How to Downsize and Nationalize Staff Positions

I was incredibly inspired by this interview, and I hope you will be too. Samaresh Nayak is Country Director for an International NGO, and over the last five years has managed a massive downsize within his country program (from 295 to 90 national staff and 13 to 4 international staff). He also has made significant process around "nationalizing" key senior positions within his organization. In this episode Samaresh shares his experience and advice around downsizing and the process he followed, as well as how he began to nationalize many of the formerly international positions. From my experience many leaders talk about nationalization of positions but the actuality of it happening is delayed for various reasons, most of all perceived risk. I hope this motivates you to think about your own organization and how to move forward with empowering more national staff, and some best practices around how to do it. Also the courage it took to make such a big decision to downsize a large program is really admiring.