PARTICIPATORY LEADERSHIP and DECISION-MAKING. Why and how

Take decisions fast! Break things if needed! That seems to be the current model for leadership and decision-making, promoted by e.g. the tech-barons, in an ultra-capitalist world which has no other concern than maximizing profit.

Such approach tends to feed the ego and the wallet of the very few at the top. It gets justified by arguments about efficiency, effectiveness and adaptability. It can work – for a while- if you degrade people, the environment, a healthy and inclusive society. It is an expression, and enforcement, of hyper-individualism.

In the medium- and longer-term run however, the limitations and damaging consequences of such leadership style and decision-making approaches, become very visible. We can see them all around us, and the next generation will be confronted with them even more. There are other ways.

This brief examines participatory leadership as an alternative to traditional top-down decision-making. It highlights how involving people in decisions leads to better outcomes, smoother implementation, professional growth, and less pressure on leaders. It also identifies common barriers—such as leaders’ fear of losing control—and outlines the conditions needed for genuine participation beyond simple consultation. The brief further introduces deliberation and gradients of agreement as effective approaches for building broad support. Three case studies demonstrate how these participatory methods work in practice. Find the brief here. 

THE STRATEGIC CUBE: Where do you go in an ecosystem of organisations?

The world development and humanitarian organisations are operating in is not just changing; it is fundamentally shifting. Climate-driven disasters are intensifying, conflicts are rising and becoming more complex, political freedoms are shrinking even in traditionally stable democracies, and multilateral cooperation is weakening. NGOs are facing a world that needs more from them but their resources are shrinking. Many are asking themselves: What should our future role be in these circumstances? Are we primarily responders to urgent needs or actors with a mandate that includes rights and justice? Do we continue to implement our own projects or shift toward enabling local actors to lead? How much do we work within our own Western societies, where public understanding of global crises is eroding, though we are increasingly experiencing the same challenges? The Strategic Cube gives organisations a simple, visual way to articulate who they are today and who they aspire to become tomorrow. It brings structure to conversations that are otherwise fragmented, emotional, or avoided altogether. It complements an earlier GMI brief on ‘Reimagining INGOs’. Download here.

TIME TO REIMAGINE INGOs?

We are living a historical turning point. The world order, as it was created after WWII, and particularly the world we have known since the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989-1990) no longer exists. Profound political changes are underway, geo-politically but also within and between Western countries. Ideology is again a powerful driver of politics, as it was in the first part of the 20th century. Democratic values and norms are actively pushed back. Neo-liberal economics on the other hand remains strong, even though its negative consequences are now plainly visible. And the climate and extinction crises are worsening, with many tipping points now in reach.

The cumulative cuts in Official Development Assistance (ODA), particularly in 2024 and 2025, are a consequence of these broader developments. Confronted with all this, in recent months most UN agencies, INGOs but also national and local NGOs/CSOs, understandably, have been focused on downsizing, searching for alternative income and sometimes mere surviving.

Yet international aid agencies, the mainstream INGOs in particular, need to seriously ask the question whether a radically different future might require a more fundamental organisational re-orientation, not just of the business model but of the very purpose, mission and modus operandi of the organisation.

Three key questions are:
1. The endless stream of ‘projects’ will never be enough to mitigate the increasingly negative consequences of the bigger trends, driven by economic, political and military elites. What must we do to also weaken and reverse the drivers of these negative trends?
2. Should we not also work on the increasingly visible social, economic and political fractures in our own (Western) home societies? Not only because we have there our support base, but because the global environmental, economic and security interconnectedness and interdependencies can no longer be denied.
3. Why are we primarily communicating about poverty, misery and need, and not much more about the millions of positive initiatives by communities, towns and cities, and the larger social movements, that give hope, encouragement and practical ideas to the many who know that things are going in the wrong direction but do not know what they can do about it?

The article contains a question sheet that helps you take the reflection from the immediate financial challenge to the deeper strategic questions. Find them here.

DEFUNDING AND DELEGITIMISING THE UN: What future for global cooperation?

In June 2025, the United Nations turn 80. However, in this important birthday year, it finds itself under major financial pressure and serious political attack. In recent months, most attention has gone to the impacts of the financial crisis: projects and programmes abruptly terminated, thousands of staff made redundant, possible relocations of staff and entire offices to cheaper places, and closures or mergers of different UN agencies.

While understandable, this is drawing attention away from intense political attacks on the UN because it defends certain international norms and rules, promotes certain values, as well as environmental protection and climate crisis action. The consequences of these political attacks, by some member states, are potentially much worse than from its forced downsizing. We need to remember that the League of Nations, created to prevent the horrors of war after the carnage of WWI, de facto collapsed in the 1930s, when militarization and preparations for war simply overran its mandate to maintain peace and security.

This brief examines both the financial situation and the political pressures in some detail. It then raises the key question: What possible futures for multilateral cooperation? Will the UN survive and continue as the primary platform for global multilateral negotiation and collaboration? Will it only be able to play that role on areas of undeniable common interest such as air- and maritime transport, but be made largely powerless on the critical issues, such as peace, security, human rights, environmental and climate action? And if the UN is severely weakened, as it was during the Cold War, would other bodies step up as major platforms for multilateral collaboration – at least among its members? Which ones, the regional bodies such as the AU, OAS, ASEAN, EU? The G7, G20 or G77? Would we see a re-emergence of a non-aligned movement, if we find ourselves in a new ‘Cold War’ era, now with 3 instead of 2 major powers?

What are your ideas about the possible futures for multilateral cooperation? Download the brief here.

UN AND INTERNATIONAL AID ESTABLISHMENT: Transformation starts within

This note complements our earlier brief ‘Western Aid Cooperation in Meltdown – Radical Change Required’ which discussed the politically-driven changes in the aid sector and in multilateral norms and -cooperation, that we are experiencing today.

It is mainly addressed at the UN, Red Cross Movement, INGOs and national/local non-governmental organisations, that are part of the ‘international aid establishment’.

Its purpose is to mobilise mental and emotional energy beyond ‘surviving’ the aid budget cuts. Its main messages are

§ The state of the world today and tomorrow requires a profound transformation of the UN and of the aid establishment, not another ‘reform’ or ‘reset’ to what is was a few years ago.

§ The UN and mainstream aid agencies need to critically examine how they have been part of the ‘old system’ with great achievements but also profound flaws. A ‘Braver New World’ requires that we drop our own poor practices, among them costly ways of working, ego-centric competition and very hierarchical organisational cultures.

§ Concentrating the remaining resources, capabilities and energy overwhelmingly on ‘humanitarian’ aid’ would be a strategic mistake. It will remain desperately needed, but humanitarian action is largely reactive and in reality only alleviates suffering inadequately and temporarily. We must also robustly engage with the macro-drivers of global inequality, exploitation, environmental destruction, misery and suffering. Fundamentally, this is about ‘economics’.

§ Western ‘international’ NGOs need to engage much more in their ‘home societies’, as it is primarily the Western governments, voted in by parts of their populations, who are most actively withdrawing from international cooperation, with aid budgets cuts, but also politically.

§ Local and national NGOs also need to critically reflect on their own behaviours, among them their competitiveness, leaderships, independent thinking and ability to propose.

Fragmentation and competition are costly: The times require a major pooling of resources: joined programmes, shared offices, merging organisations and international organisations really supporting and complementing local and national actors.

The brief offers an initial set of questions for critical self-reflection, grouped under the broad categories of UN, INGOs, local/national non-governmental organisations. Most are equally relevant for members of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. You may disagree with some of these questions or their underlying assumptions. That is fine. Your own insights, creativity and wisdom are warmly invited. Refine, change, add to them – but stay with the purpose: To courageously review how we too have been part of a Western international cooperation system, with serious flaws. We will not be able to contribute to a more equitable future without also transforming ourselves. Download the brief here.

WESTERN AID IN MELTDOWN. Radical change required - after critical selfreflection

The international aid sector is in shock. The brusque downsizing of USAID has an immediate impact on millions of people and many aid-funded organisations: UN, NGOs, and government institutions running programmes with US funding. The brutality of it tends to obscure that European aid donors have been, and continue cutting, their aid budgets for some time now; USAID maintained its level until the new administration took over this year. It is the cumulative impact of budget cuts of the main Western aid-donors that is biting deep.
 
The aid sector is responding with arguments to the Western donors not to cut so drastically. Some hope this decline will be temporary, with official aid picking up again in a few years, when the political landscape has changed. Meanwhile, while searching for alternative sources to at least partially compensate the drastic losses in income, many must let go of large numbers of staff, and several have already closed down.

We are beginning to hear views that this must be the opportunity to drastically change an aid sector with significant flaws.
 
This brief supports the argument that radical change is needed. But it goes deeper in its analysis and imagining of the nature of that change. First, the analysis of what is happening needs improvement: The cuts in aid budgets go together with a sustained disregard for international norms and with an increasingly frontal attack on the primary multilateral institution tasked with promoting and defending them, the United Nations – by several of the countries behind its creation at the end of WWII. Simultaneously, we are also seeing a clear attack on the freedom of speech, academic independence, civic activism and the right to protest in the US, a trend that was already noticeable in several European countries. Find a more detailed political analysis here.

Therefore
- ONLY focusing on ‘downsizing’ and ‘re-prioritising’ project, and searching for alternative funding, is not good enough.
-The aid sector cannot continue to ignore the national, regional and international political economies that create and maintain poverty, disease, ‘underdevelopment’, wars, forced displacement, and humanitarian suffering.
- INGOs in particular need to engage much more with the marginalisation, climate crisis impacts, but also polarisation in their home societies, and the economic policies of their own governments.
- Agencies need to fundamentally rethink purpose, role, and collaborations in a new world disorder. That must start with a critical self-examination, in each, about how it has been working, individually and as part of a wider sector. We must let go of mindsets and ways of working similar to those that drive today's crises. Only then can we consider, with fresh eyes, how we best contribute to what the world now needs. A second brief offers an initial set of questions for critical self-reflection. Find them here.

WHEN DID YOU LAST DISCUSS YOUR DECISION-MAKING PRACTICES?

Teams, organisations, consortia, coalitions, networks, ‘community’ groups, constantly make decisions. Decisions have consequences. Yet, surprisingly, rarely do we  review how we make decisions, and whether certain approaches could be more appropriate than others. This brief is an invitation to have an explicit reflection on decision-making, and introduces you to different possible approaches.

Three decision-making styles are most common in work environments: Formal authority (‘I decide because I am the highest ranking person in the formal hierarchy here’); majority vote, and consensus. Each of these carries potential weaknesses: There is no guarantee that someone with higher authority takes better decisions; voting risks the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and a disaffected and resentful ‘minority’ that obstructs implementation; while ‘consensus’ risks the ‘tyranny of the minority’, as everyone has de facto veto power – leading to negotiated compromises that may not longer be the most insightful and wisest decision.

More fundamentally, none of these approaches actively invites deliberation, where listening attentively to the perspectives and proposals of different stakeholders creates the atmosphere for decisions grounded in more collective intelligence, even collective wisdom.

The argument against ‘deliberative decision-making’ is its slowness. In a rapidly changing world, and where efficiency and productivity (though not effectiveness and sustainability!) are associated with speed, fast decision-making is preferred over slower approaches. While there is a place for fast thinking, its risks, when practiced to most decision-making, have been comprehensively exposed by Daniel Kahneman. So beware!

This brief introduces you to three deliberative approaches to decision-making: decision-circles, dynamic governance (also referred to as sociocracy), and gradients of agreement. All three reduce the influence of formal or informal power in decision-making, in favour of purpose-led collective intelligence and collective wisdom. Ultimately decisions need not just be taken but also implemented: more inclusive and deliberative approaches increase the willingness to support implementation, a time-saver in the medium-term! The brief also touches on ethical dilemmas where there is no clear ‘good’ option, and how to try and find a ‘least bad’ of them.

No approach is presented as always better than any other. The message of the brief is to encourage you to explicitly reflect on the decision-making ‘culture’ in your work sphere and in your family, and wider society – and whether there is scope for better approaches. Find the brief here!