join them again as we tried to set it up and roll it out? And at the end at Timor-Leste, I said, yeah, I would love to. The voice is a unique organization that carry a lot of passion and a lot of learnings from myself during my time working for themselves. Happy to be back with them. And then starting mid 2022, we started to roll out the program. It was the first PDIA course with the 32 leaders from the Voices network from around the country who were already working on issues. So we had to pull together that program and get it up and going in a pretty short time and, you know, including with you guys. And somehow I think we pulled it off pretty well. And those people are all out there. That first group had a really good experience in a rollout there, using some of those PDIA tools in different ways, although I think we're still working out how exactly that network comes together, what, you know, parts of PDIA and training, and how can we sort of keep some of that going for them.
Salimah Samji So we reconnected again, like you mentioned in 2022, and I was pleasantly surprised and very happy to get that first email from you and Mali about, hey, would you be interested in this? And doing a PDIA training for The Voice as part of this program? What motivated you to, so you know, you come back to work for The Voice, they have this new program on local leadership. How did PDIA come into this? How did you think about, hey, let's come back to Building State Capability and think about what we can do with them?
Kirk Gibson Yeah, I think this story is more Mali and Sabrina's because they made the initial contact with you. But when they spoke to me, they pitched the idea of what had happened, and to test, you know, what was my thoughts and the logic, how PDIA fitted with relative recollection and collective action. And essentially they would say they needed a tool to try and support the emergence of coalitions in PNG, which had been a difficult space, some coalitions had started but had been difficult to maintain. There was some challenges around trust, around different groups of actors coming together in a way that was able to maintain itself through to public policy reform or implementation. And so and nothing similar. Mali originally pitched to you guys and got you excited about it. So I think I was involved in that initial decision to choose PDIA. But for me, the logic made great sense because we made it a way to extract and engage different sorts of leaders into something new and practical. That wasn't just another training, it wasn't just another talk fest or forum that needed to say, well, what is the problem in your space? You bring that problem to the table and then let's start working on it now. And that logic really made sense to me in PNG, which there is just lots and lots of talking and lots of plan that already exist. And then there are people who are desperate to start working on things and want it. So that's the maze. That's one of the key differences and why we hope that it may work in a different sort of way in PNG to get momentum on these quite intractable problems or previously intractable problems.
Salimah Samji So when you think about that first cohort. Right. So we are now in the second year of this program that we are working together. But we didn't think about it as a two year program. We started with one year doing a pilot, which we did from September to December 2022 and 31 Development leaders from Papua New Guinea successfully completed the program and as you say, are now out there. Can you say a little bit about what they've been doing? Because we finished the course in December, and then I think it was in March where you came back to us this year in 2023 saying, can we do a second cohort and can we think about what that would look like? But in that time period, what was the group that we had trained doing with the training that they had received?
Kirk Gibson So there's a couple of different ways that those groups have traveled. So what we first imagined with PDIA in the logic of local leadership. You know, PDIA makes up one part of a sort of broader suite of resources and mechanisms by which we try to support these leaders to take action. So what we thought was that, okay, a PDIA group will dig into an issue. They'll come up with actions, and then those actions will continue after PDIA. Perhaps they'll gather a larger group of people around them that will form into a coalition. That will then get some traction on the issue they're working on. So that sort of happened, but in a bit of a different way than we thought. That probably some of the most interesting examples are when the first group from PDIA dug into the issue, identified some access points. So sorcery accusation related violence is one example. Access to justice was the point that they were digging into the problem. That group of people have been engaged with other groups of developmental leaders and organized a team that then enrolled in PDIA 2. And that second team is made up of highly influential and key network leaders who are actually in a better position probably than PDIA team 1 starts as a coach in that team on the second team. So there's sort of, a cumulative effect on some of the issues where we've got a team in PDIA 2 who are better placed, and also the issue that they've identified or the access point is narrower and more realistic as a reform issue. So that's happened in probably two cases. The other one is on youth employment, where we now have a team that is much more focused on a specific national policy issue and has a real chance of progressing that one, being coached by PDIA 1 person on the access point and got the right leaders in PDIA 2. And yeah, the interesting way that we got some follow up and feedback with PDIA, is that some of them are just using it individually in their own organizations, sort of habitually in their daily work. But some of our higher education team are simply using the tools to deal with day to day problems in the operations that the universities, university leaders, or bringing university people and using it to bring people together around problems and identifying how to solve them, and particularly stuff around authorizers that's been really powerful for PDIA 1 group has been understanding, well, how do we make change happen? Or why isn't it happening? Right? Authorizing space. We don't have the right people on board. So I think all these bits of the tools they're then using just to solve problems at various levels in their daily work.
Salimah Samji And with like this second cohort, you know, they're in week nine of the program. What do you hope to see from this cohort? You know, I think like you explained, we trained the first cohort last year. Some of the members of that cohort are now serving as coaches in teams for the second year of training. What are some thoughts that you have or hopes that you have for what they may do with this?
Kirk Gibson I think the second team and, you know, we we try not to be too ambitious because in PNG, things take time. You know in countries things take time when you're trying to budge really complex issues. But what we think is the way PDIA 2 teams came together, they came together as a team. They were already working together in some way, so they had a bit of a jumpstart. PDIA 1 came together from different spaces. So PDIA 2 teams potentially working already within a single organization or within a networked group that is acting on a problem. So they tend to be a bit further progressed into the problem, into solving things in their daily work. So for a couple of them, yeah, we are a little bit more optimistic about what they might be able to accomplish. So now starting to get into this more clearly identifying a reform issue and starting to see a couple of them bring together people outside the PDIA group to solve that issue. So this sort of emergent coalitions will in a couple of spaces. And they really using the PDIA tools to say, okay, who are the authorizers for the specific problem we want, how do we bring them together? And so starting to take the shape of a coalition into cases that might be able to take on, in one case, it would be the implementation of a national plan that's been very hard to implement. And the other case, it's possible reform of some really outdated laws around a certain type of alcohol that is causing a lot of harm in some of the capital cities. So I think there's a couple of emergent mini-coalitions, but also narrower reform issues that are viable really for that group to take forward.
Salimah Samji And finally, what advice would you give to other people who are either interested in PDIA or already doing PDIA work?
Kirk Gibson Sure. And, you know, I think. Yeah. It's not like I've drunk the Kool-Aid or anything on PDIA. There are many tools and mechanisms that we use, and, you know, it can work in different situations. But what I've found is there are some parts of PDIA that are extremely practical for people that I work with, both in developing countries and in other places, that simply work, that allow them to unpack a problem in a way that makes them feel confident and able to take action. And so I would say to anyone thinking about it is that, yeah, it's not a single tool. It's not the be all and end all. There are many different ways, but in certain situations. And what I found is you've got a very complex problem when you've got a large amount of people trying to take on that complex problem, PDIA tools can give you a very practical way of breaking it down to a starting point, which actually allows momentum to then develop, and then from there, who can cite. But it's that first paralysis point that I find can really just stop things happening for a very long time, sometimes in places that are working.
Salimah Samji Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kirk. This has been a real delight.
Kirk Gibson Good to chat, Salimah. Talk to you again soon.
BSC Team Thank you for listening to our podcast today. If you liked it, please check out our website, bsc.hks.harvard.edu or follow us on social media @HarvardBSC. You can also find links and other information under the description of this podcast.