A lonely walk in search of knowledge
I was once told a story where the penalty was to paint a wall a thousand kilometers a day or walk under the scorching sun and over the sand of a desert for three (3) hours a day. The penitent didn’t think twice and immediately chose to paint the wall. A month later, the supervisor came by and saw that the wall had not been painted. He asked the penitent, who replied: on the first day I came to look for the paint, the bucket, the ladder and the brush, but I only found the paint, but there was no brush, on the second day I came to look for the brush, but the ladder was gone, on the third day I came to look for the paint, because I already had the brush and bucket, and so far I can’t find the wall.
This jocular illustration seeks, on the one hand, to present the difficulties that entrepreneurs face when trying to consolidate their business, as well as the difficulties that arise due to a lack of knowledge, planning and, even more so, technical administrative mastery of the area they serve.
On the other hand, it’s the struggle to find a prepared, articulate, well-resourced site with a workforce that has the necessary knowledge to compare and determine whether the object and documentation are complying with the parameters required by law. See how the articulation of each stage is intrinsic.
How the articulation of ideas together with legislation makes all the difference in putting the designed object into operation
Articulating the work plan with the policy is essential, because an operation can only be carried out if it is understood by peers, civil servants or patrons, who have an interest in delivering services or products to citizens, but also if it has a beginning, middle and end. The new legislation, Decree No. 11,948 of March 13, 2024, is surgical in helping to define roles and understand who has what to do and how it should be done. However, it is necessary to use tools to analyze, build and parameterize the intervention scenarios that the institution proposes to positively modify.
It is becoming increasingly clear that it is the administration’s responsibility to design the object and your institution’s responsibility to execute it. You see, the holder of the public policy is the state, the target audience is the analytical cross-section of society as a whole carried out by the public administrator by means of in-depth studies with academic technical competence, in other words, carried out by research institutes.
What is your role as an institution and where have we fallen short when it comes to submitting a project proposal?
Normally we have proposed the object as being part of the structuring of the project, but the scope of this object should be limited exclusively to the territorial space and direct vision of service that the project claims to achieve. We must now separate the idea that presenting a group of photographs, attendance lists and videos are proof of the execution of the object. This is not the execution of its object, what is presented is proof of a stage executed, which corroborates the documentary formalization of the delivery of the physical-financial accountability. So what do we call the object? In the social area, it is the situation of vulnerability presented by the person being assisted and, normally, captured at the time of the initial interview (expectation) and which, at the end of the execution (final report), must be demonstrated as advances and findings that the intended intervention (advances) has changed the person’s life or has set out to change it. Let’s look at an example: for a homeless person, a project should seek to change the living conditions of the person and the group they live with. In other words, the expectations of these people is to improve the conditions in which they find themselves, because even the legislation in force supports this thinking, i.e. it is anachronistic to say that the project seeks to remove the person from the street, because it is a personal decision.
If this is one of your problems, you can be sure that we are in the right place and the right space to discuss how we should acquire knowledge, how we can use new technologies and tools to facilitate the construction of an object adapted to the latent needs of the community and expressed by the public policy designed by the final management body.
How can I use new tools and consolidate concepts that will help me not to repeat mistakes when designing projects?
Increasingly, the Administration is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to check the veracity of texts, the originality and even the relevance of themes, so there is no point in believing that we have a unique, innovative idea that will change everything and everyone around us, it is better to check who is doing it and how they are doing it well and what problems they are facing, in order to interfere and produce a document that relates to the changes we want to achieve (expectations). The great dilemma we face is designing the EXPECTATIONS, because these are the ones that will have to be translated into an object. Each of the units directly implementing the public policy has drawn up a list of its target public and their needs, but its project is limited to a portion of this public, as well as the needs they have demonstrated. On the other hand, we have to keep time in mind, i.e. the timetable drawn up with pre-execution, execution and post-execution, since these are the limits imposed on the delivery of the stages by means of their detailed reports. Closing these reports is largely one of the biggest problems, since there is not always efficient, fluid and assertive management of the data to be delivered to the project supervisor.
So how do we get past this stage? We need to use modern tools that integrate our thinking with the need to manage the project and the institution, and speaking of institutions, that’s another chapter altogether. Because there is often a mental confusion between project management and institute management, which often leads to cash flow problems.
Don’t get lost like our character in the story in the management of your institution
More and more, managers and project developers are being called to account in order to discipline their area of activity and better control the institute or organization, CSO. Management systems and public administration platforms are becoming increasingly convergent and interdisciplinary, generating multifaceted dialogues that take into account the different realities and create objective control parameters, not allowing the reality imposed on the territory to be evaded, whether in the preparation of project costs or the construction of the object to be served.
Always keep the paint, the wall and the brush in mind, because depending on the location, management and delivery status, your product could be considered the best project at national and international level, and could be replicated in other states and municipalities in the Federation, as well as countries. Don’t stop updating yourself, looking for new management technologies, pursuing new knowledge and, finally, always bear in mind that what drives you to stay in the third sector is your commitment to your community!
