Yes I know, I know, Bangladesh is flooded. Well, 40 out of 64 districts and last I heard 60 per cent of Dhaka. They're comparing it to the floods of 1998, which doesn't sound like a long time ago but gives you an idea of how this flat land is exposed to natural disaster. According to my Lonely Planet, 90 per cent of the country is no more than 10m over sea level! You will be relieved to hear though that this does NOT include the North-West where I am which is relatively, and I mean relatively, high up with an altitude that is I gather less than 200m. Basically though, we're higher up, haven't had that much rain these last few weeks, so are fine. Neighbouring areas have flooded though, but are apparently over the worst now.

It's real simple geography in fact - the country is higher in the North than the South so the water slowly but surely makes its way to the sea, flooding areas as it goes. I got an idea of what the flooding looks like on my way back from Dhaka on Monday. For starters, I noticed we took a completely different route for the first half of the journey up to crossing the Brahmaputra river or Jamuna as it's known here. Now that's a BIG river, and while I've not got any hard numbers I'd guess it's at least a couple of miles wide where we cross on a new bridge that opened last year. At one point we were a good foot or 2 deep in water on a road we couldn't actually see. They'd helpfully indicated the edges of the road using rope and poles, much like you'd indicate the different queues at a cinema. That was a tad worrying I have to admit (the water, not the ropes), and all around I could see nothing but lakes where fields, even villages, used to be. Once in a while there would be a clue as to what lay underneath, like a corrugated iron roof, but basically the landscape was completely transformed. Only some of the roads or paths are high enough up to stay dry, so most people just have to wade across whatever new body of water now separates them from the market or relatives or their place of work (if they're lucky enough to have one).

My work on the other hand is coming along nicely. Just before Anne and Bjart left they put all their documents etc. onto a CD and gave it to Sarah for future distribution. I immediately made a copy of their files as some of their stuff is very relevant to what BRIF needs as well. This week I took a few hours to go through it all and see what was useful for my own projects, and found some great stuff. And this got me thinking about what I'd like to leave behind when I finish here (a lot), and how much of that remained to be done (also a lot). In the end I came away with the impression that I hadn't really achieved very much, and that I certainly had a good portion of the blame. Looking back, when I retreated into myself to cope with the isolation several months ago, I also backed off professionally and let things go at their natural rhythm. That is another way of saying that I stopped pushing the process and taking initiatives to get out there and solve problems. That said, Habib's recent change in attitude and desire to get things done, along with extra staff to work with me, has made a big big difference. I now find myself leading a team of 2 people (Anne and Shahid) with whom I discuss ideas and to whom I can delegate tasks. Shahid also offers the absolutely fundamental plus of speaking Bangla so can act as my interpreter. We've yet to really start doing field visits together, but he's already been out a few times and brought back some very interesting indications of how things work at the sharp end of the organisation.

So what have I currently got on the boil? Well, funny you should ask as there's quite a lot really. Habib recently suggested getting some people into a room to generate some new project ideas for more funding. Much as I support this idea as it stands, I'm even keener to make it happen as it will provide valuable information about what development issues we're facing in our working areas. This, you see, can then serve as the basis for a discussion about what sorts of things BRIF should be concentrating on long term i.e. our strategic focus areas, which in turn can be summarised into a simple statement i.e. BRIF's mission. So, from a good old chat about what else we could be doing to counter poverty, we've got all the ingredients for a reasonably good strategic plan without even forcing the issue down people's throats. This may all be too good to be true, but the prospect of getting the organisation to think a bit more strategically by simply building on other very useful outputs is too good to be missed. In my view, the work of defining strategic focus areas is fundamental to the development of new projects anyway, as if we don't know what our long term objectives are how on earth can we decide which issues to concentrate on and design projects for now?!

Linked to the above work is the need to have a better understanding of our beneficiaries needs and how our projects are performing to address them. This is called monitoring and evaluation in NGO speak, or M and E for short, and is what Shahid has been recruited to improve. When I read the various audit reports from our major donors international donors I get the impression that all is generally well. However, when I ask a few questions about monitoring how well we're working and what we're doing with that information I start to get a wee bit twitchy. It's early days yet, and apparently my uneducated expectations beyond what our donors are expecting, but what I'm seeing doesn't quite correspond to the reassuring picture of an organisation perfectly under control. Let's hope I'm wrong eh?

Relatively speaking those 2 areas are a picnic compared to the last job I'm starting to sink my teeth into i.e. management development. Hiding behind this seemingly innocuous term hides all those soft skills that differentiate a good manager from all the really crappy ones most of us have to put up with for most of our careers. What I'm talking about is a manager who displays good leadership skills, knows how to delegate and coach, gives fair and regular feedback and is open to criticism, is a member of the team but still maintains sufficient authority to supervise and manage activities. To put it bluntly, I have no experience whatsoever of analysing and improving these sorts of things, but seeing as I'm on my own here I've not choice but to knuckle under and cobble something together. I'm reasonably confident I can get to a position where the managers' key needs have been identified and prioritised, but as for actually improving their weaknesses it's all adlib I'm afraid! However, as good professional experiences go it's a stonker. Soooo, if any of you have been on a management course that was actually quite effective I'd love to hear from you, and pronto!