Theories of Change

A theory of change is a purposeful model of how an initiative—such as a policy, a strategy, a program, or a project—contributes through a chain of early and intermediate outcomes to the intended result. Theories of change help navigate the complexity of social change. (No. 122 | February 2013)

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Future Search Conferencing

Where large organizations make an effort to boost knowledge sharing, the solutions they fabricate can aggravate problems. Designing jobs for knowledge behaviors and recruiting people who are positive about sharing to start with will boost knowledge stocks and flows at low cost. (No. 120 | September 2012)

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The Premortem Technique

Assumptions that do not associate with probabilities create a false sense of certainty. Working backward, considering alternatives that emerge from failed assumptions broadens the scope of scenarios examined. The Premortem technique raises awareness of possibilities, including their likely consequences, to enrich planning. (No. 113 | March 2012)

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Political Economy Analysis for Development Effectiveness

Political economy embraces the complex political nature of decision making to investigate how power and authority affect economic choices in a society. Political economy analysis offers no quick fixes but leads to smarter engagement. (No. 107 | September 2011)

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A Primer on Intellectual Capital

Intellectual capital has become the one indispensable asset of organizations. Managing its human, relational, and structural components is of the essence of modern business. (No. 106 | August 2011)

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Seeking Feedback on Learning for Change

Feedback underpins organizational learning. To find the highest level of success in learning for change, feedback should be invited, analyzed in the most positive manner possible, and used to impact decision making.(No. 92 | October 2010)

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Design Thinking

The need for 21st century mindsets and protocols has sparked interest in design thinking. That is a human-centered, prototype-driven process for the exploration of new ideas that can be applied to operations, products, services, strategies, and even management. (No. 78 | March 2010)

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A Primer on Talent Management

Talent is not a rare commodity—people are talented in many ways: it is simply rarely released. To make talent happen organizations must give it strategic and holistic attention. (No. 76 | February 2010)

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The Future of Social Marketing

Social marketing is the use of marketing principles and techniques to effect behavioral change. It is a concept, process, and application for understanding who people are, what they desire, and then organizing the creation, communication, and delivery of products and services to meet their desires as well as the needs of society, and solve serious social problems. (No. 73 | January 2010)

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Marketing in the Public Sector

Marketing in the public sector may be the final frontier. Agencies operating in the public domain can use a custom blend of the four Ps—product (or service), place, price, and promotion—as well as other marketing techniques to transform their communications with stakeholders, improve their performance, and demonstrate a positive return on the resources they are endowed with. (No. 72 | January 2010)

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From Strategy to Practice

Strategic reversals are quite commonly failures of execution. In many cases, a strategy is abandoned out of impatience or because of pressure for an instant payoff before it has had a chance to take root and yield results. Or its focal point is allowed to drift over time. To navigate a strategy, one must maintain a balance between strategizing and learning modes of thinking. (No. 60 | August 2009)

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Enhancing Knowledge Management Strategies

Despite worldwide attention to strategic planning, the notion of strategic practice is surprisingly new. To draw a strategy is relatively easy but to execute it is difficult—strategy is both a macro and a micro phenomenon that depends on synchronization. One should systematically review, evaluate, prioritize, sequence, manage, redirect, and if necessary even cancel strategic initiatives. (No. 58 | August 2009)

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Learning Lessons with Knowledge Audits

Knowledge from evaluations will not be used effectively if the specific organizational context, knowledge, and relationships of evaluation agencies, and the external environment they face, are not dealt with in an integrated and coherent manner. Knowledge management can shed light on this and related initiatives can catalyze and facilitate identification, creation, storage, sharing, and use of lessons. (No. 51 | June 2009)

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Building Institutional Capacity for Development

The conditions of economic and social progress include participation, democratic processes, and the location of necessarily diverse organizational setups at the community, national, regional, and increasingly global levels. Access to and judicious use of information underpin all these. (No. 47 | May 2009)

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Building a Learning Organization

Learning is the key to success—some would even say survival—in today’s organizations. Knowledge should be continuously enriched through both internal and external learning. For this to happen, it is necessary to support and energize organization, people, knowledge, and technology for learning. (No. 46 | May 2009)

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Overcoming Roadblocks to Learning

The gulf between the ideal type of a learning organization and the state of affairs in typical bilateral and multilateral development agencies remains huge. Defining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them—it might make them part of the solution instead of part of the problem. (No. 41 | April 2009)

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Social Network Analysis

Power no longer resides exclusively (if at all) in states, institutions, or large corporations. It is located in the networks that structure society. Social network analysis seeks to understand networks and their participants and has two main focuses: the actors and the relationships between them in a specific social context. (No. 28 | February 2009)

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The Most Significant Change Technique

The Most Significant Change technique helps monitor and evaluate the performance of projects and programs. It involves the collection and systematic participatory interpretation of stories of significant change emanating from the field level—stories about who did what, when, and why, and the reasons why the event was important. It does not employ quantitative indicators. (No. 25 | January 2009)

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Culture Theory

Culture theory strengthens the expectation that markets work, not because they are comprised of autonomous individuals who are free of social sanctions but because they are powered by social beings and their distinctive ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge. It can contribute to understanding and promoting development where group relationships predominate and individualism is tempered. (No. 22 | December 2008)

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Outcome Mapping

Development is about people—it is about how they relate to one another and their environment, and how they learn in doing so. Outcome mapping puts people and learning first and accepts unexpected change as a source of innovation. It shifts the focus from changes in state, viz. reduced poverty, to changes in behaviors, relationships, actions, and activities. (No. 17 | November 2008)

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