Interview with Patrick Iribarne

What experience do you have of working on quality issues in the international aid sector?

I have been working with public and private sector organisations for over twenty years to help them implement a quality approach, including ten years at AFNOR, the French Standardisation Association, where I led some evaluations. Along the way, about ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet Coordination Sud and F3E, and NGO representatives who are very interested in these subjects, who had just launched a project to implement a self-evaluation approach for French NGOs. This project came to fruition with the MADAC (Self-evaluation and continuous improvement model), developed by Coordination Sud and F3E, which included three phases: developing the approach, testing it ‘for real’ in five NGOs, then deploying it in other NGOs who were interested.

During each of these phases, I met very committed organisations and individuals who were keen to discuss their practices, carry out self evaluations and share their experiences. Concretely, I contributed to the working groups who developed the approach, to the facilitation of individual self-evaluations by NGOs and to the annual training course for the facilitators of the self-evaluation approaches within NGOs, with the aim of transferring skills.

How are quality approaches evolving in the business sector? And how are these changes reflected in the international aid sector?

In the business sector, quality approaches have evolved a great deal in recent years, with successive phases of development that we can split into three waves.

In the 1990s, quality approaches consisted principally of establishing norms and standards that were common to all organisations. This trend was enshrined in the ISO 9001 standard, which was adopted in all sectors of activity. Those in charge of quality therefore focused on certification objectives, pushed by those giving orders (commissioning bodies, clients and supervisory authorities) who saw this as an opportunity to harmonise the internal organisation of their suppliers, and thus facilitate their ability to interact.

In the 2000s, the limits of these standardisation approaches gradually became apparent. First of all, in terms of effectiveness, then in terms of external recognition of the quality approach. It became clear that certified organisations were not necessarily effective, and quality departments used up all their energy pursuing compliance and did not take effectiveness into account sufficiently. In order to make up for this situation, sector-based standards gradually emerged in numerous sectors, such as the automotive, aeronautical, medical, defence and food industries. In each of these sectors, quality approaches then focused on deploying best practice in each field, with very detailed reference frameworks that allowed greater precision.

These sector-based best practices were called into question in the 2020s. Due to crises and disruptions of all kinds (technological, societal, environmental and regulatory), they proved to be insufficient to ensure the survival of many organisations. Agility, resilience and operational effectiveness have now become the priority, and quality approaches are gradually moving towards these objectives. These changes have led to new, cross-cutting approaches based on the need to combine quality with economic issues, human resources and societal responsibility. Those in charge of quality have therefore become conductors in charge of implementing cross-cutting principles of action centred on the organisation’s raison d’être and ecosystem, its objectives, its results and its accountability. Today, each quality approach is unique because it is specifically adapted to the organisation’s context. It refers to best practice within its sector of activity, but it also takes into account the organisation’s background, the challenges it is facing, the needs and expectations of its stakeholders and its specific objectives.

It is important that the international aid sector takes inspiration from these changes in quality approaches. The old paradigm that consisted of deploying organisational standards with compliance objectives is outdated, even though it did allow a lot of organisations to establish the foundations of a structured quality approach. They now need to clarify their raison d’être, the challenges they face, and their objectives. They need to define and deploy the most relevant operational principles and evaluate their results with respect to their main stakeholders: the beneficiaries of their activities, as well as their donors, human resources and affected local authorities.

In order to promote this new paradigm, quality approaches should be based on three components – Objectives, Principles and Results – and self-evaluation and evaluation. The aim is no longer to check whether a procedure has been applied regardless of the result, but to assess the extent to which objectives have been achieved and adjust practices accordingly, while continuing to respect operational principles. These approaches are judged based on the relevance of the practices and their effectiveness with regard to objectives, principles and results.

With the creation and implementation of the MADAC approach, we saw that this paradigm and these self-evaluation practices are particularly adapted to international aid organisations. The self-evaluations are highly participatory while also being very structured thanks to the MADAC’s thirty-something criteria. They allow a multi-disciplinary group (which can range from four to several dozen people) to carry out a complete assessment of their organisation’s functioning and results, then to choose a limited number of areas of improvement. These self-evaluations are an opportunity to involve, for example, members of the administrative council, field operators and partners in organisational change and improvement activities.

These participatory methods mean that the implementation of the quality approach is not limited to the specialists within the organisation – generally the quality manager – who have to inspire, implement and evaluate their own initiatives on their own. In the international aid sector, these self-evaluation and participatory activities allow actors who are often focused solely on their operations to take part in cross-sector discussions and activities.

What points does the international aid system need to be careful about regarding quality approaches?

The organisations involved in the international aid system vary a great deal in terms of the nature of their activities, their size, their structures and their operational methods. There are nevertheless some constants that we observed in detail when we developed and deployed the MADAC method. Some of these are strengths that can help to implement quality approaches: the capacity to define the raison d’être and orientations of the organisation, project management skills, the motivation of individuals and teams, the willingness to take part in participatory approaches, responsibility and autonomy in implementing projects. On the other hand, other constants are weaknesses that do not help to implement quality approaches: cross-cutting governance that is often dispersed and irregular, projects and cross-cutting activities in silos, the tendency to engage in too many projects that are not sufficiently monitored and are delegated to isolated people.

The idea here is not to point out shortcomings and to seek to correct them. Each organisation’s characteristics are the result of a particular history, context and culture. Some can be a handicap and should be changed, others are not. As a result, the aim should rather be to develop the organisation’s strengths and to make these effective levers to deploy the quality approach.

Based on these observations, organisations need to be vigilant about the following points:

Focusing quality initiatives on key changes or improvements via prioritisation. The aim of the prioritisation is to select the subjects that the quality approach will focus on, based on two parameters: first of all, their importance (Is this subject really important for our stakeholders and is it in keeping with our raison d’être?); and then, their timing, to decide how opportune each subject is (Is it the right time to do this?).

Not limiting quality initiatives to risks. Too often, quality initiatives focus solely on subjects that can constitute risks: operational risks, financial risks, risks related to the organisation’s image, etc. Without neglecting the importance of reducing these risks effectively, it is crucial that quality initiatives also deal with issues that contribute to success, that is to say, that help to achieve strategic objectives – increasing the localisation of projects, finding new partners and optimising fundraising, for example.

Not limiting quality initiatives to correcting problems. It is very common for quality initiatives to focus on seeking out problems: failures, frustrations, complaints. As is the case for risks, this is a legitimate activity that is useful in every organisation. At the same time, sometimes quality-related activities gradually become limited to this problem-solving role (‘the office of tears’), and are no longer associated with the organisation making progress by bringing about change.

Dealing with subjects based on a balanced portfolio approach. The choice of subjects to be dealt with by the quality department is therefore crucial, but so is the number and duration of activities taken on. In concrete terms, I often observe that the number of activities is very (too?) high, with widely varying durations (from several weeks to a number of years). The risk with a large number of activities is not to be able to monitor them enough nor implement them due to a lack of resources. The risk with varying durations is that they prevent an overarching view of the progress and effectiveness of the projects, with some that never finish and others that are finished in a number of days. It is therefore important that a quality approach deals with and highlights, on the one hand, a limited number of important, cross-cutting and long-term issues (‘fundamentals’), and, on the other, a list of quicker and less important projects (‘quick wins’).

Being both consistent and agile. Quality departments need to meet two challenges: first of all they need to be consistent so that activities that have begun should be carried out until they have met their objectives, even in the long term. Nothing is more discouraging than ambitious activities that gradually fade out without any valid reason, or activities that stop as soon as there is a problem. At the same time, staff responsible for quality need to be agile by remaining attentive to needs and developing their capacity to adjust the activities and mechanisms in place when necessary. Methods exist to meet the challenge of being both consistent and agile, and these should be appropriated by quality departments.

Cultivating internal improvement, while taking inspiration from the outside world (benchmark). I have already mentioned how important it is that quality approaches are based on each organisation’s strengths, and that the days of universal good practices, that just need to be copied, are over. It is nevertheless essential that quality approaches continuously monitor the practices and results of the ‘outside world’, whether from similar organisations in the international aid sector, or from other sectors. Being open to the outside world means that quality departments can be a source of inspiration, can bring in new ideas and can make sure that continuous improvement activities do not ‘stagnate’.