PICOTEAM sees the relationship with its clients as partnership with joint interests in dealing with development challenges. In this relationship we understand our role as systemic facilitators of guided learning processes. We support partners in developing their own potentials for identifying opportunities and solving problems in managing change. This learning process approach is underpinned by the following core principles:

• Behavioral change is at the heart of development partnerships and initiatives. Development implies change and the openness and readiness of individuals and groups to change. All our development initiatives include a strong emphasis on building social and human capital through group dynamics, team development and social learning processes. We foster incremental change from within the system.
  
  
• Our interventions are guided by the perspective and values of systemic Organisational Change & Development. Within an organization, we see the strategic orientation, structure, competence and performance as interlinked dimensions which can not be dealt with in isolation. Integrating these dimensions and levels through the facilitation of openness, transparency and accountability is central in our approach for developing good governance and performance enhancement.

• Facilitation of change processes is geared towards fostering ownership of all efforts by our partners. We emphasize strongly on the quality of facilitation processes and the competencies of facilitators as they are critical factors in assuring ownership and impact of development initiatives.
  
  
• Continuous Learning and creative Experimentation with alternative Ways of doing Business as a backbone towards innovation, transformation and performance enhancement of individuals and whole systems
  
  
• Continuous critical peer and self-assessment and feedback by all parties are crucial to develop the capabilities of individuals and groups and to ensure high quality learning processes.
  
  
• Empowerment and emancipation of communities and individuals is at the heart of social equity, inclusiveness and equal opportunity in developing countries’ societies and for developing peoples’ potentials. Facilitation in communities aims at balancing interests of different groups and fosters collective action while recognising heterogeneity in terms of gender, age, wealth etc. 
  
  
• We believe in fostering greater mutual exchange, understanding and respect between ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ cultures as a basis for more enduring development partnerships and relationship. While recognising the prevailing resource disparities in north-south relationships, we believe in moving towards more authenticity and equality in development partnerships.
  
  
• Process efficiency and quality (no process without a clear output) as a key to success in stakeholder processes. While we strongly believe in process-orientation, we equally believe that it is the quality of managing processes which bring results.  We give a particular emphasis to developing leadership in process as in our experience, participation is not a substitute for leadership.
  

The ultimate output of this approach is capacity and competence development at all levels (individuals and teams). Conceptualising the experiences from practice generates new experience-based concepts and products which support the adaptive management capacity and performance improvement.

Our Key Concepts

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