Understanding stakeholders and political networks - Practical Guidance Note - Piron, Laure-Hélène; Mwamba, Wilfred (FCDO and TWP CoP, 2026)
In 2023, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice published Understanding political economy analysis and thinking and working politically. This complementary note sets out more detailed guidance on how to undertake a dynamic Stakeholder Analysis and Political Network Mapping, which are core elements of political economy analysis and other forms of politically informed context analysis. This technical note is for use alongside the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) guide to understanding political economy analysis (PEA) and thinking and working politically and is part of a series of guides on the use of PEA in practice. It sets out more detailed guidance on how to undertake a dynamic stakeholder analysis and political network mapping, both of which can be used to support international cooperation and development partnerships. Stakeholder analysis considers the key actors relevant to an area of work, political network mapping goes further, analysing the relationships between actors. Both tools help practitioners move from a general understanding towards specific, evidence-based decisions. These approaches can contribute to the design and implementation of a strategy, policy dialogue or development programme, and to the management of risks This guide has been produced jointly with the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice (TWP CoP). The TWP CoP is a global network of practitioners and researchers in international cooperation committed to helping practitioners understand how change happens and why. The TWP CoP Secretariat has been hosted by the University of Birmingham with support from FCDO.

Critical thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking and many more: A comparative bibliometric analysis of prevalence and distribution - Crilly, Nathan (Thinking Skills and Creativity, 2026)
To compare discourses related to different ways of thinking, a bibliometric analysis was performed on the Dimensions database of research documents. Terms related to 78 ways of thinking were ranked according to the number of documents containing them over the last five years (2020 to 2024). Twenty ways of thinking were subjected to further analyses, examining (i) those that are most prevalent (with the top five being critical thinking, design thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking then computational thinking); (ii) the different suffixes appended to each term (with critical thinking mostly referred to as a skill, systems thinking mostly referred to as an approach and design thinking almost equally referred to as a method, approach and process); (iii) the proportion of documents focusing on each of them, rather than simply referring to them (with computational thinking having the highest such proportion); (iv) their rise to prevalence since 1975 (with critical thinking and systems thinking slowly gaining prevalence compared to the more recent rise of design thinking and computational thinking); (v) the frequency with which they are referred to together (with critical thinking and creative thinking co-occurring most often); (vi) their distribution across various academic disciplines (with futures thinking being quite evenly distributed, but computational thinking being highly concentrated); (vii) their distribution across the Sustainable Development Goals (with critical thinking, systems thinking and design thinking being most prevalent in this respect). The findings and visualisations provide a useful basis for identifying, comparing, selecting and combining different ways of thinking.
Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Interdisciplinary; Sustainable development goals; Ways of thinking

Regenerative Evaluation - Influences, Pathways & Practices - Boone, Katie; Collins, Kirsten Bording; Kaiser, Jannik; Martins, Laila; Reppart, Mateah Spencer; Strasser, Tim; Van den Daele, Geetha (Uniity Effect, 2026)
Regenerative Evaluation: Evaluation in Service of Life To foster change today means navigating a gap between two realities: the reality of reporting (demanding accountability and proof of impact) and the reality of the planet (calling for regeneration, complexity, and interconnectedness). For too long, evaluation has forced a choice, functioning as an extractive exercise—mining data to count the "fruits" of a project while ignoring the health of the "soil" that sustains them. Regenerative Evaluation bridges this gap. Moving beyond extractive measurement, it is an evolving practice that embraces rigor while actively nourishing the systems it assesses. This document outlines its core components: ● The 9 Guiding Principles: The internal values and mindsets that orient our judgment and align our work with living systems. ● The 7 Core Practices: A practical, three-phased cycle of specific methods and habits that translate these principles into tangible evidence and action. ● The 3 Essential Evaluation Strands: The evaluation lineages (systemic, power-conscious, and ecological) that this practice weaves together. ● Applications and Future Pathways: Entry points for bringing this work to life across projects, organizational vitality, funding, and policy.

Letting Go, Without Losing Coherence: How Local Agency and Donor Accountability Can Coexist - Guerzovich, Florencia (TWP CoP, University of Birmingham, 2026)
Despite widespread endorsement of locally led development, donor agencies still struggle to translate local agency into cumulative change. Donor discourse increasingly emphasises localisation and community leadership, yet operational arrangements remain structured around upward compliance. The practical question is how local agency and institutional accountability can work together so that locally generated insights lead the way while portfolio coherence is maintained. This paper examines a form of connective work that helps make this co-existence possible. Drawing on the author’s more than 20 years’ experience as a practitioner and evidence from over 150 documented cases across sectors and regions, it focuses on invisible weavers – actors who keep cooperation moving under constraint by connecting fragmented institutions, routing insights across levels, and sustaining continuity when conditions change. These functions are often essential to maintaining cooperation, insights, and continuity across fragmented actors and institutions, yet they remain largely unrecognised in formal programme design, costing, and evaluation. Despite this, donors’ informal routines allow them to act on these insights, albeit in ad hoc ways. The paper addresses three practical questions: how such actors can be recognised, how their effectiveness and resilience can be assessed, and how donors can support this connective work more intentionally without formalising it into compliance. It traces how donor staff and local counterparts use judgement, continuity, and low-overhead practices to carry locally generated insights into organisational decisions. By reframing accountability as portfolio reliability and making these patterns visible, the paper shows that donors can ‘let go’ of rigid control without losing systemic coherence. It concludes with three practical ways to make these existing ‘workarounds’ more intentional and fundable, ensuring that local intelligence leads to durable change rather than having to re-set with every project cycle.

Using rubrics to explore pathways to scale: Navigating the Integration of Graduation into Public Systems - Blog post on Better Evaluation - Pellini, Arnaldo; Torres, Kristian Paolo; Warokka, Tania Dora (Better Evaluation, 2026)
In this blog, Arnaldo Pellini, Kristian Paolo Torres, and Tania Dora Warokka reflect on their experience developing and testing a rubric to support dialogue and learning as complex initiatives are integrated into public systems.

Moving Beyond Projects: Portfolios and Systems MEL - Muhereza, Suzane; Tolmer, Zazie (UNDP Strategic Innovation, 2026)
Authors: Suzane Muhereza & Zazie Tolmer Contributor: Simone Uriartt & Bianca Tejada

Technically Strong and Politically Savvy: Enhancing Thinking and Working Politically when practicing the consevation standards at USAID - Schuttenberg, H.Z.; Stark, J.; Schueler, K. (USAID, 2026)
This supplemental guide offers practical advice for thinking and working politically (TWP) when practicing the Conservation Standards. The CS are a widely used, systematic approach for planning, monitoring, and adapting programs aiming to conserve biodiversity. TWP is an approach to international development that brings greater attunement to the political dynamics of the local programming context in order to enhance development results. Given strong evidence that political factors overwhelmingly drive the loss of biodiversity, this guide is based on the premise that conservation programs will be more effective when they skillfully integrate TWP.

Exploring participants’ experiences of and perspectives on relational development: The cases of CLARISSA SP+ and WORKFREE - Lazarus, Joel (Community Development, 2026)
There is growing engagement with “relational” approaches to community development work - interventions that give practical or even metaphysical primacy to relations and processes over identities and outcomes. But what more can we say about the nature and efficacy of such approaches? CLARISSA SP+ and WorkFREE were two major relational community development intervention and research projects that took place in Bangladesh and India respectively. In this article, I compare the experiences and perspectives of participants in CLARISSA SP+ and WorkFREE to learn more about the nature and efficacy of relational community development. My findings reveal how these projects served to meet participants’ individual and collective psychological and material needs and highlight the transformative power of unconditionality. Whilst my overall findings support the case for advancing relational approaches to community development work, I conclude that more work must be done on theoretical and operational refinement and systematic evaluation.
_eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2025.2609533
Keywords: Relationality; community development; needs; universal basic income

Launching a new Co-design Toolkit for Early Years Services - Adams, Ellen; Alves Calistri, Nicole (Policy Lab, UK Gov, 2026)
This blog launches a new co-design toolkit to support the development of services for early years. The co-design toolkit is a practical set of resources created to enable local authorities and communities to design public services together. It has been

Complex Systems Frameworks Collection: an illustrated collection - Finegood, Diane; Bradd, Sam; Yakimov, Chris (Frameworks Collection, 2026)

The Architecture of Learning: Systems, Infrastructure, & Leadership for Health System Transformation (Stanford Medicine - Department of Pediatrics, 2025)
The Architecture of Learning: Systems, Infrastructure, and Leadership for Health System Transformation Session Description Health care can improve as a system only if its parts are aligned around the shared purpose of better health for all. This talk will explore how learning health systems integrate science, data, and culture to enable continuous improvement and innovation. Through real-world examples from a single patient’s question to national learning networks, we will examine how infrastructure, leadership, and community engagement create the conditions for systems that learn and improve at scale.

Democratic deliberation as a North Star: Showcasing a framework to assess the value for money of systems-change efforts - Peterson, Heidi (Evaluation, 2025)
The growing interest in systems-change initiatives sits alongside increasing pressure to demonstrate value for money (VFM), which is challenging for emergent, interconnected and often intangible work. A new way to assess the VFM of systems-change work involves considering the value of changing system conditions and the creation of potential value for future systems transformation. This innovation combines the Water of Systems Change framework with the Cycles of Value Creation to create five types of value for systems-change work: inherent, potential, applied, realised and transformative. The VFM of systems-change efforts is then best understood, negotiated and judged by different stakeholders through democratic deliberation. A practical case study of WorkWell (a systems-change initiative to improve mental well-being in Victoria, Australia) is used to demonstrate the use of the approach and offer reflections on its rigour.

Track to Change | Home - Clear Horizon (Clear Horizon, 2025)
Track to Change homepage

Working between systems and complexity - a practitioners guide - Allen, Will (learningforsustainability.net, 2025)
How practitioners navigate between systems and complexity thinking. Exploring structure and emergence in real-world collaboration and adaptive work.

A critical, integrative review on evaluating systems change and transformation, Part One: 2011–2021 - Gates, Emily F.; Vidueira, Pablo; Komakhidze, Maya; Aldrich, Charlotte; Shim, Clara (Evaluation, 2025)
Calls for evaluating systems change and transformation in multiple fields present an opportunity to explore cross-field patterns. This article reports on part one of a critical, integrative review of academic and gray literature published between 2011 and 2021 (n = 102) within five areas: evaluation, health, organizational change, sustainability, and philanthropy. Questions address key definitions, how a systemic approach differs from traditional social problem-solving, leverage points to influence change, and implications for evaluation. Four findings include (1) limited normative debate about change and transformation; (2) conventional and systemic approaches contrasted as binary paths; (3) 10 shared leverage areas with the least attention on power and resources; and (4) an expanded role for evaluation that presents challenges and opportunities. Review results provide support for shifts underway within the evaluation field, including funders working in deeper collaborations, evaluators expanding their skill sets, and intermediary agencies facilitating transdisciplinary exchanges.

Moving from nudging to boosting: empowering behaviour change to address global challenges - Hertwig, Ralph; Michie, Susan; West, Robert; Reicher, Stephen (Behavioural Public Policy, 2025)
The COVID-19 pandemic provided a stark reminder that societies will struggle to address global challenges unless they are able to change behaviour at scale. The widely adopted ‘nudge’ approach epitomizes an individualistic, deficit model of human cognition and motivation that leverages or overcomes people’s weaknesses and biases to get them to do things they would otherwise not. By contrast, we argue that tackling the challenges facing humanity requires a collective, capacity-building approach – one that boosts the competences, opportunities, and motivations of individuals to act together.
Keywords: agency; behaviour change; boosting; bounded rationality; nudging

Understanding A Quick Approach to PEA - Whaites, Alan (FCDO, 2025)

Shift the status quo: Applying a systems approach to improving adolescent health and wellbeing in cities - A guide for practitioners - Ecorys (Ecorys, 2025)
Healthy Cities for Adolescents Phase II (HCA-II) is a multi-country programme that supports projects working to improve adolescent and young people’s health and wellbeing in intermediary cities. Guided by the principle of shifting the status quo, with adolescents at the centre of this, HCA-II aims to catalyse meaningful changes in how cities function for young people. This guide aims to help you influence the systems that shape adolescent and young people’s health and wellbeing in the cities where they live. You don’t need to be a ‘systems expert’ to use it. It’s designed for anyone working on HCA-II projects (or similar) – whether you’re a project manager, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) lead, consortium partner or youth worker – who wants practical ideas for planning, delivering, and learning from work that aims to make cities fairer and healthier for adolescents. A core focus of this guide is helping projects shift system conditions – the underlying structures, relationships, and beliefs that shape how things work. It’s not about fixing everything at once, but about identifying where small changes, like who’s involved in decision-making, how resources are shared, or how people relate to one another, can unlock bigger, longer-term improvements. Focusing on how our work shifts system conditions helps us move beyond surface-level problems and get to the root causes, like policies, resources, relationships, and behaviours that shape adolescents’ lives. It’s a practical way of thinking and working that leads to more joinedup, fair, and lasting change. This guide is designed to be flexible; dip in and out depending on where you are in your project. It includes practical tools, examples, and ideas across five key areas of systems practice.

Evaluative Inquiry for Systemic Change: A Guide to Shift Beyond Fixes to Lasting Value - Gates, Emily F.; Vidueira, Pablo (SAGE Publications, Inc, 2025)
In a world where social, ecological, health, and other problems are influenced by multiple, intersecting systems, why do most interventions target single-factor solutions? Why does so much evaluation settle for incremental change, and how could it contribute instead to deeper, lasting, transformative change? Authors Emily F. Gates and Pablo Vidueira make two interconnected arguments in this book: they critique the "fixed" approach of traditional program evaluation and policy analysis, and they advance an alternative approach centered on changing systems and developing the value of efforts toward change. They demonstrate that systemic change that embeds evaluative inquiry is a theoretically supported, practical way to work toward fundamental social change with lasting impact.

A personal reflection on Thinking and Working Politically at USAID: - Jacobstein, David (2025)
This paper shares an insider's perspective on the spread of Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) across the US Agency for International Development (USAID), highlighting lessons learned along the way that are relevant even beyond the dissolution of the Agency in 2025.

Implementing Systems Change - Jain, Vikram; Singh, Vivek; Mundol, Hisham; Gogri, Mirik (2025)
While enthusiasm for systems change has grown steadily over the past decade, we find a significant gap persists between this enthusiasm and execution. Funders attempting to implement systems change consistently face 9 challenges, including unclear outcome attribution, long commitment horizons, and complex stakeholder coordination. When faced with these challenges, it is understandable why many funders find themselves defaulting to patching the system rather than changing it. The pressures are real: boards expect clear metrics, program timelines demand quick wins, and established processes reward predictable outcomes. These institutional realities often nudge funders toward incremental fixes, even when they recognize deeper change is needed. This report names and explores the challenges in implementing systems change and provides steps to navigate them. We draw on the authors’ 14 years of experience implementing systems change programs in the Global South across affordable housing, early childhood education, and gender equity. Foundation leaders (e.g., CEOs, principals, and other executives) can use this guide to implement systems change in their work, finding entry points that align with their foundation’s current capacity, constraints, and strategic objectives. Funders can choose to lean in and make their intent to change the system explicit. Doing so would offer the potential for permanent, transformative change that continues long after the intervention or program ends. This choice requires abandoning the comfort of clear attribution and predictable outcomes and accepting that it may be impossible to claim credit for your contributions. The communities you serve rarely need you to prove exactly which intervention created change, but they do need you to commit to changing the conditions that trap them in cycles of inequity. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in spite of it.” – Nelson Mandela

Outcomes & Systems: From Predicted Goods to Emergent Cohesion - Johar, Indy (Indy Johar, 2025)
Critical summary – the single through‑line of the essay

Modernizing Development: Introducing Portfolios - a new systems-way of working for today’s complexity, built for greater impact - UNDP (UNDP, 2025)

What if design could transform the way we think and make public policies? Proposing a new model: the Policy Design Journey - Gouache, Christophe (2025)
For about 15-20 years, a rather small-yet growing-community of designers started getting involved in public policy innovation and public problem solving activities. Those design activists (willing to work for the common good, public welfare and social justice) have decided to apply their design skills, tools and methods in order to help public authorities of all levels (from village, to city, metropolis, national governments, or EU commission, etc.) reset & solve public problems and/or fix public policies and public services. « Designing better policies for people, by people » could be their motto. In parallel to working on solving public problems, designers have also spend energy on training civil servants and sometimes elected officials about their design approach so as to empower them in replicating, once the designers are gone, some design-inspired techniques and tools such as co-design with users, involving citizens in policy ideation, prototyping and experimenting before implementing, etc. By doing so, designers slowly spread their know-how to equip public authorities with design skills and progressively transform them. At the same time, we started seeing the first public authorities which would offer to designers real official design positions within their own administrations. Designers would not be only consulting for public authorities but transforming public authorities from within (often linked with the creation of public policy innovation labs). If it's still too early to discuss the success and impact of this strategy on the long term, we can already observe that by applying design methods to policy making, a new way of creating policies is emerging, one inspired by design. In this paper, we'll propose to draw a new guiding approach to policymaking inspired by design. To do so, we will build upon the initial critics of the policy cycle model such as the one of Lasswell drawn in 1957 (still in use today as a reference model) which, despite its clarity and simplicity, is purely theoretical (too linear, too static and too rational) and never takes place in the « real world » and question the actionability of policy threads or streams model as proposed by Howlett in 2015. Then, we'll look into how, in practice, designers have, through practice, « tinted » policy making with their own methods to finally, extract and draw a new model for policy making, one which would build upon the design thinking & doing methodology (questioning the double diamond of the UK Design Council) but also the design « spirit » (capacity to improvise, to detour, to navigate at ease through uncertainty, etc.). Considering public policymaking from the angle of a "journey" could enable designers but also public authorities to embrace the fact that true policy design is an unwritten voyage, made of choices, options, creative detours, opportunities, trips to the unknown, etc.

Transforming Health Care - Shared Commitments for a Learning Health System - Madara, James L.; Miyamoto, Suzanne; Dowdy, Sean C.; Greene, Sarah M.; Tarrant, Julie; Margolis, Peter A. (The New England Journal of Medicine, 2025)

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Systems Change - McDonald, Lizzy; Simpson, Kate; Schramm, Carolin (Wasafiri, 2025)
Today’s critical challenges are complex and require system level change. Issues like ending poverty, reversing biodiversity collapse, creating more equitable and sustainable food systems, or ending health inequalities, will not respond to neat siloed technical interventions. These are not problems we can tackle head on. Rather, we need to change the conditions (systems) that create these problems. Consequently, many of the most ambitious philanthropic foundations are adopting ‘systems change’ approaches to their work. There is a critical need to better understand the impact of systems change interventions. This is for two reasons: 1) without being able to understand our impact we can’t learn about the efficacy of efforts and focus on doing more helpful action and less unhelpful action, and 2) without effective monitoring and evaluation it is hard to galvanise resources, whether as money, time, or enthusiasm. Traditional monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) approaches and practices struggle to respond to complexity. Many of today’s MEL approaches have been developed to serve funders keen to ‘prove’ the efficacy of their work and hold grantees accountable. This paradigm has produced approaches like ‘logical frameworks’ that seek to create a linear logic between intervention, outputs, outcomes and impact. Such approaches often pay scant regard to the activity (intentional or otherwise) of other actors in any system, and don’t adapt well to the characteristics of complex problems such as emergence, uncertainty, and interdependency. There is a fast-developing body of practice on MEL for systems change. A growing number of practitioners are experimenting with complexity informed approaches to MEL, and UNDP is pioneering an open-source set of tools and ideas.ii Wasafiri is contributing to this innovation by developing a MEL approach that builds on our (open access) Systemcraft Framework. iii Emerging approaches for systems change MEL are underpinned by some key principles. There is growing consensus on the need to be pragmatic and flexible, not just because it is a new field for many that requires a degree of mindset and behaviour change and different ways of working. MEL approaches for system change primarily focus on improving and learning and on identifying ways to adapt and pivot. This contrasts with linear approaches to implementation and measurement. Learning questions guide and co-exist alongside indicators to support continual learning and adaptation. These shifts will require a shift in relationships between funders and implementers from measuring and accountability to greater flexibility and patience, close engagement and learning together. There is pressure to show impact in less time. Reduced time horizons, increasing impatience and integration of new sets of agendas in development programming present challenges in the context of systems change. In an increasingly resource constrained context and amid growing global uncertainty (e.g. current global politics, emergencies like COVID, economic instability, rapid technological advancement), it is unclear which direction donors will take, i.e. an even greater focus on value for money and impact, and/or willingness to explore innovative approaches and learning in uncertain territory. Wasafiri’s approach for systems MEL builds on Systemcraft. This is a diagnostic and design tool for systems change, that has been used globally across a broad range of systems and interventions. This paper summarises our approach to MEL for systems change. It aims to provide a short introductory overview and form a ‘conversation starter’ to initiate a practical dialogue on current practices, experiences, and learnings with MEL for systems change. It introduces some concepts and appropriate tools for measuring systems change and poses some key questions for further discussion. We aim to engage with funders and practitioners working on complex problems who are in the process of or planning to develop their approach to and practices for MEL, who are interested to learn, share and explore. We welcome your inputs, either in response to this document, via a call, or during online webinars that we will convene in 2025.

Pando Funding. A princpled apprach to deploying capital to support system change - Muoio, Anna; Lehan, Brendan (2025)
Pando Funding is a practical, principle-based approach to pooling and deploying capital to support a system change network—collaborations of diverse actors working across strategies, sectors, and theories of change to shift a complex system for the better. A system change network brings together leaders, helps them develop a shared vision for transformational change, and shifts decision-making into their hands so they can adapt and innovate in response to emerging developments on the ground. Pando Funding is designed to finance the often invisible, under-funded but critical “roots” for transformative change, the interconnections and enabling conditions among people, projects, and practices that we know are key drivers of a system’s health. Pando Funding also finances the innovative “shoots,” the portfolio of projects launched from a system change network by leaders who see the power in working in infinitely more strategic and connected ways behind their shared vision. At the most basic level, Pando Funding supports ecologies of diverse but connected actors, organizations, and theories of change intervening over time. Appropriately building and resourcing a system change network is the necessary infrastructure for leaders to organize themselves within; and more importantly, to develop the root enabling conditions for system change such as: relationships, trust, collective system awareness, information and knowledge flows, and a shared vision that can cohere all their work. These conditions are not nice-to-haves. They are critical pre-conditions for a group to be able to take coordinated and coherent action together through a range of many specific but aligned projects. That said, Pando Funding is more than just a funding mechanism to distribute capital. It is a framework for rebalancing power, encouraging a collective approach, and fostering long-term commitment in the service of transformational change. Pando Funding creates the conditions for deeper, more resilient change by aligning the strategic use of capital with the collective intelligence and shared purpose of leaders working within a system change network.

Pando Funding: Financing System Change Networks - Ricigliano, Rob; Muoio, Anna (Medium, 2025)
By Robert Ricigliano and Anna Muoio

Fast Isn’t the Same as Forward - Brink (Brink's Cognitive Download, 2025)
What it takes to create smart velocity

Adaptive Political Economy: Toward a New Paradigm - Ang, Yuen Yuen (World Politics, 2025)
The conventional paradigm in political economy routinely treats living, complex, adaptive social systems as machine-like objects. This treatment has driven political economists to oversimplify big, complex social processes using mechanical models, or to ignore them altogether. In development, this has led to theoretical dead ends, trivial agendas, or failed public policies. This article proposes an alternative paradigm: adaptive political economy. It recognizes that social systems are complex, not complicated; complexity can be ordered, not messy; and social scientists should be developing the concepts, methods, and theories to illuminate the order of complexity, rather than oversimplifying it. The author illustrates one application of adaptive political economy by mapping the coevolution of economic and institutional change. This approach yields fresh, important conclusions that mechanical, linear models of development have missed, including that market-building institutions look and function differently from market-sustaining ones.
Keywords: adaptive; coevolution; complex adaptive systems; complexity; endogeneity; inclusive; market-building; market-sustaining; moral; political economy of development

Learning about learning health systems: Strengthening theory through continuous evaluation and improvement - Gremyr, Andreas; Seid, Michael; Margolis, Peter A.; Ramaswamy, Rohit (Learning Health Systems, 2025)
Introduction Learning Health Systems (LHSs) offer potential for transforming healthcare through continuous learning and improvement. However, the current literature lacks a robust connection between theory and practice, limiting knowledge transferability across diverse healthcare environments. This article proposes a novel framework for integrating theorizing and continuous evaluation into LHSs, illustrated through the case of the Bipolar Action Network (The Network). Methods We use a process of theorizing to structure how mid-range theory, program theory and LHS design, development and evaluation can support improved practices and theories. We use the Conceptual Framework for Value-Creating Learning Health Systems as our initial mid-range theory, and the Bipolar Action Network serves as an illustrative case. Results The framework emphasizes continuous multi-level LHS theory refinement based on real-world data, ensuring that both the system and its theoretical underpinnings evolve in response to new insights and challenges by connecting four steps: (1) Selecting an initial mid-range theory, (2) Creating a program theory for a specific LHS, (3) Evaluating LHS performance using operational data, and (4) Using evaluation findings to refine both the LHS program and mid-range theory. Conclusions This article contributes to the field by offering a practical methodology for bridging the gap between LHS theory and practice. By promoting ongoing theorizing and evaluation, our framework aims to both enhance the effectiveness and adaptability of LHSs, as well as inform theory development. Challenges remain, including resource intensity for data infrastructure and potential limitations in data quality or accessibility, which must be addressed to realize the full potential of LHSs as adaptive, theory-driven systems.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/lrh2.70038
Keywords: health services research; implementation science; learning health system; quality improvement

Ecosystem Cards: Deepen your understanding of the status quo. Envision desirable futures. Design strategic experiments to learn more - Lukyanova, Zoya; Polok, Darius; Shah, Indira; Martin, Naomi; Kildeev, Ruslan (resense360 & iac Berlin, 2025)
A tool to deepen your understanding of the status quo, envision desirable futures, and engage with ecosystems more intentionally.

Adaptive Management in International Development - Knowledge Base - Prieto Martin, Pedro (2025)
A curated collection of resources on Adaptive Management and MEL in International Development

Digital.gov Resources - U.Ss GSA (Digital.gov, 2025)
Essential how-to guidance for government product managers and digital teams.

Many-to-Many - Field Guide with learnings, models, insights and tools - Zucker, Michelle; Dhami., Annette (Dark Matter Lab, 2025)
A living library of practical tools, frameworks, and case studies designed to support practitioners in complex collaborations. Many-to-Many System -aims to support collaborations tackling complex, entangled challenges where disrupting norms and values, ownership, and power is essential. Solving today’s complex, interconnected problems requires what we term “complex collaborations” - bringing together many diverse groups (public, private, civic) with many new perspectives, including future generations and the natural world. While many collaborations are already doing great work, we believe that finding better ways to support how they are structured and organised them could unlock more effective, system-level change. The Many-to-Many System is focussed on unlocking the governance, organising, legal, and learning structures of complex collaborations to enable many resources, not just money, but also knowledge and relationships to flow more freely, and to foster many ways of working that embrace diverse value exchange. For each and everyone of us, our fundamental understandings of the world are influenced by ‘deep codes,’ often invisibly embedded within our creations, frameworks, and rules. The Many-to-Many System explored how these codes shape collaboration and governance, aiming to understand if they could be reimagined and how those within complex collaborators themselves can embed them into their collaboration’s infrastructures. More intentional and visible shifting of deep codes for governance and organising could help collaborations to better align with their systemic missions and offer approaches for rethinking core concepts like value, power, risk, and ownership. The Many-to-Many System distills two years of learning, prototyping, research, and practice. Here we offer a blend of elements: a core framework, practical insights and learnings, illustrative models for complex topics, and tools developed along the way. Our aspiration is to provide a range of resources that can help others embed the Many-to-Many deep code shifts into their own complex collaboration work.

The How we need now: a capacity agenda for 2025 and beyond - Pahlka, Jennifer; Greenway, Andrew (Niskanen Center, 2024)

Demystifying Interoperability. Insights from our work in Ethiopia's agriculture sector - Hatcher-Mbu, Beverley; Ferreyra, Fernando; Postelnicu, Mihai; Cihai, Viorel; Getachew, Yosef; FIkre, Yohannes; Kassa, Selam; Orrell, Tom; Tewari, Khyatee (Development Gateway, 2024)
Government offices are filled with siloed, sector-specific digital systems that strain their capacity to make decisions, use data effectively, and achieve ambitious sustainable development goals. Public investments in digital development, transformation, and infrastructure can only meet citizen needs if data and systems are consolidated and interoperable. While interoperability is a sensible approach to building digital public infrastructure, transforming existing systems is easier said than done. Limited resources and expertise, lack of training, inadequate hardware and software infrastructure, and concerns over data privacy are some of the key factors that limit the impact of systems or lead to their discontinuation. The data that feeds these systems also needs to be standardized using global best practices and common languages and frameworks that can be understood across multiple platforms and adapted to the local context. In increasingly digital economies, systems and their data need to be relevant and responsive to citizens’ specific conditions and needs With emerging challenges like climate change that require more complex data, and new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) that require large volumes of data, systems need to be agile and scalable to advance solutions and fully harness innovation. This paper discusses, in practical terms, what goes into implementing interoperable solutions in partnership with public administrations. Based on 20+ years of DG’s experience, the paper demystifies key components needed to build robust, resilient, and interoperable data systems, focusing on the “how” of data standardization, data governance, and implementing technical infrastructure.

Working with Systems-Informed Theory of Change - A practical introduction - Vogel, Isabel; Abosenna, Karim R (Climate-KIC, 2024)
Explore Climate KIC’s S-ToC guide A practical and flexible resource designed to help teams and partners navigate the complexity of systems change in the face of the climate crisis. Our S-ToC approach integrates systems thinking to support adaptive monitoring, evaluation, and ongoing learning. This guide empowers users to analyse systems, identify leverage points, and co-create change-oriented strategies that evolve with context. Whether you’re working on a small-scale pilot or a multi-stakeholder portfolio, S-ToC can help you articulate dynamic change trajectories, catalyse impact, and document learning across interconnected efforts. Designed as a step-by-step Miro board template, the guide supports collaborative sense-making and can be used to facilitate stakeholder workshops or train others in systems-based ToC thinking.

A Framework for Embedding Learning in Systems Change - Bertermann, Kecia; Coffman, Julia (Center for Evaluation Innovation, 2024)
This five-step framework, developed and tested by a foundation, embeds learning in emergent systems change strategies. It prioritizes the testing of hypotheses and assumptions, uses learning questions, and calls for examining both confirming and disconfirming evidence. — A framework for embedding learning in systems change strategies and for testing strategic uncertainties. Learning and evaluation approaches that accompany systems change efforts need to fit with and support the emergent nature of this work. Systems change efforts call for examining, with evidence, the hypotheses and assumptions that undergird the work and regularly adapting in response to what is learned. They require staff to be highly engaged in testing their ideas by gathering evidence, interpreting it, and then acting on its implications. This brief presents a learning approach—referred to here as the Learning Framework—developed and tested by a foundation to support its systems change strategies. It is intended for other practitioners working on approaches for integrating learning with systems change efforts. Because a wealth of conceptual work exists about why learning is critical to systems change but practical advice about how to do it is much less available, we describe the approach we took and how the Framework’s core elements fit together in practice. The primary purpose of this approach is to interrogate our strategic uncertainties. This approach to learning is different from the dominant approach to learning and evaluation in philanthropy that primarily looks for evidence (often static metrics) that expected outcomes have been achieved (an approach that is more suitable for linear and predictable change strategies). This Learning Framework is driven by, and organized around, hypotheses and assumptions. This is especially important for systems change efforts where the path forward cannot be determined with complete certainty, but where robust evidence collection and regular sensemaking can increase our confidence in chosen directions and ultimately increase our chances of success.

Political Economy Analysis in Sudan: Handy Tools for Everyone? - Jones, Beverley; Oosthuizen, Daniel (TWP CoP, 2024)
Based on a case study of the Kullana Liltanmia (All of Us for Development) (KLP) Contextual Analysis (CA) course in Sudan, this paper tells the story of how training and capacity building in Political Economy Analysis (PEA) made a difference in the lives and experiences of those involved, including in particular young people. The paper highlights three critical lessons: • At the country level, the twists and turns of Sudan’s recent history reinforce the importance of people deepening their understanding of what is really going on, in order to make better informed (if not the best or least-worst) choices. The skills and mindset of both broad and localised PEA capacity can make a difference to people living in fragile and conflict-affected settings, where navigating complexity and uncertainty is a daily reality. • At the level of strategic programming, the potential of PEA remains under-utilised. There is considerable scope for capacity in PEA to support not only ordinary people across a range of different occupations and educational levels, but also prominent actors who may eventually play key roles in political processes, and whose choices can affect the longer-term prospects for stability and peace. This becomes even more imperative in the context of the war in Sudan, which now involves a plethora of external actors. • At the level of the experiment in the KLP CA course, this story reinforces the paramount importance of adapting and grounding PEA training in a common understanding among its intended participants, shaping it through their insights and experience. It also highlights how essential it is to nurture PEA skills and mindsets not only in stable contexts but also in challenging, more dangerous and uncertain ones. Supporting this vital capability during periods of hiatus, fast-moving transitions, and even active conflict is a public good; and it requires courage and creativity on the part of the donors, course designers, implementers and participants. The paper is structured as follows. Section 1 provides an introduction setting out the broad context of Sudan within which the KLP CA training took place. Section 2 describes the 30-year period of al-Bashir’s regime (1989-2019). Section 3 focuses on successive UK governance programmes in Sudan between 2015 and 2019. Section 4 describes the KLP CA course (2017-2018) and its development. Section 5 looks at the revolutionary hiatus and brief transition to civilian rule in Sudan (2017-2018). This is followed by an account in Section 6 of the 2019-2023 transitional phase and dashed hopes for a move to civilian rule with the outbreak of a civil war that has led to exceptional violence (including weaponised sexual violence), displacement and hunger. Section 7 concludes with reflections on missed opportunities to capitalise on the KLP CA experiment, and with recommendations on the need for continued support on PEA for Sudanese people and organisations.

RAAM Toolkit: A Toolkit for Reduced Access Analytical Methods - RAAM Project (USAID & Mercycorps, 2024)
The Reduced Access Analytical Methods (RAAM) toolkit is a practical resource designed to help humanitarian practitioners overcome monitoring challenges in reduced access environments. Reduced access can be caused by natural disaster, conflict, political instability, or other factors, and typically makes it difficult to conduct normal monitoring of program implementation. The RAAM toolkit offers technical and managerial tools for a menu of analytical methods that can fill information gaps and/or improve data quality during reduced access program monitoring. RAAM supplements (but does not replace) traditional Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL). The analytical methods covered by the RAAM toolkit were designed to address commonly-encountered information gaps and data quality issues in reduced access environments. The toolkit covers the following methods: Data Triangulation: Systematic comparison of multiple data sources to improve the reliability and accuracy of program data, helping to identify strengths and weaknesses in information. Context Mapping: Layering various data sources on a map to understand factors that may impact program activities, such as access changes or conflict trends. Rumor Tracking: Monitoring unverified information in communities to identify potential gaps, implementation issues, or early signs of violence, enabling timely interventions. Remote Sensing: Using satellite or aerial data to monitor physical conditions and changes in implementation areas from a distance. Transaction Analysis: Analysing digital transaction data from cash or voucher assistance programs to understand usage patterns, vendor capacity, and more. Available in French, Spanish, and Arabic.

Local Systems Position Paper - USAID (USAID, 2024)
The Local Systems Position Paper describes the key approaches USAID will use to translate systems thinking into systems practice. It focuses on ways USAID can better understand and engage local systems to support them in producing more sustainable results. Systems thinking is a mindset and set of tools that we use to understand how systems behave and produce certain results or outcomes. Systems practice is the application of systems thinking to better understand challenges and strengthen the capacity of local systems to unlock locally led, sustained progress. The shift from systems thinking to systems practice is driven by a desire to integrate systems practice throughout the Program Cycle and increase our capacity to actively and adaptively manage programming in ways that recognize complexity and help make our programs more effective and sustainable. These approaches will be utilized alongside and within the context of USAID’s policies and guidance, including technical guidance for specific sectors, as well as evidence and lessons learned from partners around the world. Systems thinking is a long-standing discipline that can serve as a powerful tool for understanding and working with local systems. It has been a consistent component of USAID’s decades-long commitment to locally led development and humanitarian assistance. USAID uses systems thinking to better understand the complex and interrelated challenges we confront – from climate change to migration to governance – and the perspectives of diverse stakeholders on these issues. When we understand challenges as complex systems – where outcomes emerge from the interactions and relationships between actors and elements in that system – we can leverage and help strengthen the local capacities and relationships that will ultimately drive sustainable progress. Recognizing this, in 2014, USAID released the Local Systems Framework, outlining ten principles to help USAID staff, partners, and local stakeholders place local systems at the center of all of our efforts to promote sustainability. Since then, development and humanitarian actors have embraced systems thinking as a concept and reiterated its importance in other policies, strategies, and tools, across sectors and regions. When USAID released its Localization Vision and Approach in 2022, it included local systems practice as a core component of adapting policies and program practices. Building on the success of the Local Systems Framework, this position paper reiterates USAID’s commitment to systems practice and presents six approaches that will help USAID strengthen and further embed systems practice in all of our work

Innovation Carve-Outs: Curating the space for innovation - Rahman, Asad; Brink (Brink, 2024)
Over the course of this paper we lay out the basis of the Carve-Out method, an approach that leverages a behavioural framework to allow organisations (even those burdened with layers of bureaucracy and entrenched ideas) to create intentionally designed environments that give people the space, resources and support they need to explore and test new ideas. Ideas that may go on to transform the core of their organisation. The Carve-Out method is based on a simple insight: That if we want to deliver real world, enduring impact then we must recognise that it’s real (often irrational, always human) people that are doing the work of innovating. So to deliver the outcomes we seek for people and our planet then we must explore and unlock the human behaviours that we need to get us there. The Carve-Out method makes this possible by creating the conditions for continuous innovation so that existing teams are empowered to explore solutions and bring those transformational ideas to fruition. To get there, first we look at the idea of the innovation lab or ‘skunkworks’: typically physical spaces, built away from business-as-usual constraints and processes where a small team can move quickly and with relative autonomy. We explore the legacy skunkworks principles have left on our contemporary innovation landscape, for example, how the iPhone was developed by a skunkworks team at Apple, as well as the proliferation of government innovation labs in the public sector. We then go on to examine some of the downsides involved in creating isolated innovation units, particularly the potential disconnect between the innovation process and core business operations, and the result this can have on products that might lack relevance to the market or practical applicability to the company’s mainline business. The second section of the paper looks at another model of organisational innovation, which has been adopted by tech companies such as Google and Netflix. This bottom-up model, exemplified by Google’s ‘20% time’ policy, gave employees the freedom and dedicated resources to explore transformative innovations. The paper looks at how these companies leveraged their employees to fuel ‘strategic risk-taking’, but also how this introduced significant pressure on individuals, and the difficulties in sustaining this level of innovation while scaling over the long term. In the third section we introduce the CarveOut method for organisational innovation: a powerful solution for organisations seeking to foster a culture of ideation experimentation, empower teams, and accelerate the development of impactful innovations and drive sustainable growth. Here we show how systematic, continuous, scalable innovation requires genuine integration and the application of behavioural science practices. This combination allows both for the creation of the space, time, and resources for innovation, as well as carving out the psychological and emotional space necessary for changemakers to thrive and grow within an organisation. Through multiple examples we show how designing and shaping the ‘innovation environment’, it is possible to create an integrated and agile system of organisational innovation that allows for the ‘carving out’ of time, resources and space, but also of cognitive bandwidth and the environmental conditions that enable individuals and teams to take creative risks, embrace new perspectives, and engage fully in the innovation process. We lay out five key principles that underpin the Carve-Out model: 1. Commit to evolving and create structures to enable it 2. Keep the people, change the mindsets 3. Learn fast, fail small 4. Invest and scale in line with confidence 5. Do in order to learn The final section of the paper looks at how the Carve-Out method has been successfully applied in real-world scenarios across a number of sectors. The first story looks at how behaviourally informed features were brought to bear on the Frontier Tech Hub, a programme that supports government officials in the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to explore radical, early-stage tech ideas that might solve big development challenges and in doing so, evolve the innovation culture of a government department. In the second story we look at how, after the COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures, Lebanon-based NGO Jusoor worked alongside Brink to explore and test a new way of ensuring access to education for refugee children that would eventually shift the whole education system. And in the third story we explore how the uBoraBora fund for education implementers in sub-Saharan Africa, supported teams to take an experimental approach to exploring and testing key questions to enhance their product or service alongside their businessas-usual, and integrate what they learn with governments’ education systems. We end the paper by asking our readers to imagine what could be achieved if they could dedicate a small portion of their organisation’s time and resources to create the conditions for innovation, so their teams could operate with a different set of rules, and be empowered to explore solutions in a safe and supportive environment. We also provide links to a number of tools and resources created by Brink so others can begin to put the ideas found in this paper into action in their work.

Relationality: How Moving from Transactional to Transformational Relationships Can Reshape Our Lonely World - Jay, David (North Atlantic Books, 2024)
How moving from transactional to transformational relationships and organizations can save our democracy, nurture our connections, and make us happier and healthier. Powerful institutions, from schools to tech and social media companies, create breeding grounds for isolation by failing to invest in relational work. This obstacle stands in the way of our fight for racial equity, economic justice, and climate resilience. In Relationality, leading asexuality and relationship activist David Jay brings clarity to the crisis with a fresh perspective that expands upon the fundamental idea that all entities in the universe are connected. Jay draws from a range of vivid personal experiences, including his time spent helping tech workers and policymakers reform social media. This book is for people who believe in the power of relationships and want to see increased investment in relational work. Its scientifically grounded framework will help readers foster conversations about relational work, establish conditions for relationships to thrive, and quantify the impact of them. Equipping professionals and activists involved in nonprofit, political, and other types of relational work with the knowledge they need to fight for and utilize resources, Relationality shares valuable insight on: - The history of why institutions fail to invest in relationships - Reimagining ROI calculations to account for relational work - Using tools of prediction and emergence theory to build communities - How stories and data about relationships can help us direct resources toward relational work - Relational economics and the redistribution of wealth With isolation and loneliness on the rise in a post-lockdown world, Relationality offers a roadmap to nourish our connections toward a better, more liberated world—personally, organizationally, and in community.

Financing System Health: The Pando Fund - Ricigliano, Rob (Medium, 2024)
By Robert Ricigliano and Anna Muoio

The Strategy Testing Workbook: Politically-Smart Adaptive Programming in Complex Environments - Nixon, Nicola; O'Donnell, Carolyn; Rajalingam, Gobie; Tweedie, Pauline; Sullivan, Elizabeth (The Asia Foundation, 2024)
The guide begins with a section on what we at TAF have learned about practicing Strategy Testing, highlighting things that we didn’t know when we started out. Some of these lessons may seem obvious, but others may strike you as less so. In any case, we believe that, when taken together, they provide a useful reminder of some of the pitfalls that arise in efforts to practice Adaptive Management. Moreover, they help to remind us that there are multiple layers to doing Strategy Testing effectively as a system instead of reducing it to its component parts and applying them mechanistically. Thus these lessons are useful to read now and to revisit later. The guide then comprises three more sections: • Part 1, the Design Stage, involves constructing the system and making sure everyone is on board; • Part 2, the Inception Phase (start-up phase), helps the implementing team to make the leap from the ideal initially set out in the design stage to the grounding, support, and frameworks that the team will need to implement Strategy Testing in a meaningful and impactful way. We’ve found that the gap between design and implementation is very often the cause of an ineffective ‘all talk and no walk’ approach to Adaptive Management. And finally; • Part 3 covers Program Implementation – the practices, knowledge, and culture needed for the feedback loop that underpins Strategy Testing. The guide can be used for individual or group learning, or it can be used directly to inform Reflection Sessions (see Section 3) through the questions we raise or the activities herein.

“Everyone is talking about it, but no one is doing it”: How implementation research is – or isn’t – informing adaptation towards scale in international education - Dowd, Amy Jo (International Journal of Educational Development, 2024)
With growing evidence of what works in education, governments and their partners strive towards scale. While implementation research to adapt solutions holds promise for testing what works, where and for whom, its use in education is limited. Sixty-three international education stakeholders from government, academia, think tanks, local and international non-governmental organizations, multi- and bi-laterals and foundations offer insight into three modes of implementation research that differ on responsiveness, timeliness and stakeholder collaboration. They speak to the primacy of government involvement, trust and curiosity in collaborative efforts. This study explores enabling factors for evidence-based implementation improvement on the pathway to scale.
Keywords: Evidence-based practice; Implementation research; International education

Exploring causal pathways amid complexity - Lynn, Jewlya; Apgar, Marina (Research Handbook on Program Evaluation, 2024)
Evaluation has a long history of using experimental and quasi-experimental designs to measure the effects of programs and strategies, and through this, to infer causality. Yet, these approaches are often not appropriate when evaluating change in complex, dynamic systems. Further, programs and strategies that seek to produce change in complex settings are increasingly common. This leads to an evaluation dilemma: if and how do evaluators attend to causality amid complexity? Too often, the answer has been to use causal thinking in the design of the evaluation and interpretation of findings, but not incorporate causal analysis and inference. In practice, this allows for assumptions about how change happens to go unchallenged. In this chapter, we explore the use of causal analysis through methods designed to attend to complexity and context, strengthened by participatory implementation, that can be implemented with rigor.
Section: Research Handbook on Program Evaluation

Passing in the Dark: Making Visible Philanthropy’s Hidden and Conflicting Mental Models for Systems Change - Lynn, Jewlya; Coffman, Julia (The Foundation Review, 2024)
Exploring two systems change mental models in philanthropy [ https://evaluationinnovation.org/publication/systems-mental-models/ ] it is an increasingly shared truth: If we want to tackle society’s worst problems, we must bring a systems lens to our social change efforts. We define “systems change” here as the practice of confronting the causes of social problems rather than treating their symptoms. Many in philanthropy are taking this stance, and are shaping their portfolios, strategies, evaluation, and grants management approaches to recognize what is required to shift complex and dynamic systems. We support this focus and think it is critical to address the way systems keep problems stuck in place and create inequitable outcomes.* When we don’t make our mental models visible, we risk undermining our efforts. At the same time, we see that philanthropy and those that work in it (including ourselves as longtime systems change strategists and evaluators) have not been making visible our mental models about how and why systems change. By mental models, we mean the deeply held beliefs and assumptions and ways of seeing the world that we use to examine problems and generate solutions. Our mental models drive how we work and achieve impact. But sometimes the systems change approaches that program staff, strategy consultants, and evaluators use are based on competing mental models or models that are not a good fit for the systems, problems, strategies, or practices they are using. In our experience, this ultimately undermines the work. We see two mental models about systems change at play in philanthropy. While many mental models apply to systems change work, we see two dominating the philanthropic sector—the systems dynamics mental model and the systems emergence mental model.** We do not advocate for one mental model over another. While our article compares the two models and emphasizes how they differ so that their distinctions are clear, we want to avoid binary or either-or thinking about their application. We think that certain systems and problems call for the use of one mental model over the other, but there are also systems and problems where the use of both mental models simultaneously can be useful and appropriate. The systems dynamics mental model is more common in philanthropy. This model is grounded in the work of well-known thought leaders like Donella Meadows and Jay Forrester. The mental model leads to: Strategies that focus on leverage points, or places where focused effort and resources can have an outsized impact on the system. These are often part of feedback loops in the system, where one dynamic feeds into another. Strategies often focus on policy or legal changes, changes in power, narrative change, resource changes, or even changing the field of actors working on an issue. Grantmaking focused on chosen points of leverage. Theories of change that predict short- and long-term outcomes, including hypothesized causal relationships. Often these are less linear than a programmatic theory of change, but they still predict how change will happen. Evaluation that focuses on determining whether theorized change processes are playing out as expected. Use of tools like systems maps, causal loop diagrams, field-building assessments, and social network analyses, and theory-driven methods like contribution analysis and process tracing. The systems emergence mental model deserves more attention. This mental model draws on thinking from complexity, critical race, social capital, and ecological systems theories, among others. While terms here are Western in origin, the culturally embedded approaches to systems thinking in Indigenous communities align most closely with this mental model and have significantly informed this way of thinking about how systems change (see, for example, the work of Common Ground, Melanie Goodchild, and Don McIntyre, Geneva Cloutis, & Dan McCarthy). This mental model leads to: Strategies that are non-linear and decentralized, where opportunities to influence change are experimented with and discovered, released when no longer relevant, and learned from throughout. Strategies focus on parts of the system that seem ripe for attention (e.g., green shoots of innovation, underutilized or unexplored parts of the system, the most hidden aspects of the system), even when it is not clear what acting in these areas might lead to. Grantmaking that enables time-based experiments and long-term partnerships with like minded, values-aligned organizations. It engages those most affected by the problem and may attempt to change who has leadership over systems and solutions. A line of sight that describes a future worth achieving (what the system could be), but that does not make upfront predictions about a precise chain of outcomes to get there. Hypotheses and other loose storytelling about how change might happen, rather than the defined pathways featured in theories of change. Emergent outcomes, leveraging real-time and deeply embedded learning led by program staff or facilitated by a developmental evaluator. Use of tools like emergent strategy, the Cynefin framework, emergent learning, futures thinking, and participatory systems sensing. Our mental models need to be fit for purpose. Our thesis is that the mental models we use should match the systems being changed and what is known (or not) about those systems. Reasons for using a particular mental model should not be driven solely by what has been tried before in a different system (what is familiar), what tools are already available (what is easily accessed through trusted consultants), or by standardized reporting and accountability requirements that apply across the foundation regardless of strategy approach (what is organizationally normed). We see both mental models at play in systems change efforts in philanthropy, and we also see mismatches occurring between mental models and philanthropic practices. In our full article, we offer three case studies–two that illustrate how each mental model plays out in a real-life foundation strategy, and one where mental models were in conflict. Read the full article to go deeper. Systems change thinking and scholarship is heady stuff and often overly intellectualized. We try to avoid this in our article by using metaphors and storytelling and by offering concrete tools to explore your own models. We also explore how these mental models relate to our shared commitments to equity and trust-based philanthropy. We’re curious to hear from you. What are the mental models you’re using and why? Are you seeing additional models ? What happens when models are aligned or in conflict with systems change strategies or evaluations?

Reflecting Forewords - Chambers, Robert; Lewin, Tessa (Practical Action Publishing, 2024)
Reflecting Forewords is an unashamedly ambitious book. Full of lessons from the past that are relevant for the future, it is a compilation of inspiring forewords from books written by Robert Chambers; one of the most influential and prolific scholars to write about participation, poverty, and knowledge in development studies. Tessa Lewin, Robert’s colleague and an experienced practitioner and researcher, has worked with Robert to weave together the forewords alongside a series of reflections from other practitioners and scholars in the field. In our world of dramatic unforeseeable change, Reflecting Forewords seeks to draw lessons and present insights that should not be ephemeral, but can contribute on a lasting way to policy, practice and research in the rest of our 21st century. Readers will draw their own conclusions. The orientation is forward-looking into our unpredictable future, stressing the need to be alert, in touch, nimble, and guided by reflexivity. This curated collection of resurfaced gems will inspire development professionals, teachers and graduate students of development studies, policymakers, historians of development thinking and practice, activists, and all those who are concerned with a better life for all.
Pages: 1-140

Bridging Learning and Action: How Did CLARISSA’s Participatory Adaptive Management Approach Foster Innovation, Effectiveness, and Stakeholder Empowerment? - Prieto Martin, Pedro; Apgar, Marina; Afroze, Jiniya; Arulanantham, Amit; Hicks, Jacqueline; Karki, Shanta; Mareschal, Sophie; Paul, Sukanta; Snijder, Mieke; Uddin, Forhad; Veitch, Helen (Institute of Development Studies, 2024)
Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) is an evidence and innovation-generation programme funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), responding to the challenge of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL) in Bangladesh and Nepal. It is a challenge characterised by a poor understanding of its drivers and a lack of evidence on what works to combat it. To handle such fundamental uncertainty, the programme adopts a child-centric and participatory action research approach, which is supported by an adaptive management model to respond better to challenges and opportunities. From its inception, the programme needed to navigate shocks and challenges, such as Covid-19 lockdowns, political upheaval, and sustained budget cuts, which put its capacity to learn and evolve to the test. This paper shares insights emerging from evaluating CLARISSA’s participatory adaptive management (PAM) practices, connecting them with current discussions on adaptive management. It provides an in-depth evaluation of CLARISSA’s PAM approach, exploring how adaptive strategies were implemented and evolved throughout the programme’s life cycle. Multiple cases of adaptation and misadaptation were selected and analysed through a series of in-depth interviews and review of programme documentation, allowing us to assess whether and how the adaptive management practices have been operationalised, the degree to which they led to enhanced decision-making and effectiveness, and their empowering effect on children and other programme stakeholders. Through conceptual analysis and real-world examples, the paper examines the key stages and critical dimensions of PAM, conveying the complexities and dynamism of adaptive management in development work, while highlighting both the successes and challenges encountered in operationalising PAM within CLARISSA.
Accepted: 2024-05-10T08:21:46Z

A Manifesto for the Platform Organization - Cicero, Simone; Quintarelli, Emanuele; Ruggeri, Luca (Boundaryless, 2024)
Discover the future of organizational structure with the Platform Organization Manifesto. Our guiding principles provide a blueprint for dynamic, adaptable businesses designed to thrive in a constantly changing marketplace. Harness the power of entrepreneurial spirit, cooperation, innovation, and key design principles to empower corporate evolution.

Partnering with communities to co-design humanitarian health strategies: A SeeChange CommunityFirst Framework for implementation in MSF projects - Chapela Trillo, Violeta; Farber, Jessica (MSF, 2024)
The CommunityFirst Framework is intended to be implemented by field teams at MSF. The theoretical aspects and evidence presented on the importance of community engagement are intended for all MSF staff seeking to learn more about why and how to shift the way we work with communities as humanitarians. We believe this guideline, and other tools like it (including OCA’s Person-Centred Approach Guidance07, and MSF Vienna Evaluation Unit’s Guidance for Involving Communities08), to be an important contribution to the growing movement of communities and humanitarian actors who are pushing for changes in the humanitarian system that translate to dignity, health, justice, equity and self-determination for communities around the world. Specifically, the CommunityFirst Framework is intended to guide MSF teams to co-design health strategies with communities, throughout all stages of the project cycle, for exploratory missions, projects that are just opening, projects that have been running for some time, or those that are closing. At the time of publication, the CommunityFirst Framework has been tested in pilot projects in: (1) Madre de Dios, Peru (MSF OCP, August 2022), (2) Tonkolili, Sierra Leone (MSF OCA, November 2022) and (3) Anzoátegui, Venezuela (MSF OCB, February 2023) The experiences from these pilots (feedback from teams, implementation results, adaptations to each context, etc.) have informed the adaptation of the Framework. CommunityFirst builds on existing community engagement work inside MSF and contributes a practical framework for co-designing health initiatives with communities. To avoid duplicating efforts and resources around community engagement inside MSF, the appendices in this guideline largely refer to already existing MSF resources.09 This guideline is meant to be a living document that can evolve and be adapted given the experience of MSF staff and community members and diverse community contexts. This guide can be used by anyone in MSF who is interested in partnering with communities to improve the responsiveness and impact of their humanitarian programs. This is the first iteration of the document. Subsequent iterations will be published based on additional testing during future phases of the CommunityFirst TIC project.

The Radical How - Greenway, Andrew; Loosemore, Tom (Nesta and Public Digital, 2024)
Any mission-focused government should be well equipped to define, from day one, what outcomes it wants to bring about. But radically changing what the government does is only part of the challenge. We also need to change how government does things. The usual methods, we argue in this paper, are too prone to failure and delay. There’s a different approach to public service organisation, one based on multidisciplinary teams, starting with citizen needs, and scaling iteratively by testing assumptions. We’ve been arguing in favour of it for years now, and the more it gets used, the more we see success and timely delivery. We think taking a new approach makes it possible to shift government from an organisation of programmes and projects, to one of missions and services. It offers even constrained administrations an opportunity to improve their chances of delivering outcomes, reducing risk, saving money, and rebuilding public trust. The Radical How in a nutshell The struggles and shortcomings of delivering in government are well rehearsed. Many of the root causes that make it tough have been restated several times over several decades. But what to do? We believe the government can and should change how it delivers, by: organising around multidisciplinary teams embracing incremental, feedback-driven iteration focusing more on outcomes. The Radical How is a change of mindset as much as a change in organisation. It promotes methods and processes that have been shown to work, multiple times, at scale. They are the default ways of working for many of the world’s most successful companies. However, the occasions where they have been deployed are rare in government. These occasions have come about thanks to exceptional leaders, exceptional circumstances, or both. We think they’d make a big difference if they became the norm, rather than the exception. We also think that without them, mission oriented government will not become a reality. New policy ideas will remain just that, rather than translating into profound improvements to society. Central to this approach is the widespread adoption of internet-era ways of working. This paper explains both those and our thinking in more detail, with reference to real examples.

Doing weeknotes - What weeknotes are, how weeknotes work, and how to start writing weeknotes of your own - Turnbull, Giles (Use the Human Voice, 2024)
Doing weeknotes brings together various things I’ve written about weeknotes in different places. This text expands on things I wrote in The agile comms handbook, as well as various blog posts. Quite a lot of it is brand new. - Weeknotes for beginners - Why write weeknotes - The weeknotes rules - Weeknotes within the corporate environment - What weeknotes can bring about - Examples of good weeknotes - How to write weeknotes - Weeknotes tips and tricks - Further reading

Social Accountability 3.0: Engaging Citizens to Increase Systemic Responsiveness. Background Paper - Guerzovich, Florencia; Aston, Tom (Grupo Politeia, ESAG, UDESC and act4delivery, 2024)
Social accountability has become increasingly important to development programming since the 2004 World Development Report spearheaded its first generation of programming. In 2016, Thomas Carothers synthesized global experts’ perspectives on what became known as the second generation. With an evolving global context, new research and evaluations and tacit knowledge on how those assumptions played out in practice, the time is ripe for asking what the evidence since 2004 can tell us about what the social accountability’s next generation might look like? This meta-analysis takes stock of that knowledge through a systems lens and presents a possible “social accountability 3.0.” It draws on a database of 157 cases of initiatives implemented by different civil society organizations around the world and the lived experience of practitioners. Scholarly debates present practitioners’ options in binary terms, contrasting 1.0 minimalist and 2.0 maximalist options. The review finds that this binary is inaccurate and misleading; it masks practitioners’ diverse interpretations of 2.0 and range of feasibility considerations. Instead, work in the last decade looks more like a mosaic. By opening the analysis to the broader range of evidence, and reflecting more critically on scholars’ assumptions, a more adaptable middle path for social accountability 3.0 emerges. Its key outcomes include contributing to systemic responsiveness and an operational mechanism to rework the social contract.

How to be more agentic - Hall, Cate (Useful Fictions, 2024)
On a supposedly difficult thing

Learning Towards Zero: Learning in + from Practice in Systems Innovation - Burkett, Ingrid (Good Shift, 2024)
In early 2021 we were asked to support two initiatives in South-East Queensland by undertaking a developmental evaluation of how they collaborated across multiple partners to reduce, prevent and ultimately end homelessness. The initiatives, Brisbane and Logan Zero, started with the ‘Advance to Zero’ methodology, and adapted this as they progressed. We were asked to track how contributors collaborated to tackle the systemic nature of this challenge. This gave us the opportunity to work with both initiatives over a two year period to reflect back to them how change was happening towards the outcome, and to track learnings focused on systemic change along the way. While the evaluation report captures the details of this exploration, there were a myriad of insights from the process that could inform other systemic innovation initiatives - so this Learnbook outlines these. So much can be learnt from these initiatives that could help others seeking to create multi-sector and multi-organisation alliances for systemic change. Systemic work is, by its very nature, complex work. Anyone who is embarking on this type of work needs to be comfortable with learning forward, and working with diverse approaches that are context dependent. We share learnings not to suggest that this is ‘the’ way to undertake systems innovation, but to share one way that is showing promise in a particular context. This Learnbook outlines four key insights that could inform systemic change initiatives. 1. Human systems are complex and dynamic. When we are working in complex domains, we need to ‘learn forward’. 2. Shifting systems requires collaboration across multiple structures, sectors and organisations. The way collaboration is organised shapes action. And if the context is complex, then organising needs to be adaptive. 3. Leading systemic shifts is about collaborating, sharing power and distributing action. Governance models need to adapt to dynamic action and collaborative leading. 4. Data is critical, but let’s be clear about the type of data that is needed and how it is used. Action towards systemic change in human systems requires human-centred, lead data.

Guidance Note: Evaluation Criteria - Chaplowe, Scott; Child, Keith; AF-TERG (Adaptation Fund, 2024)

Critical systems thinking: a practitioner's guide - Jackson, Michael C. (Wiley, 2024)
"Critical systems thinking is a multiperspectival and multimethodological approach to complex problems that takes advantage of the variety of systems approaches, aware of their different strengths and weaknesses"–
Keywords: Leadership; System analysis; System theory

Systems-aware social accountability: Harnessing Practitioner Insights for More Responsive Governance - Guerzovich, Florencia (Pact, 2023)
The framework’s four principles, described below, are not exclusive to social accountability interventions; for example, Pact has published tools on how to use political economy analysis or integrate adaptive management principles into programming. Rather, the principles highlight how – by including the right combination of mindsets, management approaches, analytic approaches and tools – practitioners can develop and apply a deep understanding of a system to improve relationships within it, in support of greater accountability and improved service delivery. - Use a Holistic Lens - Recognize that there is always a system; understand and engage with it​: Developing a strong understanding of the system in which a project works and effectively integrating this knowledge into implementation increases the chances that local actors will sustain the interventions. - Right Fit the Approach​ - Equipped with a holistic understanding of the context, teams identify where they have a comparative advantage in a specific system. In other words, they identify where their resources, expertise and partners have the greatest potential for impact, then set realistic targets that they revise periodically. -Orchestrate Across The System -​ Practitioners take a networked, rather than a top-down, approach to capitalize on their convening power and maximize opportunity to facilitate the most-promising alignments across and within their projects, portfolios and systems. Orchestrators use their individual power, relationships and insight into the local system to enable, not impose, promising interactions and mitigate the risks of damaging ones. - Manage Adaptively - Monitor, evaluate and reflect on emerging patterns of data, evidence and learning to inform decision-making within and, equally importantly, across project cycles. Where possible, practitioners should consider how to use short-term projects to play a long-term game by linking new projects to the lessons and results of their predecessors and ensuring that they are responsive to the evolving context, particularly opportunities, limits and risks.

Practicing what we preach — our experience rethinking M&E in complex settings - Bina, Andrea; Vester, Søren (UNDP Strategic Innovation, 2023)
The UNDP has been exploring new approaches to M&E to better understand and address complex systems challenges. Traditional linear project-based planning and evaluation methods are insufficient for dealing with the unpredictable nature of such systems. The UNDP’s new Strategic Plan calls for a shift in M&E practices to align with the complexity of today’s global challenges. Key points from the blog post include: Learning and Adapting: There’s a need for continuous learning and adaptation in M&E practices to effectively address complex problems like transitioning to a circular economy. Longer Time Horizons: Substantive change takes time, and it’s often unclear what the results will look like, making it difficult to track progress. Aggregate Impact: Evaluating interconnected interventions as a portfolio is crucial because they cannot be assessed in isolation. Contribution vs. Attribution: Focusing on the contribution to broader change processes is more important than attributing specific outcomes to individual actions. The UNDP has initiated the M&E Sandbox to experiment with and learn from innovative M&E practices. This collaborative space has attracted participants from over 180 organizations, highlighting a shared interest in evolving M&E to better understand change in contexts of uncertainty. A partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also been formed to focus on M&E in food systems. The blog post emphasizes the importance of embracing uncertainty, experimenting, and collaborating to contribute to positive change in complex settings1.

Insights for Influence: Understanding Impact Pathways in Crisis Response - Clark, Louise; Carpenter, Jo; Taylor, Joe (Institute of Development Studies, 2023)
The Covid-19 Responses for Equity (CORE) programme was a three-year initiative funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) that brought together 20 projects from across the global South to understand the socioeconomic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, improve existing responses, and generate better policy options for recovery. The research covered 42 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East to understand the ways in which the pandemic affected the most vulnerable people and regions, and deepened existing vulnerabilities. Research projects covered a broad range of themes, including macroeconomic policies for support and recovery; supporting essential economic activity and protecting informal businesses, small producers, and women workers; and promoting democratic governance to strengthen accountability, social inclusion, and civil engagement. The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) provided knowledge translation (KT) support to CORE research partners to maximise the learning generated across the research portfolio and deepen engagement with governments, civil society, and the scientific community. As part of this support, the IDS KT team worked with CORE project teams to reconstruct and reflect on their impact pathways to facilitate South-South knowledge exchange on effective strategies for research impact, and share learning on how the CORE cohort has influenced policy and delivered change. This report presents an overview of these impact pathways and the lessons learnt from a selection of the projects chosen to represent the diversity of approaches to engage policymakers, civil society, and the media to generate and share evidence of the effect of the pandemic on diverse vulnerable groups.
Accepted: 2023-11-10T12:56:06Z

How AI Fits into Lean Six Sigma - Holweg, Matthias; Davenport, Thomas H.; Snyder, Ken (Harvard Business Review, 2023)
AI already is being used in some areas of process improvement, and the usage of this technology — including generative AI — promises to grow. That’s because it can perform tasks faster and much less expensively than humans alone. But it will never fully replace people — and that poses management challenges.
Section: Operations and supply chain management

Challenge-led Innovation Workbook. Organising for Systems Innovation at Scale - Burkett, Ingrid (Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation, 2023)
Organising for Systems Innovation at Scale Our team at Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation have been experimenting with and evolving a Challenge-led Innovation Approach (based on Mission-oriented approaches developed by Mariana Mazzucato at UCL IIPP and others internationally). We are using this approach to guide the way we work internally and engage with our systems innovation partners. We’ve facilitated intensive Re:Treats, worked with government bodies, businesses and civic organisations, and engaged deeply with others exploring this work. We have a bias for developing and testing HOW such approaches could be applied to respond to both local and global challenges rather than getting too caught up in the what and why of such approaches. We decided to openly share our learnings and thinking to date in this workbook, to spark conversations and innovation in both practice and thinking amongst those exploring how we work, and to learn together to address complex systems and challenges. We see this booklet as a first step in a longer learning journey. In it we share an overview of: the principles and processes that sparked our evolution to a Challenge-led Innovation framework (from Mission-oriented). examples of our learnings from other system innovators who are experimenting. an adaptable process to help guide the learning journey. learning tools and canvases to catalyse thinking, practice, and further adaptations. Part One sets out some foundations we’ve identified as important to Challenge-led Innovation. If you want to jump straight into the mapping process, we suggest you skip to Part Two. The final section, Part Three, focuses on what we have learnt about the conditions needed and how to get started on a Challenge-led initiative.

Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things - Grant, Adam (WH Allen, 2023)
#1 New York Times bestseller "This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would've helped me find a more joyful path to progress."-Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis championThe #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distances we ourselves can travel. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess – it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.

Anatomy of Social Accountability 3.0: A working framework for moving forward - Guerzovich, Florencia; Aston, Tom (Florianopolis, SC, Brazil: Grupo Politeia, ESAG, University of the State of Santa Catarina and act4delivery, 2023)
This note presents the key components of a potential next generation of social accountability programming. The key aspects outlined emerge from a review of over 150 cases as well as tacit knowledge from dozens of practitioners (Guerzovich and Aston, 2023).The main thread of social accountability 3.0 and what distinguishes it from previous generations is a focus on its contribution towards more responsive systems and accountable social contracts. In particular, social accountability should be considered as an operational means to rework social contracts.Over the last two decades, the field has been defined by a supposed dichotomy between minimalist (i.e., “widget” based) approach or a maximalist (“go big or go home”) approaches. Yet, most practice sits somewhere between these extremes. The paper presents various options derived from practice; practitioners should choose whichever best fits their own particular circumstances.Those hoping to improve and expand their practice with a systems-lens may benefit from considering how they approach the key elements of social accountability 3.0.
Keywords: accountability; development; responsiveness; social accountability; social contract; systems

How adaptive M&E from the peace sector can help demonstrate the value of aid - Kratzer, Sebastian (2023)
Over the last decade, the peace sector has been developing and adapting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and tools to fit their contexts and ways of working. This evolution may hold some insights for the aid community in how to go beyond more traditional, backwards-looking M&E to navigate today’s volatile, interest-based world of politics and aid.

Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences - Koch, Dirk-Jan (Routledge, 2023)
Foreign aid and international development frequently bring with it a range of unintended consequences, both negative and positive. This book delves into these consequences, providing a fresh and comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing them. The book starts by laying out a theoretical framework based on complexity thinking, before going on to explore the ten most prevalent kinds of unintended effects of foreign aid: backlash effects, conflict effects, migration and resettlement effects, price effects, marginalization effects, behavioural effects, negative spillover effects, governance effects, environmental effects, and ripple effects. Each chapter revolves around a set of concrete case studies, analysing the mechanisms underpinning the unintended effects and proposing ways in which policymakers, practitioners, and evaluators can tackle negative side effects and maximize positive side effects. The book also includes personal testimonies, a succinct overview of unintended effects, and suggestions for further reading. Providing a clear overview of what side effects to anticipate when planning, executing, and evaluating aid, this book will be an important resource for students, development practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Is the problem driven iterative adaptation approach (PDIA) a panacea for public financial management reform? Evidence from six African countries - Lawson, Andrew; Harris, Jamelia (World Development Perspectives, 2023)
This article assesses the application of the problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) approach to public financial management reform in six African countries. It draws on primary data collected using a mix of interviews, overt participation observations and a short survey. PDIA responds to shortcomings in orthodox approaches to reform and technical assistance in developing countries. It stresses local solutions to local problems, achieved through experimentation and adaptation. The principles of PDIA are appealing, but its empirical assessment is in its infancy. This study aims to fill part of this gap. Findings show that PDIA delivers results in the short-term, particularly in cases where there is an influential authorising agent and dedicated team. Progress was less forthcoming for reforms that required high level political buy-in from senior officials. The approach does exceptionally well to develop staff capability, transferable skills, and local empowerment to solve local problems, thus potentially benefitting future reforms.

Fractal approaches to scaling transformations to sustainability - O’Brien, Karen; Carmona, Rosario; Gram-Hanssen, Irmelin; Hochachka, Gail; Sygna, Linda; Rosenberg, Milda (Ambio, 2023)
Responses to sustainability challenges are not delivering results at the scale and speed called for by science, international agreements, and concerned citizens. Yet there is a tendency to underestimate the large-scale impacts of small-scale, local, and contextualized actions, and particularly the role of individuals in scaling transformations. Here, we explore a fractal approach to scaling sustainability transformations based on “universal values.” Universal values are proposed as intrinsic characteristics that connect humans and nature in a coherent, acausal way. Drawing on the Three Spheres of Transformation framework, we consider how enacting universal values can generate fractal-like patterns of sustainability that repeat recursively across scales. Fractal approaches shift the focus from scaling through “things” (e.g., technologies, behaviors, projects) to scaling through a quality of agency based on values that apply to all. We discuss practical steps involved in fractal approaches to scaling transformations to sustainability, provide examples, and conclude with questions for future research.
Keywords: Agency; Fractals; Relational paradigms; Scaling; Three Spheres of Transformation; Universal values

Gestión de la complejidad para el impacto sistémico: respuestas a entornos VUCA y BANI - Peña-López, Ismael (SociedadRed, 2023)
Research on the Information Society, the Digital Divide and Information and Communication Technologies for development

From mouthset to mindset shifts in co-creating systems change - Blomkamp, Emma; Snow, Thea; Burkett, Ingrid (Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation, 2023)

Lasting Roots: Naatal Mbay and the Integrated Finance Model in Senegal - Fowler, Ben; Courbois, Laura (USAID, 2023)
This report addresses the well-recognized evidence gap1 on the longer-term impacts created by marketdriven programming; specifically, programming influenced by market systems development (MSD) principles. It does so by presenting the findings of an ex-post study conducted three and a half years after the close of USAID’s Feed the Future Senegal Naatal Mbay Activity (hereafter Naatal Mbay) in 2019. It examines the scale and sustainability of changes resulting from Naatal Mbay’s introduction of an integrated finance model (IFM) – described in Error! Reference source not found. below – in the domestic rice sector. This study is one in a series of ex-post evaluations that are being conducted between 2023-2026 on USAID-funded MSD interventions around the world. This study focused on four questions, noted below in Figure 1. These were addressed using a mix of desk research, 122 key informant interviews with market actors and other stakeholders remotely and in Senegal, focus group discussions with 26 rice producers networks in Senegal, and a validation workshop with USAID/Senegal, implementing partner staff and market actors. Findings were analyzed leveraging the Disrupting System Dynamics (DSD) framework (see Figure 4 in the body of the report) as an analytical tool for understanding systems change.

Agile on steroids through the RenDanHeYi - Quintarelli, Emanuele (Boundaryless, 2023)
This article offers initial insights into the overlap, positioning, shared values, and convergences between RenDanHeYi compared to agile practices.

Fast Forwarding to Systems Maps of Corruption: Getting to Usable Analysis More Quickly - Woodrow, Peter (CJL, 2023)
For AC practitioners, systems mapping is essential but also difficult. To lessen obstacles, Peter Woodrow proposes a scaffolded approach. An Experiment in “Fast Forwarding” Drawing upon our near-decade work on corruption, we recently decided to try an experiment: we would present “common patterns” of corruption as tentative models to adapt and add to—rather than try to teach people to do systems mapping from scratch. In this teaching experiment, each common pattern would function as a kind of “scaffolding” or framework that participants can build on to generate a cogent systems map as the basis for identifying possible points of intervention and subsequent program planning.

Practitioners Guidance to Assessing Systems Change: Co-Authors Preview - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)
Check out this video to see what’s inside our new resource: Practitioners' Guidance to Assessing Systems Change, developed by MEL Managers for MEL Managers. (Check out the Guidance here https://bit.ly/MSPMELClinics.) Hear from the authors about which parts they love the most and how this guide challenges MEL managers to assess systems change as an ongoing aspect of implementation, generating feedback that teams need to better understand and catalyze change, for more impact.

Applying Adaptive Management in a Fragile Context – Case Study - Lonsdale, Jane; Green, Duncan; Robertson, Kelly (DT Global, 2023)
DT Global is proud to introduce our new Guidance Note: Practical Introduction to Adaptive Management There is a growing consensus around adaptive management as an effective (even necessary) approach when programs are tackling complex development problems. While there is no standard definition of adaptive management, there is general agreement that such programs need to routinely engage with and respond to program context; constantly test what works in that context; and adjust approaches, plans, and activities based on continuous learning. However, there remains a more limited body of evidence about what this looks like in practice—the enabling conditions, systems, resourcing, skills, and attitudes to effectively operationalise adaptive management. There is also limited guidance around when adaptive management is required, and to what extent—both critical and often overlooked considerations when planning for successful adaptive management. This Guidance Note draws together lessons and good practice in adaptive management from across DT Global’s diverse portfolio of donor-funded programs. It outlines our conceptual framework for adaptive management, with practical guidance on how it can be applied by our program teams. It is also designed to help our teams distinguish adaptive management from good (non adaptive) project management, consider when adaptive management is most useful on a program, and how adaptive a program (or part of a program) should be.

Applied political economy analysis for human rights programs and campaigns: A guide for practitioners (second edition) - Pact (Pact, 2023)
This updated guide provides practical guidance to practitioners in the human rights sector and beyond on how to integrate Applied Political Economy Analysis

Knowledge Retention and Transfer (KRT) - Model overview presentation - USAID (USAID, 2023)
What problem is the KRT model trying to solve? For workforces that experience continuous staff turnover, the lack of systematic knowledge transfer can often lead to: - Loss of programmatic momentum, - Duplication of efforts and frustration, and - Wasted time and resources. The Knowledge Retention and Transfer (KRT) model provides tools, processes, and practices to individuals, teams, offices, and organizations to improve knowledge handover, which in turn improves efficiency and programmatic and operational learning.

Evaluative reasoning in complexity - King, Julian (Evaluation and Value for Investment, 2023)

When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for Recasting Policy and Management in the Anthropocene - Roe, Emery (Institute for Development Studies, 2023)
Many readers recognise and understand that complex is about as simple as it gets for major policy and management. This guide is for those unwilling in the Anthropocene to shrink back into the older platitudes about ‘keep it simple’ and ‘not to worry, we’ll scale up the analysis later on’. This guide offers key concepts, methods, counternarratives, and analogies that recast major policy and management issues in ways that do not deny their complexity but help render them more tractable for action.
Accepted: 2023-06-06T09:51:20Z

How to Build Movements with Cyclical Patterns in Mind - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly - Algoso, Dave; Guerzovich, Florencia; Gattoni, Soledad (Nonprofit Quarterly, 2023)
The world changes too much for anyone who is invested in social change work to imagine that this work is linear and predictable. Opportunities come and go, whether caused by a pandemic or political shifts. This much most social movement leaders and activists intuitively understand. But what can be done with this realization? How might movement groups better prepare for moments of opportunity? We want to explore how we can create the changes we want to see by responding to the changes that are outside our control.

Participation for Humanitarian Innovation - Background Paper - Smith, Amy; Thompson, Martha; Saida Benhayoune; Crespo Cardona, Omar (Elrha, 2023)
A resource designed to help organisations, teams and individuals manage innovation journeys responsibly and successfully. We have partnered with MIT D-Lab to develop a new resource to drive greater diversity and inclusion within project design and implementation. The Participation for Humanitarian Innovation (PfHI) toolkit sets out a robust approach to setting expectations for and monitoring the degree of participation within research and innovation projects for, with, and by people affected by crisis. The PfHI toolkit is composed of five tools: Opportunity Adviser: Identify and prioritise the desired benefits of participation while weighing the potential barriers. Participation Matrix: Agree on the precise degree of participation to target at a given project stage. Resource Navigator: Select tools and processes to address the needs of stakeholders, the project objectives and context. Quality Guidance: Ensure engagements are delivered to the highest standard. Assessment Matrix: Collectively evaluate the degree of participation achieved during an activity or project phase, learn and adapt. By applying these tools before, during and after a research and/or innovation project, implementors can ensure that stakeholders/end-users are included and participating at the highest possible degree. We encourage users of the PfHI toolkit to consider how else to integrate the tools into existing practices. For instance, the Evaluation Matrix could be used to supplement existing MEAL activities to: Establish baselines to measure changes in participation over time. Track the degree of participation/engagement of stakeholders. Regularly assess the degree of participation. Seek feedback from participants about the degree of their participation. Monitor the progress of activities related to stakeholder engagement. Our Participation for Humanitarian Innovation toolkit represents our ongoing commitment to responsible research and innovation across our portfolio of grants and for the humanitarian sector more broadly. We hope you will consider downloading and using the toolkit on your next project.

Participation for Humanitarian Innovation - Toolkit - Smith, Amy; Thompson, Martha; Saida Benhayoune; Crespo Cardona, Omar (Elrha, 2023)
A resource designed to help organisations, teams and individuals manage innovation journeys responsibly and successfully. We have partnered with MIT D-Lab to develop a new resource to drive greater diversity and inclusion within project design and implementation. The Participation for Humanitarian Innovation (PfHI) toolkit sets out a robust approach to setting expectations for and monitoring the degree of participation within research and innovation projects for, with, and by people affected by crisis. The PfHI toolkit is composed of five tools: Opportunity Adviser: Identify and prioritise the desired benefits of participation while weighing the potential barriers. Participation Matrix: Agree on the precise degree of participation to target at a given project stage. Resource Navigator: Select tools and processes to address the needs of stakeholders, the project objectives and context. Quality Guidance: Ensure engagements are delivered to the highest standard. Assessment Matrix: Collectively evaluate the degree of participation achieved during an activity or project phase, learn and adapt. By applying these tools before, during and after a research and/or innovation project, implementors can ensure that stakeholders/end-users are included and participating at the highest possible degree. We encourage users of the PfHI toolkit to consider how else to integrate the tools into existing practices. For instance, the Evaluation Matrix could be used to supplement existing MEAL activities to: Establish baselines to measure changes in participation over time. Track the degree of participation/engagement of stakeholders. Regularly assess the degree of participation. Seek feedback from participants about the degree of their participation. Monitor the progress of activities related to stakeholder engagement. Our Participation for Humanitarian Innovation toolkit represents our ongoing commitment to responsible research and innovation across our portfolio of grants and for the humanitarian sector more broadly. We hope you will consider downloading and using the toolkit on your next project.

The adoption of innovation in international development organisations: lessons for development co-operation - Kumpf, Benjamin; Jhunjhunwala, Parnika (OECD Publishing, 2023)
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 adopting innovations. How can development organisations institutionalise a new way of working, bringing what was once novel to the core of how business is done? Analysing successful adoption efforts across five DAC agencies, the paper lays out a proposed process for the adoption of innovations. The paper features five case-studies and concludes with a set of lessons and recommendations for policy makers on innovation management generally, and adoption of innovation in particular.

Participatory action research - Cornish, Flora; Breton, Nancy; Moreno-Tabarez, Ulises; Delgado, Jenna; Rua, Mohi; de-Graft Aikins, Ama; Hodgetts, Darrin (Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 2023)
Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to research that prioritizes the value of experiential knowledge for tackling problems caused by unequal and harmful social systems, and for envisioning and implementing alternatives. PAR involves the participation and leadership of those people experiencing issues, who take action to produce emancipatory social change, through conducting systematic research to generate new knowledge. This Primer sets out key considerations for the design of a PAR project. The core of the Primer introduces six building blocks for PAR project design: building relationships; establishing working practices; establishing a common understanding of the issue; observing, gathering and generating materials; collaborative analysis; and planning and taking action. We discuss key challenges faced by PAR projects, namely, mismatches with institutional research infrastructure; risks of co-option; power inequalities; and the decentralizing of control. To counter such challenges, PAR researchers may build PAR-friendly networks of people and infrastructures; cultivate a critical community to hold them to account; use critical reflexivity; redistribute powers; and learn to trust the process. PAR’s societal contribution and methodological development, we argue, can best be advanced by engaging with contemporary social movements that demand the redressingl of inequities and the recognition of situated expertise.
Number: 1

A new pathway: how can funders support meaningful monitoring, evaluation, and learning practice in the field? - Acevedo, Andrea; Colnar, Megan (Better Evaluation, 2023)
How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

Evaluating Research for Development: Innovation to Navigate Complexity - Apgar, Marina; Snijder, Mieke; Higdon, Grace Lyn; Szabo, Sylvia (The European Journal of Development Research, 2023)
Large publicly funded programmes of research continue to receive increased investment as interventions aiming to produce impact for the world’s poorest and most marginalized populations. At this intersection of research and development, research is expected to contribute to complex processes of societal change. Embracing a co-produced view of impact as emerging along uncertain causal pathways often without predefined outcomes calls for innovation in the use of complexity-aware approaches to evaluation. The papers in this special issue present rich experiences of authors working across sectors and geographies, employing methodological innovation and navigating power as they reconcile tensions. They illustrate the challenges with (i) evaluating performance to meet accountability demands while fostering learning for adaptation; (ii) evaluating prospective theories of change while capturing emergent change; (iii) evaluating internal relational dimensions while measuring external development outcomes; (iv) evaluating across scales: from measuring local level end impact to understanding contributions to systems level change. Taken as a whole, the issue illustrates how the research for development evaluation field is maturing through the experiences of a growing and diverse group of researchers and evaluators as they shift from using narrow accountability instruments to appreciating emergent causal pathways within research for development.

How are Research for Development Programmes Implementing and Evaluating Equitable Partnerships to Address Power Asymmetries? - Snijder, Mieke; Steege, Rosie; Callander, Michelle; Wahome, Michel; Rahman, M. Feisal; Apgar, Marina; Theobald, Sally; Bracken, Louise J.; Dean, Laura; Mansaray, Bintu; Saligram, Prasanna; Garimella, Surekha; et al. (The European Journal of Development Research, 2023)
The complexity of issues addressed by research for development (R4D) requires collaborations between partners from a range of disciplines and cultural contexts. Power asymmetries within such partnerships may obstruct the fair distribution of resources, responsibilities and benefits across all partners. This paper presents a cross-case analysis of five R4D partnership evaluations, their methods and how they unearthed and addressed power asymmetries. It contributes to the field of R4D partnership evaluations by detailing approaches and methods employed to evaluate these partnerships. Theory-based evaluations deepened understandings of how equitable partnerships contribute to R4D generating impact and centring the relational side of R4D. Participatory approaches that involved all partners in developing and evaluating partnership principles ensured contextually appropriate definitions and a focus on what partners value.

Berkana Two Loop Model: A quick introduction to an accessible model for systems change - Proud, Emma (LinkedIn - Emma Proud, 2023)
A model I've been using a lot recently, to bring systems thinking to life, is the Berkana Two Loop model. It doesn't describe complexity or systems thinking. But it does describe systems change in a way that's simple and oriented to action.

The Secret Sauce of Development Professionals: Tools for Assessing TOR Potential to Source Scalable Learning Interventions - Barton, Adam (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2023)
Terms of reference (TORs) play an outsized role in driving scalable educational programming. These procurement documents shape, constrain, and signal programme priorities and possibilities. Successful funders and implementers across the globe hold rich processual knowledge about this documentation, which they use to draft and assess TORs. This project explores such best-practice knowledge around TOR review, seeking to support the design and implementation of educational programmes that can improve learning at scale in developing contexts.

Reflections on Ten Years of USAID’s Experience with Political Economy Analysis and Thinking and Working Politically - Brinkerhoff, Derick; Cassidy, Marc (TWP CoP, 2023)
The global Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) Community of Practice (CoP), the Washington DC TWP CoP, and USAID organised a webinar on 5 December 2022 to take stock of how USAID and its partners have used PEA to inform programme strategy, design and implementation, and support TWP. This paper synthesises the key points arising from the webinar, including observations on the impacts, opportunities, challenges, and prospects for PEA/TWP to become more deeply adopted and sustained as a development methodology and approach across sectors. It starts by defining key concepts. It then highlights insights from the discussions of the impact of the application of PEA and TWP principles across sectors. The paper concludes by looking at progress achieved to date, as well as constraints and opportunities to increase the uptake of both thinking and working politically in USAID-sponsored programming.

Adaptive Evaluation: A Complexity-based approach to Systematic Learning for Innovation and Scaling in Development - Gokhale, Siddhant; Walton, Michael (Center for International Development, Harvard University, 2023)
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 commonly used in international development, including Randomized Control Trials (RCT) and quasi-experimental methods, are good at assessing specific effects of interventions but are not designed for the change processes inherent to innovation and scaling within a system. There is a need to reconstruct how we use existing measurement tools, techniques, and methodologies so that they capture the complexity of the environment in which an intervention or change occurs. We introduce Adaptive Evaluation, designed to learn at various levels of complexity while supporting the transformation needed to foster sustainable change. An Adaptive Evaluation uses three main approaches to work with complex questions—systems diagnosis, theorybased assessment of change processes, and iterative designs. An Adaptive Evaluation typically builds hypotheses from field-based interactions, emphasizes learning over testing, advocates open-mindedness with techniques, and appreciates the value of dialogue and participation in navigating complex processes. It can use RCT or similar techniques to analyse specific processes within a system or a development cycle, but these are embedded in a broader approach to assessment and interpretation. It is designed to be flexible and adjust to shifting contexts. Finally, an Adaptive Evaluation can be applied at any stage in a complex intervention's lifecycle, from the interpretation of the system and change processes to rapid experimentation, prototyping, and testing of select interventions, and then adaptation to different settings for impact at scale. This paper provides the theoretical basis for an Adaptive Evaluation—the main approaches, core ideology, process, and applications.

The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies - Mazzucato, Mariana; Collington, Rosie (Allen Lane, 2023)
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 consulting industry performs in contracts with hollowed-out and risk-averse governments and shareholder value-maximizing firms. It grew from the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of reforms by both the neoliberal right and Third Way progressives, and it thrives on the ills of modern capitalism, from financialization and privatization to the climate crisis. It is possible because of the unique power that big consultancies wield through extensive contracts and networks - as advisors, legitimators and outsourcers - and the illusion that they are objective sources of expertise and capacity. To make matters worse, our best and brightest graduates are often redirected away from public service into consulting. In all these ways, the Big Con weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments and warps our economies.Mazzucato and Collington expertly debunk the myth that consultancies always add value to the economy. With a wealth of original research, they argue brilliantly for investment and collective intelligence within all organizations and communities, and for a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good. We must recalibrate the role of consultants and rebuild economies and governments that are fit for purpose.

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration - Flyvbjerg, Bent; Gardner, Dan (Macmillan, 2023)
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. More modest endeavours, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg. In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors that lead projects to fail, and the research-based principles that will make yours succeed:- Understand your odds. If you don’t know them, you won’t win.- Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it’s wrong.- Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.- Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.- Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can’t, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done – on time and on budget.

Don't Lead Alone: Think Like a System, Act Like a Network, Lead Like a Movement! - Justis, Cleveland; Student, Daniel (Fast Company Press, 2023)
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 us learn those skills through trial, error, and often, failure. Worse, we typically stay in our self-reinforcing silos, sharing perspectives and frustrations with like-minded people, limiting our vision of what our work can become. By partnering with other sectors, we combine and adapt approaches to solve complex problems, and leaders in any industry can create large-scale change.Cleveland Justis and Daniel Student share a road map for effective partnerships that increase impact and profitability. Using real-life examples and practice exercises, the authors teach how to acquire and use skills to solve complex problems and propel your organization forward by combining a multitude of perspectives, split into three sections:Think Like a SystemAct Like a NetworkLead Like a MovementIt’s time to get out of our silos. Don’t lead alone.

Celebrating Adaptive Delivery: A View from the Frontline in Myanmar - Barnes, Katrina; Lonsdale, Jane (Institute of Development Studies, 2023)
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 difference between adaptive management and adaptive delivery, and how this interacts with risk and aid accountability, particularly in contexts of fragility. Drawing on examples of Oxfam in Myanmar work and our personal insights in relation to delivering programming across humanitarian, peace-building, and development, we suggest that in complex, conflict-affected, and highly political environments adaptive delivery already happens far more regularly than is currently recognised, as a necessity to get activities delivered. However, it happens despite the system, not because of it, and is therefore often hidden and carried out ‘under the radar’ rather than celebrated as a success in difficult environments. This paper was written in 2019, before the military seized control of Myanmar in February 2021. Whilst it draws on examples from pre-2021 Myanmar to illustrate real life cases, it is a contribution to a broader global debate on adaptive management in practice, specifically in fragile contexts. This is not specifically aimed at practitioners working in Myanmar at present, who are now working in a protracted crisis. This paper makes tangible recommendations on steps that donors, international non-governmental organisations, local staff, and partners could take to promote a system of encouraging and celebrating adaptability in programme delivery in fragile contexts.
Accepted: 2023-02-02T14:48:03Z

Two Loops Guide - Colchester, Joss (Si Network, 2023)
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 might be as a group in this process of change and the best actions to take at different stages. This guide will be of relevance for anyone involved in a complex organizational change process.

Understanding Political Economy Analysis and Thinking and Working Politically - Whaites, Alan; Piron, Laure-Hélène; Menocal, Alina Rocha; Teskey, Graham (FCDO and TWP CoP, 2023)
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 counterparts’ political incentives and preferences. The guide summarises different types of tools – from very light-touch to more in-depth approaches – and provides advice on how development professionals can decide what is most appropriate in a given context, with illustrations based on the experiences of teams working on these issues. This guide will help development professionals and others to make use of PEA and to apply it to their own specific needs. The first part of the guide offers a general picture of the approach. The second part provides more specific guidance for those who are tasked with deploying a PEA. Contents –> Main audience What is PEA, its role and purpose (Section 2) –> General information for all readers The main elements of PEA (Section 3) Thinking and Working Politically (Section 4) –> Core information for teams planning and using PEA How to ensure quality (Section 5) –> Essential reading for those directly responsible for a PEA Important concepts and terminology (Annex) –> General information for all readers

Innovative M&E from the Sandbox and beyond - Vester, Søren; Tran, Samuel (Medium, 2023)
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 transformation? - How do we know if we are on track? - How do we rethink complexity and independence in evaluation? - Why, how and for whom do we measure? - How do we generate insights and learn? - How do we make decisions and adapt?

A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews - Fletcher, Angus; Cline, Preston B.; Hoffman, Matthew (Harvard Business Review, 2023)
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.
Section: Collaboration and teams
Keywords: Collaboration and teams; Crisis management; Project management

Introducing the CLA Maturity Tool for Implementing Partners - Salib, Monalisa; Ziegler, Jessica (Social Impact, 2023)
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
Section: Uncategorized

Holistic Flexibility for Deploying Systems Thinking as a Cognitive Skill - Chowdhury, Rajneesh (Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2023)
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 of any traditional systems methodology. Holistic Flexibility is defined as the dynamic interplay between a state of mind that has the ability to absorb systemic complexity and a state of practice that has the ability to embrace flexibility, both in intent and in form. Through two case-studies, discussions in this paper highlight how Holistic Flexibility can serve as a conceptual lens for systems practitioners. The case-studies demonstrate the importance of a practitioner’s ability to seamlessly manage and work with multiple variables, stakeholders, and factors to deliver responsible outcomes with the aid of learning loops. The main contribution of this paper lies in the case-studies and analyses presented that provide use cases for Holistic Flexibility in ST, which will help address recent calls in the discipline for ST to be considered as a cognitive skill.

Strengthen Your Team’s CLA Practices: Introducing the CLA Maturity Tool for USAID Implementers - Social Impact , Inc (2023)
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 - BEAM Exchange (BEAM Exchange, 2023)
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 demonstrated through concrete behaviours. This section explores the 17 competencies used by high-performing MSD teams. Arranged in three groups they relate to how we understand the world, make decisions and interact with others. Each competency is defined and has links to useful resources that explain or illustrate the knowledge or skills that feed it. Where available, sources of teaching and learning for that competency are included. Teaching and learning modes An exploration of the most common modes of teaching and learning that support practitioners to acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes. Some modes of learning are more relevant to certain types of competency - as indicated by the box colours. Each page has a summary of the teaching mode, guidance for team leaders and trainers, and examples of how to use this mode for developing specific competencies. Assessment modes Assessing competency is important for recruitment, performance appraisal and continued professional development These pages describe distinct approaches to evaluating individuals. They include a summary of the evaluation mode, guidance for assessors, and examples tailored to specific competencies.

Problem Framing Canvas Handbook: Making sense of problems for better responses - Burkett, Ingrid (Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation, 2023)
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 in which we could work with people to ‘zoom out’ and focus on how they could frame and name problems more effectively, recognise different types of problems, and start to ‘learn’ their way into responding. We developed some of our own ways of helping people, and we borrowed some of the great tools and frameworks others have used to support better framings and responses to problems. We drew these together in a canvas to help people spend more time framing problems rather than jumping headlong into problem ‘solving’. We found that this approach helped people to develop better skills to analyse problems and to reflect, test, and learn about possible responses more effectively. The response from teams we’ve worked with has been very positive – and we’ve refined the canvas via feedback and testing. In 2022 we shared the canvas in one of our social media posts and were inundated with requests for deeper explanations of each of the segments. In response, in 2023 we are making our Problem Framing Canvas workshop materials open source through this workbook.

Si Guides on System Innovation - Colchester, Joss; Si Network (Si Network, 2023)
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 ...

Guide to Principles of Emergent Learning - Darling, Edited Marilyn; Eenigenburg, Avery (The Emergent Learning Community Project, 2023)

The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you - Fitzpatrick, Rob (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2023)
The Mom Test is a quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak.They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little . As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it and it's worth doing right .Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.

Designing & Facilitating Collaborative Learning Networks. A toolkit - Folsom, Amanda (Results for Development, 2023)
Collaborative Learning — an approach which brings together people who face common challenges to share knowledge and jointly problem-solve — is a powerful way to support locally-led development and achieve impact. It provides a structured process in which change agents determine priorities, set the learning agenda, work together to identify strategies to address complex challenges, and provide ongoing implementation support to one another. Collaborative Learning — unlike traditional approaches to technical assistance — centers the expertise of local change agents and captures the valuable tacit knowledge of practitioners to advance systems change. This toolkit synthesizes lessons, tips, and tools accumulated from more than a decade of experience designing and facilitating over 20 Collaborative Learning Networks. The lead author was Amanda Folsom, Senior Program Director and Collaborative Learning Practice Lead, Results for Development (R4D). The toolkit benefited from the contributions of many R4D colleagues, including Katie Bowman, Cheryl Cashin, Tanya Jones, Gina Lagomarsino, Agnes Munyua, Maria Jose Pastor, and Abeba Taddese. R4D has not done this alone. The lessons and examples are drawn from our work with many network partners from the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN), Linked Immunisation Action Network (Linked), Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator, Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC), the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI), the Partnership for Evidence and Equity in Responsive Social Systems (PEERSS), and the School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX), to name a few. We are grateful for the thought partnership and support of our partners and funders, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gavi, Hewlett Foundation, Jacobs Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and World Bank.

The Art of Scaling Deep - Research in Summary - Fraser, Tatiana (The Systems Sanctuary, 2023)
Over the last 15 years the concept of scale has become a foundational part of the apparatus of the social and environmental change sector. A business mindset of growth has been seamlessly transferred to the social and environmental problems we are collectively trying to shift in the world. Scaling up, (influencing policy) has been considered the strategic pathway to systems change. Scaling out (spreading new models) is seen as a pathway to success. The allure of these scaling theories lies, in part, in their tangibility, and the easy way in which they can be measured. However this focus on growth has shifted our attention away from a series of messy truths. Sometimes bigger isn't better. Endless growth is not sustainable and our urgency to try to fix the problem and seek solutions may be part of the crisis we are in. One unintended consequence of this has been that another type of scale has been devalued and as a result, under-resourced. It’s a scale that values the slow steady work of deepening relationships. It recognizes the significance of context, building connections that bridge diverse communities and it prioritizes inner work and healing as integral components of the scaling process. We call this type of scale ‘Scaling Deep’ and we believe that adequately supporting it, and funding it, holds the greatest potential for long lasting systemic change. The purpose of this research has been to delve deeper into the art and craft of Scaling Deep. Ultimately, our goal is for it to become firmly ingrained within the recognized realm of social change, alongside the well-established concepts of scaling up and scaling out. We want practitioners who are Scaling Deep to be able to harness the wisdom and power of this work and to talk about it openly, with confidence and credibility. We want understanding of this approach to flourish and evolve and for it to be appropriately celebrated and supported. We want decision-makers to be informed and inspired by the principles and practices of scaling deep. For it to be embedded in theories of change as an essential component of decision-making processes within the wider change discourse. Importantly we want leaders who are Scaling Deep to have access to sufficient resources and to receive the care from the field that they need to thrive. We would like to see organisations that have the power to invest, to align their efforts with the profound impact that scaling deep aspires to cultivate in the world. Before we begin, let us be crystal clear. We are not opposed to scaling up and out as strategies for change. Innovation and scaling what is working is part of how we evolve as humanity. As social entrepreneurs ourselves, we have both done this twice over. We value it and we know it’s important. We recognize these are strategies for creating widespread impact and effecting positive change. Our intention here is not to dismiss or undermine the value of scaling up and out, but rather to encourage a broader and more holistic perspective that includes other dimensions of scale. There is a need to understand how the different scaling approaches can work together, rather than seeing them as hierarchical and disconnected. Our ultimate goal is to equip the change sector with a more inclusive, expansive, and powerful approach to tackling the myriad challenges we face, by exploring the potential of Scaling Deep as a transformational strategy for systems change.

Building a team culture for Adaptive Management in MSD: 5 Strategies MEL Managers Say Work - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)
Keywords: Bolder Meghan; Gover Dun; Henao Lina; Nasution Zulka; Okutu David

Enhancing partner and system-level learning: 8 Tips from MEL Managers - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)
Effective learning is a key driver of market systems change, with the potential to enhance system competitiveness, resilience, and inclusiveness. Shifting the Locus of Learning: Catalyzing Private Sector Learning to Drive Systemic Change recently outlined a rationale for enhancing the scale and quality of learning in a system and identifying 10 strategies programs can contextualize to catalyze learning. These strategies are also backed with robust examples from 13 programs doing this work across 11 countries. To deepen insights on what MSD Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Managers have experienced in putting several of those strategies into practice, the Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships (MSP) Activity convened a series of peer discussions as part of a larger initiative (see Figure 1). This brief shares the collective learning and experience on this topic of three senior MEL Managers who were interested in and had experience with this topic. The group represented full-time, program-based MEL Leads working on MSD programs funded by USAID and DFAT, based in Fiji, Albania, and Kosovo working for Adam Smith International, SwissContact, and DT Global, respectively. From those discussions, this paper synthesizes eight tips from MEL Managers for practically enhancing partner and system-level learning: 1. Identify the right decision-maker(s) at potential partners. 2. Use a co-creation process to identify learning opportunities. 3. Use diagnostics and assessments to strengthen partner and system capacity for actionable learning. 4. Use a phased capacity strengthening process tied to behavior change. 5. Measure partners’ continued investment in and use of learning—not the continuation of specific learning activities. 6. Work with sector-level institutions for scale but be aware of risks. 7. Leverage informal communities of practice to share learning. 8. Use the right terminology to talk about partner and system-focused learning.

Practioners Guide to Assessing Systems Change - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)

The Dynamics of Team Learning: Harmony and Rhythm in Teamwork Arrangements for Innovation - Harvey, Jean-François; Cromwell, Johnathan R.; Johnson, Kevin J.; Edmondson, Amy C. (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2023)
Innovation teams must navigate inherent tensions between different learning activities to produce high levels of performance. Yet, we know little about how teams combine these activities—notably reflexive, experimental, vicarious, and contextual learning—most effectively over time. In this article, we integrate research on teamwork episodes with insights from music theory to develop a new theoretical perspective on team dynamics, which explains how team activities can produce harmony, dissonance, or rhythm in teamwork arrangements that lead to either positive or negative effects on overall performance. We first tested our theory in a field study using longitudinal data from 102 innovation teams at a Fortune Global 500 company; then, we replicated and elaborated our theory in a study of 61 MBA project teams at an elite North American university. Results show that some learning activities can occur within the same teamwork episode to have harmonious positive effects on team performance, while other activities combine to have dissonant negative effects when occurring in the same episode. We argue that dissonant activities must be spread across teamwork episodes to help teams achieve a positive rhythm of team learning over time. Our findings contribute to theory on team dynamics, team learning, and ambidexterity.

Adaptive Programming and going with the grain: IMAGINE's new water governance model in Goma, DRC - Kirk, Tom; Green, Duncan; Stys, Patrycja; Mosquera, Tom (Development Policy Review, 2023)
Motivation This paper explores adaptive approaches to development programmes that aim at improving service provision in underperforming sectors in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS). It does this through a case study of the Integrated Maji Infrastructure and Governance Initiative for eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's (IMAGINE) public-private partnership model for water provision. Purpose The processes and decisions that culminated in IMAGINE's model emphasize the need for programming that is culturally and politically aware, responsive to events, learns in real-time, is entrepreneurial, and works with the grain of local institutions to support change. Detailed case studies of such ways of working are crucial for programmes that seek to challenge and reform the status quo in FCAS. Methods and approach The paper is based on 42 semi-structured interviews conducted in the summers of 2019 and 2020. They reflect the broad spectrum of actors – individuals, public authorities, and organisations – involved in IMAGINE's evolution. Findings The narrative focuses on IMAGINE's attempts to professionalise and commercialise Goma's water sector. It shows how as IMAGINE repeatedly adapted to ground realities, it took on the characteristics of a public authority, thereby, engendering backlashes that threated its longer-term goals. However, by revisiting its initial values and logics it was able to get things done and achieve it aims. Policy implications IMAGINE's story suggests that adaptive programmes should put politically savvy local development professionals in key positions and enable them to carefully construct coalitions of allies across the systems they aim to disrupt. This may also require them to revisit and adapt their initial ideas, guiding principles and values as greater understandings of development problems are gained. A pubic authorities lens, attuned to the logics programmes seek to address and introduce to FCAS, may help analysts to foreground the implications of such adaptations.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dpr.12691

On the Right Tack: Reflections on Coalition-Building Initiatives across The Asia Foundation - Nixon, Nicola; Yates, Peter; Saluja, Sumaya; Yi, Su Lae; Lucas, Miranda; Bain, Katherine (The Asia Foundation, 2023)
Coalitions—groups of organizations and individuals that work together to pursue a common policy goal or reform—are crucial to development. Some of The Asia Foundation’s longest-standing and most successful development programs and portfolios have used coalition-building as an implementation modality. This paper examines successful initiatives in Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste. By delving into each of these, we shed light on this coalition-building modality, sharing insights about how externally supported coalitions emerge and function and contributing ideas about how such support can be adapted to other contexts. We hope that this paper and these case studies contribute to innovations in contemporary development theory and help practitioners use and move beyond some formulaic and technocratic modalities, such as traditional capacity development, knowledge transfer, and technical assistance. People, relationships, and working partnerships can then take center stage, and sustained cooperation will gain primacy over short-term outputs and deliverables.

Developing a Systems Thinking Lens for Collective Leadership - O’Donnell, Joan (Collective Leadership for Scotland, 2023)
Systems thinking approaches are gaining traction as an effective way of understanding and working with increasing complexity. They are being put forward by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as well as the World Health Organisation as a way to tackle the complex and unpredictable environments we now operate in. As the world has become increasingly interconnected, national or local boundaries cannot isolate and control social problems. The climate emergency, war and political instability have become everyday realities that accompany an ever-widening gap between those who have and control resources, and those who do not have enough to meet basic needs. The usual responses are becoming more and more ineffective; all interventions have unseen consequences or emergent properties that cannot be predicted using an inputoutput outcomes model. Designing interventions therefore requires a fresh lens to manage our way through turbulence and uncertainty. Most complex situations benefit from a complementary mix of a systematic (linear) decisive intervention as much as a systemic (whole-view) understanding of a proposed intervention. In this sense, adopting a systems thinking approach requires both framing the situation using a systems lens, as well as a commitment to take action and learn forward in realtime. When utilised in this way, a systems thinking lens complements rather than replaces traditional management tools. It draws on well-tested concepts and tools and relies on the systems leader to develop their practice, which includes the art of knowing what is needed and when. It is about threading traditional planning methods together with an understanding of the interrelationships, multiple perspectives and boundary judgements that influence the framing of a situation. It is becoming increasingly clear that effective leadership is embedded and invested: objective management science has no place in a world bound by interconnectedness and unintended consequences. Leaders are, as we shall see, an inherent part of both the problem and the proposed intervention. The purpose of this paper is to share some concepts informed by systems thinking to support you, as leaders in your organisations, to bring a systems-informed lens to your work. It puts you as a practitioner-leader at the centre of your own practice and encourages you to reflect critically on your positionality, as well as the lens you use to understand and intervene in complex issues. This paper has been developed on foot of training piloted with public service leaders in Scotland in the summer of 2022, and acts as an introduction to developing your systems literacy skills. While we are all born with a systems sensibility, many of us lose that sense of connectedness and interdependence with the world as we grow up. This paper acts as a prompt to bring a complexity informed approach to your work practice. It also contains some pointers for further resources and tools that may support your learning.

Re-institute website - RE!NSTITUTE (Re!nstitute, 2023)
We are a dynamic non-profit organization with a unique approach to managing change and catalyzing innovation to support global systems transformation. We know that to achieve equal, just, and safe communities, we must collectively challenge and change the systems that people rely on — especially those most vulnerable. Together, we must RE!BUILD a system's resilience and capacity to take on our biggest generational challenges. Justice, housing, health, and other systems in every country are often struggling to come together, across institutions and organizations, to unite under a common vision for change, and implement those changes in effective and innovative ways. Our work and methodology — the 100-Day Challenge — are designed to support these systems to achieve extraordinary results. Our approach is rooted in the philosophy that frontline staff, supported by leadership, can unleash innovation and achieve incredible results by creating new relationships, experimenting with fresh ideas from across their system, and building authentic engagement with those with lived experience.

Propel - Strhive (2023)
Learn from experience. Together. In the complex landscape of international development, organisations need a way to learn from their experiences and build on what works. Propel is the software solution that revolutionises the way organisations capture, access, and reuse learnings to adapt, innovate, and create lasting change on a global scale. Let's stop reinventing the wheel and build on what works, together.

How Political Contexts Influence Education Systems: Patterns, Constraints, Entry Points - Levy, Brian (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2022)
This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: - Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving learning outcomes. However, as the case studies of Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Tanzania illustrate, all-too-often dominant leaders’ goals vis-à-vis the education sector can veer in other directions. - In impersonal competitive contexts, a combination of strong formal institutions and effective processes of resolving disagreements can, on occasion, result in a shared commitment among powerful interests to improve learning outcomes—but in none of the case studies is this outcome evident. In Peru, substantial learning gains have been achieved despite messy top-level politics. But the Chilean, Indian, and South African case studies suggest that the all-too-common result of rule-boundedness plus unresolved political contestation over the education sector’s goals is some combination of exaggerated rule compliance and/or performative isomorphic mimicry. - Personalised competitive contexts (Bangladesh, Ghana, and Kenya for example) lack the seeming strengths of either their dominant or their impersonal competitive contexts; there are multiple politically-influential groups and multiple, competing goals—but no credible framework of rules to bring coherence either to political competition or to the education bureaucracy. The case studies show that political and institutional constraints can render ineffective many specialised sectoral interventions intended to improve learning outcomes. But they also point to the possibility that ‘soft governance’ entry points might open up some context-aligned opportunities for improving learning outcomes. In dominant contexts, the focus might usefully be on trying to influence the goals and strategies of top-level leadership. In impersonal competitive contexts, it might be on strengthening alliances between mission-oriented public officials and other developmentally-oriented stakeholders. In personalised competitive contexts, gains are more likely to come from the bottom-up—via a combination of local-level initiatives plus a broader effort to inculcate a shared sense among a country’s citizenry of ‘all for education’.

How and Why Practitioners Think and Work Politically - Evidence from Chemonics Programming Across Sectors - Kantelberg, Renee; Swift-Morgan, Jennifer; Watson, Bryce (Chemonics International, 2022)
Most development practitioners have long recognized that deep contextual knowledge is crucial to understanding how projects interact with their local systems and, in turn, to navigating these systems. Moreover, this knowledge must complement projects' technical solutions, or they will fall flat and may even undercut project objectives as they clatter down. What, then, explains practitioners' particular interest in TWP as an explicit strategy and more than just "doing good development"? This report responds to that question and to the many calls for a more comprehensive picture of TWP by presenting new evidence of the various forms that TWP may take in practice. The evidence comes from a 2022 study that Chemonics undertook to foster more robust learning about TWP. Specifically, we closely examined Chemonics implemented projects that used or are using various forms of TWP in nine countries: Bangladesh, Iraq, Mozambique, the Philippines, Pakistan, Syria, Timor-Leste, and Tunisia. In conducting the study, we interviewed multiple staff from these projects. We complemented what we learned from these projects with a review of eight additional Chemonics- implemented projects applying TWP that had received dedicated support from Chemonics’ Center for Politically Informed Programming (the Center). We consider these findings alongside those of the recent (2022) USAID-Chemonics study on political economy analysis (PEA) usage to identify and articulate what is different and more effective about PEA processes and TWP practices that have received more support.

Transforming M&E for Uncertain and Complex Contexts: The UNDP’s Innovation Sandbox Approach - Fraser, Dugan; Haldrup, Søren (Powered by Evidence Podcast, 2022)
How can we transform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) into a more adaptive, emergent process to address uncertainty and complexity in todays’ world? How do we move from compliance and accountability to learning – to support better, more timely, decisions? Join GEI Program Manager, Dugan Fraser, as he discusses these questions and others with Special Guest, Søren Haldrup, from UNDP's Strategic Innovation Unit where he manages UNDP's innovation facility and leads a new initiative called the M&E Sandbox.

Study on application of Adaptive Management (AM) in Education Out Loud (EOL) project implementation in the Horn, Eastern adn Southern Africa (HESA) - ANHRE (Oxfam, 2022)
This study mainly aimed to look at adaptive management in the program cycle (throughout Program Cycle processes, including strategy, project, and activity design and implementation) and to look at the Enabling Conditions: how an organization’s culture, business processes, and resource allocation support adaptive management. It explores elements of adaptive management that correspond to the objectives of the study as follows: 1) Assess grantees’ level of understanding of adaptive management as a programming approach and a method of risk mitigation Methodology. 2) Examine how adaptive management has been applied in EOL project implementation thus far. 3) Explore ways in which an adaptive management approach can be used as a source of learning during project implementation. 4) Propose ways in which the application of adaptive management can be improved in EOL project implementation. Objective 1: Assess grantees’ level of understanding of adaptive management as a programming approach and a method of risk mitigation Methodology: The researchers asessed whether the EOL program, GMU, and HESA RMU have a culture of openness, continuous learning, reflection, and improvement. This assessment looked at actual practices and perceptions of field-based staff and project officers. In addition, they looked at processes to assess knowledge management and decision-making process – the ability to distill, share and disseminate knowledge and the awareness among grantees/ employees of the decision-making process. Summary of findings: Understanding of adaptive management as a programming approach among the selected sample of grantees was linked to continuous learning, the ability to adjust implementation and inform decision making to reach the intended objectives based on analysis and assessment of the context and flexibility in management. RMU HESA was perceived to have a culture of openness where grantees feel comfortable sharing their opinion and ideas and is perceived to be receptive to proposed changes to projects and encourage grantees to provide feedback. The HESA RMU-Oxfam Denmark is also seen as an agency that is very “flexible“. Recommendations: Enhance Capacity building on adaptive management tools, particularly for finance and admin teams with a focus on pro-active adaptive management which scans the horizon for opportunities and risks, and it adapts to take advantage of them. It explicitly plans for experimentation and regular upgrading of the strategies; it considers learning and the reduction of uncertainty and imperfect knowledge as one of the key objectives of the management effort. Objective 2: Examine how adaptive management has been applied in EOL project implementation thus far Methodology: Two elements were assessed : Collaboration and how internal and external collaboration of grantees and grant agent, assessing the ability to collaborate with other departments within the entity, the ability to collaborate with learning partners, other grantees, to what extent they consult their stakeholders and their ability to build coalitions. In addition, researchers looked at Adaptation and the best practices and lessons learned in adopting change in the design, implementation, budgeting or monitoring of EOL programs and the process followed to adapt the desired change. Summary of findings: Adaptive management practices are seen to be adapting to context changes, constant learning, and flexibility. The management and coordination of EOL program is deemed to be collaborative, adaptive, and understanding of the emerging needs of EOL Program implementation. There is a simple process in place for grantees to make changes to the program implementation. Most grantees do take the time to pause and reflect on what is going well and what could be improved and to share the knowledge gained with their coalition members and regional coalitions. HESA RMU was found to be encouraging learning practices through organizing periodic online and offline regional learning and reflection workshops. Compared to other donors, the majority of grantees believe that EOL provided the highest level of flexibility and ability to adapt which is seen to be a necessity for advocacy work. However, it is important to enforce structure to tighten the feedback loop between data and action: adaptive management aims for double learning more than just correcting deviations in planned versus actual. Recommendations: Introducing outcome harvesting tool as one of the mechanisms to capture outcomes, institutionalization of adaptive management further by developing context analysis tools/ regular reviews of TOC. Further use of Scenario planning as a tool to map and plan different scenarios on how change may happen, and to examine the program’s role in making future events happen, enforcing structure to tighten the feedback loop between data and action. In addition to the introduction of quarterly planning cycles where data and information gathered in the previous quarter can be used to inform the next planning cycle and update the TOC, project design and activity implementation strategies. Objective 3: To explore ways in which an adaptive management approach can be used as a source of learning during project implementation Methodology: The team assessed the grantees’ ability to use evidence to build their pathways for change, their ability to use learning to inform decision making, the frequency and habit of reviewing their theory of change, the risks and opportunities through scenario planning, how they assess the efficiency of their data collection tools and monitoring and evaluation data quality, on whether they have a mechanism to monitor unintended outcomes (outcome harvesting) and reflect. Summary of findings: This study revealed that there is a culture of collaborating, learning and openness among grantees and HESA RMU. The EOL program has adopted Re-active Adaptive Management that relies on regular monitoring and reflection activities to detect unpredicted challenges and, when needed, to adjust planned actions to remain on track to achieve the desired program outcomes. EOL provided learning opportunities, platforms for knowledge sharing and encouraged peer learning among grantees. Recommendations: Encouraging further engagement on knowledge sharing hubs and investing in knowledge transfer on adaptive management and learning to other partners in targeted countries (EOL to become an influencer in this field), encouraging further engagement from learning partners to provide mentorship and support during implementation and continuous learning on adaptive management tools. RISP and GISP could be further engaged in the monitoring process. Based on the stated objective, what was assessed and findings, it would also be interesting to enable grantees distill learnings from AM practices and applying that knowledge to improve project implementation. This means AM will be expected to go beyond changing implementation strategies and budgets and document learnings from such changes and apply them to improve the remaining part of the project. Objective 4: Propose ways in which the application of adaptive management can be improved in EOL project implementation Summary of findings: Grantees were able to articulate well their understanding of adaptive management but were less able to provide concrete examples of how adaptive management is implemented in practice. There is a culture of collaborating, learning and openness among grantees and HESA RMU. The EOL program relies on regular monitoring and reflection activities to detect unpredicted challenges and, when needed, to adjust planned actions to remain on track to achieve the desired program outcomes. EOL provided learning opportunities, platforms for knowledge sharing and encouraged peer learning among grantees. However, it is important to enforce structure to tighten the feedback loop between data and action and to institutionalize practicing adaptive management. Recommendations: A roadmap that looks at reviewing seven steps for improving adaptive management is recommended as a systematic tool to introduce improvement. This roadmap is useful in a multi-organizational, multi-country set-up where efficient design is needed to align top-down structuring and requirements with bottom-up diversity and divergence. This roadmap of seven steps is introduced by HIVOS. These 7 steps can come in a different order and it depends on the user to assess which of the seven steps needs to be undertaken. 1. Annual Review results/ outcome statements: using outcome harvesting to continuously monitor intended/ unintended outcomes (whether positive or negative or within the sphere of control (outputs) or within the sphere of influence (outcomes). 2. Learning questions: Learning from the monitoring data; Learning about the critical Make-or-Break assumptions in the Theory of Change; and Developing learning topics/ questions and learning agenda at each level 3. Changes in context: Identifying possible trends and signs about emerging shifts in the environment, followed by analyzing and collective sense-making of possible implications for the Theory of Change (is there a need to revise intervention strategies, desired outcomes, pathways, assumptions? 4. Theory of change: Reviewing the theory of change was not seen as a frequently recommended practice. Constant validation of pathways to change and evidence in the TOC is important. 5. Capacity assessment and development: What capacities are available amongst the alliance members and partner organizations in relation to the (revised) Theory of Change; What would be Capacity Development needs in view of the capacity assessment results? 6. Strategies and interventions: With the outcomes achieved and learning so far, what can you say about your interventions and strategies? What worked? Why? Is there a need for adjustment? 7. Annual reflection and Planning Who should take part in the annual planning and reflection?

The path to a preferable future: Investing in System Innovation - Leadbeater, Charles; Smith, Shawn; Winhall, Jennie (The Rockwool Foundation, 2022)
Acknowledgements 3 1. Introduction 4 1.1. System Innovation 6 1.2. Systems Investing 7 2. News from the Frontier – An Emerging Field 10 2.1. Foundations 11 2.2. Private Capital 12 2.3. Government 12 2.4. Community Capital 13 2.5. Movements 14 2.6. Framers 14 3. Systems Investment Strategy and Intent 15 3.1. Improvement or Transformation 16 3.2. Solving Problems or Opening Up Possibilities 18 3.3. Pragmatic Steps or Transformational Intent 20 3.4. Four Keys to System Innovation 25 4. Unlocking the Potential of Systems Investing 27 4.1. Orchestrate Opportunities, Convene Capital 27 4.2. Create Attractive Systems Investment Propositions 31 4.2.1. Get In Early 32 4.2.2. Build a Backbone 34 4.2.3. Invest in Ecosystems, Not Single Interventions 34 4.2.4. Create Conducive Conditions for System Shifts 35 4.3. Create Accessible Investment Vehicles 36 4.4. Set Better Measures 40 4.5. Craft New Portfolios of Systems Change Interventions 42 5. Conclusions 43 Appendix 1. Learning Process and Contributors 47 Appendix 2. Systems Investing Portfolio Matrix 50

Everyday patterns for shifting systems - GCSI (GCSI, 2022)

The Art and Craft of Bricolage in Evaluation - Aston, Thomas; Apgar, Marina (Institute of Development Studies, 2022)
This CDI Practice Paper by Tom Aston and Marina Apgar makes the case for ‘bricolage’ in complexity-aware and qualitative evaluation methods. It provides a framework based on a review of 33 methods to support evaluators to be more intentional about bricolage and to combine the component parts of relevant methods more effectively. It discusses two cases from practice to illustrate the value added of taking a more intentional approach. It further argues that navigating different forms of power is a critical skill for bricolage, and that doing so can help to ensure rigour.
Accepted: 2022-10-14T10:56:39Z

‘Fake seeds cost us money’: Learning from Traction’s adaptive approach to changing the stakes for farmers in Malawi - Kelsall, Tim; Laws, Ed (2022)
Improved seed has the potential to boost crop yields and improve livelihoods for millions of small farmers in Malawi. Yet many small farmers are not using it. The reasons are numerous, but one of the most important is the prevalence of fake seed in the marketplace. Improved seed is more expensive to produce and sells for a much higher price than normal seed and grain, providing an incentive for unscrupulous traders to cheat farmers, using various tricks such as filling improved seed packets with normal grain or stocking shops with authentic seed, while delivering fake seed from warehouses. Such practices weaken confidence in the improved seed market, holding back agricultural development and poverty reduction. FCDO’s Traction, a politically smart, issue-based, adaptive development programme, set out to solve this problem using scratch cards – a technical solution that helped farmers verify the authenticity of the seed they were purchasing. After approximately two years of working on the programme, scratch cards on seed packaging have become mandatory for the pivotal crops of maize and legumes. This briefing, based on programme documentation and nine interviews with Traction staff and stakeholders, tells the story of how this breakthrough was achieved, focusing on the novel methodology Traction employed, some of the programme’s twists and turns, and what the experience tells us about issue-based programming in places like Malawi.

UNDP Digital Leadership Learning Modules - UNDP (United Nations Development Programme, 2022)
In order to support the digital transformation of government operations Digital Learning Modules for Civil Servants are available, an off-the-shelf package of capacity development in form of replicable training modules to empower public servants at both the local and central government level to be leaders of digital transformation for delivering better public services. The modules cover a multitude of fundamental areas: comprehending digital government and services, human-centered design for inclusivity and agile learning cycles; feature the importance of security and privacy, the value of data and how to manage data and technology related risks; spotlight the key role of supportive leadership and offer practical tools for assessing and overcoming main barriers to ensure a successful digital transformation journey.

Thinking and Working Politically in the Land Sector in Mekong Region - Burns, Tony; Ingalls, Micah; Rickersey, Kate (2022)
In recent decades, the World Bank and many bilateral development partners have provided funding to support land administration reform. Traditional land administration reform projects focus on the economic and technical design of interventions based on a library of best practice, commonly avoiding the “messy politics” typically involved in land governance. Experience and lessons from land administration reform initiatives have been documented and a recurrent theme is that many projects fail to create effective, transformative change and gain the critical mass, and the community participation, necessary to ensure the sustainability of land administration reform. Over the last decade there have been concerted efforts to develop more politically informed ways of thinking and working using a range of methodologies referred to, variously, as Thinking and Working Politicallyi (TWP), Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) and Doing Development Differently (DDD). There is little evidence that these different approaches have been applied in the land sector.

How Beijing Commands: Grey, Black, and Red Directives from Deng to Xi - Ang, Yuen Yuen (The China Quarterly, 2022)

Where have we got to on Thinking and Working Politically? Update and a Mildly Heretical Thought. – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2022)
Headed off recently to discuss the state of Thinking and Working Politically within the aid sector. This is a loose network of aid wonks that came together to try and move aid from a pure focus on technical issues, towards taking account of power and politics and why they can facilitate/frustrate attempts to make change happen in any given context. It was great to be in a room with others (50/50 in person and online) – the neurons fire in a way that just doesn’t happen online (but I also need to brush up on my meeting skills, as when I accidentally clicked on a random video in my timeline and it started playing at full volume. Super awkward). On to the content (Chatham House rule, so no names or institutions). Some observations about the evolution of a movement I’ve been connected with for over a decade. I got a lot of pushback from participants on an earlier draft and have made quite a few changes, but they should definitely feel free to set me straight in comments!

Achieving disability inclusive employment – Are the current approaches deep enough? - Shaw, Jackie; Wickenden, Mary; Thompson, Stephen; Mader, Philip (Journal of International Development, 2022)
Diverse approaches to promoting disability inclusive employment aim to transform workplaces into truly inclusive environments, usually with intervention strategies targeting two main groups: employers and jobseekers with disabilities. However, they do not always consider other relevant stakeholders or address the relationships and interactions between diverse actors in the wider social ecosystem. These approaches often neglect deeper ‘vexing’ difficulties which block progress towards disability inclusive work environments. Most interventions rightly embrace hegemonic ‘social models of disability’ and use human rights arguments but may neglect entrenched structural factors. Disability inclusive employment is complex, with unaddressed invisible aspects that continue to limit progress. We explore some key relevant disability concepts and then interrogate evidence from the ‘Inclusion Works’ programme working in four middle- and low-income countries, considering some intractable barriers underlying the slow movement towards inclusive employment. Finally, we propose that a more participatory action orientated approach involving disabled people and others is needed to both generate deeper understanding and provide pathways towards new solutions to obstinate problems through progressive action learning processes in context. Programmatic interventions that work across the levels of the ecosystem and address power relations and interactions between stakeholders could lead to more substantial forms of disability inclusive employment.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jid.3692

Evidence-led adaptive programming: Lessons from MUVA - Sharp, Samuel; Riemenschneider, Nils; Selvester, Kerry (ODI, 2022)
Calls for more ‘adaptive programming’ have been prominent in international development practice for over a decade. Learning-by-doing is a crucial element of this, but programmes have often found it challenging to become more learning oriented. Establishing some form of reflective practice, against countervailing incentives, is difficult. Incorporating data collection processes that generate useful, timely and practical information to inform these reflections is even more so.This paper explores MUVA - an adaptive female economic empowerment programme in Mozambique. MUVA, we suggest, is atypically evidence-led. It combines systematic, inclusive reflective practice with extensive real-time data collection. We describe the fundamental features of MUVA’s monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) approach that supported this. One, how data collection and analysis are synchronised with set cycles for learning and adapting projects. Two, how MEL systems are designed to prioritise actionable learning, with data collection oriented more to the needs of implementing staff than to the reporting requirements of funders.This approach was enabled by building collective ownership over the programme’s objectives and the purpose of MEL from the outset. Implementers are asked about their motivations, and these are related to the programme’s Theory of Change. The evidence culture is supported by the proximity of MEL staff to implementing staff; and through structuring upwards accountability to funders around justifying evidence-based adaptations instead of reporting on more narrow indicators. We conclude by considering the relevance, or not, of MUVA’s approach to programmes in other contexts or issue areas trying to replicate a similarly evidence-informed approach to adaptive management. Key messages Learning-by-doing is essential to adaptive programming, but it can be challenging to establish data collection processes that generate useful, timely and practical information. MUVA – a female economic empowerment programme in Mozambique – has an atypically evidence-led adaptive management approach. This has two fundamental features. One, data collection and analysis are synchronised with set cycles for learning and adapting projects. Two, data collection is oriented more to the needs of implementing staff than to the reporting requirements of funders. Monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) systems are designed to prioritise actionable learning. This approach was enabled by building collective ownership over the programme’s objectives and the purpose of MEL from the outset. Implementers are asked about their motivations, and these are related to the programme’s Theory of Change. The evidence culture is supported by the proximity of MEL staff to implementing staff; and through structuring upwards accountability to funders around justifying evidence-based adaptations instead of reporting on more narrow indicators.

The Learning Power of Listening - Guijt, Irene; Gottret, Maria Veronica; Hanchar, Anna; Deprez, Steff; Muckenhirn, Rita (PRACTICAL ACTION PUBLISHING, 2022)
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 the method can be used to for difficult-to-measure outcomes related to poverty reduction, social justice, peacebuilding, resilience, gender norms, behavior change, governance and environmental management. ​ SenseMaker is a unique participatory method of inquiry that encourages and enables novel insights not obtained from conventional quantitative and quantitative and qualitative methods. It is action-oriented and, therefore, well-suited for people needing data- informed insights for adaptive management. "Writing this guide together with Irene, Veronica, Anna and Rita was an enormous learning process in itself and has further shaped our thinking and practice. We hope it will support first-time and experienced users to enhance their practice and that it will inspire people to explore and innovate further with the method."
Pages: 1-188

(Re)making the case for adaptive management - Aston, Thomas (Medium, 2022)
Great overview of what to read on adaptive management. It’s a long one, so I’ve split it into two – second installment tomorrow. Christian Aid Ireland’s recent publication The Difference Learning Makes by Stephen Gray and Andy Carl made a bit of a splash. The study found that Christian Aid Ireland’s application of adaptive programming contributed to better development outcomes and supported more flexible delivery. The much vaunted MUVA programme in Mozambique is also coming to a close and presenting its results from using and adaptive approach. So, it struck me that we might be at a critical juncture in the conversation on adaptive management. We’ve had the crashing to earth of inflated expectations in recent misanthropic reflections, [misanthropic, moi? – Duncan] alongside a fragile institutionalisation of adaptive management in donor agencies, NGOs, and private sector organisations. However, I’d argue that we’ve reached the point where adaptive management has passed the proof-of-concept stage.

TIP Resource Lab - Tools, Actions, Learning - TIPC (TIP Resource Lab, 2022)

Thinking and Working Politically on Health Systems Resilience: Learning from the experience of Cameroon, Nepal and South Africa during COVID-19 - Williams, Gareth (TWP Community of Practice, 2022)

Redefining rigour: using stories to evaluate systems change? - Lowther, Keira (Centre For Public Impact (CPI), 2022)
What might a different way of understanding rigour for work in complex adaptive systems look like?

Beyond "Lack of Political Will": Elaborating Political Economy Concepts to Advance "Thinking and Working Politically" Comment on "Health Coverage and Financial Protection in Uganda: A Political Economy Perspective" - Ssennyonjo, Aloysius (International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 2022)
Political economy analysis (PEA) has been advanced as critical to understanding the political dimensions of policy change processes. However, political economy (PE) is not a theory on its own but draws on several concepts. Nannini et al, in concert with other scholars, emphasise that politics is characterised by conflict, contestation and negotiation over interests, ideas and power as various agents attempt to influence their context. This commentary reflects how Nannini et al wrestled with these PEA concepts - summarised in their conceptual framework used for PEA of the Ugandan case study on financial risk protection reforms. The central premise is that a common understanding of the PEA concepts (mainly structure-agency interactions, ideas, interests, institutions and power) forms a basis for strategies to advance thinking and working politically. Consequently, I generate several insights into how we can promote politically informed approaches to designing, implementing and evaluating policy reforms and development efforts.

Rethinking monitoring and evaluation in complex systems — when learning is a result in itself - Innovation, UNDP (Medium, 2022)
By Søren Vester Haldrup, UNDP’s Strategic Innovation Unit

Integrated Governance: Achieving Governance Results and Contributing to Sector Outcomes - Frazer, Sarah; Granius, Mark; Brinkerhoff, Derick W.; McGregor, Lisa (RTI Press, 2022)
Achieving broad-based socio-economic development requires interventions that bridge disciplines, strategies, and stakeholders. Effective sustained progress requires more than simply an accumulation of sector projects, and poverty reduction, individual wellbeing, community development, and societal advancement do not fall neatly into sectoral categories. However, researchers and practitioners recognize key operational challenges to achieving effective integration that stem from the structures and processes associated with the current practice of international development. Integration calls for the intentional linking of intervention designs, implementation, and evaluation across sectors and disciplines to achieve mutually reinforcing outcomes. In this report, we summarize the results of a study we conducted to explore the challenges facing governance programs that integrate with sector interventions to achieve governance outcomes and contribute to sector outcomes. Through a review of policy documents and project reports from recent integrated governance programs and interviews with donor and practitioner staff, we found three integrated governance programming variants, an emphasis on citizen and government collaboration to improve service delivery, interventions that serve as the glue between sectors, and a balancing act for indicators to measure contribution to sectoral outcomes. Our analysis identified four key success factors: contextual readiness, the application of learning and adapting approaches, donor support, and recognition of the limitations of integrated governance. We then discuss recommendations and implications and for answering the challenge of integrating governance and sector programming to achieve development outcomes.

Seeing the Combined Effects of Aid Programmes - Burge, Richard; Nadelman, Rachel; McGee, Rosie; Fox, Jonathan; Anderson, Colin (Institute of Development Studies, 2022)
Multiple aid agencies often try to support change in the same places, at the same time, and with similar actors. Surprisingly, their interactions and combined effects are rarely explored. This Policy Briefing describes findings from research conducted on recent aid programmes that overlapped in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and from a webinar with UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) advisors and practitioners. The research found three distinct categories of ‘interaction effects’: synergy, parallel play, and disconnect. We explore how using an ‘interaction effects’ lens in practice could inform aid agency strategies and programming.
Accepted: 2022-05-10T09:42:35Z

Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose - Dercon, Stefan (C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2022)

Can PDIA become a regular part of how a government works? - Building State Capability - Harrington, Peter (Building State Capability, 2022)
Institutional change is part of the theory of change of PDIA – scaling through the diffusion of new ways of thinking and greater problem-solving know-how. And once a community of practice reaches critical mass across an eco-system, a tipping point can happen where the eco-system becomes generally more open to novelty, where success is a more effective route to legitimacy, and where leadership is oriented towards value creation.

Measuring and Monitoring Adaptive Learning: A Landscape Review - LaFond, Anne; Adrian, Haley (USAID MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator, 2022)
This landscape review on measuring and monitoring adaptive learning highlights the learning from five adaptive programming guidelines and toolkits and one implementation science framework to inform the monitoring and evaluation of adaptive learning. The introduction of adaptive learning processes and skillsets in global health programming is part of an emerging strategy to advance a learning culture within projects and teams to improve health program performance. The monitoring and evaluation of adaptive learning is an emergent field aiming to monitor how adaptive learning processes have been introduced, how they are used, and whether they are having the intended results. Although there is a growing body of literature on adaptive programming more generally, there is a limited knowledge base on the monitoring and evaluation of adaptive learning interventions and their impacts. Unlike other implementation strategies or program management approaches, there are no standard metrics or a monitoring and evaluation framework to track the integration, implementation, and effectiveness of adaptive learning in health programming.

Capacity Development in a Participatory Adaptive Programme: the Case of the Clarissa Consortium - Widmer, Mireille; Apgar, Marina; Afroze, Jiniya; Malla, Sudhir; Healey, Jill; Constant, Sendrine (Institute of Development Studies, 2022)
Doing development differently rests on deliberate efforts to reflect and learn, not just about what programmes are doing and achieving, but about how they are working. This is particularly important for an action research programme like Child Labour: Action- Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA), which is implemented by a consortium of organisations from across the research and development spectrum, during a rapidly changing global pandemic. Harnessing the potential of diverse skills and complementary strengths across partners in responding to the complex challenge of the worst forms of child labour, requires capacity to work together in novel ways. This Research and Evidence Paper documents how CLARISSA approached capacity development, and what we learnt from our challenges and successes. From the start, the programme incorporated a capacity development strategy resting on self-assessment of a wide range of behavioural and technical competencies that were deemed important for programme implementation, formal training activities, and periodic review of progress through an after-action review (AAR) process. An inventory of capacity development activities that took place during the first year of implementation reveals a wide range of additional, unplanned activities, enabled by the programme’s flexibility and adaptive management strategy. These are organised into eight modalities, according to the individual or collective nature of the activity, and its sequencing – namely, whether capacity development happens prior to, during, or after (from) implementation. We conclude with some reflections on the emergent nature of capacity development. Planning capacity development in an adaptive programme provides a scaffolding in terms of time, resources, and legitimacy that sustains adaptiveness. We also recognise the gaps that remain to be addressed, particularly on scaling up individual learning to collective capabilities, and widening the focus from implementation teams to individuals working at consortium level.
Accepted: 2022-04-25T10:25:54Z

Innovating for inclusive rigour in peacebuilding evaluation - Apgar, Marina; Báez-Silva, Ángela Maria; Deng, Ayak Chol; Fairey, Tiffany; Rohrbach, Livia; Alamoussa, Dioma; Bradburn, Helene; Cubillos, Edwin; Gray, Stephen; Wingender, Leslie (Institute of Development Studies, 2022)
Inclusive and rigorous peacebuilding evaluation is both vital and complex. In this blog we share examples of how we are innovating our methodologies to move towards participatory and adaptive practice.

The collaborative exploration of alternative futures: A different approach to Theories of Change - CEDIL programme (2022)
ParEvo is a web application that enables the collaborative construction and exploration of a range of alternative futures: likely and unlikely, desirable and undesirable. These are described in the form of a branching narrative structure, developed over a series of iterations involving the interactions of a group of participants. These detailed storylines about the future contrast with optimistic, skeletal and largely singular views of the future found in diagrammatic ToCs often encountered by evaluators. This webinar will describe a recent ParEvo exercise implemented by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) in Cambridge. In this exercise 11 international experts explored ideas about how global risks associated with biotechnology research could be managed, and mismanaged, in the coming four years. Including how these alternative futures were evaluated by participants and the CSER facilitators. Issues to be discussed by the panel, and others, include comparisons with other representations of Theories of Change and other approaches to the exploration of alternative futures, described variously as scenario planning, futures or foresight work. Speakers: Rick Davies, Lara Mani Tom Hobson An overview of the app can be found here: https://mscinnovations.wordpress.com/ The app website is here: https://parevo.org/

Second (and Third) Thoughts on Adaptive Management and Thinking and Working Politically - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2022)
Self-Critical reflections on AM and TWP. Linking it with The Hype Cycle - "it feels like we are heading downward to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ form the initial peak of ‘inflated expectations’, but we will bounce back to something more sustained, that becomes a permanent feature of the aid landscape".

System Change: A Guidebook for Adopting Portfolio Approaches - Wellsch, Brent (UNDP, 2022)
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.

What, so what, now what? - Aston, Thomas (Medium, 2022)
Getting serious about systems change

Ripple effects mapping: capturing the wider impacts of systems change efforts in public health - Nobles, James; Wheeler, Jessica; Dunleavy-Harris, Kirsty; Holmes, Richard; Inman-Ward, Alan; Potts, Alexandra; Hall, Jennifer; Redwood, Sabi; Jago, Russell; Foster, Charlie (BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2022)
Systems approaches are currently being advocated and implemented to address complex challenges in Public Health. These approaches work by bringing multi-sectoral stakeholders together to develop a collective understanding of the system, and then to identify places where they can leverage change across the system. Systems approaches are unpredictable, where cause-and-effect cannot always be disentangled, and unintended consequences – positive and negative – frequently arise. Evaluating such approaches is difficult and new methods are warranted.
Keywords: Complex adaptive systems; Complexity; Evaluation; Public health; Systems approach; Systems science

Lessons Learned From the Use of the Most Significant Change Technique for Adaptive Management of Complex Health Interventions - Ohkubo, Saori; Mwaikambo, Lisa; Salem, Ruwaida M.; Ajijola, Lekan; Nyachae, Paul; Sharma, Mukesh Kumar (Global Health: Science and Practice, 2022)
Introduction:The Most Significant Change (MSC) technique is a complex-aware monitoring and evaluation tool, widely recognized for various adaptive management purposes. The documentation of practical examples using the MSC technique for an ongoing monitoring purpose is limited. We aim to fill the current gap by documenting and sharing the experience and lessons learned of The Challenge Initiative (TCI), which is scaling up evidence-based family planning (FP) and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) interventions in 11 countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Methods:The qualitative assessment took place in early 2021 to document TCI’s use and adaptation of MSC and determine its added value in adaptive management, routine monitoring, and cross-learning efforts. Focus group discussions and key informant interviews were conducted virtually with staff members involved in collecting and selecting MSC stories. Results:TCI has had a positive experience with using MSC to facilitate adaptive management in multiple countries. The use of MSC has created learning opportunities that have helped diffuse evidence-based FP and AYSRH interventions both within and across countries. The responsive feedback step in the MSC process was viewed as indispensable to learning and collaboration. There are several necessary inputs to successful use of the method, including buy-in about the benefits, training on good interviewing techniques and qualitative research, and dedicated staff to manage the process. Conclusion:Our assessment results suggest that the MSC technique is an effective qualitative data collection tool to strengthen routine monitoring and adaptive management efforts that allows for flexibility in how project stakeholders implement the process. The MSC technique could be an important tool for global health practitioners, policy makers, and researchers working on complex interventions because they continually need to understand stakeholders’ needs and priorities, learn from lessons and evidence-based practices, and be agile about addressing potential challenges.
Publisher: Global Health: Science and Practice

Theory of Change Workbook: A Step-by-Step Process for Developing or Strengthening Theories of Change - Salib, Monalisa (USAID, 2022)
While over time theories of change have become synonymous with simple if/then statements, a strong theory of change should actually be a much more detailed, context-specific articulation of how we *theorize* change will happen under a program.

Systems Thinking and Practice: A Guide to Concepts, Principles and Tools for FCDO and Partners - Woodhill, Jim; Millican, Juliet (Institute of Development Studies, 2022)
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 working practices, business processes and leadership. It also offers links to additional resources and tools on systems thinking. We hope it can support systems thinking to become more commonplace within the culture and practices of FCDO and working relations with partner organisations.
Accepted: 2023-02-03T15:47:58Z

Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013? – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2022)
It’s always a red letter day when a new paper from Graham Teskey drops. His most recent is Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013? For those that don’t know him, Graham is a consummate insider-outsider within the aid sector – long stints at DFID (UK), DFAT (Australia) and now Abt (Management Consultants). From this vantage point he has been one of the leading proponents of ‘thinking and working politically’, always ready to call out the hand-wavey academics and demand some practical lessons, please. This paper is part biography of an idea, setting out the timeline, moments and key documents and policy wins in the evolution of TWP (which seems to have involved a lot of seminars that I missed due to Oxfam’s meagre travel budget). The other part is, to be honest, a bit of a lament – a study in ‘Why Change Hasn’t Happened’, because TWP has ‘got lost in the maelstrom’ of the wider, largely negative, changes in the aid sector. Overall, it’s a brilliant summary, and one I’ll be recommending to my increasingly long-suffering activism students….

The Difference Learning Makes - Factors that enable and inhibit adaptive programming - Gray, Stephen; Carl, Andy (Christian Aid, 2022)
Executive Summary When Christian Aid (CA) Ireland devised its multi-country and multi-year Irish Aid funded Programme Grant II (2017-2022), they opted to move away from a linear programme management approach and to explore an adaptive one. Across seven countries: Angola, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, CA and partner organisations support marginalised communities to realise their rights, reduce violence and address gender inequality. Since 2019, Adapt Peacebuilding has accompanied CA Ireland, CA country teams and partner organisations as they experimented with using a deliberate adaptive approach. The authors were also asked to follow up on an initial study by CA Ireland and Overseas Development Institute in 2018, which described the rationale for adopting this new approach and included early lessons from its first year of implementation. The aim of this study is to help deepen CA Ireland, CA country teams’ and partners’ understanding of (a) whether their application of adaptive programming has resulted in better development outcomes, and (b) how they can better understand the factors that enabled or inhibited the effectiveness of using this approach. Over the past three years, this study has found evidence and multiple examples that show adaptive programming contributed to better development outcomes. The main reasons cited were that these were made possible both from improvements to programming strategies based on proactive reflection and learning, as well as those that stem from the reactive capacity of adaptive programmes to change course in response to unanticipated changes in operating conditions. This study found that adaptive programming has enabled better development practice where organisations are enhancing their skills to better respond and be flexible to contextual challenges. 72% of partners surveyed described adaptive programming as the most useful approach to programme management that they have used. The programme approach has meant that CA and partner staff were better able to explore the significance of change in the context and their contributions to them. It also enabled spaces for meaningful engagement with communities in learning and programme planning processes and encouraged opportunities for experimentation in programming. The study also found that adaptive programming has supported flexible delivery. This led to better outcomes that would not have been possible were the programme not able to make flexible adjustments. The main focus has been the analysis of nine factors that can determine the effectiveness and impact (or otherwise) of using an adaptive approach, flagging important issues for understanding. These factors are identified as: 1) Leadership; 2) Organisational culture; 3) Conceptual understanding; 4) Staff capacities; 5) Partnership approaches; 6) Participation; 7) Methods and tools; 8) Administrative procedures; and 9) The operating context. Together these can provide an analytical framework for assessing an organisation’s ‘adaptive scope’, which can be used as a tool for better understanding an organisation’s potential to generate improved development outcomes via adaptive programming and how to strengthen them. The study concludes with several recommendations for CA Ireland, all of which have relevance for a broader community of donors and implementing organisations interested in the potential of adaptive programming.

Guidance Note for Adaptive Management - Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (Government of Denmark, 2022)
This note explains what adaptive aid management is; why and when it should be considered; and how it should be applied. It covers all Danish development support channels and modalities, including bilateral country assistance, assistance to and through civil society, the private sector and to and through multilateral organisations. This guide has three chapters. Chapter 1 provides an executive overview of what adaptive management is. Chapter 2 goes deeper into five key operational principles of adaptive management. Chapter 3 details the main tenets of adaptive management processes during the programming cycle.

The Patterns of Possibility - How to Recast Relationships to Create Healthier Systems and Better Outcomes - Winhall, Jennie; Leadbeater, Charles (The Rockwool Foundation, 2022)
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 series we delve deeper into these four keys and provide practical advice on how they can be put to use. This article is about relationships. Systems are defined by the patterns of interactions between their parts: their relationships. Those interactions generate the outcomes of the system as a whole. Transforming the outcomes of a system requires remaking its relationships and then unlocking the other keys to system innovation: purpose, power and resources. This shift in relationships allows all those in the system to learn faster, to be more creative. System innovators redesign the relationships in the system to allow dramatically enhanced learning across the system, and thereby generate far better outcomes.

PFM Reform Through PDIA: What Works and When it Works - Harris, Jamelia; Lawson, Andrew (Public Financial Management Blog - IMF, 2022)

Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) - Abbaszada, Ramiz (2022)
The present literature review was conducted in order to investigate the role of Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) in modern public administration. We use data from different academic articles to decompose the value within the framework of this theoretical perspective. In addition to explaining how extend, Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) is crucial in the “information age” and its main factors will be the main priorities of the study. Traditional top-down conceptions of leadership are at best unduly simplistic, as twenty-first-century management continues to stress decentralized organizing structures and co-evolutionary ecologies of enterprises, institutions, and markets. There's also a growing recognition that effective leadership isn't always defined by the leader's symbolic, motivating, or charismatic behaviors. But, if leadership isn't "in" or "done by" a leader, how can we understand what leadership is and where it comes from? A unique method to answering these concerns is based on complexity theory, specifically the idea that leadership emerges from relational interactions among actors. Leadership, in this view, is more than a talent, a transaction, or a symbol; it comes from dynamic relationships. The role of leadership in accelerating those processes in companies where interdependent acts among many persons merge into a collective venture is investigated by "complexity leadership theory." Complexity leadership is a combination of the three forms of leadership described below: (1) administrative leadership based on tight control and a large bureaucratic hierarchy (2) adaptive leadership, which is built on creative issue solution, resonating with changing situations, and learning, and (3) action-centered leadership, which entails crisis decision-making and dynamic productivity.

Data-powered positive deviance: Combining traditional and non-traditional data to identify and characterise development-related outperformers - Albanna, Basma; Heeks, Richard; Pawelke, Andreas; Boy, Jeremy; Handl, Julia; Gluecker, Andreas (Development Engineering, 2022)
The positive deviance approach in international development scales practices and strategies of positively-deviant individuals and groups: those who are able to achieve significantly better development outcomes than their peers despite having similar resources and challenges. This approach relies mainly on traditional data sources (e.g. surveys and interviews) for identifying those positive deviants and for discovering their successful solutions. The growing availability of non-traditional digital data (e.g. from remote sensing and mobile phones) relating to individuals, communities and spaces enables data innovation opportunities for positive deviance. Such datasets can identify deviance at geographic and temporal scales that were not possible before. But guidance is needed on how this new data can be employed in the positive deviance approach, and how it can be combined with more traditional data to gain deeper, more meaningful, and context-aware insights. This paper presents such guidance through a data-powered method that combines both traditional and non-traditional data to identify and understand positive deviance in new ways and domains. This method has been developed iteratively through six development projects covering five different domains – sustainable cattle ranching, agricultural productivity, rangeland management, research performance, crime control – with global and local development partners in six countries. The projects combine different types of non-traditional data with official statistics, administrative data and interviews. Here, we describe a structured method for data-powered positive deviance developed from the experience of these projects, and we reflect on lessons learned. We hope to encourage and guide greater use of this new method; enabling development practitioners to make more effective use of the non-traditional digital datasets that are increasingly available.

Monitoring and evaluation for thinking and working politically - Aston, Thomas; Roche, Chris; Schaaf, Marta; Cant, Sue (Evaluation, 2022)
This article explores the challenges of monitoring and evaluating politically informed and adaptive programmes in the international development field. We assess the strengths and weaknesses of some specific evaluation methodologies which have been suggested as particularly appropriate for these kinds of programmes based on scholarly literature and the practical experience of the authors in using them. We suggest that those methods which assume generative causality are particularly well suited to the task. We also conclude that factoring in the politics of uncertainty and evidence generation and use is particularly important in order to recognize and value diverse experiential knowledge, integrate understandings of the local context, accommodate adaptation and realistically grapple with the power relations which are inherent in evaluation processes.

Civil society organizations and managerialism: On the depoliticization of the adaptive management agenda - Gutheil, Lena; Koch, Dirk-Jan (Development Policy Review, 2022)
Motivation In the last decade, a movement formed around making aid delivery more adaptive, relying on principles such as context sensitivity, flexibility, and ownership. The approaches seem promising for civil society organizations (CSOs) to fulfil their mission of fostering social transformation. While several donor agencies have started engaging with such approaches, the authors hardly see their political implications in practice. Purpose The article aims to provide evidence on an adaptive project and demonstrate how the social transformative and political nature of adaptive development management is rendered technical and depoliticized in practice. Methods and approach We use a case study of a development programme based on a social transformative policy framework that is implemented through CSOs in Uganda and Vietnam. Data were collected by means of interviews, participant observation and document analysis. Findings We find that, in practice, the social transformative policy framework is competing with managerial logics. We compare this process with the depoliticization of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, finding striking similarities. By using practice theory, we show how managerialism remains the dominant paradigm in the civil society aid sector, fuelling the “anti-politics machine.” Policy implications The article shows that policy frameworks do not always work as intended. Donors should therefore not only change policy frameworks, but also start addressing institutional and operational requirements.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dpr.12630

Market systems change rubric - Loveridge, Donna (Oxford Policy Management, 2022)
This systems change rubric describes different performance levels according to various systems elements, such as policy (formal rules), practices and relationships and connections. Programmes can use the rubric to assess the performance of systems to help decide where and how to intervene, or during and post-implementation to conduct progress assessments, and assess the effectiveness of interventions and type, breadth and depth of systems change. Each performance level description highlights the type of data and information that needs to be collected. One analysis is completed, users can compare this to the performance descriptions to see which level best matches the analysis. This helps programmes draw conclusions about systems changes. The rubric was developed in 2020 and tested in 2021 and builds on systems change thinking and frameworks from two previous FSG publications. It can be used as: pre-intervention to conduct an assessment during an intervention to conduct progress assessments and reflect on the effectiveness of interventions to change systems and inform decision making post intervention to make judgements about whether interventions were valuable given the resources, time and effort spent Useful for: Implementation managers to determine the effectiveness of interventions, as well as by Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) teams to track progress against expected outcomes.

The Relational Work of Systems Change - Millgan, Katherine; Zerda, Juanita; Kania, John (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2022)
Collective impact efforts must prioritize working together in more relational ways to find systemic solutions to social problems. Sometimes we lose sight of a simple truth about systems: They are made up of people. Despite all of the frameworks and tools at our disposal and all of our learning as a field of practice, purely technical, rational approaches to systems change will not make much of a dent in shifting power or altering our most deeply held beliefs. If most collective impact efforts fall short of supporting people to change in fundamentally consciousness-altering ways, then, the system they are a part of will not significantly change either. However, over the past two decades, the prevailing view among many funders, board members, and institutional leaders has been that only quantifiable and predetermined outcomes can create impact. But if the interrelated, devastating, and deepening crises and divisions over the past two years have taught us anything, it is that complex, adaptive problems defy tidy logic models and reductive technical solutions. It is time to invest our collective energy in more relational and emergent approaches to transforming systems.

MOTION HANDBOOK - Developing a transformative Theory of Change - Palavicino, Carla Alvial; Matti, Cristian; Witte, Jenny (TIPC, Utrecht University, 2022)
A step-by-step guide on how to develop a Transformative Theory of Change, for innovation projects, programmes and organisations working on systems transformation. The MOTION project was initiated with one key question in mind: how can we help projects and organisations be more transformative, using the framework and concept provided by the multi-level perspective? And what kind of tools, methods and frameworks can we co-design that translate scientific concepts into practises relevant for policy practitioners? This led us into a co-creation journey during which researchers from the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and EIT Climate-KIC project partners experimented, reflected and learned from each other in building the approach that we share in this handbook. Through this journey, we gained a deeper understanding of what the portfolio approach means in a transformative system change context and which skills and competences are needed to facilitate processes of co-creation in the science-policy-practice interface. We had the opportunity to configure the key building blocks of our theoretical approach, the Transformative Outcomes, into practical insights and actions that can easily be applied by innovation organisations at many levels. This handbook is the culmination of the journey as it translates key learnings from the MOTION project into practical insights that are relevant to practitioners working on systems transformation.

An introduction to radical participatory design: decolonising participatory design processes - Udoewa, Victor (Design Science, 2022)
Outside of community-led design projects, most participatory design processes initiated by a company or organisation maintain or even strengthen power imbalances between the design organisation and the community on whose purported behalf they are designing, further increasing the absencing experience. Radical participatory design (RPD) is a radically relational answer to the coloniality inherent in participatory design where the community members’ disappointment is greater due to the greater expectations and presencing potential of a ‘participatory design’ process. We introduce the term RPD to show how research and design processes can be truly participatory to the root or core. Instead of treating participatory design as a method, a way of conducting a method, or a methodology, we introduce RPD as a meta-methodology, a way of doing any methodology. We explicitly describe what participation means and compare and contrast design processes based on the amount of participation, creating a typology of participation. We introduce ‘designer as community member’, ‘community member as designer,’ and ‘community member as facilitator’ models and provide characteristics for the meta-methodology of RPD.
Keywords: critical design; decolonising design; design justice; participatory design; participatory research; research justice

Sensemaking Workshop Preparation Guide and Facilitator Guide and Sensemaking Training - UNDP (UNDP, 2022)
Based on experience from running Sensemaking workshops for UNDP offices and government partners, the Asia-Pacific Regional Innovation Centre developed the Sensemaking Preparation Guide and Facilitator Guide to share its knowledge with teams and organization that are interested in using the Sensemaking process.

Guidance Note: Practical introduction to adaptive management - DT Global (DT Global, 2022)
DT Global is proud to introduce our new Guidance Note: Practical Introduction to Adaptive Management There is a growing consensus around adaptive management as an effective (even necessary) approach when programs are tackling complex development problems. While there is no standard definition of adaptive management, there is general agreement that such programs need to routinely engage with and respond to program context; constantly test what works in that context; and adjust approaches, plans, and activities based on continuous learning. However, there remains a more limited body of evidence about what this looks like in practice—the enabling conditions, systems, resourcing, skills, and attitudes to effectively operationalise adaptive management. There is also limited guidance around when adaptive management is required, and to what extent—both critical and often overlooked considerations when planning for successful adaptive management. This Guidance Note draws together lessons and good practice in adaptive management from across DT Global’s diverse portfolio of donor-funded programs. It outlines our conceptual framework for adaptive management, with practical guidance on how it can be applied by our program teams. It is also designed to help our teams distinguish adaptive management from good (non adaptive) project management, consider when adaptive management is most useful on a program, and how adaptive a program (or part of a program) should be.

Evaluating programming that thinks and works politically: Challenges and emerging practice - Jacobstein, David; Swift, Sarah (New Directions for Evaluation, 2022)
Issues of power are not new to program evaluation. What is new is a consideration of how programming uses insights into incentives that shape and adapt implementation. How should one evaluate in a way that explicitly assesses the ways in which a program considers power? One of the innovative topics deriving from the democracy and governance space is the approach of thinking and working politically (TWP) which is seeing increased use in development programming. TWP suggests different mental models and practical approaches to achieving development objectives in ways that are more contextually grounded and informed by power dynamics. This article describes several of the core challenges to evaluation of TWP and also a rubric of considerations for more effective evaluation practices in this emerging field.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ev.20527

Systems change: from theory to practice - Kessler, J J; Molenaar, J W (Aid Environment, 2022)
In recent years concepts such as market or sector transformation and systems change have become part of the mainstream development discourse. The aim is to address root causes that undermine the performance of sectors (e.g. agriculture, mining or energy) in order to achieve long-term and widescale impact. It seems, however, that it is not always clear to everyone using these concepts what is meant with these concepts and how it differs from ‘business as usual.’ Adopting a systems change approach is often seen as an incremental change from ‘business as usual,’ while in most cases it implies a much more fundamental shift to the ‘way of working.’ Moreover, even where systems change has been more or less clearly defined, it remains a challenge to actually achieve it and to monitor it. To provide practitioners with relevant input, this paper provides an overview of relevant insights from literature and AidEnvironment’s own experience in conceptualizing, implementing and monitoring systems change. The insights have been brought together in a number of ‘systems change characteristics (‘what is it?’), and systems change principles (‘how to do it?’), with actionable details. These are meant to support organisations in understanding and implementing systems change.

Human Learning Systems: A practical guide for the curious - Lowe, Toby; Padmanabhan, Chandrima; McCart, Des; McNeill, Karen; Brogan, Andy; Smith, Mark (Centre for Public Impact, 2022)
Our new guide provides practical advice to help any organisation working in public service apply the Human Learning Systems approach to their work. In doing so, they will be better equipped to explore, learn and respond to the unique strengths and needs of each person, family and community they serve.

Context-monitoring for adaptive management - Pickwick, Sarah (World Vision, 2022)

A new bird's eye view on the agile forest (2022 update) - Portman, Henny (PM World Journal, 2022)
Some years ago, you could say “Scrum is agile” and ask “is Agile Scrum?” Now we know there is much more flesh on the bones. At this moment there are more than fifty known and less known agile approaches, frameworks or methods available. To get a first impression of the different approaches, I try to bring some structure in the jungle to approaches, methods and frameworks. In Figure 1, I position the best-known agile approaches in a structure. The approaches, frameworks or methods are positioned within the 'One-time programs / projects' sections or within 'Business as usual’ / indefinite, or both. On the other side the approaches, frameworks or methods are clustered around team, product or programme and portfolio level. In the dark blue boxes in Figure 1 we see agile approaches that are only applicable in IT-focused organizations. All other approaches can be used within IT and non-IT-oriented organizations (light blue coloured). I haven’t mapped all the known approaches, frameworks and methods in this figure, and to be honest, I think there is a lot of duplication and probably commercial drivers play a role too to ‘develop’ the next kid on the block without added value in comparison with the existing approaches, frameworks or methods. The team level, including Scrum and Kanban, is applicable in both IT-oriented and non-IT-oriented products and services development and operations. The engineering level focuses specifically on IT-oriented product development. The one-time, temporary projects and programme frameworks and methods are suitable for both IT and non-IT. The permanent umbrella frameworks (both product-targeted and team-targeted) focus specifically on IT and product development and the Culture-targeted approaches help organisations to increase their agility.

Learning to change: The case for systemic learning strategies in the humanitarian sector - Ramalingam, Ben; Mitchell, John (ALNAP/ODI, 2022)
This paper presents the case for systemic organisational change in the humanitarian system. The paper firstly shows that that organisational learning has tended to reinforce existing ways of working and has not been able to shift a culture that values action over reflection. As a result, the rest of the paper asks about the most significant changes in the humanitarian sector

Nimble adaptation: Tailoring monitoring, evaluation, and learning methods to provide actionable data in complex environments - Serpe, Lauren; Ingram, Mason; Byom, Kate (New Directions for Evaluation, 2022)
This chapter examines good practices in implementing effective Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems within complex international development Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) programs, which are characterized by challenges of non-linearity, limited evidence of theories of change, and contextual and politically contingent nature of outcomes. The chapter presents three cases of MEL systems in complex projects implemented by Pact across distinct and diverse operating contexts – Zimbabwe, Cambodia, and Somalia – to illustrate those projects’ MEL approaches that enabled continuous adaptation. The authors analyze the cases to respond to two questions: (1) What are the key elements of effective adaptive management-focused MEL systems in complex environments? (2) What is practical guidance for designing and enabling complexity-responsive and effective adaptive management-focused MEL systems? The case studies illustrate three key elements: (1) Information gathering that closely links context, research, and performance data; (2) Systems for reflection that offer scheduled learning moments of varying frequency and intensity, as well as multiple feedback mechanisms; and (3) Enabling structures that promote adaptive mindsets and attitudes within project teams.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ev.20523

Storytelling for Systems Change: insights from the field - Snow, Thea; Murikumthara, David; Dusseldorp, Teya; Fyfe, Rachel; Wolff, Lila; McCracken, Jane (Centre for Public Impact, 2022)
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 sitting in communities, they’re often not being told or celebrated. We wanted to understand why this is, and what might be done to better enable these stories to be shared and heard. The story of storytelling We talked to a range of people to uncover the story of storytelling - including collective impact backbone team members, community members, storytelling experts, and those working in and around community-led systems change initiatives across Australia. We explored the roles stories play in different communities; what good storytelling looks like; what barriers to storytelling might be; and what role stories can play in supporting systems change. Our findings We have learned through this project that stories can be used both to change the system and to evaluate, understand and showcase the change that is occurring in communities. We have heard that different stories require different approaches – stories that are seeking to enable change look different to those that are seeking to celebrate change.

An introductory systems thinking toolkit for civil servants - UK Government (UK Government Office for Science, 2022)
This document is a an Introductory Toolkit for for civil servants. It is one component of a suite of documents that aims to act as a springboard into systems thinking for civil servants unfamiliar with this approach. These documents introduce a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, but which is by no means comprehensive. They are intended to act as a first step towards using systems thinking approaches to solve complex problems and the reader is encourage to explore the wider systems thinking field further.

CLA Maturity Tool - Card Deck (Implementing Partners version 1) - USAID LEARN (USAID, 2022)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL) and its support mechanism, LEARN, have developed a Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) Framework and Maturity tool to help USAID missions think more deliberately about how to plan for and implement CLA approaches that fit the mission’s context and assist them in achieving their development objectives. While the tool is intended primarily for USAID audiences to be used in participatory self-assessment workshops, the CLA Framework and maturity spectrum are relevant to a wider audience. USAID’s CLA Framework identifies key components and subcomponents of daily work that may be opportunities for intentional, systematic, and resourced CLA. The framework recognizes the diversity of what CLA can look like in various organizations and programs while also giving CLA structure, clarity, and coherence across two key dimensions: • CLA in the Program Cycle: how CLA is incorporated throughout Program Cycle processes, including strategy, project, and activity design and implementation; and • Enabling Conditions: how an organization’s culture, business processes, and resource allocation support CLA integration. Recognizing that CLA is not binary—it’s not an issue of “doing it or not doing it”—PPL and LEARN have developed a spectrum of practice for each of the 16 subcomponents in the framework. The spectrum offers examples of what integration might look like at different stages: Not Yet Present, Emergent, Expanding, Advanced and Institutionalized. The maturity stage descriptions are only illustrative and are intended to spark reflection on current practice and opportunities for improvements. In this resource, each CLA subcomponent page describes the key concepts for that topic and includes a description of the maturity stages. Although the descriptions were originally developed for USAID, the majority of the concepts easily transfer or have equivalents in the partner community. For example, although organizations outside of USAID may not hold “Portfolio Reviews” (part of the Pause & Reflect subcomponent), the majority hold some type of meeting to review programmatic progress. This is the seventh version of the CLA Framework and maturity spectrum. PPL and LEARN will continue reviewed and periodically update them based on user feedback, so if you have comments about the content, please email learning@usaid.gov. We would also love to hear how you’ve used this content with your team or organization.

Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Maturity Spectrum (v7) - USAID LEARN (USAID, 2022)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL) and its support mechanism, LEARN, have developed a Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) Framework and Maturity tool to help USAID missions think more deliberately about how to plan for and implement CLA approaches that fit the mission’s context and assist them in achieving their development objectives. While the tool is intended primarily for USAID audiences to be used in participatory self-assessment workshops, the CLA Framework and maturity spectrum are relevant to a wider audience. USAID’s CLA Framework identifies key components and subcomponents of daily work that may be opportunities for intentional, systematic, and resourced CLA. The framework recognizes the diversity of what CLA can look like in various organizations and programs while also giving CLA structure, clarity, and coherence across two key dimensions: • CLA in the Program Cycle: how CLA is incorporated throughout Program Cycle processes, including strategy, project, and activity design and implementation; and • Enabling Conditions: how an organization’s culture, business processes, and resource allocation support CLA integration. Recognizing that CLA is not binary—it’s not an issue of “doing it or not doing it”—PPL and LEARN have developed a spectrum of practice for each of the 16 subcomponents in the framework. The spectrum offers examples of what integration might look like at different stages: Not Yet Present, Emergent, Expanding, Advanced and Institutionalized. The maturity stage descriptions are only illustrative and are intended to spark reflection on current practice and opportunities for improvements. In this resource, each CLA subcomponent page describes the key concepts for that topic and includes a description of the maturity stages. Although the descriptions were originally developed for USAID, the majority of the concepts easily transfer or have equivalents in the partner community. For example, although organizations outside of USAID may not hold “Portfolio Reviews” (part of the Pause & Reflect subcomponent), the majority hold some type of meeting to review programmatic progress. This is the seventh version of the CLA Framework and maturity spectrum. PPL and LEARN will continue reviewed and periodically update them based on user feedback, so if you have comments about the content, please email learning@usaid.gov. We would also love to hear how you’ve used this content with your team or organization.

Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting Framework & Key Concepts (Implementing Partner Version 1) - USAID LEARN (USAID, 2022)
Although collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) are not new to USAID and its implementing partners, they often do not happen regularly or systematically and are not intentionally resourced. The CLA Framework above identifies components and subcomponents to help you think more deliberately about what approach to CLA might be best tailored to your organizational or project context. The framework recognizes the diversity of what CLA can look like in various organizations and projects while also giving CLA structure, clarity, and coherence across two key dimensions: - CLA in the Program Cycle: how CLA is incorporated into planning and design processes throughout the Program Cycle in order to improve their effectiveness; and - Enabling Conditions: how an organization’s culture, daily operating processes, and resource allocation support CLA integration. Organizations need both integrated CLA practices appropriate for their context and conducive enabling conditions to become stronger learning organizations capable of managing adaptively. The framework stresses the holistic and integrated nature of the various components of CLA to reinforce the principle that CLA is not a separate workstream—it should be integrated into existing processes to strengthen the discipline of development and improve aid effectiveness.

Change & Complexity: Vector Theory of Change - a theory of change for complex systems - Doyle, Linda (Cynefin Centre, 2021)

Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013 - Teskey, Graham (TWP Community of Practice, 2021)
The Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) Community of Practice (CoP) was established at a small meeting tacked on at the end of a meeting of Governance Advisers working for the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development (DFID) on South and South-East Asian countries, held in Delhi in November 2013. Since then, a number of meetings have been held throughout the world, each addressing different issues; ‘TWP’ has entered the lexicon of mainstream development; the CoP has expanded to more than 300 people; a Washington DC chapter has been established; and the International CoP has been granted modest funding from DFID’s successor, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It is legitimate to ask, however, what has been achieved operationally: how have the ideas underpinning TWP affected operational practice? This short paper traces the evolution of the idea and practice of TWP from 2013 to late 2021, and identifies what we have learned. What has been successful, and what has not? I asked in 2017 whether TWP had become a second orthodoxy (Teskey, 2017). Did this represent hubris or was 2017 in some ways the apogee of what might rather grandly be called the TWP ‘movement’?

Getting Real about Unknowns in Complex Policy Work - Andrews, Matt (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2021)
As with all public policy work, education policies are demanding. Policy workers need to ‘know’ a lot—about the problems they are addressing, the people who need to be engaged, the promises they can make in response, the context they are working in, and the processes they will follow to implement. Most policy workers answer questions about such issues within the structures of plan and control processes used to devise budgets and projects. These structures limit their knowledge gathering, organization and sense-making activities to up-front planning activities, and even though sophisticated tools like Theories of Change suggest planners ‘know’ all that is needed for policy success, they often do not. Policies are often fraught with ‘unknowns’ that cannot be captured in passive planning processes and thus repeatedly undermine even the best laid plans. Through a novel strategy that asks how much one knows about the answers to 25 essential policy questions, and an application to recent education policy interventions in Mozambique, this paper shows that it is possible to get real about unknowns in policy work. Just recognizing these unknowns exist—and understanding why they do and what kind of challenge they pose to policy workers—can help promote a more modest and realistic approach to doing complex policy work.

Technical assistance: a practical account of the challenges in design and implementation - Nastase, Alexandra; Rajan, Alok; French, Ben; Bhattacharya, Debarshi (Gates Open Research, 2021)
Technical assistance is provided to country governments as part of international development programmes to support policymaking or strengthen state capability. This article presents the conceptual evolution of ‘technical assistance’ linked to capacity development, starting with programmes aiming exclusively to enhance individual capacity in the 1950s to 1970s and progressing to complex systems approaches in the past ten years. It also presents some of the frequent challenges in designing and implementing technical assistance, drawing from the existing literature and the authors’ experience in international development. The article summarises the latest thinking about delivering more effective development, including the adaptive management practices and the initiatives to strengthen evidence about what works. Finally, we complement this article with a follow-up open letter reflecting on the current policy options and opportunities for change.

The Art of Agile Development - Shore, James; Warden, Shane (O'Reilly Media, 2021)
Most companies developing software employ something they call "Agile." But there's widespread misunderstanding of what Agile is and how to use it. If you want to improve your software development team's agility, this comprehensive guidebook's clear, concrete, and detailed guidance explains what to do and why, and when to make trade-offs. In this thorough update of the classic Agile how-to guide, James Shore provides no-nonsense advice on Agile adoption, planning, development, delivery, and management taken from over two decades of Agile experience. He brings the latest ideas from Extreme Programming, Scrum, Lean, DevOps, and more into a cohesive whole. Learn how to successfully bring Agile development to your team and organization–or discover why Agile might not be for you. This book explains how to: Improve agility: create the conditions necessary for Agile to succeed and scale in your organization Focus on value: work as a team, understand priorities, provide visibility, and improve continuously Deliver software reliably: share ownership, decrease development costs, evolve designs, and deploy continuously Optimize value: take ownership of product plans, budgets, and experiments–and produce market-leading software

System Innovation on Purpose - Leadbeater, Charles; Winhall, Jennie (The Rockwool Foundation, 2021)
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 series we delve deeper into these four keys and provide practical advice on how they can be put to use. This essay is about the role that purpose plays in orchestrating complex systems and how system innovators can create a new system around a new sense of purpose.

The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change - Rayner, Cynthia; Bonnici, François (OUP Oxford, 2021)
The issues of poverty, inequality, racial justice, and climate change have never been more pressing or paralyzing. Current approaches to social change, which rely on industrial models of production and power to "solve" social problems, are not helping. In fact, they are designed to entrench the status quo. In The Systems Work of Social Change, Cynthia Rayner and François Bonnici draw on two hundred years of history and a treasure trove of stories of committed social changemakers to uncover principles and practices for social change that radically depart from these approaches. Rather than delivering "solutions," these principles and practices focus on the process of change itself. Through rich storytelling and lucid analysis, Rayner and Bonnici show that connection, context, and power sit at the heart of the change process, ensuring broader agency for people and communities to create social systems that are responsive and representative in a rapidly changing world. Simple yet profound, this book distills a timely set of lessons for practitioners, leaders, scholars, and policymakers.

Building a culture of learning at scale: learning networks for systems change. - McKenzie, Fiona (Orange Compass & Paul Ramsay Foundation, 2021)
This scoping paper explores the question ‘what would it take to build a culture of learning at scale?’. It focuses on systems-wide learning that can help to inform systems change efforts in complex contexts. To answer this question, literature was reviewed from across diverse disciplines and the realms of education, innovation systems, systems thinking and knowledge management. This inquiry was also supported by in-depth interviews with numerous specialists from the for-purpose sector and the examination of several case studies of learning across systems. The goal was to derive common patterns to inform a ‘learning for systems change’ framework. Learning for systems change is critical when working with complexity. The dynamic nature of complex adaptive systems requires an ability to continually sense and learn from the system and adapt accordingly. This is because the nature of the challenge and ‘what works’ to meet the challenge is continually shifting (Lowe and Plimmer, 2019). This requires an ongoing process of iterative inquiry that draws upon wisdom and insights from across the system. Such learning challenges traditional siloes of expertise and organisational boundaries (Clarke et al., 2019). Learning is not simply a nice to have. It is critical for greater impact and improved outcomes, particularly in mission-driven organisations and initiatives (Price et al., 2019). In this paper, a ‘learning networks’ approach is proposed, one that draws upon individual, group and systems-wide learning to build capacity and resilience for systems change in uncertain environments. This fills a gap in the literature where the focus is largely on learning within organisations. Instead, the focus here is on what is required to support learning to occur across scales and boundaries - from the individual to system-wide. A simple meta-framework for developing learning networks is proposed that includes high level guidance on the enabling conditions - the mindsets, relationships, processes and structures- that would enable learning networks to flourish.

Twenty years of UK governance programmes in Nigeria - Piron, Laure-Hélène; Cummings, Clare; Williams, Gareth; Derbyshire, Helen; Hadley, Sierd (ODI, 2021)
This Flagship report analyses 20 years of governance programmes in Nigeria funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in the North-western states of Jigawa (since 2001), Kano (since 2005) and Kaduna (since 2006), as well as the North-eastern state of Yobe (since 2011). The report’s main research question is whether, how, under what conditions and for whom UK-funded state-level governance programmes in Nigeria have contributed to sustained changes in governance, and related changes in health and education. ... The report concludes with the following recommendations: To international development partners: 1. Invest for the long term – 10 to 20 years – combining support for both state and nonstate actors. 2. Ensure programmes have the strategic-level mandate, managerial capacity and frontline staff skills to pursue politically savvy opportunities. 3. Take PEA to the next level by unpacking causal mechanisms, understanding incentives and designing interventions to make change happen. 4. Give governance programmes the ability to flex between core governance and service delivery issues. 5. Incentivise greater collaboration between governance and sector programmes. 6. Incentivise greater attention to gender, and to social inclusion beyond disability issues, in governance programming. To FCDO: 7. Empower and resource FCDO teams to enable TWP programmes, ensuring decision-making by country teams to respond to local priorities. 8. Re-imagine TWP for FCDO Nigeria, giving implementers the space to operate in TWP ways. 9. Incentivise stronger collaboration between PERL, Lafiya (health programme) and the Partnership for Learning for All in Nigerian Education. 10. Invest in impact data analysis. To partner governments in Nigeria and beyond: 11. Explicitly set out the objectives for which you would like to receive assistance. 12. Use TWP principles to decide how development partners can support your political objectives and the scope for politically-feasible and mutually-beneficial collaboration. 13. Invest in the coordination of development partners. To non-state partners in Nigeria and beyond: 14. Join coalitions to achieve your priorities. 15. Select development partners which can strengthen your skills, not just fund your activities.

Lessons for PFM Reform - the PDIA Approach in Africa - Bento, Joana (Public Financial Management Blog - IMF, 2021)
Some important lessons are as follows: First, identifying a policy problem is critical for reforms to get traction both at a political and administrative level. Second, appropriate solutions can emerge from a process of experimentation, iteration, and adaptation. Third, building teams and institutional capabilities is a critical part of solving complex problems in a sustainable way.

How Does Participatory Action Research Generate Innovation? Findings from a Rapid Realist Review - Snijder, Mieke; Apgar, J. Marina (Institute of Development Studies, 2021)
This Emerging Evidence Report shares evidence of how, for whom, and under what circumstances, Participatory Action Research (PAR) leads to innovative actions. A rapid realist review was undertaken to develop programme theories that explain how PAR generates innovation. The methodology included peer-reviewed and grey literature and moments of engagement with programme staff, such that their input supported the development and refinement of three resulting initial programme theories (IPTs) that we present in this report. Across all three IPTs, safe relational space, group facilitation, and the abilities of facilitators, are essential context and intervention components through which PAR can generate innovation. Implications from the three IPTs for evaluation design of the CLARISSA programme are identified and discussed. The report finishes with opportunities for the CLARISSA programme to start building an evidence base of how PAR works as an intervention modality, such as evidencing group-level conscientisation, the influence of intersecting inequalities, and influence of diverse perspectives coming together in a PAR process.
Accepted: 2021-07-23T08:48:45Z

What can Australia learn from the public service revolution taking hold in Europe? - Hurcombe, Sarah (Centre For Public Impact (CPI), 2021)
Sarah Hurcombe shares what she's learning from the public service revolution building momentum in Europe.

Designing a Participatory Programme at Scale: Phases 1 and 2 of the CLARISSA Programme on Worst Forms of Child Labour - Burns, Danny; Apgar, Marina; Raw, Anna (Institute of Development Studies, 2021)
CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) is a large-scale Participatory Action Research programme which aims to identify, evidence, and promote effective multi-stakeholder action to tackle the drivers of the worst forms of child labour in selected supply chains in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar. CLARISSA places a particular focus on participants’ own ‘agency’. In other words, participants’ ability to understand the situation they face, and to develop and take actions in response to them. Most of CLARISSA’s participants are children. This document shares the design and overarching methodology of the CLARISSA programme, which was co-developed with all consortium partners during and since the co-generation phase of the programme (September 2018–June 2020). The immediate audience is the CLARISSA programme implementation teams, plus the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). This design document is also a useful reference point for other programmes trying to build large-scale participatory processes. It provides a clear overview of the CLARISSA programmatic approach, the design, and how it is being operationalised in context.

Complexity-Aware Monitoring and Evaluation - Hertz, Tilman; Brattander, Eva; Rose, Loretta (Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 2021)
Background: Addressing today’s sustainability challenges requires adopting a systemic approach where social and ecological systems are treated as integrated social-ecological systems. Such systems are complex, and the international development sector increasingly recognises the need to account for the complexity of the systems that they seek to transform. Purpose: This paper sketches out the elements of a complexity-aware monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for international development programmes in the area of sustainable development.  Setting: Not applicable. Data Collection and Analysis: The authors draw on existing literature on complexity and evaluation and on their own experience from working in the field of M&E. Findings: An M&E system should not be seen simply as a tool to track compliance against a pre-determined theory of change. Instead, it is most useful as a real-time approach, constantly defining and re-defining narratives for change that help push systems along trajectories of interest. Dealing with complexity involves embracing uncertainty; and this challenges established notions of accountability—something which funders and implementers must begin to redefine together. Keywords: monitoring; evaluation; complexity; social-ecological systems; international development programmes; narratives for change; theory of change
Number: 41

Energy Governance in Developing Countries — A New Approach - Mcculloch, Neil (The Policy Practice & Chemonics, 2021)
In 2015, leaders from around the world agreed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The seventh goal (SDG7) is: “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” In the same year, the world’s leaders concluded the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, which will require a global transition in the energy sector away from the use of fossil fuels. Yet, despite growing investments in clean energy in many developing countries, the transition is happening much more slowly than needed. The central reason for this is poor energy governance. This technical brief shows how poor energy governance damages energy access and efforts to improve the quality and reliability of power. It explains the political reasons why energy governance is so bad in many countries and contrasts this with the current system of procuring technical assistance, which largely ignores the energy governance challenge. It shows that a new approach to tackling energy governance is emerging that is better matched to the nature of the problems faced and provides recommendations on how to implement it.

Why Tackling Energy Governance in Developing Countries Needs a Different Approach - McCulloch, Neil (The Policy Practice & Chemonics, 2021)
Global efforts to improve energy access and quality and to tackle climate change need a different approach to addressing poor energy governance. In 2015, leaders from around the world agreed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030.1 The seventh goal (SDG7) is “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” In the same year, the world’s leaders concluded the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, which will require a global transition of the energy sector away from the use of fossil fuels. Yet, in many developing countries, despite growing investments in clean energy, the transition is happening much more slowly than needed to achieve SDG7 and avert damaging climate change. The central reason for this is poor energy governance. This paper outlines the size and nature of the energy challenge, with a focus on electricity. It describes the investments that are currently being made to improve the quality of power and access to electricity — and the growing evidence that investments often fail due to poor energy governance. The paper then delves more deeply into how bad governance influences the quality of and access to electricity, with specific country examples. It shows the importance of understanding how electricity fits into the political settlement of a country and how this affects the incentives of key actors in the sector. Unfortunately, donor projects designed to widen electricity access or to support reform of the power sector in developing countries often pay too little attention to the problem’s political nature; the same is true of measures to improve energy efficiency or to promote renewables. The paper outlines a new way of thinking about energy governance and shows how interventions can be better matched to the different governance challenges that they face. It concludes with recommendations for donors on how energy programs can be better designed and procured — as well as recommendations for implementors on how to improve the chances of successful implementation by adapting to the political realities of the contexts in which they operate.