Mission
EUROCLIMA+ is the European Union flagship cooperation programme on environmental sustainability and climate change with 18 Latin American countries. Its objective is to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects by fostering climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience and investment.
The programme is funded by the European Commission. Five agencies from the European Union member states and two United Nations agencies are responsible for implementing the program’s initiatives, involving a large variety of stakeholders.
Solution
In this complex organizational setting, the Programme Support Unit (PSU) plays a pivotal role. This small 10-people team, where each individual has a different employee is where everything comes together. To ensure clarity among all partners and prevent misunderstandings or conflicts of interest, it was vital to delineate the team’s collective function and each member’s responsibilities.
This clarification also aimed to enhance the program’s effectiveness in anticipation of the upcoming programming period and increased investments, which correlate with a higher workload.
A consultation process with the management of all implementing agencies together with a team building process which mainly served to clarify the role of the PSU, facilitated by a neutral person, external to the programme.
What we did:
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- Interviews with all 7 implementing agencies to surface any contextual key elements, challenges and issues with appreciative inquiry as a main approach
- A 7 week team building process with the PSU to improve trust, surface core issues and clarify roles, with participatory leadership as core approach
- Codesign of a role description for the team as a whole and for each individual, which was ratified by the Management Committee
