Innovations for Poverty Action Ghana
Loïc Watine, Country Director, IPA Ghana
“It is with great enthusiasm that I am providing a recommendation for Rosie Leyden and Ian Ferguson from Teamworks, who spent two months as volunteer consultants for IPA Ghana.
IPA is an international NGO with permanent presence in 18 countries around the world, and which aims to discover and promote effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA works with various implementers and policy makers to evaluate the impact of their interventions using the most rigorous field research methods. IPA Ghana is one of IPA’s largest offices, with 86 permanent staff across its two offices in Accra and Tamale, and 19 ongoing projects nationwide.
Ian and Rosie were with us as volunteer consultants for 8 weeks in the last quarter of 2015, a period in which we were reflecting on our achievements in 2015, as well as building our strategic plan for 2016. We had asked them to help us think through our management practices, organizational structure, staff development strategy, and our strategic priorities at large.
Their approach was particularly effective. They started by spending two weeks talking with a large majority of our staff so to fully understand their work and the constraints they were facing. They also visited our field operations, and studied background documentation extensively. After that, despite the thorough understanding that they had built about the organization through that first phase, their approach didn’t merely involve producing recommendations to us – which they certainly could have done extensively given their tremendous experience of organizational management. Instead they managed to strike a very fine balance between a “consulting” approach – i.e. providing recommendations and answering questions – with a “coaching” approach – i.e. helping me and my managers come up with the solutions to our own challenges ourselves. As a result of that thoughtful combination, they did have a tremendous positive influence on our plans and organizational structure, although the whole team clearly still felt a full sense of ownership over the orientations that were decided during their stay. Thanks to this I am particularly confident that the large majority of these ideas will effectively be implemented – and a number are already under way.
Rosie and Ian are also outstanding trainers. In addition to the support mentioned above, they also spent time preparing and delivering particularly effective management trainings to our staff – in our case, they did one training on coaching and one on delegation. These trainings were very highly rated by staff, and the carefully-tailored practical exercises that came with them will undoubtedly allow for the key lessons to stick and actually be put in practice.
In addition to the results that they produced, I should add that Rosie and Ian also were a real pleasure to interact with. They were professional but also very friendly and approachable.
My team and I are very thankful for the difference they made at IPA Ghana, and we would recommend them for any similar consultancy without reservation.”