• Track Dividers and Connectors over time. They get better or worse. Change over time matters! You must track this! Update your understanding of the context regularly.
   
• Teams do analysis work better than individuals. Always check your understanding.
   
• Who is divided? Who gains from conflict? Cui bono?
   
• Which Dividers are dangerous? Which ones will lead to violence?
   
• Which Connectors can you support?
   
• New Connectors cannot be built or created by outsiders. People can build their own new Connectors and will make their own decisions about how and where they want to be connected.
   
• Don’t rely on “hope lines”. Don’t hope that a new activity will turn out to be a Connector. Be aware of the already existing Connectors and support them.
   
• A specific Divider cannot be addressed by developing a “connector” to counter it. What are you trying to stop? Figure out a way to stop it.
   
• Don’t be romantic about Connectors and about people’s desire to be connected. Be honest. If, for example, working together does not increase people’s sense of connectedness, then working together isn’t a Connector.
   
• Sometimes people try to create “connectors” to address specific Dividers (such as a farming project that has workers from two groups involved). If these two groups were not divided or if working together does not actually increase their sense of connectedness, then this is not a real Connector; it represents a “hope line” of the intervenor.
   
• All mixed institutions are not Connectors. If they are segregated inside, the people involved in them may be experiencing constant and rising tensions.^[1]
   
• Before imagining other, new things you can do, look at what you are doing now. Fix the things you are already doing in order to ensure positive, not negative, impacts. Then look for other opportunities.
   
• Be specific! This is important. What are people doing?
  
  If you think something is a divider, ask: how does it divide people? Why is it important? What is it about that factor that divides people?
  
  Similarly, connectors and local capacities for peace should not be romanticized or over generalized.
   

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Related Topics
How to do a Dividers/Connectors Analysis
Key Questions to unlock Dividers and Connectors
Do No Harm SAVES: Categories for Disaggregating a Context
Dividers and Connectors as Categories

[1] “All mixed institutions are not Connectors. If they are segregated inside, the people involved in them may be experiencing constant and rising tensions.”
 
Many organizations involved in interventions intentionally develop themselves in order to have mixed staff. Yet, they too can be segregated within the organization. If one group gets management jobs, while others are excluded, or if just one group gets jobs as drivers or secretaries, this can lead to jealousies. The internal make up of the organization can emphasize the dividing mindset even though the organization was trying to do the opposite!
 
Critical Detail Mapping goes into more depth on staffing.