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At the beginning of the year, a team of AFRINIC staff set out to explore ways to engage more with its members in Africa. This led to the birth of Project “Jenga”. Jenga, which means “Build” in Swahili, aims to build stronger relationships with the African resource holders by organising dedicated sessions to highlight the services offered by AFRINIC and collect feedback and recommendations from our members. This makes Jenga in line with the mission of "Serving the African Internet community by delivering efficient services in a global multi-stakeholder environment".

 

 

Over the past few days, the AFRINIC Team has conducted 25 Jenga sessions with Resource Members from 55 countries/economies in our service region. These Jenga sessions were attended by just under 400 participants, with sessions conducted in both English and French.

 

25
Sessions		 55
Economies		 5
Days		 393
Participants		 2
Languages

 

The main objective of this pilot edition of Jenga sessions was to update members on the ongoing activities. And provide detailed accounts on the external pressure that the organisation is currently facing, particularly the situation whereby AFRINIC found its bank accounts frozen. The Roundtable saw the AFRINIC team discuss this crisis with the members.

During the Jenga session, the team informed Resource Members that AFRINIC had done several things to ensure sustainability. These include:

  • AFRINIC has negotiated with suppliers to grant a grace period for payments.
  • Agreed internally to cut staff costs by 50% for this period if the situation goes on for a prolonged period than expected. 
  • As a last resort, AFRINIC may consider activating the Joint RIR Stability Fund if we do not have any other option. Read more e on the Fund here >> https://www.nro.net/accountability/rir-accountability/joint-rir-stability-fund/ 

During the Jenga sessions, AFRINIC Resource Members engaged in discussions evaluating the operations’ impact and delved into possible scenarios on the way forward. The AFRINIC Resource Members shared different proposals on how AFRINIC can meet its financial obligations and sought clarifications on payments, continuity of core registry function of AFRINIC and explored the impact of the situation to Resource Members in the wake of ongoing misinformation around the crisis. 

The AFRINIC team promised to keep the Resource Members abreast of any new developments and assured the members that the Registry System stability was not at risk and all resource holders will continue to benefit from the registry services. This means that Members can still apply for new resources in the case a member is in need. Therefore, members can settle all their pending invoices as usual.

 

“Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve an uncommon result”
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

 

We are happy with the outcome of the Pilot Jenga sessions that our Resource Members well received, evident in the rich discussions. We commit to doing more of these Jenga sessions in the future. Internally, this Project has helped AFRINIC staff to come together as a team and become stronger through collaboration and innovation even in the face of one of the toughest challenges AFRINIC has had to face and has helped AFRINIC staff members dive headfirst into in AGILE Transformation Journey. Read Avi’s Journey.

 

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We thank our Members and community for their continuous support.

 

AFRINIC en Avant!

 

 

This Blog Post was penned by Susan Otieno.
She is the PR and Marketing Manager in AFRINIC. 

 

 

 

 

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Avi shares his experience on his AGILE Transformation journey. AFRINIC Teams had to be AGILE enough and achieve a milestone of meeting all the members in the service Region within a span of five days. He explains his role in this project and the lessons he learnt. This was published in internal staff communication and we thought we could share this with you.

 

Click to enlarge
Hi, I'm Avi, I do graphic design for AFRINIC - so all those designed images originate from my desk. I am passionate about branding and thankfully I have the opportunity to brand and creatively communicate the services AFRINIC offers.

We have been trying hard to implement an Agile culture here at AFRINIC by taking part in various workshops and training, primarily in a transactional way and most of the time I did not feel my responsibility for the success. Like most teammates, I have my core duties, and I was not convinced I could act as an Agile Leader myself. Little did I know that I misinterpreted the title and did not believe I could be part of this movement or even drive it.

 

" Recently in our VUCA world, calamity struck. It caught us completely off guard; it was not even on our recent VUCA exercise Jamboard! "

 

Our CEO inspired us to achieve a milestone in 2 weeks. He only shared his intent. There was no time to focus on the bits and pieces; there were no specifications or processes to follow. It was a blank canvas, and our survival depended on it. Here I learnt that leadership was not exercised through authority or expertise but rather through creating a culture of participation.

We were on a project with a common purpose, finally. It was a unity we had rarely experienced and which was well needed. We were on a mission where we could organise ourselves within a few days before launching it. We asked for more volunteers within the team and offered appropriate support for them to execute the service on their own. The initial group encouraged leadership at all levels, and the group grew big in just a few days. We experimented, failed and learned quickly various ways of doing the project correctly. It was a continuous iteration until we came up with something presentable.

I feel connected with the purpose; no matter how small my task is, I think I contribute to something much bigger. I mainly created a slack channel for the project and changed a few font and font sizes here and there. The little conversation I had with our CEO was relatively informal but addressed essential concerns. I have seen all of us working in a way that is not limited to our job description and felt we own our organisation and its success was our success. There was psychological ownership of the project. The common purpose was of more value than our gain.

It was, at times, exciting and disappointing, too.

We are all Agile Leaders through our actions right now. Thanks to this ongoing crisis, we are forced to cut down on the real purpose that was so hard to figure out.

It is time we recognise this leadership spirit at all levels and give ourselves kudos.

 

 

Avi. K,

Multimedia Designer, AFRINIC
Follow me on Twitter and check my folio

 

VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity

 

 

 

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