Teachable Moments: The Rubber Improvement Project

Dr. Smith is a member of PMI and IPMA-USA, with many years of experience as a practitioner, researcher-evaluator, advisor, consultant and instructor/facilitator in project management. He was formerly a management systems specialist with the U.S. Department of Defense; later a manager, advisor and evaluator on various sector projects world-wide as a representative of the U.S. government and the international development donor community [i.e., the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank Group, African Development Bank, the UN, and the Asian Development Bank]. Dr. Smith now conducts workshop-seminars in various aspects of project management, monitoring and evaluation for PMI as well as other government, academic and private sector organizations. He is an Air Force Reserve Colonel (Ret'd).

 

Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers.

During the 1960s and ’70s, I led an external team in the Rubber Improvement Project.It was a long-term, international donor organization-supported project to improve tribal community village rubber plantations in a West African country.

Implementation had been ongoing several years, but results were falling short of expectations. Our findings indicated that most plantations were established in the 1930s, but current farming practices were inappropriate: low fertilizer use, insufficient tree nutrition and poor tapping methods. Consequently, rubber production was low, quality was deteriorating and incomes were declining.

An agricultural subject matter expert team had recently recommended multiple measures to rectify the situation, such as conducting genetic research to improve tree productivity and quality, pulling and/or pruning crowded tree stands, proper spacing and many more.

However, these measures were to be expected. We evaluators were not specialists, but I had a gut feeling they might be …

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