Life and times after PRADAN

Reminiscences of a former PRADAN-ite bring back, the varied experiences, training opportunities, and personal growth that being an agent of change heralded….today someone who began his journey in PRADAN stands shoulder to shoulder with the best in the field

Inventing a new life

T he day I left PRADAN (20 years back almost to the day!), I got a job offer—and a good one at that (as Deputy Head of a UNDP-funded program, with the implicit promise that I would be the head in a year’s time)! This was the ‘market value’ that a PRADANite carried even at that time!

I was clear I did not want to be in a formal organization; I wanted to work on my own. Consequently, I negotiated with UNDP to let me do an Organization Development (OD) analysis of the very program they wanted me to join. I would, subsequently, decide whether I wanted to join that program. UNDP accepted my proposal, and I was off with my very first assignment as an OD consultant—something I have remained for the past 20 years of my life!

To a rural development professional like me, a consultant was a mere clever talker, somebody who was good at presentations and theory, somebody who, importantly, did not know the field and was quite useless for society and organizations. And here I was going to become one such consultant!

The psychological challenge was that for the previous 13 years, I had viewed myself as a rural development professional, someone who worked directly with villagers and helped transform their lives. To a rural development professional like me, a consultant was a mere clever talker, somebody who was good at presentations and theory, somebody who, importantly, did not know the field and was quite useless for society and organizations. And here I was going to become one such consultant!

In order to come to terms with my new reality, it was important for me to re-frame my profession. This re-framing became: “I am a consultant because I know a lot about the realities of the field, of the village, of the government and banks. I have been working for 16 years, and I know from the inside how different organizations concerned with social transformation actually work. My consulting or advice, therefore, is based on this extensive intuitive understanding, and not just some theory that I have picked up. In short, I am not a typical airy-fairy consultant, but a more solid, grounded and, consequently, a genuinely useful consultant for the sector.”

All of the above was undoubtedly true, and helpful. Organizations were willing to hire me because they could see in their first interaction with me that I knew how the world worked.

Yet, I realized that this was not enough. Intuition and field understanding were not enough; I also needed to understand theory. And I needed to understand the practices of the world of Human Resources (HR) and OD.

Tejinder Singh Bhogal is an Organizational Change Consultant working with Social Transformation organizations.