Policy consulting in the Middle East
what one should pay attention to when she/he gives a policy consulting in the middle east
When I graduated from Harvard Kennedy School, I was equipped with lots of tools and methods to consult governments. However, when I actually started to apply these tools in reality I faced multiple issues. Although I grew up in the Middle East and was culturally very aware of the underlying soft capabilities one needs to be able to navigate the system in the Middle East, I faced lots of problems. I can summarize my experiences in three points that can help you if you are a policy consultant or intended to start your career as a policy consultant in the middle east.
ِDrowned into the process (Process-based thinking Vs problem-based thinking )
As a freelancer policy consultant, recently I guided two national policy projects, National Employment Policy and National Tourism Policy. In both of these projects, I was responsible to get the approval from national planning organization and cabinet. To craft policy, I used a process-based approach. I believe the methodology of any given project is only 10% of the project and as a result, I’ve always spent proportionally the same amount of time explaining the methodology in the meetings.
To my surprise, in every meeting, I was asked to change the structure of the report to the proposed structure of planning organization (which is one of the methods of strategic planning). And even when people did not have any comments about the content they insisted and tried so hard to convince me that if I do not change the structure my report cannot be considered a policy work!
These discussions grabbed my attention towards other activities that are being done even at the top level of governments! you can see people are so drowned in the process that does not even ask themselves: Why I am doing what I am doing?
You may say this is the nature of bureaucracy. In any given bureaucracy one wants a percentage of people who perfectly do the process without asking so many questions. Well, I agree but I think there should be a healthy combination of problem-oriented thinkers and process-oriented thinkers, otherwise, no one can take corrective actions toward existing policies.
In this region, we have a strong tribal concept (or a strong head of the extended family). It means one person will think about the problem and the majority of the community members just need to do what is being said to them. So keep in mind, that most high-level policymakers in this region are not problem thinkers.
As a consultant:
If you are asked to give a policy consult on a specific issue, first of all, make sure that your client is clear about what is the problem that she/he wants to address. Have a clear problem definition and get her/his approval on that!
In every meeting start with the problem definition and bring the attention of members back to why you are doing what you are doing!
In the search of utopia (full list of suggestions to fix everything in a most complex possible way)
This year I taught a course “Policy making process and policy evaluation” for undergrad students. In this course students had a group project to develop policy options for a real problem and sketch out an evaluation plan for them. The first thing I asked them to mention was “who is your client”, and they could not understand why I am emphasizing on this issue too much! and most of the time I would get the answer “ I am writing it to the president!”, “President office” or “anyone who tells everybody what to do”! I’ve started to think about these answers and got engaged in the second level discussions with them:
Me: what are you going to do with conflict of interests?
Student: We need to come up with alternatives that maximize every bodies’ interest.
Me: Is it possible to come up with policy options and be sure those policies can fulfill every ones’ interests?
Student: We need to do it! we can if we spend enough time on it!
Me (This time in my mind): So we can play god and create utopia! otherwise policy paper does not have any meaning! :) either you fix it all or do nothing!
Then I started to notice the same pattern with my clients:
Client: why you have only 20 items?
Me: Considering government capacity and its bottlenecks, these are the most technically, administratively and politically feasible options.
Client: But what are you going to do with.. (naming lots of other issues)
Me: Government does not have capacity to deal with all of these issues now and we need to prioritize!
Client: Noooo, what you write should capture all the elements of the system and possible solutions.
Me (In my mind): Do you want to play god?
I’ve been experiencing these types of discussions during these years and let me tell you what I think is the potential explanation for it:
Most of prophets were from this region and the concept of religion is very deeply rooted in people’s mind. In all the religions in this region, the idea of a day that someone will come and create a flawless society is very much promoted. As a result, in people’s subconscious they are looking for a master plan to create Utopia and less than this is not accepted at all! They even, cannot accept any mistake because you either have a master plan that can save everything or you are not qualified for what you do. You can easily see this behavior in hiring foreign football coaches. Usually in these countries you can see, they hire a very expensive football coach, after her/his first bad result policy makers or team owners/managers immediately considering to fire the coach and replace her/him (He is either god or no mistake is accepted.)
So as a consultant:
Policy makers looking for a master plan for change, you should communicate constantly why what they expect is not possible and what is a possible and doable solution! Mange exceptions constantly!
Mistakes are not accepted, so from the beginning emphasize the possibility of not being 100% right especially in problems with heavy social weight. Promote the importance of learning and possibility of not having 100% accuracy!
Policy makers tend to overload themselves with the complexity of details (They want to plan a Utopia :)), so always bring them back to the big picture and actively check to not fall into the trap of not necessary details by policy makers.
Can we create a Utopia? we are destined to do it?
Can you trust me? (How being a long history of being an empire can destroy TRUST)
An interesting fact about Persian and Arabic languages is that in both of these languages to convey the same message you need to write at least twice as much as what you write in English. Especially when you look at official letters you may notice lots of decorative, complex and long sentences (You can even see these patterns in my English essays :)). The first time I noticed it was in my Leadership class when Professor Hefeitz brought it to my attention. We had a long discussion about how the history of a region can affect its language structure.
As all of you know this region has almost the oldest civilization in the world and has always a powerful empire (Babylonians, Persians, etc). Even just 40 years ago all the countries in this region had strong monarchies. So, as you can easily even see in Hollywood movies, people need to use lots of decorative words and play games (not directly say what they actually think or intend)with each other to be able t gain more popularity with the king or simply to survive. This issue presents itself in two different ways in how they deal with a policy consultant:
First, as a policy consultant keeps in mind when politicians give you feedback on your work, they do not necessarily mean what they tell you even when they pay you a lot to do a project for them. For example, the following phrase “It is an interesting suggestion let me think about it” can have multiple meanings: 1) I liked it but I need to think about its political impact, 2) I hated it, and I will never use it, 3) It is good to work and I want to present it somewhere and the list can continue… SOOO a counterattack would be bombarding them with follow-up specific questions. In my example, ask “I am happy that you liked it, can you elaborate more on the parts you liked so I can work more on them” or “What it is about it that keeps your mind busy, give me some hints on them so I can change my work”. You need to be proactive to explore the real meaning of her/his words! never trust the actual words!
Second, remember that people in this region naturally play games, so no one presents what is actually technically correct. Most people mix it with lots of politics to secure their positions (In reality they may not even need to do it but they do!). So, people in bureaucratic systems gradually learn how to not trust each other and double-check what is being presented by a person or a unit. So for example, the Ministry of Cooperative, Labour and Social Welfare writes National Employment Policy, NEP, (Naturally this ministry should have the most qualified experts in this area!). To get the approval for the NEP ministry should go through two other checking points in the government, the planning organization and a subcommittee of the cabinet. What I (I was responsible to present this work)expected was to have discussions around the alignment of proposed policies with the country’s overall plan or budget discussions. However, I’ve spent lots of time convincing people that the numbers that I used (In this case being produced by the official statistical body of the government!) are correct :). They do not trust each other! So, be aware that actually getting things done in these systems is really hard and that is why most of the work being done by international organizations is just for shelves of libraries!
As a consultant:
Do not trust what you get as feedback and always explore it!
Try to build your own trust network with different stakeholders regardless of your client’s organization. It can potentially help your client to get approval for your project.
Talk about trust, and bring this issue up in meetings if you face difficulties related to trust. This can make people aware of what they do subconsciously and they may slightly correct it.
