Why this, why now, why me?

After ten or so years organizational capacity development "practitioning" (i.e. the act of being, or thinking of oneself as a practitioner, or someone who practices something—or even worse, someone who tries to build capacities…), as well as a more hidden, sordid past as an investigative accountant (don’t say auditor—eeeek!), I have become a bit tired and disillusioned with my “practice”. I am also a bit suspicious of how I have allowed my practice to be overly influenced by the broader “development aid” industry that I have worked in, which I have found (my biased opinion) highly effective in “aiding” the discovery of urgencies (and upward accountabilities) and obscuring “importancies” in the process.

As part of a broader personal healing and detoxification process it occurred to me that perhaps I should “throw it all away” and begin a PhD program, hoping that it might help me go deeper into the reasons why I could, or should, or do, do (no pun intended) things. I thought I could perhaps discover a more meaningful way of approaching my practice, and, ultimately, hopefully, be more useful to others in the process.

Whether any of it will be helpful or not is an open question, but I’ve decided I should at least try to more openly reflect on the things I think I’m learning, or understanding better, about my subject area—organizational capacity development—in the hopes that reflecting and writing occasional tidbits will help me better develop my own capacity (to first do no harm?) to grapple with these issues and continually improve both my practice, preaching, and, why not, my theory.

So that’s what this is about. Now you know. Welcome.