Head of Solutions Mapping at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the United Nations’ global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life for themselves. It provides expert advice, training and grants support to developing countries, with increasing emphasis on assistance to the least developed countries. It promotes technical and investment cooperation among nations.

Headquartered in New York City, the status of UNDP is that of an executive board within the United Nations General Assembly. The UNDP is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states. The organization operates in 177 countries, where it works with local governments to meet development challenges and develop local capacity.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Head of Solutions Mapping

Job ID: 30200
Location: Abuja, Nigeria
Practice Area – Job Family: Management – SOLUTIONS MAPPING
Grade: NOB
Vacancy Type: FTA Local
Posting Type: Common System
Contract Duration: 1 Year with possibility for extension

Background

The UNDP Strategic Plan embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering.

US:

We are building the largest and fastest learning global network on development challenges. We have already set up 60 labs in 78 countries) embedded within UNDP’s global architecture and country platforms. We are now recruiting for a second cohort of 30 labs to be based in UNDP around the world. We use the power of the crowd, machine learning and distributed decision making to support partners to understand problems, develop new solutions, promote more inclusive decision making, and provide better oversight of what is done.
We identify grassroots solutions and stretch their potential to accelerate development. We apply experimentation closely with government partners to grow this as a mode of operating to reduce costs of large-scale public sector reforms. Experimentation helps us learn whether particular assumptions are accurate before deploying solutions at scale, especially in the rapidly evolving contexts that often dominate development progress.
The Accelerator Labs will be comprised of a core team with niche capabilities that focus on exploration, experimentation and grassroots innovation. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, each member of the Core team will take the lead on one of the following functions:
- Coordination
- Training
- Communications

The Core team of the Accelerator lab will have capabilities in:

Experimentation: Instituting rapid learning about emerging challenges through design and running of a portfolio of experiments that is coherent with the type of challenges that are part of UNDP’s strategic plan, and
Mapping Solutions: Ethnographic methods and immersion in community dynamics, identification of and work with lead users, and implications of bottom up solutions for the policy design
Exploration: The exploration function focuses on discovery and sensemaking of emerging trends, implications for systemic impacts and risks, and their potential for accelerating progress toward SDGs. Its work feeds into the portfolio of experiments ensuring its coherence with the emerging risks and opportunities and connects local dynamics and solutions into the broader national and international ecosystem of potential funders, partners, and allies thereby increasing the chances for acceleration. While critical for the functioning of the Accelerator Lab, the exploration function will also service the Country Office as determined and agreed with the UNDP senior management.

You:

You are capable and excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks. You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors. You tell stories of emergent solutions and you gravitate to solving global development challenges.
You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity. You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends. You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities.
You are comfortable with ambiquity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed. You have superb compentencies in program and portfolio management, are at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance.
You are curious, a natural strategic thinker and a talented do-er. You understand systems, the good, the bad and the ugly, and are capable of working within bureaucracies to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution. You are digitally savy, you hack tools, and you are keen to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values.

Duties and Responsibilities

Lead lab efforts in deep community immersion, collective intelligence and solutions mapping:

Developing and sustaining positive relationships with a range of local community and citizen groups
Identifying and training local volunteers, recruiting Universities and think tanks for sustaining long term community outreach and engagement and identification of lead users, providing training and mentoring
Translaton of ethnographic and field research findings into learning and action for the Accelerator Lab activities
Design specific field research and participatory methods to focus on the most vulnerable populations and those not usually engaged in public policy debates on development methods
Explore, document and increase understanding on emerging methods of tapping into bottom up solutions, lead users and grassroots innovations related to sustainable development
Convene a broad range of new partners with UNDP including artists, community organizers and emergent movements to explore areas for collaboration on sustainable development
Proactively manage risks with using ethnograpic tools and methods, including those related to ethics and privacy

Convene the processes of solution intake, assessment and designing prototypes for diffusion:

Design and implement methods for sensing and building on indigenous knowledge and local solutions, consolidating, screening and describing incoming
Design criteria for consolidating incoming local solutions
Conduct field research to determine best methods fo making solutions transferable, design methods to test and stretch ideas for their applicability and diffusion as part of a portfolio approach.
Test the solutions and potential ideas in real life context to understand potential channels of spreading (including identifying private and public sector venues for uptake)
Analyse system level issues that local solutions address (and those that they don’t address, therefore creating insights on the gaps)
Design ‘things and tools’ needed to successful scale indigenous knowledge, lead user solutions, turning its insights into systemic change.
Advise on the accelerator lab’s experiment portfolio to ensure experiments are designed based on people’s knowledge, behaviors and peer to peer methods of managing and diffusing knowledge about sustainable development issues.
Design methods for integrating collective intellengence into UNDP programmes and engage with programme and project managers to translate ideas into concrete practice
Undertake cultural and behavioral analyses for the accelerator lab portolio of experiments
Advise on the accelerator lab’s experiment portfolio to ensure experiments are designed based on people’s knowledge, behaviors and peer to peer methods of managing and diffusing knowledge about sustainable development issues.
Ensure ethics framework is implemented for the lab’s portfolio of experiments
Design methods to test accelerator ideas for their applicability and diffusion
Integrate cultural norms, peer to peer methods and behaviorial insights into technology based experiments
Convene a broad range of new partners with UNDP including artists, community organizers and emergent movements to explore areas for collaboration on sustainable development

Working out loud and Organizational Learning:

Lead communication efforts and proactively use blog and social media to share findings from field research
Ensure UNDP’s communication efforts respect privacy and ethics considerations
Liaise with the broader Accelerator Lab network and the support team to share learnings and insights from the country-specific experience
Jointly with the CO, support lab partners to develop an emerging pipeline of new initiatives, support other activities related to the design and operation of the Lab
Proactively use blog posts and social media to share insights, attract partners and help position Accelerator Lab at the forefront of the exploration of new trends.

Advocacy, Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP:

Help embed solutions mapping and lead user methodology within the CO portfolio, design and provide trainings that include various methodologies and steps to identify and work with lead users
Provide technical consultation and training for national partners and the CO through various phases including asset mapping, developing a strategic portfolio logic, experiment design, prototype testing, and evaluation;
Develop communication and other tools to transform field research into actionaable intelligence
Work together with your Accelerator Lab colleagues and experts to codify and advance the Accelerator Lab practice and solutions mapping in particular.
Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab
Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from field research and grassroots innovation.

Competencies
Core:
Innovation:

Ability to make new and useful ideas work.
Adept with complex concepts and challenges convention purposefully

Leadership:

Ability to persuade others to follow.
Generates commitment, excitement and excellence in others

People Management:

Ability to improve performance and satisfaction.
Models independent thinking and action

Communication:

Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform.
Synthesizes information to communicate independent analysis

Delivery:

Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement.
Meets goals and quality criteria for delivery of products or services

Technical/Functional:
Innovation:

Ability to manage organizational resources and deployment in pursuit of innovation approaches and initiatives.
Originate: Catalyzes new ideas, methods, and applications to pave a path for innovation and continuous improvement in professional area of expertise

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Master’s degree in Anthropology, Sociology, Behavioral Psychology, Design, Architecture, Communications or related field and minimum of 2 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, Sociology, Behavioral Psychology, Design, Architecture, Communications or related field and minimum of 4 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

Experience:

Demonstrated ability to undertake field research in remote communities and document ethnographic evidence and honor expertise in unusual places
Demonstrate ability to work in participatory methods, follow the lead of people as experts in their own sustainable development

Experience in following areas is desirable but not necessary:

Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation.
Proven professional knowledge and experience in approaches such as Ethnography, Systems Thinking, Behavioral Insights, Co-creation, Qualitative and Quantitative User Research, Positive Deviance, Community Asset Mapping, Service Design or Human Centered Design
Demonstrated ability to work with partners to help surface unarticulated needs
Proven ability to design ethical frameworks for managing public sector experiments

Language Requirements: