…and consciously reflexive approaches. At the risk of gross generalization, the first group tends to treat ToCs as ‘logframes on steroids’, a useful tool to develop more complete and accurate…
Thinking and Working Politically in Economic Development Programmes – Some Sprints and Stumbles from a DFID Programme in Kyrgyzstan
…get the ‘full package’ in any one individual, and building teams with different but complementary skills/experience Doing the M, the E and the L in practice – Logframes and Learning…
ICYMI: Some summer highlights on FP2P
…of Logframes’, which managed to combine two forms of FP2P clickbait – techie and contrarian. ‘I am aware that logframes are out of fashion: references to the ‘tyranny of the…
What use is a theory of change? 6 benefits, and some things to avoid.
…form to fill in (and most definitely not logframes on steroids). Nor is it a typology or (a personal bête noire) an insanely complicated diagram that no-one coming after you…
Only (re)Connect. The US elections, How Change Happens and where do we go from here?
…think I still belong). Wednesday felt like Brexit on steroids, triggering an emotional roller-coaster akin to the grieving process: Blank Disbelief Gallows Humour (social media is a great comfort) Fear,…
Remember when Oxfam took on Winston Churchill, apartheid, the Labour government, Big Pharma and the pesticides industry?
…taking on the excesses of the private sector, whether it was the pharmaceutical giants marketing steroids or nestle pushing baby milk in poor countries. Internally there were huge debates and…
China’s Gilded Age: a fantastic new book from Yuen Yuen Ang
…the steroids of Access Money that holds the key to China’s boom, as she explains in her summary of the key arguments: ‘How did China evolve a more growth-friendly structure…
Climate Change, the Olympics and Hunger: What's the link?
…as warm as last year’s by around 62 times. What this means is that greenhouse gas emissions are to our climate what steroids are to an Olympic athlete – they…
Can theories of change help researchers (or their funders) have more impact?
…of my previous comments on such sessions apply – in DFID the theories of change agenda seems rather dominated by evaluation and planning (‘logframes on steroids’), whereas in Oxfam, it…
Thinking and Working Politically update: where have aid agencies, consultants etc got to?
…can’t do anything that slows the burn rate – we have to address anything going wrong, while continuing to spend.’ More broadly, the technocratic approach of logframes and roll-outs has…
Bad aid to agriculture: lessons from West Africa
…rather than living (or dying) by the logframe Coordinate between donors to reduce the administrative burden and free up time for civil servants to do what they are supposed to…
Preaching to the Converted and the Path to Unlearning: this week’s random conversations
…will be asking people who have had logframe thinking drummed into them for decades to start behaving in a drastically different fashion. To caricature (hey, it’s what I do…) people…