As part of a blog series on learning, you will hear directly from members of our global community on The State of Learning. You will learn from these diverse voices about transformational and experiential learning, learning from small and colossal failure, client-centered learning, mentoring the next generation of learners, harnessing the power of learners, and measuring learning. We showcase these blogs with the hope that health and development practitioners across the world will learn from each other’s experiences to deliver improved health.
Childhood TB and the ‘ending preventable deaths’ agenda

The why doesn’t seem to be the issue. Anyone who has worked in the field and managed sick children knows that tuberculosis (TB) is a probable cause of disease in children presenting with signs of common childhood illness (cough, fever, malnutrition) and agrees that TB indeed affects maternal and child health. The why was also [more…]
ABCs for Managers who Lead – S is for Scan

Imagine for a moment that you are in a hot air balloon gliding soundlessly through the sky at about 1000 meters up in the air. If you look down, what do you see? There are certain things that stand out – a tall building, waterways, forests, traffic, and may be people. This is what scanning [more…]
ABCs for Managers who Lead – R is for Respect

“PhD in Leadership, Short Course: Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don’t do them to others, ever. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.” Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of the Visa credit card association. In definitions and [more…]
TB/MNCH Integration: Challenges & Opportunities

From September 7 to 9, I was fortunate to participate as technical discussant, in a LeaderNet online seminar: Where is TB in maternal and child health? The seminar was moderated by Rudi Thetard (MSH) and Anne Detjen (UNICEF), with Karen Waltensperger (Save the Children) and Jon Rohde (MSH) also participating as technical discussants. We had [more…]
ABCs for Managers who Lead – Q is for Question

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” – Albert Einstein Many people in leadership roles believe [more…]
ABCs for Managers who Lead – P is for Planning

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States, 1953-1961 Why in the world would we start with such a quotation? Aren’t plans important? Let’s see. Planning is defined as setting a direction, strategies, tasks and schedules to accomplish [more…]
ABCs for Managers who Lead – O is for Organize

Managers organize. They ensure that the right resources are in the right place at the right time. This helps them and their teams work efficiently and obtain the results they desire in a timely and cost-effective manner. That sounds simple, but not everyone is a good organizer. Some people just seem to have a knack [more…]
ABCs for Managers who Lead – N is for Nurture

What image does the word “nurture” bring up for you? For some people it might be the image of a mother breastfeeding a baby or kissing a scrape on a child’s knee. For others it could be an image of their own garden with plants they have grown from seeds. And for even others it [more…]
The Return to Durban

By Jason Wright, Senior Director, Project Implementation, Health Programs Group (HPG) at Management Sciences for Health (MSH). The International AIDS Conference has returned to Durban, South Africa after 16 years. AIDS 2000 was my first AIDS Conference. The theme of that conference was “Breaking the Silence.” While many others most remember the voices of former President Nelson Mandela or [more…]
ABCs for Managers Who Lead – M is for Monitor

I always wonder how we got to list monitoring and evaluating as if it is one item, abbreviated in our jargon as M&E. Monitoring is quite different from evaluating. Yet when looking for videos on monitoring, they were either embedded into M&E videos (with more attention to evaluating than to monitoring) or they were about [more…]