What makes a great chief of party?

Chiefs of party are some of the most powerful players in the world of development, essentially serving as the chief executive of an individual project. Getting the right one is often key to winning contracts and also ensuring a project is successful once the bid is won. But what makes a good chief of party? Are development organizations hiring the right people for the job? And should the system for recruiting chiefs of party change? In a wide-ranging conversation with Devex, four past and present chiefs of party discussed these issues. Key responsibilities The panel painted a picture of how complex the role can be. Responsibilities can begin well before a bid is even won, since the chief of party plays a role in preparing bids and fundraising. But once a bid is successful, typically, a chief of party is responsible for managing multiple stakeholders — the client, the head office of their own organization, the government of the country or region where they work, local suppliers, their team in the field, and the beneficiary population. And while managing these stakeholders is a major part of project delivery, chiefs of party must also have the technical knowledge to understand what the project is trying to achieve, and the skills in design and management to implement successful solutions. They must also have the strategic vision to understand what the project is trying to achieve and how to get there. And, depending on the project, they must be able to adapt to a potentially unstable working environment that could include pandemics, civil unrest, and climate-related challenges. Pamela Bowen, the senior director for Africa at Global Communities, who oversees several chiefs of party, said the role is growing and changing. “A lot of us are going to have to retool ourselves,” she said. “Many chiefs of party need to retool and expand their skill set beyond the technical area they’ve studied.” What makes a good chief of party? Donna Vincent Roa, who is a project director at Kaizen, a Tetra Tech company, and looks after USAID’s Partnerships Incubator, talked about how the success of a project is driven by a chief of party’s ability to get the best out of a team. “Oftentimes we have a request for particular technical expertise for a chief of party,” she said. “But in the end it’s not about technical expertise, it’s about the ability to drive a particular project. So I would argue all day with anyone who says we need 100% technical expertise in this area. If you have the ability to manage properly a team and tap into proper process management, the results can really blow up.” Meanwhile, Dhirisha Naidoo, chief of party for the APACE program from BroadReach Health Development, based in South Africa, said it could be a struggle for technical experts to make the shift to be chiefs of party — one she had experienced herself. She said hat makes a good leader for a development projectarly on where the team is going. “If I’m managing a team of 1,300 people, I need to remain true north,” she said. “They’re relying on me to get them there.” Understanding of the local context is also important, said Hervil Cherubin, country director for Haiti at Heifer International. “You really need people with technical and management skills,” he said, “but also you need people who really understand the communities, people who have empathy. It’s about the people you are going to help. “You can have the best people, with the best skills, but when it comes to implementation, if they have no connection with the people they work [with], if they cannot relate to the situation in the field, they fail completely.” Where should chiefs of party come from? Asked whether it still makes sense for U.S. chiefs of party to be asked to deliver solutions in countries they have never worked in, Bowen stressed that change is needed. “I think there's a need for chiefs of party to have a fundamental shift in the way we think, and it starts, at a very most basic level, with respect for the local knowledge, and an appreciation for the fact that the people in the community we're working with, they oftentimes have solutions. They know what works and what doesn't work,” she said. “We have to be open to true partnerships, to meaningful deep partnerships, and that sometimes means us international guys not being in charge.” Bowen said that chiefs of party need to involve local voices more clearly at every stage of a project development, but that more chiefs of party also have to come from the countries where projects are being implemented. Naidoo agreed that projects are far more successful when they build trust and establish connection with local people. This requires time from everyone involved — from the funder to the ministry of health to the chief of party. She said that a successful chief of party should both identify existing local talent and build local capacity for the future. Cherubin said this necessitates a change in how chiefs of party work. “Chiefs of party should be there to advise local people on finding solutions to their own problems,” he said. “For a long time we’ve been importing solutions and we’ve found out it’s not working.” Too much prescription? Roa talked about the need to allow chiefs of party to experiment and innovate, rather than focusing on compliance and prescribing exactly the sets of skills needed — something USAID has previously been criticized for. She said that her current project with USAID was about allowing this kind of innovation to take place. “It’s very exciting to be in a setting where the agency is challenging you to innovate and to listen to all stakeholders within the system,” she said. Right now, Roa said, USAID projects do not have enough scope and flexibility to deal with changes in the environment or to respond to emerging problems. “Every single RFP [request for proposal] needs to have a surprise bucket at a minimum — and that means money that's available to deal with unforeseen circumstances or money that's available to innovate,” she said.