We are constantly enhancing our capabilities to better serve in the field. We took our project Tools to the lab for an update. Our objective is to facilitate the generation and implementation of feasible high-impact projects for customers and partners worldwide. The new version of our Project Tools will be effective, robust, and easy to apply. Stay updated by subscribing to our newsletter. Remember to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
We’re always improving our capacities to help our customers discover and draw nearer to God through social innovations. We empower our customers to generate and carry out great ideas for the glory of God.
For the past three years, we developed simple, practical tools to help us be more effective in the field. This day, 27th of August 2021, we gladly announce our tools are ready and available online for our customers.
We divided our tools into three parts:
Part one has general information, which includes the Terms & Conditions to partner with us, Our Vision, Constitution and Values. All these give you the necessary information on who we are, how to engage with us and what we want to achieve together in the future.
The second part has Project Tools to help our customers generate and carry out a project idea God’s way.
The third and last part comprises tests to help keep the project ideas our customers generate in line with our vision, goals and values.
For more information on how to use our tools, our customers can contact us through the contact form on our website www.treff-end.com or write us on treff@treff-end.com or jmw@treff-end.com.
In Series 3.2, we learned about developing a strategy to implement your project in the field. We discovered the strategy consists of three main components:
The mission statement is present-oriented, describing your current actions. It incorporates social ideals known as values which guide the entire project or organization.
The vision (or goals) is future-oriented and long term. It stipulates what you desire to achieve over a period of time. We discovered the vision anchors on SMART strategic objectives which render it flexible should the entrepreneur desire a change of strategy along the way.
Finally, we introduced the practical approach strategy which deals with organizing resources and selecting an effective implementation approach to achieve your strategic objectives and vision.
In this series, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of the practical approach strategy: we’ll discover how you identify, prepare resources and choose an implementation approach prior to implementing your project.
Practical Approach Strategy
The practical approach as we’ve seen deals with resources analysis and field realities. There’re four main things to consider:
Internal And External Stakeholders
Stakeholders are people or entities that influence decision-making or aspects of the project. A stakeholder’s influence can either be positive or negative depending on their interests.
Most social projects have two types of stakeholders: internal and external. Internal stakeholders are those within the organization while external stakeholders are outside the organization. These must be carefully analysed and engaged for a project to be implemented successfully.
For our tree planting project in Cameroon, we have the following internal and external stakeholders:
Internal: Village workers, Treff-end members, the village chief and council members
External: Local NGOs (Wewuley Consultancy, Master Planner Foundation, Green Peace), government representatives, neighbouring villagers, the local radio station, local newspapers and donors.
To successfully implement your project, you must identify all internal and external stakeholders, their roles, level of importance and level of influence. When this is done, the entrepreneur develops a Stakeholder Engagement Plan to ensure all actions of the identified stakeholders favour the implementation of the project.
Treff-End’s Sample Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement Plan are made available to its partners in the field.
Resource Analysis
Resources are the items you need to accomplish your objectives (to implement the project in the field). You either own or acquire resources. The main resources to identify include:
Physical (Tangible): transport equipment, office equipment, working equipment, training equipment, etc.
Intangible: skills, knowledge, capacities, strengths, etc.
Financial: The finances you need (where it will come from and what it will be used for).
Human: Who will do what, how and when.
Organizational: Logistics, administrative, bills (fuel, electricity, phone, internet, emails, etc.), events, unforeseen, contingencies, etc.
By going through the Reveal and Design steps, it’s possible to identify most of the resources you need to implement your project (especially by observing the Work Breakdown Structure and Task List).
Treff-End’s Sample Resource Analysis is made available to its partners in the field.
The Most Feasible Implementation Approach
The implementation approach is a philosophy stakeholders take to the field during implementation. Treff-End encourages social entrepreneurs to choose among the following three:
Conclusion
You need a practical approach strategy to implement your project. The approach depends on a careful analysis of internal and external stakeholders, material and immaterial resources, as well as, the most feasible implementation approach. With these, you must have put all in place to reduce risks of failure.
In Series 3.4, we’ll see how the entrepreneur actually implements the project in the field.
Please share this info with friends and entrepreneurs in your community
In Stage 3.1, we learned it’s necessary to prepare the field with prayer and fasting prior to implementing your project. We discovered three main prayer points to consider when trying to implement a Social Project.
Today, we’ll learn, in part, how to develop an implementation strategy for your project.
Implementation Strategy
What’s a strategy? It’s an action plan you design to achieve long-term objectives. It’s all about organizing or re-organizing resources in order to achieve your defined vision and strategic objectives in a sustainable manner.
With this simple definition in mind, you must clarify three things to enable you generate an effective implementation strategy:
The first deals with your identity, the second with the overall orientation of your resources and the third deals with adjusting resources in the field.
Your Mission Statement
You can’t achieve much without knowing who you are. You also can’t make effective progress without a global understanding of your current situation. All these aspects are incorporated in your mission statement.
Your Mission Statement is, therefore, a statement of your identity and actions – it’s current – present-oriented. For instance, Treff-End’s mission statement two years ago was ‘‘Inspiring & Empowering The People’’. Back then, we were focused on helping those in interior communities identify their potentials. In recent times, we’ve made progress by helping people utilize their capacities. Our new Mission Statement is ‘‘Generating Innovative Ideas’’.
To define an effective mission statement, you must recognize the values which guide you. Values are social ideals and qualities which guide your actions. E.g. honesty, commitment, faith, accountability, etc. The Following values guide Treff-End’s actions – they’re all reflected in our current mission statement:
Your Vision / Goals
You can’t plan effectively against the future without a sufficient understanding of where you’re coming from – and where you’re at the moment. Your Vision, therefore, relies on the Mission Statement and findings to set targets for the future. Vision is what you plan to achieve in the long-term. Your vision is future-oriented and may require a significant amount of time to achieve – e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20-years.
To define an effective vision, you must make use of Strategic Objectives. Your Strategic Objectives must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound). E.g. Treff-End has a yearly strategic objective to plant 2,500 Cedrela trees in Woteva Village to accomplish a vision of 12,500 trees by the end of 2022.
Contrary to the vision, strategic objectives are short-time-bound – 1 to 5-years. Visions usually require a change of strategy along the way to be accomplished. Strategic objectives are useful in ensuring an effective change of strategy without disrupting the entire goal.
Your Practical Approach
You’ve clearly defined your mission statement and vision. But wait a minute – your implementation strategy isn’t complete. There’s an important piece left to clearly defined – the practical approach strategy – how well you’ll manage your resources to accomplish your strategic objectives and vision.
To determine this practical approach strategy, two things are necessary:
In Stage 3.3, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of how you determine an effective practical approach strategy to implement your project in the field.
Don’t forget to share this info with friends and entrepreneurs in your community
In Series 1, we acquired skills to generate a project or idea from scratch in a step known as Reveal. The entrepreneur begins with fasting/prayers and asks God for wisdom. This first stage prepares the Entrepreneur to receive a God-revealed idea or project. In stage 2, the entrepreneur analyses the root-causes of troubles. He or she listens and records project ideas which address those root causes in stage 3. In stage 4, the entrepreneur prioritizes the generated project ideas and later applies the TCLR-Test in stage 5 to ensure projects align with God’s will. At the end of this process, the entrepreneur generates a project or idea which is feasible, cost-effective and realizable in its context.
Series 2 dealt with how we transform the generated idea or project into organized axiomatic tasks in a step known as Design. The design begins with prayers/Fasting to determine the most feasible implementation patterns. Stage 2 utilizes Project Management techniques to determine the main tasks, schedule, budget and risks involved. In stage 3, the entrepreneur develops a prototype and sends it for testing in the field. He or she collects all feedback and incorporate them into the final design in stage 4. In the end, the project or idea is robust, suits the needs of its customers and ready to be implemented in the field.
In Series 3, we’ll deal with how the entrepreneur actually realizes the idea in the field in the third step known as Implement.
You’ve taken time to obtain a revelation from God and received wisdom from Him to design this idea and prepare it for implementation in the field. You’ve worked hard and developed a prototype. Your customers have tested the product and expressed their feelings about it. You’ve considered their feedback and designed a final product with matches their needs. It’s time to take the idea into the community and change lives.
But pause a minute. Implementation begins by approaching God in prayer/fasting in Stage 1. There’re four main prayer points you should consider before taking your project into the field:
Insufficiencies
No matter how well you design your project, it can’t be perfect. There’re always improvements to make. It can always get better. The entrepreneur, therefore, begins the implementation with a learning mindset. Hence, the first prayer point is wisdom to discover all insufficiencies and appropriate mechanisms to fill the gaps.
Arising Challenges
You can’t determine with accuracy what’s waiting for you in the field. You primarily implement a project by faith. Your project can be affected by additional internal and external factors you didn’t consider. For instance, new stakeholders may arise. Accidents or illnesses can occur which might require significant adjustments. And, of course, fierce resistance from the enemies of progress – Satan and his agents. Your second prayer point deals with how to address these unprecedented challenges.
Growth & Expansion
Every God-given idea needs to grow. But growth requires strategy. And the strategy is effective when you understand field realities. Your third prayer point is to identify and carefully make use of expansion and growth opportunities and possibilities. Who knows? You might require additional partnerships or alliances with people or organizations with similar interests.
Benefit-Sharing
A social entrepreneur primarily works for people in a particular community. The benefits of the project(s) or idea must be shared fairly among all stakeholders concerned. Fair benefit-sharing encourages unity and progress. Where selfishness, materialism and greediness are involved, it gives room to exploitation. Your fourth and last prayer point is wisdom to establish a fair benefit-sharing mechanism together with stakeholders of the community.
In Stage 2, we’ll deal with how you develop an Implementation Strategy.
Please Share This Info With Entrepreneurs In Your Community
In Stage 3, we discovered it’s necessary to develop a Prototype prior to implementing your project in the field. We learned the Prototype helps you to make your project known, collect vital feedback from its potential beneficiaries, experts and other stakeholders which will help you improve your Project Design and Strategy to achieve a bigger impact.
In Stage 4, we’ll discover how you analyse the Feedback generated from presenting your prototype and incorporate them into your project to develop the final product to implement in the field in a process known as Learn.
In the food industry, an important stage to understand whether a new product will have an impact on the market is to develop a Test Product (Prototype) and allow potential consumers to taste it and provide feedback. The feedback is analysed to determine whether the product should be released or modified before introduced to the market.
Feedback has four main roles:
You can analyse the feedback in many ways:
During the feedback analysis process:
For our teaching and learning processes improvement in the LifeWayLight Schools in Tanzania, we analyzed the feedback with the teachers.
Feedback Analysis – LifeWayLight Schools
At the end of this analysis, you develop and generate a robust project or product you are sure will have an impact on society.
After the field visit to the demonstration farms, we collected feedback using forms on ways the villagers thought could improve the Cedrela tree planting project. Among the concerns raised were the following:
Feedback Collection Process WCTPP
We have gladly taken these feedback into consideration as we implement the project in the field and believe the Cedrela farming project will significantly change the living standards of the villagers in the coming years.
Next month, we’ll begin with Series 3 – the Implementation of your project in the field and what you need to consider.
Share this information with entrepreneurs in your community
Stay tuned!