One pattern keeps appearing in our work with organisations across the UN system: the gap between what an organisation has committed to achieve and the operating model, structure and workforce it has put in place to deliver it.
We call this capability misalignment.
The Sustainable Development Goals establish the global commitment. From there, the chain becomes increasingly operational. The Cooperation Framework translates the SDGs into national priorities. The Country Programme Document commits the agency to outcomes with partners. The corporate strategic plan sets the direction, while the results framework defines the indicators. The operational plan then determines how the programme will be structured, staffed and resourced.
Each of these documents is usually developed with considerable rigour.
Yet the operational plan, the document that fixes the establishment for the programme cycle is often given the least strategic attention.
Four patterns of misalignment
1. The new plan starts from the old structure.
The previous establishment becomes the baseline, adjusted to fit the new budget envelope. The result is an office configured for the programme that has just ended, delivering the programme that has just begun. The strategic plan changed. The structure did not.
2. The organisation chart is mistaken for capability
An organogram records the intended design at a particular point in time. It does not show what has drifted, which posts have been vacant for eleven months or how roles have quietly changed. Posts are not capability. Grades are not capability.
Capability is the organisation’s ability to do something defined, at the required scale and to the required standard.
3. The capability sits at the wrong tier.
Organisations often retain capability where it was historically needed rather than where the current mandate requires it.
This can leave headquarters strong in functions on which country offices are being measured, while country teams lack the capability needed to influence policy, strengthen national systems or generate evidence.
4. Capability gaps are treated as staffing gaps
A capability gap is often translated immediately into a request for a post. But the right response may be development, redeployment, partnership, shared capability, specialist support or a different operating model. Without identifying the capability required first, the organisation risks solving the wrong problem with the wrong intervention.
Before the establishment is fixed
We work with UN agencies after the strategic plan has been approved but before the operational plan is finalised. That is the point at which strategic commitments can still shape the capabilities, structure and workforce required to deliver them.
We translate the strategic plan and country programme commitments into the capabilities the mandate genuinely requires, not simply into a list of posts. We establish what capability the office holds today, distinguish it from what the organisation chart suggests and define the future capability required for delivery. We then identify and prioritise the gaps, assess the risk of leaving mission critical gaps unresolved and help leadership determine the most appropriate response to each one.
That response may involve building, buying, borrowing, binding, boosting or releasing capability. The cost, speed and mandate implications of each option are made explicit before the establishment is fixed.
That is very different from: We will build the capability as we go.
The cost of getting it wrong
The operational plan fixes the establishment for the programme cycle. If it is misaligned with the mandate, the consequences are not merely administrative.
Critical posts may remain vacant through classification and recruitment processes while programme delivery suffers. Capability gaps may be filled through consultants and short term appointments, often at greater cost and without leaving sustainable capability behind.
International posts may be used where national capability would have been faster, most cost effective and better aligned with localisation commitments
The agency may contribute less than it should to join programming because it can only bring the capability it already has.
Later evaluation may attribute delivery shortfalls to “capacity” without identifying the underlying design problem. And in a more constrained funding environment, an office that cannot demonstrate that it is configured for its mandate may find it harder to make a compelling case for investment.
Mid cycle restructuring is possible, but it is slow and politically costly. Post creation, regarding and recruitment operate on institutional timescales. Filling a critical position can take months.
The question to ask
After the next strategic review and before developing the operational plan ask: What are we built and staffed to deliver? Then ask the more difficult question: Where are the honest gaps between that capability and what we have already committed to achieve?
That is where capability alignment begins.