| Overview : Dear Sir/Madam, UNDP Strategic Innovation Unit invites interested companies/consultants to submit their expression of interest to the following: Summary of proposal: BPPS (Bureau for Policy and Program) in collaboration with the OHR (Talent Development Unit) is planning to roll out a strategic innovation learning program for CO (country office) leadership that is based on experiential, simulation driven, multi-disciplinary approach to learning. The objective of the program is to build new set of core capabilities in dealing with contexts of radical uncertainty (such as one that the pandemic has brought to the foreground, with the World Uncertainty Index reaching record highs). The program should enhance leadership capabilities that are relevant for achieving UNDP’s mission, provide opportunities to learn by doing and interact and learn from each other, and create space to experience new concepts and frameworks from other sectors/fields and apply those in development. Required Services & Outputs: Please see enclosed TOR (Annex I) for detailed deliverables and background info. Following this Expression of Interest, UNDP’s Innovation Facility intends to shortlist companies who may be contacted by email with a request for a full proposal and quotation. Submission details: - Please submit your expression of interest and a brief company profile, including description of related learning programs facilitated in the past or current programs - Kindly submit your response via email (details below) - Deadline for submission: (28 July 2020). Interested Companies/Consultants must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the services (brochure, description of similar assignments, experience in similar conditions, availability of appropriate skills among staff, etc…). The EOI and accompanying documents must be received by email to: Khin Khin Kyaw, khin.khin.kyaw@undp.org with cc to Aylin Schulz van Endert , aylin.schulzvanendert@undp.org and Mettelena Herring , mettelena.herring@undp.org No later than (28 July 2020). Emails should be clearly titled “EOI Response_Innovation Learning Program”. EOIs received after the above deadline will not be considered. EOIs from suppliers failing to provide the requested information will be disregarded. This EOI does not entail any commitment on the part of UNDP, either financial or otherwise. UNDP reserve the right to accept or reject any or all EOI without incurring any obligation to inform the affected applicant/s of the grounds. Interested consultants may obtain further Technical information at the below addresses: Milica.begovic@undp.org; mariam.kakkar@undp.org Annex I Terms of Reference Strategic Innovation Learning Program Target audience: Country office leadership Context: UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It provides its policy advice through the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan. The GPN’s vision is to become the cutting-edge provider of timely development advice, providing support to COs and program countries in an integrated and coherent manner to instantly connect them to the world of knowledge, resources and networks of best practice they need to achieve development breakthroughs. The Bureau for Policy and Program Support (BPPS) and the Crisis Bureau (CB) are the anchors of UNDP’s global policy and knowledge capacities and a central element of the GPN. BPPS has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP's Strategic Plan. It works closely with CB to support emergency and crisis response, and it provides technical advice to COs, supports both UNDP and its partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach, focus on innovation, knowledge and data driven policy support. The ability to fulfil these responsibilities are contingent on BPPS’ staff staying in tune with the changes in the external environment. UNDP is increasingly receiving requests for support from Governments on issues with little to no historical precedence and no good practices for guidance. The recent audit of UNDP’s regional hubs found that UNDP’s most valuable contribution in this context is indeed the quality of its policy advice, local know how and global knowledge, but it further warned that ‘since many countries have also enhanced their own skills profile, the minimum quality of benchmarks for internationally provided technical assistance are much higher.’ Therefore, the long-term sustainability of the business and operational mode of UNDP is ultimately reliant on its ability to build core competencies that would drive provision of cutting-edge policy advice, leverage existing corporate initiatives and assets, and supporting partners toward transformational change. A cohort of RRs/DRRs reaffirmed this at the October 2019 Strategic Innovation meeting, specifically advocating for enabling conditions and new capabilities that would underpin policy support for transformational change. At the same time, the role of the CO leadership has been recognized as critical in terms of creating and nurturing conditions for staff to build new capabilities and pursue system transformation especially in the context of radical uncertainty. Objective: In this context, the BPPS in collaboration with the OHR (Talent Development Unit) is planning to roll out a strategic innovation learning program for CO leadership that is based on experiential, simulation driven, multi-disciplinary approach to learning. The objective of the program is to build new set of core capabilities in dealing with contexts of radical uncertainty (such as one that the pandemic has brought to the foreground, with the World Uncertainty Index reaching record highs). The program should enhance leadership capabilities that are relevant for achieving UNDP’s mission, provide opportunities to learn by doing and interact and learn from each other, and create space to experience new concepts and frameworks from other sectors/fields and apply those in development. Target Audience: The learning program is aimed at a cohort of about 20 senior managers (resident representatives and their deputies) leading UNDP offices around the world. The senior leadership are individuals tasked with managing teams that range from 50-1000+ staff, annual budgets that range between $5-$100million, and creating and nurturing partnerships and alliances (of technical experts, investors, government and other partners with the stake in transforming systems, other development partners and private sector). Success in their performance is contingent on a range of factors including: emotional and social intelligence for leading and managing large teams, identifying and managing risks and dealing with uncertainty, authenticity and depth in relationship management, performance and leadership, synthesis and communication of complex information in a multitude of oral, digital and written persuasive ways, design and delivery of powerful presentations. Deliverables: It should be designed for digital delivery (given the current pandemic-driven context) and cater to group and individual work. The program should aim to design an online learning experience that is aimed at improving performance under conditions of high uncertainty, including practicing skills such as: coping with high levels of volatility and uncertainty, processing high amounts of contradictory information and take decisions accordingly, providing a sense of direction and purpose to a team in a volatile context, adapting strategy as business needs change, recommending options for action to senior political decision makers, creating compelling narrative that increase coherence, etc. The learning methodology will be a mix of experiential learning, simulation, interactive online engagements, , on the job action learning tasks, peer to peer learning. The critical aspect of the program is its multi-disciplinary approach, implying that the program will expose participants to situations, principles and philosophies from lateral sectors that are transferable to development. The learning experience should cover a period of 16-20 hours, which can be delivered in a series of shorter sessions – the design of which invariably impacts the experience itself and therefore will be a subject to evaluation. It will be designed and delivered keeping the following in mind: Builds on the scoping research (interviews with key leaders from the field, talent development unit, strategic innovation team) on the needs, strengths and context within which the UNDP leadership operates
Identifies key lateral fields with practices and philosophies (arts, medicine, engineering, natural science, business, combat, performance arts, traditional crafts, etc) that can apply to development (in order to build in the multi-disciplinary aspect of the training). The focus ought to be on those fields where key features include performing under pressure and public scrutiny, in contexts of high uncertainty where traditional data and models are insufficient guide for action, with the need to synthesize great amounts of information into persuasive forms intended to influence a behavior change.
Outlines key capabilities to develop or nurture through the experience of a highly realistic simulation learning program
Designs and deliver a 16-20 hours immersive, experiential learning program within which the UNDP leadership can i) learn and gain new ideas, insights and perspectives on their work , ii) experiment with those ideas and insights for greater understanding and mastery of new capabilities, iii) practice in a safe environment to consolidate new ideas and insights, and iv) apply new ideas and insights back in the work place with the benefit of one to one feedback (given the digital context of the training, this aspect needs to be designed and agreed). Given the spread of time zones, the vendor should expect to deliver a 2-day learning program twice, due to breaking down the cohort into 2 groups and in order to cater to the different time zone demands.
Builds in individual, one-on-one feedback sessions for the program participants in the period post 16-20 hour program (2 hours per participant).
Designs and delivers a 1-1.5-hour presentation (as a kickoff of the program, but with the intention of broadcasting to the wider organization the nature of the learning program) to the broader UNDP audience on benefits and examples of highly immersive, experiential and simulation driven programs for leadership and policy and development field. NOTE: this is an experimental new offer for UNDP. We’re looking for a proposal for a learning experience that goes beyond the mainstream, traditional executive leadership programs aligned with the context above. As such, the training will cover a smaller cohort of estimated 20 leaders from UNDP offices around the world. Provided that the experience generates positive feedback and value, as determined from the post-experience interviews, impact assessment etc. participants , UNDP will consider expanding the program on a b-annual basis to its broader network of field based leadership operating in 170 countries targeting an additional 200+ participants. Technology, Platform and Administrative support: UNDP proposes that the vendor uses their platform / site to host all content to ensure all participants have easy access to all course materials. Business school to use their preferred technology to run the sessions (e.g. Zoom, WebEx, etc.). All virtual sessions should be available on-demand. We envision group activity in the session and using a variety of technologies, group work will enable some type of interactivity. The vendor is expected to provide administrative and IT support (manage administration and logistics, organize and schedule the courses in collaboration with the Strategic Innovation Unit and mindful of various time zones that the CO leadership is working out of, recording and hosting of sessions. The technology support is particularly important- while there is no specific preference to a type of technology to deliver the training, the vendors should be mindful of the implication of tech-related potential issues on the quality of the experience. Expectation duration of work: The scoping research and design should take place in the period between August-September. The delivery of the training should take place in the period between October-December. The delivery is expected to be fully digital, no travel involved. Professional qualification of the successful vendor and its key personnel: The vendor is expected to have 5+ years of experience in designing and running highly immersive, experiential learning and simulation driven programs, targeting public and private sectors. While this TOR does no bias against any particular school, preference will be given to those who vendors who are not business schools but dominantly specialize in interdisciplinary approaches (in case that the lead department is not itself a multidisciplinary unit within the university, the university should identify the lead department who will be responsible to tap into different sectors and fields as relevant to the proposed training). If a business school submits a proposal, it would be expected that different deparments/schools within the university would be part of the proposal. Given the nature of the program, as a critical qualification, the vendor is expected to have experience in design and running of multidisciplinary learning programs where principles of work from one sector are abstracted and utilized for learning in another sector. The suggestion is that the team should consist of at least 3 professionals (though we are open to alternative suggestions from vendors): Two senior co-leads – with experience in designing and running high level immersive multidisciplinary learning programs for executives. The two should preferably come from different fields indicating the collaboration that has a multidisciplinary perspective.
Program management- responsible for admin and logistics *preference is given to proposed teams that exhibit gender, cultural and other forms of diversity as this shows coherence with the nature of the cohort of participants in the training. Background documents: UNDP’s strategic priorities are outlined in a series of documents including: UNDP’s Strategic Plan, UNDP’s annual report 2019, People Strategy “People for 2030”, Digital Transformation Strategy, UN System Leadership Framework). Pursuit of these strategic priorities is contingent, among others, on a quality of leadership development especially on the country level. | 
