THEMATIC ANALYSIS: GETTING TO GRIPS WITH CITY-TO-CITY LEARNING
5.3.7. Joint ownership of plan
The last commonality that emerged from the interviews with respondents was that what also set apart the eThekwini Municipality’s process from other processes was the joint ownership of the plan by political and administrative leadership. By having such joint ownership, confidence was instilled among the public stakeholders to engage and be regarded as equal partners in such a process. This point was further delved into in the interview with the previous City Manager who was asked to reflect on ownership of the process.
On the one hand there was very clear ANC leadership and on the other there was strong management leadership; we were not afraid to put our heads down and just get things
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done. We led and made things happen. This route of bringing people together has since then been followed by many other municipalities who took our lead.
Former City Manager, eThekwini Municipality In summary, what the findings from the interviewees and focus group respondents have shown is that there are clear and measurable characteristics of successful strategic planning processes. The five areas that have emerged from the interviews surfaced as consensual, common areas that respondents had identified. These areas were not contested or debated by the participants and each of these was valued and recognized as worthy of being emulated. As such, these characteristics are important to note in terms of the content of strategic planning and do provide a useful yardstick to measure such good planning practice.
In order to gauge the perceptions of eThekwini municipality’s visioning process of those not directly involved in the mentorship, but who participated in the strategic planning workshops two questions were included in the survey. The first broader question tested respondents’ general satisfaction with the usefulness and relevance of eThekwini Municipality’s visioning process, whilst the second question isolated five key aspects of the process and surveyed respondents’ level of satisfaction with each.
Before these survey results are presented and analyzed it must be noted that these results merely indicate respondent perceptions. As acknowledged by Dhingra and Dhingra (2011: 63), perception is a “very complex cognitive process that yields a unique picture of the world, a picture that may be quite different from reality”. It is important therefore not to overstate the findings in this regard.
Moreover, such perceptions are based only on what they would have encountered during the course of the workshop, through short presentations from their respective city planners on how their city process was modeled on eThekwini Municipality’s own experiences as well as through informal interactions with the Durban planners during the workshop. Whilst the respondents’ exposure to, and understanding of the municipality’s journey of strategic planning was limited, they are useful in painting a picture of how the respondents’ perceive and judge eThekwini Municipality’s process, especially since they were not exposed to it in any great detail.
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Figure 5.1: Comparative analysis of Otjiwarongo and Mzuzu survey respondent satisfaction with the relevance and usefulness of eThekwini Municipality’s visioning process in percentage (n=10 for Otjiwarongo and n=24 for Mzuzu)
As indicated in Figure 5.1 above, it is clear that most participants at both workshops were satisfied with the eThekwini Municipality’s strategic planning process. Of the 88% of total respondents who were satisfied, 32% were quite satisfied and 56% were very satisfied. It is interesting that even though these respondents did not have many years of exposure to the eThekwini Municipality’s experience like their own municipal planners and facilitators, only 6% chose not to respond to this question, with none of the Mzuzu respondents choosing not to respond.
Their higher level of satisfaction (71% being very satisfied as compared to 20% in Otjiwarongo) could be attributed to the fact that Mzuzu’s visioning process ran over two and a half days and not just for a day as was the case in Otjiwarongo. There was therefore relatively more time to reflect on the eThekwini Municipality’s process in Mzuzu and to interact and engage with the eThekwini Municipality’s planners. During this time, they were exposed to all aspects of the eThekwini planning process from participation, budgeting, implementing to how the plan was monitored and evaluated. Key components of the process would have resonated with them, which could explain their high level of satisfaction.
Table 5.7: Analysis of both Otjiwarongo and Mzuzu survey respondents’ perceptions of key aspects of the eThekwini Municipality’s visioning process in percentage (n=34, in %)
Level of satisfaction
No response
Strongly disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
Total
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Otjiwarongo Mzuzu
20
0 10
0 10
0 40
29 20
71
No Response Quite Dissatisfied Neutral
Quite satisfied Very satisfied
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Strategic 6 3 3 6 32 50 100
Highly participatory
12 3 6 3 29 47 100
Budget alignment
9 - 3 9 41 38 100
Action plan alignment
6 6 3 - 35 50 100
Performance managed
6 - 6 3 26 59 100
With regard to respondents’ perceptions of specific aspects of eThekwini Municipality’s strategic planning process, there appears to be general satisfaction with all aspects. What stands out from the data, however, is that the highest rating emerged in the areas of plan implementation and performance management, with 85% of all respondents either agreeing or strongly agreeing that eThekwini Municipality’s process was worthy of emulation. In attempting to make sense of this result, it is fair to intimate that civil society representatives appreciated and valued a process that actually delivered on the ground. Any process that involves consultation and does not follow on to yield results is unproductive and often disempowering for those being consulted. Equally, as Mzuzu respondents included officials and politicians who were not directly involved in leading the planning process, the results showed that municipal officials also recognized the value of plan implementation and constant evaluation. For these officials associating with a plan which was able to yield tangible results ensured both legitimacy and credibility not only to the process but to the municipality.
It is also worth pointing out the majority of the respondents (82%) either agreed or strongly agreed with the notion of the eThekwini Municipality’s planning process as a strategic one. This is particularly important as the strategic planning orientation lends itself to longer term planning and the emphasis on engaging with key stakeholders to ensure a more sustainable future and improved quality of life, rather than focusing on short-term service delivery issues only.
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These survey results which complement the insights from the in-depth interviews is useful in understanding what is valued as important in strategic planning processes both to planners leading the process and to those that engage in the visioning exercise as participants. Whilst this may be the case, the more critical issue revolves around understanding exactly how cities recognize the value of such good practice in other cities. In other words, how do they know who to learn from;
is this identification of good practice cities as a result of systematic research or is it a hit-and miss approach, or is it perhaps based on a system of referrals?
A fundamentally important revelation was made during the interview with a member of the Cities Alliance Secretariat that has helped unravel the complexities of city-to-city learning.
I am not sure whether cities are really doing their homework, making an assessment and approaching cities strategically. City-to-city learning is where in a facilitated process this happens, actually through brokering…where a common platform has been created by say the UCLG. The problem is that this brokering role is totally hidden – no one knows about it, and it is not recorded in any of the official documentation.
Member of the Cities Alliance Secretariat
This key insight clearly reinforces the notion of an underground knowledge economy in city-to- city learning. Undocumented, and completely under the radar, what emerges is the notion that cities often rely on an important brokering role played by a third party agency that goes between themselves and the cities that they ultimately partner with; matching a latent demand for knowledge with a potential knowledge supplier. Expressed in matrimonial terms, it seems that cities enter into an arranged marriage of sorts, relying on the expertise of the go-between to ensure success of their courtship. In probing to uncover what it is that attracts the attention of the go- between to the mentor city, it emerged that investment in knowledge management is the single most important factor that attracts potential partners.
In particular, from an analysis of the responses from across all 18 key informants, the fact that the eThekwini Municipality made the conscious effort to document the history of its strategic planning process was a significant issue. In probing during the interview with the former City Manager, it
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emerged that it was his intervention with the UCLG at an international event that alerted them of eThekwini Municipality’s robust strategic planning process that had led to the eThekwini Municipality as being identified as a mentor to other African cities. The UCLG then strategically facilitated the pairing of these cities with the eThekwini Municipality. This brokering role by the UCLG also resulted in the eThekwini Municipality being paired with the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo where Sao Paulo was regarded as the mentor city sharing its expertise around human settlements with its eThekwini Municipality counterparts.
What is critical to highlight here was the intention of the former City Manager to position the Municipality as a potential center of learning on the African continent so that its good practices could be disseminated within the region on the one hand, whilst ensuring that international good practice from elsewhere in the global South could be received as part of the eThekwini Municipality’s own learning agenda. In order to facilitate this learning culture, the municipality invested in documenting their own processes, and had a team of highly trained planners who were willing and able to share this knowledge which was the catalyst in ensuring that the eThekwini Municipality consolidate its position as a learning city. Interestingly, this knowledge management decision to preserve the institutional memory of the organization not only appealed in the first instance to the UCLG, who played the role of the go-between, but to the mentee cities themselves, and to the Local Authority Associations. ALAN, for example, was concerned that in Namibia the loss of memory in local government was one of the single greatest threats they were facing. The UCLG itself also recognized the practice of the eThekwini Municipality to consciously document its processes as critical, and over the last few years has partnered with the eThekwini Municipality to ensure that all the UCLG learning events are captured through a set of learning notes.
The eThekwini Municipality planners themselves also acknowledged this commitment to documenting, learning and sharing. As one official suggested:
eThekwini appears to be more open than other cities to learning; they play in learning spaces and are much more accessible.
Head of Policy Office, eThekwini Municipality
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In probing the reason for this openness, it appeared that this was part of the organizational culture that was intentionally being created at that time. Officials observed that there was a concerted effort from the former City Manager to position eThekwini as an international center of learning.
Marketing of the city processes also seemed important to the eThekwini team, and in particular, active networking in international circles. From the analysis, it emerged that having city leadership or a champion who could see the value of knowledge management and sharing international good practice was key:
Having the City Manager play a key role in networks such as the South African Cities Network (SACN) and the UCLG cannot be under-estimated… ultimately personalities play such an important role.
Lead facilitator, eThekwini Municipality
More than just the active marketing of itself and the intention to share information internationally though, the eThekwini municipal planning team made the point that what mattered was the quality of the sharing and engagement. In this regard, an astute observation was made by ALAN:
The Durban story has been powerful because it has an honest candidness about it.
Senior ALAN official
This point about being able to reflect and share openly also emerged from the eThekwini Municipality’s participants themselves. They stressed that the conditions were always created by the city leadership to engage without fear of retribution, to critically look at what worked well and to learn from past mistakes. These are critical insights from a southern African case study that confirms the essence of organizational learning theory.
In particular, this self-reflective admission confirms the notions of Nonaka’s (1994) ba and Aydalot’s (1986) innovative milieu which emphasizes the value of sharing in an open, non- threatening environment. This is an important theoretical validation that the case study begins to make, as the researcher is not aware of the testing of this aspect of organizational learning in city- to-city learning contexts in southern Africa. The details of exactly how the learning process was structured and the methodology employed by the facilitators will be covered later on in this
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chapter. What is important to reinforce here is the point that the learning process in the case study was structured in a way that facilitated honest and open dialogue, with the space created for open reflection and opportunities created to dissect what mistakes had been made in the strategic planning process. This reporting of a brutal honesty about what worked well and what did not in their approach to strategic planning, it appears, almost disarmed participants and played a role in allowing them to speak their minds, and helped further entrench a sense of trust in each other.
At the same time, in deepening the analysis, it can be posited that this higher order of learning did not happen by accident or coincidence. The eThekwini Municipality’s facilitators were actually very skillful learning practitioners who had been schooled in the art of strategic facilitation under the auspices of MILE. As MILE practitioners they had consciously utilized tools and techniques that maximize learning outcomes, such as the adoption of the World Bank Institute’s “blended learning approach” which incorporates multiple learning approaches (eThekwini Municipality, 2014c: 18). Again, these insights have not been documented elsewhere before, as MILE is a fairly recent institutional innovation and the lessons learned in this case study is important to inform practice elsewhere on the continent.
Beyond this reference from the MILE Knowledge Management Strategy, the researcher paid particular attention in observing first-hand the facilitators at work in Durban and Namibia. During these observations, important facilitation techniques (ranging from the setting of inclusive ground- rules, to ensuring opportunities for maximum social interaction during lunch and dinner, to creating site visits that encouraged personal interaction on a bus) employed by the facilitators allowed them to create an atmosphere of trust that enabled higher order learning. This is important, as the case study begins to validate Campbell’s (2012a: 11) model that suggests clear “orders of learning”, placing eThekwini Municipality in the third order of learning with proactive city learners such as Seattle.
What also emerges from the case study is the importance of organizational investment in institutionalizing knowledge management and committing time and resources towards more structured learning. The Founding Document of MILE explains concisely the explicit intention of this knowledge management vehicle:
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The intention of MILE is to provide a powerful platform for sharing practical insights into the day-to-day protocols, and systems required for successful implementation of local government functions. MILE can be invaluable to the local government practitioner who asks: “How do I do what I have been doing, more effectively? Who is doing something similar? Does it work elsewhere? Is it grounded theoretically? How can I consolidate such learning via academic institutions?
eThekwini Municipality (2010b: 3)
This again validates Campbell’s (2012a) model around different styles of learning, with an important qualification. The eThekwini Municipality’s decision to establish a dedicated knowledge management vehicle, MILE, suggests a corporate style of learning which, according to Campbell (2012a: 147), involves “formalized arrangements, including a bureaucracy, written procedures for rule making and less flexible means of decision-making and action”. The three cities that have been identified in this learning typology by Campbell (2012a) are Seattle, Bilbao and Singapore. It is interesting to note, however, that unlike these cities identified in Campbell’s (2012a) research, whilst the eThekwini Municipality’s arrangements were formalized and organized and the learning very structured, one of the critically important findings from this study is that the eThekwini Municipality’s approach enjoyed much more flexibility around decision- making and action. The MILE organizational structure is flat, and does not have a dedicated Deputy Head or Head unlike typical municipal departments, and is managed more as a dynamic program by a senior manager (eThekwini Municipality, 2010b).
As a learning institute that has been in existence for only six years, with increasing support from international agencies such as the UCLG, World Bank, UN and other development agencies, this unique feature of MILE’s flexibility emerging from the case study resists the perfect categorization into the model presented by Campbell (2012a). It shows that in a southern African context, it may be difficult to straight jacket the learning style characterized by MILE into a more generalized model. This is a critically important finding highlighting that need for more nuanced understandings of how learning occurs in an African context, and this will be flagged for further development in later chapters.
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To summarize, from this first thematic analysis that explored defining characteristics of good strategic planning practice that cities find useful to emulate, five enduring traits emerged from the case study. These include committing to a longer term planning horizon that goes beyond narrow political terms of office, a robust and bottom-up participatory stakeholder engagement process, an integrated and holistic approach that delivers on outcomes, a planning process that translates easily into implementation and a process that is jointly owned by its administrators and political leadership.
More importantly, the case study showed that whilst cities themselves are actively looking for partnerships with others, they ultimately rely on external brokers that help connect cities with each other. These brokers are often international agents such as the UCLG that are able to access funding for such partnerships from donor agencies. Another critical insight emerging from the case study is the importance of investing in an entrenched knowledge management system that promotes institutionalized learning, which in turn attracts the attention of international agencies and facilitates future partnerships.
Whilst the case study validates the notions of orders of learning and learning styles, as suggested by Campbell (2012a), it showed that the reality of learning in a southern African context required agility, flexibility and adaptability demonstrated by MILE which resists the neat categorization into a corporate learning style. The pragmatic stance of the research, outlined in the conceptual framework again comes to the fore. It is clear that the adoption of grand meta-theories and cookie- cutter reductionist approaches, offer little analytical value in politicized and dynamic southern African contexts that often require more flexible, bottom-up responses to complex urban challenges.
These are all key findings that are helping excavate and reveal the underground knowledge economy that has not surfaced in the southern African context before. In continuing this excavation, the next section probes the concept of city-to-city learning in an attempt to crystallize a common southern African practitioner perspective of this somewhat elusive term.