Grieving UN contraction – with Optimism
Grieving UN contraction – with Optimism
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How can the metaphor of grief be applied to organizational change? As I edit my book The Punctuation of Loss, I have found the five stages of grieving developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance – to be powerful metaphors to analyze the contraction of the UN system, drawing particularly on my experience with UNAIDS.
The insights point to how there is literally loss of agency, but also that with honest acceptance and integration there is cause for optimism and hope for a dignified way forward.
The five stages interrelate and are not necessarily sequential:
A diminishing or fading organization may typically employ denial, for example refusing to accept or acknowledge downward trends or precarious situations by resolutely having a head-in-the-sand ‘business as usual’ stance. This is particularly pernicious in planning – such as maintaining the budget at an unrealistically high level compared to actual income, or refusing to prepare for worst-case scenarios. A state of ‘near-future reestablishment of normality’ may be maintained in perpetuity, a rolling horizon of hope which is never quite reached. Organizations may insist that (the implementation of) their identity and mandate are untouched, all the while as these fade and become more and more symbolic.
Anger may underlie staff and board exchanges, and stakeholder and public disputes. With the illusio of UN culture seeking to avoid expressing conflict, this anger may transform into cynicism, fatigue and emotional disengagement. Passive compliance may replace strategic challenge. Anger may also transform into blame – between parts of the institution, and in the form of self-doubt, resentment and overwork. Without emotional acknowledgement of loss, the response may be increasing reporting requirements, producing more strategies and narratives, and over-articulating ‘impact’. There may be more polish and less substantive delivery, where symbolic control replaces real control. Nostalgia may magnify, but in a cloying way and as an unhelpful fantasy.
Bargaining multiplies in the form of reviews and mediation. Mission creep can develop, where the organization’s alignment becomes elastic. This can lead to a shift to unearmarked funding, fundraising in adjacent areas, and 'visibility rather than depth' to ensure better ‘fundability’ (leaders may focus more on resource chasing rather than direction setting). A constant urgency of threshold is maintained: the sense of ‘recovery just one step away’ can lead to a negative spiral. There is the classic ‘doing more with less’ dialogue and option-preserving keeping doors open but leading to a lack of focus and diluted input. There may be an over-heavy emphasis on partnership which in reality becomes dependency or window dressing.
Depression manifests itself directly in staff depletion and burnout: there is a general flattening of energy, meaning and expectation. The work is less ideologically driven and becomes “what is done”. Staff lose their commitment and leave, with those remaining being loyal, risk-averse and/or lacking alternatives. The organization may become more stable, but less dynamic, with quiet disengagement reinforcing lingering sadness. The organization settles into a bureaucratic holding pattern, focusing on maintenance rather than transformation, with less internal collaboration and more atomization. Scarcity becomes the internalized reality, rather than seen as a temporary constraint. There is literally a loss of agency.
In all of these cases, the reality of grief may not be named, leading to a loss of trust and authenticity. Staff become psychologically suspended between past and present. There tends to be high activity, high effort, but low strategic resolution; long-duration, low grade decline. The illusion fades, but before new meaning has formed.
The issue is however structural: UN organizations were never designed to deal with loss, which implicitly suggests failure. The system was built for expansion, coordination and norm setting rather than contraction, diminished relevance, and existential repositioning.
This leads us to the fifth and, in terms of constructively pointing to the future, the most important dynamic of grief: acceptance.
This is where the situation is named plainly. Loss, trade-offs and their consequences are transparently acknowledged. Limits are articulated. This is simple but radical in UN settings.
At this point, agency increases. It is possible to choose priorities deliberately, say ‘no’ with clarity, and begin intentional positioning. Rather than add or preserve, there is strategic subtraction: closing programmes, exiting geographies, narrowing mandates. This is a sign of survival and adaptation, not failure, and leads to renewed coherence and energy.
This is the moment to reassess the organization’s actual value, to realistically focus on credibility and leverage. The identity of the organization is not automatically inherited, but re-earned. The process requires honesty: not over-promising, articulating limits, negotiation with equanimity. Like the process of having traversed a personal divorce, the full experience becomes integrated.
It is not a question of ‘saving’ the organization but stewarding its transition, holding clarity and boundaries, and enabling collective understanding. Management and boards must facilitate rather than control. There is dignity and realism in this.
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