“Duncan, you define yourself as a white, western ‘rapidly ageing male’ – that is something I can relate to! You then go on to say that our own perspective is limited to what we experience and who we are. How do we guard against that – and should the two of us, two white, western ‘rapidly ageing males’ really discuss how change happens and how to change the world?”

In this episode of Chasing Impact, Chris interviews Dr Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, Professor in Practice in International Development at the London School of Economics and author of the book How Change Happens and the blog FP2P.

Among other topics, they discuss:

– how to guard against the arrogance of “inheritance” as white western males
– practical information on how to use your platforms to make space for other, more diverse voices
– as a leader, creating an organisational culture that rewards and values people taking (well-argued) risks that allow failure because failure can facilitate (accidental) success
– “prepared minds” that can deal with randomness and who are able to work with accidents intelligently
– the role of money in the incentive system for NGOs, foundations and other organisations
– “positive deviance”, localisation, alternative funding, domestic resource mobilisation
– what makes the ideal “ecosystem gardener”  – and many other topics!

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Who is Dr. Duncan Green?

Dr Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB and Professor in Practice in International Development at the London School of Economics. He is author of How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016) and From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (Oxfam International, 2008, second edition 2012) as well as several books on Latin America. Check out his daily development blog FP2P.

He can be contacted at d.j.green@lse.ac.uk or on Twitter at @fp2p.

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Intro music:

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/fugu-vibes/spatial
License code: FFEXMMCJZOEANCT8