CLA: Collaborating, Learning and

Adapting

Implementing the CDCS

as a living strategy

Stacey Young, PhD August 16, 2011

The need

Address common problems that inhibit aid effectiveness:

– synergies are lost due to insufficient collaboration

– projects don’t always reflect evaluation evidence, good practice, tacit and local knowledge, new learning (including in other sectors)

– project design and indicators assume static country conditions and predictable results

– strategies can function as constraints, and implementation remains static while conditions are dynamic

– implementation can adapt while strategies don’t, and their function as road maps is lost, increasing risk of mission drift

The opportunity: Uganda

• Dave Eckerson Uganda—creative mission director, key mission

• Dave asked Tony for help with strategy (SMP; later CDCS)

• Tony introduced us (2008), and Dave agreed to include a focus on making the strategy a living strategy, integrating learning throughout mission portfolio

The opportunity: Liberia

• Uganda: pilot CDCS country – “success”

• Liberia: pilot CDCS country – third attempt

• Patricia Rader, mission director

• Severe constraints in mission and in country conditions

CLA: implementing for maximum effectiveness

Collaborating, Learning and Adapting

• Collaborate: Work with others where it makes sense

• Learn: Draw on evidence and experience; test our development hypotheses and implementation methods; share learning about what works and what doesn’t

• Adapt: Make iterative course corrections while we implement to shorten the path to our goals and improve overall effectiveness

CDCS guidance

new language in version 3: • improved coordination and collaboration • continuous learning • timely course correction/iterative adaptation

CLA: who and what?—Uganda

• CLA advisor—seasoned development professional with skills in research, adult learning and facilitating

• PO and Deputy PO • M&E, GIS staff • Subject Matter Liaisons from technical areas • Gender & Youth Liaison(s) • Resource people: researchers/analysts, facilitators,

evaluators, local thought leaders

• Implementing partners (IPs) • Other stakeholders (donors, GOU, research institutes, etc.)

CLA: who and what?—Liberia

• Contract • Recruiter/talent manager • (key constraint = staff #, quality, resilience) • CLA advisor—seasoned development professional with

skills in research, adult learning and facilitating [revise--]: • PO and Deputy PO • M&E, GIS staff • Subject Matter Liaisons from technical areas • Gender & Youth Liaison(s) • Resource people: researchers/analysts, facilitators,

evaluators, local thought leaders

Leverage existing processes

Adapt and expand on existing mission processes, use existing mechanisms & budgets:

• M&E contract • Technical contracts • Portfolio reviews (2x/year) • Donor working groups • GIS and M&E functions With some new activities (e.g., informal discussion forums)

CLA throughout implementation

• Articulate development hypotheses • Align portfolio with strategy • Facilitate strategic collaboration • Fill knowledge gaps • Ground indicators and targets in evidence • Capture learning, facilitate knowledge exchange,

promote a learning culture • Engage wide range of stakeholders • Adapt projects quickly, effectively and legally

Align hypotheses and activities

• Describe causal pathways to desired changes (IRs, objectives)

• Map project activities to these pathways • Identify portfolio gaps/misalignments, assumptions • Assess which can be filled by others, which by

USAID • Work with CO on acquisition and assistance (new,

altered) • Address any capacity gaps internally and among IPs • Review and adjust program alignment periodically,

through Portfolio Reviews, etc.

Facilitate strategic collaboration

Identify internal opportunities

• Ag/SO 7’s work with land tenure for vulnerable households & DG/SO 9’s work with Land Boards on land tenure regulations

• Ag/SO 7 & Health/SO 8 on Feed the Future in

selected districts

• Short rotations through Gulu office?

Facilitate strategic collaboration

Build on existing GIS work to get data & information: Map development activities: USG, GOU, other donors, NGOs/civil society, academic/ research institutions – who’s doing what, and where? With whom should we be working?

Facilitate strategic collaboration

• Add GIS info from IPs, Bureau of Statistics, other

sources to create country data overlays showing relevant local conditions • population, health, cropping, markets, environmental factors,

etc.

• Share these overlays with others

• Assess: any emergent trends that imply collaboration opportunities?

Facilitate strategic collaboration

Identify opportunities to coordinate, leverage, reduce conflict • Where we overlap—are we coordinating?

• Where someone else is already working: can we give a

push to what they’re leading?

• Where our philosophies or methods diverge—can we reduce duplication of efforts? Can we avoid working at cross purposes?

Fill knowledge gaps

• Plan to test selected development hypotheses – Collocation (Uganda), decentralization (Liberia and Uganda) – Health hypotheses (Uganda)

• Conduct Assessment, Surveillance and Response reports & roundtables on game changers

Fill knowledge gaps

• Conduct new studies of key technical questions – How does value chain development affect hh nutrition? hh

gender dynamics? – Have we done the analytics on climate change to understand

any implications for key crops (maize, coffee) in Uganda? – Does the weakened status of coffee cooperatives threaten the

viability of working in the coffee value chain? if so, is there a role for governance activities in resolving that problem?

• Draw on available analytic resources – M&E results, other data – syntheses of existing research – project & program evaluations, impact assessments

Fill knowledge gaps

Bring in experiential learning • what team members are observing • what seasoned pros know • what experts/practitioners from other countries are learning

Facilitate learning

• Capture learning from departing staff • Institute FSN-led orientation and mentoring program • Institute informal, cross-sectoral discussion forums

on key parts of the strategy

• Capture and share learning from IPs, local thought leaders

• Create opportunities for sharing observations (early warning?), experience and tacit knowledge

Strengthen learning culture

We’re implementing as planned but not getting the results we expected. Should we point the finger of blame?

so people learn to hide better next time…

Or should we ask—“why?” Shifts in implementation, faulty

hypothesis, changing local conditions, something else?

Engage stakeholders

• Identify trusted thought leaders

• Hold public roundtable discussions on ASR reports

• Participate in selected donor working groups

• Engage stakeholders in annual reflection on country conditions, assistance, and USAID

Learning: Portfolio review #1

internal

maintain focus on performance

but also emphasize

problem solving

Learning: Portfolio review #2

Are the DOs still the right ones? What’s happening with the game changers? What trends are we observing in Uganda?

Do our strategy and hypotheses still hold?

What are we

learning? Any new

opportunities for collaboration?

Any need for course

correction?

convene IPs, GOU, other donors, thought leaders for a “Big Picture Reflection”

Adapt implementation

• Incorporate language on collaborating, learning and adapting into solicitations and assistance agreements

• Employ “evolutionary”/agile acquisition

• Align incentives to promote ongoing, collaborative monitoring, assessment, evaluation and adaptation

» Michael Quinn Patton: “timing matters…”

Adapting

Finding: Impact evaluation shows increased effectiveness of collocating DO activities under certain conditions; analysis of Gulu experience identifies potential pitfalls of competition among IPs

Adaptation: Identify where conditions for success exist

elsewhere in Uganda, and plan to introduce collocation in those areas; establish a community of practice for experience sharing and peer assist to help avoid the pitfalls

Adapting

Finding: Big Picture Reflection reveals widespread observations of civil society shrinking from addressing governance issues surrounding petroleum revenues, but one organization is having an impact

Adaptation: SO 9 works with local thought leaders and

subject matter experts to determine the conditions supporting this success, and shares findings with State and other donors to plan support for replicating and scaling the success

Adapting

Finding: CLA research based on youth assessment findings determine that there is high potential to influence fertility through concentrated awareness and service provision to youth

Adaptation: SO 8 Education and family planning

activities target youth in selected areas

Adapting

Finding: Environmental factors, including climate change, threaten viability of agricultural production due to rainfall variability/uncertainty

Adaptation: SO 7 works with other donors and research

institutes to identify adaptation and mitigation approaches suitable to Uganda’s main agro-ecological zones

Adapting

Finding: Monitoring of game-changers indicates that Uganda’s population projections to 2050 are even higher than anticipated; climate projections are off the charts; oil revenues are likely to be appropriated

Adaptation: Plan now for what’s coming!

Indicators? What is success?

• Institutional and behavioral

• Tacit K-sharing institutionalized

• Candid discussions for tough assessment of implementation are institutionalized and rewarded

• Staff capacity to think critically in terms of the larger picture (development hypotheses, game changers) and across traditional stovepipes (sectoral, institutional) enhanced

• FSN-led orientation and mentoring program established

• Staff/stakeholder buy-in to and ownership of the CLA process continues and increases

What is success?

• Programmatic

– More strategic collaboration taking place internally and externally

– More analytic process driving project design, monitoring and adaptation

– Projects reflect more holistic/cross-sectoral considerations (Ag/FTF, value chain development, climate projections)

– Course corrections are proposed, grounded in evidence, implemented, tracked, shared transparently

– Knowledge is shared with others, adapted and applied by them

Success…

Achieving development objectives faster more effectively more sustainably Impact should be felt at the project and program level

(but what of the counterfactual?)