PDM: Prioritise mindset change

On February 27,  President Museveni launched the Parish Development Model (PDM). A lot of ink has been used to comment on the PDM and its promise of lifting more than 30 million people from the subsistence economy to the money economy.  It is indeed a bold intervention by the government that needs the support of all stakeholders.  

While the PDM pillars are not listed in order of priority, the listing tells us something about where the government’s mind is. 

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I would submit that Pillar 5, Community Mobilisation and Mindset Change, should come first and indeed more effort needs to be put on this pillar.  This is because the type of mindset that a person has will determine how they embrace development, view the world, and invest and work to transit from the subsistence to the money economy.  

As a practitioner who has been part of the policy process from the Poverty Eradication Action Plan days to date, I would concede that our assumptions on what impedes development did not significantly focus on mindset change.  So we should applaud the PDM for this new focus.

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There are several books that have been written about mindsets. To summarise what the literature says, mindsets are deeply held beliefs about how things are done that often go unstated and unquestioned.

Researchers on mindsets have distinguished mindsets into two types – the ‘growth mindset’ and the ‘fixed mindset’. 

In the fixed mindset, people or institutions believe that their qualities are carved in stone. Fixed mindsets create an urgency to prove oneself over and over. 

On the other hand, the growth mindset is one where the belief is that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during challenging times and needs to be built at the community level and among all leaders and practitioners involved in the PDM process. Developing the growth mindset should be the first intervention of PDM.  

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PDM will rise and fall depending on the type of mindset that is adopted by leaders and community members. 
 If money is invested in persons with a fixed mindset that views themselves as people who can never make it in life, or people who will only thrive when the government gives them money or some other fixations, this can be a recipe for disaster.  

The fixed mindset is sometimes evident among political leaders, in gender relations among women and men, at the household and community level, and sometimes among communities that have firmly held beliefs rooted in culture or religion.  

For example, when men want to always prove their superiority and leaders want to prove that they are right or that their political ideology and position is the right one all the time – that can be fatal.

To change this fixed mindset across all persons involved in the PDM will be critical because it will lead to significant failures.  

It is, therefore, imperative that all efforts are made to develop a robust training and orientation programme for building a ‘growth mindset’.  

The intervention under Pillar 5 should, therefore, not be wholly sensitisation workshops filled with empty talk but well-designed ‘mindset change clinics’. People with a growth mindset will appreciate that their basic qualities can be improved and cultivated through their own efforts, strategic interventions and actions, and the help of others.  

In the growth mindset, people believe that they can become anything through consistent effort and hard work.  In a growth mindset, people acknowledge that their potential to accomplish anything can never be foreseen.  

When people believe they can develop themselves, they will develop a passion for learning and will not be preoccupied with hiding their weaknesses but recognise that these weaknesses are there to be overcome.  

Richard Ssewakiryanga, senior research fellow, advisor at the Policy Research and Strategic Partnerships Centre for Basic Research.