{"id":559,"date":"2014-07-31T02:23:27","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T02:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unhcr.php.caravan.coop\/?p=559"},"modified":"2017-06-29T10:56:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:56:33","slug":"change-is-difficult-lets-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unhcr.org\/innovation\/change-is-difficult-lets-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Change is difficult: let’s dance!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a reader, you will notice that I will use the term \u00a8Harmony\u201d a lot of times during this blog. Like in music, the harmony<\/b><\/span> (how each instrument interact with other in a certain time line) and the timing <\/b><\/span>(when and how each instrument enters) are key elements to make an innovative idea to become a concrete project. Like in music, you become a good performer by learning, as a VERY first step, to LISTEN\u2026 in this case the motivations behind what is declared on the needs assessments, and the tempos of when and how innovation tools can be used and what for.\u00a0 Like in music, a new type of practice takes years and years to be understood and absorbed by culture.<\/p>\n

Like in music, you learn to dance by listening. An effective Innovation it\u2019s a nice dancing between the ideas and the users, whereas the 1st one (the ideas) are changing their rhythm and harmony according to the needs of the second.\u00a0 Like in a good music jam, it does not matter how competent or how experienced the musicians are if they don\u00b4t listen to each other and adapt their ideas to the collective exercise in order to produce a song. In our case, we try to listen and adapt our ideas to the context we are playing in: the needs of our users. It does not matter how a great innovator you think you can be, it will happen only if your ideas can improve the reality of your surrounding environment. Some times being quiet and listen to the context, before starting to play is a pretty good first step to begin with.<\/p>\n

The first time I presented a \u201cnew tool to improve your performance\u201d as a foreigner in a new operation, the 1st answers I received were:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u201cI have being doing this job for 30 years! What made you think you can<\/b><\/span> improve it?\u2026 What makes you think I want<\/b><\/span> to improve it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u201c<\/span>Every time some one new comes, they always try to bring something new <\/b>and change the way we do things\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In that moment the conversation was already so far away about the discussion about improving efficiency or performance but gave me an even more important outcome of what I expected: The motivations for innovation<\/b><\/span> into your clients (understanding \u201cclient\u201d as the population that can be served for a certain idea. It can be a government officer, other HCR or UN colleagues, IDPs, Refugees and even your self wen prototyping any kind of tool to organize your self better).<\/p>\n

There are 2 major elements I learned from those conversations:<\/p>\n