Implementation – Building State Capability

How often do public policies really fail? A question to help you escape the policy futility trap

written by Matt Andrews

Last week I blogged about the ‘public policy futility trap’ in which countries get stuck when a negative feedback loop institutionalizes itself in the public policy domain. Experiences of past policy failure erodes the confidence (of citizens and public officials) to deliver in future, which undermines the potential for positive future policy results, which in turn reinforces the view that government cannot ‘get things done’, and on and on and on.

I think many countries are stuck in this trap, where negative feedback loops frustrate effort after effort to improve government capabilities. Initiatives designed to help governments get things done tend to fail when no one (in the citizenry or government) actually believes government can get things done.

So, how do governments get unstuck?

This is the question we plan to address—in practice —through the forthcoming Implementing Public Policy executive education course (starting in May 2019). The answer we suggest is simple: challenge the existing negative feedback loop by promoting cases of implementation success that can become the basis of new positive feedback loops—that help citizens and officials believe that more is possible tomorrow than it was yesterday.

Continue reading How often do public policies really fail? A question to help you escape the policy futility trap

Getting real about development; It is hard

Written by Matt Andrews

I’m reminded so regularly that development is about change. If it’s done well it is about change that sticks, and even more about countries becoming adaptive (able to change continuously at the right pace and in the right way).

This requires learning and building a specific type of DNA in people, organizations, and countries. And this learning is hard. Often because learning is perceived as failure, and failure is feared.

The truth is that most key development breakthroughs happen out of the lessons of things gone wrong, but in the moment of going wrong it is hard to see how valuable the failure is; it seems like all is falling apart and critics come out of every window and door they can.

Keeping one’s head in these moments is crucial, and is required to let people see failure as learning and to see that learning itself is the key to success.

I wonder how often public policy schools teach students about these moments and how to manage yourself in the face of the turmoil these moments involve. I think this may be one of the most important lessons to learn if you want to work in development and not spend all the time writing safe reports no one uses or consult from a distance, or do stuff without bringing local folks along to learn how to do it themselves.

The PDIA Anthem

Need help decoding the acronym PDIA? Check out the PDIA anthem.

This Anthem uses the Instrumental from Mos Def – Mathematics. It was made by a very talented student as part of an assignment for Matt Andrews course entitled Getting Things Done in Development. We had never imagined that we could write a song about PDIA, let alone a rap. Thank you.

Let me hear you say P. D. I. A. …

Introducing The DDD Manifesto

We are delighted to release The DDD Manifesto as an outcome of the 2014 Doing Development Differently (DDD) workshop.

In late October, a group of about 40 development professionals, implementers and funders from around the world attended the DDD workshop, to share examples where real change has been achieved. These examples employ different tools but generally hold to some of the same core principles: being problem driven, iterative with lots of learning, and engaging teams and coalitions, often producing hybrid solutions that are ‘fit to context’ and politically smart.

The two-day workshop was an opportunity to share practical lessons and insights, country experience, and to experiment first hand with selected methodologies and design thinking. In order to maximize the opportunity to hear from as many people as possible, all presenters were asked to prepare a 7:30 minute talk — with no powerpoints or visual accompaniments. The workshop alone generated a rich set of cases and examples of what doing development differently looks like, available on both Harvard and ODI websites (where you can watch individual talks, see the posters or link to related reports).

The aim of the event was to build a shared community of practice, and to crystallize what we are learning about doing development differently from practical experience. The workshop ended with a strong call for developing a manifesto reflecting the common principles that cut across the cases that were presented. Watch the closing remarks here.

These common principles have been synthesized into The DDD Manifesto. We recognize that many of these principles are not new, but we do feel the need to clearly identify principles and to state that we believe that development initiatives will have more impact if these are followed.

As an emerging community of practice, we welcome you to join us by adding your name in the comment box of the manifesto.

Contexts and Policy Implementation: 4 factors to think about

written by Matt Andrews

I recently blogged about what matters about the context. Here’s a video of a class I taught on the topic at the University of Cape Town over the summer (their winter). It is a short clip where I try to flesh out the 4 factors that I look at when thinking about new policy: 1. Disruption; 2. Strength of incumbents; 3. Legitimacy of alternatives; and 4. Agent alignment (who is behind change and who is not).

Doing Development Differently: Day 1 Summary

Today was the first day of Doing Development Differently (#differentdev). It was a full day with two DDD Exchange Sessions, a design thinking session and a wind tunnel meeting. View the storify to see all the content, including videos, tweets and photos.

When we designed this workshop, we wanted to maximize the opportunity to hear from as many people as possible. Specifically, we wanted

to show that it is possible to do development differently;
the participants to discern key principles and cross-cutting modalities or tools;
to explore whether we could promote a vibrant Community of Practice for those trying to do development differently.

To facilitate this, we asked our presenters to prepare a 7:30 minute talk —with no powerpoints or visual accompaniments. The talk had to address the following questions:

What problem were you trying to solve?
How had you/your organization/others addressed this problem in the past?
What did you do?
How did you manage the politics of your work?
How did you ensure learning in the process?

We are delighted to share the first set of 7:30 presentations: Michael Woolcock, Zack Brisson, Tim Williamson, and Kay Winning. Here are some key principles that cut across all the presenters:

Humility: We don’t know the answers
Articulate principles that can scale
Donors role: broker, convenor, facilitator, adviser
Understand context: listening, relationships and personal networks are central
Need feet on-the-ground to support the process
Create space for local solutions and local ownership
Embrace and navigate politics: work with what you have
Building and sustaining broad coalitions: middle/low level bureaucrats, many stakeholders at all levels
Iterative messy process: one that evolves over time, problems change, solutions change
Built-in rapid cycles of learning
Refine problem definition: focus on what really needs to be solved
Take advantage of windows of opportunity (shocks, critical junctures, etc)
Adaptability: thinking strategically but building on flexibility

Follow #differentdev and storify for live coverage of Day 2.

Doing Development Differently 2014

Last October, we hosted a one-day workshop entitled, Untying Development: Promoting Governance and Government with Impact . The day brought together different voices to discuss the challenge of creating a governance agenda that focuses on solving country-specific problems, involves local people through flexible and context-fitted processes, and emphasizes learning in the reform process.

We are proud to announce a two-day follow up workshop entitled, Doing Development Differently to be held on October 22-23, 2014 at the Harvard Kennedy School. This event is an opportunity to share practical lessons and insights, country experience, and to experiment first hand with selected methodologies and design thinking.The aim of the event is to start to build a shared community of practice, and to crystallize what we are learning about what doing development differently really looks like in practice. This event is co-hosted with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), with funding from the Governance Partnership Facility.

Follow #differentdev on Twitter for live coverage.