Your search
Results 54 resources
-
Getting serious about systems change
-
Modelling and communicating how to shift systems
-
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet— Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001.Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential...
-
We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five common pitfalls that organisations fall into when using theory of change, and walks through five rules of thumb that will help organisations to use the approach to tackle complex problems. We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five...
-
Want to know better how your interventions can contribute to change? A Theory of Change (ToC) approach helps in deepening your understanding - and that of your partners - of how you collectively think change happens and what the effect will be of your intervention. Not only does it show what political, social, economic, and/or cultural factors are in play, it also clarifies your assumptions. Once a ToC has been developed, it can be used to continually reflect on it in ways that allow for...
-
The Theory of Change approach demands a radical shift towards more and better learning in development thinking and practice, creating a productive and much-needed space for critical reflection.
-
In Building Better Systems, we introduced four keys to unlock system innovation: purpose and power, relationships and resource flows. These four keys make up a set. Systems are often hard to change because power, relationships, and resource flows are locked together in a reinforcing pattern to serve the system’s current purpose. Systems start to change fundamentally when this pattern is disrupted and opened up so that a new configuration can emerge, serving a new purpose. In this article...
-
Development economics is split between macro-development economists - who focus on economic growth, international trade, and fiscal/macro policies - and micro-development economists - who study microfinance, education, health, and other social programs. Recently there has been substantial convergence in the policy mindset exhibited by micro evaluation enthusiasts, on the one hand, and growth diagnosticians, on the other. At the same time, the randomized evaluation revolution has led to an...
-
Steff had the pleasure to co-author the first SenseMaker Practitioner Guide with a group of friends and colleagues supported and published by Oxfam and CRS. This practical guide is for those who wish to use SenseMaker to conduct assessments, monitor progress, and undertake evaluations or research. Drawing on more than a decade of experience, the authors share dozens of examples from international development, providing practical tips and ideas for context-specific adaptations. They show how...
-
Transdisciplinarity is not a new science per se, but a new methodology for doing science with society. A particular challenge in doing science with society is the engagement with non-academic actors to enable joint problem formulation, analysis and transformation. How this is achieved differs between contexts. The premise of this paper is that transdisciplinary research (TDR) methodologies designed for developed world contexts cannot merely be replicated and transferred to developing world...
-
This Green Paper intends to review key elements of the problem that Development actors will confront as a new decade opens up ahead of us. It will articulate a solution that we believe should become an inherent feature of Development programs and initiatives. This is the outcome of an intense period of experiences and reflections in the Development space across different geographies and institutional mandates and activities, during which the Foundation has collaborated with institutions such...
-
Addressing 21st century development challenges requires investments in innovation, including the use of new approaches and technologies. Currently, many development organisations prioritise investments in isolated innovation pilots that leverage a specific approach or technology rather than pursuing a strategic approach to expand the organisation’s toolbox with innovations that have proven their comparative advantage over what is currently used. This Working Paper addresses this challenge of...
-
This guide is a basic reference on systems thinking and practice tailored to the context and needs of the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). It is an output of the FCDO Knowledge for Development Programme (K4D), which facilitated a Learning Journey on Systems Thinking and Practice with FCDO staff during 2021 and 2022. The guide offers a common language and shared framing of systems thinking for FCDO and its partners. It explores what this implies for...
-
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 Building Better Systems, we introduced four keys to unlock system innovation: purpose and power, relationships and resource flows. These four keys make up a set. Systems are often hard to change because power, relationships, and resource flows are locked together in a reinforcing pattern to serve the system’s current purpose. Systems start to change fundamentally when this pattern is disrupted and opened up. Then a new configuration can emerge, serving a new purpose. In this essay...
-
This guidebook codifies the principles and methods of applying systems change and portfolio approaches to complex development challenges with practical tools and examples. It is based on the empirical learning generated from the collaborative initiatives in UNDP Country Offices in Bhutan, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Viet Nam with support from Regional Innovation Centre for Asia and the Pacific.
-
Capturing the impact of community-led work The Centre for Public Impact, Dusseldorp Forum, and Hands Up Mallee have been exploring how stories can be used to more effectively communicate the impact of community-led systems change work. Community-led place based initiatives are modelling new ways of working - shifting away from top down, program-focussed approaches towards an approach grounded in systems thinking and community-led innovations. However, while these stories of change are...
-
The Strategic Program for Analyzing Complexity and Evaluating Systems (SPACES MERL) project is an activity funded by USAID’s Global Development Lab and the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL). This three-year activity aims to bring a variety of tools and methodologies that decision-makers can use (alone or in combination) to provide comprehensive systems analysis. The activity is being implemented from 2015 to 2018 by a consortium of organizations expert in systems and...
-
The following handbook is designed to provide a step by step guide to the application of Social Network Analysis for the IRC.
Explore
Theme
- Adaptive Approaches [+]
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
- Action Inquiry/Collective Leadership (2)
- Desk based research/lit review (1)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (1)
- Impact evaluation (1)
- Indicator-based approaches (1)
- Innovation System Analysis (2)
- Knowing Unknowns (1)
- Mapping Visualization Methods (4)
- MEL in International Development (3)
- Most Significant Change (1)
- Narrative Based Approaches (2)
- Network Analysis (1)
- Outcome Harvesting (1)
- Outcome Mapping (1)
- Participatory Action Research (2)
- Participatory Evaluation (1)
- Political Economy Analysis (1)
- Portfolio Management (2)
- Process Tracing (1)
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (2)
- Realist Evaluation (2)
- Rubrics (2)
- Scenario Planning (1)
- SenseMaker (3)
- Stakeholder Feedback (1)
- Surveys (1)
- Systemic Change (26)
- Systems Mapping (6)
- Theory-based evaluations (2)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (8)
- Trans-disciplinary Research (1)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (1)
- Cases (5)
- Development Actors Perspectives (9)
-
Geography
(6)
-
Africa
(5)
-
Eastern Africa
(4)
- Mozambique (1)
- Rwanda (1)
- Uganda (2)
-
Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
-
Eastern Africa
(4)
-
Asia
(1)
-
Eastern Asia
(1)
- China (1)
-
Eastern Asia
(1)
-
Africa
(5)
-
Practical
(13)
- Tools (1)
-
Sectors [+]
(16)
- Agriculture (1)
- Alternative Development (4)
- Citizen Engagement (1)
- Economic development (1)
- Education (2)
- Governance and Accountability (1)
- Health (1)
- Innovation (in Development) (4)
- Organizational Change (1)
- Scaling up / Propagating (3)
Resource type
- Blog Post (6)
- Book (4)
- Journal Article (8)
- Report (35)
- Software (1)
Publication year
-
Between 2000 and 2024
(54)
-
Between 2000 and 2009
(3)
- 2008 (3)
- Between 2010 and 2019 (21)
- Between 2020 and 2024 (30)
-
Between 2000 and 2009
(3)