082 – Innovations in Internships and Workshops

[00:00:00] Lucie: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. My name is Lucie Hazelgrove Planel, I’m a Social Impact Scientist and anthropologist, and I’m here today with David Stern, co founding director of IDEMS. Hi David.

[00:00:19] David: Hi Lucie. It’s been a little while since we’ve recorded an episode.

[00:00:23] Lucie: Yeah. So, you had an idea recently for an internship program of how to manage it. And I see lots of parallels with some of the other trainings, the way we do the other trainings and workshops, which I find really interesting because it also connects to some of the agroecological principles that we try and follow, and some of IDEMS own principles, where the theme is really collaborating and co creating.

[00:00:49] David: Should we dig into actually just describing what happened with this idea that emerged related to the internship program?

[00:00:56] Lucie: Yeah, sounds good.

[00:00:57] David: Do you want to give a bit of the background on the internship and how we went about this? And then I can say how this idea emerged.

[00:01:04] Lucie: Okay. So it’s an internship for the CASAS Global Collaboration that we have anyway. And the team identified, I think it’s about seven really strong candidates.

[00:01:16] David: These are all MSc students who are pursuing MSc’s in Kenya and who would be interested in learning about and potentially doing a project on the CASAS approach.

[00:01:29] Lucie: Now, the suggestion, as far as I’ve heard, is that rather than hire all seven interns at the same time, because they all come with different interests and different possibilities, there’s a proposal to separate them into two groups, where the more experienced group, so some of them I think are already experienced professionals, they already have a career as teachers or statisticians potentially.

So to hire them first, because they will learn fast and they will have a different experience of the internship and be able to offer things in a different way. And then have a separate stage where the second group of interns, the less experienced interns are hired. And it’s these more experienced interns who started beforehand who then try and train the less experienced interns, which is a really interesting idea. And I don’t know how often it happens in other contexts.

[00:02:21] David: So let me add a bit of detail around this. And yes, this sort of idea emerged, we weren’t aiming to take on seven interns, we were aiming for more like four. But there were these seven strong candidates in different ways. And on the back of the first set of interviews, the group doing the interviewing classified them and identified these top four who were all sort of professionals, if you want. They had either established careers or they were teaching, and for various reasons, it was seen that actually bringing them on board would be quicker and easier.

But they were, if you want, maybe less obvious as people who would then immerse themselves in these methods. Whereas, the remaining three were all very interesting, but they really had no experience which would relate to them being able to quickly pick up these ideas in the same way. Because they were that bit less experienced, it was seen that they would need more support to pick it up, but they would in some sense have more time because they don’t have existing careers. They might actually immerse themselves and then go further in this direction.

And so we have these relatively modest three month internship processes which we set up. And the idea was then, exactly as you described it, to take on the four who we think would pick things up quickly, to get them to work directly with George, an Impact Activation Fellow who’s part of the IDEMS team, and try to get up to speed quite quickly, so that they could not be fully immersed because they have their own other interests. And it wasn’t thought that they would necessarily want to sort of really commit themselves to this direction, but it would be very good experience for them, and them learning about this, they were well placed to do so already.

But this idea of them then playing a support role for the following interns, this came about because the best way to learn is really to teach. And that’s something which we found in so many different contexts. We’ve used this, as you mentioned, in a number of different ways, in the maths camps that we’ve run, in various teacher training programs, in a whole set of other contexts.

We’ve used these approaches to help create these really meaningful learning experiences which also involve the sharing with others. And the hope is that by actually having this two stage process, we are able to stretch the funds a little bit and add a few other funds to this process, to have the full set of seven interns, and possibly to have something which could then become more scalable, because it doesn’t rely on the same expert input to be able to get others on board. And at the same time be having a deeper learning experience for the interns who are doing that training.

[00:05:22] Lucie: And who are ready to take on that opportunity, yeah.

[00:05:25] David: Exactly, and so there’s a whole set of different benefits, which is coming out of this. And it also really emerged, the thinking emerged, because actually there were candidates within the bottom three who in other ways, maybe a top candidate because they could be the ones, who had a genuine interest in the farming and the agroecology, they might not have had the background, but this could really be something meaningful that they could take forward.

[00:05:55] Lucie: And not all internships have that possibility, but in this case, we really were open and interested in people who can become a member of the team to take it on.

[00:06:04] David: And to dig into it. So it was this element of being able to sort of have that flexibility to reimagine what the internship process we were offering was in light of the applicants that we had. Now, you yourself recognize that this isn’t the first time, as IDEMS, we’ve done this because you applied for a job which you were ill suited to, but you were very suited to IDEMS’ work in other ways.

[00:06:33] Lucie: On the website though, I have to say on the website, it said you’re open to other applications. I was generally putting myself out there!

[00:06:40] David: Absolutely and I appreciated it and this is why we recruited you straight away, into another role. And I think there are some very interesting issues around this. As we grow, there will be issues around diversity, inclusion, which relate to this. But this is one of our principles of creating opportunity, not just being proactive and trying to be fair under a strict set of guidelines, because that often excludes people for all sorts of other reasons.

Being open to creating those opportunities in different ways around individuals who bring specific skill sets, one of the advantages of being an organisation that recruits some very high powered people like yourself who come in with a PhD in anthropology, and so on. You’re coming in with very high level skills in a particular area. But what we’re doing is we’re finding ways to match that with needs which potentially you didn’t recognize and that your role emerged from that.

And I’d argue the same thing is what is happening with these interns. That if we just looked at the top students by a certain criteria, we would have left out people who by a different criteria could actually be benefiting more.

[00:07:57] Lucie: I find it really interesting that you’re seeing this through the creating opportunities lens or Enabling Opportunities lens, because I see it as part of collaborating and co creating.

[00:08:06] David: Collaborative by Nature. So it’s interesting that I wouldn’t necessarily put this as much in that collaborative by nature box, it is very much about collaboration, but…

[00:08:17] Lucie: It’s finding, internally within the team, how to work, how to best work within a team.

[00:08:22] David: Yeah, there’s elements of that. How to use the resources we have.

[00:08:25] Lucie: Yeah, exactly. If you’re putting the more experienced interns at the same level as the less experienced interns, it might create inequalities within them, or some would feel it was going too slow, or they were being reduced, and some would be completely lost. And as you’re saying, in terms of enabling opportunities, it wouldn’t be helpful to those interns that you’re giving the chance to, because they would feel lost and would fall behind.

[00:08:47] David: Exactly, yes. By putting everyone at the same level, in that context, you’re not actually being fair. Actually by giving people this sort of approach which is more tailored to where they are, this actually enables them, and I would fully expect that some of the second set of three, may be the ones who emerge and actually immerse themselves, and actually end up outperforming and becoming part of the long term team.

And that’s exactly what we’re hoping. We’re hoping to create those opportunities for them, in ways where, they wouldn’t have existed otherwise. They couldn’t have competed on that level playing field in that same way.

I don’t claim we always get it right, but I think what I can claim is we’re always thinking deeply about it. We’re always very consciously aware of why it is that certain people may be excluded, and finding ways to make sure that things which are outside of their control are not reasons to exclude them. It’s hard.

[00:09:43] Lucie: I want to talk about the co creation too, because what I find interesting in this example is that it’s the more experienced interns who already have jobs and who might go back to those jobs after the internship, in a way, it’s them who are going to be creating the internship for the less experienced people who may stay on, which, it sounds…

[00:10:03] David: Counterintuitive.

[00:10:04] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:10:06] David: But because they come with that experience, because they maybe have an existing workplace or existing sort of roles, what they’re gaining out of it is that experience of being able to create that program. And so they’re gaining more out of the internship than they would from an internship which was not giving them that opportunity to take responsibility. It is this element that actually taking responsibility is a fantastic way to learn and to grow. And we’re giving them that opportunity to grow.

Now, the fact that because of where they are in life, and because of where their interests lie, that this opportunity enables them to grow, but they probably won’t grow into a long term role. That’s fine. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the opportunity, and they’re well placed to get it.

To not take them because they’re further ahead in life would be wrong as well.

[00:10:56] Lucie: Yep.

[00:10:56] David: So to be able to take them, but to give them that responsibility and to actually enable them to then bring others up, everybody wins. This is what we’re trying to get. It’s not that there’s a competition between people. It’s that the roles people can play going forward are different.

And I think this is one of the key things, that if you take the frame of competition, so this is where you’re right that it is collaborative by nature, if you take the framework of competition where you say we might be able to take somebody on, and therefore everybody’s competing to get that, that’s very different from saying we might be able to take someone on, but that role isn’t right for everyone.

So then people can collaborate and find the roles that are right for them and the ways of interacting which can benefit them and what they go on to do which are right for them. We don’t claim that sort of people who go through these internship programs, that their best next step would be to carry on with us.

In fact, I would argue for many, they have other opportunities which would be more lucrative, which would have more responsibility in different ways. So if we can provide internships which enable them to then succeed in them doing other things, that’s fantastic, we’re happy with that. But we also want the internships to help people to grow into the roles that we’re also trying to create within our team.

And so that combination of not seeing that as a competitive process, and this is one of the things where we’ve got colleagues in Kenya who find this very difficult, because that means they have members of their team who are really good who keep leaving to go and do other things.

[00:12:29] Lucie: Yes.

[00:12:29] David: They find it frustrating. But this is part of capacity building, if they leave and they get a good experience and the expertise that they’ve gained meant that they go and find success elsewhere, that’s exactly what an internship approach is supposed to be. And this is something where that recognition of these different roles and how they can interplay with one another, within a context where we’re not imagining everybody, we’re not aiming to get everyone to stay, is really important. And that’s that collaborative approach.

[00:12:58] Lucie: Yeah. Now, I see the similarity in this to how, I think, you have a way of organising workshops in a co creation sense. And I’m thinking especially of like maths camps, but I’ve seen other examples elsewhere, where the participants, it’s not necessarily the participants, but in some cases, it’s the participants themselves who help decide what they want to see in the workshop.

So in the maths camp, I think you have experts, however you want to define experts, more knowledgeable people, who make proposals.

[00:13:30] David: So the maths camps, this is a well established model now, which has been going for over 10 years, where in the first week you bring together the volunteers who are going to then run the maths camp the following week, and they design it from scratch.

Of course, you have experienced people who have done this process before. But if the process is well followed, there’s a lot of opportunity to actually shape it, mould it into another form through that week in collaboration. And that’s very much that co creation of the event, which then happens and everybody co facilitates the next week.

But I think in other contexts we try to bring this in where the expression I like is don’t plan the workshop, prepare for it.

[00:14:13] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:14:14] David: And you’re not having that fixed a plan you’re actually going in prepared to do certain things.

[00:14:21] Lucie: Prepared to be flexible and respond.

[00:14:23] David: And they’re also prepared to respond to the needs of the participants, to the way the participants are emerging, and so on. And so it’s that delicate balance between being prepared, if you’re not prepared, then things aren’t likely to go well. But the difference between being prepared and having planned, and very often I find that when things are planned, you miss too many opportunities of things that emerge. And if you’re prepared to actually be flexible and seize those, then things can come out which you never imagined.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is an approach I’ve been using for a long time, but I’m not the only person to take these sorts of approaches. We’ve just come recently out of a workshop in Kenya, that was the first African based American Institute of Mathematics workshop. And they have a whole algorithm about doing this. They have a whole process which is designed to allow participants to emerge the themes and what is discussed and what comes out. And it’s proven extremely effective.

I would never want to take full credit for this in any shape or form, but this is something which in certain circles has been recognised, but somehow in many circles is still deemed very novel. In the American Institute of Mathematics this is extremely well established now and those workshops, they’re very popular in that sort of context.

[00:15:51] Lucie: So what does the American Institute of Mathematics do? Do they send around a survey beforehand, like a questionnaire?

[00:15:57] David: No there’s a little bit of getting information beforehand. How you select participants is all part of their algorithm, how you get the right people in the room. And once you’ve got the right people in the room, then you actually have bits of time where you’re hearing from people and other bits of time where you’re then doing small group work. And those small group works all emerge from the discussions and they’re then managed by the group as a whole and the way they emerge and they have an algorithm which helps them to do this.

In some sense, for them, the algorithm is the key that this is what is creating that stimulated discussion. And I am shamelessly going to try and reuse elements of that algorithm in other contexts, because it was a very powerful way of doing this. But I think the point is that it’s that ability to recognise that there is preparedness. The workshop organisers prepare, but they’re not planning. They are recognising that they’re preparing for things to emerge from the group, recognising that the voices in the room bring a lot of knowledge and expertise, which you as organisers don’t necessarily have in the same way. And so I feel there’s a number of ways in which this approach can be extremely powerful and applied in other contexts.

[00:17:14] Lucie: This is what I’m wondering, how can co creation happen in workshops? All that serendipity of having interns apply who are of different experience levels. How can that sort of collaboration and co creation be encouraged while still perhaps benefiting from organisers planning something? Not planning it, sorry, preparing it.

[00:17:35] David: So the key is, and this is where, if you think about the internship example, because I think that’s different. More people would have experienced a workshop where there were elements of flexibility, where the participants’ interaction stimulated the workshop to evolve into something which emerged. That emergence process, is I think more common within a workshop context.

And I’ve been to, I think the first time I really truly experienced this was actually when we went through a workshop where, as a community, the principles of the community emerged. And that approach, where this relates to Principle Focused Evaluation, which we’ve discussed before, that was where I first really experienced that emergent behaviour coming out from a collective where it was then carefully orchestrated without being really fixed and planned. It was very powerful.

[00:18:35] Lucie: And I think there, again it’s good facilitation, which is key. So it’s having someone who is able to guide the process.

[00:18:41] David: And it’s that combination between that facilitation, but also enough expert understanding to be able to draw out and bring things together, actually, the sense making component.

[00:18:52] Lucie: Yeah, or helping the group actually identify what’s interesting and worthwhile, or bringing people together.

[00:18:59] David: Exactly, that it actually served a purpose, and I think this is where, again, for these internships, we don’t know whether this particular case will work well or not, we can’t know after it’s happened. But what we can know is that actually as we prepared for the internships, we built flexibility in terms of the number of interns we could take, in terms of how we would see them being mentored, and the role different people would take within the mentorship process.

[00:19:26] Lucie: Exactly. Also, it’s not the more experienced interns being left on their own. It’s, they are still interns, they are still being supported and guided by someone.

[00:19:35] David: Exactly. And that guidance process, actually we’d thought of taking four interns in the first place, because that was the mentorship capacity that we had.

[00:19:43] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:19:44] David: And to actually then take more means that now the mentor is stretched, unless you find ways to get new mentors. So that preparedness is about understanding what are the capacities you have, what are the limits of that capacity, what are the differences where things will work well and where things might work less well? And then what are the new resources that you could bring to bear, what are the other things that could be used to extend capacity? And these are the sort of things where that imagination of being able to think, you shouldn’t prepare in advance, but you need to have a lot of things in your toolbox. And this is where it comes back to experience and valuing experience.

Often, the first time you do something like this, it feels very scary and different and new.

[00:20:25] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:20:26] David: But once you’ve seen it work in a few different contexts, then it’s about identifying, is this a context when it could work? And it’s about having a lot of different things in your toolbox to bring to bear for different contexts.

And that’s something where, I don’t hear this discussed enough, many people try to get an approach, this is the approach that works. Whereas what I like and what I really find useful for myself is I’ve seen lots of different approaches that work in different contexts. And so it’s about having lots of things in your toolbox and then trying to be able to identify, oh, could something that you’ve experienced or that you’ve heard of or that you’ve observed, could that be brought to bear in this new context you find yourself in?

And that to me that’s creative. This is interesting and fun. Now it doesn’t mean that it’s always going to work. So the other thing you need to do is you need to be brave enough to recognize that it’s okay to fail. Things don’t work as well as they should. And we had this earlier this year with another internship program we had where there were details that were then overlooked. And as a process, it served a purpose, but it didn’t serve the purpose we were intending.

And that happened partly because actually we were trying to innovate and do something with a partner where they were co creating it and there wasn’t the right communication backwards and forwards and so there were miscommunications and misunderstandings, and therefore things that were important got dropped. And therefore some of the elements that we wanted to get out of it weren’t achieved, whereas other things were achieved.

You’ve got to be willing to fail. And I don’t mean fail is a bad thing, but have things not work as well as you would like. And you have to have that flexibility. If things are really high stakes, then it’s much harder.

[00:22:20] Lucie: Thank you, David. I think that’s a nice place to end though, but do you have any final comments?

[00:22:25] David: No, I’ve enjoyed this discussion. I think it’s really nice to bring this out and to think about how to be innovative in some of the things that we’re doing.

[00:22:32] Lucie: Something as simple as a workshop too, or an internship, as you say, like often there’s just a sort of standard way of doing it. And, yeah, people look for the best way and don’t consider trying to be flexible and change what they do. And that’s what I’ve enjoyed with IDEMS is discovering these different approaches to it.

[00:22:48] David: So to me, maybe the thing I want to finish on, is that one of the reasons we can do that is because we have so many thoughtful people. This is part of the thing. It’s about having people who understand context, who are thoughtful, and who are able to do that. If you want to standardise, and then people have to follow, then it’s a whole different approach. But if you can get people who are highly thoughtful, then that’s where this sort of innovation becomes really powerful and possible.

[00:23:14] Lucie: Great. Thank you, David, and looking forward to another conversation sometime soon.

[00:23:20] David: Thank you.