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Pact’s Adaptive Management Guide provides practical guidance to development practitioners globally on the mindsets, behaviors, resources, and processes that underpin an effective adaptive management system. It presents an approach to managing adaptively that is rooted in complexity analysis and program theory. It draws on Pact’s global experiences and work on topics as diverse as health, livelihoods, markets, governance, capacity development, women and youth, and more. This document begins...

The world faces converging crises of health, climate, gender and racial injustice and extreme economic inequality. The calls are mounting to ‘build back better’ to create more inclusive, caring and environmentally sustainable futures. But what evidence exists that this is possible? The Inspiring Better Futures case study series investigates whether radical change at scale is possible and how it was achieved. This paper synthesises 18 cases which show that people are already successfully...

Systemcraft is our applied framework to help leaders and organisations get started and keep going when faced with complex problems. It is built on our practical experience. It draws on a broad body of research, action and theory from the worlds of complexity thinking, systems theory, adaptive management, leadership development, social movements, development theory and beyond. Systemcraft has been designed to make systems thinking something any leader can apply when they find themselves faced...

In September of 2014, USAID’s Office of Learning, Evaluation & Research (LER) awarded the Learning and Knowledge Management (LEARN) contract to Dexis Consulting Group and subcontractor RTI International.1 This document—the End of Contract Report—captures five and half years of results and reflections for our stakeholders. Our intention is to share the good and the bad, and while this report would not be considered a “tell all,” we think we have a story worth sharing, particularly to USAID...

Development donors invest significantly in governance reform, including in contexts characterised by conflict and fragility. However, there is relatively little comparative study of their change strategies, and little understanding of what works and why. This paper explores the strategies of six recent DFID-funded programmes in Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan with empowerment and accountability aims. Document review and field interviews are used to analyse the application of multi-scalar...

Internal and external stakeholders have different information needs over a project’s life, for purposes that include adaptive management, accountability, compliance, reporting and learning. A project’s monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning, or MEAL, system should provide the information needed by these stakeholders at the level of statistical reliability, detail and timing appropriate to inform data use. In emergency contexts where the situation is still fluid, ‘informal...

Adaptive management (AM) is a programme management approach that helps international development organisations to become more learning-oriented and more effective in addressing complex development challenges. AM practices have been applied for decades within other sectors as varied as logistics, manufacturing, product design, military strategy, software development and lean enterprise. At its core, AM is not much more than common sense, as it essentially recognises that the solutions to...

“Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” --Samuel Beckett Here’s my favorite part of that quote: the ultimate goal is not a lack of failure; it’s better failures. That’s good news for CARE, because we just published round two of our Learning From Failure initiative, and…I know this will surprise everyone…we haven’t stopped failures yet. We do have some hopeful signs that we’re failing better; or at least, that we’re improving on some concrete weaknesses we identified in...

Adaptive management approaches potentially offer us opportunities to deliver high quality results in circumstances where change is complex, including in fragile, unstable or conflict affected places. However, building adaptive programming continues to be a challenge for the sector. For CARE, our Department for International Development -UK Aid funded Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) programming has provided useful learning on how to operationalise adaptive approaches. In this paper we expand...

Theory of Change is thought to be very useful for learning and adaptive management of complex interventions such as advocacy. Nevertheless, the use of Theory of Change is also under critique. One common criticism is that Theory of Change is often used as a framework that fixes agreements rather than as a living, guiding tool that helps reflection and adaptation. However, while such criticism stresses forms of control, little research has looked at the way Theory of Change and advocacy...

Planning for and assessing system change is a strategic management issue. It is critical for everything from developing a strategy and designing interventions, to adapting strategy, improving implementation and reporting impact. But many programmes get stuck when it comes to assessing system change. The private sector development field has struggled to agree on an approach that programmes can implement and stakeholders can understand. However some mature programmes are starting to assess...

Planning for and assessing system change is a strategic management issue. It is critical for everything from developing a strategy and designing interventions, to adapting strategy, improving implementation and reporting impact. But many programmes get stuck when it comes to assessing system change. The private sector development field has struggled to agree on an approach that programmes can implement and stakeholders can understand. However some mature programmes are starting to assess...

Pressure is mounting on international development cooperation agencies to prove the impact of their work. Private and public commissioners as well as the general public are increasingly asking for robust evidence of impact. In this context, rigorous impact evaluation (RIE) methods are increasingly receiving attention within the broader German development system and in GIZ. Compared to other implementing agencies such as DFID or USAid, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale...

Why should I integrate an impact assessment in my programme? How will the programme benefit from it? Are the benefits worth the effort and expenses? How do I design and implement it in detail? Who is addressable for support? What should I pay attention to in order to get the most out of it? This note is meant to answer these questions. It addresses leaders and project staff of governance programmes who are interested in using this tool within their specific governance programme or project....

CARE's Failing Forward initiative is sparking opportunities to showcase the ideas that don't work so we can spend more time implementing the ones that do. It's changing the conversation inside the organization, and leading to changes in the way we design and implement programs. It's also allowing us to make connections across a global portfolio of more than 900 projects, and with new and different partners to learn from their experience.

Fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS) are messy and ambiguous contexts in which to plan and implement development initiatives. To work there, external actors are increasingly adopting an adaptive approach to empowerment and accountability (E&A) programming, whatever the setting. This means using a compass rather than map, where real-time political economy analysis (PEA) in relation to context and programme monitoring and evidence-informed learning in relation to...

How does adaptive implementation work in practice? Drawing on extensive interviews and observations, this paper contrasts the ways in which an adaptive component of a major health care project was implemented in three program and three matched comparison states in Nigeria. The paper examines the bases on which claims and counterclaims about the effectiveness of these approaches were made by different actors, concluding that resolution requires any such claims to be grounded in a...