We Rise - Movement Building Reimagined - JASS (Just Associates, 2017)
In our virtual toolkit, We Rise: Movement Building Reimagined, we describe in detail four interconnected cycles of movement building – Rising Up, Building Up, Standing Up, and Shaking Up. At the heart of these cycles lies an analysis of how to challenge and transform power. Each cycle features key ideas, relevant tools, and practical tips from our work and activists in our network that movement builders around the world can learn from and adapt in their own work.

Webimar - Adaptive Management at the Strategy Level: Portfolio Reviews and Mid Course Stocktaking - USAID (USAID, 2017)
On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 8:00 a.m. EST, the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL) held a one-hour webinar exploring Strategy-level Portfolio Reviews and Mid Course Stocktaking.

Webinar: Operationalizing Adaptive Management: What it takes. Why it matters. - Mercy Corps (Mercy Corps, 2015)
Development actors increasingly agree that managing programs adaptively – especially complex interventions – can improve their effectiveness. A growing body of evidence supports this claim. But what does adaptive management look like in practice? What does it require of managers and donors to make happen? How can we reconfigure incentives and success metrics to support adaptation, while remaining compliant?

Webinar - Practicing Thinking and Working Politically (TWP): Voices from the Field - SID (Society for International Development., 2020)
Current thinking on effective international development interventions highlights the importance of “thinking and working politically” (TWP). Among the emerging lessons of experience is that thinking politically, using tools such as political economy analysis, is more easily undertaken than working politically. How can the two pillars of TWP be effectively integrated? What challenges exist and how have practitioners confronted them? This session focuses on listening to voices from the field to explore answers to these questions. The organizers solicited proposals from implementers, reaching out to SID-W members and the Washington, D.C.-based TWP community of practice. They selected the following four projects that illustrate different approaches to practicing TWP. • Mercy Corps: Integrated Maji Infrastructure and Governance Initiative for Eastern Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo • Asia Foundation: Tourism Strategy Project, Timor-Leste • Counterpart International: Rights and Dignity Project, El Salvador • RTI International: Knowledge Sector Initiative, Indonesia Their voices will be bookended by Sarah Frazer (RTI International), who will summarize a recent study, Thinking and Working Politically: Lessons from Diverse and Inclusive Applied Political Economy Analysis, and Alina Rocha Menocal (Overseas Development Institute), who will provide commentary on the four projects and the study findings. Ann Hudock (Counterpart International) will moderate.

Webinar - Sustainability Ready: what it takes to support & measure lasting change - Cekan, Jindra (Valuing Voices, 2020)
On June 24th under GLocal’s UNConference, “Co-creating our future stories of hope and action”, Jindra Cekan, Holta Trandafili, and Isabella Jean presented their work on sustainability evaluations and exit strategies via local voices. We chaired a 2-hour discussion session on the following topics: Sustainability of global development projects and exit from them, The importance of valuing local partners’ and participants’ voices, How to embed ex-post evaluation of sustainability into the project cycle, How expectations, benchmarking, and early joint planning in exit strategies, as well as considering long-term ownership & relevance will support projects to be sustained locally, including questioning who will maintain results, Considering power dynamics between donors and ultimate ‘beneficiaries’ and the value of the impact of the project from a variety of perspectives, and more Here is the recording of our presentation or see just the PowerPoint presentation. We harvested lessons from our three presentations: Jindra Cekan: · Fear of learning about failure in our global development industry – INGOs are “waiting for a successful enough project” to commission ex-post project sustainability evaluation · It needs to be a culture of learning, not a culture of success. · Lack of transparency in sharing program evaluation results with communities and local government is widespread, and even more rarely do we come back after many years and share learnings · Participatory approaches are vital, listening to participants about sustained impacts is key · It is never attribution, always contribution. To isolate impacts, we need to look for project sites that haven’t had multiple other organizations overlapping through all phases. · Building sustainability planning throughout the project cycle is key – but often doesn’t happen Holta Trandafili: · Sustainability needs to be planned to be researched, including evaluating why or why not were project elements sustained, and why? What has the project done to enable communities to sustain improvements? · Expectations of sustainability need to be more modest (as most results are mixed good/bad) · We need to ask: How are you defining and measuring sustainability – for how long should the results last? Among how many participants? Have you set benchmarks for success? · We should expand your toolbox on methodology to investigate sustainability. Stories of success are one of a myriad of methods used, including mixed-methods, cost-benefit, etc. · Start with the need for learning not [just] accountability Isabella Jean: · Sustainability investigation/evaluation/learning should be mindful that this is NOT about projects. It is about people. · We have a system that focuses on gaps and needs to be filled vs. existing capacities’ structures to be reinforced. How can our work on measuring sustainability bring this to light and call it out, so that we change the norm? · Planning for sustainability requires the insight to integrate resources and experiences of outsiders with the assets and capacities of insiders to develop context-appropriate strategies for change If you would like to discuss this with any of us, please send us comments and we’re happy to respond. Thanks again to the G-Local UnConference team! Below please find our bios: Jindra Cekan/ova has worked in global development for 33 years focused on participatory design and M&E for global non-profits. She founded Valuing Voices 7 years ago. For details, see: Valuing Voices Founder Holta Trandafili is the Research, Learning, and Analytics Manager with World Vision US and has been leading field research, monitoring, and evaluation since 2007. She has led sustainability measurement studies for World Vision programs in Uganda, Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, Burma, and Bolivia. Her areas of expertise and interest include program and community groups’ sustainability measurements; agency-level measurements; empowerment approaches to development; integrated programming; local capacities for peace; gender analysis; and outcome monitoring. Currently, Mrs. Trandafili serves as an Advisory Committee member for InterAction’s Effectiveness and Program Evaluation Working Group and chairs one of the sub-working groups under The Movement for Community-led Development. Isabella Jean supports international and local organizations and funders to document promising practices, facilitate learning and strengthen capacities for conflict sensitivity, peacebuilding and humanitarian effectiveness. She has facilitated action research, collaborative learning and advisory engagements in over 25 countries, and serves as an advisor to policymakers, senior leadership and program teams. Isabella co-authored the book, Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of Aid and developed practical guidance to support accountability to communities, listening and feedback loops, and responsible INGO exits. She teaches graduate-level courses on aid effectiveness, program strategies and M&E of peacebuilding at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Previously, Isabella directed training at a community organizing network and conducted policy research for the Institute for Responsive Education, UNDP, and Coexistence International.

Werner Ulrich's Homepage - Ulrich, Werne (2018)
This website provides a variety of resources from Werner Ulrich's work in a range of philosophical and research areas with a particular focus on his own work in critical systems thinking and practice or, Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH).

What about the results? Lessons from long-term process support to strengthen results-based management (RBM) for Swedish framework NGOs operating in Western Balkans - Ørnemark, Charlotte (NCG, 2012)
The observations and lessons outlined in this report should be seen as a contribution to the on-going learning and reflections in a wider debate on how to assess and monitor results from support to CSOs involved in complex social change processes (as opposed to those involved in more ‘classical’ service delivery and more linear development assistance). These lessons, though directly emerging from the consultancy to provide long-term RBM support to the FOs and their local CSO partners in Western Balkans, also draws on previous experiences and similar lessons from on-going initiatives. In brief, these lessons call for a certain ‘paradigm shift’ in the way we (as development professionals) regard and support RBM for actors involved in less tangible social change processes in highly contested political spaces. Some of these shifts, outlined in more detail in different sections of this report, are summarised below:  From a linear, aggregated cause-and-effect thinking around RBM to one that is linked to human factors and is embedded in systems,  From pushing the burden of reporting down in the system to a clearer division of labour between donors, recipient governments, intermediary agents like framework NGOs (FOs) and implementing CSOs with each actor using its comparative advantage and appropriate role in the RBM process and for its own learning,  From operating in programming and results frameworks where outcomes and impact are largely assumed to be predictable to setting up systems that deal with uncertainty and that capture emerging result patterns through tracking of gradual changes,  From a project/programme perspective to a focus on institutions and systems as actors and arenas for change, where organisations are enabled to act as change agents towards clearly identified processes of social transformation,  From SMART to REAL results frameworks – although SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) principles are always good to keep in mind for the formulation of goals and indicators, the danger of coming up with fictive measuring frameworks calls for a more systematic incorporation of ‘real’ concerns, including making RBM processes rights-based, embedded in local realities (and empowering for those involved), aligned to national reform efforts and national and international human rights commitments, and learning-oriented for all different levels of operations.

What Are the Next Steps in Innovation for Good Governance? - von Sturmer, Lucy (Making All Voices Count, 2015)
What are the next steps in innovation for good governance? Lucy von Sturmer reflects on lessons learned at Buntwani 2015.

What are the Simple Rules that guide our Strategies? - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2019)
A management treatise on 'simplre rules' for companies facing unpredictable situations could provide useful guidance to aid organizations

What are you afraid of: Collective leadership and its learning implications - Raelin, Joseph A (Management Learning, 2018)
In this provocation, the author attempts to cite the advantages of collective leadership while acknowledging the objections and fears of challengers. Collective leadership is seen as remote because it defies the traditional view of leadership as an individualistic attractive quality that not only protects us but is efficient when applied. Nevertheless, the collective alternative may not only be advisable but required in a connected world featuring a networked economy. The contemporary socio-politico-economic environment requires the contribution of, creativity from, and collaboration among multiple agents providing a dynamic concentration of management and knowledge. If we are to accept and recognize the contribution of a collective leadership, its development would require an entirely different learning model. In particular, collective leadership development occurs as an acute immersion into the practices that are embedded within in situ material–discursive relations—in other words, among people, objects, and their institutions.

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.

What can the Thinking and Working Politically community learn from peace and conflict mediation? - Douglas, Alex (From Poverty to Power, 2018)
Wily aid practitioners have long understood the importance of adapting their programs to the political environment, and even use their activities to push politics in a progressive direction. But this magic was spun secretly, hidden behind logframes and results frameworks. Only recently has a range of programs been permitted to escape the dead hand of technocracy. But there was one corner of the development and humanitarian world that never needed to shroud its political ambitions; those of us working on resolving violent conflicts. Donors have always understood our work could never be disembodied from politics. This field included elements of the UN, regional organisations, and NGOs, such as the one I work for: the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. With a new focus on development being enabled by a series of ‘deals’ between different actors, it seems timely to examine the strategies used to reach peace agreements and whether they contain broader lessons for TWP/DDD/Adaptive Management.

What difference does CLA make to development? Key findings from a recent literature review (2020 update) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2020)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning and its LEARN support contract are working to integrate systematic, intentional and resourced collaborating, learning and adapting (CLA) throughout program planning and implementation to achieve more effective development programs. As part of this effort, USAID is exploring several approaches to understand whether and how strategic collaboration, continuous learning and adaptive management make a difference to organizational effectiveness and development outcomes. To begin this work, we have undertaken a foundational literature review of academic and gray literature to answer our key learning questions: • Does an intentional, systematic and resourced approach to collaborating, learning and adapting contribute to organizational effectiveness? To development outcomes? • If so, how? And under what circumstances? • How do we measure the contribution? The 13 key findings, mapped to the CLA Framework below, are described in greater detail in the following pages.

What does ‘adaptive programming’ mean in the health sector? - Tulloch, Olivia (ODI, 2015)
• There is considerable interest in the concept of adaptive development and what it may look like in different sectors, including health. • Adaptive types of programming from the health sector are relatively advanced; as we work towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), experiences in health can provide useful lessons for other areas of development. • The international health community may not use the label ‘adaptive development’, but many are already conducting adaptive work. ‘Quality improvement’ is one such tried and tested approach. • Quality improvement is problem-driven, iterative and flexible. The methodology and principles can be used to identify, test and implement changes in any context or part of a health system. • Quality improvement is being used successfully, but there is still limited experience and evidence of how to apply its values and philosophy beyond the project level and embed it within national structures and systems. • Systems thinking and analysis of the political economy environment may help embed complex interventions like quality improvement and sustain their achievements

What Does the Evidence Tell Us about ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ in Development Assistance? - Dasandi, Niheer; Laws, Ed; Marquette, Heather; Robinson, Mark (Politics and Governance, 2019)
Abstract: This paper critically reviews evidence on ‘thinking and working politically’ in development. Scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognised that development is fundamentally political, and efforts are underway to develop more politically informed ways of thinking and working. The literature does not yet constitute a strong evidence base to link these efforts to more effective aid programming: much evidence is anecdotal, does not meet high standards of robustness, is not comparative, and draws on self-selected successes reported by programme insiders. We discuss factors commonly considered to explain the success of politically informed programmes in areas where conventional programming approaches fall short. We consider evidence in three areas—political context, sector and organization—and provide guidance on where to focus next. Finally, we outline ways of testing the core assumptions of the ‘thinking and working politically’ agenda more thoroughly, to provide a clearer sense of the contribution it can make to aid effectiveness.

What exactly do we mean by systems? - Vexler, Dan (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
Everyone is talking about systems. Or at least, that's how it seems in my wonkish corner of the philanthropic world. You can't attend a conference or even have a meeting without hearing about systems, whether it's people trying to disrupt them, map them, learn from them, or catalyze them.

What have we learned about learning? Unpacking the relationship between knowledge and organisational change in development agencies - Yanguas, Pablo (DIE - Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, 2021)
Development cooperation has spent decades wrangling over the merits, evidence, and implications of what we may term “the learning hypothesis”: the idea that increased knowledge by development organisations must logically lead to increased effectiveness in the performance of their development activities. Organisations of all stripes have built research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) departments, adopted a multitude of knowledge management systems and tools, and tinkered with different ways to structure their organograms to stimulate knowledge sharing and learning. The topic of organisational learning is particularly significant as the global development community grapples with increasingly complex problems and the aspiration of evidence-based policymaking. This paper presents an analytical framework for interrogating “the learning hypothesis”, breaking it down into causal steps: knowledge causes learning, learning causes organisational change, change causes effectiveness. The framework focuses on the first two sub-hypotheses, mapping out the conceptual space around them by outlining potential relationships between different types of knowledge – tacit and explicit, internal and external – and between different types of learning – operational and strategic. This map provides a foundation for three key research questions: What impact has the rising knowledge agenda had on development organisations? Which factors appear to enable or inhibit organisational learning? What is the relationship between operational and strategic learning and organisational change? A review of available evaluations and studies, including two cases from former UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank, reveals that there is insufficient evidence to support the causal claim that knowledge leads to learning and thereby to organisational change in development agencies. Sources point to tacit learning prevailing while explicit knowledge management systems flounder, and external advocacy agendas appear more compelling than internal research and evaluation products. It is not entirely clear how, or indeed, whether operational and strategic learning intersect, with delivery-level lessons hardly aggregating into structural or policy shifts. Organisational change – even that aimed at enhancing learning – is rarely based on lessons learned from practice. More research is necessary to fully unpack the learning hypothesis, but what limited evidence is available disproves rather than confirms its central claim. This has significant implications for the future of learning in development agencies as advocated by thought leaders, researchers, and reformers. In particular, the latter should consider an evidence-based reassessment of the function and value-for-money of research and M&E in development practice, and a more critical examination of the politics of external advocacy efforts around innovative aid approaches like thinking and working politically, adaptive management, or results-based management.
Publisher: German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Version Number: 1.0

What Is a Case?: Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry - Ragin, Charles (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
The concept of the case is a basic feature of social science research and yet many questions about how a case should be defined, selected, and judged are far from settled. The contributors to this volume probe the nature of the case and the ways in which different understandings of the concept affect the conduct and the results of research. The contributions demonstrate that the work of any given researcher is often characterised by some hybrid of these basic approaches, and it is important to understand that most research involves multiple definitions and uses of cases, as both specific empirical phenomena and as general theoretical categories.

What is a Theory of Change? Really. - Mack, Katelyn (FSG, 2015)
Recently thousands of evaluators came together in Chicago to celebrate the growing field, share exemplary practices, and to push our collective thinking on how evaluation responds to the complexity of social change efforts.

What is adaptive management? - Wilson, Gregory (ΔNTYLLES, 2016)
Recently there has been growing recognition that most development challenges are in actual fact ‘wicked’ problem that requires development actors to recognize that the optimal management approaches…

What is democratic evaluation? - Picciotto, R. (2013)
This article from Robert Picciotto provides an overview of democratic evaluation, particularly with reference to its use in the European Union context. "Can evaluation strengthen the democratic process? Speciﬁcally can it help ﬁll the democratic deﬁcit (limited transparency; weak bureaucratic accountability, etc.) often ascribed to the European Union? First and foremost, evaluators operating in the European space should be committed to the ethical and democratic values of the European project and the promotion of its social inclusion and cohesion ideals. But two other sets of challenges must also be met: those that relate to evaluation in democracy and those that relate to democracy in evaluation. The former has to do with the macro positioning of evaluation processes in society. The latter has to do with the evaluation approaches and methods used in deliberative democratic decision making processes." (Picciotto, 2013)

What is different about how INGOs do Adaptive Management/Doing Development Differently? - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2019)

What Is Disruptive Innovation? - Christensen, Clayton M.; Raynor, Michael E.; McDonald, Rory (Harvard Business Review, 2015)
For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which industry entrants will succeed. Unfortunately, the theory has also been widely misunderstood, and the “disruptive” label has been applied too carelessly anytime a market newcomer shakes up well-established incumbents. In this article, the architect of disruption theory, Clayton M. Christensen, and his coauthors correct some of the misinformation, describe how the thinking on the subject has evolved, and discuss the utility of the theory. They start by clarifying what classic disruption entails—a small enterprise targeting overlooked customers with a novel but modest offering and gradually moving upmarket to challenge the industry leaders. They point out that Uber, commonly hailed as a disrupter, doesn’t actually fit the mold, and they explain that if managers don’t understand the nuances of disruption theory or apply its tenets correctly, they may not make the right strategic choices. Common mistakes, the authors say, include failing to view disruption as a gradual process (which may lead incumbents to ignore significant threats) and blindly accepting the “Disrupt or be disrupted” mantra (which may lead incumbents to jeopardize their core business as they try to defend against disruptive competitors). The authors acknowledge that disruption theory has certain limitations. But they are confident that as research continues, the theory’s explanatory and predictive powers will only improve.
Section: Disruptive innovation

What is impact? - Hearn, Simon; Anne, Buffardi (2016)
• Impact is a multi-dimensional concept. Some definitions focus on very precise understandings of impact, while others cast a much broader net. • How impact is defined and used has a significant effect on the design, management and evaluation of development programmes. • Development programmes should hold explicit conversations with different stakeholders about how impact is used and understood, in order to come to a shared understanding. • There are six dimensions of impact that may help development programmes be clearer about what they mean.

What is Outcome Harvesting? - Wilson-Grau, Ricardo (2014)
Ricardo Wilson-Grau, former Chair of the Board of Stewards of the Outcome Mapping Learning Community, introduces Outcome Harvesting, an approach for retrospective identification of outcomes based on the principles of Outcome Mapping. More details here: http://www.outcomemapping.ca/nuggets/outcome-harvesting

What is Political Economy Analysis (PEA) and why does it matter in development? - Teskey, Graham (From Poverty to Power, 2020)
Graham Teskey shares a great internal links round up and guide to 'political economy analysis'

What is Rapid Action Learning and how was it developed? - Sanitation Learning Hub (2020)
To celebrate the publication of our latest Frontiers of Sanitation, we had a series of conversations with our colleagues and partners on our work on Rapid Action Learning so far. To download the publication in full, head to https://sanitationlearninghub.org/res...

What is Social Learning? - Reed, Mark; Evely, Anna; Cundill, Georgina; Fazey, Ioan; Glass, Jayne; Laing, Adele; Newig, Jens; Parrish, Brad; Prell, Christina; Raymond, Chris; Stringer, Lindsay (Ecology and Society, 2010)
Reed, M. S., A. C. Evely, G. Cundill, I. Fazey, J. Glass, A. Laing, J. Newig, B. Parrish, C. Prell, C. Raymond, and L. C. Stringer. 2010. What is social learning? Ecology and Society 15(4): r1. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03564-1504r01

What is technopolitics? A conceptual schema for understanding politics in the digital age Doctoral Student on the Programme on Political Science New School for Social Research - Kurban, Can; Peña-Lopez, Ismael; Haberer, Maria (Revista de Internet, Derecho y Política, 2017)
In this article we seek to revisit what the term ‘technopolitical’ means for democratic politics in our age. We begin by tracing how the term was used and then transformed through various and conflicting adaptations of ICTs (Information and

What is the Outcomes Star? - Triangle (Triangle, 2022)
The Outcomes Stars are a suite of evidence-based outcomes measurement and keywork tools, which drive an ‘enabling help’ approach to service delivery. They support a person-centred, collaborative and trauma informed approach and give service users, workers, managers and commissioners vital information about needs and progress. Since the first version was published in 2006, the unique features of the Outcomes Star contributed to its popularity and widespread use, with over 1,000 organisations with licenses to use the Star including over 500 charities and 170 local authorities

What Is This Thing Called a Mechanism? Findings From a Review of Realist Evaluations - Lemire, Sebastian; Kwako, Alexander; Nielsen, Steffen B.; Christie, Christina A.; Donaldson, Stewart I.; Leeuw, Frans L. (New Directions for Evaluation, 2020)
Realist evaluation has, over the past two decades, become a widely used approach in evaluation. The cornerstone of realist evaluation is to answer the question: What works, for whom, under what circumstances, and why. This is accomplished by explicating the causal mechanisms that, within a particular context, generate the outcomes of interest. Despite the central role of mechanisms in realist evaluation, systematic knowledge about how the term mechanism is conceptualized and operationalized is limited. The aim of the present chapter is to examine how mechanisms are defined and applied in realist evaluations. Informed by the findings of the review, further conceptual and practical developments for future applications of mechanisms in realist evaluation are considered.

What is Uncertainty and Why Does it Matter? - Scoones, Ian (STEPS centre, 2019)
Uncertainty defines our times. Whether it is in relation to climate change, disease outbreaks, financial volatility, natural disasters or political settlements, every media headline seems to assert that things are uncertain, and increasingly so. Uncertainty, where we do not know the probabilities of either likelihoods or outcomes, is different to risk, the implications of which are explored in this paper through five different ways of thinking about uncertainty, derived from highly diverse literatures encompassing societal, political, cultural, practice and individual perspectives. The paper continues by examining how these perspectives relate to four domains: finance and banking; critical infrastructures; disease outbreaks and climate change; natural hazards and disasters. Reflecting on these experiences, the paper argues that embracing uncertainty raises some fundamental challenges. It means questioning simple, linear perspectives on modernity and progress. It means rethinking expertise and including diverse knowledges in deliberations about the future. It means understanding how uncertainties emerge in social, political and economic contexts, and how uncertainties affect different people, depending on class, gender, race, age and other dimensions of social difference. And, if uncertainty is not reducible to probabilistic risk, it means a radically different approach to governance; one that rejects control-oriented, technocratic approaches in favour of more tentative, adaptive, hopeful and caring responses. The paper concludes by asking whether we can learn from those who live with and from uncertainty – including pastoralists in marginal settings – as part of a wider conversation about embracing uncertainties to meet the challenges of our turbulent world.

What's in a name? Unpacking “participatory” environmental monitoring - Turreira-García, Nerea; Lund, Jens; Domínguez, Pablo; Carrillo-Anglés, Elena; Brummer, Mathias; Duenn, Priya; Reyes-García, Victoria (Ecology and Society, 2018)
Turreira-García, N., J. F. Lund, P. Domínguez, E. Carrillo-Anglés, M. C. Brummer, P. Duenn, and V. Reyes-García. 2018. What's in a name? Unpacking “participatory” environmental monitoring. Ecology and Society 23(2):24. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10144-230224

What's missing? Adding context to the urban response toolbox - Campbell, Leah (ALNAP/ODI, 2018)

What’s Next for Design Thinking - Cone, Taylor (Medium, 2019)
Thoughts on the future of creative problem-solving from across the industry

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

What Startups Can Learn from General McChrystal about Combining Strategy and Execution - Pisoni, Adam (First Round, 2015)
Yammer Co-founder Adam Pisoni speaks with General Stanley McChrystal about the lessons technology companies might take away from his new book Team of Teams.

What We Do: Getting Beyond Statistics - Sense Guide (Sensemaker narrative monitoring, 2018)
Our approach Understanding daily life reality with micro-narratives Narratives and more specifically micro-narratives are a fundamental and ancient way by which humans interpret their experience and make decisions. SenseMaker® provides the ability to capture and understand those narratives. Through the web or app environment the software allows the capture of pictures, recordings and writing in various combinations to reflect how the respondents are making sense of the world. Reducing cognitive bias with self signification In a patented method, the respondent then interprets their own story into a series of abstract constructs (‘signifiers’) that feel more like a game than a survey, but allow profound meaning to emerge. This interpretation adds layers of meaning rather than simply interpreting the story and provides quantitative data to detect visual patterns among stories. The patterns are linked back to the original material enabling a deeper dive into individual stories. If the researcher first look for patterns in the metadata using statistical or visual tools, he or she is less likely to be biased by content and prematurely converge on an interpretation. Evidence based insights that enables action The output of SenseMaker® is statistical data backed up by explanatory narrative. This means that advocacy is an integral part of the system. Numbers on their own appear objective but are not persuasive; anecdotes on their own may be persuasive but are not objective. SenseMaker® puts the two together and provides a powerful means of persuasion. It also enables action. Instead of saying “How do we create a culture of X?” we say “How do we create more stories like this and fewer stories like that?” Then, as actions are initiated, we see the impact in real time.

What We Know About Traditional MERL Tech - Insights from a Scoping Review - Tilton, Zach; Harnar, Michael; Raftree, Linda; Perrin, Paul; Bruening, Gretchen; Banerji, Soham; Gordley, John; Foster, Hanna; Behr, Michele (Western Michigan University, 2020)
This paper explores the peer-reviewed evidence base of “traditional” technology-enabled monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL Tech) in international development assistance from 2015 to 2019. The authors conducted a scoping review that searched seven databases, screened 3,054 reference titles and abstracts, coded 886 abstracts, and extracted and analyzed conclusions and recommendations from the full texts of 256 studies. The findings reveal the most frequently reported technologies, MERL activities, and the sub-sectors, and the geographies where those tech-enabled activities occur. Gaps in the evidence for specific technologies, MERL activities, and sectors are mapped. The data reveals which technologies are trusted more than others and reported barriers to effective MERL Tech implementation and areas that researchers suggest for further investigation. The results suggest that the evidence from peer-reviewed studies is not proportional to estimated MERL Tech activity, significant publication bias exists, and further knowledge synthesis of unindexed grey literature is needed to provide a more comprehensive and possibly accurate description of MERL Tech practice.

What we’re missing by not getting our TWP alphabet straight - Marquette, Heather (From Poverty to Power, 2019)
Heather Marquette grapples with aid's alphabet soup, and explains why DDD, TWP, PDIA etc are different and why that matters

What we’ve learned about adaptive management from our Somalia education programming - Heales, Charlotte (Care Insights, 2020)
Adaptive management in its various incarnations has long been a focus of a development community that is more and more frequently bumping up against the barriers of complexity, and looking for ways to overcome its challenges. In a field where we consistently have to deal with multifaceted problems,...

What works for Social Accountability? Findings from DFID’s Macro Evaluation - Hughes, Claire (Itad, 2017)

Wheeling in the Trojan Mice - Mahendra, Jackie (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2016)
One way to make risk-taking more palatable for social change organizations is to run small, light, nimble experiments––tests not built to win wars, but rather to quickly infiltrate new territory, attack new problems, and inform future tactics.

When and how to develop an impact-oriented monitoring and evaluation system - Peersman, Greet; Rogers, Patricia; Guijt, Irene; Hearn, Simon; Pasanen, Tiina; Buffardi, Anne (2016)
This guidance note focuses on: • what an impact-oriented monitoring and evaluation system entails • why an organisation may want to establish such a system • when integrating an impact-orientation into an monitoring and evaluation system is most useful • what should be considered in developing the monitoring and evaluation system, or in tweaking an existing system, to become more impact-focused. The primary audience for this guidance note is internal and external monitoring and evaluation advisors involved in designing and implementing, and/or assessing monitoring and evaluation systems to include a focus on impact. It will also be useful for senior management of organisations who need to know how best to plan for a sustainable monitoring and evaluation system that supports impact assessment or to adapt an existing system to incorporate an impact perspective.

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 ISSN: 2040-0209

When Does ICT-Enabled Citizen Voice Lead to Government Responsiveness? - Peixoto, Tiago; Fox, Jonathan (IDS Bulletin, 2016)

When Does the State Listen? - Loureiro, Miguel; Cassim, Aalia; Darko, Terence; Katera, Lucas; Salome, Nyambura (IDS Bulletin, 2016)

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation - Honig, Daniel (International Organization, 2019)

When theory meets reality: assumptions, feasibility and implications of a complexity-informed approach - Buffardi, Anne (Methods Lab, 2016)
Over the last half century, repeated calls for adaptive learning in development suggests two things: many practitioners are working in complex situations that may benefit from flexible approaches, and such approaches can be difficult to apply in practice. • Complexity thinking can offer useful recommendations on how to take advantage of distributed capacities, joint interpretation of problems and learning through experimentation in complex development programmes. • However, these recommendations rely on underlying assumptions about relationships, power and flexibility that may not hold true in practice, particularly for programmes operating in a risk averse, results-driven environment. • This paper poses guiding questions to assess the fit and feasibility of integrating complexity informed practices into development programmes.

Where have we got to on adaptive learning, thinking and working politically, doing development differently etc? Getting beyond the People’s Front of Judea - Algoso, Dave; Hudson, Alan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
Dave Algoso and Alan Hudson at Global Integrity compare and contrast 9 different initiatives that are all heading in roughly the right direction in aid reform
Keywords: IMPORTANT

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!

Where next for development effectiveness? Building a renewed consensus - Blampied, Catherine (ODI, 2016)

Where next for development effectiveness? Implementing development effectiveness: a reality check - Carter, Paddy (ODI, 2016)

Which Voices Are Heard and By Whom? - Oswald, Katy (Making All Voices Count, 2014)

Who is ICT innovation for? Challenges to existing theories of innovation, a Kenyan Case Study - Marchant, Eleanor (University of Pennsylvania, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Who Owns Poverty? - Burt, Martin (Red Press Ltd, 2019)
This is the story of the one question about global poverty we never thought to ask: who owns it? It's a question with an unexpected answer, one that challenges everything that we thought we knew about what poverty is, and what we can do about it. This is a story of a powerful data-driven methodology being used in a dozen countries across 5 continents. It's a new approach that puts poor families in charge of defining and diagnosing their own unique, multidimensional povertywho by owning the problem, own the solution. This book is for all the governments, development NGOs, charities, dreamers, thinkers, doers and leaders who are frustrated with limiting their aspirations to reducing poverty, or alleviating its effectsand the lack of progress we face in doing either. This is a book about unleashing trapped energy within poor families to do the unthinkable: eliminate global poverty once and for all.

Why are effective feedback mechanisms in cash transfers so important? - Jannat, Mahiratul (CLARISSA, 2023)
The CLARISSA Social Protection Intervention was set us as an innovative social policy intervention for tackling social ills, with a...

Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter - Rock, David; Halvorson, Heidi Grant (Harvard Business Review, 2016)
Research shows they’re more successful in three important ways.

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective - Stanley, Kenneth O.; Lehman, Joel (Springer, 2015)
Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated – and nearly everything in-between – our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the objective obsession has gone too far. They make the case that great achievement can't be bottled up into mechanical metrics; that innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort; and that we would be wiser (and the outcomes better) if instead we whole-heartedly embraced serendipitous discovery and playful creativity.Controversial at its heart, yet refreshingly provocative, this book challenges readers to consider life without a destination and discovery without a compass.

Why is it so hard for non-state actors to be heard? Inside Tanzania's education policies - Katera, Lucas (MAVC, 2015)
Lessons from policy in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania

Why isn’t Tech for Accountability Working in Africa? - de Lanerolle, Indra (SAIIA, 2017)
Expanding mobile networks and falling costs could transform communication between African citizens and governments. So far, however, attempts to harness new technologies to improve transparency and accountability in Africa and elsewhere have had disappointing results. What is going wrong? Research suggests that an important reason for this failure is a poor understanding of technologies and limited skills in developing and using them. It seems that civil society organisations (CSOs) and governments often ‘re-invent the flat tyre’: experimenting with new tools without finding out what has been tried (often unsuccessfully) before. They also do not follow best practices in how to source, develop and test technologies to ensure these are ‘fit for purpose’. Decision makers should focus on building an effective innovation ecosystem with better links between technologists and accountability actors in both government and civil society to enable learning from successes – and mistakes.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Why Lean Enterprise Transformation is Hard - McClure, Dan (ThoughtWorks, 2015)

Why Learning & Adaptation are Central to Making All Voices Count - Halloran, Brendan (Making All Voices Count, 2014)

Why Software Fails - We waste billions of dollars each year on entirely preventable mistakes - Robert N., Charette (IEEE Spectrum, 2005)
We waste billions of dollars each year on entirely preventable mistakes. The biggest tragedy is that software failure is for the most part predictable and avoidable. Unfortunately, most organizations don't see preventing failure as an urgent matter, even though that view risks harming the organization and maybe even destroying it. Understanding why this attitude persists is not just an academic exercise; it has tremendous implications for business and society.
Section: Computing

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.

Why the Problem with Learning Is Unlearning - Bonchek, Mark (Harvard Business Review, 2016)
Don’t get stuck in your current ways of thinking.

Why to be Wary of "Design for Developing Countries" - Donaldson, Krista (Ambidextrous, 2008)

Why We Lie About Aid: Development and the Messy Politics of Change - Yanguas, Pablo (Zed Books, 2018)
Foreign aid is about charity. International development is about technical fixes. At least that is what we, as donor publics, are constantly told. The result is a highly dysfunctional aid system which mistakes short-term results for long-term transformation and gets attacked across the political spectrum, with the right claiming we spend too much, and the left that we don't spend enough. The reality, as Yanguas argues in this highly provocative book, is that aid isn't – or at least shouldn't be – about levels of spending, nor interventions shackled to vague notions of ‘accountability’ and ‘ownership’. Instead, a different approach is possible, one that acknowledges aid as being about struggle, about taking sides, about politics. It is an approach that has been quietly applied by innovative development practitioners around the world, providing political coverage for local reformers to open up spaces for change. Drawing on a variety of convention-defying stories from a variety of countries – from Britain to the US, Sierra Leone to Honduras – Yanguas provides an eye-opening account of what we really mean when we talk about aid.

Why your IT project may be riskier than you think - Flyvbjerg, Bent; Budzier, Alexander (Harvard Business Review, 2011)
New research shows surprisingly high numbers of out-of-control tech projects—ones that can sink entire companies and careers.

Wildlife laws monitoring as an adaptive management tool in protected area management in Ghana: a case of Kakum Conservation Area - Wiafe, Edward Debrah (SpringerPlus, 2016)
INTRODUCTION: The wildlife laws of Ghana alienated the rural communities from forests and material well-being depended upon for their livelihood and this manifests itself in the progressive conflict between the park patrol staff and poachers from the fringes of the protected areas. CASE DESCRIPTION: The main aim of this study was to determine the impact of quantification of patrol efforts on indicators of illegal hunting activities that occur in rainforest protected areas, as a result of monitoring patrol operations and modifying the original plan. The specific objectives were to determine the optimal patrol efforts necessary to reduce illegal wildlife use to minimal; and the influence of the rainfall and seasonal activities on illegal wildlife use. DISCUSSION AND EVALUATION: The results indicated that as the patrol efforts increased the encounter with illegal wildlife use also increased until a certain point that the encounter rates started decreasing. Neither rainfall nor seasonal activities influenced the illegal activities and the patrol efforts. The protection staff of rainforest protected areas would work effectively to bring down illegal wildlife off-take to the barest minimum if monitored, quantified and provide feed-back. CONCLUSIONS: Illegal wildlife off-take can also be reduced by the protection staff if the original plans are made flexible to be adjusted. Recommendations for further studies have been made.

Windows on the world: The power of assumptions in uncertain times - Aston, Thomas (Medium, 2020)
In my last blog on theory-based Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL), I explained why relationships matter, and how to assess change…

Winners and Losers in the Global App Economy - Pon, Bryan (2016)

Women and power: overcoming barriers to leadership ODI women and power coverand influence (ODI, 2016)
ODI have just wrapped up an excellent two year project on ‘Women and power: overcoming barriers to leadership and influence’ with a final synthesis report that is well worth reading. It’s an intell...

Working effectively through partnerships - Lessons from Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tanzania - Laws, Ed (ODI, 2020)
• This paper looks critically at the approach to value for money (VfM) in the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) programme – an adaptive, politically smart governance programme in Tanzania. • Adaptive, politically smart programmes like I4ID aim to deliver VfM by learning about what will work in complex environments, and quickly incorporating those lessons into delivery. When functioning properly, they can rapidly wind down activities as new information emerges and divert funding to more effective alternatives. • This means that adaptive programmes will achieve their potential to deliver strong VfM when their processes are good – when appraisal of experimental efforts is timely, consistent, knowledgeable and politically astute. As these programmes mature in their implementation phase, VfM evaluation should be focused on checking for a culture of adaptation and learning supported by strong adaptive processes. • While economy is important for adaptive programmes, it is also important that keeping costs low does not deprive teams of the resources, staff, and management and administration time they need to gather information, experiment, learn and adapt.

Working Politically: A story of Change about the contribution of research evidence to the new Village Law in Indonesia - Pellini, Arnaldo; Angelina, Maesy; Purnawati, Endah (Austrialian Community Development and Civil Society Strenghtening Scheme (ACCESS), 2014)
On 18 December 2013, the Indonesian House of Representatives passed the new Village Law, a vote that was the culmination of a journey that had started in 2007. This Story of Change takes the passing of the Village Law as its starting point and describes the relative influence that research-based evidence, produced by the Institute for Research and Empowerment (IRE), has had at critical junctions of the legislative process. This Story of Change concludes that good quality, research-based evidence is necessary but not sufficient to influence policy-making processes. Researchers and research organisations need to think and work politically to achieve their influencing goals and to adapt to changes in local circumstances.

Working the System: What We’ve Learned About Strengthening Accountability - Nugent, Sarah (Chemonics International, 2018)
When designing a new project, how often do we set out to strengthen a particular actor’s or institution’s ability to “hold government to account?” What does that mean exactly? Maybe the better question to ask is: what is the most effective way to strengthen accountability in our development work? And then, what does it look …

World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior - World Bank (The World Bank, 2015)
Development economics and policy are due for a redesign. In the past few decades, research from across the natural and social sciences has provided stunning insight into the way people think and make decisions. Whereas the first generation of development policy was based on the assumption that humans make decisions deliberatively and independently, and on the basis of consistent and self-interested preferences, recent research shows that decision making rarely proceeds this way. People think automatically: when deciding, they usually draw on what comes to mind effortlessly. People also think socially: social norms guide much of behavior, and many people prefer to cooperate as long as others are doing their share. And people think with mental models: what they perceive and how they interpret it depend on concepts and worldviews drawn from their societies and from shared histories.The World Development Report 2015 offers a concrete look at how these insights apply to development policy. It shows how a richer view of human behavior can help achieve development goals in many areas, including early childhood development, household finance, productivity, health, and climate change. It also shows how a more subtle view of human behavior provides new tools for interventions. Making even minor adjustments to a decision-making context, designing interventions based on an understanding of social preferences, and exposing individuals to new experiences and ways of thinking may enable people to improve their lives.The Report opens exciting new avenues for development work. It shows that poverty is not simply a state of material deprivation, but also a “tax” on cognitive resources that affects the quality of decision making. It emphasizes that all humans, including experts and policy makers, are subject to psychological and social influences on thinking, and that development organizations could benefit from procedures to improve their own deliberations and decision making. It demonstrates the need for more discovery, learning, and adaptation in policy design and implementation. The new approach to development economics has immense promise. Its scope of application is vast. This Report introduces an important new agenda for the development community.

World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law - World Bank (The World Bank, 2017)

You Cannot Go it Alone: Learning from Cooperative Relationships in Civil Society Budget Campaigns - Larsen, Jillian (IBP, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

‘You Have to Raise a Fist!’: Seeing and Speaking to the State in South Africa - Mills, Elizabeth (IDS Bulletin, 2016)

You might not be as agile as you think you are - Lindpaintner, Julia; Rivera, Stephanie (18F, 2019)
The mandate to be agile is everywhere. But agile isn’t an on-off switch. It’s a skill and a mindset that is developed over time, through dedicated work, open teams, and lots (and lots) of practice

Your Company’s Secret Change Agents - Pascale, Richard T.; Sternin, Jerry (Harvard Business Review, 2005)
Somewhere in your organization, groups of people are already doing things differently and better. To create lasting change, find these areas of positive deviance and fan their flames.