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Five Oaks Consulting I help leaders of international nonprofits turbocharge their ability to lead dramatic and useful change

Over the holiday period, I had more time to peruse older podcast episodes that are well worth listening to.And... George...
05/01/2026

Over the holiday period, I had more time to peruse older podcast episodes that are well worth listening to.

And... George Mitchell, Hans Peter Schmitz, Barney Tallack and I are in the FINAL month of finalizing our book manuscript for the second edition of Between Power and Irrelevance: the Future of Transnational NGOs. In which we will introduce a few new case studies on practical steps forward-leaning NGOs took towards locally led development.

This made me want to listen to this older episode, highlighting Christian Aid's steps:

https://mzninternational.com/podcast/

And I am so glad I did.

Christian Aid, since then, has taken even more steps, towards an aligned Operating Model- which we will pay attention to in our book.

Concretely, this is what stood out to me:

* Give up direct implementation (yes, a well-known artifact of locally led development - but is it well-practiced?)
* FBOs have several advantages in closing the gap between espoused values and real in-use practices: their basic premise is to primarily work with local, well institutionalized, capable, and trusted religious institutions; also, their funding basis includes receiving a healthy proportion of unrestricted income, leading to what the podcast host Christian calls "strategic agility"
* Focus on where the INGO really adds value, compared to what’s already being done effectively by local groups
* Share your indirect cost recovery (ICR) funds 50-50% with local partners
* Harmonize partner accountability requirements with those of other development actors and/or accept other donors' proof of accountability standards when your partner org already has met those
* Allocate 80% of your humanitarian appeal donor money to partners
* Allocate one quarter of your flexible funds to partners
* Use longer-term, 3-year partnership cycles

Love the concreteness of these steps.

Read more in our upcoming second edition book, published around September 2026. Follow us as authors here on LinkedIn for more details as they become available!

MzN International – Chasing Impact Podcast If you are continually seeking ways to maximise your impact and ensure that the world is a better place because your organisation or company is in it – not despite it – then Chasing Impact is for you. This podcast is for dreamers, thinkers, engineers ...

One of the many polarities that leaders of INGOs have to balance - and which we describe in our upcoming second edition ...
07/11/2025

One of the many polarities that leaders of INGOs have to balance - and which we describe in our upcoming second edition of our book 'Between Power and Irrelevance: the Future of Transnational NGOs' -- is well described in this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/politics/sierra-club-social-justice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zU8.Cmkl.oR2emVxDkkT7&smid=url-share

We just learned that the book will be published in Sept-Nov 2026.

Stay tuned!

The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened as it takes on the Trump administration.

You have probably heard of the deeply psychological reactions that we as humans tend to show when we feel under threat: ...
04/11/2025

You have probably heard of the deeply psychological reactions that we as humans tend to show when we feel under threat: fight, flight, or freeze.

These are defensive responses.

And remember: one of the biggest threats to us is the threat of being socially excluded, of not belonging to a group, of being the outlier etc.

In this article, I learned about three more of such defensive reactions to threats: please/appease (also called fawning); attach/cry for help; and checking out/submit/collapse.

Interesting.

The author Ron Carruci, whose writings about change management I appreciate, maps appropriate management responses to each reaction to threats.

And this helps you as a manager avoid the mistake of assuming people's reactions are reflective of certain personality traits.

Nice article:

Most people are familiar with the language of fight, flight, or freeze to describe the body’s instinctive survival responses to perceived threats. There are three additional, less-known threat responses: please/appease (sometimes called fawning), attach/cry for help, and collapse. We unconsciously...

We are still at risk of digital fatigue.This article describes the issue well and offers valid actions to counter it.Dur...
28/10/2025

We are still at risk of digital fatigue.

This article describes the issue well and offers valid actions to counter it.

During and after the pandemic, my colleague Ahmed Abdelhakim Hachelaf and I offered both advisory services as well as training products on virtual team leadership skills. We, among others, dealt with this topic.

DM us if you feel you need a refresher, now that we are 5 years later.

Digital exhaustion is a modern workplace challenge that arises not from poor management, but from the way digital tools disrupt our cognitive and emotional balance. Fragmented attention, constant context switching, and the need to infer meaning from limited digital cues all contribute to this phenom...

A majority of the US public continues to trust in nonprofits. That is good - and warranted.But trust in the federal gov...
22/07/2025

A majority of the US public continues to trust in nonprofits. That is good - and warranted.

But trust in the federal government is declining (no surprise). So when nonprofits are significantly supported by the US federal government, the public trusts them somewhat less.

Same for when wealthy individual donors fund nonprofits to a significant extent. The Elon Musk effect?

Amid political polarization, public trust in nonprofits remains high. But concerns about government and wealthy donors’ influence grow.

At a nonprofit or foundation leadership level, we need to think of AI in a comprehensive manner. And that includes the (...
07/07/2025

At a nonprofit or foundation leadership level, we need to think of AI in a comprehensive manner.

And that includes the (potential or already realized) downsides and trade offs.

I don't mean now the risk of biases, job loss, environmental damage, labor abuse regarding people who train the AIs in Kenya, and other ethical risks. As important as they are.

I mean the risks to our individual and collective cognitive capacity (anybody ready to be dumbed down?); all of us moving to a bland medium in terms of what we think, understand, and write/say, the loss of personal tone and originality, and the loss of relationships. See below for one example of a thoughtful treatment of this issue.

I am not a tech Luddite, I am experimenting with AI just like most of you.

But I do think we need to ask the overarching questions.

And I don't mean now the risk of biases, jobs loss, ethics, environmental damage, slave labor in Kenya etc - as important and real as they are.

I mean our individual and collective cognitive capacity; all of us moving to a bland medium, loss of personal tone, and loss of relationship.

Gen AI has the potential to create a tremendous amount of value for organizations and individual employees. By focusing on the value of the output that AI produces, however, we tend not to think much about other sources of value. We rarely ask: In what way does each activity we do create true and un...

"How Nonprofits Can Navigate Uncertainty"A grounded Harvard Business Review (HBR) interview with Janti Soeripto, CEO of ...
23/06/2025

"How Nonprofits Can Navigate Uncertainty"

A grounded Harvard Business Review (HBR) interview with Janti Soeripto, CEO of Save the Children USA.

Janti makes several no-nonsense points -- well worth your time to listen to. I note Janti's (half-Dutch!) common-sense tone.

Times are really hard for international NGOs right now - and as we know, Save the Children has had its share of impacts.

Its capability to positively impact the lives of young children has diminished; children are dying as a result, and a significant number of people have also lost their jobs.

A conversation with Save the Children US CEO Janti Soeripto on staying mission-focused in turbulent times.

As a woman in my 60s, I keep an eye out for agism -- on both sides of the spectrum.And as a mother of two adult children...
18/06/2025

As a woman in my 60s, I keep an eye out for agism -- on both sides of the spectrum.

And as a mother of two adult children, I might be constantly tempted to engage in too-easy thinking about generational differences.

But it also always struck me many thimes that the way we may think and talk easily about supposed generational differences at this moment in time may well have been repeated *exactly in the same manner* in previous generations.

And that the current generation Z, for instance, is likely to do the same about upcoming generations, 10+ year from hereon.

This podcast episode hosted by Adam Grant, the well-known American organizational psychologist, features Jennifer Deal, senior research scientist at the University of Southern California, and she indeed busts a lot of these myths about generational differences.

Check your thinking!

Podcast Episode · Worklife with Adam Grant · 06/10/2025 · 26m

Oh irony!Research indicates that when women report abuse in the workplace, it is taken less seriously than when men do s...
11/06/2025

Oh irony!

Research indicates that when women report abuse in the workplace, it is taken less seriously than when men do so.

"This reflects longstanding stereotypes that women are more emotional and less objective than men"

Find out which solid organizational systems can help prevent this bias from happening:

In recent years, many organizations have reevaluated and attempted to improve their processes for reporting and investigating workplace abuse. But new research, which analyzed thousands of workplace reports, found that reports made by women are less likely to be taken seriously than identical report...

Cross-cultural communication skills are always important to hone.In 2024, I hosted several NGO Soul + Strategy podcast c...
05/05/2025

Cross-cultural communication skills are always important to hone.

In 2024, I hosted several NGO Soul + Strategy podcast conversations about non-Western perspectives on leadership and leadership development.

They came to mind in reading this solid Harvard Business Review article, which offers important nuances and warnings:

https://hbr.org/2025/05/leading-global-teams-effectively?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=mtod_Active&deliveryName=NL_MTOD_20250501

(Re)listen to my 2024/2025 podcast episodes with Adama Coulibaly, Nankhonde Kasonde, Taaka Awori, Faye Ekong, Martin Kalungu Banda, and Albert Momo - among others -- to educate yourself!

Sign up here to never miss any of my episodes: https://mailchi.mp/5oaksconsulting/podcast-signup

Western managers leading global teams face a challenge: Their expertise and training usually are rooted in individualistic contexts and emphasize values such as autonomy, empowerment, egalitarianism, and authenticity. Yet more than 70% of the world’s workforce comes from collectivist and hierarchi...

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