From the outset of the IP Initiative, NRC staff have been saying, ‘We understand the value of integration; we want to know HOW to do it’. We wanted to meet this need, but didn’t think a 50pg step-by-step handbook was the answer. By its nature, IP, is nuanced and contextual - it’s a way of working in conjunction with the practical humanitarian activities. By learning from the way our early adopter IP champions have been working, we’ve now found a recipe we think will help NRC fulfil its ambition around integration.
At NRC, integrated programming is built on teamwork
Hiring great talent and using the right tools isn’t enough. How we worked together, as a team, makes the difference.
We’ve brought together the elements that are needed for integration to flourish in our country operations. Focusing on having the right conversations, building on the experiences of our IP pilot countries and giving you plenty of room to adapt content to your needs. The IP FieldGuide has three main components:
- HealthChecks to let your team see how they’re doing and where to focus to improve
- Plays, which are a set of practical activities to support you with doing the work to get there
- Game plans, which organise plays for those times when you have a specific IP need you need support for, like starting a project
While the HealthChecks are the main entry point, there are plenty of other ways to access the FieldGuide content. If you have a clear need in mind, chances are there is a GamePlan that will point you to the Plays you need.
Plays remove the naturally-occurring barriers our teams face. They provide a common language used across the entire organisation. They let teams invest their energy on the task at hand, instead of spending it on theoretical ways to approach the task. Simply put, Plays unleash more of our teams’ potential to deliver integrated programming.
Now we’re sharing them as a FieldGuide that teams of all types can use to manage and execute joint activities, assess team integration health, address gaps in their IP know-how, and monitor their progress. And because we believe leadership is personal (not positional), the plays can be introduced by any member of the team, regardless of title or role.
We needed a common resource
So, we pooled together the integrated programming practices that were working best. We blended elements of programming, private sector team work, and our own in-house methodologies to create workshops called Plays, and built a self-serve resource accessible to all NRC teams and beyond.
The short answer is: for everyone. The intended ‘users’ are NRC staff in country offices. Programme staff are already grabbing it and running, but we’ve built content to be just as valuable for those without other backgrounds, including content for Support and Leadership teams. An Area Office will find just as much content to help prepare their planning as the support team will to build stronger external partnerships. Whether you’re in Amman, Berlin, Dakar or even Oslo, we hope you’ll find value in the FieldGuide.
While we think the FieldGuide works best when teams use it, we hope that individuals will find it useful – whether to reflect on their own ways of working, or get inspired about Plays they might want to do with their colleagues.
The IP FieldGuide is a workshop resource built for integrated teams, by integrated teams
We’re sharing this resource with all teams so you can focus more on getting work done and less on inventing ways of working
We designed the IP FieldGuide to support people to go from talking about integrated programming to doing it. By starting small, with concrete actions for individuals and teams, we want to help the integrated programming movement grow within NRC and in the humanitarian community.
We set out to build the IP FieldGuide to support people in NRC to understand more about and to do integrated programming - wherever they were in the world, in whichever role in the organisation, and starting from any point in their work.
Our design principles
- So good, people want to use it
- Practical, and action-oriented
- All paths are the right path
- Available anywhere, any time
- For everyone in NRC – just like IP
OMG, no.
The Plays are designed to contribute to your daily work, not distract from it. Still, running all the Plays would be overkill (and, ultimately, distracting – which would defeat the whole purpose). It’s all about running the right play(s) for your team when you need them.
You’re the best judge of what to use, and when. Use regular HealthCheck sessions to point yourself toward the most helpful Plays based on the areas your team wants to focus on developing. You can also head to the page with all the Plays and filter by category to get some suggestions.
Not really. Think of the Plays as a your favourite breakfast buffet – get what you need to fuel your day, then get on with it.
While some plays will help you envision your end state, others will help in building it and others will help to improve it once it’s reaching displacement affected people. Make sure you select the Plays that are fit for the job you need to do.
Need help with that? Look for each play’s “Use this play to…” section, or head to the Plays page and filter by pain point. And while it’s probably better to start with a healthy bircher muesli and juice, sometimes – just sometimes – you might decide to start the day with cake. Eat cake for breakfast? Sure, why not?
No. The IP Initiative is about working with a ‘coalition of the willing’. What this means is we don’t force stuff on COs (phew, said it) and we have always adopted the principle that the intuitive nature of IP will drive the energy rather than a compliance and mandatory attitude.
We are providing a service to staff in the organization who want a process and tools to embed IP, and things done in service are rarely mandatory. While we hope that you find what we’ve made useful and want to use it, if you don’t then we don’t want to waste your time. (Though we’d love your feedback on how we can improve it.)
So no, the IP FieldGuide is not a requirement!
Saying this, if a team really loves pieces of the FieldGuide (which we hope you will) and decides to add regular HealthChecks or particular Plays as part of their balanced scorecard or workplan then this is great, but it will not be a HO requirement. We could also see one or two Plays becoming embedded within existing processes such as PCM and the country strategy process in future where teams feel they add value.
We would encourage those COs that use the FieldGuide to flag it to a) your regional office so it can be part of check-ins such as the T-reporting and b) the IP Initiative so we can have a sense of who is using it and how it is performing.
The institutional answer is to remind you of the NRC commitments to IP in the NRC Programme Policy & Global Strategy and probably your CO has made similar commitments around integration in donor proposals.
The Field Guide is not about convincing teams to do IP but more to identify how the actual programming and system could benefit from it based on a quick assessment of the existing situation – via the HealthCheck. The findings of this exercise can then be linked to practical activities leading the teams toward innovative and more efficient ways of working. The development of the IP approach is work in progress for the organisation and more broadly for the sector, so we all learn from it.
No. And we’re loathe to label any of this as “best practice”. We’ve blended elements of response analysis, traditional humanitarian tools, and design thinking in developing (and, in some cases, borrowing) the Plays. So you’ll notice diverse methodologies reflected in them, which we think is a good fit for teams with diverse goals, skills, and personalities.
Use the IP FieldGuide to turbocharge your team’s integration journey. And make sure you’re challenging these sessions for value. Don’t just go through the motions – that’s when team rituals only slow you down.
You don’t. We guarantee they work for the teams we’ve tested them with, but can’t guarantee they’ll resonate with yours.
Prior to releasing content into the NRC wild, we’ve done some serious testing with staff from across the organisation. We then adapted and tweaked the FieldGuide with country teams putting it into practice.
They’re better than the usual top-down approach to guidance dissemination, though. (Yeah, we said it.) While NRC has traditionally mandated process and standardization in an effort to eliminate variability, our approach is to create guard rails inside which teams have flexibility and autonomy. Instead of obsessing about the effort a team puts in, we focus on their outcomes. Where many strategic initiatives create monolithic complex tools, we go for helping you frame the right conversations.
Every piece of the IP FieldGuide is built for the following situations:
- On Demand (online) The IP FieldGuide is perfect for learning on your own, at your own pace and on your own schedule. You can skim and/or deep dive as much as you’d like. These Plays are the same standard content as seen in face-to-face sessions, so you can get familiar with content anytime.
- Remote (virtual) The IP FieldGuide is ideal for geographically dispersed teams. You can set a time and work through HealthChecks or Plays at anytime. Each Play has tips for online facilitation.
- Onsite (face to face) Team onsite workshop days are ideal to get your entire team ramped up together in a day or two! These can be supported by the IP Initiative team or self-facilitated. Either way, materials are there to download and we’ve got plenty of experience in building dynamic and action orientated sessions.
- H2R (offline) Connectivity is never easy in many of the locations we operate. So we’ve ensured that every piece of the IP FieldGuide is downloadable, so you have a version to save on your hard drive and/or print.
There’s no formal release calendar. But the FieldGuide will never be considered ‘finished’, so it’ll be updated from time to time. We’ve used the Plays, improved them, and will continue to iterate on them. We’ll keep our scratch paper to ourselves, and not share a new or updated play here until it’s working well for NRC pilot countries. Leave us your email using the form at the bottom of the homepage and you’ll get updates as new stuff is added.
But that doesn’t mean they’ll be perfect. Try the plays with your team, and if you love them, great. If not, adapt and make them your own! Then share with us!
We also know that we don’t have all the pieces we need quite yet, and are focusing on building more Plays. If you have a particular need that isn’t met, get in touch and we can talk about how to include it into our FieldGuide development planning.
Of course! Contextualise to your heart’s content. Just let us know why and how, so we can take this learning on board for others who might want to do the same.
How can I send feedback or get someone to help run a session with my team?
We’d love to hear what’s working for you, and what’s not. Bring it! If you’re on Workplace, ping Tim McInerny there. Else, use the “Give Feedback” feature on each Play page to tell us what’s on your mind.
And if you’re blown away, floored, or generally beside yourself with joy because your team are loving the FieldGuide, feel free to say so on WorkPlace #IPFieldGuide. Just sayin'.
Atlassian are an IT company and more, it was their Team Playbook that inspired the framework for our IP FieldGuide. They also have a lot of really cool content. So why not build upon the shoulders of what others have tested!
Atlassian content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License so we’re following the terms and are good to adapt.
The NRC definition is of IP flags the importance of both internal and external integration. While we have a lot of work to do with our internal integration, we think there is scope for the FieldGuide to be used by NRC staff active in consortiums, with downstream partners and perhaps even inter-agency engagement.
Just remember to give appropriate credit to NRC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/