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Nearly all challenges in international development tend to be complex because they depend on constantly evolving human behaviour, systems, and contexts, involving multiple actors, entities, and processes. As a result, both the discovery and scaling of innovations to address challenges in development often involve changes in system behaviour or even system-level transformation. This is rarely a linear process over time and can result in unexpected outcomes. Existing evaluation techniques...

The past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in and concern over the global trend toward democratic regression. In South Asia, regulatory and institutional frameworks have become increasingly restrictive, curbing the ability of citizens and civil society organizations to occupy and use civic spaces to organize, express themselves, and participate in decisions that affect the lives of people whose interests they serve. Of course, this is only one half of the story. The other half is how...

There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today which must change.Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies' reliance on companies such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown.The 'Big Con' describes the confidence trick the...

World expert Bent Flyvbjerg and bestselling author Dan Gardner reveal the secrets to successfully planning and delivering ambitious projects on any scale.Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant new reality. Think of how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to an enormously successful product launch in eleven months. But such successes are the exception. Consider how London’s Crossrail project delivered five years late and billions over budget....

Think. Act. Lead.It seems simple enough. But understanding your desired impact and how it fits into a larger picture, connecting your work to others and finding new collaborators, and bringing those collaborators together and moving them in a unified direction is never easy.Governments, businesses, and nonprofits all have unique approaches and ideas that many of us learn through our work. Yet, we rarely consider the skills needed to create and maintain the partnerships between them. Most of...

The conversation on adaptive management has grown fast amongst development actors. These conversations often focus on designing, commissioning, and managing large-scale development programmes. Exactly how this impacts the frontline, the implementers, and day-to-day project delivery is still being debated. Yet, perspectives drawn directly from practice are often largely missing within these debates. This paper is written by two development practitioners. Through this paper, we reflect on the...

The Two Loop model is a nonlinear theory of change based upon the ideas of living systems created by Margaret Wheatley & Deborah Frieze. It provides us with insight into the simultaneous growth and decline process that are underway within a system during a transition period. In this way, it provides a heuristic for us to better try and recognize and connect the past to the future during a change process. It likewise gives us the possibility to try and come to some consensus about where we...

This guide is adapted from work by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) with inputs from members of the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice (TWP CoP). It outlines how to understand and use a set of analytical tools that are collectively known as Political Economy Analysis (PEA). The guide aims to equip practitioners to act in an informed manner, given that development objectives are invariably politically complex, and entail engaging with...

In this blog we are sharing a digest of some of the many useful and innovative monitoring, evaluation and learning resources and efforts that have come through the M&E Sandbox in 2022. A lot of these resources have been shared by our community in response to the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the launch of the Sandbox (please keep them coming!). We hope you find it useful. We have grouped these efforts and resources under six broad questions: - How do we measure systems...

In the decades since the Army created the After Action Review (AAR), businesses have embraced the practice as a way of learning from both failure and success. But all too often the practice gets reduced to nothing more than a pro forma exercise. The authors of this article describe the history and philosophy of the original AAR, debunk three myths about the practice that impede its proper use, and finally suggest three improvements that can help business leaders make the most of it.

On December 13, 2022, Social Impact hosted a webinar in our Evidence for Impact series, "Strengthen Your Team's CLA Practices: Introducing the CLA Maturity Tool for USAID Implementers." Through the session, we shared more about the origin and history of the USAID tool upon which this version is based, why and how we updated

Considering Systems Thinking (ST) as a cognitive skill can create greater acceptability of and openness to the discipline from practitioners and researchers outside operations research and management science. Rather than associating ST with frameworks and methodologies, ST as a cognitive skill can help popularize and democratize the discipline. This paper highlights how the conceptual lens of Holistic Flexibility can help practitioners deploy ST as a cognitive skill without the application...

The Collaborating, Learning & Adapting (CLA) Maturity Tool has been used by USAID operating units since 2015. The tool enables staff to self-assess their current CLA practice and plan ways to improve their internal and external collaboration, organizational learning efforts, and adaptive management practices. Recently, SI built on this resource to create the CLA Maturity Tool for implementing partners (IPs) to provide a version that speaks more directly to the experience of international and local organizations. Learn more here.

MSD Competency Framework A catalogue of the full range of knowledge, skills and aptitudes found in high-performing teams that use the market systems approach. Useful for: Practitioners - identify personal training needs and continue your professional development Trainers - diversify your courses and refine your training / capacity-building offers Managers - strengthen your recruitment and induction processes MSD competencies Competency is a mix of knowledge, skills and attitudes...

This free guide aims to build the skills and confidence of people designing and facilitating participatory, productive, and engaging workshop sessions for work teams and communities of practice by providing them with a series of creative activities that can be run in-person or virtually. By the time they have gone through this guide, session leads will be able to: Describe ways in which creative activities can be of value to teams and communities of practice, Design both in-person and...

This free guide aims to build the skills and confidence of people designing and facilitating virtual meetings, including online community of practice sessions. By the time they have gone through this guide, community of practice facilitators will be able to: Design an engaging and participatory virtual session, Develop an effective, varied and realistic agenda for a virtual session, Apply a wide range of virtual facilitation techniques, and Using technology to facilitate virtual...

This canvas and workbook were borne out of frustration and a sense of possibility. We’ve worked in various tricky and complex contexts where we were confronted with a raft of responses ranging from: ‘quick fixes’, ‘offthe-shelf solutions’, ‘transplanted solutions’, to ‘we’re stuck’. We’ve seen the effects of analysis paralysis, diving down wombat holes (the Australian alternative to rabbit holes!), and getting lost in problems that were not really the problem. So, we started to explore ways...

So you have just hear about systems thinking and systems innovation and are keen to know more, Ok sparky let's get started.We have structured all the content into four main areas that we think you ...

How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation? The Open Society Foundation’s Fiscal Governance Program found success by focusing on six key approaches, including empowering grantees and relinquishing power. In 2021, an external close-out evaluation by Intention to Impact of the program (which ran for 7 years and gave over $150 million in grants) revealed something pretty remarkable—the...

Scholarly attention in innovation in the public sector is growing rapidly, provoking analytical complexity. We developed a systematic literature review about Public Sector Innovation (PSI), analysing 169 articles published between 2001 and 2021, using PRISMA. We present a comprehensive approach to PSI testing and empirically develop an analytical framework based on the most common combinations of the studied dimensions. Additionally, we propose three main research avenues for the future of...