Adapt Peacebuilding is supporting the NGO Christian Aid Ireland to institute adaptive programming approaches in its human rights, governance, gender and peacebuilding work in seven countries. Adaptive programming approaches recognise that its difficult if not impossible to know which strategies are likely to be effective in complex environments, and prioritises learning and reflection to improve strategies in close to real time.
One thing that we are learning so far is that CAI’s partners would like more support with front-end creative planning. Adaptation requires more than backward looking analytical processes, which consider how the context has changed or what we have learned that renders our strategies obsolete. Adaptation is also promoted by a forward looking commitment to responsible experimentation. This requires asking ourselves, in an uncertain environment, how we will try to achieve our goals in the coming months, and how we will know (in a timely fashion) whether our hypotheses were correct.
Training partners for creative planning
The powerpoint above served as the basis for a half day training in creative planning for adaptive management. The training builds on an earlier process of strategy testing, which helps CAI’s partners understand which of their strategies are or aren’t working based upon how the context is changing and what they’ve learned, but doesn’t necessarily inform them what (or how) they should do things differently.
The powerpoint above outlines three main steps for creative planning in adaptive management:
- The first involves breaking down the question of “what should we do” into smaller inquiries in breakout groups that generate a rich set of response opportunities.
- The second prioritises these responses based upon their feasibility and potential and articulates the resources and relationships needed to implement them.
- The third considers how we will learn in close to real time whether or not these responses are proving effective.
Lessons learned
The key takeaways from the training included:
- We can increase our chances of developing effective strategies amidst uncertainty by utilising the evolutionary principles of variation and selection. In practice, this meant breaking up a larger question into smaller ones, and breaking teams into smaller groups or individuals in order to generate larger numbers of responses that draw out more diverse perspectives. When a larger set of responses are elicited, given equal air time, and selected by the group, the likelihood that better ideas will surface and be selected for increases, especially when strong hierarchies prevail.
- Simple tools can be helpful in complex environments. The first approach to this training was mechanistic, using a points and ranking approach to determine feasibility, assess potential impact, and prioritise potential strategies. Although it might vary by context, for this group a simpler set of questions that could be discussed in group was preferred to a more complicated ranking approach.
- In this vein, the following simple set of questions can help any organisation to regularly check in on the effectiveness of its strategies and adapt as necessary:
- What has changed in the context, micro, meso and macro? What have we learned about our impact? And for both…
- How can we be sure?
- Does it matter and why?
- Which strategies are affected and how?
- What should we do differently? (What (goals), how (activities), where, when, with whom, with what resources)
- How will we know it’s better?
- How should we communicate this (to donors, partners, beneficiaries)?
This work is part of a three year partnership with Christian Aid Ireland to support implementation and learning from adaptive programming. We welcome any suggestions as to key research questions regarding the effectiveness of adaptive programming that this research might explore.
8 Responses
This is a great initiative and the learning from will be extremely useful for other initiatives, organizations and funders as we continue to engage in this space. One aspect I am keen to learn more about about through this initiative and even in my own organization’s learning, is what is possible/feasible to know at what time along the spectrum? For your learning point #3, did the group come up with different time frames for different aspects of their work? I’d be curious to know more about this. This remains a question I have for adaptive management in general since information and data come in at different times and point to different levels of learning (implementation, outputs, outcomes/impact, context changes, etc). If you have insight in how you factor this in already, I’d love to hear more about that. Thanks!
Thanks Leslie, great questions. A bit more context and then I’ll circle back around to them. These partners are pretty early into their funding cycle – year one of three – if that’s what you mean at what time along the spectrum. In a sense you might say that this gives them more scope to be creative, experimental and adaptive as they still have funding/time to burn, but in another sense these timelines are somewhat artificial as these organisations were doing this work before and after this funding cycle, the context is always changing, and these organisations always (ideally should) have access to information about context, implementation and impact. That doesn’t mean they or any of us are availing ourselves of these info sources though. These partners use a process called strategy testing, together with outcome harvesting, to understand how the context has changed, whether assumptions are still valid, whether they are having impact. They currently do this once per year. What we are pushing for, and in a way this is my main response to your question, is can’t you be reflecting in a light touch way about context, implementation, impact etc more regularly, and adapting more often, regardless of where you are in a funding cycle? To us it seems that shortening feedback loops and decoupling them from a traditional and long program cycle is needed for effective adaptation, particularly when context is changing rapidly. Great food for thought and happy to keep the convo going
Thanks, this is a great continuation of the conversation. I’ve been mulling it over this week. I like how you point out and remind us to think outside the particular funding cycle, as these organizations having been doing the work before and after. Thus elevating good adaptive behavior or building it if it doesn’t already exist is a core function of how to change this narrative. I agree that a regular light touch reflection on implementation, context and impact is possible and I like that you’ve put them all together. Any one itself is valid in it’s own right but all together they give a better understanding for adaption. I’ve been thinking of how we can do this and one approach is to think about the type of decisions you want to make: 1) Tactical (program implementation); 2) Strategic (technical approach) and 3) Systems (in this sense the context and broader environmental, social, political factors impacting the work–nationally and globally). Happy to continue to continue this conversation!
This is a great initiative and the learning from will be extremely useful for other initiatives, organizations and funders as we continue to engage in this space. One aspect I am keen to learn more about about through this initiative and even in my own organization’s learning, is what is possible/feasible to know at what time along the spectrum? For your learning point #3, did the group come up with different time frames for different aspects of their work? I’d be curious to know more about this. This remains a question I have for adaptive management in general since information and data come in at different times and point to different levels of learning (implementation, outputs, outcomes/impact, context changes, etc). If you have insight in how you factor this in already, I’d love to hear more about that. Thanks!
Thanks Leslie, great questions. A bit more context and then I’ll circle back around to them. These partners are pretty early into their funding cycle – year one of three – if that’s what you mean at what time along the spectrum. In a sense you might say that this gives them more scope to be creative, experimental and adaptive as they still have funding/time to burn, but in another sense these timelines are somewhat artificial as these organisations were doing this work before and after this funding cycle, the context is always changing, and these organisations always (ideally should) have access to information about context, implementation and impact. That doesn’t mean they or any of us are availing ourselves of these info sources though. These partners use a process called strategy testing, together with outcome harvesting, to understand how the context has changed, whether assumptions are still valid, whether they are having impact. They currently do this once per year. What we are pushing for, and in a way this is my main response to your question, is can’t you be reflecting in a light touch way about context, implementation, impact etc more regularly, and adapting more often, regardless of where you are in a funding cycle? To us it seems that shortening feedback loops and decoupling them from a traditional and long program cycle is needed for effective adaptation, particularly when context is changing rapidly. Great food for thought and happy to keep the convo going
Thanks, this is a great continuation of the conversation. I’ve been mulling it over this week. I like how you point out and remind us to think outside the particular funding cycle, as these organizations having been doing the work before and after. Thus elevating good adaptive behavior or building it if it doesn’t already exist is a core function of how to change this narrative. I agree that a regular light touch reflection on implementation, context and impact is possible and I like that you’ve put them all together. Any one itself is valid in it’s own right but all together they give a better understanding for adaption. I’ve been thinking of how we can do this and one approach is to think about the type of decisions you want to make: 1) Tactical (program implementation); 2) Strategic (technical approach) and 3) Systems (in this sense the context and broader environmental, social, political factors impacting the work–nationally and globally). Happy to continue to continue this conversation!
You begin by emphasizing "Adaptation requires more than backward looking analytical processes, which consider how the context has changed." But you give up on that, and close by emphasizing "What has changed in the context?"
A better alternative is to articulate a Theory of Change that evolves continually throughout problem identification, search for solutions, iterative testing, and project evaluation. See John Hoven (5April2018) "Adaptive Theories of Change for Peacebuilding," 2018 International Studies Association Conference
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324507012_Adaptive_Theories_of_Change_for_Peacebuilding
John Hoven
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhoven/
You begin by emphasizing "Adaptation requires more than backward looking analytical processes, which consider how the context has changed." But you give up on that, and close by emphasizing "What has changed in the context?"
A better alternative is to articulate a Theory of Change that evolves continually throughout problem identification, search for solutions, iterative testing, and project evaluation. See John Hoven (5April2018) "Adaptive Theories of Change for Peacebuilding," 2018 International Studies Association Conference
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324507012_Adaptive_Theories_of_Change_for_Peacebuilding
John Hoven
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhoven/