Response to: Getting beneath the surface in program planning,monitoring and evaluation: Learning from use of Participatory Action Research and Theory of Change in the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems

Development organizations who aim to improve program outcomes and ensure increased accountability to communities are under increasing pressure to better understand the experiences of project participants. There is much discussion across the aid community (including, but not limited to, aquatic agricultural research) about opportunities and challenges to adapting planning, monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) approaches in order to improve their relevance and applicability to complex and unpredictable development processes. This article is therefore timely and relevant in describing a Theory of Change (TOC)-based approach to address complexity in a practical and transformative way.

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) used a TOC-based approach to design and establish an “intelligent” PM&E system that supported complexity-aware programming addressing the evolving needs and interests of poor and marginalized people in five locations in southern Africa, south and southeast Asia, and the Pacific. The AAS program also intended to empower stakeholders to contribute to collective learning through active reflection and sense-making in order to inform decisions and subsequent action.

The article’s explicit recognition that TOCs can be thought of as “both a process and a product,” to encourage ongoing critical, or evaluative thinking (Archibald, Sharrock, Buckley, & Cook, 2016)—motivated by an attitude of inquisitiveness and a belief in the value of evidence—strongly resonates with my current work which is focused on embedding such TOC-based reflective practices and techniques in two large USAID-funded food security projects in eastern Zambia and southern Malawi. Establishing and encouraging learning processes are challenging when so much emphasis in projects has typically been myopically fixated on target achievement. Yet, such mechanisms are essential if we are “to optimize the benefits of adopting an approach that actively seeks to be “more than a complex log frame (http://infinitasinternational.com/evaluation-methodology/whats-wrong-theories-change/).”

In fact, this article reassuringly reinforces the approaches that we have been piloting in Catholic Relief Services (CRS) over the last three years. Since 2012, USAID (a key donor for CRS), alongside other donors, have been wrestling with a desire to encourage flexible programmatic interventions that adapt and respond to new learning and changing circumstances, including even reaching out to new partners not envisaged in the original program design. The mantra of “collaborating, learning and adapting” has been adopted to reflect a desire to be more “complexity-aware.”

Our belief is that there is now an opportunity for all individuals engaged in development programming to view themselves not merely as “aid deliverers” but more valuably as “reflective practitioners” supporting longer term sustainability and responsible innovation. My own personal view is that there is significant untapped potential for assigning delegated decision-making authority to field-level staff and those we are serving, and for their voices to be given more prominence so as to influence the strategic direction of interventions. In the case of my own organization, this is closely aligned with the agency principles of options for the poor, stewardship, and subsidiarity. The latter advises that, “a higher level of government—or organization—should not perform any function or duty that can be handled more effectively at a lower level by people who are closer to the problem and have a better understanding of the issue (CRS, 2000).” I am particularly encouraged by the article’s description and analysis of local “hub” teams growing into positions where, as reflective practitioners, they can facilitate learning processes that liberate the potential for more meaningful, locally relevant development pathways.

The authors of this paper found, as we are finding in our own work, that a key component underpinning progress is the need for trust (see USAID, 2016); in CRS we tend to talk about the importance of “right relationships” though the meaning is broadly similar. The article emphasizes the importance of having a positive, trusting and balanced relationship to ensure effective partnership among program members. This is an often understated, if not overlooked, aspect of successful programming, and the article provides a timely reminder. The program in which I have been engaged has invested significantly in establishing good, open relationships that, in turn, facilitate a greater degree of freedom to collaborate, learn and adapt as all stakeholders travel together on their shared journey.

While appreciating the authors’ efforts to employ a TOC-based approach to engender a PM&E system that encourages more responsive and flexible programming, it is important to remain alert to the conceptual and operational limitations of the TOC-based approach itself. For many, a TOC model, no matter how well done, still suffers from the weaknesses of all logical planning tools in not being able to accommodate the systemic complexity of development interventions. For many projects, there remains a challenge associated with not truly knowing how to operationalize the model often combined with the absence of managers with “an appetite to take appropriate risks and make course corrections in their work when needed”(O’Donnell, 2016).

Finally, I am particularly impressed by the description of how use of the TOC approach has not only affected the technical programmatic interventions but has also influenced the emerging expansion of the original coalition of partners. This is a significant achievement since improving program relevance and performance generally benefits from the multiple perspectives of wider community engagement before determining how best to nudge the system in the desired direction of travel. The article provides a clear message that while challenges clearly exist, we should not be deterred from “getting beneath the surface” to embed reflection and learning into development implementation processes.