Sensemaking & Foresight Specialist Vacancy-Job Ref:ACTHUNDP/1111/202180

Sensemaking & Foresight Specialist Vacancy-Job Ref:ACTHUNDP/1111/202180

Bangkok (Thailand)

JOB DESCRIPTION
UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.
UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

BACKGROUND
The Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) based at the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub, has been established by UNDP Asia-Pacific to leverage innovation to generate new development responses and robust development solutions, by developing new products, services and offers, new ways of solving development issues across the Governments and Country Offices within the UNDP Asia Pacific Region. The Centre provides a safe space to test development solutions through portfolios of policy experiments, new and innovative products and through scaling best practise solutions that exist within the region. The RIC work to foster an innovative culture that helps the UNDP, governments and other partners be on the front foot of spotting, understanding, and integrating new development approaches into their work. The Centre has a key role in helping deliver on the UNDP Strategic Plan 2022 – 2025 which has systems transformation, strategic innovation and digital transformation at its core.

Over the past four years the RIC team have developed a specialist Sensemaking process which we use with Country Offices to support the development of their strategic plans or Country Programme Documents (CPD). This process involves pre workshop preparation, leading a workshop and then post workshop reporting which feeds into the strategic plan. The point of Sensemaking is to “make sense” of what is underway in Country Offices, connecting the programming to the overall strategic intent of the office and connecting programmes together where currently they exist in silos. The process also unearths new areas where the office could direct its work. The Sensemaking process is complimentary to the foresight work undertaken in offices and it is desirable for Sensemaking to happen yearly. The RIC have developed a DIY version on the Sensemaking process through the development of a preparation guide and step by step facilitation guide.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) based in Bangkok, Thailand, established by UNDP Asia-Pacific, has been working to continuously evolve Sensemaking to meet the needs of Country Offices and other stakeholders to augment their process to accommodate a post-pandemic digital imperative as well as to complement their capabilities with foresight disciplines. The Sensemaking process involves getting the CO to reflect on their portfolio of projects as a whole and helping project teams to surface common patterns, identify connections and gaps, and facilitating collective decision-making on how those gaps can be addressed. This process enables stakeholders to get a better grasp of the strategic direction they are heading in as a team and understand the changing external environment to ensure they can adapt and pivot their programmes.

The scope of work includes:

1. Sensemaking sustainability and scaling

Collaborate with the Head of Regional Innovation Centre (Asia-Pacific) to scale the Sensemaking process to become scalable and sustainable and ideally income generating either with clients inside or outside the RIC
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2. Leading Sensemaking workshops and processes

Work with the Global Policy Network (GPN) Nature, Climate and Energy (NCE) team in the Bangkok Regional Hub to run Sensemaking Sessions with their cohort of innovators, develop reports and insights from those sessions with the team.
Lead on Sensemaking workshops in Country Offices (up to 8) who have their CPD processes in 2022 and while doing so train Country Office staff and build their capacity in Sensemaking
Work with Head of Regional Innovation Centre to build a group of Sensemaking experts who are able to support Country Offices in Sensemaking, this will involve training and capacity building
Provide guidance and support to RIC stakeholders in applying Sensemaking and other approaches to assess internal coherence of their programs, strengthening strategic decision-making on logic and new directions/pivots for the increased relevance of programmes;
3. Capacity Building and training

Provide training/support to mainstream sense-making skills in RIC and COs;
Lead on operationalization and continuous improvement of Sensemaking approaches;
Provide technical consultation and training for COs in Sensemaking
Build a network of Sensemaking specialists from employees within the UNDP to support Sensemaking across the region and globally
Develop support materials (guidelines, templates, etc.) that can guide RIC and COs through the Sensemaking process;
Facilitate trainings, webinars and capacity building sessions on all aspects of Sensemaking.
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4. Insights from scaling and connecting to broader RIC work

Help embed a portfolio logic in COs’ work, encourage reflection and capturing of insights from individual projects, so as to identify logic against which to assess fit and coherence of the individual portfolios with the frontier challenges;
Connect the UNDP Foresight work explicitly to the UNDP Sensemaking work
Generate an insight report from the Sensemaking work that has been completed over the last four years for internal management use at GPN/BRH and RBAP.
Work with COs to map the context and nature of development challenges, with a particular focus on understanding systemic issues beyond traditional silos and classifications and identifying drivers of change, and levers for intervention.
Expected Outputs And Deliverables

The expected outputs and deliverables will be agreed between the Consultant and the Head of Regional Innovation Centre, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub, while working with the team members in the RIC and NCE team. Deliverables will be reviewed and approved upon the delivered quality by the Head of Regional Innovation Centre, UNDP BRH.

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