Program Cohort – Building State Capability

Increasing the dynamism of the implementation of French public policies

Guest blog written by Kanan Dubal, Jess Redmond, Ankita Panda, Arba Murati

No amount of information or research can and did prepare us for the intensity and unlearning that the Problem Driven Iterative Approach (PDIA) process demands. Theoretically, we knew what the PDIA process was, but the course facilitated an opportunity to learn, implement and receive constant feedback on the application of PDIA to a real policy case.

PDIA provides a blueprint to follow, but it’s not that straightforward. Each time we thought we had defined the problem and then deconstructed it, a new conversation or reading would spark a new idea, and new way of thinking about the problem leading to many versions of a problem definition. The deconstruction of the problem using the ‘fishbone’ approach helped us dive deeper into the problem whilst breaking a big issue down into smaller problems.

Engaging youth in sustainable development in Barbados

Guest blog written by Arpita Tiwari, Diana Ly, Emma Catalfamo, Hina Musa, Katherina Hruskovec Gonzalez, Morgan Benson

Early Days

The first PDIA meeting for the KEYS to Success team focused on one goal: getting to know each other. Our team members came from different backgrounds, different programs within HKS, even different countries, and each of us was curious about what the team dynamic would look like. We built our team Constitution – a critical trust-building exercise for the PDIA process – which guaranteed enough psychological safety for each of us to freely participate and contribute. Over the next six weeks, each team member grew in our ability to think critically about our problem, propose creative solutions, and ensure that these ideas were most useful for our authorizer and ultimately for Barbados.

Examining Rising Teacher Shortages in the United States

Guest blog by Razan Alayed, Aleena Ali, Ryan S. Herman, Cecilia Liang, Krizia Lopez

There were many lessons to be extracted from this course and through applying the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach to our concurrently ordinary and extraordinary problem. The issue of teacher shortage has existed for many years and is persisting in the United States, with the pandemic exacerbating and laying bare the public education system. Through iterative thinking and discussions, we as a team were able to narrow and focus our problem to what was relevant to our authorizer and her context, as well as surface the causes that continue to influence the issue at hand. Specifically, the PDIA process has taught us to dig deeper into root causes and distill them into comprehensive understandings; in fact, we discovered along the way that some sub-causes are shared among larger entry points, which was pivotal to defining our ideas and action steps. This process taught us that starting with small ideas and growing them is key to the iterative approach, since we were able to take frequent pauses, reflect, modify and then go back into the solution space. This also allowed us to experiment with our ideas and to obtain timely feedback through stakeholder interviews prior to investing time and resources on ideas that may not work in our context. Suffice to say that this experience has been fruitful for our professional journeys, and we will be taking these learnings as we move forward in our careers.

Civic Education and Youth Political Engagement in Peru

Guest blog by Nicah Santos, Ivy Wang, Rachel Diaz, and Malaika Toyo

Six weeks ago, we came together because we wanted hands-on experience with a new approach to getting things done in development: PDIA. We were from all four corners of the world and campus – Filipino, Nigerian, Latin-American, and Chinese-Canadian, HKS and HGSE. We discovered that together, we had a wealth of combined experience in education, curriculum development, strategy, project management and Latin America. This would come in handy for our problem on civic education and youth political engagement in Peru.

Creation of jobs for youth through entrepreneurial development in Ghana

Guest blog by Osman Haruna Tweneboah

This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Participants successfully completed this 6-month online learning course in December 2020. These are their learning journey stories.

My expectations for signing up for the programme

I was actually excited to start the IPP programme at Harvard Kennedy School not only because of the brand name of the School, the popularity and the international respect accorded to the School, but I was also looking for a solution to my policy challenge. My policy challenge revolves around, “the creation of jobs through entrepreneurial development for the youth”. The IPP programme actually provided me with the tools not only overcoming the problem but also learning. Upon commencement of the programme, I thought I was going to learn through the usual theoretical way, little did I know and believe that the course was very practical and interesting, though rigorous and time consuming.

Economic growth transformation in Azerbaijan using real world examples

Guest blog by Namig Naghdaliyev

One of the common age-old questions we are thinking about is a positional competition between theory and practice. This question is of utmost importance and common in economic policymaking and implementation.

Before taking this course, I was familiar with the Harvard Kennedy School’s advancing role in building threshold points, not only theory but also practice. This course assured me and made me more than confident that HKS is one of the main engines of adding global public policy values.

An unexpected journey: ‘One fish in your hand is worth more than two in the river’

Guest blog by Raphaël Kenigsberg

Integrate the Millennial generation into strategic decision-making and implementation

During the Covid-19 crazy crisis, I had a dream, shared by many: what would the world look like after this unexpected pandemic? Our landmarks were missing, and adaptation became key. With the support of hundred engaged members of the think tank I am running, we designed a set of 32 ambitions imagining youth expectations for a better future. For two months, during the first general lockdown, daily and after work, we decided to gather and organize ideas with the hope of being heard by policymakers. We designed a 150-page report in French and in English. The main goal of this report was to convince policymakers that youth should be included into designing and implementing public policies. We organized an influence communication directed towards the French President, all members of government, National Assembly, Senate, embassies, European Commission and Parliament, international organizations, and media.

Examining the secondary education system in Georgia

Guest blog by Levan Karalashvili

That was a great course. A lot of countries are facing major policy challenges due to COVID19 and there is especially high uncertainty on post-covid era. The world simply will be different and any policy-maker needs to be equipped with the best possible tools and be able to efficiently analyze complex problems, which will require unorthodox strategies to develop and implement, with goal to accelerate process of recovery.

I found the provided materials and course dynamics very interesting, widening the understanding of complex problem handling, learning the PDIA approach in action, and sharpening problem understanding and solution development strategies.

Appointing advisory board, youth council, and commission member vacancies in U.S. local government

Guest blog by Pat Jacquez-Nares

This was a journey that I was not prepared for, but I enjoyed the ride. I was given the opportunity from the mayor of the city that I work for, he also is my boss, to take this course, and I did not know what to expect. I was very thankful that he considered me and gave me the opportunity to attend this course. The course was very good and very useful in my daily interactions at work and at home. The key learnings that I will take from this course are the PDIA tools to help solve my problems. The need to identify the problem, then break down the problem, identify where the problems lie, find the solutions to these problems, fix these problems, then reflect on the outcome and keep doing it until the entire problem is solved. The mayor also gave me the problem he wanted me to solve with this training course. The boards and commissions vacancies and the retention of the existing members. This also entailed the youth council for the city I work for.

A learning year out of the comfort zone

Guest blog by Alex Fernandez

Now that we have these pandemic times, at the beginning of this year I decided to continue my studies by studying something totally different from my professional and educational background, a program called Implementing Public Policies at Harvard Kennedy School.

The reason of this decision was to understand how public servants live the challenge of implementing a public policy, the barriers, obstacles, bad things, and good things.

In my current role, I need to connect with the public sector to implement social impact activities in some moments. Some of those practices end in community initiatives with the back up of the local government.

What better way to understand my ally than taking a course full of policymakers and discussing the challenges and best ways to implement public policy?