News

Soft skills: Smart skills for Organizations
Focus on humility and self confidence
Humility is looking at life from different perspectives, not just from your own; it will allow you to see what others cannot. Humility gives you a perspective to do what needs to be done to make your venture successful. Arrogance can blind you. When you see yourself superior to other founders, smarter than your staff and directors, more capable than professional executives, you and your organization lose. It is that simple.
In conceptual and development stages of the Organization, you should balance humility and self-confidence, not arrogance. Listen to criticisms of your ideas and plan with openness but don’t lose your confidence. Don’t show-off or have an attitude of “holier than thou” or “smarter than you” because that puts prospective partners, who could be clients, collaborators, staff, off. It doesn’t build your future or create good “buzz” about you and your ecosystem. To partner with others, who have different set of skills than you do, and to hire and manage people better than you, you need to have a healthy sense of confidence in yourself. You must find the right balance between inner strength and outward humility combined with a genuine sense of leading a whole team and not advancing one’s isolated, personal gains.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Soft skills: Smart skills for Organizations
Organisations sink or swim based on soft skills regardless whether their technologies keep them afloat temporarily. Great technology and mediocre management leads to sure failure! Leadership is the key. “The truth is that no one factor makes an organization admirable, but if you were forced to pick the one that makes the most difference, you’d pick Leadership”. Leadership is one of the key soft skills along with communication, creativity, learning and teamwork.
Soft skills contribute to leading people, by leading a team, one’s life, conflict management, interviewing and selecting new members, delegation, coaching, networking and developing others.
Managing activities, like service quality, workplace safety, client care and fundraising.
Managing resources, such as people and finances.
Managing information, in decision making, problem solving, meeting management, persuasion and presentation skills.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Soft skills: Smart skills for Organizations
Soft skills like leadership, decision-making, conflict resolution, negotiation, communication, creativity and presentation skills are essential for organizational success and for maximizing human capital in any organization. When balanced with a good management team and an effective human resource management system, soft skills provide a way to get the highest return to the investment in terms of human capital. While professional skills may open the door of opportunity, soft skills keep you in the driver’s seat. In other words, technical skills get you in the door, but soft skills keep you in the job.
Many organizations fail even though they have great ideas and great talent because they lack the appropriate structures and processes to move forward. In addition, when the focus is too much on “hard skills”, the dynamics in the workplace become difficult to manage and many organizations never see their first anniversary because they lack soft skills.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Civil society – Government Cooperation Strategy:
The cooperation of government with the civil society sector shall rest on the principles of mutual trust, partnership, participation and consultation, transparency, independence and accountability.
Independence, The Civil society sector shall be free and independent in deciding its aims, adopting decisions and planning activities. The government shall respect this distinct civil society sector quality in representing citizens’ interests, and implementation of activities with financial support from government and participation in policy making.
Accountability, The government and civil society sector shall be mutually accountable to the public and the citizens for jointly implemented activities. This principle shall be expressed through the efforts of government and civil society sector to take into account citizens’ contributions in deciding on priorities, drafting and implementing the policies. The government and civil society shall comply with the principle of mutual accountability in allocation and utilization of governmental resources.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Civil society – Government Cooperation Strategy:
The cooperation of government with the civil society sector shall rest on the principles of mutual trust, partnership, participation and consultation, transparency, independence and accountability.
Participation and consultation, the government shall involve the civil society sector in policy-making process to incorporate the interests of the the citizens in decision-making and implementation of measures.
The civi society sector shall employ its capacities and resources for quality benefit of the community. It shall represent various values and interests of citizens, and serve as a medium through which citizens shall receive information and express their viewpoints on the suggested government measures. Hence, the government shall be open to dialogue with the public for improved quality and strengthened legitimacy of policies.
Transparency, the activities to be undertaken by the government and civil society sector in view of the programmes and plans necessary to accomplish common goals shall be openly shared and accessible to the public. The government shall pay special attention to this principle of accessibility to information, participation in public policy-making and allocation of resources.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Civil society – Government Cooperation Strategy:
The cooperation of government with the civil society sector shall rest on the principles of mutual trust, partnership, participation and consultation, transparency and accountability.
Mutual trust, in the process of development and implementation of policies and activities, the roles of government and civil society sector are complementary. Their mutual goals shall be most efficiently accomplished provided that they are determined and implemented on grounds of mutual trust, of what to achieve and how. The government and civil society sector shall enter into a mutual relationship, unbiased and fully understanding the positive role of each counterpart in achieving common goals.
Partnership, successful cooperation between the government and civil society sector shall require partnership and division of tasks in order to be more organized in addressing the citizens’ needs. The partnership principle refers to mutual cooperation for a balanced dialogue and respect of various viewpoints in defining common goals of implementation. Whenever considered necessary, the government and civil society sector shall function complementarily by utilizing governmental intervention and civil society sector’s input within the boundaries of capacity and knowledge for all relevant areas and vice versa.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Civil society – Government Cooperation Strategy:
The Civil society organizations as the integral part of the social system, enables citizens to actively participate in all social matters. Also, as additional benefits from further development of civil society organizations are the stimulation of social cohesion and creation of sustainable social capital. Civil society organizations also possess a high economic potential expressed through their role as employers, i.e. to involve the economically active population in their activities and thus help reduce the problems related to unemployment. Consequently, it should be the interest of government to support the development of civil society organizations, meanwhile the latter acting as a constructive complimentary actor in all social areas defined as in-need-of intervention. The strategy should nurture the mutual trust, partnership and transparency in communication, and at the same time it maintains the principle of independence of the civil society organizations sector from the state.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

Civil society – State Cooperation Strategy:
The development of the Civil society sector is of key importance for the fundamental and pluralistic values of any country, as well as for the engagement of its citizens’ awareness for wider social engagement. At the same time, it reaffirms the constitutionally guaranteed human rights of freedom of association for exercising and protecting a myriad of rights and beliefs and the freedom of speech, articulated through the principles of participative democracy. In addition, through their activities citizens contribute to a more holistic social development and to an improved standard and way of life.
Such contribution by the civil society sector in promoting and building a democratic, cultural and social cohesion on all social levels implies the need for its cooperation with the government. Their mutual action can significantly contribute to the development of numerous spheres of society, in order to address the challenges and the current problems in the country.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

CIVIL SOCIETY: How can donors and grantees get better together?
Getting better together, requires learning. This is as true for philanthropists and grantees as it is for athletes, business executives, actors, and doctors. When people and organizations become set in their ways, as a result of arrogance or inertia, they stifle useful learning. It requires a certain degree of humility – an ability to acknowledge what you may not know or may have gotten wrong – plus the personal resolve to invest time, and relentless effort to improve. Learning requires thoughtful discipline about what elements matter most.
It is easier to be good than great, and easier still to be mediocre. It is easy to shake hands, write a cheque, and accept a contribution. However, imperative is to go beyond the hand shake and work effectively together in pursuit of shared goals, to accept our mutual interdependence and collaborate for the common good. At the time, when resources are chronically scarce (and society’s needs are escalating), effective collaboration will enable donors and grantees to achieve more results with the same (or fewer) resources.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda

CIVIL SOCIETY: How can donors and grantees use measurement to its greatest potential effect? How can they get better together? The solution demands that both parties trust and respect one another – and believe fervently that there is always room for improvement. Donors must make the effort to ensure that the the metrics they want to see are useful both as performance indicators and as tools that can help the civil society organization improve its results. And civil society leaders must find a way to measure data that will help them get better at what they do regardless of specific donor requirements. From experience, grantees that develop these capabilities are ultimately better positioned to do the measurement work required by donors, even when those efforts are directly different – possibly because of experience gathering meaningful data and analyzing it, and the organizational culture of accountability and results that can develop as a by product of that experience.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda