The Power of Plain Speaking

Probably the most courageous contributors to the Plain Speaking Webinar in which I took part last week were two social workers from India.

In their second, possibly third language, and addressing a gathering of mostly CEOs, Directors, Heads of Department and Board Members of large British charities, they voiced their concerns.

‘You must be knowing about the situation in India and how bad it is’ said one. Then he referred to the social media fundraising campaigns by huge international charities that were launched in the wake of the devastating second wave of Covid in India. These emergency appeals, he had read, had raised a lot of money.

‘But here, on the ground, we just don’t see any of these organisations at work, ‘he told us.

Also on the subject of the role of international charities, the other Indian social worker reported witnessing ‘a very worrying trend.’
Heavily influenced by international charities, Indian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were now handing over their Monitoring and Evaluation to ‘third parties’, usually private companies.
These third parties, he said, use business models to judge the effectiveness of projects without engaging with the local people who actually plan and implement the programmes.
Oh, and the fees these third parties charge are normally 10% of the total project cost.

These two plain speakers had taken time out from their frontline work to log into the webinar (late at night for them), because it was a rare opportunity to be heard by charity leaders.

The webinar had been organized by the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, part of the Cass Business School in London. And I had been asked to give a talk to kick off the discussion. https://www.cass.city.ac.uk/faculties-and-research/centres/cce/events
In many ways I was an odd choice of speaker. On its website the CCE calls itself ‘the non-profit sector’s academic hub.’ It draws on ‘sound research and the shared experience of academics, consultants and clients to offer support and guidance to nonprofit leaders who want to drive change – be it governance, strategy, leadership.’
Second Sight is an organization that could not be further removed from such a world – our strategy, governance and leadership have evolved very much away from the corridors of academia and in the villages of rural north India.

Ah but that was fine, said the organisers. Tell it like it is. We want to stimulate debate.
So I chose the title : The Power of Plain Speaking. And they added – ‘how a small charity punches way above its weight’.  Which of course Second Sight does.
However, we agreed that the webinar should be as interactive as possible and everyone encouraged to engage in some Plain Speaking in order to widen the discussion.

In one sense it was terrific. I was reminded of my days as a TV reporter on the BBC’s John Craven’s Newsround in the 1970s. That programme had broken the mould and succeeded in conveying important news and current affairs stories to a child audience – with much clarity of language and no patronizing tone whatsoever. No surprise that it was popular with adults, too.

Similarly, having established the tone of the webinar in the only way that I know – with my own plain speaking- when the Q and A started I did not detect any of the jargon or verbosity of language that, sadly, has become part and parcel of the charitable sector.
There was an honesty and openness in the questions and comments. Well done, all.

There was, however, a resounding silence from one group – the representatives of the large charities. This was surprising for two reasons: firstly because one would have thought they would have a great deal to say about the Second Sight creed – Small is not just beautiful but highly effective – but also because most of the contributors ended up asking questions that they were more fitted to answer than me e.g. why is it so difficult to get information out of a big charity, and (the plainest speaking question of the lot) –‘are big charities conning their donors?’

I tried to draw them in. Anyone out there who would like to answer that? I asked more than once.
That’s the drawback of webinars, however. I couldn’t eyeball individual audience members or ask them directly if they wanted to speak up.
There is a limit to Plain Speaking on Zoom.

But why this reluctance to speak, from a group usually most ready to hold forth.

A cynical explanation to the marked silence would be that they could not adequately answer the probing questions.

On the other hand, there could be a more encouraging explanation.
Could it be that some were experiencing a Damascene moment? Perhaps, listening to the natural, conversational language used by most of the attendees to share their own experiences or to make a point, they recognized that they, themselves, had lost the habit of plain speaking.
Perhaps they were able to answer some of those tricky questions or believed that they could justify some of the practices being criticized…but realised that the language they normally use might appear a little weak, even suspiciously opaque in an environment in which everyone else was indulging in plain speaking.

Perhaps they had simply lost the habit of plain speaking.
Perhaps the silence was a humble admission of loss.

Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling a touch of impatience, post-webinar. At myself, too.
Poverty, blindness, domestic abuse, climate change are ALL emergencies. For the people suffering most from these situations they have always been crisis situations. And there are countless great people out there, never forgetting this, and refusing to slack on the job.
All in all, it does seem a bit of a luxury to keep spending time and money on nurturing charity leaders to learn how to reconnect with these people, don’t you think?

So now I am back to doing what I normally do – staying in close touch with the do-ers in Bihar. Until the day when we can once again be amongst them in the flesh.
I have just talked to the doctor in charge of an eye hospital in north-western Bihar. It seems that an inexperienced eye surgeon from neighbouring Nepal has set up a temporary hospital on the Indo-Nepalese border in order to practice his surgical technique on poor patients. Action on several different fronts is required.
Watch this space.

Lucy Mathen

#powerofplainspeaking   #smalliseffective