I accompanied a project in Myanmar that ran from August 2017 to October 2021 implemented by DT Global. This blog is written together with guest bloggers Jane Lonsdale and Kelly Robertson. As part of the programme’s final output, we wrote a ‘reflection paper’, discussing what ended up as being an important natural experiment in Adaptive Management (AM), as a governance

I’m off to Papua New Guinea in a couple of weeks in the role of ‘critical friend’ (more on that weird job description in due course) to a big Aussie-funded aid program (the A$87m Building Community Engagement in PNG Program) run by DT Global (as Cardno is now called). They’ve just published an excellent guidance note on Adaptive Management, written

Tom Aston continues yesterday’s summary of what we know about adaptive management There are many papers which make a convincing case for adaptive programming. Here’s my top 5: Escaping capability traps through problem-driven iterative adaptation (Andrews, Pritchett, and Woolcock, 2012) Getting real about politics: from thinking politically to working differently (Rocha Menocal, 2014) Development entrepreneurship: how donors and leaders can foster institutional change (Faustino and

Following yesterday’s reflection on the MEL of working in complex systems, Tom Aston provides a great overview of what to read on adaptive management. It’s a long one, so I’ve split it into two – second installment tomorrow. Christian Aid Ireland’s recent publication The Difference Learning Makes by Stephen Gray and Andy Carl made a bit of a splash. The study found that Christian

Nicola Nixon, Kim McQuay, Peter Yates, Sumaya Saluja and Su Lae Yi, all of The Asia Foundation, continue our posts questioning the impact of the whole Adaptive Management/ Thinking and Working Politically Thing (I did my bit yesterday). Throughout 2021, we spent many hours talking with civil society organizations about adaptive management. We engaged with over 100 civil society organizations

Going into self-doubt mode for the rest of this week, on the feasibility and impact of the ‘second orthodoxy’. Students can be great at pointing out the contradictions in your thinking and this year’s LSE cohort seem particularly good at it. A recent set of student-led seminars focussed on Adaptive Management and Thinking and Working Politically (AM/TWP) and connected a

Yesterday I summarized the thinking behind an important new toolkit on adaptive management. In this second post, I want to have a look at the tools themselves. These come in the form of 15 ‘guidance notes’. The 15 notes cover the 3 elements of Adaptive Management that Angela Christie and I identified a couple of years ago – adaptive governance,

In recent years, I’ve been one of a crowd of people thinking and pontificating about ‘adaptive management’. The debate has been rather dominated by academics and thinktankers, fond of hand-waving generalizations and rather better at taking down the bad stuff that suggesting what might replace it. In those conversations, Graham Teskey has played the role of the stroppy practitioner, demanding

Following on yesterday’s podcast + transcript about the work of the Coalitions for Change (CfC) programme in the Philippines, I thought I’d compare it to the 3 Adaptive Management programmes I’ve also been studying in Tanzania, Nigeria and Myanmar. Let’s take context first, and then think about the nuts and bolts of the different programmes. 2 issues on Context: MICs

Had a really interesting conversation last week with Oxfam Intermon and its friends in the Catalan aid system (in Spain, aid is regional with provinces and even cities like Barcelona pursuing active aid policies). I gave my usual rap about how complex systems require aid providers to adopt iterative, adaptive approaches to cope with uncertainty and the response was basically

Adaptive Management week part 3 (with some trepidation given the recent comments from Heather Marquette et al about the proliferation of flakey case studies in lieu of evidence)…. My paper with Angela Christie summarizing our 3 case studies of big DFID-funded Adaptive Management projects in Myanmar, Tanzania and Nigeria is now online. Every word in its 26 pages is golden,

TWP guru Heather Marquette does everyone a great service by explaining the important differences between all the acronyms. I am struck by how often people say ‘TWP/PDIA/adaptive management/PEA…whatever’. Kind of like when my great-aunt calls me by various relatives’ names first before getting mine right – ‘Sheila… Mary…Lily…Heather!’ – these things may share a common genesis, and there are threads that