Paul James Crook

Paul James Crook

Technical Director
CrookConsults
Kenya

Expertise:-

Management (founded on my academic work with Henley Business School - MBA and Leadership for Senior Managers. University of Cambridge - Sustainable Management: Circular Economy and work with Said Business School - Oxford Futures Forum and Durham University - SME development)

Programme evaluation and development (Building on experience and critical evaluation of self and key people with whom I have worked)

Economic inclusion (Local economic development and fitting to MSME work plus feeding in design thinking and participative engagement processes) 

Worked extensively in East Africa in different facets of MEL, management and business development. Also had the pleasure to work with quality people elsewhere on building local capacity for climate change work (Afghanistan and Iran) and on Fund Management approaches (notably Nepal and Yemen)

My contributions

    • Thanks for this kick-off Harriet and welcomed the links to other materials. 

      Maybe I am a different genterationgiven I was weaned on visualisation and use of multimedia throughout the project cycle to build inclusion and participation. 

      Fundamentals remain - how many times are learning surveys undertaken? We are making recommendations presently to look at the use of learning learning styles inside an organisation - take this further and look at the different stakeholders and how they return. My own internal challenges came with our daughter going to an Aga Khan School where we, as parents, had to look at how we communicated and learned and whether we 'imposed' learning approaches not fitting to the default, natural, style of children. 

      This is true of how we continue to send points without setting up the feedback loops. Look at the styles of learning, individually and within the community (practice or socially) then build the style of communication able to offer impact. Goes further than either or plain text - did you see the yellow chicken coming? - or visualisation to sense out and gain the feel to how we look, see, speak, listen and sense and feel what we want to send and receive. 

      Looking forward to reading further, hearing more as gain the feel this will sponsor further thinking and action

      Paul