World Bank Blog: Why Influencing Leaders Requires a Willingness to Hug a Porcupine

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/why-influencing-leaders-requires-willingness-hug-porcupine

World Bank Blogs

Why Influencing Leaders Requires a Willingness to Hug a Porcupine

SUBMITTED BY SINA ODUGBEMI ON THU, 10/03/2013

Let’s be clear about this: to successfully influence leaders, that is, to have your views, your suggestions, your criticisms of their actions and so on, be taken seriously by them, you are not allowed to cheat. Cheat and leaders will ignore you. Worse, they will treat you with contempt. Above all, you will deserve their contempt.

The subject is important because a fundamental part of producing change is the ability to influence leaders…the leaders of the organizations you need help from, and the leaders of government at different levels without whose support very little can get done. I know this suggestion flies in the face of the current romance of the streets, of the current idealization of grass roots mobilization using cool new tools that magically launch revolutions, and produce wondrously effective pro-poor social and political change.

Now, I am a great believer in active citizens but I also know that real change is delivered by effective coalitions, and people in leadership positions are at the very heart of effective coalitions. It is the classic Inside-Outside strategy: leaders in government and leaders in civil society collaborate (sometimes quietly because of the exigencies of power play) to produce change.

In another life, when I was a newspaper pundit and editorial opinion writer, a number of leaders I interacted with taught me a simple truth. They were trying to describe to me which newspaper editorials or writers they took seriously and why. They laid out the tests they applied as follows:

• Are you informed? Do you know what you are talking about?
• Are you aware of the complexity of the decision-making context that the leaders in the arena are facing?
• Do you factor that complexity into what you are proposing, or are you ignoring the complexity in order to fire off cheap shots, or urge upon them asinine courses of action?

They said to me that these tests are the reason leaders take very few activists, pundits and editorial opinions seriously.  But, you know, I firmly believe that similar tests are applied by leaders in different spheres of life…including where you work. Leaders everywhere, I am convinced, take very few people seriously.

The key lesson that I was taught is this: if you are informed, if you take on the complexity of the decision making context leaders are facing and still come to a different, perfectly feasible course of action, you will earn the respect and admiration of the leaders you are trying to influence, even if they don’t say so to you...or change course.

The reason for all this is simple. Leaders wrestle with complexity all the time. They have to embrace porcupines daily…and porcupines have those nasty erectile spines mingled with their body hair. Yet, these sorely pressed leaders often find that most of the people seeking to influence them, or those who simply blast them, are not interested in embracing porcupines.  They cheat. They simplify complex problems and then say: ‘It is simply really, Madame Prime Minister. Why don’t you do this or that?’

And why do people cheat? Because embracing complexity is hard; thinking is hard; and trade-offs are tough customers. It is a lot easier to cheat.

But leaders cannot cheat. They cannot duck complexity. They cannot avoid difficult trade-offs, competing principles, quarrelling allies, vicious enemies and so on.

I want to end with an example from the world of politics. In October 2012, the best-selling author, Michael Lewis, published a remarkable essay in Vanity Fair, the resultant of spending six months quietly shadowing President Barack Obama of the United States. The piece is titled ‘Obama’s Way’ and it contains the following glimpses into the realities of political leaders. Lewis quotes Obama saying:

1. “Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable. Otherwise someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made that decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.”
2. “You’ll see that I wear only gray or blue suits. I am trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I am eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

Now, just think about what it would take to impress and influence someone only a small part of whose reality we have just espied.

Photo Credit: Mary Harrsch
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GCC to set up common water grid

http://www.emirates247.com/business/energy/gcc-to-set-up-common-water-grid-2013-09-30-1.522864

Project to cost $10.5bn; desalination plants in Gulf of Oman

Published Monday, September 30, 2013

Gulf oil producers are planning to pump around $10.5 billion to set up a landmark common water supply grid to meet their fast growing consumption in the long run because of a rapid population growth and expanding non-oil sectors.

The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which are the world’s richest in oil but poorest in water, have agreed to set up giant desalination plants in Oman to use water from the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

The project involves large pipelines that will link all six members and supply them with desalinated water in case of shortages in their existing desalination plants in the Gulf.

The project includes three stages, the first of which will cost around $2.7 billion and involves linking regional countries with a pipeline network while the second phase will cost nearly $four billion to construct a plant in Sohar on Oman’s coastline overlooking both seas. The third phase includes the construction of another desalination station in Ashkhara in Oman at a cost of about $3.8 billion.

“This project is in line with a decision by the GCC heads of state at their meeting in Riyadh in mid 2012,” Bahraini Minister of Water and Electricity Abdul Mohsen bin Ali Mirza said in remarks published in regional newspapers.

He said a feasibility study bid has already been awarded to King Abdullah for Research and Strategic Studies in Saudi Arabia at a cost of SR12.5 million.

Officials said the project would rely on water from the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea outside the oil-rich Gulf to ease reliance on desalination plants in the Gulf due to rapid growth in consumption in member states.

In a recent study, a US research firm warned that regional states could face a serious water supply shortage because of a rapid growth in domestic demand due to a large increase in their population, steady expansion in their economies, the long summer season, and lack of awareness about rationalization of water consumption.

 “Excess water consumption has become a serious issue in the region. GCC residents and businesses have disregarded the consequences of their water usage to enjoy benefits more common in countries with ample rain and overflowing aquifers. But with the population of the GCC increasing in excess of two cent a year, it is a real challenge,” Booz & Company said.

According to the report, desalination station provides more than two-thirds of the potable water used in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, and will continue to play a huge role in the GCC’s water development efforts.

But it warned that desalination carries enormous economic and environmental costs. Despite a more than fivefold improvement in efficiency since 1979, the $one it costs to desalinate a cubic meter of seawater is still a relatively expensive way of producing potable water, it said.

“Moreover, seawater desalination is an energy-intensive process, consuming eight times more energy than groundwater projects, and accounting for between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of energy consumption in the GCC. This adds to the problems of energy intensity already plaguing the region,” it said.

The report estimated that GCC countries, which control 40 per cent of the world’s oil, would invest more than $100 billion in their water sectors between 2011 and 2016.

It said some of these investments will be in improved desalination technologies, which could involve solar energy or new ways of filtering out salt or making it evaporate.

A recent official study showed people in the UAE are the world’s largest water consumers, with the average per capita consumption standing at 364 litres per day, more than 82 per cent above the global average individual demand.

Demand for water in the UAE, the second largest Arab economy, totalled around 4.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2011 and is projected to nearly double to nine bcm in 2030 because of high consumption and population growth, said Mariam Hassan Al-Shanasi, undersecretary of the ministry of environment and water.

She estimated per capita water demand in the country at 364 litres per day compared with a global average of nearly 200 litres per day.

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