Capability Building | The Impact Post
Issue #4 | Thu, Sep 3, 2020
Dear NuSocia Patrons,
Every day is a fresh beginning to look at what can you make of your future and take necessary steps toward it.
In this 4th edition of Impact Post, we are focusing on the topic of ‘Capability Building’. A Buddhist phrase goes like "When the roots become deep, there is no reason to fear the wind". In these uncertain times, one thing that has held together the organisations, both for-profit and non-profit, is their agility and ability to keep themselves abreast with times and focus on capability building.
We hope that you find this edition useful in your own quest to relevant knowledge. We have been getting some great reviews and feedback from our readers. Thank you for that. We are eager to hear back from you, as to how are you finding the newsletter and how can we make it even more useful for you.
Readings : Food for Thought
We have carefully curated a selection of reading list for you to get an in-depth idea and importance of Capability Building.
1. Capability Building - What, Why and How:
If capability is a feature that can be developed or improved in an individual/ team/ organisations then what stops organisations to get all necessary training and get fully capable? The answer lies in the research that says, capabilities that individuals / organisations need, evolves with time. Capability building works at three levels – Knowledge (or cognitive abilities), Skill (or physical abilities) and Attitude (emotional abilities).
Read Now (6 Min Read)
2. Re-Thinking Training and Development in a Post-Covid World: A Case Study :
2020’s entirely unexpected change of course is forcing all of us to rethink how we can develop and train our people and create and strengthen organizational capabilities and culture when we simply cannot get together in person. Simply putting people-development on pause until we “get back to normal” is not an option, because we’re not going “back to normal” anytime soon, if ever.
Read Now (10 Min Read)
3. Capacity Building - The UNDP Approach :
In the UNDP's 2008-2013 "Strategic Plan for Development" UNDP promotes a capacity building approach to development in the 166 countries it is active in. It focuses on building capacity on an institutional level and offers a 5 step process for systematic capacity building. The steps are:
Read Now (5 Min Read)
Expert Speaks
For understanding the aspects of Capability Building we were looking for expert opinion of someone who has worked across the NPOs, Social Enterprises as well as Impact investment side.
Q1- Is there a need to nurture empathy and social consciousness as a trait among corporate leaders?
This is a question that I think corporate leaders, HR professionals have been asking themselves for some time. An empathetic leader is a leader who has a genuine interest in his people, their lives and their development. In recent times, given our current context of Covid challenges, this is something that people are beginning to recognize even more all the time.
Leadership cannot be living in vacuum of only business context. Understanding and appreciation of social context is critical for leaders to be effective on a sustainable basis and that's empathetic leadership.
Q2 - What are some of the ways in which we can nurture empathy and social consciousness among leaders?
Empathetic leadership and empathy itself is not a subject to be learned from the textbooks. It's one of those competencies that needs to be learned through experience. One needs to experience it, to learn it, or alternatively learning through exposure to some excellent role models.
We also need to create some project works in the social sector where leaders, can go and work in the social sector, experience things for themselves for a completely different world, diverse world, a world which is not driven by strategy or the sources. World which is driven by surprises and constraints, and that exposure & experience will bring empathetic leadership alive for these corporate leaders.
Watch full Interview (5 min)
Please click on the images below to watch 5 min short videos on importance of capability building by experts.
Expert #1: Manju Menon, CEO, NuSocia, speaks about Fundraising and the need of Visibility, Credibility and Relationship focus for non-profits to attract & retain donors and also how this skill can be improved.
Expert #2: Shalabh Sahai, Co-Founder of iVolunteer and Taskforce member on Probono at Confederation of Indian Industry India@75 Task Force tells us ways in which nonprofits can effectively use volunteers to bridge their skill and capability gaps.
As we talk to more experts our insights will get much clearer and we will keep updating our insights. Do follow NuSocia on Social media / NuSocia Blogs for the same. If you want to get additional people in your network to receive the newsletter going forward, please do share their contact details with us. Your privacy and patronage, both are important to us!