Category: international development | Page 7

Clark Quinn says “Yes, you (we!) do have to change”

3212164191_4ae8fbf744_o Learnlets » Yes, you do have to change. Clark Quinn nails a good one today. In writing about effective learning, he notes:

And that’s assuming courses are all the learning unit should be doing, but increasingly we recognize that that’s only a small proportion of what makes important business outcomes, and increasingly we’re recognizing that the role needs to move from instructional designer to performance consultant. More emphasis can and should be on providing performance resources and facilitating useful interactions rather than creating courses. Think performance support first, and communities of practice, only resorting to courses as a last result.

This rang my bell as I’m starting to do some research for a client on effective ways for more distributed work place learning. (More on this later, as I want to pick your collective brains.)I’m deeply interested in these intersections on roles.

What do we know about the costs of moving towards more performance support for globally distributed, not-all-in-one organization contexts? (I’m talking international development here!) Ideas?

Data, Transparency & Impact Panel –> a portfolio mindset?

Yesterday I was grateful to attend a panel presentation by Beth Kanter (Packard Foundation Fellow), Paul Shoemaker (Social Venture Partners), Jane Meseck (Microsoft Giving) and Eric Stowe (Splash.org) moderated by Erica Mills (Claxon). First of all, from a confessed short attention spanner, the hour went FAST. Eric tossed great questions for the first hour, then the audience added theirs in the second half. As usual, Beth got a Storify of the Tweets and a blog post up before we could blink. (Uncurated Tweets here.)

There was much good basic insight on monitoring for non profits and NGOs. Some of may favorite soundbites include:

What is your impact model? (Paul Shoemaker I think. I need to learn more about impact models)
Are you measuring to prove, or to improve (Beth Kanter)
Evaluation as a comparative practice (I think that was Beth)
Benchmark across your organization (I think Eric)
Transparency = Failing Out Loud (Eric)
“Joyful Funeral” to learn from and stop doing things that didn’t work out (from Mom’s Rising via Beth)
Mission statement does not equal IMPACT NOW. What outcomes are really happening RIGHT NOW (Eric)
Ditch the “just in case” data (Beth)
We need to redefine capacity (audience)
How do we create access to and use all the data (big data) being produced out of all the M&E happening in the sector (Nathaniel James at Philanthrogeek)

But I want to pick out a few themes that were emerging for me as I listened. These were not the themes of the terrific panelists — but I’d sure wonder what they have to say about them.

A Portfolio Mindset on Monitoring and Evaluation

There were a number of threads about the impact of funders and their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) expectations. Beyond the challenge of what a funder does or doesn’t understand about M&E, they clearly need to think beyond evaluation at the individual grant or project level. This suggests making sense across data from multiple grantees –> something I have not seen a lot of from funders. I am reminded of the significant difference between managing a project and managing a portfolio of projects (learned from my clients at the Project Management Institute. Yeah, you Doc!) IF I understand correctly, portfolio project management is about the business case –> the impacts (in NGO language), not the operational management issues. Here is the Wikipedia definition:

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is the centralized management of processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage a group of current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals ― while honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors.

There is a little bell ringing in my head that there is an important distinction between how we do project M&E — which is often process heavy and too short term to look at impact in a complex environment — and being able to look strategically at our M&E across our projects. This is where we use the “fail forward” opportunities, the iterating towards improvements AND investing in a longer view of how we measure the change we hope to see in the world. I can’t quite articulate it. Maybe one of you has your finger on this pulse and can pull out more clarity. But the bell is ringing and I didn’t want to ignore it.

This idea also rubs up against something Eric said which I both internally applauded and recoiled from. It was something along the lines of “if you can’t prove you are creating impact, no one should fund you.” I love the accountability. I worry about actually how to meaningfully do this in a) very complex non profit and international development contexts, and for the next reason…

Who Owns Measurement and Data?

Chart from Effective Philanthropy 2/2013

There is a very challenging paradigm in non profits and NGOs — the “helping syndrome.” The idea that we who “have” know what the “have nots” need or want. This model has failed over and over again and yet we still do it. I worry that this applies to M&E as well. So first of all, any efforts towards transparency (including owning and learning from failures) is stellar. I love what I see, for example, on Splash.org particularly their Proving.it technology. (In the run up to the event, Paul Shoemaker pointed to this article on the disconnect on information needs between funders and grantees.) Mostly I hear about the disconnect between funders information needs and those of the NPOs. But what about the stakeholders’ information needs and interests?

Some of the projects I’m learning from in agriculture (mostly in Africa and SE/S Asia) are looking towards finding the right mix of grant funding, public (government and international) investment and local ownership (vs. an extractive model). Some of the more common examples are marketing networks for farmers to get the best prices for their crops, lending clubs and using local entrepreneurs to fill new business niches associated with basics such as water, food, housing, etc. The key is the ownership at the level of stakeholders/people being served/impacted/etc. (I’m trying to avoid the word users as it has so many unintended other meanings for me!)

So if we are including these folks as drivers of the work, are they also the drivers of M&E and, in the end, the “owners” of the data produced. This is important not only because for years we have measured stakeholders and rarely been accountable to share that data, or actually USE it productive, but also because change is often motivated by being able to measure change and see improvement. 10 more kids got clean water in our neighborhood this week. 52 wells are now being regularly serviced and local business people are increasing their livelihoods by fulfilling those service contracts. The data is part of the on-the-ground workings of a project. Not a retrospective to be shoveled into YARTNR (yet another report that no one reads.)

In working with communities of practice, M&E is a form of community learning. In working with scouts, badges are incentives, learning measures and just plain fun. The ownership is not just at the sponsor level. It is embedded with those most intimately involved in the work.

So stepping back to Eric’s staunch support of accountability, I say yes AND the full ownership of that accountability with all involved, not just the NGO/NPO/Funder.

The Unintended Consequences of How We Measure

Related to ownership of M&E and the resulting data brings me back to the complexity lens. I’m a fan of the Cynefin Framework to help me suss out where I am working – simple, complicated, complex or chaotic domains. Using the framework may be a good diagnostic for M&E efforts because when we are working in a complex domain, predicting cause and effect may not be possible (now, or into the future.) If we expect M&E to determine if we are having impact, this implies we can predict cause and effect and focus our efforts there. But things such as local context may suggest that everything won’t play out the same way everywhere. What we are measuring may end up having unintended negative consequences (this HAS happened!) Learning from failures is one useful intervention, but I sense we have a lot more to learn here. Some of the threads about big data yesterday related to this — again a portfolio mentality looking across projects and data sets (calling Nathaniel James) We need to do more of the iterative monitoring until we know what we SHOULD be measuring. I’m getting out of my depth again here (Help! Patricia Rogers! Dave Snowden!) The point is, there is a risk of being simplistic in our M&E and a risk of missing unintended consequences. I think that is one reason I enjoyed the panel so much yesterday, as you could see the wheels turning in people’s heads as they listened to each other! 🙂

Arghhh, so much to think about and consider. Delicious possibilities…

Wednesday Edit: See this interesting article on causal chains… so much to learn about M&E! I think it reflects something Eric said (which is not captured above) about measuring what really happens NOW, not just this presumption of “we touched one person therefore it transformed their life!!”

Second edit: Here is a link with some questions about who owns the data… may be related http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=59975

Third edit: An interesting article on participation with some comments on data and evaluation http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-people-affected-by-problem-have-to.html

Fourth Edit (I keep finding cool stuff)

“Who Counts: the power of participatory statistics.” Edited by Jeremy Holland with an Afterword by Robert Chambers.
NYTimes “Can Big Data From Epic Indian Pilgrimage Help Save Lives?“

The public health project is part of a larger pilgrimage by Harvard scholars to study the Kumbh Mela. You can follow their progress on Twitter, using the hashtag #HarvardKumbh.

Listening and Acceptance as Core Facilitation Skills

I’m preparing for what might be a challenging facilitation gig this month involving a very complex domain, diverse perspectives, at least three languages and rooms where the tables are nailed to the floor. I actually love the first three things. The tables nailed to the floor asks for every bit of my creativity and ability to improvise with space, sound and time. So in preparation, I’m keeping my radar attuned to things floating in front of me. This is how I get inspired. It is like a magnetic field for ideas. Here is what came across the radar today, via a link from the Applied Improvisation Network‘s Facebook Page.

Lives In Progress: Listening And Acceptance: Improvising Our Way To Relationship With The Pre-Contemplative Person.

Acceptance of their offer, even if it is tinged with hostility or hoisted by layers of defensive projections about me and what I represent to them, is absolutely essential to engagement with the group. Acceptance of their offer is most often acceptance of their worldview, which most of us will freely share with others who listen without judgment. That is the hard part. To listen without imposing our will on another person even when it seems abundantly clear that their worldview can wind up killing them. Listening and acceptance of the offer of another person’s worldview are power tools in the improvisers toolkit, the builders of meaningful connection. Because why should anyone collaborate with me about a difficult, usually painful and conflict-inducing process of change if I fail to understand the way they see their story? How can I become a part of someone’s story – and no amount of intellectualizing or information-giving influences a person’s choices unless the new message and the messenger become part of his/her story – if I set myself apart from it?

The author, Jude Treder-Wolff. goes on to quote Daniel Pink, from his new book, To Sell is Human.

“The first principle of improvisation-hearing offers-hinges on attunement, leaving our own perspective to inhabit the perspective of another,” he writes. “And to master this aspect of improvisation, we must rethink our understanding of what it is to listen and what constitutes an offer.” Digging into the meaning of improvisation exercises designed to cultivate these skills, he concludes that “once we listen in this new, more intimate way, we begin hearing things we might have missed. And if we listen this way during our efforts to move others, we quickly realize that what seem outwardly like objections are often offers in disguise.” (p. 192)

Then, of course, the magnetic field continued to strengthen and I came across a couple of Facebook posts from the amazing Kat Koppet, who probably doesn’t know that I regularly open her book (Training to Imagine) to some random page and, with that magnetic field, find inspiration and knowledge. She posted a scan of a letter that Robert Lowe sent her which contains some amazing advice to us that resonates with this idea of listening and acceptance. With permission, here are the two pages of the letter.

In my work with international development agencies, people are passionate about solving global problems, feeding the world, saving the planet. With this passion can come an almost blinding form of advocacy, to be heard, to be validated, that can cripple listening, idea creation and collaboration. We SO want to be right and solve the problem, but this can become the problem. There is so much value placed on data, on solutions that we forget to listen for context and meaning. So I’m going to think hard, or maybe better yet, open my mind to what possibilities I can weave into my next engagement that seek space for listening and acceptance as the ground for working really hard, well and with joy on tough, intractable problems.

Any advice to share?

Edit, just a few minutes later… I see this Tweet from Linda Stone:

Elephants, Radical Rethinking and AND

Well, radical may be an overstatement, but it is worth saying that we have solutions for many things in front of us, but we have old glasses on when we need new ones. We love to protect the proverbial “elephant in the room” because after all, it is the elephant we know. But we consistently need to consider new perspectives. An “AND” perspective, not just an “OR.” This challenges status quo, power dynamics and is sometimes just hard to wrap our head around, particularly when we feel we have some “expertise” and “skin in the game” in a situation.

Last week I heard (and visually captured) CIAT’s Andy Jarvis give a great talk about the role of livestock in both feeding the world, and in green house gases. On one hand, livestock is a critical food and economic staple for the very poor, especially those who own a single cow or a few chickens. At the same time, livestock is implicated in large greenhouse gas contributions. So we have competing interests.

Or do we? There is real potential that this is not simply an “OR” proposition if we look with those new lenses. For example, Andy shared some initial data about the blending of growing trees and cows (silvo-pastoral systems) which have been growing in importance in Central and South America. New lenses. Here is a snippet:

Jarvis challenged those present at April’s meeting to look at the livestock ‘hoofprint’ as an opportunity as much as a call to immediate action. “Developing countries are where it’s at! They have the biggest potential for mitigation and major system transformations. There are systems which are far more efficient than others, and developing nations have the ability to put the rest of the world to shame.” Intensive silvo-pastoral systems, for example, were highlighted as having catalyzed a mini-revolution in Colombia and Central America due to their high CO2 capture potential and low implementation costs. According to Jarvis they are the rare climate change win-win, converting degraded pasture land into profitable, productive systems with high carbon stock, biodiversity, and resilience.

via The elephant in the room – or is it a cow? | DAPA. See also a reframe on ILRI’s blog.

Is it that simple? Certainly not. But the point is, we can’t look at greenhouse gases or food security as separate issues. They are connected. And that requires us to stretch the way we think and act. It requires a lot more “ANDs!”

This theme of AND rather than OR is popping up in my work literally every day and with every piece of work. The process challenge it offers me is to really push how I design and facilitate for, and to, AND. Yeah, that’s a messy mouthful.

This involves a) the ability to examine ideas and challenges from multiple perspectives, not just “critically from one approved perspective,” b) the ability to deal more productively with power dynamics that sit behind the influence of expertise and funding, mostly through increased transparency, and c) building our tolerance for ambiguity along the path towards action decisions. The latter is greatly enhanced by understanding when to do small “safe fail” (a la Dave Snowden) experiments, when to do larger shifts where there is a bit more certainty, and where to scale the things we really know work across different settings. I think we confuse these all the time (at least in international development, it is a challenge!)

In fact, this is not radical rethinking, folks. It is understanding how to agilely get out of our own thinking ruts, individually, organizationally and collectively. This has deep implications for our organizational structures and certainly for how we wield our power. I find it challenging (in a good way.) How about you? How are you working towards staying out of unproductive ruts?

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